ng the
sickly season; thence he went to Florence, surveying with interest the
glories of its art; and in fine he crossed the Alps by Mount Cenis to
Geneva, composing on his way a poetical epistle to Montague, now Lord
Halifax. The Alps do not seem to have much delighted his imagination.
There are a few even still who look upon mountains as excrescences and
deformities, and give to Glencoe only the homage of their unaffected
fears, which is certainly better than the false raptures of others. But,
in Addison's day, admiration for wild scenery was neither pretended nor
felt. Our poet loved, indeed, the great silent starry night, and has
whispered and stammered out some beautiful things in its praise. But he
does this, so to speak, below his breath, while the white Alps, seeming
the shrouded corpses of the fallen Titans, take that breath away, and he
shudders all the road through them, and descends delightedly to the green
pastures and the still waters of lower regions.

At Geneva, where he arrived in December 1701, he remained some time,
expecting from Lord Manchester the official appointment for which he was
now qualified. But while waiting there, he heard the tidings of King
William's death, which put an end to his hopes as well as to those of
his party. His pension, too, was stopped, and he was obliged to become a
tutor to a young Englishman of fortune. With him he visited many parts of
Switzerland and Germany, and spent a portion of his leisure in writing,
not only his "Travels," but his recondite "Dialogue on Medals,"--a book
of considerable research and great ingenuity, which was not published,
however, till after his death. From Germany he passed to Holland, where
he heard the sad intelligence that his father was no more. During his
stay in Holland, he watched with keen, yet kindly eye, the manners of
the inhabitants; and in his letters hits at their drinking habits with a
mixture of severity and sympathy which is very characteristic. Toward the
close of 1703 he returned home, and, we doubt not, felt at first desolate
enough. His father was dead, his pension withdrawn, his political patrons
out of power, and his literary fame not yet fully established. But,
on the other hand, he was only thirty-one; he had made some new and
influential friends on the Continent, particularly the eminent Edward
Wortley Montague, husband of the still more celebrated Mary Wortley
Montague, and he had in his portfolio a volume of "Travels