312 PRÆTERITA-II

against conscience; and a dim sense of duty to myself, my parents, and a daily more vague shadow of Eternal Law.

What should I be, or do? my utterly indulgent father ready to let me do anything; with my room always luxuriously furnished in his house,-my expenses paid if I chose to travel. I was not heartless enough, yet, to choose to do that, alone. Perhaps it may deserve some dim praise that I never seriously thought of leaving my father and mother to explore foreign countries; and certainly the fear of grieving them was intermingled more or less with all my thoughts; but then, I did not much want to explore foreign countries. I had not the least love of adventure, but liked to have comfortable rooms always ordered, and a three-course dinner ready by four o’clock. Although no coward under circumstances of accidental danger, I extremely objected to any vestige of danger as a continuous element in one’s life. I would not go to India for fear of tigers, nor to Russia for fear of bears, nor to Peru for fear of earthquakes; and finally, though I had no rightly glowing or grateful affection for either father or mother, yet as they could not well do without me, so also I found I was not altogether comfortable without them.

75. So for the present, we planned a summer-time in Switzerland, not of travelling, but chiefly stay in Chamouni, to give me mountain air, and the long coveted power of examining the Mont Blanc rocks accurately. My mother loved Chamouni nearly as much as I; but this plan was of severe self-denial to my father, who did not like snow, nor wooden-walled rooms.

But he gave up all his own likings for me, and let me plan the stages through France as I chose, by Rouen, Chartres, Fontainebleau, and Auxerre.¹ A pencil-sketch or

¹ [Of this tour no diary was written (see § 78). The first draft of this portion of Præterita adds an interesting detail:-

“I spent a week in Somerset House drawing a geological map of the line on a large scale from the maps of the Geological Society, and we started with some of the gladness of old days.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]