few rocks in the high Alps more awful than the 'Angle' of the Salève, at its foot-seven Shakespeare's Cliffs set one on the top of another, and all of marble.*

On the other side of the high town the houses stand closer, leaving yet space for a little scyamore-shaded walk, whence one looks down on the whole southern reach of lake, opening wide to the horizon, and edged there like the sea, but in the summer sunshine looking as if it was the one well of blue which the sunbeams drank to make the sky of. Beyond it, ghostly ranges of incredible mountains-the Dent d'Oche, and first cliffs towards Fribourg; to the west, the long wave of Jura, fading into the air above Neuchatel.

That was the view for full noon, when the lake was brightest and bluest. Then you fell down a perpendicular lane into the lower town again, and you went to Mr. Bautte's.

Virtually there was no other jeweller in Geneva, in the great times. There were some respectable, uncompetitive shops, not dazzling, in the main street; and smaller ones, with an average supply of miniature watches, that would go well for ten years; and uncostly, but honest, trinketry. But one went to Mr. Bautte's with awe, and of necessity, as one did to one's bankers. There was scarcely any external sign of Bautte whatever — a small brass plate at the side of a narrow arched door, into an alley-into a secluded alley — leading into a monastic courtyard, out of which—or rather out of the alley, where it opened to the court, you ascended a winding stair, wide enough for two only, and came to a green door, swinging, at the top of it; and there you paused to summon courage to enter.

A not large room, with a single counter at the further side.

*Not Parian, indeed, nor Carrara, but an extremely compact limestone, in which the compressed faulted veins are of marble, indeed, and polish beautifully.

Nothing shown on the counter. Two confidential attendants behind it, and — it might possibly be Mr. Bautte!—or his son -or his partner- or anyhow the Ruling power—at his desk beside the back window. You told what you wanted: it was necessary to know your mind, and to be sure you did want it; there was no showing of things for temptation at Bautte's. You wanted a bracelet, a brooch, a watch — plain or enamelled. Choice of what was wanted was quietly given. There were no big stones, nor blinding galaxies of wealth. Entirely sound workmanship in the purest gold that could be worked; fine enamel for the most part, for color, rather than jewels; and a certain Bauttesque subtlety of linked and wreathed design, which the experienced eye recognized when worn in Paris or London. Absolutely just and moderate price; wear, to the end of your days. You came away with a sense of duty fulfilled, of treasure possessed, and of a new foundation to the respectability of your family.

You returned into the light of the open street with a blissful sense of a parcel being made up to be sent after you, and in the consequently calm expatiation of mind, went usually to watch the Rhone.

Bautte's was in the main street, out of which one caught glimpses, down the short cross ones, of the passing water, as at Sandgate, or the like fishing towns, one got peeps of the With twenty steps you were beside it..

sea.

For all other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone flows like one lambent jewel; its surface is nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to the depth.

Fifteen feet thick, of not flowing, but flying water; not water, neither, melted glacier, rather, one should call it; the force of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of the

clouds, the gladness of the sky, and the continuance of Time.

Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they are always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and neverhushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the ever-answering glow of unearthly aqua-marine, ultramarine, violet-blue, gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradise blue, glass of a painted window melted in the sun, and the witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it forever from her snow.

The innocent way, too, in which the river used to stop to look into every little corner. Great torrents always seem angry, and great rivers too often sullen; but there is no anger, no disdain, in the Rhone. It seemed as if the mountain stream was in mere bliss at recovering itself again out of the lake-sleep, and raced because it rejoiced in racing, fain yet to return and stay. There were pieces of wave that danced all day as if Perdita were looking on to learn; there were little streams that skipped like lambs and leaped like chamois; there were pools that shook the sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, like crystal sand; there were currents that twisted the light into golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel; there were strips of stream that had certainly above the lake been millstreams, and were looking busily for mills to turn again; there were shoots of stream that had once shot fearfully into the air, and now sprang up again laughing that they had only fallen a foot or two; - and in the midst of all the

gay glittering and eddied lingering, the noble bearing by of the midmost depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harmless, with its swallows skimming instead of petrels, and the dear old decrepit town as safe in the embracing sweep of it as if it were set in a brooch of sapphire.

And the day went on, as the river; but I never felt that I wasted time in watching the Rhone.

FOUR years!

Matthew Arnold.

and didst thou stay above

The ground, which hides thee now, but four?

And all that life, and all that love,

Were crowded, Geist! into no more?

Only four years those winning ways,

Which make me for thy presence yearn,

Call'd us to pet thee or to praise,

Dear little friend! at every turn?

That loving heart, that patient soul,
Had they indeed no longer span,
To run their course, and reach their goal,
And read their homily to man?

That liquid, melancholy eye,

From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs

Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry,

*

The sense of tears in mortal things —

*Sunt lacrimæ rerum.

That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled

By spirits gloriously gay,

And temper of heroic mould

What, was four years their whole short day?

Yes, only four!—and not the course

Of all the centuries yet to come, And not the infinite resource

Of nature, with her countless sum

Of figures, with her fulness vast
Of new creation evermore,
Can ever quite repeat the past,

Or just thy little self restore.

Stern law of every mortal lot!

Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear, And builds himself I know not what

Of second life I know not where.

But thou, when struck thine hour to go,
On us, who stood despondent by,

A meek last glance of love didst throw,
And humbly lay thee down to die.

Yet would we keep thee in our heart
Would fix our favorite on the scene,

Nor let thee utterly depart

And be as if thou ne'er hadst been.

And so there rise these lines of verse
On lips that rarely form them now;
While to each other we rehearse:

Such ways, such arts, such looks hadst thou!