end; and then after dinner they brought us little tumblers of warm lavender scent and water to wash our mouths out, and the little bowls to spit into; but enough of eating, we must have some more coffee at a cafe on the Boulevards, watch the carriages and the people and the dresses and the sunshine and all the pomps and vanities which the Boulevards have not yet renounced; return to the inn, fetch our knapsacks, and be off to the Chemin de Fer de Lyon by forty-five minutes past seven; our train leaves at five minutes past eight, and we are booked to Grenoble. All night long the train speeds towards the south. We leave Sens with its grey cathedral solemnly towering in the moonlight a mile on the left. (How few remember, that to the architect William of Sens we owe Canterbury Cathedral.) Fontainebleau is on the right, station after station wakes up our dozing senses, while ever in our ears are ringing as through the dim light we gaze on the surrounding country, "the pastures of Switzerland and the poplar valleys of France."

It is still dark—as dark, that is, as the midsummer night will allow it to be, when we are aware that we have entered on a tunnel; a long tunnel, very long—I fancy there must be high hills above it; for I remember that some few years ago when I was travelling up from Marseilles to Paris in midwinter, all the way from Avignon (between which place and Chalon the railway was not completed), there had been a dense frozen fog; on neither hand could anything beyond the road be descried, while every bush and tree was coated with a thick and steadily increasing fringe of silver hoar-frost, for the night and day, and half-day that it took us to reach this tunnel, all was the same—bitter cold dense fog and ever silently increasing hoar- frost: but on emerging from it, the whole scene was completely changed; the air was clear, the sun shining brightly, no hoar-frost and only a few patches of fast melting snow, everything in fact betokening a thaw of some days' duration. Another thing I know about this tunnel which makes me regard it with veneration as a boundary line in countries, namely, that on every high ground after this tunnel on clear days Mont Blanc may be seen. True, it is only very rarely seen, but I have known those who have seen it; and accordingly touch my companion on the side, and say, "We are within sight of the Alps"; a few miles farther on and we are at Dijon. It is still very early morning, I think about three o'clock, but we feel as if we were already at the Alps, and keep looking anxiously out for them, though we well know that it is a moral impossibility that we should see them for some hours at the least. Indian corn comes in after Dijon; the oleanders begin to come out of their tubs; the peach trees, apricots, and nectarines unnail themselves from the walls, and stand alone in the open fields. The vineyards are still scrubby, but the practised eye readily detects with each hour some slight token that we are nearer the sun than we were, or, at any rate, farther from the North Pole. We don't stay long at Dijon nor at Chalon, at Lyons we have an hour to wait; breakfast off a basin of cafe au lait and a huge hunch of bread, get a miserable wash, compared with which the spittoons of the Diners de Paris were luxurious, and return in time to proceed to St. Rambert, whence the railroad branches off to Grenoble. It is very beautiful between Lyons and St. Rambert. The mulberry trees show the silkworm to be a denizen of the country, while the fields are dazzlingly brilliant with poppies and salvias; on the other side of the Rhone rise high cloud-capped hills, but towards the Alps we strain our eyes in vain.

At St. Rambert the railroad to Grenoble branches off at right angles to the main line, it was then only complete as far as Rives, now it is continued the whole way to Grenoble; by which the reader will save some two or three hours, but miss a beautiful ride from Rives to Grenoble by the road. The valley bears the name of Gresivaudan. It is very rich and luxuriant, the vineyards are more Italian, the fig trees larger than we have yet seen them, patches of snow whiten the higher hills, and we feel that we are at last indeed among the outskirts of the Alps themselves. I am told that we should have stayed at Voreppe, seen the Grande Chartreuse (for which see Murray), and then gone on to Grenoble, but we were pressed for time and could not do everything. At Grenoble we arrived about two o'clock, washed comfortably at last and then dined; during dinner a caleche was preparing to drive us on to Bourg d'Oisans, a place some six or seven and thirty miles farther on, and by thirty minutes past three we find ourselves reclining easily within it, and digesting dinner with the assistance of a little packet, for which we paid one-and-fourpence at the well-known shop of Mr. Bacon, Market- square, Cambridge. It is very charming. The air is sweet, warm, and sunny, there has been bad weather for some days here, but it is clearing up; the clouds are lifting themselves hour by hour, we are evidently going to have a pleasant spell of fine weather. The caleche jolts a little, and the horse is decidedly shabby, both qua horse and qua harness, but our moustaches are growing, and our general appearance is in keeping. The wine was very pleasant at Grenoble, and we have a pound of ripe cherries between us; so, on the whole, we would not change with his Royal Highness Prince Albert or all the Royal Family, and jolt on through the long straight poplar avenue that colonnades the road above the level swamp and beneath the hills, and turning a sharp angle enter Vizille, a wretched place, only memorable because from this point we begin definitely, though slowly, to enter the hills and ascend by the side of the Romanche through the valley, which that river either made or found—who knows or cares? But we do know very well that we are driving up a very exquisitely beautiful valley, that the Romanche takes longer leaps from rock to rock than she did, that the hills have closed in upon us, that we see more snow each time the valley opens, that the villages get scantier, and that at last a great giant iceberg walls up the way in front, and we feast our eyes on the long-desired sight till after that the setting sun has tinged it purple (a sure sign of a fine day), its ghastly pallor shows us that the night is upon us. It is cold, and we are not sorry at half-past nine to find ourselves at Bourg d'Oisans, where there is a very fair inn kept by one Martin; we get a comfortable supper of eggs and go to bed fairly tired.

This we must remind the reader is Thursday night, on Tuesday morning we left London, spent one day in Paris, and are now sleeping among the Alps, sharpish work, but very satisfactory, and a prelude to better things by and by. The next day we made rather a mistake, instead of going straight on to Briancon we went up a valley towards Mont Pelvoux (a mountain nearly 14,000 feet high), intending to cross a high pass above La Berarde down to Briancon, but when we got to St. Christophe we were told the pass would not be open till August, so returned and slept a second night at Bourg d'Oisans. The valley, however, was all that could be desired, mingled sun and shadow, tumbling river, rich wood, and mountain pastures, precipices all around, and snow-clad summits continually unfolding themselves; Murray is right in calling the valley above Venosc a scene of savage sterility. At Venosc, in the poorest of hostelries was a tuneless cracked old instrument, half piano, half harpsichord—how it ever found its way there we were at a loss to conceive—and an irrelevant clock that struck seven times by fits and starts at its own convenience during our one o'clock dinner; we returned to Bourg d'Oisans at seven, and were in bed by nine.

Saturday, June 13.

Having found that a conveyance to Briancon was beyond our finances, and that they would not take us any distance at a reasonable charge, we determined to walk the whole