Swiss allmends, and a walk to see them

by F. Barham Zincke

CHAPTER XV.

BRIEG—THE VALAIS—LAUSANNE AND GIBBON—DETAILS AND PLAN OF THE EXCURSION—CONCLUSION.

Accuse not nature; she hath done her part:

Do thou but thine; and be not diffident

Of wisdom: she deserts thee not, if thou

Dismiss not her.—Milton.

August 29.—We had thought of ascending the Sparrenhorn this morning: but now the aspect of things forbad such an undertaking. The Bell Alp was in the clouds. At such altitudes this means damp, rawness, shivering: nothing to see, and nothing to do. At 10 o’clock things were no better, and there was no prospect of their getting better; and so we decided to say our adieu to our good host, and to go down to Brieg. He had done for us all he could, having put up for us three beds in what had been intended for the fumoir of his hotel, but which cannot, in the height of the season, be afforded for such a purpose.

Brieg was reached in three hours. A descent of so many, it is five thousand, feet must be more or less good, and Alpine in character. Although it may not have anything particularly striking, still it must have upland pastures and pine woods, rills and rocks, prairies, first without and then with orchards: and there must always be mountains in sight, besides the one you are descending.

This was our last walk. In the conclusion of what has for some time been giving pleasure there is sadness: and more so when the pleasure has been of the stirring, and not of the Sybarite kind. If at the moment we had thought of the Sybarite’s case, we should have said that he had no business to be a Sybarite, and was rightly served. Certainly the entrance into Brieg, after the Eggischhorn and the Bell Alp, appeared heinously lowland and hatefully alluvial. Within the town the shops, the pavements, the diligences, the churches, the Post Office proclaimed to us that our delightful wanderings had only brought us back again to what seemed for the moment like the pestilent prose of life. For us henceforth would be no more summons from the sun, watched for, and obeyed with a ready mind, to meet him on the mountain side; no more, the day through, should we walk before him; no more should we contemplate with contentment the glories of his withdrawal to give the needed rest to man and beast. For us no more trudging on, hour after hour, to see we knew not precisely what, with the feeling that, though it might not be particularly worth seeing when we had come to it, still that it was well worth while going to see it. No more grand views of snow-fields and ice-rivers. No more of nature’s battlemented and pinnacled ramparts and castles far above us while the storm was raging far below us. No more pleasant halts at mountain châlets, or on the turf by the huddling streamlet, in such haste to get down to the valley. No more turning into wayside inns, not knowing what we were to find in them except a welcome. No more hunger and thirst. No more ice-cold draughts from sparkling springs. Our Switzer days and doings had now ended; and we were returning to regular hours, regular work, morning calls, eight o’clock dinners, and the manners and customs of the latter part of the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

In the afternoon, as we walked along the embankment of the Saltine, we cast some longing lingering looks on the Bell Alp and the snow about it; and, too, on the opposite snow-fields, right and left of the Simplon. After this, while loafing about the streets, we found ourselves opposite the shop of the Barber of Brieg, whose record is in the ‘Month’ of last year—the undisputed monarch, in the barber department, of all that he surveys in Brieg. There was no resisting the desire to see him again: at all events he was my only acquaintance in the place. His door, as I opened it, rang his shop-bell, but he was not there to hear it. This was what I had expected. I should have been disappointed had it been otherwise. The woman, however, who keeps the little grocery shop opposite, and with whom last year I had had, seated on the bench by her doorside, half an hour’s talk, while her bibulous neighbour was being looked for, heard the bell and came out of her shop. There was a smile on her face to imply that the little event of last year was not at all forgotten. Indeed, she looked as if she had been expecting me, and was glad to see me. In anticipation, it must have been, of my turning up that evening, he had told her in which of his resorts he might be found. It was close by, and he was soon unearthed. Of course, I thought it better to be shaved now by my old acquaintance than to have to shave myself early to-morrow morning. The good woman, who had not forgotten that morning of last year, will henceforth be able to add to the weight of metal in her gibes the evening of this day.

