147 if he deserves punishment for presumption, no feeling positions here named, 'Isabella,' which is founded upon a man will be forward to inflict it, but will leave me alone, story of Boccaccio, is the one most distinguished by the with the conviction that there is not a fiercer hell than the same defects visible in Endymion,' but its occasional exfailure in a great object.' high-toned sincerity of his own nature. Closing their eyes found pathos, and images of great beauty, scattered libeHe was misled here by the travagances are amply counterpoised by touches of proor blind to the fact that the very wildest extravagances of rally throughout the narrative. the poem were but the evident offspring of a fancy poetically much more equal merit; but the two gems of this final rich to excess, the editor of the Quarterly Review' de- volume of the youthful bard are the Eve of St Agnes' and Lamia' is a piece of scribed the 'Endymion' as a piece of drivelling idiocy,' the fragment of Hyperion.' The first is one continuous and its author as next thing to a raving madman. Leigh Hunt observes, with a gentleness characteristic of him, and lovely lady has been told that, by observing certain As strain of melody, gentle and pure as the theme. A young but ill merited in the case, Mr Gifford, whose perceptions ceremonies on the eve of St Agnes, her lover and destined were all of the commonplace order, had a good common- husband will be presented to her in her dreams; and the place judgment, which served him well enough to expose true living lord of her affections, assisted by an aged crone, errors discernible by most people. He only betrayed his visits her couch in reality, and persuades her finally to fly own ignorance and presumption when he came to speak with him from her cruel kindred to become his bride. It of such a poet as John Keats.' It may be that Mr Hunt is amazing with what delicacy Keats has touched on the could not speak the whole truth with propriety, but the points in this story most difficult to handle. For example, following sonnet addressed to himself on his leaving pri- observe the richness of the picture when she has reached son (where he had been confined one year for calling the her chamber. The taper goes out as she hurries in,' and Prince Regent a fat Adonis of fifty') more justly indi- the whole light is finely described as falling through a cates, in our opinion, the cause of the hireling vituperation casement stained with innumerable splendid dyes.' of Keats in the Quarterly Review :' WRITTEN ON THE DAY THAT MR LEIGH HUNT LEFT PRISON. Think you he nought but prison-walls did sec, Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?' We do not like, even at this time of day, to speak our free mind respecting the motives which led to the attacks on Keats in a noted Scottish periodical, holding the same politics with the English review. One of the parties implicated has since deeply regretted, we believe, the injustice committed in the reckless wantonness of youth, and in the flow of high animal spirits. Well may such be the case; since the main basis of the sneers at Keats was the profession which he for a time followed; and such sneers came very ill from the son of a Paisley weaver. Penitence makes amends for much, however; but the harsh and unjust treatment which he received inflicted a deep if not deadly blow on the sensitive mind of the young author of Endymion.' This has been doubted, and his early decline has been wholly ascribed to hereditary consumption. Without denying that the ailment in question might have been the ultimate cause of death, it is yet indubitable that he was so painfully affected, on perusing Mr Gifford's critique, as to burst a blood-vessel in the lungs, and that these organs never regained the same sound strength afterwards. Nay, he required to be carefully watched for a time, having even threatened his own life. criticism, in the Edinburgh Review,' proceeded afterwards A kindly, judicious, and just from the pen of Lord Jeffrey, and it is interesting to know, that time has only strengthened the admiration of his lordship for Keats. So we find from his lately collected essays. In a recent piece, Leigh Hunt also alludes prettily to this fact: 'Lo! Jeffrey, the fine wit, the judge revered, The generous praises of Lord Jeffrey came too late, however, to soothe the wounded sensibilities of the poet, not being published until two years after Endymion' appeared, and when another volnme had been given to the world by Keats. It was his last, pulmonary disease having then laid upon him its fatal hand, and that unmistakably. The volume referred to contained the poems entitled 'Lamia,' 'Isabella, or the Pot of Basil,' the Eve of St Agnes,' and 'Hyperion,' with several minor pieces. Of the larger com. 'Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, And on her hair a glory, like a saint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. Anon his heart revives: her vespers donc, But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest, The last similitude is one to which it would not be easy of Hyperion,' wherein the poet once more enters on his Lofty, dignified, and in parts sublime, is the fragment favourite field-that of Greek mythology. It is written