
Dresden My dear master
I wish you could send me, if you have them loose, a few of your
portraits, especially of the shirt-sleeves one—or perhaps you could tell
me where they are to be had, if they are attainable to the public? I should like
also to have a couple of copies of a brief autobiographical note of which Edward
Dowden gave me a copy some time ago—intended to
accompany presentation copies of the L. of G. I am just
home from a summer's walking-tour in Switzerland, where I, and a friend who lives
here, had a glorious time together. Anything more bracing and invigorating than the
air on the high mountain passes it is impossible to conceive. We went over one
glacier, where my friend distinguished himself by falling into a crevasse. As we
were all roped together—two guides and ourselves, he was extricated without
much damage. Scenery on the glacier the
'Tschingel' was marvellous. It is a vast lake of ice, probably some 200
feet deep, lying
high among the peaks of the Bernese Oberland. It is mostly covered with a thin
coating of snow, but at one point it pours down through a break in the
mountain-wall, by a kind of gorge or ravine, into a deep valley. It has the
aspect then of a river, not a lake; and at this point there is no snow—the
ice being heaped up into enormous ridges & pinnacles like a river when there is
a long reach of rapids, only in the glacier everything is much vaster—the
waves as big as a terrace of houses, with deep chasms between them walled as far as
one can see with gleaming ice. The ice is only semitransparent & is of a very
strange pale green hue. The wild, tossing confusion of the ice-river
contrasted strangely with the absolute stillness and immoveability, broken only, now
& then, when some great block would totter over and come thundering down into the
valley, hurling huge fragments & splinters into the air as if they were dust.
I am working now at an essay on the L. of G. which I am to read before a literary
society here. Shall introduce quotations liberally & see what they think of my translation.
If I like this essay when it is done I will publish it here in pamphlet form &
send it well about Germany. I suppose you got a page of
translation I sent you some time ago?
I hope all is going well with you. Heard some months ago of an intended prosecution of the new edition—but I suppose that was a mere 'canard.'
Much interest here about the English in Egypt. A shameful business altogether, which makes me thankful that I am not an Englishman except against my will. The other European governments feel some satisfaction at the course taken—whenever might is the order of the day despotism feels securer, & they like to see England, the home of liberty, acting as unjustly as any dynasty with its traditions of iniquity. They do not yet fully comprehend that English liberty is regarded as being only fit for Englishmen.
I suppose you have seen Swinburne's new
vol. Tristram of Lyonesse. There seems some fine verse
in it—especially the ode to Athens, but I have not read it thoroughly yet.
Now farewell, with all good wishes & greeting. Please do not forget about the portraits and Note.
Yours sincerely T.W. Rolleston.