As to the MS., be so kind as to forward it at your leisure to me, at Sir George Beaumont’s, Coleorton Hall, near Ashby, whither I am going in about ten days.  May I trouble your Lordship with our respectful compliments to Lady Lonsdale?

    Believe [me] ever
    Your Lordship’s faithful
    And obliged friend and servant,
    WM. WORDSWORTH.[84]

[84] Memoirs, ii. 69-74.

50. Tour on the Continent, 1820.

LETTERS TO THE EARL OF LONSDALE.

Lucerne, Aug. 19. 1820. 
MY LORD,

You did me the honour of expressing a wish to hear from me during my continental tour; accordingly, I have great pleasure in writing from this place, where we arrived three days ago.  Our route has lain through Brussels, Namur, along the banks of the Meuse, to Liege; thence to Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, and along the Rhine to Mayence, to Frankfort, Heidelberg (a noble situation, at the point where the Neckar issues from steep lofty hills into the plain of the Rhine), Carlsruhe, and through the Black Forest to Schaffhausen; thence to Zurich, Berne, Thun, Interlachen.  Here our Alpine tour might be said to commence, which has produced much pleasure thus far, and nothing that deserves the name of difficulty, even for the ladies.  From the Valley of Lauterbrunnen we crossed the Wengern Alp to Grindelwald, and then over the grand Sheideck to Meyringen.  This journey led us over high ground, and for fifteen leagues along the base of the loftiest Alps, which reared their bare or snow-clad ridges and pikes, in a clear atmosphere, with fleecy clouds now and then settling upon and gathering round them.  We heard and saw several avalanches; they are announced by a sound like thunder, but more metallic and musical.  This warning naturally makes one look about, and we had the gratification of seeing one falling, in the shape and appearance of a torrent or cascade of foaming water, down the deep-worn crevices of the steep or perpendicular granite mountains.  Nothing can be more awful than the sound of these cataracts of ice and snow thus descending, unless it be the silence which succeeds.  The elevations from which we beheld these operations of Nature, and saw such an immense range of primitive mountains stretching to the east and west, were covered with rich pasturage and beautiful flowers, among which was abundance of the monkshood, a flower which I had never seen but in the trim borders of our gardens, and which here grew not so much in patches as in little woods or forests, towering above the other plants.  At this season the herdsmen are with their cattle in still higher regions than those which we have trod, the herbage where we travelled being reserved till they descend in the autumn.  We have visited the Abbey of Engelberg, not many leagues from the borders of the Lake of Lucerne.  The tradition is, that the site of the abbey was appointed by angels, singing from a lofty mountain that rises from the plain of