74 A CONTINENTAL TOUR. 



without having the power to behold it, would make me 

 wish for death. And yet the resources of my mind are 

 not fewer than those of this poor ignorant peasant, I 

 often think on the deprivation of sight, for I have a pre- 

 sentiment that the case will one day be mine. Yet the 

 more I think of it the more fearful a thing does it become, 

 and the more am I convinced of my own inability to be 

 reconciled to such a destiny. I observed this old musi- 

 cian, when by himself, stop every twenty yards, and re- 

 main motionless for about a minute, turning his head a 

 different way each time, and moving his lips as if he were 

 speaking to himself. Perhaps he was recalling to his 

 memory the appearance of the scene before him — the 

 rich beauty of the winding valley, the sombre magnificence 

 of the ancient forests, or the everlasting glory of the icy 

 Alps, and haply for a moment he may have forgot that he 

 was blind. Probably by doing this often, the idea of the 

 landscape remained so constantly in his mind as to present 

 itself always under the same appearance at the same rest- 

 ing-place, as much as if his eyes were not dark and sight- 

 less — ' as if no drop serene had quenched their orbs, or 

 dim suffusion veiled.'" 



The wanderer among the mountains was after this no 

 longer solitary. The following extract records a little in- 

 cident, of which an Amciican friend was the hero : — 



