368 LETTERS OF A CONTINENTAL TOURIST. 



Could not recal to consciousness, and deemed 



Myself the handmaid of the grave ! But since 



That awful night I never could renew 



Acquaintance with the dead, though I have held 



Communion with the part that never dies. 



I doubted at the first the evidence 



On which such intercourse could be sustained. 



I nothing saw nor heard with outward sense, 



So subtile was the medium that conveyed 



Perception to the mind ; and, for its use, 



The body might have been dissolved. In those 



Mysterious intervals of life it formed 



No recognized appendage of the soul. 



Thou who hast studied the phenomenon, 



Say, what is mind ? and wherefore doth it seek, 



In endless enterprise, an unknown good 



Unknown if not attained ? Is this a proof 



This ever seeking that which not repays 



The search an attribute of mind ? And where 



Is its abode ? Not this frail tenement, 



Compounded of such fatal principles, 



Of earth compounded. It disdaineth earth, 



And with one bound the arch of heaven ascends ! 



But canst thou fix the limits of its sphere 



Of thought and action ? No, thou canst not tell 



How mind approximates to kindred mind, 



Though for all purposes of outward show 



Distance, like death, communication ends. 



LETTERS OF A CONTINENTAL TOURIST. 



( Continued from page 262. ) 



LETTER IV. 



Geneva, August 25. 



WE arrived at Lyons at eight o'clock on the morning of the 22d of 

 August, heartily sick of sixty-four hours' confinement in the interior 

 of a diligence, with only the intermissions afforded by our meals and 

 the exercise of walking up the hills. The country that we passed 

 through in the day-time was for the most part uninteresting. One 

 view, however, was charming. A vast hollow, somewhat in the form 

 of a bowl, round the edges of which the road ran. In the centre were 

 the ruins of an old castle, the name of which I could not catch, mo- 

 dified as it was by the barbarous paiois of the conducteur. The route 

 we travelled was by Bourgogne, and therefore passed through Cha- 

 lons sur Saone, a picturesque old town, where we dined. One of the 

 most remarkable points of distinction between France and England 

 consists in the different rank and circumstances of the military. One 

 of our fellow travellers, a sergent et marshal de-logis, that is, a quar- 

 ter-master sergeant of dragoons, sat down at table, and not only joined 

 in the conversation, but was the best-spoken and the best-bred of his 

 countrymen present. He was a young man it seemed of good fa- 

 mily, who had chosen the army for his profession, and not having 

 been educated at one of the military schools entered the ranks in the 