August 30.—Were off by the first diligence for Sierre, where we were to take the train en correspondance for Lausanne. The day was bright; there was none of the dust of last year; and the drive down the valley was pleasant. Was it not the valley of the Rhone? And were there not the lateral confluent valleys to note, with thoughts of what they led up to and of where their streams came from? And then there was the aspect of things in the valley itself; the evident air of neglect and of waste of opportunity. We could see that we were now in the most improvable and least improved part of Switzerland. We passed through tracts in which every particle of humus had been washed out of and floated off from the soil by the permitted overflow of the freshets of the Rhone; and through others which were still willow thickets and marshes. If the Rhone were embanked, as is the Aare, the Linth, and many other Swiss streams, all this land might be reclaimed: the shingle and sand, now naked, might soon be converted into goodly meadows by spreading over them a little earth, and by irrigation, for irrigation in Switzerland will produce good grass anywhere. And besides, if the Rhone were embanked, then there would be everywhere the possibility of utilizing its stream for spinning and weaving. And this will come here, the priests notwithstanding, for it will come in every valley of Switzerland. It is ‘the manifest destiny’ of the country. The first step will be the continuance of the railway to Brieg, and through the Simplon. This will bring cotton, silk, and wool to be worked up, and will take it to market when worked up. It will bring the machinery, and the iron wanted for repairs, and the coal that will be required both in making the repairs, and for supplementing any deficiency in the water power. All this can be done, and will be done. And then those of the population, as with the land, who are improvable will be improved; and those among the former who are not improvable will be improved from the scene.

Another advantage that will result from the coming state of things will be that the larger, and busier, and more active-minded population of the future will be better fed than the existing population. In exchange for the fruits of their labour they will then have brought to them good wheaten bread and beef and mutton. At present the staple food here is, as you see, maize and potatoes, somewhat fortified and corrected by their acid wine and rough brandy. This is not the kind of food that such a climate requires. It enfeebles mind as well as body; and these enfeeblements include that of morality.

The history of these matters is instructive, and ought to be noted. Of course there must have been a time, before the advent of maize and potatoes, when wheat was largely cultivated in the Lower Valais. Doubtless the yield was not great, and what there was must have been of very inferior quality. Still home-grown wheat must then have been the mainstay of the people. Maize and potatoes, when time brought them, were found to be more productive, and more to be relied upon in such a locality: and so they have superseded wheat almost entirely. In some other districts, which, while they are more industrious, have also attained to the advantage of easy access to wheat markets, the culture of grass has superseded that of wheat. Their inhabitants, by converting their abundant grass crops into cheese and beef, have obtained the means, from the same extent of ground, and with less labour, for procuring a larger amount of wheat, and of far better quality, than they could have grown at home. This is precisely what was done in the case of the few vineyards which once were cultivated in the south of England. There was a time, when from their immature grapes was produced, at a great cost, very bad wine. It would then, from the deficiencies and uncertainties of transit, have been very difficult to have got wine from beyond sea. Besides, too, there was not much to be given in exchange for it. But the time came when it would cost little to convey from beyond sea what was better than the home produce; and when there were markets for the wheat, and meat, and wool that could be produced at home; and this gave also the means for purchasing the better produce of foreign vineyards. English vineyards, therefore, and their sour, costly, and uncertain produce disappeared. The power of the Rhone at present, like the unutilized powers of an uncultivated and unregulated intellect, not only goes to waste, but also does harm: when it shall have been turned to account it will—railway communication also by that time having come to be more fully carried out, and the principles of free trade more generally understood and acted on—give the millers and bakers of the Valais the means for making their purchases in the corn markets of Germany, France, and Italy: and the people of the Valais will be all the better for it.

