ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 7 



and the dangers of the Grand Plateau. I recall these 

 first efforts of a showman for such they really were 

 with great pleasure. I recollect how my brother 

 and I used to drive our four-wheeled chaise across the 

 country, with Mont Blanc on the back seat, and how 

 we were received, usually with the mistrust attached 

 to wandering professors generally, by the man who 

 swept out the town-hall, or the Athenaeum, or wher- 

 ever the institution might be located. As a rule, the 

 Athenaeums did not remind one of the Acropolis : 

 they were situated up dirty lanes, and sometimes 

 attached to public - houses, and were used, in the 

 intervals of oxygen and the physiology of the eye, 

 for tea festivals and infant schools. I remember 

 well the " committee-room," and a sort of condemned 

 cell in which the final ten minutes before appearing 

 on the platform were spent, with its melancholy 

 decanter of water and tumbler before the lecture, and 

 plate of mixed biscuits and bottle of Marsala after- 

 wards. I recollect, too, how the heat of my lamps 

 would unsolder those above them, producing twilight 

 and oil avalanches at the wrong time ; and how my 

 brother held a piece of wax-candle end behind the 

 moon on the Grands Mulcts (which always got 

 applauded) ; and how the diligence, which went 

 across a bridge, would sometimes tumble over. There 

 are souvenirs of far greater import that I would 

 throw over before those old Alpine memories. 

 No matter why, in the following years I changed 



