New Hampshire Statesman And Concord Register

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS.

HOLY INFLUENCES.

The following paragraphs are from an article in the New Monthly Magazine, purporting to be from the pen of a Chamois Hunter.

The Chamois has been confined by its Maker to those icy palaces of Nature, amidst which that Maker's presence is more immediately and sensibly felt. It has always struck me that the ocean is the fittest emblem, and conveys the deepest impression of God's immensity and eternity—the Alps of his unapproachable power and everlasting unvariableness. In the sea, wave succeeds wave forever; billow swells upon billow, and you see no end thereof. But magnificent a spectacle as ocean ever is, at all times, and under all aspects, it still cannot be enjoyed without some alloy. It must be seen either from a ship, in which man enters much, or from the land, which again breaks the entry of the idea.

The effect of the scenes among which the chamois hunter lives, is weakened by no such intrusion as this. Man's works enter not there. From the moment he quits the chalet in which he has taken his short rest, until his return, he sees no traces of man; but dwells amid scenery stamped only with its Creator's omnipotence and immutability. Nature is always interesting. Elsewhere she is lovely, beautiful: here she is awful, sublime. Elsewhere she shrouds all things in a temporary repose, again to clothe them with surpassing beauty and verdure. But here there is no change: such as the first winter beheld them, after they sprang from the hands of their Great Architect, such they still are—like himself, unchangeable and unapproachable. Nor summer's heat, nor winter's cold have any effect on their everlasting hues; nor can the track or works of man stain the purity of their unsullied snows! His voice may not even reach that upper air to disturb the "sacred calm that breathes around"—that still silence which holds forever, save when the avalanche wakes it with the voice of thunder! In such situations it is impossible not to feel as far elevated in mind as in body, above the petty cares, the frivolous pursuits, "the low ambition" of this nether world. If any one desire really to feel that all is vanity here below—if he wish to catch a glimpse of the yet undeveloped capabilities of his nature; of those mysterious longings, after which the heart of man so vainly yet so earnestly aspires, let him wander amongst the higher Alps, and alone.

Scenes like these must be seen and felt—they cannot be described. Languages were formed in the plain: and they have no words adequately to represent the sensations which all must have experienced among mountain scenery. A man may pass all his life in towns and the haunts of men, without knowing he possesses within him such feelings as a single day's chamois hunting will awaken. A lighter and a purer air is breathed there—and the body being invigorated by exercise and temperance, renders the mind more capable of enjoyment. Though earthly sounds there are none, I have often remarked, amid this solemn silence, an undefinable hum which is yet not sound, but seems, as it were, the still small voice of Nature communing with the heart, through other senses than we are conscious of possessing.

If ever my earthly spirit has been roused to a more worthy contemplation of the Almighty Author of Creation, it has been at such moments as these; when I have looked around on a vast amphitheatre of rocks, torn by ten thousand storms, and of Alps clothed with the spotless mantle of everlasting snow. Above me, was the clear blue vault of heaven, which at such elevations seems so perceptibly nearer and more azure: far below me, the vast glacier, from whose chill bosom issues the future river, which is there commencing its long course to the ocean: high over head those icy pinnacles on which countless winters have spread their dazzling honors—who is there that could see himself surrounded by objects such as these, and not feel his soul elevated from Nature up to Nature's God? Yes, land of the mountain and the torrent! land of the glacier and the avalanche! who could wander amidst thy solitudes of unrivalled magnificence, without catching a portion, at least, of the inspiration they are so calculated to excite? I wonder not that thy sons, cradled among thy ever matchless scenery, should cling with such filial affection to the mountain breast that nursed them, and yearn for their native cot amid the luxuries of foreign cities, when even a stranger, born in softer lands, and passing but a few months' pilgrimage within thy borders, yet felt himself at once attached to thee as to a second home, nor yet can hear without emotion the sounds that remind him of thy hills of freedom!