gain." April 1855.

[187] Sitting at Nisi Prius not long before, the Chief Justice, with the
same eccentric liking for literature, had committed what was called at
the time a breach of judicial decorum. (Such indecorums were less
uncommon in the great days of the Bench.) "The name," he said, "of the
illustrious Charles Dickens has been called on the jury, but he has not
answered. If his great Chancery suit had been still going on, I
certainly would have excused him, but, as that is over, he might have
done us the honour of attending here, that he might have seen how we
went on at common law."

CHAPTER III.

SWITZERLAND AND ITALY REVISITED.

1853.

Swiss People--Narrow
Escape--Berne--Lausanne--An Old
Friend--Genoa--Peschiere revisited--On the Way
to Naples--Scene on Board Steamship--A Jaunt to
Pisa--A Greek War-ship--At Naples--At
Rome--Time's Changes--At the Opera--A
"Scattering" Party--Performance of
Puppets--Malaria--Desolation--At Bolsena--At
Venice--Habits of Gondoliers--Uses of
Travel--Tintoretto--At Turin--Liking for the
Sardinians--Austrian Police--Police
Arrangements--Dickens and the Austrian--An Old
Dislike.

THE first news of the three travellers was from Chamounix, on the 20th
of October; and in it there was little made of the fatigue, and much of
the enjoyment, of their Swiss travel. Great attention and cleanliness at
the inns, very small windows and very bleak passages, doors opening to
wintery blasts, overhanging eaves and external galleries, plenty of
milk, honey, cows, and goats, much singing towards sunset on mountain
sides, mountains almost too solemn to look at--that was the picture of
it, with the country everywhere in one of its finest aspects, as winter
began to close in. They had started from Geneva the previous morning at
four, and in their day's travel Dickens had again noticed what he spoke
of formerly, the ill-favoured look of the people in the valleys owing
to their hard and stern climate. "All the women were like used-up men,
and all the men like a sort of fagged dogs. But the good, genuine,
grateful Swiss recognition of the commonest kind word--not too often
thrown to them by our countrymen--made them quite radiant. I walked the
greater part of the way, which was like going up the Monument." On the
day the letter was written they had been up to the Mer de Glace, finding