thunder. Rocks or masses that have been carried away from their resting-places on the bosom of a glacier, protect the ice under them by their shadow, while the surrounding mass gradually melts away, leaving them standing on stately pedestals, huge block obelisks slowly travelling towards the valley. Whenever these descending masses enter a gorge up in the mountains, they spread out into it, partially filling it up, and are called ice seas. The frozen sea of Chamouni is one of these. These large collections of ice are traversed by immense crevices, reaching hundreds of feet down, and revealing that beautiful clear colour which the Rhone has as it leaves the Lake Geneva. Through these fissures, streams flow in every direction, and collecting at the lower extremity of the glacier, under the roof of a huge cavern of their own making, flow off, a violent torrent, into the valley. Into these crevices the snow frequently drifts, choking up the portion near the surface, thus making pit-falls for the traveller, and sometimes even for the wary, bold deer hunter. Above the glaciers, near the summit, one frequently meets with red snow. I have seen it myself, and noticed it. The colour is said to be produced by a species of root very common in these parts, and which makes the snow itself its soil, and spreads and grows in imperceptible branches over the surface. The invisible threads reaching out in every direction, give to the snow a deep crimson tint, which, as the plant dies, changes into a dirty black. The number of glaciers in the Alps has been stated at four hundred, covering a surface of about three hundred and fifty square miles. But one might as well, attempt to estimate the number and weight of all the avalanches that fall, for these glaciers are of all sizes, some extending miles, and in every variety of shape and position. Indeed there is one which contains a hundred and twenty square miles. The traveller sees, as at Grindelwald and Chamouni, only the branches, the mere arms of these mighty forms. Scientific men differ very much as to the relative thickness of glaciers, though they average probably not more than seventy or eighty feet. The frozen sea, where it extends into the vale of Chamouni, is a hundred and eighty feet thick. Some of these glaciers are of a pure white, and shine in the noonday sun with dazzling splendour, but the greater part of them are covered with the remains of the mountains, giving them a dirty hue, wholly unlike the appearance one would imagine who has never seen them. The impression they make on the mind of the beholder, however, can never be effaced. The marks of power, of terrific struggles they carry about them, fill the mind with emotions of grandeur almost equal to the single avalanche and its lonely voice of thunder. They have a voice of their own too, called by the mountaineers brullen (growlings) caused by the rending of the solid mass when the south-east wind breathes upon it. The lower

portion of the Alps is full of sound and motion; even after you leave the tinkling of bells, the music of the horn, and the bleating of goats, there is the roar of the torrent, the shock of the avalanche, and the grinding and crushing sound of the terrible glacier. But when you ascend above these, all is silent as the grave. Eternal Sabbath reigns around the peaks, and solitude deeper than the heart of the forest embraces the subdued and humbled adventurer, while the sudden flight of a pheasant from amid the snow, or the slow and lordly sweep of the eagle, in his circles upward, waken the feelings into great delight and admiration.

ITALY.

THOSE of my young readers who have read the history of Rome, with all its stirring and wonderful incidents, cannot but feel interested in a country which has been the theatre of such great events. With a mild and fertilizing climate, Italy ought to possess many elements of happiness and contentment: but superstition and bad government have had an ill effect on the people, and they do not possess the talents or energy of their ancestors. Still, Italy has been for ages the seat of the fine arts, where painters and sculptors have derived their best conceptions, and it is in connection with this subject I will relate a story of a celebrated artist.

About forty miles from Florence, Italy, there lived a poor peasant, named Bondone. In 1276 he had a son born whom he called Giotto. The father was an ignorant man, and knew little else than to labour in taking care of his flocks of sheep.

There were no public schools in that country, where children of the poor man, as well as those of the rich, could attend and obtain an education. Consequently, young Giotto was brought up in ignorance. But he was one of those boys that learn something from what they see around them.

In the country where Giotto lived, there were no fences and fields, such as we have, to keep the sheep and cattle from straying; hence it was necessary to keep some person with the flocks while they were feeding on the plains, to take care of them.

At the early age of ten, Bondone sent his son Giotto out to take care of a flock. This pleased the lad, for now the happy little shepherdboy could roam about the meadow plain at his will. But most of his time must be spent near the flock, and he was not long in devising some means to keep himself busy while there.

His favourite amusement soon became that of sketching in the sand,

or on broad flat stones, making pictures of surrounding objects, while lying on the grass, in the midst of his flock. His pencils were a hard stick, or a sharp piece of stone; and his chief models the sheep which gathered around him in various attitudes.

