1873 LETTERS FROM ABROAD 109 



For of course they will attempt something. Scotland is, 

 I believe, the only country in the world in which you 

 can bring an action for " putting to silence " an adversary 

 who will go on with an obviously hopeless suit The 

 lawgivers knew the genius of the people ; and it is to be 

 regretted that they could not establish a process of the 

 same sort in scientific matters. 



I wrote to you a month ago to tell you how we had 

 been getting on in France. Hooker and I were very 

 jolly, notwithstanding the heat, and I think that the 

 Vivarrais is the most instructive country in the world for 

 seeing what water can do in cutting down the hardest 

 rocks. Scrope's book is very good on the whole, though 

 the pictures are a little overdone. 



My wife and Leonard m',t me at Cologne on the llth. 

 Then we went on to Baden and rested till last Tuesday, 

 when we journeyed to Luzerne and, getting out of that 

 hot and unsavoury hole as fast as we could, came here 

 last Thursday. 



We find ourselves very well off. The hotel is perched 

 up 1800 feet above the lake, with a beautiful view of 

 Pilatus on the west and of the Urner See on the south. 

 On the north we have the Schwyz valley, so that we are 

 not shut in, and the air is very good and fresh. There 

 are plenty of long walks to be had without much fatigue, 

 which suits the wife. Leonard promises to have very 

 good legs of his own with plenty of staying power. I 

 have given him one or two sharp walks, and I find he 

 has plenty of vigour and endurance. But he is not 

 thirteen yet and I do not mean to let him do overmuch, 

 though we are bent on a visit to a glacier. I began to 

 tell him something about the glaciers the other day, but 

 I was promptly shut up with, " Oh yes ! I know all 

 about that. It's in Dr. Tyndall's book" which said 

 book he seems to me to have got by heart. He is the 

 sweetest little fellow imaginable ; and either he has 

 developed immensely in the course of the last year, or I 



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