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. Of the
Uffizi Gallery at Florence he writes: "I have spent three hours this
morning in the gallery and I have made up my mind that if of all the
treasures I have seen in Italy I were to choose one room it would be the
Tribune of this gallery.
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