in imparted to that form of composition so much of the Milblank verse; and, since the time of Milton, no one has into the poem are the early gods, the Titanic brood who tonic stateliness and harmony. The characters introduced ruled the universe under the supreme governance of Saturn; and allusions are likewise made to their successors, Jupiter and his brothers, Saturn's sons and dethroners. The Titans the new deities, all save one, Hyperion, the giant of the are pictured at the outset as having already fallen before sun;' and the transference of his golden empire to Apollo, the son of Jove, seems to have been the purposed subject passage depicts the visit of Hyperion to Saturn and the of the poem, so unfortunately left fragmentary. One fine defeated Titans, where they lay in a gloomy and rocky retreat, 'Like a dismal cirque Of Druid stones upon a forlorn moor.' his solar throne for the craggy den of wo where his brethren Hyperion, still a form of undiminished brightness, leaves are: Like to a diver in the pearly seas, The gradual approach of his radiant shape gives occasion A gleam of light, And every gulf, and every chasm old, Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams: And all the everlasting cataracts, And all the headlong torrents far and near, Now saw the light and made it terrible. It was Hyperion:-A granite peak His bright feet touch'd, and there he staid to view The misery his brilliance had betray'd To the most hateful seeing of itself. Golden his hair, of short Numidian curl, In midst of his own brightness, like the bulk Of Memnon's image at the set of sun To one who travels from the dusking East: This sketch, embodied in the canvass, would certainly We must at length quit our critical observations to notice the scanty facts which have been recorded respecting the last days of the poet. As a final resource, when his health declined more and more, he was ordered by his physicians to visit Italy, which he did in the summer of 1820. After passing a short time at Naples, he proceeded to Rome, accompanied by but one friend, Mr Severn the artist, who left profession and home to devote himself to the care of Keats. It is painful to learn, as we do through a friend of Mr Severn, that the temper of the invalid was sadly soured in his closing days, as well by the unmerited contumely cast upon his writings, as by the base ingratitude of parties whom he had deeply obliged. He longed earnestly for death, and used wistfully to watch the looks of his physician at every visit, not to draw thence a favourable augury, but the reverse. Sometimes his passions became excited to a violent degree, and tested the friendship of Mr Severn severely; but speedily he would melt into self-accusations and sincere remorse. His life came finally to a close on the 27th of December, 1820, when he had just completed his twenty-fourth year. Shortly before his decease, he remarked beautifully, I feel the daisies growing over me;' and true it is, that the spot where he lies, according to Shelley, is covered in winter with violets and daisies.' It is an open space under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, which forms the cemetery of the Protestants at Rome. gether, Leigh Hunt tells us his aspect was that of a poet, and if ever poet lived he was one. Much as we have already quoted from the works of Keats, we venture yet to give an entire specimen of his odes, which, like his sonnets, are wonderfully finished productions. In both cases his exuberant fancy seems to have been checked by the restraints of space, and to have benefited by such necessity. ODE TO A GRECIAN URN. Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness! A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhymet. In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstacy Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Though winning near the goal-yet, do not grieve; -7 A For ever piping songs for ever new; For ever panting and for ever young; Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 1 Why thou art desolate, can e'er return, When old age shall this generation waste,. MRS MICKIE'S TIGER, This This ALL mighty events are the results of great ideas. is one of our friend Dionysius Mickie's aphorisms, and we Critical suggestions have been so largely intermingled write it down as an introduction to one of his dinner with the preceding sketch of the career of John Keats that parties. Dionysius Mickie had perhaps as much reason there is little occasion for any further remarks of the kind to enunciate the above fact as some moral philosophers here. His main poetical characteristic was a splendid en- with more pretensions have to develop others less strikdowment of fancy, as contradistinguished from imagina-ing. It does not matter, however, upon what grounds he tion. The one, it may be explained, deals chiefly with the propounded the idea; it is enough that he did so. imagery of external nature, animate or inanimate, and the was perhaps the most philosophical sentence that ever other with the internal passions of the human breast. Per- Dionysius gave expression to; many others might fie haps no one, since the time of Shakspeare, has possessed the within the profound concavities of his capacious frame, gift of