The following story is related of the manner in which the genius of Giotto was discovered, and how he became a great painter.

One day, as the shepherd-boy lay in the midst of his flock, earnestly sketching something on a stone, there came by a traveller. Struck with the boy's deep attention to his work, and the unconscious grace of his attitude, the stranger stopped, and went to look at what he was doing. It was a sketch of a sheep, drawn with such freedom and truth of nature, that the traveller beheld it with astonishment.

"Whose son are you?" said he, his curiosity excited. The startled boy looked up in the face of his questioner. "My father is Bondone, the labourer, and I am his little Giotto, so please you, sir," said he.

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'Well, then, little Giotto, should you like to come and live with me, and learn how to draw, and paint sheep like this, and horses, and even men ?"

The child's eye flashed with delight.

and ask my

"I will go with you anywhere to learn that. But," he added, as a sudden reflection made him change colour, "I must first father; I can do nothing without his leave."

go

"That is right, my boy, and so we will go to him together," said the stranger, who was a great painter, named Cimabue.

Great was the wonder of old Bondone at such a sudden proposal; but he perceived his son's wish, though Giotto was fearful of expressing it, and consented. He accompanied his boy to Florence, and left his little Giotto under the painter's care.

His pupil's progress surpassed Cimabue's expectations. In delineating nature, Giotto soon went beyond his master, to whom a good deal of the formality of ancient art, which he had been the first to cast aside, still clung.

One morning the artist came into his room, and looking at a halffinished head, saw a fly resting on the nose. Cimabue tried to brush it off, when he discovered that it was only painted.

"Who has done this?" cried he, half angry, half delighted.

Giotto came trembling from a corner, and confessed his fault. But he met with praise instead of reproof from his master, who loved art too well to be indignant at his pupil's talent, even though the frolic were directed against himself.

As Giotto grew older, his fame spread far and wide. Like most artists of those early times, he was an architect as well as painter. Pope Benedict IX. sent messengers to him one day. They entered the artist's room, and informed him that the Pope intended to employ him

in designing for St. Peter's Church at Rome, and that he desired Giotto to send him some designs by which he might judge of his capacity.

Giotto was a pleasant and witty man, and taking a sheet of paper, drew with one stroke of his pencil a perfect circle. Then handing it to the messengers, he said to them, "There is my design, take that to the Pope."

The messenger replied, "I ask for a design." "Go sir," said Giotto : "I tell you the Pope asks nothing else of me. And notwith

standing all their remonstrances, he refused to give any other.

Pope Benedict was a learned man; he saw that Giotto had given the best instance of perfection in his art, sent for him to come to Rome, and honoured and rewarded him. From this incident "Round as Giotto's O," became an Italian proverb.

The talents of Giotto won him the patronage of the great of his country. He visited in succession Padua, Verona, and Ferrara. At the latter city he remained some time painting for the Prince of Este.

While there, Dante, the Italian poet, heard of Giotto, and invited him to Ravenna. There, also, he painted many of his works, and formed strong friendship with the great Dante.

a

society; and admired by all, his was indeed an enviable position, and one justly merited.

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He was a good as well as great man, loved by all his friends; and, as his biographer relates of him, a good Christian as well as an excellent painter." He died at Milan in the year 1336, and the city of Florence erected a statue in honour of this eminent artist.

SPAIN.

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"MANY," says Washington Irving, are apt to picture Spain to their imagination as a soft southern region, decked out with all the agreeable charms of pleasant Italy. On the contrary, though there are exceptions in some of the maritime provinces, yet, for the greater part, it is a stern, melancholy country, with rugged mountains, and long, sweeping plains, destitute of trees, and indescribably silent and lonesome-partaking of the savage, solitary character of Africa. What adds to this silence and loneliness is the absence of singing birdsa natural consequence of the want of groves and hedges. The vulture and the eagle are seen

wheeling about the mountain cliffs, and soaring over the plains; and groups of shy birds stalk about the heaths; but the myriads of smaller birds which animate the whole face of other countries, are met with in but few provinces in Spain, and in those chiefly among the orchards and gardens which surround the habitations of man.

In the interior provinces the traveller occasionally traverses great tracks, cultivated with grain as far as the eye can reach, waving at times with verdure, at other times naked and sun-burnt, but he looks round in vain for the hand that has tilled the soil. At length he perceives some village on a steep hill or rugged crag, with mouldering battlements and ruined watch-tower; a strong castle, in olden times, against civil war or Moorish inroad; for the custom among the peasantry of congregating together for mutual protection is still kept up