It was not only that the air of the Alps braced him, but the spirit of mountain-worship stirred him as nothing else could.

At last he seemed himself, after more than a year of intense depression; and he records that one day, in church at Geneva, he resolved to _do_ something, to _be_ something useful.

That he could make such a resolve was a sign of returning health; but if, as I find, he had just been reading Carlyle's lately-published lectures on "Heroes," though he did not then accept Carlyle's conclusions nor admire his style, might he not, in spite of his criticism, have been spurred the more into energy by that enthusiastic gospel of action?
They travelled home by Basle and Laon; but London in August, and the premature attempt to be energetic, brought on a recurrence of the symptoms of consumption, as it was called.

He wished to try the mountain-cure again, and set out with his friend Richard Fall for a tour in Wales.

But his father recalled him to Leamington to try iron and dieting under Dr.Jephson, who, if he was called a quack, was a sensible one, and successful in subduing for several years to come the more serious phases of the disease.