pure fancy in a higher degree than Keats. Shelley, working and fermenting like volcanic fire, but this, was who had a mind of congenial cast, was a warm admirer of the alpha and omega of his philosophising; it was his the subject of our notice, and, when drowned at sea, held novum organum, his summum bonum, his pearl of price, the poems of the latter in his hands. But before that un- his all, and he plumed himself upon it. The accident happy event took place, he had poured forth a lament for which drew the mind of Newton down to the earth's his brother in the muses, more tenderly impassioned than centre, by the power of its gravitation, was a very trivial ever bard uttered for bard before. In the same piece, one, and so was that which set Galvani and Germany into called Adonais,' Shelley also showers down bitter male- a state of nervous experimentalising. The idea of denotdictions on those who persecuted in life the departed child ing the specific gravity of substances came upon the Syraof genius. cusan mechanician like the sparks from the kite-cord of the Massachusetts printer, and, therefore, inverting the proposition of Dionysius, we may safely declare that his great idea was the result of a mighty event. Keats was handsomely formed in person, and had a finely-shaped head, resembling in mould the heads of Milton and Wordsworth. His hair was of a beautiful auburn tint, and fell upon his neck in rich natural curls. Alto 'We must do it,' said Mrs Mickie, starting from her reverie and looking thoughtfully at the candlestick, which stood in illuminative radiance before her. We must do it!' I should think so,' responded Dionysius, rousing himself from a nap, and looking first upon the right arm and then upon the left of his fauteuil, without properly knowing why or wherefore. I should think so.' Mrs Mickie knew that the development of her idea would require labour, hazard, precision, and, above all, courage, and therefore she looked serious and reflective for some time. At last she uttered an emphatic Yes!' and raising her left hand, with a theatrical flourish, exclaimed, Dionysius, count!' were most capacious, especially posteriorly, and they had a very martial appearance from the stripes of red tape that had been carefully sewed down their lateral parts; a green coat, sparkling with buttons, hung upon the frame of this oddity, who seemed as if he had once been a giant and had shrunk up into his present dimensions. He seemed perfectly easy in his situation, however; his garments did not sit more loosely or lightly upon his person than did his mind adapt itself to his circumstances, 'Here we go,' cried the juvenile Charon, as he mounted the stair leading to the habitation of the Mickies, and swung back a step or two now and again upon the railing in his passage upwards. Here's a gemman, missus,' and he threw open the drawing-room door and sent us at once into the middle of the company with a push. Dinner was set, and we adjourned to the festive board. It took some expenditure of apologies from the agitated hostess, and many extraordinary demonstrations of patience and satisfaction from the guests, before they were set, however. Mrs Mickie hoped everybody was comfortable: everybody vehemently protested that he or she was. Mrs M. looked red in the face, but she smiled as if to hide the perturbation of her spirit, and her guests all smiled in sympathy. Mrs Mickie sat at the head of the table, as was her right, rigid and immovable as the statue of Memnon, and behind her stood Tom, with his red striped shirt-collar encircling the half of his face and the sleeves falling a la Turc over his knuckles; he stood bolt upright, as if he had been educated upon a barrack esplanade, and seemed to be thinking of nobody and nothing but his own personal appearance. Will you have roast beef, Mr Blunt?' said Mrs Mickie, smiling, and addressing herself to the veterinary surgeon, who sat at the door. 'Yes, ma'am, thank you,' cried Blunt, emphasising the pronoun and lifting up his plate. Yes,' responded Dionysius, and he aroused himself and looked keenly around the walls and on the roof of his room, as if he expected the galaxy to be shining there, Unpropitious calculation, twelve guests had arrived; and that Mrs Mickie wished him to number the stars. unfortunate occurrence, Tom had already destroyed the And reader, gentle reader, what had Mrs Mickie re-equanimity of Mrs Mickie; and, gloomy prospect, he was solved to do? To give a dinner. And what had Diony- the only prandial servitor destined to do the duties of the sius prepared himself to do? To count the guests. Any- feast. body that looks upon a table standing passively in the middle of a dining-room, garmented with a fine damask cloth, and patiently supporting rummers, tumblers, plates, knives, forks, spoons, and ketchup cruets, would scarcely believe that this was the elaboration of the most lofty propositions in domesticity; that perspiration had been poured forth like water in preparing this, language vigorously expended in directing its arrangement, patience exhausted in the collocation of its accessories, and fear and trembling endured in the hope and desire of its 'being all right;' in short, that all the speculative genius and ardent aspirations of femme