TO HIS MOTHER.
Dear Little Mother,—Do you still remember our living here twenty years ago in the pleasant inn under the great walnut-trees with the fair young hostess? Ten years back I was here again, and they refused me quarters. I looked too disreputable after my journey on foot, and that, I think, was the only annoyance I had on all that journey. Now we are living here again, this time as people who are settled in life. The Jungfrau with its silver horns still shapes itself as steeply and delicately as ever in the air; the mountain looks fresh still, but the hostess is grown quite old, and it was only by her unchanged deportment I could recognise her. I have been sketching the walnut-trees, far better than before, no doubt, but far worse than I know it really ought to be. The Unterseen post brings us the letters as it used; but there are many new houses. The Aar ripples and murmurs as quickly and quietly; and the water is as green as ever; “time is, time was, time is passed.” Really, I have little more to write; description, of Swiss journeyings are neither here nor there, and instead of my old diary, I now fall to sketching like one pos-
