lity that finds no vent but in silent tears on the sunny
bank, when the noonday light sparkles on the water, or in an inward
shudder at the sound of harsh human tones, the sight of a cold human
eye--this dumb passion brings with it a fatal solitude of soul in the
society of one's fellow-men. My least solitary moments were those in
which I pushed off in my boat, at evening, towards the centre of the
lake; it seemed to me that the sky, and the glowing mountain-tops, and
the wide blue water, surrounded me with a cherishing love such as no
human face had shed on me since my mother's love had vanished out of my
life. I used to do as Jean Jacques did--lie down in my boat and let it
glide where it would, while I looked up at the departing glow leaving one
mountain-top after the other, as if the prophet's chariot of fire were
passing over them on its way to the home of light. Then, when the white
summits were all sad and corpse-like, I had to push homeward, for I was
under careful surveillance, and was allowed no late wanderings. This
disposition of mine was not favourable to the formation of intimate
friendships among the numerous youths of my own age who are always to be
found studying at Geneva. Yet I made _one_ such friendship; and,
singularly enough, it was with a youth whose intellectual tendencies were
the very reverse of my own. I shall call him Charles Meunier; his real
surname--an English one, for he was of English extraction--having since
become celebrated. He was an orphan, who lived on a miserable pittance
while he pursued the medical studies for which he had a special genius.
Strange! that with my vague mind, susceptible and unobservant, hating
inquiry and given up to contemplation, I should have been drawn towards a
youth whose strongest passion was science. But the bond was not an
intellectual one; it came from a source that can happily blend the stupid
with the brilliant, the dreamy with the practical: it came from community
of feeling. Charles was poor and ugly, derided by Genevese _gamins_, and
not acceptable in drawing-rooms. I saw that he was isolated, as I was,
though from a different cause, and, stimulated by a sympathetic
resentment, I made timid advances towards him. It is enough to say that
there sprang up as much comradeship between us as our different habits
would allow; and in Charles's rare holidays we went up the Saleve
together, or took the boat to Vevay, while I listened dreamily to the