ven preserved by the myrtle wreath
or the garland of roses from the premature winter of time.

In selecting the scenes for my new journey I was guided by my former
experience. I know no country more beautiful than that which may be
called the Alpine country of Austria, including the Alps of the southern
Tyrol, those of Illyria, the Noric and the Julian Alps, and the Alps of
Styria and Salzburg. The variety of the scenery, the verdure of the
meadows and trees, the depths of the valleys, the altitude of the
mountains, the clearness and grandeur of the rivers and lakes give it, I
think, a decided superiority over Switzerland; and the people are far
more agreeable. Various in their costumes and manners, Illyrians,
Italians, or Germans, they have all the same simplicity of character, and
are all distinguished by their love of their country, their devotion to
their sovereign, the warmth and purity of their faith, their honesty, and
(with very few exceptions) I may say their great civility and courtesy to
strangers.

In the prime of life I had visited this region in a society which
afforded me the pleasures of intellectual friendship and the delights of
refined affection; later I had left the burning summer of Italy and the
violence of an unhealthy passion, and had found coolness, shade, repose,
and tranquillity there; in a still more advanced period I had sought for
and found consolation, and partly recovered my health after a dangerous
illness, the consequence of labour and mental agitation; there I had
found the spirit of my early vision. I was desirous, therefore, of again
passing some time in these scenes in the hope of re-establishing a broken
constitution; and though this hope was a feeble one, yet at least I
expected to spend a few of the last days of life more tranquilly and more
agreeably than in the metropolis of my own country. Nature never
deceives us. The rocks, the mountains, the streams always speak the same
language. A shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a
thunderstorm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; but
these effects are rare and transient: in a few hours or at least days all
the sources of beauty are renovated. And Nature affords no continued
trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution
of humanity; no hopes for ever blighted in the bud; no beings full of
life, beauty, and promise taken from us in the prime of youth. Her
fruits are