e, and Charles Lamb's humour in its
touch of colouring.

". . . There are two old ladies (English) living here who may serve me for
a few lines of gossip--as I have intended they should, over and over
again, but I have always forgotten it. There were originally four old
ladies, sisters, but two of them have faded away in the course of
eighteen years, and withered by the side of John Kemble in the cemetery.
They are very little, and very skinny; and each of them wears a row of
false curls, like little rolling-pins, so low upon her brow, that there
is no forehead; nothing above the eyebrows but a deep horizontal
wrinkle, and then the curls. They live upon some small annuity. For
thirteen years they have wanted very much to move to Italy, as the
eldest old lady says the climate of this part of Switzerland doesn't
agree with her, and preys upon her spirits; but they have never been
able to go, because of the difficulty of moving 'the books.' This
tremendous library belonged once upon a time to the father of these old
ladies, and comprises about fifty volumes. I have never been able to
see what they are, because one of the old ladies always sits before
them; but they look, outside, like very old backgammon-boards. The two
deceased sisters died in the firm persuasion that this precious property
could never be got over the Simplon without some gigantic effort to
which the united family was unequal. The two remaining sisters live, and
will die also, in the same belief. I met the eldest (evidently drooping)
yesterday, and recommended her to try Genoa. She looked shrewdly at the
snow that closes up the mountain prospect just now, and said that when
the spring was quite set in, and the avalanches were down, and the
passes well open, she would certainly try that place, if they could
devise any plan, in the course of the winter, for moving 'the books.'
The whole library will be sold by auction here, when they are both dead,
for about a napoleon; and some young woman will carry it home in two
journeys with a basket."

The last letter sent me before he fell upon his self-appointed task for
Christmas, contained a delightful account of the trip to the Great St.
Bernard. It was dated on the sixth of September.

"The weather obstinately clearing, we started off last Tuesday for the
Great St. Bernard, returning here on Friday afternoon. The party
consisted of eleven people and two servants--Haldimand, Mr. and Mrs.
Cerjat and one daughte