In the Valais, as elsewhere, throughout our excursion, I noticed how great had been this year, in Switzerland, the failure of the fruit crop. This had been caused by a very severe late frost, the effect of which we had felt in the same way, almost to an equal extent, in many parts of England: though here, of course, a diminution of that crop is a matter of comparatively little moment. Except in the valley of the Tessin, on the south side of the Alps, I did not see any fruit on the walnut trees, though I looked for it whenever I passed one. As in Switzerland they are grown largely for the sake of the oil expressed from the nut—the produce of a fair-sized tree is, in average years, worth about six francs—the loss on this item alone of the fruit crop was very considerable. I observed that the foliage of the fruitless trees was unusually luxuriant, and that the foliage of those that had fruit in the valley of the Tessin was not by half so abundant, nor was what they had of so dark a green as that of the barren trees to the north. It was just the reverse with the cherry trees. They also had been smitten by the frost, and they had been hit so hard that many were dead, but nowhere, except on the Rigi, did I see any with healthy foliage. The crop, too, of apples and pears was sadly deficient. Most trees of these kinds were entirely without fruit. Those which had some fruit were, as it was generally easy to see, sheltered in some way or other, frequently by some lofty, partially overhanging walnut-tree. Fruit enters so largely into the total of Swiss industry, that we can readily suppose that the late frosts and snowfalls of 1873 must have cost the peasants some millions of francs.

We reached Lausanne late in the afternoon. Our first care was to get our heavy baggage from the Post Office. I had had mine with me for only so short a time at the commencement of the Month, and had made so little use of any part of it, that I was now almost disposed to think that it would have been as well had I not encumbered myself with it. As, however, one cannot tell what may occur in the way of weather, and of possible mishaps of many kinds, it is as well, to some extent, to be provided with duplicates and supernumeraries. The best limitation perhaps is that of what you can easily lift, and carry yourself, in and out of railway stations.

August 31.—Sunday.—We attended morning service in the chief church of the town. If anything can be inferred from a single sermon, one might suppose, from what we heard this morning, that the Swiss Reformed Church at Lausanne is in the stage in which we were when Blair’s Sermons were in high estimation and were passing through many editions. In the afternoon we formed part of an English congregation that was addressed by an English clergyman in the same church.

In the evening we went down to Ouchy to walk, on the margin of the lake, in the beautiful grounds of the Beaurivage Hotel. We saw in several places the water rising and subsiding through holes it had lately formed in the pavement of the marginal terrace walk. It had been able to effect this in consequence of the level of the lake being this year so much higher than usual that the wash of its waves was able to undermine what had hitherto been out of their reach. Was this elevation of the lake caused by the unusual amount of snow that fell late last spring, at the time when so much injury was done to the fruit trees? There is everywhere this year more snow on the mountains than usual. This must make the streams also, that descend from them, fuller than usual, which must therefore bring more water than usual into the lake. There are, however, in this lake some elevations and subsidences of its level, which cannot be accounted for by such causes as that to which I have just referred.

