I was only a poor scholar. There was a time when the title of poor scholar would have conciliated something of sympathy and reverence in the minds of most people. But this notion, with the whole lot of medieval rubbish, has been eliminated from the minds of English folk. Once, instead of being a poor scholar, I had reason to consider myself a rich scholar. I was the son of a rich man; and I had reason to believe that I should one day be a rich man myself. That I do not arrogantly assume to myself the title of scholar may be assumed from the fact that I actually gained a scholarship at my college, which was one of the largest of the small colleges at Cambridge. It was worth fifty pounds a year; but my father would not allow me to keep the money. I know many a wealthy young fellow who would gladly have pocketed it, and where the governor' would have been extremely well pleased that such had been the

case.

'But no, my dear boy,' said my father; you have shown yourself a scholar by coming in first at the examination, and now let the money go to the next best man, who may want it more than you do.' Nevertheless the good dad was so pleased that he added a hundred a year to my allowance, which was large enough already. So I continued my scholarly pursuits, such as they were, not exactly as the regular Cantab does, as may best pay' at the examinations, but as the opening avenues of literature might beckon me forward into their beloved vistas. When I had been two years at the

University the crash came. I need not go into it minutely. It was one of those commercial crashes which have only been too common of late years. My father lost his all-worse than all, for the great failure left him with 'a minus less than nothing.' Fortunately I had no debts. That last hundred pounds was lying untouched at the banker's. My college behaved very nobly. Let me say that those college authorities, whom the careless undergraduate regards as his natural enemies, are capable of behaving with the rarest tenderness and generosity. The Bursar sent to me, and told me that there would be no college charge against me for board, rooms, and tuition, until I should have taken my degree. This was kind indeed; but even this would not cover the inevitable expenses of the University, and I felt that it was my duty to be earning money. The hundred went back to my father, who had to live upon my mother's little property; and I had to set to work to earn some filthy lucre, by which I might maintain myself and help my family as well.

A certain Mr. Fisby had a big school with a big, and not altogether undeserved, reputation. Fisby had been to one of the Universities, and had smuggled himself into some sort of a degree through one of the recognised byroads. Not being able to get into any profession, he thought that he would take pupils. He asked modest terms and got no answers. Then one of his friends told him that he did not ask enough, and that if he demanded two hundred

a year each he might get plenty of pupils from rich people, who would, of course, imagine that they would be getting an equivalent. A number of pupils flocked to him on these highly satisfactory terms. Some big fellows came, and other fellows stopped till they got big. Fisby was no more competent to teach these big fellows than if he were a Hottentot. To do him justice, he was perfectly aware of the fact. He put on good masters in subjects of which he only had a smattering himself. The name of Charles Murray, formerly scholar of St. Ambrose College, Cambridge, was not a bad one for his purposes, as classical master. I became that classical master, and, as things go, Fisby did not pay me so badly.

At the end of a twelvemonth I had saved money. I had worked

hard, not only in my duties, but also on the old lines of work. Then my father strongly urged me to take a holiday. I was suffering from the effects of overwork. Just then there was a sudden rage for the Engadine. People said that a warm climate did not answer in cases of debility, not even the debility of consumption. People in such a state required a bright atmosphere and pure bracing air. Our summer vacation was to last seven weeks; it was nearly all to be spent in Switzerland, and a part of it in the Engadine. I had been in Switzerland as a lad, and the recollections of it sometimes came back to me, both in dreams and day-dreams. I thought I would revisit the old scenes in the Oberland, and then open up new ground in the Engadine before I returned home. I went to Dover, intending to cross to Calais or Ostend. I took a lodging for the night, thinking I was performing a great stroke of economy, when I have reason to believe that I paid double what

my bill would have been at the Lord Warden. I settled that next day I would go over to Ostend. I made the discovery that I might save half-a-sovereign, which in the long-run would mean an extra two days' stay in the Engadine. Engadine. It was a bright day, with quiet waters and a favourable breeze. Imade myself very comfortable in the cheap part of the vessel, avoiding the heat. I got as near as I could to the prow, which on a quiet day is the best part of the ship, where you witness the dividing of the waters, get the freshest of breezes, and have the first opening views of the landscapes and seascapes. A pleasant sensiblelooking girl and a fine weatherworn man were sitting very near to the place where I was, and insensibly we all glided into conversation together. I was struck with the man's wide acquaintance with the world; with the world; Egypt, India, Australia, South America, seemed as familiar to him as Wapping. He had a shop at Wapping, he told me; but before he took it he had been a courier by profession, and now that his wife could manage it by herself, in the holidayseason of the year he betook himself to his old business as a courier, which gave him a pleasant change and enabled him to save some money. His companion was a lady's-maid, who only with much difficulty could be distinguished from a lady, if, indeed, such a distinction could be safely drawn. She was studying the Guardian, and pronouncing clearly-defined opinions on Rites and Ritualism. I found, from what they said, that they were both in attendance on a party in the cabin, a gentleman and lady and their only daughter. The whole party were in a state of great depression on account of the death of an only son from phthisis, and some fears were entertained

lest Miss Grinnell-so the name slipped out-should fall into the same illness which had proved fatal to her brother.