de cuisine and maitre du table have been expended and are concentrated in the centre dish, and radiate to every point of the superficies on which shines the crystal and will smoke the dinner. Mrs Mickie was a woman of genius; she was one of those independent-minded people whom the philosophic lark of old pointed out to her young ones as earnest people. When she resolved upon a thing she did it; and on the present occasion, as on all others, she was, like the Duke of Glo'ster, herself again. She wrote out the invitations, fifteen in all. Her dining-room was small, it could Tom had been previously instructed what to do that only comfortably seat ten guests; but calculating, as New- was easy to be seen-so, like the high-bred colt that first haven dealers in fish do, that there would be a defalcation tries its strength and speed, he leaped from his passive of fifty per cent. upon the original conscription, she boldly position, and, making a demivolte in the air, he clutched threw the missives into the receiving-box, and began the the plate of the horse-doctor. The motion of the waitingserious business of the menage. It was a fine idea that man's person imparted motion to his coat, whose tails, of Mrs Mickie's the creation of a tiger; Frankenstein's making a centrifugal sweep, dashed down a tray of crysalchemic and corporic labours were nothing to the original tal, and in a moment the floor was strewed with broken and courageous conception of this great woman. The glasses. Crystal is a bad conductor of electricity; this perstudentious mystical compounder of elements and smasher haps happens from its surcharge of it; for this accident of retorts produced a monster who did not know a pot from produced a profuse perspiration in every guest. Each a potentate, but Mrs Mickie, on this memorable occasion, face grew red, and every one seemed to boil over with borrowed a human corpuscle, and divesting it of its super- vexation, save the cause of this ferment. Tom was as cool ficial attributes, turned it out a tiger of the rarest kind, as a zephyr, and gathered up the fragmentary reliques of who knew what time of day was dinner-time. his mishap with the utmost gravity and nonchalance. The first course had to be removed, and of course Tom was the prominent actor in this part of the drama. Mr Blunt's chair was placed close to the door, for the very good reason that the room was small; and as the little waiter rushed to and fro with the dishes, Mr Blunt rocked to and fro upon his chair, bobbing his head like Napoleon's guide at Waterloo, lest peradventure he might accidentally require extreme unction. Perhaps we superinduce, by our fears, the very accidents we dread. Mr B. lost time in his motion, and Tom did not perceive the change. Frigates at sea ascend and descend with the swell and fall of the waves, and hostile navies perceive this in their calculations of gunnery. Tom and Mr B. lost calculation, however, and so the servitor rushed upon Mr B. with a large ashet well replenished with gravy; he struck the guest upon the shoulder, causing his chair to gyrate for a moment, and, as the platter reacted, striking himself in the chest, he measured his length on the carpet, pillowing his head beside a mutton-bone. The indomitable little waiter was as resilient as whalebone, however. He lay and drew breath for some time, then, springing to his feet, Arrived at the door of Dionysius, I rang the bell. Toby Tospot could not have done it more lustily; and Mr Tonson could not, I am sure, have looked more bewildered than I when the portal was wide open flung and this specimen of zoology stood before me. Mr Mickie at home P' said I, looking down in surprise. 'Should think so,' said the pedisequius, winking his eye. I stepped into the lobby, and the door was closed with a bang that shook the plaster from the lath and made the walls to tremble. Tom-they denominated this person Tom-was a creature sui generis. If it had been possible to petrify him, and bury him clothes and all in one of the alluvial pampas, he would assuredly have produced amongst future savans as much speculation as the bones of the megatherium. He might be fourteen years of age. We do not make this calculation from his corporeal appearance; judging from the apparent, we would have been inclined to call him as many hundreds. His nether garments seemed to have been a legacy from Hendric Hudson; they rushed to the kitchen, with the fragment of the mutton in one hand and the ashet in the other. If Dionysius had been a man of as much feeling as he was fat, he would have felt severely for poor Mrs Mickie. Her face seemed a prism, reflecting pale, red, and blue, in rapid and vexatious succession. Oh, dear! did ever woman so endure pain in her efforts to ape a footman? Why, an ape would have answered her purpose as adroitly as that grinning, careless boy. She looked at him as if she could have pierced him through, but Tom returned her stare with interest, and would insensibly wink in her face. She scolded him; but he seemed to have been accustomed to this, for his face brightened under it, like a duck in rainy weather. He was an easy, cool specimen of the precocious cockney, with his little abrupt calves stuck to his legs like adhesive golf-balls, his sympathetic knees and triangular feet, and his hair combed right up. There he was, as transparent as the atmosphere-you could see through him as far as you pleased; he cared not for place, or circumstances, or persons-Tom would always be Tom. 