ards and Piedmontese who come trading over the
Alps. As for the country, it cannot be praised too highly, or reported
too beautiful. There are no great waterfalls, or walks through
mountain-gorges, _close_ at hand, as in some other parts of Switzerland;
but there is a charming variety of enchanting scenery. There is the
shore of the lake, where you may dip your feet, as you walk, in the
deep blue water, if you choose. There are the hills to climb up, leading
to the great heights above the town; or to stagger down, leading to the
lake. There is every possible variety of deep green lanes, vineyard,
cornfield, pasture-land, and wood. There are excellent country roads
that might be in Kent or Devonshire: and, closing up every view and
vista, is an eternally changing range of prodigious mountains--sometimes
red, sometimes grey, sometimes purple, sometimes black; sometimes white
with snow; sometimes close at hand; and sometimes very ghosts in the
clouds and mist."

In the heart of these things he was now to live and work for at least
six months; and, as the love of nature was as much a passion with him in
his intervals of leisure, as the craving for crowds and streets when he
was busy with the creatures of his fancy, no man was better qualified to
enjoy what was thus open to him from his little farm.

The view from each side of it was different in character, and from one
there was visible the liveliest aspect of Lausanne itself, close at
hand, and seeming, as he said, to be always coming down the hill with
its steeples and towers, not able to stop itself. "From a fine long
broad balcony on which the windows of my little study on the first floor
(where I am now writing) open, the lake is seen to wonderful
advantage,--losing itself by degrees in the solemn gorge of mountains
leading to the Simplon pass. Under the balcony is a stone colonnade, on
which the six French windows of the drawing-room open; and quantities of
plants are clustered about the pillars and seats, very prettily. One of
these drawing-rooms is furnished (like a French hotel) with red velvet,
and the other with green; in both, plenty of mirrors and nice white
muslin curtains; and for the larger one in cold weather there is a
carpet, the floors being bare now, but inlaid in squares with
different-coloured woods." His description did not close until, in every
nook and corner inhabited by the several members of the family, I was
made to feel myself at home; but on