Although a second-class passenger, I had received an intimation that if I wished for lunch or dinner I should be served in the principal cabin. Although I dine late, the middle of the day is always my hungriest time; and I went forward intent upon a solid repast. There were not many personssuch are the chances of war-on board that day. There were, towards the centre of the cabin, a party of three, whom I had no difficulty in identifying with the Grinnells. The gentleman of the party was engaged in reading the Times, which he had had the good sense, that I myself had lacked, to secure before he came on board. A lovely girl, slightly propped up by pillows, was apparently engaged over a Tauchnitz volume, but the closed eyelids gave me the idea that her attention was wandering from her author. Her complexion was brilliant, perhaps too brilliant to be perfectly healthy. Her face had a character of intellectual beauty about it which I had seldom or ever beheld, except in the conception of an artist or some summer's dream that comes to a young man's imagination.

I had ventured to ask leave to look at the Times, which at that moment had been laid down, and at the sound of an unwonted voice the beautiful eyelashes had unclosed, and a pair of sapphire eyes, incomparable for 'light' and 'sweetness,' had looked down upon me with deep dazzling radiance, and then had languidly closed once more. I took up the Times, and read part of the City article upside down; but a sudden solicitude had seized me about this sweet girl, so threatened in the height of her youthful bloom with a

mysterious incomparable malady. There was no mistaking, either, the look of intense fondness and intense anxiety borne by the mother's face.

At Cambridge I was considered a shy man, but just then I felt that I should have liked to converse, and also to have conversed well. But my shyness, such as it was, prevented my commencing; and the thread of the conversation would in any case have been cut short by the abhorred shears of the Fates; for the malignant steward of the ship-if I may apply such a term to an honest and deserving man- -came up to me, and said to me, in a tone low indeed, but still sufficiently audible to be heard all over the place,

'If you have finished your dinner, sir, you ought to return to the second cabin. Only first-class passengers are allowed to stay in this cabin.'

A sudden blaze of anger swept through me, such as never before had troubled my tranquil existence. A desire to fling the fellow overboard into the sea, a movement to fling the fellow a sovereign, here and there divided the swift mind. Nothing is more mortifying to a man, at least before years have brought the philosophic mind, than to be convicted of poverty in the presence of a young lady. My eyes instinctively sought hers; would there be any expression of scorn and amusement? None at least that I could detect; perhaps a little wonderment and concern; that was all, if, indeed, that. I did what was perhaps best after all under the circumstances. I deliber

ately said, 'Thank you-presently?' finished the impossible City article, and beat an inglorious retreat.

Once I met them on the Lake of Geneva. Here again I was in the cheap part of the vessel, but I had the presence of mind quickly to change the ticket. I was irresis

tibly attracted towards the party, but at the same time they made me feel exceedingly irritable and uncomfortable. I was within eyesight and the sound of their voices, but they calmly ignored my exist ence. They might just as truly have said that I ignored theirs. Through the rigour of English etiquette it was just the same as if these mountains rose, as if these waters rolled, between me and them. At Geneva I went to an hotel which, as the guide-book described, was quiet, comfortable, and respectable. This just seemed to suit my limited and modest aims. But the hotel was crowded with many of the best people in Europe, princes of Royal blood included, and everything was on a ⚫ most lavish scale. While I was taking my modest cutlet, the champagne bottles stood in the icepail and the early luscious fruits were piled high on the frosted silver. To them,' as they say in the playbills, entered another British family of a highly Philistine type. A fortuitous concourse of atoms immediately took place, or rather according to some laws of similars. 'Yes,' I growled to myself, 'things of a kind pair together: wealth with wealth, ignorance with ignorance, imbecility with imbecility.' So I glared at them; at least, I glared as much as my mild nature would allow, and resolved that next morning I would forsake the palatial and depart on an honest trudge.

