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Proverbial Philosophy, Series IV.), divers grand sights, as the Great Exhibition, close to which we lived for some weeks in the Champs Élysées, and many pleasant incidents, as greetings with friends, old and new, and other usual _memorabilia_. Among these let me mention the honest kindliness of Courier Pierre,--always called Pere by my children, with whom he was a great favourite--the more readily because he has long gone to
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so he needs no recommendation from his late employer. This, then, I say is memorable. At Lucerne, as my remittance from Herries failed to reach me, I seemed obliged to make a stop and to return; but Pierre objected, saying it was
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Certainly I said this was very kind, and so I borrowed at his solicitation:--it was £100, as I find by the journal; our travel was costing us £40 a week. Well, to recount briefly, when, after having placed in our _repertoire_ Bellinzona, Como, Milan, &c. &c., I found myself at Geneva, and with remittances awaiting me, my first act was to place in Pierre's hands £105,--and when he counted the notes, he said,
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Sare, there is one five-pound too many. --
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Of course, my worthy Pierre, I hope you will accept that as interest. --
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Non, Monsieur, pardon; I could not, I always bring money to help my families: --and he would not. Now, if that was not a model courier, worthy to be commemorated thus,--well, I hope there are some others of his brethren on the office-books of Bury Street, St. James's, who are equally duteous and disinterested.
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Some people are heroes to their valets; my worthy help is a hero to me: so saith my journal. Here's another extract, after two slight earthquakes at Brieg, and Turtman (Turris Magna);--
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Again a bad accident. One of our spirited wheelers got his hind leg over the pole in going down a hill: at once there was a chaos of fallen horses and entangled harness, and but for the screw machine drag locking both hind-wheels we must have been upset and smashed,--as it was, the scrambling and kicking at first was frightful; but Paterfamilias dragged the younger children out into the road, and other help was nigh at hand, and the providential calm that comes over fallen horses after their initiatory struggle was at hand too, and in due time matters were righted: that those two fiery stallions did not kick everything to pieces, and that all four steeds did not gallop us to destruction, was due, under Providence, to the skill and courage of our good Pierre and the patient Muscatelli. --Railways have since superseded all this peril, and cost, and care: and trains now go _through_ the Simplon, instead of
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pulling us steadily and slowly _over_ it: thus losing the splendid scenery climaxed by the Devil's Bridge: but let moderns be thankful.
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Paterfamilias's Diary has long been out of print, and its author is glad that he made at the time a full record of the happy past, and recommends its perusal to any one who can find a copy anywhere. My friend, the late Major Hely, who claimed an Irish peerage, was very fond of this
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Diary, and thought it
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A Night-Sail in the Race of Alderney, --and in chief that in which I
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Raised the Haro, which saved the most picturesque part of Castle Cornet from destruction by some artillery engineer. Here is the poem, supposing some may wish to see it: especially as it does not appear in my only extant volume of poems, Gall & Inglis. It occurs (I think solely) in Hall & Virtue's extinct edition of my Ballads and Poems, 1853, and is there headed