HOW TO TEAVEL. 27 



little kingdom of their own, of which Fancy was the sole 



t 



and undisputed sovereign, and in the midst of which I 



could at all times take refuge from the dull and dreary 

 realities of common life. I determined, too, that this ideal 

 kingdom should never be overturned but by Nature her- 

 self : in fact, that I would not go among these scenes for 

 the purpose of forming a judgment of them for myself, 

 but would leave them to build up for me a fabric of their 

 own, in the place of the ideal one that I knew they would 

 destroy. I felt it to be something worse than idle to go 

 peeping and prying about, with a pencil and a note-book 

 in my hand, among the mountains of "William Tell — to be 

 sketching trees and cottages, or scribbling nothings, in the 

 ideal presence of Manfred, or the real one of Mont Blanc 

 — to be ascertaining the exact distance from Vevay across 

 the lake to the rocks of Meillerie, in order to calculate 

 whether St Preux really could see from thence the dwelling 

 of Julie — to be inquiring the number of the inhabitants, 

 and the price of the necessaries of life, at Clarens — the 

 scene of that immortal kiss, the echoes of which may even 

 now, to an ear properly attuned, be heard mingling with 

 the breezes that whisper among the branches of its ches- 

 nut groves, or come fanning the brow — the burning brow 

 — of him who gazes, for the first time, on that cradle and 

 home and heaven of love. 



" I repeat, my determination was not only not to prepare 



