s dwellers in hotels, must
sleep if they can; but the hour for "turning in" had scarce arrived, and
meanwhile, I remember, my thoughts took strongly a homeward direction.

With these, of course, I shall not trouble the reader; only I must be
permitted to mention a misconception into which I had fallen, in
connection with my journey, and into which it is possible others may
fall in similar circumstances. One is apt to imagine, before starting,
that should he reach such a country as Italy, he will there feel as if
home was very distant, and the events of his former life far removed in
point of time. He thinks that a journey across the Alps has somehow a
talismanic power to change him. He crosses the Alps, but finds that he
is the same man still. Home has come with him: the friendships, the
joys, the sorrows, of his past existence are as near as ever; nay, far
nearer, for now he is alone with them; and though he goes southward, and
kingdoms and mountain-chains are between him and his native country, he
cannot feel that he is a foot-breadth more distant than ever. He moves
about through strange lands in a shroud of home feelings and
recollections.

How wretched, thought I, the man whom guilt chases from his country! He
flies to distant lands in the hope of shaking off the remembrance of his
crime. He finds that, go where he will, the spectre dogs his steps. In
Paris, in Milan, in Rome, the grizzly form starts up before him. He must
change, not his country, but his heart--himself--before he can shake off
his companion.

May not the same principle be applicable, in some extent, to our
passage from earth into the world beyond? When at home in Scotland, I
had thought of Italy as a distant country; but now that I was in Italy,
Scotland seemed very near--much nearer than Italy had done when in
Scotland. We who are dwellers on earth think of the state beyond as very
remote; but once there, may we not feel as if earth was in close
proximity to us,--as if, in fact, the two states were divided by but a
narrow gulph? Certain it is that the passage across it will work in us
no change; and, like the stranger in a foreign country, we shall enter
with an eternal shroud of joys and sorrows, springing out of the deeds
and events of our present existence.

I found that if in this region the day had its beauty, the night had its
sublimity and terrors. I had years before become familiar with the
phenomena of thunder-storms among the Alps;