September 1.—In the forenoon we walked on the fine terrace to the west of the Hotel Gibbon. After a time I took a seat upon a bench on the gravel beneath the lofty elms. Before me was the lake. On the two or three acres of grass behind the trees were some English lads playing at football. I seated myself on the bench, I suppose because I was thinking of Gibbon, and wished to look upon the view he had often looked upon. I repeated, as he gives them in his autobiographical memoirs, two of the most interesting passages in literary history:[3] one being that in which he records that the idea of his great work ‘first started to his mind at Rome on the 15th of October, 1764, as he sat musing among the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter;’ and the other that in which he describes its completion, within a few months of twenty-three years afterwards, near the spot on which I was seated: ‘It was on the day, or rather night of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.’ It was a right instinct that led him to record both the conception of the idea, and the conclusion, of his great work. M. Guizot, no mean judge of such work, says that it is the only true book in the English language; the only book we have which contains a grand idea worthily worked out. Regarded in this light it almost stands in a class of its own, as the grandest piece of literary work the human mind has ever elaborated. It is great in its subject; human history supplies nothing greater. It is great in the vast amount of labour expended in preparing and shaping the materials requisite for its construction. It is great in its style. It is great in the breadth of view it takes, and in the philosophic spirit with which it is animated. Such a combination of the sources of literary greatness, and each element in so high a degree, are not to be found in any other book. Other books may be named which have given a greater amount of, and more intense pleasure. The Homeric poems doubtless did this, when they formed well-nigh all the intellectual food of the most sensitive-minded of all people. Others may have done more to enrich thought and to humanize hearts. This the dramas of Shakespeare have done: which show, too, the fertility and creative power of the human mind to a degree as far beyond Gibbon’s capacity as was the philosophic insight of Aristotle or Bacon. And other historians, as Thucydides, may have had more appreciative sagacity for dealing with the characters of those who cross the scene of their pages. Still there is in Gibbon’s book a comprehensiveness, a massiveness, a grandeur, alike of subject and of treatment, which make it one of the greatest of literary monuments. It is so great a work that the spot on which its last sentence was written, and of which Gibbon records that he penned it there, adding particulars that much enhance the interest of the record, will be regarded, so long as his ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ shall be read, as classical ground in literary history.

How strange that a mind of such capacity for labour, such farness of reach, such power of grasp, should have been encased in, and had to work with so uncouth a body. In my younger days I had an old friend who had known Gibbon well. I often asked him what he recollected of him: but I never got from him anything more than that he was fond of whist, though not a good player; very awkward in his movements; and shockingly ugly. One can imagine that this very ungainliness of form and feature was, in some respects, advantageous to him intellectually. Being physically excluded from those fields of ordinary rivalry in which strength and external beauty win, he was as it were obliged to turn to those in which intellect only can take a part. He almost, to some extent, belonged to that class of men of whom Bacon remarks that they are greatly daring, in order to show that in that respect, at all events, they are the equals of those whose bodily endowments are superior to their own. If he could have taken a part in such vigorous sports as those lads were engaged in who at the moment were struggling and shouting behind me, would his great work ever have been accomplished? Possibly not.

It belonged to Gibbon’s age to take a low view of man. But there is a peculiarity in the lowness of the view he took, which may in some degree have received its colouring from the cause I have just referred to. Had he been physically a better man, he would have read men and women with more sympathy and kindliness; and therefore with more sagacity. Some traces there are, I think, of Pope’s crooked back, and of Byron’s club-foot, in their poetry. So there are, I think, of Gibbon’s ugliness and ungainliness in his great history.

But the main point is, what effect has this history had in the world of thought? As its subject, its learning, its style, its length prevent its ever getting into the hands of the generality of readers, on them it can only act at second hand. It must come to them through the minds of the comparatively few who can think, to some extent, for themselves. Now I am disposed to hold that the effect it has on such minds, if at all of the first order, is far from being bad. In them it cannot but deepen the love of truth and virtue, and enlarge the estimate they would otherwise have been disposed to form of the value of comprehensiveness, thoroughness, and honesty in literary work. And may we not say something of the same kind of that other great literary worker also, who was in many respects not wholly unlike Gibbon: at all events in having lived and worked on the shores of this lake, and in this town of Lausanne. As I looked out from this terrace over the blue expanse below, with Gibbon and Voltaire in my mind, I thought it not improbable that the day might come when it will be seen that their faults belonged to their age, and to the conditions under which their work was done. Society, if its regeneration was to be attempted, required then, first of all, the clearance of many inveterate, strong, and poisonous overgrowths. This in a coarse age could hardly have been effected except by coarse means. These workers appeared to be aiming at the destruction both of the noxious overgrowths, and of the soil out of which they grew. Fortunately, however, that was impossible. The soil can support either a noxious or a wholesome growth, but cannot itself be destroyed. It ever remains, ready to support either growth, according to the degree of neglect or care, and the kind of culture applied to it. Under the evil conditions of those times the better culture could hardly have been the prominent idea. The clearance of what was noxious alone appeared either possible or desirable. At all events, in a coarse age those who coarsely assailed hypocrisy and injustice were worlds better than those who coarsely lived in and by hypocrisy and injustice. We must remember this when we shrink from their sneers and scoffs. They did what they could to clear the soil, which is more open now for us to cultivate rightly. Their hatred of hypocrisy and injustice has made it more easy for us to love honesty and justice. When the world shall have come to understand these points, the Lake of Geneva will not be regarded as, in human history, what many now hold it to be, the antithesis of the Sea of Tiberias.

