During all this spring Reeve had suffered a great deal from gout, so, by the advice of Sir Henry Holland, who spoke strongly of the necessity of change of air and of rest from all work and effort, he and his wife started for the Continent on July 24th. Passing through Paris, and staying a few days at Fontainebleau, they went on to Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne, and to Royat, then newly come into vogue as a health resort. After about three weeks of the baths and the mountain air, Reeve was so far recovered as to be able to walk a little; and on August 18th they passed on to Geneva, where they were joined by their friends the Watneys, with whom they went on to Evian, and thence by the Valais to the Bel Alp, an hotel 7,000 feet above the sea-level, commanding magnificent views. 'Christine,' wrote Reeve in his Journal, 'went up the Sparrenhorn with Binet,' whilst, according to Mrs. Reeve, 'Henry and Mrs. Watney, not being moveable bodies, sat at windows and pooh-poohed the energetic use of legs.' From the Bel Alp, Reeve, still very much of a cripple, 'was carried'--the expression is his own--to Brieg. Thence, by the Furca, to Hospenthal and to Zurich, the falls of the Rhine, Bale, and Paris, where they stayed a few days, and returned to London on September 10th. _From the Comte de Paris_ _York House, July 26th_.--I had already seen the remarkable article which you have just published in the 'Edinburgh Review,' when I received the copy you so kindly thought of sending me, and which I shall keep as a souvenir of the author. I hasten to thank you, and to tell you with what interest I have read this study, so full of curious facts and remarkable appreciations. If I was called on to decide the question in its entirety, I should decline, in the first place as a Catholic. Indeed I cannot place myself at the Protestant point of view so as to judge what services the union of Church and State has rendered to the religious principles which are the basis of the Protestant faith. And the lay system of the official Church of England is so foreign to our ideas of religious authority that it is difficult for us to be impartial towards it. Those who do not belong to the Anglican Church are naturally tempted to attribute to this subjection everything in her which, in their eyes, is error or change. I should also decline as a Frenchman, for I confess that what troubles me most at the present time is the relation between the Catholic Church and the State, a relation which has been equally prejudicial to both, when founded on a political union. But without trying to judge such a delicate question, which will be a subject of controversy as long as the world is given up to the disputes of man, I have found a real pleasure in seeing this clear explanation of the principles which form the basis of a system whose adherents are so many and so distinguished.... _From Lord Clarendon_