" The following selections form the closing chapters of
the volume, and have a peculiar interest as anticipating the
social and political ideas which came to colour all his later
work.
THE LAMP OF MEMORY
Among the hours of his life to which the writer looks back with
peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than ordinary fulness
of joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago,
near time of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which skirt
the course of the Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura.
It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness,
of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be
manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise
of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterance of those
mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly
broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet
restrained; and the far reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed
each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet
waters from some far off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness
pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the stern
expression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn.
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