Letters of Felix Mendelssohn

Sarnen, the 20th.

I crossed the Vierwaldstadt Lake early this morning, in a continued pour of rain, and found your welcome letter of the 5th in Lucerne. As it contained nothing but good tidings, I immediately arranged a tour of three days to Unterwalden and the Brünig. I intend to call again at Lucerne for your next letter, and then I am off to the West, and out of Switzerland. I shall take leave of it with deep regret. The country is beautiful beyond all conception; and though the weather is again odious,—rain and storms the whole day, and all through the night,—yet the Tellen Platte, the Grütli, Brunnen and Schwytz, and the dazzling green of the meadows this evening in Unterwalden, are too lovely ever to be forgotten. The hue of this green is most unique, refreshing the eye and the whole being. I shall certainly attend to your kind precautionary injunctions, dear Mother, but you need be under no apprehensions about me. I am by no means careless with regard to my health, and have not, for a long time, felt so well as during my pedestrian excursions in Switzerland. If eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and music in one's head, can make a man healthy, then, God be praised, I may well call myself so; for my guide and I vie with each other in eating and drinking, and not less so unluckily in singing. In sleeping alone I surpass him; and though I sometimes disturb him by my trumpet or oboe tones, he in turn cuts short my morning sleep. Please God, therefore, we shall have a happy meeting. Before that time arrives, however, many a page of my journal must yet travel to you; but even this interval will quickly pass, just as everything quickly passes, except indeed what is best of all!—so let us be true and loving to each other.

Felix.