to go through the same performance, with the
same complete absence of all possible knowledge
of it on the part of Straudenheim. And then
they all went away, arm in arm, singing.

I went away, too, in the German chariot at
sunrise, and rattled on, day after day, like one
in a sweet dream; with so many clear little bells
on the harness of the horses, that the nursery
rhyme about Banbury Cross and the venerable
lady who rode in state there, was always in my
ears. And now I came into the land of wooden
houses, innocent cakes, thin butter soup, and
spotless little inn bedrooms with a family likeness
to Dairies. And now the Swiss marksmen
were for ever rifle-shooting at marks across
gorges, so exceedingly near my ear, that I felt
like a new Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and
went in highly-deserved danger of my tyrannical
life. The prizes at these shootings, were watches,
smart handkerchiefs, hats, spoons, and (above all)
tea-trays; and at these contests I came upon a
more than usually accomplished and amiable
countryman of my own, who had shot himself
deaf in whole years of competition, and had won
so many tea-trays that he went about the country
with his carriage full of them, like a glorified
Cheap-Jack.

In the mountain country into which I had
now travelled, a yoke of oxen were sometimes
hooked on before the post-horses, and I went
lumbering up, up, up, through mist and rain,
with the roar of falling water for change of
music. Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear
away, and I would come down into picturesque
little towns with gleaming spires and odd towers;
and would stroll afoot into market-places in steep
winding streets, where a hundred women in
bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter and fruit, and
suckled their children as they sat by their clean
baskets, and had such enormous goitres (or glandular
swellings in the throat) that it became a science
to know where the nurse ended and the child began.
About this time, I deserted my German chariot
for the back of a mule (in colour and consistency
so very like a dusty old hair trunk I once had at
school, that I half expected to see my initials in
brass-headed nails on his backbone), and went up
a thousand rugged ways, and looked down at a
thousand woods of fir and pine, and would on
the whole have preferred my mule's keeping a
little nearer to the inside, and not usually
travelling with a hoof or two over the precipice,
though much consoled by explanation that this
was to be attributed to his great sagacity, by
reason of his carrying broad loads of wood at
other times, and not being clear but that I myself
belonged to that station of life, and required
as much room as they. He brought me safely,
in his own wise way, among the passes of the
Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen climates a day;
being now (like Don Quixote on the back of the
wooden horse) in the region of wind, now in the
region of fire, and now in the region of unmelting
ice and snow. Here, I passed over trembling
domes of ice, beneath which the cataract was
roaring; and here was received under arches
of icicles, of unspeakable beauty; and here
the sweet air was so bracing and so light,
that at halting-times I rolled in the snow when
I saw my mule do it, thinking that he must know
best. At this part of the journey we would
come, at mid-day, into half an hour's thaw: when
the rough mountain inn would be found on an.
island of deep mud in a sea of snow, while the
baiting strings of mules, and the carts full of
casks and bales, which had been in an Arctic
condition a mile off, would steam again. By
such ways and means, I would come to the cluster
of châlets where I had to turn out of the track
to see the waterfall; and then, uttering a howl
like a young giant, on espying a traveller—in
other words, something to eat—coming up
the steep, the idiot lying on the wood-pile
who sunned himself and nursed his goitre, would
rouse the woman-guide within the hut, who
would stream out hastily, throwing her child
over one of her shoulders and her goitre over
the other, as she came along. I slept at religious
houses, and bleak refuges of many kinds,
on this journey, and by the stove at night heard
stories of travellers who had perished within
call, in wreaths and drifts of snow. One night
the stove within, and the cold outside, awakened
childish associations long forgotten, and l dreamed
I was in Russia—the identical serf out of a
picture-book I had, before I could read it for
myself—and that I was going to be knouted by
a noble personage in a fur cap, boots, and
earrings, who, I think, must have come out of some
melodrama.

Commend me to the beautiful waters among
these mountains! Though I was not of their
mind: they, being inveterately bent on getting
down into the level country, and I ardently
desiring to linger where I was. What desperate
leaps they took, what dark abysses they plunged
into, what rocks they wore away, what echoes
they invoked! In one part where I went, they
were pressed into the service of carrying wood
down, to be burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in
Italy. But, their fierce savage nature was not
to be easily constrained, and they fought with
every limb of the wood; whirling it round and
round, stripping its bark away, dashing it against
pointed corners, driving it out of the course,
and roaring and flying at the peasants who
steered it back again from the bank with long
stout poles. Alas! concurrent streams of time
and water carried me down fast, and I came, on
an exquisitely clear day, to the Lausanne shore
of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood looking
at the bright blue water, the flushed white
mountains opposite, and the boats at my feet
with their furled Mediterranean sails, showing
like enormous magnifications of this goose-quill
pen that is now in my hand.

The sky became overcast without any notice;
a wind very like the March east wind of
England, blew across me; and a voice said, "How
do you like it? Will it do?"

I had merely shut myself, for half a minute,
in a German travelling chariot that stood for
sale in the Carriage Department of the London
Pantechnicon. I had a commission to buy it,