it; not to mention his forcing the brandy down our throats-which by the way nearly suffocated me.' 'It was the saving of us, that brandy,' said Lady Hunlocke—'He was very wise to force swallow it.'

you to

When we reached the little hospital at Realp, where two fat capuchin Friars received us-we found, to our utter disappointment, that no fire was to be had—not a single fire place being in the whole house. Stoves indeed there were, a wretched substitute at best for the cheerful blaze of a firebut they take so much time in heating, that although we had sent on one of the guides from the Furca, and the good Friars had lighted it the moment he arrived, it was three hours before we got any warmth. Peat is the only fuel they burn here, which I have not seen before since I left Westmoreland. We arrived nearly dead with hunger too, having neglected to take any provisions with us from the Grimsel, and having fasted from six in the morning till dark.

Our fare, however, in the little convent, was rather scanty, and far from sumptuous. Neither could we mend a bad dinner by the addendum of tea-for no tea could be had at night or for break

fast, excepting Swiss tea, which is composed of dried herbs gathered on the mountains—and notwithstanding the high encomiums of the good Friars, we found this beverage peculiarly sickly and nauseous. As, however, the poor Brothers of the Hospice of Realp have no visitors excepting those involuntary ones, who, like us, are driven by storms to seek refuge with them-it is not to be expected that they should have many articles of luxury; but there is one which I think they might possess― the luxury of cleanliness; and of which there was a woeful deficiency. Their own appearance does not, except in its dirt, betray any very severe marks of mortification, and none whatever of abstinence.Certainly, they strictly follow the commands of their divine master, and do not seem unto men to fast.'

The Patois of this part of Switzerland-the only living language the good fathers either spoke or understood—is extremely unintelligible. German, which, mingled with Italian, seems to have been its foundation, was too pure for them; and for the first time proved useless. Of Italian, the Friars could make nothing. French puzzled them as much as if it had been Arabic-English, of course, was no better than Hebrew-so that at

last, to understand each other, we were compelled to carry on our conversation in Latin ;—and though certainly our phraseology was far from classical, and it was hard to say whether theirs or mine was the most execrable Latin-or which of us the most unmercifully broke poor Priscians head—yet it served to make our meaning perfectly intelligible to each other.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE LAKE OF LUCERNE.

Ye lovers of the desert, hail!
Say in what deep and pathless vale,
Or on what hoary mountain's side,
'Midst roaring falls your footsteps glide,
'Midst broken rocks a rugged scene,
With green and pastoral dales between,
'Mid' forest dark of aged oak,

Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke;
Where never human foot appear'd,

Nor ev'n one straw roof'd cot was rear'd;
Where nature seems to sit alone,

Majestic on a craggy throne.

Warton's Ode to Fancy.

LETTER XXIX.

CAROLINE ST. CLAIR TO MRS. BALCARRIS.

THE morning was bright and beautiful after the storm; and mounting our horses at sun-rise, we bade adieu (in Latin) to the two Friars, and

proceeding near a league down the valley, arrived at the little village of The Hospital,'—and at a cottage, the first we had seen since we left Guttanen, the day before yesterday:—nay since the apparition of that extraordinary being and his mute attendant had vanished from our eyes in the storm, on the summit of the Furca yesterday, no human creature had we beheld, excepting these fat Friars:―and so many leagues had we now travelled without meeting any other trace of mankind, that we began to communicate to each other our suspicions that the whole of the human race must be of a sudden reduced to these aforesaid Friars and ourselves—so that an ugly old woman at this cottage door, was to us, what she never could have been in any other possible situation—a most charming object.

Half a league further, we came to Andermatt, a village of great consideration in these parts, where we had intended to have taken

up our abode last night. The secluded and almost inaccessible situation of these peaceful Alpine vallies, have not saved them from being the theatre of war. At the close of the last century the sanguinary contests between the French and Russians, filled them with desolation. The towns and villages were pillaged