KREUTH. 113 



sence of danger and the narrow escapes from risk all 

 these cause the eye to acquire a certain fixedness of 

 look, as if it were guarding against surprise. That 

 this is not mere fancy on my part is proved by a 

 circumstance which occurred to me while writing 

 this. After having spent some weeks in the moun- 

 tains I returned direct to Munich, and the very first 

 observation a friend made on meeting me again was, 

 that my eyes had a different expression : " You have 

 got," he said, " a chamois-hunter s eyes." He had 

 not, probably, remarked the peculiarity in this class 

 of men as I had done ; but he saw something strange 

 in my looks, and knowing where I had been, at once 

 attributed the appearance which so struck him to my 

 recent pursuits*. 



I remember too, when once at the Konigs See, and 

 while at the house of the forester waiting till the rain 

 ceased, an under-gamekeeper came into the room. 

 He had been out three days on the mountains and 

 had just returned. The man's look would have struck 

 any one. At that time all relating to mountain life 

 was strange to me, and the whole appearance of the 

 new comer excited my curiosity. He was tall, gaunt, 

 and bony; his brown and sinewy knees were bare, 



* Not a week after penning these lines, I happened to be looking 

 through a volume of Hazlitt, and found the following remarks, which 

 at once reminded me of my own observations on the look of the cha- 

 mois-hunter. I was very pleased to find them, as they confirmed 

 what I had said. He is speaking of Raphael : " His figures have al- 

 ways an in- door look .... and want that wild uncertainty of expres- 

 sion which is connected with the accidents of nature and the changes 

 of the elements" The Bound Table: On Gusto. 



I 



