says Wordsworth, "did he
feel his faith." But the poet was speaking then of a very old-fashioned
young fellow, who, even when he grew up, made nothing but a peddler. Had
he lived in our day, he would have felt not his faith, but his own
importance; especially if he had put himself out of breath, as most
likely he would have done, in accomplishing in an hour and forty minutes
what, according to the guide-book, should have taken a full hour and
three quarters. The modern excursionist (how Wordsworth would have loved
that word!) has learned wisdom of a certain wise fowl who once taught
St. Peter a lesson, and who never finds himself in a high place without
an impulse to flap his wings and crow.

For my own part, though I spent nearly three hours on the less than four
miles of mountain path, as I have already acknowledged, I was
nevertheless somewhat short-winded at the end. So long as I was in the
woods, it was easy enough to loiter; but no sooner did I leave the last
low spruces behind me than I was seized with an importunate desire to
stand upon the peak, so near at hand just above me. I hope my readers
are none of them too old to sympathize with the boyish feeling. At all
events, I quickened my pace. The distance could not be more than half a
mile, I thought. But it was wonderful how that perverse trail among the
boulders did unwind itself, as if it never would come to an end; and I
was not surprised, on consulting a guide-book afterwards, to find that
my half mile had really been a mile and a half. One's sensations in such
a case I have sometimes compared with those of an essay-writer when he
is getting near the end of his task. He dallied with it in the
beginning, and was half ready to throw it up in the middle; but now the
fever is on him, and he cannot drive the pen fast enough. Two days ago
he doubted whether or not to burn the thing; now it is certain to be his
masterpiece, and he must sit up till morning, if need be, to finish it.
What would life be worth without its occasional enthusiasm, laughable in
the retrospect, perhaps, but in itself pleasurable almost to the point
of painfulness?

It was a glorious day. I enjoyed the climb, the lessening forest, the
alpine plants (the diapensia was in full flower, with its upright snowy
goblets, while the geum and the Greenland sandwort were just beginning
to blossom), the magnificent prospect, the stimulating air, and, most of
all, the mountain itself. I sympathized the