I had been too much given to the attempted production in myself of effects to justify the vague theories towards which my inborn prepossessions carried me. I had felt enough to believe there was more to be felt; and such stray scraps of verse of the new order as, floating about, had reached me, had set me questioning and testing my own life and perceptions and sympathies by what these awoke in me at second-hand. I had often doubted, oppressed by the power of these, whether I could myself see, or whether my sympathy with Nature was not merely inspired by the vision of others. Ever after this, if such a doubt returned, with it arose the Jungfrau, looking into my very soul.
‘Oh Charley!’ was all I could say. Our hands met blindly, and clasped each other. I burst into silent tears.
When I looked up, Charley was staring into the mist again. His eyes, too, were full of tears, but some troubling contradiction prevented their flowing: I saw it by the expression of that mobile but now firmly-closed mouth.
Often ere we left Switzerland I saw similar glories: this vision remains alone, for it was the first.
I will not linger over the tempting delight of the village near which we landed, its houses covered with quaintly-notched wooden scales like those of a fish, and its river full to the brim of white-blue water, rushing from the far-off bosom of the glaciers. I had never had such a sense of exuberance and plenty as this river gave me--especially where it filled the planks and piles of wood that hemmed it in like a trough. I might agonize in words for a day and I should not express the delight. And, lest my readers should apprehend a diary of a tour, I shall say nothing more of our journey, remarking only that if Switzerland were to become as common to the mere tourist mind as Cheapside is to a Londoner, the meanest of its glories would be no whit impaired thereby. Sometimes, I confess, in these days of overcrowded cities, when, in periodical floods, the lonely places of the earth are from them inundated, I do look up to the heavens and say to myself that there at least, between the stars, even in thickest of nebulous constellations, there is yet plenty of pure, unadulterated room--not even a vapour to hang a colour upon; but presently I return to my better mind and say that any man who loves his fellow will yet find he has room enough and to spare.