The modern reader would derive little amusement or instruction from a detailed account of the passage of the Alps, in the reign of Elizabeth. Suffice it, that after a long and fatiguing day's journey, the party of Lord Gowrie arrived, towards sunset, at the small town of Barraux. Julia was weary and exhausted, Mr. Rhind was hungry and low-spirited, and nothing was to be obtained at the inn, in the way of food, but some brown bread and some small fish out of the Isere. Nevertheless, youth and hope and love made a great difference between the two younger and the elder of the travellers. The tendency, I fear, of all the experience of age, is selfish; and it is strange that the nearer we approach towards the period of quitting earth, the more we prize its comforts. True, indeed, there are some who preserve the finer things of the unworn fresh heart even unto the end; but, of all the many trials to which man's soul is subject in this state of probation, I cannot but think that a tendency to that apathy for what is great and fine, and to that concentration of the mind upon the body which are incident to old age and long experience of life, is amongst the greatest. Mr. Rhind could not enjoy at all, though the scene around him, as the reader who may have wandered that way will know, was full of objects both to soothe and to elevate. He consoled himself with the wine, which was very good, while Julia and Gowrie wandered up to the base of the old castle on the hill, to get one last look of the beautiful soft valley through which the Isere wanders on, with gentle cultivated hills hemming it round, and blue gigantic mountains towering up beyond, while the sun, set to them, still tipped the peaks with purple and with gold. They returned slowly to their light supper, which was preparing during their absence, and shortly after, Julia retired to rest. Mr. Rhind was not long ere he left the room also; but it was a large old rambling house, which had formerly been a priory of the suppressed order of the Temple, standing near the centre of the little bourg--I think the reader can see it still--and Mr. Rhind could not find his room. He came back, and disturbed the earl in a reverie, to ask which it was; and the landlord had to be summoned to show him. If Gowrie was sleepy before, the inclination to slumber had now passed away; and he sat for some time longer in meditation. The landlord looked in at length; and remembering that he was keeping up a race of people devoted to early hours, he rose, got a taper, and retired to his own chamber. Then setting down the light, he looked around, and again fell into a fit of thought.