ple columbines, and geranium, and wild
strawberry-flowers. The children were intensely delighted, and I
took great care that Constance should not run about so as to heat
herself, and we got up a considerable bit of hill quite nicely, and
with greatly increased appetite for tea, and general mischief. They
have such appetites that I generally call them 'my two little
pigs.' There is a delightful French waiting-maid at dinner
here--who says they are both 'charmantes,' but highly approves of
my title for them nevertheless."

"NEUFCHATEL, _10th May_, 1866.

"Lady Trevelyan is still too weak to move. We had (the children and
I) a delightful day yesterday at the Pierre a Bot, gathering
vetches and lilies of the valley in the woods, and picnic
afterwards on the lovely mossy grass, in view of all the
Alps--Jungfrau, Eiger, Blumlis Alp, Altels, and the rest, with
intermediate lake and farmsteads and apple-blossom--very heavenly."

Here, within a few days, Lady Trevelyan died. Throughout her illness she
had been following the progress of the new notes on wild-flowers
(afterwards to be "Proserpina") with keen interest, and Sir Walter lent
the help of botanical science to Ruskin's more poetical and artistic
observations. For the sake of this work, and for the "children," and
with a wise purpose of bearing up under the heavy blow that had fallen,
the two friends continued their journey for a while among the mountains.

From Thun they went to Interlachen and the Giessbach. Ruskin occupied
himself closely in tracing Studer's sections across the great
lake-furrow of central Switzerland--"something craggy for his mind to
break upon," as Byron said when he was in trouble. At the Giessbach
there was not only geology and divine scenery, enjoyable in lovely
weather, but an interesting figure in the foreground, the widowed
daughter of the hotel landlord, beautiful and consumptive, but brave as
a Swiss girl should be. They all seem to have fallen in love with her,
so to speak the young English girls as much as the impressionable
art-critic: and the new human interest in her Alpine tragedy relieved,
as such interests do, the painfulness of the circumstances through which
they had been passing. Her sister Marie was like an Allegra to this
Penserosa; bright and brilliant in native genius. She played piano-duets
with the young ladies; taught Alpine botany to the savants;