ments, we shall find that sounds have much more expression than colours. Few persons will maintain that the minor key has not a more sorrowful expression than the major, antecedent to all association; and that a melody, proceeding and moving about according to those intervals which, in harmony, would form the perfect concords of the key, has not a more joyful and contented expression than a melody which introduces a flat third where a sharp one would have naturally resulted from the fundamental bass, or which in other respects follows constrained and forced intervals. Similar instances might easily be multiplied, to prove that music has a great deal of expression within itself, and independent of all association. If colours have any natural expression, it is far more ambiguous and limited. Yet there are some colours which it is difficult to persuade one's self, have not a gay expression, comparatively with others. Yellow, pink, light green, and scarlet, are surely cheerful; while deep transparent blue, rich crimson, clear brown with a reddish tinge, are grave and solemn. Perhaps this depends upon the greater quantity of light which the first colours reflect, and the greater vivacity of the sensation.

What is strictly and properly called the harmony of colours, is perhaps exhibited in greater purity in a common pattern of a carpet, or a border for a papered room, than in the finest picture. That is to say, the colours are there more unmixed; and as they do not represent natural objects, they have no law to follow in their arrangement but that of their mutual relations; and consequently they are so placed, that the spectrum of one colour may fall upon another, and increase its vividness. In paintings, all colours must, in some measure, be deadened and rendered impure by mixture, in order to represent objects with fidelity. The spectra which they produce must certainly be less vivid; and the juxtaposition of the different hues is, besides, much constrained by other considerations than those of harmony. Therefore, if the merits of light and shadow, and of imitation, were withdrawn from a painting, however meritorious, what remained would present relations of colours, agreeable

chiefly from being free from harshness, and not capable of giving much positive pleasure. It is the art exhibited in reconciling harmonious colours with the other requisites of painting, that constitutes a great part of the merit of what is called good colouring. Besides, an eye habituated to examine the relations of colours, takes pains in comparing the different hues exhibited in a picture. These relations are beautiful when perceived, but they do not force themselves so much upon the attention

as relations of musical sounds. In music, the sounds which compose a chord are all heard at once; and therefore melody bears a closer resemblance than harmony to the relation of colours, which are, in a great measure, viewed successively. Yet there is also a difference between the sequence of melody and colours. The succession in which colours are viewed depends partly upon our own choice in directing our eyes; but we must take melody in the order in which it is presented to us. In painting, however, it must always be remembered, that only a small part of what is included under the general name of good colouring, depends upon the adaptation of the spectrum of one

colour to another colour.

The number of original colours is small, and the number of harmonies that can be made out from them is consequently limited. The more that colours are mixed, the less decided will be the relations they bear to each other.

The number of musical notes is also small; but modulation, by making every note in its turn a fundamental one, productive of a new series of sounds, renders the materials of music almost infinite. Every relation of musical notes, whether concord or discord, is perfect of its kind, and gives pleasure when properly introduced. In painting, the mixture of colours follows no certain law, but is varied through infinite degrees, according to the taste of the artist. In music, the composer may combine what notes he pleases, but the mutual proportions of all the notes are determined by the laws of nature.

In the Lives of Haydn and Mozart, by the author of the Sacred Melodies, there is an ingenious though some what fanciful parallel, in which a

Wind Instruments.

follows:

It is as

Double Bass Deep Crimson Red

Violin

Trumpet

Scarlet

Viola

LETTER ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR

PICTET, DESCRIPTIVE OF ASCENTS

NEEDLE OF CHAMMOUNI, AND TO THAT OF MONT BLANC.

By a young Polish Gentleman, in the beginning of August in the present

Year.

Geneva, August 1818. You ask me, sir, to give you an account of my journey to Chammouni. Animated by the love of your country, and your ardour in the pursuit of all knowledge useful to your species, and sensible that things, apparently unimportant, may sometimes prove interesting, you are naturally anxious to learn what has occurred to me. In order then to satisfy you, I must employ my pen in a language which is not my own.