Now in this Swiss tour I was necessarily studying economy in all its various branches. I often investigated the state of. my 'narrow resources. My slender store of sovereigns looked a little larger when converted into napoleons, the exchange also being slightly in my favour, and so long as these napoleons held out, and no longer, was my foreign tour to continue. Mr. Ball, in one of his excellent guide

books to the Alps, says that a considerable number of napoleons may be carried without inconvenience in the waistcoat-pocket. Exactly, but I would cheerfully submit to the inconvenience if I could only pocket the napoleons. A solitary fiver was retained in the further end of my purse, to re-conduct me to my country's shores once more when 'my little all' should be gone. With all my care, perhaps because I never could do things meanly, the inevitable smelting process still went on. I did not take a tourist ticket, because it seemed to me that I should be surrendering my own free will to that of Mr. Cook; and so I did not make any saving that might be made in this direction. But in other respects I did things very cheap, and I believe much more pleasantly than if I had done them very dear.

One great rule was to avoid all the beaten tracks frequented by the English. I a little reminded myself of Goldsmith as he fiddled his way through France, as he has so deliciously told us in his Traveller. While the comfortable tourist went to the lordly hotel I was content to go to the wayside inn. I have made delicious dinners there-a chicken, a bottle of the wine of the country, a melon or grapes-at a quarter of the tabled'hôte prices. Sometimes I would go to some little châlet on the mountain pasturages, and allay hunger and thirst with a crust and copious draughts of pure milk. I would sit by the side of a rocky stream and wash out and dry a few things, that I might save the delay and expense of a laundress. I could not take an open carriage, which I should rather have liked; but, except over those long stretches of interminable dusty road which one sometimes meets with, I avoided the crowded diligence. Unless I could get the coupé or the banquette there was no place for which I cared. And even

if I had the place which I preferred I was hurried through scenery where I should like to have lingered and taken my time. So I sent on my heavy luggage by the diligence, the best use to which a diligence could be put, and went on foot over several of the passes, with a light hand-bag and a stout umbrella which would both give me a staff for support and a shade for sunshine. I was thus able to cross or recross the stream as might happen, to wander through the wayside wood, to penetrate the lateral valley, to rest at the country albergs, to enter into chance conversation with pedestrians like myself-muscular Christians these last, students as myself, or students who had developed into full-blown parsons and professional men.

that of the Splügen Pass and that of the Bernardino Pass. I wandered all around the environs, and there was only one hotel, and that not particularly lordly. I had intended that summer evening to have gained the summit of the pass, and to have made part of my way to Chiavenna. At the time that I had finished my slight dinner, the skies that had been so brilliant were utterly overcast. Even at that great height above the sea-level there was the dull, languid, oppressive feeling, that comes when the atmosphere is charged with electricity. Soon the heavy thunder drops fell, thickening into floods and sheets of water; the most vivid flashes of lightning that I had ever seen in my life, with solemn reverberations of thunder amid the lonely hills.

It was my first experience, a most magnificent experience, of an Alpine storm. I recalled Byron's description of such a storm, and verified it to the letter. To me there was something infinitely impressive, but not at all appalling, in the glittering of those forked lightnings and the rollings of the solemn thunders. The storm gave no signs of holding up, and as it was getting late in the day there was no chance of my continuing my journey on foot. I engaged a bedroom at once, and they told me at the bureau that I was fortunate in getting one, as the room I took was the last one in the house. I went up to my little room and lighted the 'bougies'-which would certainly be charged for whether lighted or not-and tried to go on with my reading and writing, very much the same as in my old Cambridge rooms. But my attention was repeatedly distracted by the magnificence of the storm.

I had come to the little town of Splügen on my travels, from which the famous pass takes its name. How lovely had been my prolonged walk that day! I had walked through the gorgeous pass of the Via Mala, through which coach or carriage thunders in three quarters of an hour, but where the observant and thoughtful pilgrim may well spend hour after hour amid scenes the like of which he will very rarely see on this side the Millennium. Then, by the shores of the Hither-Rhine, which had raved at a sunless depth in the deep narrow gorge, but which was now at an easy declivity from the road, or ran parallel with the smooth turf at its side. I had passed through the little village of Endeer, and then up and up to the town of Splügen. Now most Swiss tourists will recall that Splügen is wondrously beautiful in its surroundings, and awfully dirty in itself. I do not often affect the lordly hotel; but still sometimes I do, because in travelling you ought to see every variety of traveller. At Splügen two great roads meet,

So

At

times there was a lull, a lull so long that it almost seemed as if it had passed away, and then it