ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER. journal. 66 "WE." VEVAY, Hotel des Trois Couronnes, 11th January, 185-. E never do anything for the last time consciously without sadness, some one has said; and I am feeling a sort of tender mournfulness 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 grow weary over the thought that, with such light at the beginning, I might have made straight much that was hopelessly crooked and wilful. What use, however, in such a thought? "We can but fill the hour with its best deed, It came too late to guide." And now back again to my starting-point of "We." First, however, let me notice that Rhone valley, and the Lake, the clear starlit sky, and the beautiful terraced garden beneath my window, which looks like some chateau pleasure grounds of the gay French days of Watteau. Yes, they are all very beautiful, and the memory of them will be delightful; but, according to the opinion of the German lad across the street, at the Pharmacie Mayor, the memory will also be sad. "Ah, Madame," he said to me this afternoon, as I was buying some cologne of him, "you will long heartachingly for these Alps. You may think you can leave them as you do other beautiful countries, - but you cannot, Madame. Once live among mountains and they become like kindred, and when you go away the Heimweh, or home-sickness, is sure to cling to you as well as to the native-born Suisse." How strange these Germans are! There is such a deal of dreamy sentimentality about them, which consorts drolly, like some curious marriages, with their sharp, keen eye to the main chance. This young German looked pensive and sighed most touchingly; but he did not forget to charge me outrageously for the cologne, notwithstanding he could talk so tenderly about the Alpine Heimweh. But the Irishman is forgiven for |