In common with all the world, I admired your lofty mountains and your charming valleys; but I was peculiarly delighted with the shores of the Lake of Geneva. From thence I was not disposed calmly to view the glaciers of Chammouni: I experienced a feeling of impatience when the sun had gone down, and I could no longer see them, or when clouds intercepted my view of their summits. At last,

The young and modest traveller who has been so kind as to favour us with some details of an enterprise which has been much talked of, has only permitted us to publish them, under the condition of their being given without his name. He has likewise had the goodness to superintend the execution,

by an able artist, of a most exact relievo of Mont Blanc and the South Needle, which we shall carefully preserve. PICTET. We have again to thank our friend, Professor Pictet, for this interesting letter which he has kindly forwarded to us.

it more nearly. I shall say nothing of my journey from Geneva to Chammouni; I saw nothing but Mont Blanc, and I only thought of the pleasure of reaching its summit. At Sallanches, where I passed the first night, I made some attempts to procure information, and what I received was extremely unfavourable to my design; they spoke of difficulties without number, of enormous gaps, formed no one knew how; finally, that it was impossible to reach Mont Blanc; and they ended by laughing at me when I expressed my desire to ascend it. The day following I was again unlucky; the weather was overcast, and the rain was talked of as something like an honourable get-off from my perilous enterprise. I arrived then at Chammouni with faint hopes of success; but the guides soon dissipated my fears of those terrible crevices. While we were making some excursions upon the glaciers, the only subject of their conversation was the South Needle, which nobody had ever ascended. It involved perhaps nothing less than the discovery of new districts, or at least new routes. I forgot Mont Blanc to devote my whole attention to this Needle, though the king of mountains had occupied my first thoughts. To reconcile every thing, I formed a project still more extensive; it was no less than, after reaching the Needle, to pass over to Mont Blanc, and to return from it by the ordinary road: you will now see how far I succeeded.

I set out for the South Needle with six guides, and after having passed the Montanvert, and crossed the sea of ice, we resolved to sleep at Tacul, where we arrived about seven o'clock in the evening. You are aware, sir, that this

abode is not very comfortable. It consists of rocks in the middle of ice, close by a small lake which empties itself during the night. It was pretty cold, the thermometer of Reaumur indicating one degree below Zero. We quickly collected a heap of rhododendron, and a good fire soon warmed and enlivened the party. We supped, laughed, and recited and listened to interesting stories of the mountains. Af terwards we lay down around the fire, and a stone, rather less rough than the others, was reserved for me, as the place of honour. We were under a great mass of rock, and on the slight est wind the smoke saluted all our faces: the scene was in all respects too new to allow me to enjoy it in tranquillity; I got up, therefore, and perched myself on a stone at some distance. The moon shed her light upon this vast solitude of ice and rocks, but nothing gladdened the eye nor refreshed the mind, and those men, sleeping around the dying embers of the fire, appeared to have arrived in the land of death to undergo the inevitable destiny which the avalanches foreboded. The cold at last drove me from my observatory; my guides awoke, stirred up the fire, and we prated away the remainder of the night. At four o'clock in the morning we prepared to set off; the barometer which in the evening was 22. 2. had fallen a little in the morning, and the thermometer was at 4 degrees below Zero of Reaumur. We took the precaution to bind ourselves to each other with ropes, and set off. We first skirted the shores of the lake, which had disappeared, for we now only saw the stones which formed its bed; and after having crossed the gaps which we met with in the way to the Col de Géant, we arrived at a plain of snow. Here we held a council on the route we should follow, as three glaciers prevented themselves, each of which would lead us to the South Needle. The first, on our right, appeared too steep and full of gaps; we therefore took the second, the slope of which was pretty moderate, and I soon began to dream of the fine valleys we were about to discover; but we found nothing but precipices, and it was not without much pain, attended with some danger, that we at last got a sight of the South Needle, the summit of which we were not able to reach till

we

four o'clock. On the side of Chammouni it presents two rocks separated by a ridge covered with snow; reached the least elevated of these, and even the ridge; the other rock, which is inaccessible, is prolonged by many perpendicular peaks. We soon discovered, that we must not think of approaching Mont Blanc by this route. The view, from the rock on which we stood, was very extensive, and we could discern a great part of Lombardy over the Col de Géant. Italy, thus seen across the glaciers, recalled those Elysian fields which the ancients had a glimpse of beyond the tomb. As we were able to advance without danger to the edge of the rock on the west side, we beheld the priory of Chammouni, but a cloud hid from us a part of the valley. An accident having befallen the barometer, we could make no observations, and now thought only of returning. It was now late, yet it was absolutely necessary to reach our habitation at Tacul; for we were wet and fatigued, and not sufficiently clothed to pass the night on the snow. In descending, we avoided the difficult parts which had cost us so much trouble, and we went in another direction.