'Missus, there's no more forks,' said Tom, in an audible whisper. 'Yes, there is, behind you, sir.' 'No, Missus; you know, as you said, I has only got eight silver ones, and when anybody axes one, give them master's. Well, you see master's digging it in, and I can't get it.' Mrs Mickie looked upward, and then she looked down. She looked askance at Tom, as if she could have bitten him, and then she ordered him to 'get along.' Tom seemed to have a strong desire to do everything right, and he seemed to have a perverse faculty of doing everything wrong. He would whip up the butler's tray, in order to bear it from the room, and, after sundry ineffectual attempts to do, leave it standing on the floor. When rung for, he would appear, divested of his coat, with a towel below his arm, and, declaring that he was engaged in washing up the dishes,' demand to know why he had been called incontinently from his duties. Poor Mrs Mickie could only respond, Get along, go.' We retired to the drawing-room at last, in order to enjoy our coffee; and here Tom appeared as much at home as if he had been straddling a post in Hyde Park. He turned over the leaves of books with the air of a bibliopole, and coolly leaned over their pages, as they lay upon the tables in elegant confusion, in order to examine their contents. The coffee he handed round in single cups, much to the fear and annoyance of the ladies, and finally, in an attempt to carry away the urn, he dashed it upon a fire-screen, throwing its boiling contents upon the carpet, and sprawling as if he were practising swimming. This denouement was too much for the risible faculties of the ladies. Borne away by the ludicrousness of the scene, they roared right out, and the gentlemen, catching up the chorus, echoed it back, while Mrs Mickie precipitately retired to moralise over the mishaps of a day. Mishaps of a day, however, run into the current of days, and produce vibrations on the surface of social economy as stones do upon the bosoms of smooth lakes, or the concussions of artillery upon the motive air. This was exemplified in two ways by the redoubtable Mr Blunt. Ugh, out upon that boy! he exclaimed, on his way home; I wish that he had been caged in a caravan when he attempted to serve table. He kept the door open, and in came the draught, until my poor bones are torn by contending nerves, and I have rheumatism for breakfast to-morrow, I know.' I called upon my friend next day, and there he sat, à la cheval, upon the fender, roasting his shoulder in a desperate attempt at rheumatic expulsion. Alas for Tom if this horse-chirurgeon could have caught him at this very moment; for there he sat, like impatience on a fender,' threatening the extermination of poor Tom in particular, and tigers in general. It is a fine thing, certainly, to live in the beau monde, and to breathe the atmosphere of haut ton; it is a fine thing to keep a tiger, and to see him flashing in his striped hide; but peace is a finer thing than even fashion, and the pain of seeing a tiger stumble, and hearing him roar, supersedes all the glory that ever could shine from lace or armorial buttons. People can surely eat without subjecting their hostess to be worried and themselves to be tormented by an awkward menial! This was Mrs Mickie's first and last attempt to keep a tiger. MOUNTAIN SLIPS. WATER, like air, may be regarded as one of the most powerful, subtle, and active agents of change in nature, conducing to several of the most remarkable phenomena of physical history. The combined action of rain, melted snow, and frost upon rocks and other elevations of the earth is always producing a change in their aspect; and the passage of rivers, and torrents, and subterranean streams, has also caused very remarkable mutations in the appearance of the earth's surface. Nature's operations are generally slow when we compare them with the duration of human life; so that the transitions occurring in nature are not so visible to the eye as to arrest the attention of a casual observer. Again, they are conducted on a scale so grand, so immeasurably beyond the sphere of man's visible operations, that they are too large for his eye to comprehend, though they are nevertheless passing through great and rapid changes. Apparently accidental events take place, however, which, by their startling and destructive action, rouse men to examine and observe, and then it is often found that these accidental phenomena are the results of a long and continuous system of gradual changes. If avalanches are fearful and destructive in their effects, and are produced by disintegration, more destructive and terrible are the mountain slips, which are produced by somewhat similar causes, although they are completely of a diffe rent nature. No one who has passed through the Highland glens of Scotland but must have remarked the large blocks of rock that are embedded in the rivers or lie scattered about upon flats at the bases of the steep rocky hills. These rocks have been detached from the original mass