Mont Blanc threw Mr Pontifex into a conventional ecstasy. "My feelings I
cannot express. I gasped, yet hardly dared to breathe, as I viewed for
the first time the monarch of the mountains. I seemed to fancy the
genius seated on his stupendous throne far above his aspiring brethren
and in his solitary might defying the universe. I was so overcome by my
feelings that I was almost bereft of my faculties, and would not for
worlds have spoken after my first exclamation till I found some relief in
a gush of tears. With pain I tore myself from contemplating for the
first time 'at distance dimly seen' (though I felt as if I had sent my
soul and eyes after it), this sublime spectacle." After a nearer view of
the Alps from above Geneva he walked nine out of the twelve miles of the
descent: "My mind and heart were too full to sit still, and I found some
relief by exhausting my feelings through exercise." In the course of
time he reached Chamonix and went on a Sunday to the Montanvert to see
the Mer de Glace. There he wrote the following verses for the visitors'
book, which he considered, so he says, "suitable to the day and scene":--

Lord, while these wonders of thy hand I see,
My soul in holy reverence bends to thee.
These awful solitudes, this dread repose,
Yon pyramid sublime of spotless snows,
These spiry pinnacles, those smiling plains,
This sea where one eternal winter reigns,
These are thy works, and while on them I gaze
I hear a silent tongue that speaks thy praise.

Some poets always begin to get groggy about the knees after running for
seven or eight lines. Mr Pontifex's last couplet gave him a lot of
trouble, and nearly every word has been erased and rewritten once at
least. In the visitors' book at the Montanvert, however, he must have