Taking the verses all round, I should say that Mr.
Pontifex was right in considering them suitable to the day; I don't
like being too hard even on the Mer de Glace, so will give no
opinion as to whether they are suitable to the scene also.
Mr. Pontifex went on to the Great St. Bernard and there he wrote
some more verses, this time I am afraid in Latin. He also took good
care to be properly impressed by the Hospice and its situation. "The
whole of this most extraordinary journey seemed like a dream, its
conclusion especially, in gentlemanly society, with every comfort
and accommodation amidst the rudest rocks and in the region of
perpetual snow. The thought that I was sleeping in a convent and
occupied the bed of no less a person than Napoleon, that I was in
the highest inhabited spot in the old world and in a place
celebrated in every part of it, kept me awake some time." As a
contrast to this, I may quote here an extract from a letter written to
me last year by his grandson Ernest, of whom the reader will hear more
presently. The passage runs: "I went up to the Great St. Bernard and
saw the dogs." In due course Mr. Pontifex found his way into Italy,
where the pictures and other works of art- those, at least, which were
fashionable at that time- threw him into genteel paroxysms of
admiration.
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