by the rains and frosts, and hurled with terrible rapidity down upon the plains. It has frequently occurred in this country that persons have been killed or seriously injured by the fall of these blocks, and that property has been destroyed to some extent by them; but in Switzerland and other countries, where the mountains are very steep and lofty, the devastations caused by the mountain slips, which are commensurate with the size of the mountains from which they are detached, are proportionately greater and more fearful. There are mountains which are broken up into shelves or terraces, being composed of alternate long ascents and flats leading to other façades, conducting, as it were, by a flight of steps to the summit of the mountain. The slips on these mountains are never very great nor destructive, as is the case in Norway, where the tablelands are reached by slopes that do not offer great facilities for the motion of the rocky masses. In Switzerland, however, where the mountains preserve an almost unbroken, abrupt ascent, and where huge crags rear their dark peaks into the sky, and seem to lean threateningly over the valleys, the disintegration of any part of these masses often causes great destruction, as little obstruction is offered to its descent, and as its motion attains to a great velocity in consequence of the height from which scends. de Mountain slips are the result of a very gradual process in physics, and can only take place on hills that are stratified, or composed of layers of different kinds of stone. From mountains which are of an identical constitution, fragments of rock may be sent down; but it is only from stratified elevations that those great avalanches of rocks, earth, and stones, called slips, are hurled to the glens. When mountains are composed of various strata, it often happens that a more compact may lie above a loose stratum. Water penetrating through the rents of the upper stratum finds its way to the looser and lower layers, and softening his hut beneath it. Quietness soon succeeded the terrible noise which had accompanied this great fall, and the brave peasant of the Valais found himself in utter darkness and buried alive. He was brave, however, for he was of simple and confiding piety; and having trust in God he had no lack of courage. He had a few pieces of cheese in his hut, and with this single article of aliment he had sustained himself, and bravely commenced to clear a passage from his place of immurement. After many days, but how many he could not say, he at last discovered an openthe rays of the sun. His eyes, unused for so long a time to the glare of day, were not able to bear the light at first, but they soon recovered their visual strength, and enabled him to trace his way to his friends and home. The second depression of this peak was preceded by the same warning sounds as had heralded the first, and the people living in the vicinity took care to remove in time; a large tract of pasture-ground was buried, however, by the rubbish, and reduced to a barren waste. the component particles, carries them gradually off by the mountain streams, and torrents, and other deep rents. By this process of constant action the water undermines the stratum in superposition, until it loses its chief support and sinks down upon the stratum below. If the incline on the mountain is great, the depression will probably remain without sinking further; but if the inclination of the mountain's side is abrupt, and the fall of the upper mass anything considerable, it is projected into the valley with tremendous force, beginning its motion downwards slowly at first, and increasing as it descends, break-ing leading from his place of confinement, and beheld ing into several masses and rolling on amidst clouds of dust and flights of stones, overwhelming human dwellings together with green pasture-lands, and rendering them ruinous and deserted. These mountain slips occur frequently in high or uninhabited valleys, and consequently often escape observation; but such of them as do take place in inhabited valleys produce results too serious to be forgotten. Several Alpine villages have been buried in this manner as completely as was Pompeii by the scoria of Vesuvius; and amongst the Swiss and Tyrolese there are many tales of the devastations caused by these terrible falls. These catastrophes always took place after heavy and incessant falls of rain had washed the support away from under the slips; and so suddenly and unexpectedly have they sometimes been dislocated that many people have been overwhelmed and crushed by the compressed air and precipitous rubbish. On the 4th of September, 1618, a town and village in the Val Bregaglia were overwhelmed by a slip from Mount Conto, at the base of which they were situated. Two thousand four hundred and thirty people perished by this terrible fall, and only three of the inhabitants of the town, who happened to be absent on business, escaped the all but universal destruction. The rubbish and debris that had fallen blocked up the river Mera for some time, but the water at last forced a passage through the ruins and flowed on its course. It had been observed, for several years previous to this catastrophe, that great rents and chasms had been