enter, heart and soul, into the old warfare for the Good! (Page 139.)

At the outset of William Smith's life its purpose seemed fitly summed up in Charles Kingsley's phrase, "Given self, to find God." The deepest finding lay in that fidelity to moral good which he never forsook. But the intellectual quest was long and arduous. The barrier to intellectual peace lay in the seeming contradiction involved in the existence of evil in a divinely ordered world. In "Gravenhurst" we have at last an interpretation of evil as the servant of good. It is an interpretation that only became possible when the light of modern knowledge had been thrown on the procedure of the universe. Perplexities remain and doubtless always will remain. But great is the advance, glad as morning is the light! The seeker, sublimely meek," who entered the clouds and darkness of Sinai, comes back with a prophet's message.

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CHAPTER XX.

SWITZERLAND.

(From the Memoir.)

IN the May of 1862 "Gravenhurst" was published, and we went to Switzerland for five months, dividing the time between Bex, Zermatt, Sixt, Chamounix, and Unterseen. It was our custom to settle down quietly at one place after another, to get its loveliness by heart, and to be free from that ruffling of equanimity bad weather may entail on the rapid tourist. Our fortnight at Zermatt stands out very prominently in my memory. The keen air and the kind of scenery exhilarated my husband to the utmost. In a manuscript book of his I find, very hastily jotted down: "Two short, long weeks and all my future, such is your share, Zermatt, of my life. Nowhere the torrents so grand, the snow-hills more beautifully set. I cannot describe the scene on the Görner Grat · but I recur to it and keep it alive. All pleasure-flowers- the English hare-bell looks up from my ankle, the white Pinguicula (as if dropt from the skies upon its stalk, on which it rests rather than grows), shy as the violet and more delicate. You look up from the flower and down into the ravine. I tremble as I look below, one false step and all the beauty is gone forever, gone for me! And see, the torrent-stream is so safe, just here is its low bed scooped in the solid rock; it is so distant as to seem quite silent. And then the village, and the cows, and the goats, and the church and the bells; a great deal of the praying here seems done by the bells, and not badly."

What rapturous memories of our long walks those few words waken! At Zermatt, too, we made an interesting and enduring friendship. We were there early in June, and the Hôtel du Mont Cervin had only two other inmates, a young husband and wife, and their sweet child of three. The visitors' book gave their names; they were New-Englanders. We never thought it worth while to record ours, and hence in the course of two or three days Mr. Loomis, who discerned something remarkable about the man, asked William what his was. "The commonest of all English names, William Smith." "Yes, but I like it for the sake of a favourite author." And then I broke in, inquiring, with a strong presentiment as to what the answer would be, which of the numberless Smiths he alluded to? "The author of Thorndale.'" 6 It was a great pleasure to me to say, "This is he." Mr. Loomis had with him the American edition of the book, which my husband saw with interest. So began a friendship and correspondence that were kept up to the last.

We had had some vague idea of spending the winter in Switzerland, but the illness of my dear father recalled us. The winter was spent at Weston-super-Mare, where we knew no one where from the 14th of October to the 17th of February we only spoke to each other; and never were we more cheerful than under these circumstances. The place itself had not much interest country and sea were alike tame; but the beautiful sunsets in front of our large window were a constant source of pleasure, and we had Switzerland to remember. But, indeed, however ecstatic my husband's enjoyment of Swiss glories, it was far less exceptional than his unfailing delight in the familiar shows of earth and sky. It never was more true than of him that

"The poet hath the child's sight in his breast,
And sees all new. What oftenest he has viewed,
He views with the first glory."

As usual, during these peaceful months William was thoroughly occupied, not only in writing for the magazine, but with psychological subjects. In the manuscript book that at that time lay upon his desk, I find much jotted down under the head of "Knowing and Feeling." But the one thing in him that I regretted was his habit of writing so many of his thoughts illegibly, even to himself. He would often deplore his own way of working, extracts made, line of argument traced out, to be referred to hereafter, and when wanted undecipherable! When a new manuscript book was begun, there would he resolve to do better; but habit was too strong, the pen flew too fast, the writing (in his letters so delicate and clear) baffled the writer's own patience.

To Miss Mary Wrench.

ZERMATT, June 18, 1862. This is the place of places! No mountain that I ever saw equals the Matterhorn in his hold over one's mind. Read about him, I beg, in Murray. How he rears himself - how when the clouds come round him it takes upyour breath away every time that he emerges to find that his head can indeed be there so incredibly high! . . . On our way here, at Visp, I heard as I believed pouring rain all night, but did not like to get up and verify, fearing to disturb William. At five we were up. It was the river, not the rain, I had heard; clouds were rising; guides promised fine weather. We were in our saddles at seven. How you would have enjoyed it! I soon lost all sense of nervousness, and indeed there is nothing to be the least nervous about. I love precipices, and to stretch out my arms over a gorge with a torrent at the bottom. The nine hours' ride was one ecstasy of enjoyment; the day perfect, the horse an angel the saddle an arm-chair. Murray gives one no idea of the grandeur of the scenery the whole way to Zermatt. What with perpendicular and

richly colored rocks, hills wooded sometimes to their tops, and overlooked by one white summit after another, the river roaring far below, the flowers by the wayside, the butterflies that crossed one's path; what with the grandeur and the beauty, and all of it "reflected from the eyes that one loves," I may say life culminated that day. And yet the next was I think better, for William was in my room at five, wild with spirits, feeling the air gives him new life, and wanting instantly to be off on another expedition. Accordingly off we set to the Schwarzsee (read about it) and oh, the glory of Monte Rosa, cloudless to the summit, and the fairy beauty of the flowers! Coming down, we got wrapped in clouds. I liked to see them rising like smoke, so rapidly out of the valley, veiling the mountains, then all melting away suddenly. I would not have been without them, though it was very cold. I have got to like the feeling of going up-stairs on horseback. We had one of the sweet fellows who brought us over the day before, and a lovely youth of eighteen as guide. Fuchs (such was the dear horse's name) wriggled so delightfully up great slabs of rock! There was no one in the great hotel but an American Congregational minister and his wife and child he a remarkably handsome young man in delicate health, she healthy and kindly looking, with loving eyes, and a quite caressing smile. What walks we had Saturday and Sunday, what snow mountains we saw the Twins and the Lyskamm (almost as high as Monte Rosa), towering above the beautiful Görner Glacier, and a fringe of fir-trees for foreground, and such a sky! And then think what it is to see William wild with health and mirth, and full of the most bewitching conceptions. We have walked every day in spite of the weather, which broke up on Monday. Tuesday we went to see the river Visp break out of its icy cradle, so weird and grand and desolate, with the mist of rain hanging round. Yesterday I was thinking about other things, and