At 1 P.M. I left Lausanne for London. At 4 I was at Neuchâtel. At 6 I crossed, at Verrières, from Switzerland into France. At 5 P.M. the next day I was in London. In these twenty-three hours from the Swiss border to London were included two and a half hours at Paris for breakfast and a bath. When we bring together the magnitude of the events that have recently occurred in the world, the import of the questions now in debate, the facility with which one may now visit whatever scenes of interest or instructiveness the world possesses, and remember that we are now coming to see that all it contains is capable of interesting and instructing, our conclusion I think must be, that there never were such times to live in as these of ours. Almost every object, and every day, has now its interest.

Prisca juvent alios: ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor.

I undertake in my title to give a narrative of a Month in Switzerland. That of course means the narrative of every day in the Month. I have in the foregoing pages attempted to do this. The Month was the August of this year, 1873. I have accounted to the reader for every day separately. He now knows where and how we went, and what we saw each day. The particulars have all been set down; as far as that goes he has been one of the party almost as thoroughly as if he had been with us. All these particulars, however, are to the eye only an alphabet of detached letters, which are precisely the same for all who go over the same ground. Some will leave them as detached letters, unvivified with significance, though full of its elements. Others will spell from them significant words and sentences: some will find in them this series of words and sentences, and another that. Each will extract from them a rendering of his own. None will be able to render them adequately. All the differences, which will be endless, will be in the rendering; the letters, that is, the objects, being the same in every case. I have given one rendering of which they appear to be capable. That also the reader now has presented to him as completely as he might have had it had he been with us and cared to have it.

To the traveller, the weather is to a great extent the frame in which what he does is set. It is sovereign in the disposal of each day. The reader therefore will be unable to form any useful or complete conception of such an excursion as that just described unless the weather also shall have been adequately reported. This too I have done. He knows now when, during the whole month, the sun shone, and when the rain fell. He sees what the weather enabled us to do, and what it hindered us from doing. Here is a summary of it. I have already mentioned that as I was crossing France, and again at Interlaken, there were violent thunderstorms. Both these came at midnight, and therefore by clearing and cooling the air, and by washing away the dust, only aided a pedestrian. I encountered a third storm at Como, but that too came when the day’s work was done. At Andermatt I had a wet afternoon, but as it happened that was no hindrance to my forward movements. The most of which it deprived me was some little ascent that might have been made in the immediate neighbourhood. It gave me, however, as much, only in a different kind, as what it deprived me of. We had a wet day at Glarus. This was, for forward movements, the complete loss of a day: but again, a loss not to be regretted. At Brienz, Eggischhorn, and Bell Alp, we had short afternoon storms, but I should have been sorry to have missed them. At Lausanne we had a wet forenoon, but that hindered nothing. All the rest was as bright and fine as could have been desired. There was much luck in this. August of course is a good month. In September the weather generally worsens and begins to break up. It did so this year. From our weather-table two inferences may be drawn. One is, that it is advisable to get your work over early in the day. The other is, that in planning your excursion, as in most things, some margin should be included for possible mishaps and unforeseen hindrances.

And now a word or two on the plan of the excursion just reported. It will have been observed that it was so arranged as to provide for the requirements of two disturbing considerations. First, I had an object: this kept me on a particular line, and sometimes necessitated a short day’s march. And then, having been joined in the early part of the excursion by my wife and her little boy, what was best for them had thenceforth to be considered, as well as what was best for myself. This it was that caused my returning through the valleys of Uri and of Unterwalden, over ground I had already traversed. In this there was nothing to be regretted, though of course it would not have been done under other circumstances.

