he is not a mere scrambler, but that he
looks for poetical impressions, as well as for such small glory as his
achievements may gain in a very small circle. Something of what he gains
fortunately sticks by him: he does not quite forget the mountain
language; his eye still recognises the space and the height and the
glory of the lofty mountains. And yet there is some pain in wandering
ghostlike among the scenes of his earlier pleasures. For my part, I try
in vain to hug myself in a sense of comfort. I turn over in bed when I
hear the stamping of heavily nailed shoes along the passage of an inn
about 2 A.M. I feel the skin of my nose complacently when I see others
returning with a glistening tight aspect about that unluckily prominent
feature, and know that in a day or two it will be raw and blistered and
burning. I think, in a comfortable inn at night, of the miseries of
those who are trying to sleep in damp hay, or on hard boards of chalets,
at once cold and stuffy and haunted by innumerable fleas. I congratulate
myself on having a whole skin and unfractured bones, and on the small
danger of ever breaking them over an Alpine precipice. But yet I
secretly know that these consolations are feeble. It is little use to
avoid early rising and discomfort, and even fleas, if one also loses the
pleasures to which they were the sauce--rather too _piquante_ a sauce
occasionally, it must be admitted. The philosophy is all very well which
recommends moderate enjoyment, regular exercise, and a careful avoidance
of risk and over-excitement. That is, it is all very well so long as
risk and excitement and immoderate enjoyment are out of your power; but
it does not stand the test of looking on and seeing them just beyond
your reach. In time, no doubt, a man may grow calm; he may learn to
enjoy the pleasures and the exquisite beauties of the lower
regions--though they, too, are most fully enjoyed when they have a
contrast with beauties of a different, and pleasures of a keener
excitement. When first debarred, at any rate, one feels like a balloon
full of gas, and fixed by immovable ropes to the prosaic ground. It is
pleasant to lie on one's back in a bed of rhododendrons, and look up to
a mountain top peering at one from above a bank of cloud; but it is
pleasantest when one has qualified oneself for repose by climbing the
peak the day before and becoming familiar with its terrors and its
beauties. In time, doubtless, one may get reconciled