The pen and the pencil may attempt, and not unsuccessfully, to reproduce the soft gradations of the beautiful or the abrupt contrasts of the picturesque; but they are alike powerless and paralyzed before the awful grandeur of the Alpine heights, where there is neither life nor motion; where a stern, unsmiling sublimity has moulded every form, and stamped upon the scene the frown of a perpetual winter. There is nothing in the ordinary aspect of nature that prepares us for what we see when we have entered the region of perpetual snow. Here is no hum of insects, no rustle of foliage, no pulse of vitality. There is no provision for animal life in the pitiless granite, ice, and snow, that make up the landscape. The solitary eagle, whose slow circling form is painted on the dark sky above, seems but a momentary presence, like ourselves, and not a part of the scene. Nature is no longer a bounteous and beneficent mother, but a stern and awful power, before which we bow and tremble; and the earth ceases to be a man's farm and garden, and becomes only a part of the solar system. - Hillards Italy.