370 PRÆTERITA-II

least, compared with the days at Florence, a time of rest; and when I got down to Domo d’Ossola again, I was fresh for the expedition in search of Turner’s subject at Dazio Grande.

With Couttet and George, and a baggage mule, I walked up the Val Formazza, and across to Airolo; Couttet on this walk first formulating the general principle, “Pour que George aille bien, il faut lui donner à manger souvent; et beaucoup à la fois.” I had no objection whatever to this arrangement, and was only sorry my Chamouni tutor could not give the same good report of me. But on anything like a hard day’s walk, the miles after lunch always seemed to me to become German instead of geographical. And although I much enjoyed the Val Formazza all the way up, Airolo next day was found to be farther off than it appeared on the map, and on the third morning I ordered a post-chaise, and gave up my long-cherished idea of making the pedestrian tour of Europe.

139. The work done at Faido and Dazio Grande is told and illustrated in the fourth volume of Modern Painters;¹ it was a little shortened by a letter from J. D. Harding, asking if I would like him to join me at any place I might have chosen for autumn sketching. Very gratefully, I sent word that I would wait for him at Baveno; where, accordingly, towards the close of August, we made fraternal arrangements for an Elysian fortnight’s floating round Isola Bella. There was a spacious half of seat vacant in my little hooded carriage, and good room for Harding’s folios with mine: so we trotted from Baveno to Arona, and from Arona to Como, and from Como to Bergamo, and Bergamo to Brescia, and Brescia to Verona, and took up our abode in the “Two Towers” for as long as we chose.

I do not remember finding in any artistic biography the history of a happier epoch than it was to us both. I am bold to speak for Harding as for myself. Generally,

¹ [See Vol. VI. pp. 34 seq.]

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