Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/187

164 But in our case the approach to that pretty and convenient town, with its Kursaal, music-shops, Americans, English, and its innumerable excursions, was veiled by night.

It is delightfully comfortable, this town "between the lakes," Brienz and Thun. The hotels, particularly the Victoria and Hotel Jungfrau, are good even for Switzerland, famous for good hotels.

Here you have the excursions to the "Wengern Alp, to Reichenbach, to Lauterbrunnen (what a word! "nothing but springs" is its beautiful meaning), and there you see the Staubbach. Then to Grindelwald, where you meet the glacier, a most distinguished and uncommon acquaintance. And there — oh the ineffectuality of language! — there you see the glorious, the unrivalled Jungfrau! When I begin to talk of the Jungfrau I am convinced that language was given to us to conceal our ideas. Other things are lofty, are grand, are lovely, and are beautiful; but the Jungfrau is unlike all other things, and yet she is all these. How can I begin to describe this lovely lady of the Alpine world? How, if I begin, can I stop? How can I tell of her majesty, her unsullied snows, her noble uplift above the sordid lower world? They say those dizzy heights have been scaled by human footsteps; they can never be reached by human epithets. She is serene and unassailable in beauty — the Jungfrau — without a rival. How respectfully the other mountains stand away, like courtiers round a queen! and how her green velvet hills crouch at either side like footstools for her royal feet! Perfect in outline, sublime in height, fortunate in position, dazzling in purity, the Jungfrau is one of the dearest delights of Switzerland.

You get so fond of her that you like to toy with your