I did not conceive it possible that I should feel so much pleasure from the beauties of nature as I have done since I came to this country. The first moment when I saw Mont Blanc will remain an era in my life--a new idea, a new feeling, standing alone in the mind. We are most comfortably settled here: Dumont, Pictet, Dr. and Mrs. Marcet, and various others, dined and spent two most agreeable evenings here; and the fourth day after our arrival we set out on our expedition to Chamouni with M. Pictet, as kind, as active, and as warm-hearted as ever. Mrs. Moilliet was prevented, by the indisposition of Susan, from accompanying us; but Mr. Moilliet and Emily came with us at five o'clock in the morning in Mr. Moilliet's landau: raining desperately--great doubts--but on we went: rain ceased--the sun came out, the landau was opened, and all was delightful. My first impression of the country was that it was like Wales; but snow-capped Mont Blanc, visible everywhere from different points of view, distinguished the landscape from all I had ever seen before. Then the sides of the mountains, quite different from Wales indeed-- cultivated with garden care, green vineyards, patches of _blé de Turquie_, hemp, and potatoes, all without enclosure of any kind, mixed with trees and shrubs: then the garden-cultivation abruptly ceasing--bare white rocks and fir above, fir measuring straight to the eye the prodigious height. Between the foot of the mountain and the road spread a border-plain of verdure, about the breadth of the lawn at Black Castle between the trellis and Suzy Clarke's, rich with chestnut and walnut trees, and scarlet barberries enlivening the green. The inns on the Chamouni roads are much better than those on the road from Paris; we grew quite fond of the honest family of the hotel at Chamouni. Pictet knows all the people, and wherever we stopped they all flocked round him with such cordial gratitude in their faces, from the little children to the gray-headed men and women; all seemed to love "Monsieur le Professeur." The guides, especially Pierre Balmat and his son, are some of the best-informed and most agreeable men I ever conversed with. Indeed for six months of the year they keep company with the most distinguished travellers of Europe. With these guides, each of us armed with a long pole with an iron spike, such as my uncle described to me ages ago, and which I never expected to wield, we came down La Flegère, which we mounted on mules. In talking to an old woman who brought us strawberries, I was surprised to hear her pronounce the Italian proverb, "_Poco a poco fa lontano nel giorno._" I thought she must have been beyond the Alps--no, she had never been out of her own mountains. The patois of these people is very agreeable--a mixture of the Italian fond diminutives and accents on the last syllable-- Septembré, Octobré.