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164 PRÆTERITA-I
be happy everywhere. Generally, if there was time, I used to climb the islet of crag to the north of the village, on which there are a few grey walls of ruined castle, and the yet traceable paths of its “pleasance,” whence to look if the likeness of white cloud were still on the horizon. Still there, in the clear evening, and again and again, each year more marvellous to me; the Derniers Rochers, and calotte of Mont Blanc.1 Only those; that is to say, just as much as may be seen over the Dôme du Goûter from St. Martin’s. But it looks as large from Champagnole as it does there-glowing in the last light like a harvest moon.
If there were not time to reach the castle rock, at least I could get into the woods above the Ain, and gather my first Alpine flowers. Again and again, I feel the duty of gratitude to the formalities and even vulgarities of Herne Hill, for making me to feel by contrast the divine wildness of Jura forest.
Then came the morning drive into the higher glen of the Ain, where the road began first to wind beside the falling stream. One never understands how those winding roads steal with their tranquil slope from height to height; it was but an hour’s walking beside the carriage,-an hour passed like a minute; and one emerged on the high plain of St. Laurent, and the gentians began to gleam among the roadside grass, and the pines swept round the horizon with the dark infinitude of ocean.
191. All Switzerland was there in hope and sensation, and what was less than Switzerland was in some sort better, in its meek simplicity and healthy purity. The Jura cottage is not carved with the stately richness of the Bernese, nor set together with the antique strength of Uri. It is covered with thin slit fine shingles, side-roofed as it were to the ground for mere dryness’ sake, a little crossing of laths here and there underneath the window its only ornament.
1 [Compare the description of “the ‘Derniers Rochers’ and the white square-set summit,” in Proserpina, ii. ch. iv. (Vol. XXV. p. 455).]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
