Travelling sketches in the north of Italy, the Tyrol, and on the Rhine

Front matter

Ulrich Middeldorf don, Published for the Proprietor. lrj

C<? Paternoster Raw.

IN THE NORTH OF ITALY, THE TYROL, AND ON THE RHINE.

Contents

Page

Preparation 1

The Valley of the Rhone 25

Chap. I. Preparation

It is nothing at all to write the account of a tour that has been made without reference to authorship. You may imagine that you are merely gratifying the curiosity of your friends ; or, what is still better, that you are performing a public duty in disseminating a knowledge of certain memorabilia met with in your journey. You are like a man telling a story, either in answer to the questions of the company, or simply because he believes it to be worth telling. But to travel for the express purpose of writing your travels — to look about you, as it were, of malice prepense — and feel, every step you move, as if you had an ink-bottle dangling at your button, and a pen stuck behind your ear, is surely the most awkward thing in the world ! One sits as stiffly in the coach as if he had been petrified into an attitude by the eye of a portrait-painter. A travelling

B

TRAVELLING SKETCHES.

author may be recognised among a thousand tourists. There is an air of sheepish importance in his manner — a restlessness in the eye, and a twitching in the muscles, that proclaim an unquiet spirit. If he ever sleeps he is filled with remorse when he awakes. He is the curse of postillions, and the terror of travellers.

With a due sense of the absurdity of our position, we set out from London in the ominous month of April, and moreover on a Friday, to proceed to Geneva by the way of Paris — predetermining that till within sight of Lake Leman, where our task was to commence, we should neither hear nor see any thing but what we chose. This, however, is as laborious a way of travelling as the other. It does not do away with either the idea or reality of constraint, but only changes its direction. The best of it is that it cannot last very long. The very jolting of a journey opens the imagination, and sets the moral faculties craving as well as those of the body. We observe as voraciously as we eat and drink ; and it must be an unhealthy mind which does not wax plumper and stronger for the meal.

If, however, it were not a folly and a falsehood to say that there is any part of this goodly earth barren of the things which enter, like wholesome food, into the soul of the wayfarer, Calais and Paris might surely be named as the Dan and Beersheba. The former has been called a great inn, where travellers merely stop for a moment for refreshment; and in some sense it is so. It is the inn, however,

DAN AND BEERSHEBA.

be it remembered, from which the vehicles start, and to which they return. On one hand all is confusion, and anxiety, and selfish hurry, and suspicion ; and, on the other, weariness, repentance, and disgust. The host and waiters, knowing that they will not have time to get sufliciently well acquainted with their guests to feel ashamed of cheating, cheat without remorse ; the shopkeepers and townsmen are in like manner eager to have a pluck at the passing pigeon ; and thus the communication between the strangers and natives is full of strife and wrangling, or silent bitterness. The traveller should by all means avoid what are called the cheap English inns at Calais, and go direct to one of the dear ones. The expense of both will be pretty nearly alike ; but at the former he will be ill lodged and ill fed, and have the additional mortification of being fleeced by the understrappers instead of the principals. Before going any where, however, let him personally, or by his own servants, take measures for the prosecution of his journey as early as circumstances will allow.

From Calais to Paris, with the exception of the approach to the royal fortress of Montreuil, and one or two other places, the road is as dreary and uninteresting as can well be imagined. This is particularly the case in early spring — a season in which Englishmen, if they have any love for the beautiful in inanimate nature, should stay at home. In a flat country, like the one over which we are now rumbling in the diligence, the vast tracks of ploughed ground, b2

TRAVELLING SKETCHES.

unbroken to the eye by the garden-like fences of England, look like a desert. Even the vineyards, so dear to a northern imagination, and which present themselves as you get nearer Paris, are a deformity rather than an embellishment. They offer nothing more interesting to the eye than a multitude of dirty sticks, five or six feet long, stuck at regular distances in the earth, between which rise the black and naked trunks of the vines. A French vineyard, indeed, is not at any time so beautiful an object as a pea-field, and it bears no comparison at all to a hopplantation. But wait till we get into Italy !

