an ever-varying galantee show, an eternal vanity fair, a vortex of
folly, a pandemonium of vice.

_September 18._--Our imperials are packed, our passports signed, and
we set off to-morrow for Geneva by Dijon and the Jura. I leave nothing
behind me to regret, I see nothing before me to fear, and have no hope
but in change; and now all that remains to be said of Paris, and all
its wonders and all its vanities, all its glories and all its
gaieties, are they not recorded in the ponderous chronicles of most
veracious tourists, and what can I add thereto?

_Geneva, Saturday Night, 11 o'clock._--Can it be the "blue rushing of
the arrowy Rhone" I hear from my window? Shall I hear it to-morrow,
when I wake? Have I seen, have I felt the reality of what I have so
often imagined? and much, _much_ more? How little do I feel the
contretemps and privations which affect others--and feel them _only_
because they affect others! To me they are nothing: I have in a few
hours stored my mind with images of beauty and grandeur which will
last through my whole existence.

* * * * *

Yet I know I am not singular; others have felt the same: others, who,
capable of "drinking in the soul of things," have viewed nature less
with their eyes than their hearts. Now I feel the value of my own
enthusiasm; now am I repaid in part for many pains and sorrows and
errors it has cost me. Though the natural expression of that
enthusiasm be now repressed and restrained, and my spirits subdued by
long illness, what but enthusiasm could elevate my mind to a level
with the sublime objects round me, and excite me to pour out my whole