From The Saturday Review.

the east stretches the chain which divides the NOTES FROM THE ALPS IN 1863. Valais from Italy. Right in our front, but A BLOCK of ice placed on a dinner-table con- separated from us by the entire valley of the veys a sense of freshness which has no adequate Rhône, is a tower of rock-the "barometer" physical cause. The solid mass acts on the im- of this neighborhood; for when it is clear of agination, and through it refreshes the system. clouds the inhabitants of these Alps prepare And could we but convey a mere image of the for fair weather. It now stands upon an emscene now before us, it would probably, in inence bare and alone, like one of the "round like manner, refresh our readers in the thirsty towers of other days" sung of by Thomas atmosphere of London. The sky is without Moore. Its formation probably illustrates a cloud, and the sun shines down upon the the formation of the Alps themselves, being green hills with concentrated power; but in sculptured by the weather from the mass to front of us, and beyond the valley at our feet, which it first belonged. These mountains the everlasting snows defy his action. There assuredly were never lifted in their present they settle by degrees into firm ice, which forms by the operation of subterranean forces. stretches in frozen tongues along the valleys No man of philosophical mind will assume down to the habitations of men. Grandest that under every pinnacle and under every of all the eminences in view, set in the crys-chain a special focus of action existed which tal air as if it were but air of denser charac- raised that pinnacle or that chain above the ter, is the Weisshorn-a magnificent snow surrounding level to its present elevation. It cone buttressed all round by mountains, each may suit the poet to speak of a mountain beof which, though here subdued in the pres-ing raised like a bubble from the earth's molten ence of the grander central mass, would, if planted in Cumberland, dwarf Helvellyn to a hillock. Next to the Weisshorn, on the left, is a lonely pyramid merely sprinkled with snow, the steepness of its sides rendering accumulation impossible. Compared with this dark chieftain of the Alps, the Weisshorn, and the noble cones of the Mischabel to the left of it, seem friendly to man. Indeed, each of these has already felt the foot of the mountaineer upon its head; but the black pyramid of the Matterhorn is still a virgin fortress which has hitherto repulsed every attack. There is something mystical in its isolation, and perhaps it is well for the enjoyment of those who love the mountains that one wild peak should remain to which they can look with the wonder which attaches itself to the unexplored.

up

centre, but the physical investigator sees in the present mountains residual forms which ice and water, acting through geologic ages, have carved from a general protuberance, raised in this portion of Europe by forces operating through the whole area now occupied by the Alps.

The pastures seem all alive; for every blade of grass there seems a jumping or a buzzing insect-playful, harmless flies, which sip the dew and feed upon the honey of the flowers, or thirsty bloodsuckers, which worry and poison you if you let them. And here they jump and fly and chirrup regardless of man, coming with the summer and vanishing with the winter, asking no man's leave and ministering to no man's needs-appearing here by a patent as valid as that which authorizes man himself to set his foot upon the earth. To the left of the pointed" horns" of the And all man's powers, both physical and Mischabel is the Alphubel, called a "Tanz-mental, are here mirrored in a distorted or berg" by the guides, from the circumstance microscopic form. They eat, they fight, they that a dance might be held upon its flattened head. It is the frustrum of a mountain, the upper third of the cone being sliced away as if by the horizontal sweep of a scimetar. Then comes the crown of the Alleleinhorn, We have spoken of the Alps being sculpthere of scarcely sufficient prominence to break ured to their present forms by the action of the sky-line; then the odd-looking Rympfisch- ice and water. To state the magnitude of horn-mainly snow, but with a crag stuck like the ice operations to which this region was: an oblique feather in its white cap. Then once subjected would be to raise a smile of the huge mass of the Fletschhorn, and so on incredulity on the countenances of the majorto the Monte Leone, while many a league to ity of those who visit the Alps. From the

caress, they devour each other, they plan, they build. The same powers which in the human form find their culmination are presented here in rudiment.

