d the society of the Titans is more
agreeable for a simple mortal at a greater distance!...

"On my return to Interlachen the Titans presented me with a glorious
spectacle, and it was not without joyful admiration that I parted from
their immediate neighbourhood. The great spirits which terrify can also
enchant. In the light of the descending sun the white peaks and fields
of the Alps stood out in the most brilliant colouring; the lofty
Jungfrau clothed herself in rose-tint, the blue glaciers shone
transparently, and the lower the sun sank the higher and clearer gleamed
the Alpine pinnacles....

"Later still, new astonishment awaited me from the camp of the giants.
The head of the Jungfrau was surrounded with a soft glory of light,
which increased in beauty and brightness, till at length the moon,
shining in full splendour, slowly advancing above, crowned the Titaness
with beauty."[13]

Apart from its picturesque descriptions, however, Miss Bremer's book on
Switzerland and Italy is hardly a success. She had not the
qualifications of a Madame de Stael, and her observations, therefore,
are frequently superficial. Moreover, she seems to have suffered in
self-appreciation. In Sweden she shone as a great star in the literary
firmament; and she appears to have been under an impression that her
fame would have preceded her into other countries, and ensured her a
triumphal reception in any town she entered; but Germany showed her very
little attention, and hence she sees it in a very unfavourable light. So
in Switzerland: she was caught up in the stream of tourists; her name,
inscribed in the visitors' books of the hotels, received but a fugitive
notice; and she who had created in her fancy an ideal Switzerland,
prepared to welcome with open arms the champion of freedom generally,
and the freedom of women in particular--discovered only a nation of
good housekeepers, who were thinking of everything in the world but
emancipation.

Miss Bremer visited the valleys of the High Alps and the Forest Cantons;
spent a Sunday on the Righi; journeyed to Basle; passed into Belgium and
Flanders, surveying the antiquities of the old historic cities of Ghent,
Bruges, and Antwerp; proceeded to Paris; returning to Switzerland, spent
the winter at Lausanne; in the following year crossed the Alps into
Italy, and through Piedmont travelled to the Eternal City; thence to
Naples, where she saw an eruption of Vesuvius and the buried city of
Pompe