Yet is not life, in its real flight, Marked thus-even thus-on earth, Oh! let us live, so that flower by flower, A lingerer still for the sun-set hour, A charm for the shaded eve. Of some flowers there are innumerable species; of some there is but one, such as the tamarind; some are almost hidden by the surrounding foliage, while others (the colchicum, and many more) blossom before the leaves appear. There is a particular kind of grass growing upon the banks of the Burrampooter, in India, which throws out a delightful perfume when crushed or trampled upon. Many flowers will live only in water, some will exist for months without any. There are some plants, such as the sea-holly, which though poisonous when grown in moist ground, become, when cultivated in a dry soil, not only free from any poisonous qualities, but nutritious, giving out an aromatic scent. The root of the cassada is said to be poisonous if eaten when first taken from the ground, yet in Sumatra it is made into bread, having previously only been washed, pressed, and dried. Flowers almost change their nature by being transplanted; many wild flowers droop and wither when attempted to be cultivated in gardens. Flowers which in Europe have only one blossom, in the East, particularly in the island of Madagascar, have clusters; this is said to be the case with hyacinths and tuberoses; growing two hundred in a group, varying in colour, and diffusing a most grateful fragrance: it is also stated that the jessamine, white and scarlet, have fifty blossoms in a bunch, and that flowers which only blossom at stated periods here, there bloom the whole year throughout. The Cape of Good Hope produces, perhaps, the largest and richest flowers in the world. ALMOST every traveller who has had extensive opportunities of studying human nature has agreed that locality occasions or modifies character. Thus we have the phlegmatic Hollander, who, nurtured amid his native swamps, evinces little of that animation produced by the varied scenery of other states. We have the enterprising commercialist, who, born in a country offering no particular impediment to his intercourse with his fellows, and having his streams and seas inviting him to view the world abroad, exhibiting all that enterprize of spirit, and active energetic industry which has again elevated commerce to the position which it held among the merchant princes of Venice, in the proud and palmy days of her high prosperity. But no country, it is universally agreed, is so productive of marked characteristic as the clefts and the glens, the precipices and torrents of a mountainous region. We invariably find high and elevated feelings strongly developed in the characters of the inhabitants of such a district; a deeply imaginative cast also is invariably present among them. The variation of climate, the suddenness of storm, and the fierceness of its fury, inures them to the endurance of hardship, while the physical exertion continually requisite, and the unexpected manner in which it has constantly to be displayed, renders them cool in times of danger, and ready at all times to encounter it, or whenever the necessity of life requires. We perceive some of these traits most strikingly evinced in the conduct of the Highlanders of Scotland, those singular and noble sons of the north, in whom the individuality of selfishness seems almost a nonentity. Nor is there less superiority of distinguishing mark among the irritable, though inferior and fretful, denizens of the mountains of Wales. But these peculiarities are above all most interesting in the characters of those residents among the wild sublimities of nature exhibited throughout the higher Alps and most romantic districts of Switzerland. The hardy mountaineer of the Bernese chain has been placed altogether beyond the influence of the factitious principles of the world. The chace of the goat, or of the chamois forms at once his pleasure and support. Leaping from rock to rock, traversing tracks almost impassable to the foot of man, he pursues his game, undaunted and unwearied, until success has crowned his efforts, or night put a period to his pursuit; and then throwing himself at the foot of some jutting peak, which barely affords screen from the searching blast which moans through the darkness of those dreary and impressive wilds, he sleeps the sleep of innocence and peace, his rest undisturbed, save by the vision of the dear ones by his cottage hearth. Nor is his game unworthy of the toil. There is about the chamois a fearless boldness, and an agility and a speed, a reckless daring of desperate feats, which renders it an aim worthy of a brave man's thought to follow and make it his prey. A species of antelope, the chamois possesses the fleetness of his tribe, while like the ibex, he inhabits the loftiest range of the primitive mountain ridges, displaying all the restlessness and vivacity of the common goat. It is extremely impatient of heat, and during summer is only to be found on the topmost peaks, or in the most retired glens of the district verging on the regions of eternal snow. In the winter it takes a lower range, and then is the only time when it can be followed with any chance of success. Its senses of sight and smell are exceedingly acute, and it is said to be able to scent a man at the distance of half a league. When the hunters have ascertained where the chamois are assembled, they surround the place on all sides, when the animal perceiving those to the windward, retire, and are met by those on the opposite side. When first perceiving the approach of its foes the chamois displays the utmost restlessness and alarm, till obtaining a sight of the object of its fears, it leaps on the highest rock, and closely scans the whole prospect round, uttering at the same time a sort of suppressed whistle, and exhibiting the utmost agitation. Soon, however, as it obtains a sight of its pursuer it is off like the wind, scaling rocks which other creatures would not attempt, and if not interrupted by stratagem, soon finds safety in distance. Nothing can be more striking than the agility with which the chamois ascends and descends rocks. It does not ascend at a single bound, but, leaping forward in an oblique direction, strikes the rock three or four times with its feet, and thus will descend a precipice nearly perpendicular, twenty or thirty feet in height, without apparently the slightest projection by which to hold on with. The whole length of the body is about three feet, and the height about two feet at the shoulders, with a plain face and a pair of upright horns turned backwards at the tips, and rising on the forehead just above the eyes, The whole of the body is covered with long hair of a dark brown colour in winter, of a fawn colour in summer, and mixed with grey in spring. Beneath the long hair is a close coating of short wool thickly covering the skin, which well protects it from the cold of its inclement abode. Byron, in that sublimest of all his com positions-Manfred, has a beautiful description of the scenery, where the hardy mountaineers of Savoy follow their dangerous avocation. The Mountain of Jungfrau-Time, morning- MANFRED alone upon the Cliff. My Mother Earth! And thou, fresh breaking day; and you, ye Mountains, Why are ye beautiful? And you, ye craggs, upon whose extreme edge I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring Ay, Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, [An eagle passes. Whose happy flight is highest into heaven, Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, With a pervading vision Chamois Hunter. Even so, This way the chamois leapt; her nimble feet I will approach him nearer. -What is here ? Ye toppling crags of ice! Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me! Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass, C. Hunter. The mists begin to rise from up the valley; I'll warn him to descend, or he may chance To lose at once his way and life together. Man. The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, |