ice detached itself in icebergs which floated, laden with boulders and débris, over the neighboring ocean? So great were these operations that an important portion of the strata of England is composed of the material deposited by the liquefied "bergs." The presence of so much ice naturally suggests the operation of intense cold, and to account for this cold the intellects of philosophers have long been exercised. Two very famous speculations may be noted here. Suppose a thermometer plunged in space and defended completely from the action of the sun-say at a point of space so distant from the sun that his heat is insensible. That thermometer would indicate the temperature of that particular portion of space which it occupied. Let it be removed to another distant region

spot where we sit to the bottom of the valley of the Artic circle now embraces Greenland— is a vertical depth of at least three thousand sending glaciers down to the sea, where the feet. The valley is now covered with trees and verdure; wooden villages dot it all over, and on the green Alpine slopes the merry cow-bells tinkle; yet every square foot of this fair region was once occupied by ice. Look to those rocks-their edges are not sharp and cliffy like those upon the crest of yonder ridge. They are unnaturally smooth. All their asperities have been ground away, and by what? By a vast glacier which once filled this valley to the brim, which also held possession of the basin now occupied by the Lake of Geneva, and which rolled its frozen waves over the plain of Switzerland till it met a barrier on the distant chain of the Jura. Down the valley the glacier moved, with slow but resistless energy. It was the moulding-plane which rounded these rocks; it was the plowshare which scooped out these it would here show the temperature reignhollows in the hill sides, and left behind it ing in its new position. Now, some philosothose long ridges of moraines. This mighty phers have supposed that different portions tool, operating through the uncalculated ages of space possess different temperatures; and of the glacial epoch, must have profoundly as it is known that the entire solar system is modified the surface over which it passed. moving through space with enormous velociWere that protuberant surface perfectly uni- ty, it has been thought that it passes, during form, and were it composed of materials of the ages of its transit, sometimes through the same hardness throughout, the water colder sometimes through warmer regions of falling on it or the ice moving over it would space. The theory of the glacial epoch from have planed it uniformly down; but there this point of view is, that while crossing one is nothing uniform in nature. Such a swell- of the cold portions of space, the temperature ing of the land as we have supposed must of our system became so much lowered as to have its accidents-its fissures, eminences, produce the vast glaciers whose traces now hollows, and undulations-accidents, in short, fill us with wonder. Other philosophers which determine the direction in which wa-again have accounted for the cold by briefly ter or ice spread over its surface must move. assuming that the emission of heat from the Once committed to a line of motion, the wa- sun is not constant-that the heat emitted in ter or the ice widens and deepens its track, some ages exceeds that emitted in others, and in this track erosion goes on. Thus the and that the glacial epoch appeared during valley sinks and the adjacent eminences rela- one of the periods of feeble solar emission.— tively rise, and thus we believe, in the course The philosophers who advance this theory do of geologic epochs, those mountains have been not attempt to account for the variation of carved from a formless wen. To sum up, the heat which they assume; but, given the feeforces underneath swelled this portion of Eu- ble emission, they consider that those vast rope into a protuberance more or less broken, masses of ancient ice follow as a matter of no doubt; and then the command was given course. to the elements to chisel this mass into mountains and gorges, into mighty pyramids and far-stretching ranges of hills. The elements obeyed, and the result of their operations is the Switzerland of to-day.

But whence were the mighty masses of ice derived which in former ages covered Switzerland, and even our own islands, as the ice

Here, however, they are radically wrong. Indeed, both of the hypothesis referred to originated in too close a contemplation of the nearest facts. The presence of ice suggested so strongly the operation of cold, that the equal and opposite operation of heat which the formation of glaciers necessarily involves was forgotten. Whence came the ice of

those ancient glaciers?

source as that which feeds the glaciers now existing-namely, from atmospheric snow. Whence came this snow? From the condensation and congelation of atmospheric vapor. Whence came this vapor? From the action of the sun's heat upon the aqueous portions of the earth's surface. Thus, tracing the glacier to its origin, we find that origin to be the heat of the sun. You cannot have a single pound of the ice, either of ancient or of modern glaciers, produced without the previous evaporation of a pound of water by the sun.

From the same would raise 5lbs. of cast-iron to its melting point. We thus arrive at the indubitable result that every glacier, ancient or modern, required, as a first step towards its formation, the outlay of an amount of solar heat competent to raise a mass of cast iron five times the weight of the glacier to its fusing point.Imagine the glaciers removed, and the white hot metal in their places. Imagine, for example, the Grand Aletsch glacier and its noble tributaries all displaced-and the Jungfrau, Monk, and Eiger, the Aleleschhorn, Gletscherhorn, Trugberg, and the numerous other mountains which send their annual snows into the main valley, all wrapped in a casing of cast iron at a welding temperature, until a quantity of this iron five times the mass of the present glacier and its nutritive snows should load their shoulders and fill the valley-it would express the exact amount of solar action which has been expended in the production of the present glacier. And to express the solar action involved in the production of the ancient glaciers, we should need an incalculably greater amount of the white hot metal. Supposing the material thus changed-supposing that, instead of being filled with the ice, the valleys had been filled and the mountains clothed with the iron-then the diminuation of the quantity of the heated metal from the glacial epoch to the present time would naturally lead to the inference that solar action was becoming less. And if we adopted the hypothesis of different space-regions of different temperatures, we should have to assume that it was during the glacial epoch that the region of high temperature had been traversed. Thus, by simply changing the material, and without in the least degree altering the quantity of heat expended, we should be led to a reversal of the hypothesis which would account for the glacial epoch by supposing that during its continuance the solar system was passing through refrigerated space.

