friends of the great French humorist, to my reiterated exclamation, "Avez-vous lu Baruch? Ah, c'était par ma foi un beau génie."

Then there is a kinder view which can be taken of these pages, for, as Bold Fletcher said to his audience,

-

"We would fain please ye, and as fain be pleased;

'Tis but a little liking, both are eased."

There are seasons of quiet that come in the midst of great trials, rare and short to be sure, but precious. All outside interferences seem to arrange themselves, and social tangles unweave their knots most graciously, as if to lend us a short rest and peace, it may be to give strength for future trouble, fresh discipline, Mother Nature holding the soul back, as it were, with tender solicitude and pensive prevision on the edge of a moral winter.

During such a season were these pages written, and the pleasure of writing them under the influence of that sweet lull added greatly to the diversion of sad thoughts. Therefore, as they have performed such a gentle office to me, I would not have them ungently judged.

And now as I gather these journal leaves together, and think of that pleasant period, I name them, and

that part of my life, after the sweet autumn season

of the year which they resemble,—

"ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER."

ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER.

journal.

"WE."

VEVAY, Hotel des Trois Couronnes,
11th January, 185-.

E never do anything for the last time con-
sciously without sadness, some one has said;
and I am feeling a sort of tender mournful-
ness as I write the above heading in my new

"Vevay, Hotel des Trois Couronnes," is put here for the last time, and the first, too, in this fresh book; the last time, at all events, for many years, for to-morrow we commence our journey into Italy, and to accomplish our pleasant plan of delightful travel and leisurely study there will keep us from revisiting Suisse for a long while.

I talk of "We" as naturally as if this " we was the same which was meant on the first pages of the large, closely-written volume I packed to-day in the box which is to be sent to America, that book which contains the sorrowful record of five gloomy years. A lustrum, as those old Romans used to say, - and indeed, it has been a period of purifying and light-giving; so much light and clearness of mental vision, that I sit sometimes and