The dulness of the road, however, is of little consequence ; for we have carried along with us abundant materials for amusement. We are not, we thank heaven and a reasonably clear conscience, of that hermit class which, in traversing the common earth, shuts itself up in prison-boxes. We hate solitary confinement ; we love to look upon the faces of our species, and to feel that we are not alone in the world. There is a round score of us in this waggon-coach— grey hairs and auburn locks, manly beards and sweet blue eyes — and there is not one in the company who does not feel better and happier for the contact. Not, however, that we would claim for ourselves and our fellow-travellers a greater degree of virtue than commonly falls to the lot of humanity. On the contrary, we acknowledge that our good fellowship is owing to nothing more than the external circumstances of our situation, and in particular to the social necessities of eating

PHILOSOPHY OP TRAVELLING.

and drinking. We well remember the feelings with which we took onr places : the selfish anxiety lest another should get hold of the seat we had bargained for — the sly adjustment of the knees to the utmost possible convenience of the individual party — the haughty stare at finding oneself in a public vehicle, surrounded by brothers and sisters of God's giving — the unfeeling scrutiny of gowns and bonnets — the thousand Machiavelian speculations which take hold of the spirit of man, when he sees around him those whom the education of society has taught him to look upon as his tools, his enemies, or his victims. All this gave way gradually under the influence of mere contact and association. The edges of our unamiability were rubbed off by collision ; our reserve was jolted into pieces ; we grew hungry together, and felt that we were indeed near relations of humanity. Then we eat and drank together, and grew kind and cordial ; we told our pursuits, and sometimes our histories, and were interested in those of our neighbours; by degrees we sat down to table without getting our dusty coats brushed by the waiter ; the ladies did not care a pin about their head-gear, and in descending the steps they leaned like sisters upon the first shoulder that offered. In the morning we laughed at one another's haggard looks, and our lassitude was dispersed by the healthy conviction that we had utterly ceased to be the things of artificial society, and were indeed men and women. Then came the arrival; and then the parting. The page was turned ever,

TRAVELLING SKETCHES.

and glued down for ever. A " good bye/' a " God bless you/' and here and there a whispered,, perhaps a tremulous, u farewell/' were uttered ; some went east, some west, some north, and some south ; " they passed on their way, and we saw them no more/'

In Paris one has no time to be melancholy. This is not the case in London, where a man may be as solitary as a hermit in the midst of the crowd. The French are a more social people than the English ; they have an acquaintance-claiming look which sets a stranger at his ease ; the very idols in the cafes, as they were translated in the days of Addison, seem to be offended if you do not speak to them, by at least a bow, before you leave the room. It would scarcely be fair, however, to take those ladies as average samples of Frenchwomen. They are flowers transplanted from their natural soil into hot-houses, where they grow into extravagance. With all sorts, however, the admiration of men is like the breath of their natural life. They dress, they walk, they sit, they stand, they run, they dance, they sing, they laugh, they cry, they eat, they drink, nay, we verily believe they sleep, with reference to effect. The appearance and gait of a Parisian, even of the lowest class, gives you the idea that she is prepared to dance, and that she can dance well. The colour and texture of her clothing are a matter of indifference ; they belong to circumstances which coquetry cannot control, but to which it is superior. A Frenchwoman, however, is not vain, as we understand the word in

LA PARISIENNE.

England. She does not go a-begging for our approbation, and take so much pains to fix our gaze that we pity while we admire. There is a decision in her step, her look, her air — a pride of sex — which admits of no dispute in another, simply because it has no doubt in itself. It may be that, to our colder imaginations, this will seem to smack a little of what is coarsely termed impudence, or a want of feminine shame ; and the context which may be read in the manners of the metropolis offers some authority for the suspicion. The exposure of the female form in the print-shops is universal and unlimited ; and the books lying open on the stalls would strike an English libertine with surprise approaching to terror. The male stranger, too, is publicly beset by other panders of the imagination peculiar to Paris, or at least unknown in London ; and he waits with curiosity and alarm for the closing in of night to remove the last wavering restraint of human shame. The night comes ; the Palais Royal is lighted up ; the promenade begins ; the ceaseless crowd sweeps with slow and orderly magnificence through its arcades ; the shops, glittering with the productions of idle industry, are filled with purchasers ; the cafes overflow, and, with

Nod9, and becks, and wreathed smiles,

the idols greet their worshippers ; knots of eager politicians cluster about the lamps to devour the journals ; the theatres resound with acclamations,

TRAVELLING SKETCHES.

and the streets ring with music : and so passes on the night, with scarcely a solitary exhibition of indecency, or even disorder. What a contrast does the aspect of London present to that of Paris ! In the day-time, compared to the French, we seem a nation of prudes, and at night of libertines and bacchanals. The very virtue of one part of the English community adds indecency to the profligacy of the other. It makes no allowance, and will admit of no compromise. It will not accept of the homage of hypocrisy. The erring are driven forth to haunt with the depraved, and can only revenge themselves by flinging back injury for injury. In France the government steps in between the apathy of virtue and the encroachments of vice; in England the affair is left to our own antipathies. If we take our wife or sister to the theatre, the hollow eye of prostitution glares at us side by side in the boxes, and the wild laugh of woman's despair wrings our heart more than the tragedy. The consequence is that the French seem better and the English worse than they are. Judging of the latter, indeed, by the aspect of London at night, they look like a race of ignorant and licentious barbarians, whom the more civilized nations of the continent should conspire to tame or exterminate.