formed on the hill; but people did not regard them as other than phenomena calculated to create wonder and not apprehension. Seven days' heavy and almost constant rains were considered to have accelerated the slip, which, upon the day following their cessation -a day calm and beautiful-came down the mountain's side with a loud and dreadful crash, burying the devoted town in its ruins, and forming over its roofs a tract upon which a forest of chesnut-trees now waves. The Diablerets, or Devilshorns, which are peaks rising from a table-land at the junction of the cantons de Vaud and Valais, were four in number in the beginning of the eighteenth century, although they have now diminished to only three. In 1714, a partial fall of one of these peaks, which are from 10,000 to 11,000 feet high, took place, and another fall succeeded in 1749. Immediately preceding the first slip the herdsmen felt the ground tremble beneath them, and several took the hint and returned to their homes, but others, more careless, remained and perished with their flocks. One herdsman singularly and providentially escaped. He was a Valaise, a native of Aven; and not having returned home with the others, he was accounted as dead, and his children were declared orphans. Three months after this event, upon Christmas eve, the poor, emaciated herdsman presented himself to his terror-stricken relatives. He was believed to be a spectre, and refused admittance into any of the houses of the village until the frightened inhabitants had rushed to the priest and sought his spiritual aid. The poor, weary herdsman at last convinced his friends, however, that he was really in the body, and then their terror was changed to wonder at his preservation. When the slip began, this simple peasant fell on his knees and prayed to God; a tremendous block of rock then struck the ground before his sheiling, and fell over it, resting on the shoulder of the mountain against which it was built; this was immediately followed by a great shower of stones and rubbish, which, had it not been for the rock, must have crushed In 1806, the greatest and most remarkable mountain slip in Switzerland took place, devastating the Valley of Goldau for three miles in extent, and burying five villages and their inhabitants beneath its rocky fragments. The Vale of Goldau extends for about six miles, and lies between Mount Ruffi, on its north-eastern side, and Mount Righi, on its south-western, being formed of two inclined planes, one of which terminates in the north-west bank of Lake Zug, the other descending to the northern extremity of the smaller Lake of Lowerz. The Mounts Ruffi and Righi are both stratified, and consist of conglomerate, that is, round smooth stones cemented together by sandstone or carbonate of lime. Mount Raffi slopes gently into the Vale of Goldau, while Mount Righi rises with a bold and sudden acclivity, having its strata inclining towards the south. For more than fifty years previous to 1806, great rents had been forming in Mount Ruffi, through which water penetrated into a loose marl and clay conglomerate stratum, which it washed away. The snowfalls of the preceding winter had also been very heavy, and the rains in July and August most copious. On the 2d of September following, unusual noises were heard to issue from Mount Ruffi, which were followed by the fall of several fragments of rock. At the same time a large horizontal rent opened across the brow of the hill, a good way below its summit, and then a portion of the mountain, with its forests and buildings, was seen to move slowly towards the valley. Immediately after, the whole mass above the horizontal rent began to move, slowly at first, and then with tremendous rapidity. The compression of the air bent and broke several old and lofty trees a good way distant from the course of the slip; clouds of white dust, like smoke, whirled above the awful torrent of stones, and seemed like the simoom of the desert; and large blocks of rock were hurled forward as if they had been missiles discharged from a cannon. This dreadful accident in nature was of a compound character, and presented two distinct appearances. The part of Mount Ruffi below the horizontal rent, which began first to move, was a slip, which, becoming dislocated in mass, slid from its position, undermining the more lofty part, which fell with a dreadful crash, breaking into a thousand fragments, and hurling several of these to the base of Mount Righi. The mass fell at nearly equi-distance between the Lakes Zug and Lowerz, forming a great ridge, which is crowned with tremendous rocks; from this ridge the rubbish had fallen to the north-west and south-east, overlaying the villages of Goldau, Busingen, and part of Lowerz, having already completely covered up those of Ober and Unter Rother, which stood nearer to the base of the mountain. The mass fell with such tremendous force into the south-east part of the Lake of Lowerz that it caused several great waves, during which the water rose more than sixty feet above the level of the lake, and rushed with great violence over a part of the village of Seven, which was situated at a distance of two miles from the part of the lake into which the mountain-mass fell. This fearful catastrophe |