Skirting the glacier near the Needles, which separated us from Mont Blanc, at ten o'clock in the evening, we at last reached our favourite rocks; there I bid good-bye to reflections and observations, and slept very comfortably on my stone. In the morning we arrived all well at Chammouni.

And now, sir, my task is almost done; for in my journey to Mont Blanc, which I am now to speak of, my route hardly at all differed from that followed by Mr D. Saussure. My eleven guides and I proceeded by the mountain De la Côte, and slept on the rocks called the Grands Mulets; and at half-past twelve o'clock of the day following (August 4th), we reached the summit. The barometer stood at 15. 9.* and the thermometer at 30°; the weather was glorious. I had carried a prism with me, being desirous to know if increased elevation affected the vivacity of the colours. When at

*We are inclined to believe that the air had not been completely expelled from the instrument, for it stood about four lines lower than that of Saussure on the same summit; while the barometer in the plain was above its medium height. PICTET,

Geneva, I had got the prismatic colours painted with much accuracy, but I could now perceive no change on them; they were precisely of the same power. We spent an hour and a half on the summit, the view from which appeared to me sublime beyond every thing I had previously conceived. The verdure of vale and wood, and the graceful outline of a lake, may charm the eye and the fancy; but here, in the midst of this chaos of mountains, these shapeless and gigantic blocks, rising from among ice and snow, we conceive ourselves present at the creation, every thing connected with humanity vanishes and disappears; we faintly discern some slight indications of cities, which seem, intended by the hand of destiny, to exist but for a day. Every thing announces the moment of their destruction, and we hasten to descend, to avoid being enveloped in the great convulsions which are preparing. We now quitted the most magnificent Belvidere in the world, and arrived at the Grands Mulets by six o'clock in the evening. Our satisfaction at having succeeded in our enterprise made every thing appear delightful to us. The ascent of Mont Blanc had proved a party of pleasure compared with the dreary and terrible South Needle. The day following we descended to Chammouni. There I found your friend, Captain Basil Hall, the author of a very interesting account of a voyage to China, just published, who regretted extremely not having been of our party; for he too wished to ascend Mont Blanc, and he shewed me many important observations which he intended to make on its summit.

I have now given you, sir, the account you asked of me. Curiosity, and the pleasure of doing what is not done every day, led me to your mountains, of which I shall ever entertain a pleas ing recollection, heightened by the advantage they have afforded me of procuring the honour of your acquaint

ance.

ACCOUNT OF CAPTAIN KATER'S NEW METHOD OF MEASURING THE LENGTH OF THE PENDULUM.

Ir is scarcely necessary to inform our readers that the attraction of the earth,

Captain Kater's Paper is published in

considered as at rest, or the force of gravity at any point of its surface, varies as the square of the distance of that point from the centre of gravity of the whole mass. If we could therefore measure with extreme accuracy the force of gravity at various points, we should immediately obtain the distance of these points from the centre; and consequently, the exact figure of the earth. The velocity of falling bodies, at various places, would afford a correct measure of the attractive force; but it is extremely difficult, if not impracticable, to measure these velocities with sufficient accuracy, and therefore philosophers have turned their attention entirely to the pendulum. If we suspend a pendulum, consisting either of an uniform rod of metal, or of a ball attached to the lower part of a rod, and set it in motion, it is obvious that the velocity with which it vibrates, must be a measure of the force of gravity; as it is by the action of this force that it descends from the highest point of its path, and acquires a velocity sufficient to carry it to the same height on the opposite side. But it has been demonstrated, that the number of oscillations performed by a pendulum, in two different places, are as the square roots of the lengths of a pendulum that should vibrate seconds in these places, and therefore, we have only to observe the number of oscillations which a pendulum of invariable length performs at different points of the earth's surface, in order to obtain the relative lengths of a seconds pendulum at these points. When the relative lengths of a pendulum vibrating seconds is thus found for various places, we are then in possession of the relative distances of these places from the centre of the earth, as these distances are inversely as the lengths of the pendulum. The value of the pendulum, as an instrument for ascertaining the figure of the earth, has been long recognized by philosophers; and numerous experiments have been made with it at different points of the earth's surface, from which a tolerably accurate and consistent measure of the flatness at the poles of our globe has been obtained.

the Philosophical Transactions for 1818, Part I., and the Council of the Royal Society honoured it with the Copley medal.