On our return we gave a glowing picture of the romantic beauties which crowned our exertions, and engaged to pilot my sisters and their beaux into the defiles of the adjacent mountains on the following day, which we performed admirably, Emily and Charlotte bringing such freshness of Kerry practice to the task, that they struck our guides with the deepest astonishment. We made acquaintance in our way with several peasants, who charmed us by the ease and simplicity of their manners. All the adventitious distinctions which by introducing inequality, bring also in its train condescension on the one hand, meanness, servility, awkwardness, and presumption on the other, are unknown in the Valleys of Piémont. Here man is reduced to his _elemental_ character: stars and garters, which glitter in the murky atmosphere of courts, and there assume the “_Lux lucet in tenebris_,” hide their diminished heads, and dare not radiate their sickly lustre in presence of that glorious luminary which seems to disport with peculiar rapture in this region of eternal snows, and to play off all the magic versatility of his powers, amid these giant prisms that reflect, and refract his beams in every possible variety of form and colour. Were I _in love_, I should grow like one of the _lichens_ to these rocks, but as I am enabled to sing “My heart’s my own,--my will is free.” I prefer returning to the full tide of life, and coming from time to time to enjoy these fastnesses of nature with all the stimulus of contrast, added to their intrinsic sublimity. Emily wept as we left the banks of the Pelice on our return to Turin. Though longing to be with those who were left behind, and carrying with her the society which had lent its charms to the desert, her tears flowed as an irresistible tribute to scenes so congenial to her heart. Charlotte used to be always considered by us to live more in a world of _sentiment_ than her elder sister, yet her eyes were not suffused; and though her pencil and her voice have borne away unnumbered memoranda from the mountains, she repassed the Porta Nuova with such transport, that I could scarcely keep her in the carriage and prevent her from running a race with the animals that were doing their best to reunite us with the group which we felt impatient to embrace. Alas, my dear uncle has been very ill during our absence, and is much changed within these few days of our separation from him. We found my beloved mother looking pale from want of sleep, but rejoicing in the blessing of beholding the triumph of Faith and Hope, in the approaching scene which we cannot flatter ourselves is not in immediate prospect. Stanley, she says, is a celestial messenger.