it not so beautiful in colour as in summer, but grander in its
desolation; the green ice, like the greater part of the ascent, being
covered with snow. "We were alarmingly near to a very dismal accident.
We were a train of four mules and two guides, going along an immense
height like a chimney-piece, with sheer precipice below, when there came
rolling from above, with fearful velocity, a block of stone about the
size of one of the fountains in Trafalgar-square, which Egg, the last of
the party, had preceded by not a yard, when it swept over the ledge,
breaking away a tree, and rolled and tumbled down into the valley. It
had been loosened by the heavy rains, or by some wood-cutters afterwards
reported to be above." The only place new to Dickens was Berne: "a
surprisingly picturesque old Swiss town, with a view of the Alps from
the outside of it singularly beautiful in the morning light." Everything
else was familiar to him: though at that winter season, when the inns
were shutting up, and all who could afford it were off to Geneva, most
things in the valley struck him with a new aspect. From such of his old
friends as he found at Lausanne, where a day or two's rest was taken, he
had the gladdest of greetings; "and the wonderful manner in which they
turned out in the wettest morning ever beheld for a Godspeed down the
Lake was really quite pathetic."

He had found time to see again the deaf, dumb, and blind youth at Mr.
Haldimand's Institution who had aroused so deep an interest in him seven
years before, but, in his brief present visit, the old associations
would not reawaken. "Tremendous efforts were made by Hertzel to impress
him with an idea of me, and the associations belonging to me; but it
seemed in my eyes quite a failure, and I much doubt if he had the least
perception of his old acquaintance. According to his custom, he went on
muttering strange eager sounds like Town and Down and Mown, but nothing
more. I left ten francs to be spent in cigars for my old friend. If I
had taken one with me, I think I could, more successfully than his
master, have established my identity." The child similarly afflicted,
the little girl whom he saw at the same old time, had been after some
trial discharged as an idiot.

Before October closed, the travellers had reached Genoa, having been
thirty-one consecutive hours on the road from Milan. They arrived in
somewhat damaged condition, and took up their lodging in the top rooms
of