From Paris we took the road to Geneva by Dijon rather than Lyons, in order to save time, and in compliance with our resolution to hear and see nothing worth telling before the commencement of the business of our journey. The scenery is much

PEDESTRIANISM.

more agreeable than on the other side of Paris, although still not very striking. The road, lined with rows of trees, and perfectly straight, looks like the avenue to an old-fashioned house. The effect at first is somewhat pretty, but, as the novelty wears off, it becomes sadly tiresome. This continues without many considerable spaces of intermission as far as Sens. From Sens to Joigny, a picturesque and pleasant town, the fine undulations of the country are covered with vines, which stretch down to the very brink of the placid Yonne. Approaching the Cote d'Or, the undulations assume the character of hills, and these gradually swell into mountains. We had here an opportunity of performing a feat of pedestrianism which would be difficult in England — that is, outstripping the speed of the coach by some miles. The peasant-girls in their straw hats, with the great brims hanging over their faces and shoulders, looked interesting at a little distance ; but females who are exposed habitually to the drudgery of the fields should not be seen too near. They, however, as well as the rest of the population, had all the appearance of health, which is better — if any thing can be better — than beauty; and the few beggars we saw had reached an extreme old age. Having breakfasted at a cottage auberge, on black bread and cream, we were at length overtaken by the diligence, and pursued our way through a mountainous and sterile region to Dijon.

When sitting down to dinner we were recreated with the spectacle of some officers of the National

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Guard getting up fully as tipsy as English officers could be, in such circumstances, for their lives. It was, indeed, gratifying to our national feelings to observe the similarity. The gentlemen alluded to were extravagantly brave, and loyal almost to weeping ; they were, moreover, very justly offended that diligence passengers should be introduced into the very apartment in which they themselves had dined. It may seem an odd remark, but we have met with more drunken men in France since the late revolution than we did before. At all events, the people are certainly braver. At Abbeville there was a National Guardsman who excited the admiration of the company at the cafe by the fearless manner in which he declared that if he had been a Pole he would have slaughtered the Russians. Being afflicted, as we sometimes are, with an ignorance of foreign tongues, we conceived that the hero might have alluded to certain defunct geese that were lying upon the table ; but our observation thereupon seemed to give great offence.

From Dijon, which is a clean and rather handsome town, to Auxonne, the road runs through a plain, extending as far as the eye can reach. The soil appears to be damp, and the district, as we should guess, unwholesome : the vapour rolling along the vast surface gave it the appearance of a sea. Past Auxonne the whole country seemed a single garden. Descending the hills above Dole a very magnificent picture bursts upon the view. The ancient city stands in a plain so extensive that the

THE MOUNTAINS.

Jura mountains,, which are its barrier, look like inconsiderable hills, and the summit of Mont Blanc, which is faintly sketched in the distance, may be mistaken for a thin cloud resting on the horizon. Dole is a dull, uninteresting town, and its ancient cathedral resembles a village church. The inhabitants have a sleepy, inane look ; and the idea occurred to us that they were fatigued with the prospect of the almost boundless level before them. There is a pretty promenade, notwithstanding, at the end of the town, although frequented only by nursemaids and their charges.

The Jura mountains are like the advanced guard of the Alps, and prepare the traveller for the spectacle that is to follow. When fairly entered into the gorge of the pass, the view behind of the fair and fertile plain unites ideas of admiration and regret ; and we turn an eye of distrust upon the vast cliffs around us, that look like an ocean which had been suddenly petrified in the midst of a storm. Here and there a scanty patch of ground is protected, by human industry, from the curse of barrenness ; but in general we traverse a dreary and dreadful domain of naked rock :

A region of emptiness, howling and drear, Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear ; Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, With the twilight bat from the old hollow stone ; Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root, Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot : A region of drought, where no river glides, Nor rippling brook with osier'd sides ; Where reedy pool, nor mossy fountain,

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Nor shady tree, —

Is found to refresh the aching eye :

But the barren earth, and the burning sky,

And the blank horizon round and round,

"Without a living sight or sound,

Tell to the heart, in its pensive mood,

That this is Nature's solitude.*

In a scene like this, the little oratories at the road-side would have been looked upon with complacency by Calvin himself. Through the grating with which the niche is covered, you see the gentle virgin holding her baby in her arms ; while small jars of flowers surrounding the images attest the devotion of their worshippers. Some peasants pass quickly by, for it is already evening, and deep shadows seem to be rising up from the recesses of the valley, and stealing around us like a tide. The men, notwithstanding, wait to pull off their hats as they pass the mountain fane, and make the sign of the cross upon their brow and bosom ; while the women, always more picturesque in their devotion, turn aside from the path, and sink upon their knees, and clasp their hands. By and by the figures of these wanderers of the evening are lost in the deepening shades ; the night-wind begins to moan among the cliffs ; and a feeling of loneliness and desolation oppresses the traveller's heart.

