A Yorkshireman's Trip to Rome in 1866 Author:William Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " There stood in that romantic clime, A mountain awfully sublime ; O'er many a league the basement spread, It tower'd in many an airy head, Heig... more »ht over height,—now gay, now wild, The peak with ice eternal piled; The cultured sides were clothed with woods, Vineyards or fields; or track'd with floods, "Whose glacier-fountains, hid on high, Let down their rivers from the sky O'er plains, that raark'd its gradual scale On sunny slope, in shelter's vale."—Montgomeby. j|N reaching the station at Geneva in the early morning we met with three gentlemen from Manchester, with whom we entered into conversation, and learnt that they were about returning to Paris, having spent three whole days in Switzerland, during which they had visited some of the principal towns, such as Basle, Lucerne, Berne, and Geneva, but had not the necessary time to see any of the most renowned localities in Switzerland. Each of the party carried in his hand a clean new Alpenstock and from their conversation, we found that, they were entertaining a confused idea whether they had seen all that was really worth seeing in thecountry. They had had some slight experience of the difficulties and dangers of mountain-climbing, for they went one hundred yards up the Eighi, when a shower of rain sent them back to the blacksmith's shop at the foot of the hill, and the proprietor kindly stamped their Alpenstocks with the words " Bighi Kulm," which signified that the owner of the staff had made the ascent of the mountain. What explanation our travellers would give to their friends in Cottonopolis respecting this fraud we cannot imagine. A pleasant journey of three hours duration brought us to Culoz, where we left the Lyons and Geneva line of railway, and took our places on the Victor Em...« less