After seeing the view from the Faulhorn at sunrise, 22 August 1849, my father noted in his diary:--“Looking at my three Swiss companions as they stood with myself on the apex of this mountain in the clear smooth snow, I could not help thinking of our being the only created beings who could be enjoying this magnificent spectacle.” He always had this sort of feeling that people ought to make more effort to see the wonders of the world. This same feeling was expressed by a distinguished foreigner in rather an unexpected way. In 1900 a lady was saying in his presence that she did not mean to go to Paris for the Exhibition. He struck in:--“You _can_ go, and you _will_ not go? At the Last Day the Good God will say to you, ‘You did not go to the Paris Exhibition when-you-might-have-gone. You have not used the Talent that-I-gave-you. Go DOWN. Go DOWN.” It had not struck her in that light before. * * * * * In my younger days I took some trouble to see things. And it was worth the trouble, to see Moscow from the Sparrow hills, whence Napoleon saw it first, or Damascus from the heights of Salahîyeh, where Mohammed turned away, lest he should think no more of Paradise. Or, apart from history and association, to see things so beautiful as the Alhambra and the Generalife at Granada, and the deserted city of Mistra on the mountains overlooking Sparta. When I first went to Athens, in the spring of 1880, the Acropolis still had its mediæval ramparts; and, as one stood on the Acropolis, they shut the modern city out of view, and one was there alone with the temples and the sky. These ramparts were demolished before I went there next, in the spring of 1882; and before I went again, in the spring of 1888, the whole of the Acropolis had been excavated and laid bare down to the solid rock. The results were of the highest interest; but the charm was gone. I felt that I had seen a dragon-fly hovering in the Attic air; and my dragon-fly was now a lifeless specimen, set out with pins upon a card. I happened once to arrive at Athens in a sea-fog. The steamer had slowly hooted its way into the Piræus in the early morning; and I was driving up to Athens soon after sunrise. With the sun behind it, the Acropolis loomed up through the fog, as I came near; and this is the only time that I have seen it looking as I feel it ought to look. It seemed a vast and overwhelming mass; whereas in broad daylight it looks rather small, and quite puny, when one sees it from a distance. I have noticed that the Pyramids at Gizeh also look puny at a distance: yet the dome of St Peter’s looks its largest at fifteen or twenty miles from Rome. I cannot give a reason; but it is a fact.