And simply to reduce a pound of water from the liquid to the vaporoas condition requires as much heat as would raise nearly 6lbs. of ice-cold water to its boiling point. Expressed in another form, every one of those ancient glaciers involved in its production a quantity of solar action able to raise a mass of cast-iron five times the weight of the glacier to the white heat of fusion. It is perfectly manifest from this reasoning that, by reducing the emission of heat from the sun, or by plunging the solar system into space of a low temperature, we should be cutting off the glaciers at their source; we should be rendering impossible the very first step necessary to their formation by the enfeeblement of the agent which generates the aqueous vapor. The process is one of pure distillation, and no distiller would think of augmenting the quantity distilled by taking the fire from under his boiler. Still, this is really what they do who would produce great glaciers by the destruction of solar heat. Let us put the question in another form. We know from experiment the exact amount of heat necessary to evaporate a pound of water, and we also know the exact amount of heat necessary to raise a pound of castiron from its ordinary temperature at the earth's surface to the white heat of fusion. Comparing both together, we find that the heat necessary to evaporate 1 lb. of water

From The Saturday Review. ALLITERATION AND ASSONANCE.

the melody of language, using assonance in its widest sense as the repetition of similar vowel sounds, and alliteration as the sequence of similar initial consonants. It need not be remarked that, in such an analysis, we must be careful to avoid any forced and

To trace the history of alliteration and assonance would here be out of place. It will be enough to remark that both have been made the basis of poetical melody in lieu of rhyme. For every one who is at all ac-fanciful application of a theory. We must quainted with Spanish literature has heard of the assonant rhymes which consist in the recurrence of like vowel sounds at the end of lines, without the addition of any consonantal similarity. And it is notorious that alliteration has a peculiar charm for versifiers in all languages the literature of which is as yet undeveloped. Thus we remember the line of Ennius:

I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility.

The preyful princess pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing pricket.

not, for instance, deny that rhyme and rythm, and all that belongs to the concatenation of words differing in length and quality, play a most important part in the harmony of language. It will be enough to establish the comparatively neglected claim of assonance and alliteration as tending, together with other elements of melody, to make up the music of both poetry and prose. Nor can it be denied that, à priori, there is a strong O Tite tute Tati tibi tanta tiranne tulisti. presumption in their favor. For all words And it is well known that some of the earare composed of sounds, and the harmony of liest English metres presented almost as molanguage must be found in those sounds; and notonous a sequence of letters for many lines as the regular sequence or repetition of simtogether. It was these that Shakspeare pa-ilar forms is one source of beauty in the plasrodied in Love's Labor Lost, when he made tie arts, so it is not unreasonable to conjecMaster Holofernes say :ture that the recognition of repeated sounds in language may lie at the root of the pleas ure which we take in rythmical declamation. The metre of poetry and the cadences of prose would correspond to the time and rythm and phrase in music; while assonance and alliteration must pervade the whole, like harmony and melody, which subtly interchange and link their varying expressions, while the frame-work of the music continues unalterably the same. It cannot, however, be maintained that the melody of language In habit as a harmot - unholy of werkes is reducible to as strict rules as that of muWent wide in the world-wonders to heare. sic. Words must ever remain the common It is manifest from this example that the te- instrument of communication between man dious vulgarity of sound noticeable in the and man, nor is it possible that what we use lines of Ennius and Master Holofernes, has so variously should be capable of the same been exchanged for an agreeable repetition subtle application as the organ of one of the of the same initial letter at the most em- fine arts. Yet it may be demonstrated by phatic pauses of the verse. Three such let-analysis that, when we wish to exalt lanters were allowed in every couplet; but it guage from its trivial office and to make it was necessary to separate them, and this was the exponent of graceful sentiments or lofty generally effected by placing two in the first thought, we unconsciously call in the aid of member of the distich, and the other in a alliteration and assonance to change our talkprominent part of the second. Thus the ing into a singing voice. attention was arrested, and the structure of the verse was indicated by the dominant letter, which ruled like the keynote of a chant. Having seen how assonance and alliteration are severally used in the structure of certain poetical systems, we may endeavor to show that they really lie at the root of all

