On one of these excursions we passed by Napoleon's wonderful road, the Simplon, into one of the most beautiful regions of Italy. The first night at Baveno was delicious. The soft Italian air,--the moonlight on the placid lake, on the softly rounded olive-clad hills, on the trellised vines, so picturesque, compared to the formal vineyards of France,--all in such contrast to the giant mountain-peaks of granite, snow-covered, cutting through the clouds, the vast glacier, bristling with ice-blocks, sliding-down, an encroacher on the valley's verdure,--in such marvellous contrast to all that region of rock and ice and mountain-torrent and rugged path, and grand, rude, wild majesty of aspect, it seemed like passing in a single day into another and a gentler world. Then came the quiet excursions on the lakes,--Lugano, Maggiore, Como: such a rest to our blistered feet! Those blisters _were_ a drawback; but what episode in human life has none? We strayed through the lime-groves of the Isola Bella, where I exchanged the few words of Italian of which I was master with a fair and courteous madonna who crossed our path,--ascended, by clambering up within one of the folds of the Saint's short mantle, the gigantic bronze statue of the holy Borromeo, sat down inside the head, and looked out through the eyebrows on the lake under whose waters lies buried the wide-brimmed shovel-hat which once covered the shaven crown, but was swept off by the storm-wind one winter night. Throughout the term of these charming excursions the strictest order was observed. And herein was evinced the power of that honorable party-spirit prevalent among us, which imposed on every one of us a certain charge as to the good conduct of the whole,--making each, as it were, alive to the faults and responsible for the misconduct of our little community. Rude noise, unseemly confusion, the least approach to dissipation at a tavern, or any other violation of propriety on the road, would have been considered as an insult to the college. And thus it happened that we established throughout Switzerland a character for decorum such as no other institution ever obtained.