I will now set down the plan upon which I would recommend ordinary pedestrians to take this district. Begin at Lucerne. Go to the Schweizer Hof, and see there the assemblage of people of many nations. Take the boat for Brunnen; for the same reason go to the Hotel of the Four Forest Cantons. From Brunnen begin your walking along the Axenstrasse to Flüelen. Then by Altorf, Am Stag, Wasen, and the Devil’s Bridge to Andermatt. From Andermatt by the St. Gothard, Airolo, Faido, &c., to Bellinzona. Then Lago Maggiore, Lugano, and Como. Up the lake of Como to Colico. From Colico by the Splugen, to Flims, on the Furca-Coire road. From Flims by the Segnes Pass to Glarus.

Alternatives: If you cannot spare the time for the Italian lakes, go from Andermatt to Flims along the Furca-Coire road. Or if you wish for a harder pass than the Segnes, go by the Sand Grat Pass and Stachelberg to Glarus. Or if, whether or no you take the Italian lakes, you do not wish for either of these Passes, then go round by Coire to Glarus.

From Glarus by the Klönthal, and the Pragel Pass and Muotta to Schwyz.

Alternatives: By Rapperswyl and Einsiedln to Schwyz. Or having reached Schwyz by the Pragel, as above, go from Schwyz to Einsiedln by the Hacken, returning to Schwyz by the lakes of Egeri and Lowerz.

From Schwyz, taking the boat at Brunnen, cross the lake to Trieb, for the Sonnenberg Hotel on the Seelisberg. Then down to Beckenried. From Beckenried across the lake to Gersau. Then by Rigi Scheideck to Rigi Kulm. From Rigi Kulm to Küsnacht.

Alternative: To Visnau by the Rigi railway.

From Küsnacht, or Visnau, by steamer to Lucerne. Then Pilatus to Alpnach. Then by Sarnen, Sacheln, Lungern, and the Brünig to Meiringen.

Alternative: From Pilatus to Stanzstad, Stanz, Engelberg, the Surenen Pass, to Klus. From Klus to Wasen. From Wasen by the Susten Pass to Im Hof.

From Meiringen, or Im Hof, by the Grimsel to the Rhone Glacier. From the Rhone Glacier by the Upper Valais to Viesch. From Viesch to Eggischhorn.

Alternative: From the Rhone Glacier Hotel, or the Grimsel Hospice, to the Eggischhorn by the Oberaarjoch.

From Eggischhorn to Rieder Alp. From Rieder Alp to Bell Alp. From Bell Alp to Brieg.

If you want more details than our map supplies, procure the sections for the district of General Dufour’s map. It is a map which is almost a picture. It gives the contour of every mountain and valley, and indicates every châlet.

Everything with which we have to do has, or ought to have, its science. So therefore it is, or ought to be, with enjoyment. Anticipation in this science counts for something. The brute only it is who goes straight to the main point first, and at once. Man, endowed with reason, and because he is, looks forward to what will give pleasure. He sees it at the end of a long vista. He dallies with the anticipation, he works up to the supreme fruition. To him there are preparatory stages. And these stages, because they are preparatory, are delightful. This is a privilege of mind. Herein is the philosophy of wooing first and of marrying afterwards. If the course of the wooing have been somewhat prolonged and not quite smooth, so much the better for the marriage. The Turk, who marries without the wooing, is unscientific.

In our science arrangement is well-nigh sovereign. It would not do to begin your dinner with iced pudding and maraschino, taking next venison and champagne, then descending through entrées to fish, and concluding with the anticlimax of a plate of Julienne. This were what a pig or a Fiji might do. Reason, and a palate, and a human stomach were given us for a better purpose. And as it is with the details of the dinner, so is it with the dinner as a whole. It is too great an event to be placed early in the day. It would not do to have it served at 10 A.M., and then what you would have had for your breakfast served at 8 P.M. On this inverted plan what would in the twenty-four hours be given to the palate and to the stomach would be precisely the same, but as Wordsworth says of another matter, ‘Oh, the difference!’ The dinner must be looked forward to, for everything after it comes flat. It must be worked up to: in a sense, earned. The labours of the day are lightened, because there is something worthy of them coming at the end of it.

