Ambrogio on the line between Susa and Turin, of
which more hereafter.
True, by making use of the tunnel one will miss the St. Gothard
scenery, but I would not, if I were the reader, lay this too much
to heart. Mountain scenery, when one is staying right in the
middle of it, or when one is on foot, is one thing, and mountain
scenery as seen from the top of a diligence very likely smothered
in dust is another. Besides I do not think he will like the St.
Gothard scenery very much.
It is a pity there is no mental microscope to show us our likes and
dislikes while they are yet too vague to be made out easily. We
are so apt to let imaginary likings run away with us, as a person
at the far end of Cannon Street railway platform, if he expects a
friend to join him, will see that friend in half the impossible
people who are coming through the wicket. I once began an essay on
"The Art of Knowing what gives one Pleasure," but soon found myself
out of the diatonic with it, in all manner of strange keys, amid a
maze of metaphysical accidentals and double and treble flats, so I
left it alone as a question not worth the trouble it seemed likely
to take in answering. It is like everything else, if we much want
to know our own mind on any particular point, we may be trusted to
develop the faculty which will reveal it to us, and if we do not
greatly care about knowing, it does not much matter if we remain in
ignorance.
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