In Icelandic and Gothic poetry this alliteration was reduced to a regular system, which soon passed into our literature, and became the rythm of the Vision of Piers Ploughman. The following two lines, or rather, pair of couplets, will illustrate the position of the alliterative consonants in this measure:

We have seen already that there are two kinds of alliteration. The one we may call Vulgar, as it only affords a jingling and monotonous effect, such as is produced by strongly marked and common tunes in music. The other may be termed Subtle, for, when used by the most perfect artists, it hardly

strikes the ear, but connects the members of | Spenser. Who, for instance, can admire the a verse or period insensibly, and is such that trotting movement of— we rather miss its absence than observe its

Do we indeed desire the dead

presence. Common poets who desire to give where there are six d's in eight syllables? a glibness to their verse constantly make use We may here observe that some letters seem of vulgar alliteration. They place their al- to have a peculiar tendency to reproduce literative words together in pairs, instead of themselves, and of these d is the most remarkinterlinking them like the rhymes of an Italian sonnet; or else they string them one after another, as in the following example

from Tannhäuser : :

Creeps through a throbbing light that grows and
glows

From glare to greater glare, until it gluts
And gulfs him in.

able.

It is extremely common to find ten by a word with the same initial. This is a syllable lines which begin with a d terminated fact soon discovered in capping verses, when lines beginning with D are difficult to find. Thus it happens that out of nine verses in Shelley's Adonais which begin with this letter, seven exhibit the peculiarity we have It is not yet the place to speak of assonance; mentioned. This rule is more certain in but we may remark that the vulgarity of rhymed and long-lined measures than in these lines depends not only on the vicious blank verse or short metres; for in blank repetition of the same initial consonants, but verse the sense is often carried from line to also on the monotony of the vowel sounds, line, and alliterative repetition is more which come together in pairs, and in one in-needed in the middle of the verse than at stance produce a rhyme. On the other hand, its termination; while short lines become a real poet will place his alliterative words at some distance, making them answer to one another at the beginning and the end of a period, or so arranging them that they will mark the metre and become the key-words of the line. Thus:

Heard ye the arrow hurtle in the sky? is obviously superior to

Heard ye the hurtling arrow in the sky? For in the former and true reading of the verse the ear is satisfied by a repetition of the h sound which it has just begun to lose, whereas in the latter it is rather annoyed by the quick succession of another aspirate. Yet it often happens that even the greatest poets make a too plentiful use of such alliteration. Spenser's languor and extreme sweetness arise in a great measure from this easy flow of selfrepeating consonants. We glide from word to word, half conscious of their présence, and lulled even to forgetfulness by their placid beauty. For Spenser is too great an artist even to offend our ears by vulgar sequences such as we have quoted from Tannhäuser. He is always on the verge of this defect, but his better judgment holds him back. We may remark that Coleridge, in his notes on the Elizabethan poets, ascribes much of Spenser's melody to his use of alternate alliterations. Yet the most skilful versifiers are not always able to exercise the self-restraint of

sharp and tripping if their beginning and ending be too definitely marked, and, therefore, poets of good ear place their alliterative echo in the middle of the succeeding line instead of at the end of the same verse. Of this the following stanza from In Memoriam affords a good specimen :

66

Dip down upon the Northern shore

Oh sweet new year delaying long; Thou dost expectant Nature wrong Delaying long, delay no more." It would require a tedious analysis to indiin which the sounds of d and n and lare woncate all the alliterative beauty of this passage drously interlinked. Yet we think it incon

trovertible that the alliterative structure of

the first couplet is more harmonious than that of the second, owing to its greater subtlety. One more point in the use of alliteration must be mentioned, which is, the effect of consonants at the end of words. When they for then they have nearly the same sound as occur before vowels, their power is increased, if they stood at the beginning of the word which follows. A single instance will illustrate our meaning better than much explanation. In the line

"Come into the garden, Maud," there is no direct alliteration. Its fluency depends upon its open vowels, in a great measure; but the final m of come is echoed in Maud, and these two sounds seem to bind the