viii.] TRAVELS, 182639. 211 



journeys some preceded, and some have followed him 

 ' From sunshine to the sunless land,' 



leaving the difficult task of attempting to portray him 

 as he was, to those who had seen him only after many 

 long years of shattered health had caused his early vigour 

 and energy to be ( half-forgotten things/ Comparatively 

 few of his letters written from abroad remain, and his well 

 filled note-books cannot supply their place, for they are 

 but dry bones from which to reconstruct the living man. 

 They are records of facts only, for the impressions made 

 on his mind and imagination by the more poetical aspects 

 of nature, he felt, but seldom recorded. 1 And yet, as a 

 dried flower is often more valuable to a botanist than a 

 drawing of the same flower, however artistically coloured, 

 the following sketch of James Forbes' travels, the ' plain 

 unvarnished tale' afforded for the most part by his 

 journals not written to be read by others 2 may bring 



1 "While urging the moral advantages of mountain travel, 'Their 

 solitude,' he writes, 'is the parent of reflection, and draws forth to 

 daylight the capacities of that dimly seen inward being, which now 

 begins to assert its claim to individuality, but which, amidst the busy 

 turmoil of life, might remain a secret and a puzzle, even to itself. At 

 such times the mind becomes capable of seriously entertaining thoughts 

 which in hours of luxury or business would have been instantly dis- 

 carded. The young mind in particular seems to discover a link between 

 its powers of conception, and the greatness of the objects to be con- 

 ceived. The seeds of a poetic temperament usually germinate amidst 

 mountain scenery, and we envy not the man, young or old, to whom 

 the dead silence of sequestered nature does not bring an irresistible 

 sense of awe an experience which a picturesque writer has thus 



>sed : "It seems impious to laugh so near Heaven!" (Un- 

 published article on ' Travel.') 



2 In 1856 he thus wrote to a friend : 'There is a most serious 

 difficulty in writing travels of many years back from mere notes taken 

 at the time. I have tried it, and found it so. It is twenty -one 3 

 since I was in the Pyrenees, nineteen years since I was in the T\ r\ 

 and Carinthia, and that minute local li.Mily in tracing impressions, 

 which gives value and freshness to a "Tour-book," vanMi 



not say, in an incomparably shorter period. My mere tourist's notes, 

 in the form of a diary, it would be unbecoming in me to publish, as 

 they are not worth it : while whatever matter was added would run 

 the risk of being either exaggerated or obsolete.' 



[ -2 



