Here, sit thee down, man: art thou not come hither to enjoy thyself? why this impatience? why this anxiety to go over ground in a hurry which, a few hours ago, thou wouldst have given many a crown to visit at thy leisure? Sit thee down and look around thee: hurry no man's cattle, and fret not thyself out of thy propriety. And, truly, 'tis a wondrous spot! what a wide extent of grassy slopes and barren rocky wastes! how white and hard and rough the road; how smooth the hill-side; how blue the distant landscape; how more than blue the cloudless sky! Look onwards towards the distant east; why, you can see almost across France to the Jura: what endless ridges of mountains, one above the other, like the billows of the green sea: what boundless plains between! But turn, for a moment, to the hills on either side of you; look at those wild copses of fir and stunted oak making good their 'vantage ground wherever the scanty vegetation will allow them; and above, look at the little round clumps of box-trees, dotting the mountain-breast with their shadows, and relieving the dull uniformity of its surface. So dark are they that you might take them for black cattle at a distance; but that, ever and anon, the sun brings out from them a bright green tint, and dispels the illusion. Here, then, on this stone, am I resting, hundreds of miles away from my dull fatherland; where I have left behind me nought but pride and ennui, and heart-corroding cares, and soul-harrowing occupations. I have quitted that dense, black, throng of men, whose minds, pent up in the narrow circle of their insular limits, are intent on one thing only--and that thing, money! Thou land of the rich and the poor; of the lord and the slave; of the noble and the upstart; chosen home of labour and never-ending care; I have bid thee adieu: my face is to the world; my lot is on the waters of boundless life; and I am free to choose my dwelling wherever the clime suits my fancy, and my wishes tally with the clime. In this dry and barren valley, amidst those lofty hills, where once fire and sulphur and burning rocks poured forth as the only elements, and where the melted lava flowed along the face of the earth like an unloosed torrent; in this lonely spot, where few living beings are seen, and yet where the vast reproductive energies of the world have been so widely developed--even here, let me commune a while with nature and with myself.