loves you- I do say that you are in the most enviable position that the wide world affords. As for me, I have spent some days, some weeks, in this fashion amongst the mountains; they are the only days of my life I would wish to live over again. But mind, if you would really enjoy all this, go alone — a silent guide before or behind you. No friends, no companion, no gossip. You will find gossip enough in your inn, if you want it. If your guide thinks it his duty to talk, to explain, to tell you the foolish names of things that need no name make believe that you understand him not that his language, be it French or German, is to you utterly incomprehensible.

I would not paint it all couleur de rose. The sun is not always shining.

There is tempest and foul weather, fatigue and cold, and abundant moisture to be occasionally encountered. There is something to endure. But if you prayed Heaven for perpetual fair weather, and your prayer were granted, it would be the most unfortunate petition you could put up. Why, there are some of the sublimest aspects, the noblest moods and tempers of the great scene, which you would utterly forfeit by this miserable immunity. He who loves the mountain will love it in the tempest as well as in the sunshine. To be enveloped in driving mist or cloud that obscures everything from view-to be made aware of the neighboring precipice only by the sound of the torrent that rushes unseen beneath you - how low down you can only guess this, too, has its excitement. Besides, while you are in this total blank, the wind will suddenly drive the whole mass of cloud and thick vapour from the scene around you, and leave the most glorious spectacle for some moments exposed to view. Nothing can exceed these moments of sudden and partial revelation. The glittering summits of the mountains appear as by enchantment where there had long been nothing but dense vapour. And how beautiful the wild disorder of the clouds, whose array has been broken up, and who are seen flying huddled together in tumultuous retreat! But the veering wind rallies them again, and again they sweep back over the vast expanse, and hill and valley, earth and sky, are obliterated in a second. He who would ponder what man is should journey

amongst the mountains.

city...

What men are is best learnt in the

There is a little church stands in the valley of Chamouni. It was open, as is customary in Catholic countries, to receive the visits and the prayers of the faithful; but there was no service, no priest; nor indeed a single person in the building. It was evening and a solitary lamp hung suspended from the ceiling, just before the altar. Allured by the mysterious appearance of this lamp burning in solitude, I entered, and remained in it some time, making out, in the dim light, the wondrous figures of virgins and saints generally found in such edifices. When I emerged from the church, there stood Mont Blanc before me, reflecting the last tints of the setting sun. I am habitually tolerant of Catholic devices and ceremonies; but at this moment how inexpressibly strange, how very little, how poor, contemptible, and like an infant's toy, seemed all the implements of worship I had just left!

And yet the tall, simple, wooden cross that stands in the open air on the platform before the church, this was well. This was a symbol that might well stand, even in the presence of Mont Blanc. Symbol of suffering and of love, where is it out of place? On no spot on earth, on no spot where a human heart is beating.

Mont Blanc and this wooden cross, are they not the two greatest symbols that the world can show? They are wisely placed opposite each other. . . .

But from the mountain and the cloud we must now depart. We must wend towards the plain. One very simple and consolatory thought strikes me though we must leave the glory of the mountain, we at least take the sun with us. And the cloud too, you will add. Alas! something too much of that.

But no murmurs.

We islanders, who can see the sun set on the broad ocean - had we nothing else to boast of -can never feel deserted by nature. We have our portion of her excellent gifts. I know not yet how an Italian sky, so famed for its deep and constant azure, may affect me, but I know that we have our gorgeous melancholy sunsets, to which our island tempers become singularly attuned. The cathedral splendours - the dim religious light of our vesper skies - I doubt if I would exchange them for the unmitigated glories of a southern clime.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOLITUDE.

(From the Memoir.)

