266 FOREIGN TRA VEL CHAP, vm 



during the winter, 1 and was still unable for much 

 literary exertion. The Welsh Memoir had to stand 

 aside. Once or twice in the course of the summer 

 of 1 86 1 he amused himself with writing a paper for 

 The Saturday Review, including one of the best of 

 his contributions to that journal, on ' Lyell and 

 Tennyson' an essay which, with its humour, its 

 poetry, its geological aroma, and its literary deft- 

 ness, is an excellent sample of his fugitive pieces. 2 



Later in the summer he^went once more with Mrs. 

 Ramsay to Switzerland for more mountaineering, and 

 to cross over to the Italian side, in order to see the 

 great glacier moraines of Ivrea. The general outline 

 of this expedition is given in a letter to his sister, 

 written from the Stachelberg on the 4th September : 

 ' Ever since we left home we have had perfect 

 weather. We have only had two half rainy days in 

 all, and generally there has not been a cloud in the 

 sky. Louisa and I travelled as far as Cologne together 

 without stopping. I then went direct for another 

 day and night to Teplitz, in Bohemia. Thence, 

 after three days' rest and light work, I descended 

 the Elbe to Dresden, across Saxony and Bavaria 

 to Lindau, on the Lake of Constance, and having 

 travelled two days and nights, reached Berne at ten 

 o'clock at night, not a bit tired. Next morning 

 after breakfast I joined Louisa and Mr. and Miss 

 Johnes and Mrs. Cookman at Thun the most lovely 

 spot in the universe. I stayed there from Friday 

 till Monday, and then left them by steamer on the 

 lakes for Meiringen. There I shouldered my knap- 



1 I took this duty, and thus came to have an intimate knowledge of his 

 lecture materials and his methods of preparation and illustration. 



2 Saturday Review ', 22nd June 1861. 



