[109] "We have hardly seen a cloud in the sky since you and I parted at
Ramsgate, and the heat has been extraordinary."

[110] "The green woods and green shades about here," he says in another
letter, "are more like Cobham in Kent, than anything we dream of at the
foot of the Alpine passes."

[111] To these the heat interposed occasional difficulties. "Setting off
last night" (5th of July) "at six o'clock, in accordance with my usual
custom, for a long walk, I was really quite floored when I got to the
top of a long steep hill leading out of the town--the same by which we
entered it. I believe the great heats, however, seldom last more than a
week at a time; there are always very long twilights, and very delicious
evenings; and now that there is moonlight, the nights are wonderful. The
peacefulness and grandeur of the Mountains and the Lake are
indescribable. There comes a rush of sweet smells with the morning air
too, which is quite peculiar to the country."

[112] "One of her brothers by the bye, now dead, had large property in
Ireland--all Nenagh, and the country about; and Cerjat told me, as we
were talking about one thing and another, that when he went over there
for some months to arrange the widow's affairs, he procured a copy of
the curse which had been read at the altar by the parish priest of
Nenagh, against any of the flock who didn't subscribe to the O'Connell
tribute."

[113] In a note may be preserved another passage from the same letter.
"I have been queer and had trembling legs for the last week. But it has
been almost impossible to sleep at night. There is a breeze to-day (25th
of July) and I hope another storm is coming up. . . . There is a theatre
here; and whenever a troop of players pass through the town, they halt
for a night and act. On the day of our tremendous dinner party of eight,
there was an infant phenomenon; whom I should otherwise have seen. Last
night there was a Vaudeville company; and Charley, Roche, and Anne went.
The Brave reports the performances to have resembled Greenwich Fair. . . .
There are some Promenade Concerts in the open air in progress now: but
as they are just above one part of our garden we don't go: merely
sitting outside the door instead, and hearing it all where we are. . . .
Mont Blanc has been very plain lately. One heap of snow. A Frenchman got
to the top, the other day."

[114] ". . . Ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death