De Berg is de Doktor
Für Seel und für Lyb!”
Alexander Pope and other old English writers are always talking about fits of “vapours.” I wonder how the name arose, and why it went out of style. Vapour comes from water, tears are water; hence vapours,—perhaps that is the logic of the term. Of course then they would evaporate in the dry mountain-air.
I recollected how Rousseau loved this very lake. I remembered his apostrophe to it after he had been out sailing on it:—
“As we skirted the shores, I admired the rich and charming landscapes of the Pays de Vaud, where the hosts of villages, the green and well-kept terraces on all sides form a ravishing picture; where the land, everywhere cultivated and everywhere fertile, offers the plowman, the herdman, the vintner the assured fruit of their labors, not devoured as elsewhere by the grasping tax-collector.... The lake was calm. I kept perfect silence. The even and measured noise of the oars set me to dreaming. A cloudless sky, the coolness of the air, the sweet rays of the moon, the silvery shimmer of the water shining around us, filled me with the most delicious sensations. Oh, my lake! thou hast a charm which I cannot explain, which does not arise wholly from the beauty of the scene, but from something more interesting, which affects me and touches me. When the eager desire of this sweet and happy life for which I was born comes to kindle my imagination, it always attaches itself to the lake.”
ACROSS LAKE LEMAN.
And then again his poignant cry of farewell:
“Oh, my lake, on the shores of which I spent the peaceful years of mine infancy, charming landscapes where for the first time I witnessed the majestic and touching sunrise, where I felt the first emotions of my heart, the first impulse of genius, alas! become too imperious.... Oh, my lake, I shall never see thee more.”