We returned down the Rhine through Holland. I was willing to see the contrast between flat and lofty, and between Venice and Amsterdam. We left Vevey on the 20th of September, and arrived in England on the 16th of October. It was at first exceedingly hot; we encountered several days of severe cold on the road, and it afterwards became mild and pleasant again. We hired a _char-aux-bancs_ from Vevey to Basle, and it took us four days to reach this latter place; the expense of the conveyance was twenty-four francs a day, besides the driver. The first part of our journey, as we ascended from the Lake on the way to Moudon, was like an aërial voyage, from the elevation and the clearness of the atmosphere; yet still through the most lovely country imaginable, and with glimpses of the grand objects behind us (seen over delicious pastures, and through glittering foliage) that were truly magical. The combinations of language, however, answer but ill to the varieties of nature, and by repeating these descriptions so often, I am afraid of becoming tiresome. My excuse must be, that I have little to relate but what I saw. After mounting to a considerable height, we descended to Moudon, a small town situated in a most romantic valley. The accommodations at the inn here were by no means good, though it is a place of some pretensions. In proportion to the size of the house and the massiveness of the furniture, the provisions of the kitchen appeared to be slender, and the attendance slack. The freshness of the air the next morning, and the striking beauty and rapid changes of the scenery, soon made us forget any disappointment we had experienced in this respect. As we ascended a steep hill on this side of Moudon, and looked back, first at the green dewy valley under our feet, with the dusky town and the blue smoke rising from it, then at the road we had traversed the preceding evening, winding among thick groves of trees, and last at the Savoy Alps on the other side of the Lake of Geneva (with which we had been familiar for four months, and which seemed to have no mind to quit us) I perceived a bright speck close to the top of one of these—I was delighted, and said it was Mont Blanc. Our driver was of a different opinion, was positive it was only a cloud, and I accordingly supposed I had taken a sudden fancy for a reality. I began in secret to take myself to task, and to lecture myself for my proneness to build theories on the foundation of my conjectures and wishes. On turning round occasionally, however, I observed that this cloud remained in the same place, and I noticed the circumstance to our guide, as favouring my first suggestion; for clouds do not usually remain long in the same place. We disputed the point for half a day, and it was not till the afternoon when we had reached the other side of the lake of Neufchatel, that this same cloud rising like a canopy over the point where it had hovered, ‘in shape and station proudly eminent,’ he acknowledged it to be Mont Blanc. We were then at a distance of about forty miles from Vevey, and eighty or ninety from Chamouni. This will give the reader some idea of the scale and nature of this wonderful scenery. We dined at Iverdun (a pretty town), at the head of the lake, and passed on to Neufchatel, along its enchanting and almost unrivalled borders, having the long unaspiring range of the Jura on our left (from the top of which St. Preux, on his return from his wanderings round the world, first greeted that country, where ‘torrents of delight had poured into his heart,’ and, indeed, we could distinguish the _Dent de Jamant_ right over Clarens almost the whole way), and on our right was the rippling lake, its low cultivated banks on the other side, then a brown rocky ridge of mountains, and the calm golden peaks of the snowy passes of the Simplon, the Great St. Bernard, and (as I was fain to believe) of Monteroso rising into the evening sky at intervals beyond. Meanwhile we rode on through a country abounding in farms and vineyards and every kind of comfort, and deserving the epithets, ‘verd et riant.’ Sometimes a tall rock rose by the road side; or a ruinous turret or a well-compacted villa attracted our attention. Neufchatel is larger and handsomer than Iverdun, and is remarkable for a number of those genteel and quiet-looking habitations, where people seem to have retired (in the midst of society) to spend the rest of their lives in ease and comfort: they are not for shew, nor are they very striking from situation; they are neither fashionable nor romantic; but the decency and sober ornaments of their exterior evidently indicate fireside enjoyments and cultivated taste within.