A COMPLETE and decisive change in William Smith's manner of life was now drawing near. I may mention an incident supplied by Mr. Weigall—which must have closely preceded it. "Soon before the Corn Laws were repealed," writes Mr. Weigall," William was urged by John Stuart Mill to attend a meeting to aid the advocates for repeal. The Honourable Mr. Villiers, Mr. Mill, and William were the principal speakers, and William was beyond doubt the most impressive of them all. The Chartists at the time were getting rampant, and were in great force at that meeting, both men and women. They had disapproved of almost every wisely qualified utterance of Mr. Mill, but when William opened his speech with a most happy and harmonious sentence, the women about me said, 'Oh, what a beautiful speaker! don't disturb him,' and for some time they seemed delighted; but when he began with his prescient wisdom to caution them against expecting too much from the repeal, that the effect of free trade in corn would be to equalize prices throughout Europe, they began to howl him down. William stopped and faced the turmoil boldly, and by a very stirring appeal to their candour and sense of fair-play secured again their good-will, and sat down, the great success of the evening. From what I observed on that occasion," adds Mr. Weigall, "I felt convinced that could William have overcome his retiring habits he

would have won distinction in public life." But the retiring habits were just then on the point of decisively prevailing.

I do not know whether it was in 1848 or 1849 that my husband acted upon a resolve that must have been for some time gathering, the resolve of entirely relinquishing the pursuit of his profession, and devoting himself to thinking and writing, in perfect solitude, amidst the beautiful scenery of the English lakes. of the English lakes. He had made no way at the bar; he was not likely to make any he had no legal connections; his heart was not in his calling; his sensitive nature shrank from collision with purely personal aims and ambitions, from the inevitable turmoil and dust of" life's loud joyous jostling game." He could not, with any hope of success, compete on that arena. And, indeed, in addition to other hindrances, his private fortune, seriously diminished by a loan to an unsuccessful relative (loan which he in his refined generosity converted into a gift), was no longer adequate to the expenses chambers and circuit entailed on the briefless barrister. Then there were other influences at work. The "love of thinking for its own sake" was growing irresistible, and was seconded not only by a "passionate thirst for nature and beauty," but by that craving for solitude which strangely underlay all social charm, all his enjoyment of society, which found such forcible expression in his earliest poems, and renders portions of "Thorndale" so unutterably pathetic. Circumstances and character alike now pointed one way. There is a line of Browning's that sums it all up. Thenceforth

"This man decided not to Live, but Know."

My husband has often described to me his first plunge into the new life. It was made at Bowness (on Windermere), a quiet village in those days. There he took a small lodging, where the sitting room opened into a garden, and for six months he never spoke to a creature,

except indeed the few words of necessity to his landlady. It comforts one to remember what loving letters from sisters and nieces must have varied that solitude, as well as what high raptures Nature and Thought bestowed upon their devotee. And then the winters were always social. Some weeks would be spent at the house of his brother-inlaw, Mr. Weigall, where there were clever nephews growing up and two much-loved nieces, of whom his sister has told me he was "the idol and the oracle." Some would be pleasantly passed at Bath or Brighton, where he had several friends.

In 1851 his still secluded summer life was varied by an incident that might have given a different direction to all his future. One day the following letter from Professor Wilson was delivered to him. Although it is marked "strictly private and confidential," there can be no indiscretion in giving it now and here:

MY DEAR SIR, Our excellent friend John Blackwood has kindly undertaken to put this letter into your hands at Bowness, or if not, to find your direction there and forward it to you. My health has become very lately so precarious that I have been interdicted by my medical adviser from lecturing this ensuing session, and I can think of no man so qualified meanwhile to discharge for me the duties of my Chair as yourself. I am therefore most anxious, without delay, to see you here, when I will explain fully to you what will be required from you. As yet the matter is in my own hand, and I do not fear but that, though laborious, your duties will be agreeable. You will have to give a course of lectures on Moral Philosophy to my class during my leave of absence from College. It is absolutely necessary that you should be with me immediately for a day, that you may empower me to say that I can depend on you, for not a word can I utter publicly or privately without a perfect understanding with you. I shall therefore be looking for you in return to this, and be most happy to receive you in my house on your arrival. Yours with all esteem,

JOHN WILSON.

6 GLOCESTER PLACE, EDINBURGH, September 29, 1851.