came over him from the woods while he was slowly walking out of church on a Sunday morning, and when he had half emerged from the shadow.’  A flippant person present inquired, ’Did you ever chance, Miss F., to observe that heavenly expression on his countenance, as he was walking into church, on a fine May morning?’ A laugh was the reply.  The ways of Nature harmonised with his feelings in age as well as in youth.  He could understand no estrangement.  Gathering a wreath of white thorn on one occasion, he murmured, as he slipped it into the ribbon which bound the golden tresses of his youthful companion,

    ’And what if I enwreathed my own? 
      ’Twere no offence to reason;
    The sober hills thus deck their brows
      To meet the wintry season.’

* * * * *

(k) FROM ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON.’

BY E.J.  TRELAWNY. 1858 (MOXON).

Some days after this conversation I walked to Lausanne, to breakfast at the hotel with an old friend, Captain Daniel Roberts, of the navy.  He was out sketching, but presently came in accompanied by two English ladies, with whom he had made acquaintance whilst drawing, and whom he brought to our hotel.  The husband of one of them soon followed.  I saw by their utilitarian garb, as well as by the blisters and blotches on their cheeks, lips, and noses, that they were pedestrian tourists, fresh from the snow-covered mountains, the blazing sun and frosty air having acted on their unseasoned skins as boiling water does on the lobster by dyeing his dark coat scarlet.  The man was evidently a denizen of the north, his accent harsh, skin white, of an angular and bony build, and self-confident and dogmatic in his opinions.  The precision and quaintness of his language, as well as his eccentric remarks on common things, stimulated my mind.  Our icy islanders thaw rapidly when they have drifted into warmer latitudes:  broken loose from its anti-social system, mystic castes, coteries, sets, and sects, they lay aside their purse-proud, tuft-hunting, and toadying ways, and are very apt to run risk in the enjoyment of all their senses.  Besides, we were compelled to talk in strange company, if not from good breeding, to prove our breed, as the gift of speech is often our principal, if not sole, distinction from the rest of the brute animals.

To return to our breakfast.  The travellers, flushed with health, delighted with their excursion, and with appetites earned by bodily and mental activity, were in such high spirits that Roberts and I caught the infection of their mouth; we talked as loud and fast as if under the exhilarating influence of champagne, instead of such a sedative compound as cafe au lait.  I can rescue nothing out of oblivion but a few last words.  The stranger expressed his disgust at the introduction of carriages into the mountain districts of Switzerland, and at the old fogies who used them.