6 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



and a Polish gentleman, who was stopping in the 

 house. 



When I came home to England I had many other 

 things to think about. With the very hard work 

 which the medical practice attached to a large country 

 union required, I had little time for other employ- 

 ment. One dull evening, however, I routed out my 

 old panorama, and as our little village was entirely 

 occupied at the time with the formation of a literary 

 and scientific institution, I thought I could make a 

 grand lecture about the Alps. Availing myself of 

 every half-hour I could spare, I copied all my pic- 

 tures on a comparatively large scale about three 

 feet high with such daring lights, and shadows, and 

 streaks of sunset, that I have since trembled at my 

 temerity as I looked at them ; and then contriving 

 some simple mechanism with a carpenter to make 

 them roll on, I selected the most interesting parts of 

 Mr Auldjo's narrative, and, with a few interpolations 

 of my own, produced a lecture which, in the village, 

 was considered quite a "hit," for the people had 

 seen incandescent charcoal burnt in bottles of oxygen, 

 and heard the physiology of the eye explained by dia- 

 grams, until any novelty was sure to succeed. For 

 two or three years, with my Alps in a box, I went 

 round to various literary institutions. The inhab- 

 itants of Richmond, Brentford, Guildford, Staines, 

 Hammersmith, Southwark, and other places, were 

 respectively enlightened upon the theory of glaciers, 



