522 PRĘTERITA-III

meet me, and a very bright and singular one for both of us, when I knocked at his door in the Hotel du Mont Blanc at five in the morning; and led him, as the roselight flushed the highest snow, up the winding path among the mountain meadows of Sallenches.

I can see them at this moment, those mountain meadows, if I rise from my writing-table, and open the old barred valves of the corner window of the Hotel Bellevue;-yes, and there is the very path we climbed that day together, apparently unchanged. But on what seemed then the everlasting hills, beyond which the dawn rose cloudless, and on the heaven in which it rose, and on all that we that day knew, of human mind and virtue,-how great the change, and sorrowful, I cannot measure, and, in this place, I will not speak.

48. That morning gave to me, I said, my first tutor;* for Dr. John Brown, however far above me in general power, and in the knowledge proper to his own profession, yet in the simplicity of his affection liked everything I wrote, for what was true in it, however imperfectly or faultfully expressed: but Norton saw all my weaknesses, measured all my narrownesses, and, from the first, took serenely, and as it seemed of necessity, a kind of paternal authority over me, and a right of guidance;-though the younger of the two,-and always admitting my full power in its own kind; nor only admitting, but in the prettiest way praising and stimulating. It was almost impossible for him to speak to any one he cared for, without some side-flash of witty compliment; and to me, his infinitely varied and loving praise became a constant motive to exertion, and aid in effort: yet he never allowed me in the slightest violation of the laws, either of good writing, or social prudence, without instant blame, or warning.

I was entirely conscious of his rectorial power, and affectionately submissive to it; so that he might have done

* Gordon was only my master in Greek, and in common sense; he never criticized my books, and, I suppose, rarely read them.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]