Lucerne--Passage of the St. Gothard--Splendour
of Swiss Scenery--Swiss Villages.

ON the 22nd of December he had resumed his ordinary Genoa life; and of a
letter from Jeffrey, to whom he had dedicated his little book, he wrote
as "most energetic and enthusiastic. Filer sticks in his throat rather,
but all the rest is quivering in his heart. He is very much struck by
the management of Lilian's story, and cannot help speaking of that;
writing of it all indeed with the freshness and ardour of youth, and not
like a man whose blue and yellow has turned grey." Some of its words
have been already given. "Miss Coutts has sent Charley, with the best of
letters to me, a Twelfth Cake weighing ninety pounds, magnificently
decorated; and only think of the characters, Fairburn's Twelfth Night
characters, being detained at the custom-house for Jesuitical
surveillance! But these fellows are---- Well! never mind. Perhaps you
have seen the history of the Dutch minister at Turin, and of the
spiriting away of his daughter by the Jesuits? It is all true; though,
like the history of our friend's servant,[94] almost incredible. But
their devilry is such that I am assured by our consul that if, while we
are in the south, we were to let our children go out with servants on
whom we could not implicitly rely, these holy men would trot even their
small feet into churches with a view to their ultimate conversion! It is
tremendous even to see them in the streets, or slinking about this
garden." Of his purpose to start for the south of Italy in the middle of
January, taking his wife with him, his letter the following week told
me; dwelling on all he had missed, in that first Italian Christmas, of
our old enjoyments of the season in England; and closing its pleasant
talk with a postscript at midnight. "First of January, 1845. Many many
many happy returns of the day! A life of happy years! The Baby is
dressed in thunder, lightning, rain, and wind. His birth is most
portentous here."

It was of ill-omen to me, one of its earliest incidents being my only
brother's death; but Dickens had a friend's true helpfulness in sorrow,
and a portion of what he then wrote to me I permit myself to preserve
in a note[95] for what it relates of his own sad experiences and solemn
beliefs and hopes. The journey southward began on the 20th January, and
five days later I had a letter written from La Scala, at a little inn,
"supported on low brick arches li