Our science, too, is not one of the rigidly pure order. It is an applied science, and makes the most of its materials and opportunities. For instance, in this same matter of dinner it sees far more than is taken into account in the philosophy of the strong-minded, who say that to assuage hunger is its single object. Certes, it would be so if again we were all of us pigs or Fijis. But we have been evolved into something higher, and so have been enabled to turn dinner to some other accounts. To us the naked, primal purpose is hardly primal, and no longer naked. We have so wreathed it with flowers, so surrounded it with and made it so to minister to other purposes, that the original purpose has long ceased to be all in all, and what is incidental—even so far from the original animal purpose as good fellowship, society, and conversation—has ostensibly become now the main object. These incidental and secondary objects had no place in the original idea. So far, the strong-minded are right. But now, to their discomfiture, the secondary objects, which are altogether humanizing, and at all events semi-intellectual, have much mitigated the old animalism of the matter, and have become almost the main idea; of course, to those in whom what is humanizing and intellectual has assumed some form and consistency.

And so, to come at last to the matter we have been dealing with in the foregoing pages, is it with a Swiss excursion and its objects and incidents. Arrangement should be studied, and the objects should be taken in an ascending, not in a descending scale. What in its proper place and in a right order is good, sapid, enjoyable, would become in a wrong place, and in an inverted order, bad, insipid, unenjoyable. You must, too, study variety, and light and shade. If you arrange to have things good only in one and the same kind, and all of the highest intensity, everything being grand and striking in the same way, you will soon get tired of what you are about; and deservedly so. Keep the best thing for the end, or for a place towards the end. Look forward to what is best, work up to it, and approach it by an ascending scale. Do not take the Eggischhorn first, and then go to the Lake of Lucerne and the Forest Cantons. So much for anticipation and arrangement.

Understand too that the sources of interest incidentally within your reach are of many kinds. But in these you will find little to interest you if you have not made some progress in those humanities of culture we just now referred to, and this goes some way to prove that if it be not a duty we owe to ourselves, yet at all events it would be wise to make some such acquisitions. Without them some of the highest, and purest, and most accessible enjoyments of life are unattainable. The people then you will be among are interesting, and the different classes in different ways. Every man, woman, and child almost is in some way or other an interesting study. And nature interests in a thousand forms, and in a thousand moods. If bigness only interests you, if nothing less than a mountain moves you, Heaven help you! for then, somehow or other, you have been deprived of infinite sources of enjoyment which have been provided for, or are at all events within the reach of instructed and cultivated perception. Some or other of these are always before you, and should have been to you unpalling and inexhaustible. If it be not so with you, then are you mentally in the state in which Milton was physically, when ‘the serene drop had quenched his visual ray.’ Your bodily eye sees, but in your inward eye there is no speculation. You are now, instead of ‘the book of knowledge fair,’

Presented with an universal blank

Of nature’s works, for you expunged and razed;

And wisdom, at one entrance, quite shut out:

and too, together with wisdom, a great part of the enjoyment of life. Endeavour then to note nature’s forms, so endlessly varied, and every variation good! Note, too, her garb: again how varied, and again every variation good! Endeavour to note the reciprocal relations of organic and inorganic nature, of life to dead matter. And above all, note the relation of all you see to sovereign man. Think of how what you are beholding informed man’s mind and shaped his life in times past, and how it is informing his mind and shaping his life now. Solicit thought to interpret to you what your eye reports. This world belongs to those who understand it. Despise not knowledge. Awaken imagination. Deem none made of meaner clay than yourself.