To return to our breakfast. The travellers, flushed with health,
delighted with their excursion, and with appetites earned by bodily and
mental activity, were in such high spirits that Roberts and I caught the
infection of their mouth; we talked as loud and fast as if under the
exhilarating influence of champagne, instead of such a sedative compound
as _cafe au lait_. I can rescue nothing out of oblivion but a few last
words. The stranger expressed his disgust at the introduction of
carriages into the mountain districts of Switzerland, and at the old
fogies who used them.

'As to the arbitrary, pitiless, godless wretches,' he exclaimed, 'who
have removed Nature's landmarks by cutting roads through Alps and
Apennines, until all things are reduced to the same dead level, they
will he arraigned hereafter with the unjust: they have robbed the best
specimens of what men should be of their freeholds in the mountains; the
eagle, the black cock, and the red deer they have tamed or exterminated.
The lover of Nature can nowhere find a solitary nook to contemplate her
beauties. Yesterday,' he continued, 'at the break of day, I scaled the
most rugged height within my reach; it looked inaccessible; this
pleasant delusion was quickly dispelled; I was rudely startled out of a
deep reverie by the accursed jarring, jingling, and rumbling of a
caleche, and harsh voices that drowned the torrent's fall.'

The stranger, now hearing a commotion in the street, sprang on his feet,
looked out of the window, and rang the bell violently.

'Waiter,' he said, 'is that our carriage? Why did you not tells us?
Come, lasses, be stirring; the freshness of the day is gone. You may
rejoice in not having to walk; there is a chance of saving the remnants
of skin the sun has left on our chins and noses; to-day we shall he
stewed instead of barbecued.'

On their leaving the room to get ready for their journey, my friend
Roberts told me the strangers were the poet Wordsworth, his wife and
sister.

Who could have divined this? I could see no trace, in the hard features
and weather-stained brow of the outer man, of the divinity within him.
In a few minutes the travellers reappeared; we cordially shook hands,
and agreed to meet again at Geneva. Now that I knew that I was talking
to one of the veterans of the gentle craft, as there was no time to
waste in idle ceremony, I asked him abruptly what he thought of Shelley
as a poet.

'Nothing,' he replied as