CHAPTER VI

SCHAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN

119. THE visit to the field of Waterloo, spoken of by chance in last chapter, must have been when I was five years old,-on the occasion of papa and mamma’s taking a fancy to see Paris in its festivities following the coronation of Charles X.¹ We stayed several weeks in Paris, in a quiet family inn, and then some days at Brussels,-but I have no memory whatever of intermediate stages. It seems to me, on revision of those matin times, that I was very slow in receiving impressions, and needed to stop two or three days at least in a place, before I began to get a notion of it; but the notion, once got, was, as far as it went, always right; and since I had no occasion afterwards to modify it, other impressions fell away from that principal one, and disappeared altogether. Hence what people call my prejudiced views of things,-which are, in fact, the exact contrary, namely, post-judiced. (I do not mean to introduce this word for general service, but it saves time and print just now.)

120. Another character of my perceptions I find curiously steady-that I was only interested by things near me, or at least clearly visible and present. I suppose this is so with children generally; but it remained-and remains-a part of my grown-up temper. In this visit to Paris, I was extremely taken up with the soft red cushions of the arm-chairs, which it took one half-an-hour to subside into after sitting down,-with the exquisitely polished floor of the salon, and the good-natured French “Boots” (more properly “Brushes”), who skated over it in the morning

¹ [In September 1824.]

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