Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/269



mist wavers there fantastically. Or, from a lofty height, you look off at the cool-shadowed valley, at the color-suffused mountains, and a cloud folds itself silently about you, and all at once you see the world as through a glass darkly.

You feel the solemn silence of the soundless winter woods;—then the stillness is for an instant broken by an almost imperceptible sound, and you catch a glimpse of some soft-scurrying beast. The fox, the stag, the roebuck, are still to be found in the Alps of Liechtenstein, and in the more inaccessible parts even the chamois and the seldom-seen white hare.

When warmer weather comes, the country assumes a tender and regal splendor. The vineyards, rich and luscious in their greenery, the orchards, sweeping up to the very houses, the box-bordered gardens, the meadows, deep with grass, the rich-massed verdure of the mountain-side, unite in a soft sumptuousness of glory.

This stretch of valley, now sparsely settled and simply built, has an ancient history, for Roman towns and camps were here. The square tower of the white-perched Vaduz castle is believed to have been built by the Romans, and near where the village of Triesen now stands a Roman settlement was overwhelmed by a fall of rock from the tremendous over-hanging cliffs. Somehow such things make one realize anew that this world is very old and gray.

But though there is a history of the Roman times and of the Middle Ages, the average Liechtensteiner interests himself but little in it, nor does he care in the least for the old in architecture. The general ambition is not only to have a new house, but to have a house of new and most modern design. There are a number of old houses here, but, with the exception of one which was anciently a little Benedictine monastery, the trail of the plaster is over them all, and it is hard to distinguish, by any outward and visible sign, the old from the new, no matter what inward and spiritual old-time grace there may be. And all this is sufficiently reasonable. These folk have never been taught to cater to the demand of the