We are now on the ridge of the Jura pass. The

* Thomas Pringle. From a little, unpretending volume, called " Ephimerides," which, in " many days" or few, will assuredly yet be found by the world, if the love of genuine poetry has not for ever departed from it.

JURA BY MOONLIGHT.

night-wind pipes loud and clear ; the moon has risen over the mountains; and the shadows of the dusk, like guilty spirits, have fled howling to their caves. Our heretofore associations of moonlight are utterly destroyed, and not Shakspeare's self could build them up again. By this moonlight the angles of the crags are not softened, but sharpened ; the bald tops of the mountains are steeped in the paleness of death ; there is a ghastly bareness in every feature of the picture, which puts one in mind of a skeleton. Here and there a thick belt of stunted trees and shrubs contrasts finely with the naked rock. We pass occasionally a village, where the very dogs are silent. The houses are low and wide, as if catching by the ground lest they should be blown down.

" We have mountains like these in Savoy ! " said a voice beside us, in a tone of exultation, but tremulous with some softer feeling. The speaker was a little, oldish, meanly-dressed man, whose remarks had begun to be somewhat annoying, from their frequency, and want of connexion with the train of our ideas. He was a Savoyard returning from Paris (where his trade, as he told, had been ruined by the new revolution,) to carry into the valley he had left when a boy the savings of half a lifetime, wrapped up in a pocket-handkerchief. We thought we had never seen so uninteresting a being. He was ignorant to a surprising degree for a man who had spent so many years in Paris. He understood that Russia lay somewhere between France and c

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England,, and believed that Scotland had had the honour of giving birth to Napoleon. No sooner, however, did we enter into the shadow of the mountains, than a singular change took place in this unleavened lump of humanity. The soul that lay asleep within him, pent up and encrusted with the vulgarities of society, began to stir and heave. Old thoughts and feelings were revived — not old in use, but rather in disuse ; and they came forth in the heretofore simplicity of their infancy, unmindful of the dignity (alas ! alas !) of middle life. Every shrub growing by the road-side put him in mind of home; and resemblances of leaves and stones were detected with astonishment, and descanted upon with enthusiasm. The children whom we passed more especially excited his interest. Poor fellow ! he had left Savoy when a child himself! Once, when we were pursued by two or three little mountain-beggars, after a struggle between his inclination and his poverty, he at last threw them a sol. They did not see the gift, but continued to run on. He rose up in anxiety and anger to describe the place where the coin had fallen, to explain that it was intended to be equally divided between the claimants, and to urge them, in tones of expostulation, entreaty, or command, to turn back and look for it. In vain ! Swifter rolled the wheels of the diligence, and shriller, yet more faintly, came the now despairing " Charite ! — charite ! " of the beggarchildren. They were already left far behind, when the better feelings of the Savoyard overcame the the Savoyard's return.

resolution which we could see he had taken. He again started suddenly up, and, with a shout that alarmed his fellow-travellers, called the attention of our weary and baffled pursuers. The workings of his face were magnificent during the chace which recommenced ; but at last, after a thousand anxieties, the little wretches were seen near enough to warrant the risk, and a second sol — guided through the air by the Angels of Mercy themselves — descended in the midst. The Savoyard sat down, thanking God, we have no doubt, while he wiped his brow, that he had not relented too late.

Champagnol is worth a remark, containing, as it does, the worst and dearest inn in France. The traveller is recommended to venture into one of the cafes rather than risk the overturn of his good humour. On passing this town the road winds irregularly, frequently up the very ridge of the mountains, sometimes through a bare and sterile track, and sometimes plunging into pine-forests, in the midst of which is perceived gleaming many an ample reserve of snow. Torrents are seen tumbling here and there down the cliffs, till at length, as if they had concentrated their forces, a considerable body of water rushes between two inaccessible mountains, that look as if they had been split asunder in some Titanic convulsion of nature, and were waiting to fall back into their original union. The outline of the near horizon presents a very singular appearance. The pine-forests that extend to the top, when seen against the sky, resemble an army of c2

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men guarding the heights. With our mind full of the warlike show we had been prepared to expect beyond the Alps, our first idea was that the Austrians had already climbed into Switzerland, and that we ourselves were just on the eve of an adventure worth relating. In this wild scene, and hanging upon the brink of the torrent, stands Morez, the last French town.

On beginning to descend the Jura, our first sensation, as Lake Leman burst upon the view, was that of disappointment. So far is this from being an affectation of singularity, that we feel convinced that the same impression is and must be made upon every traveller, in spite of the cuckoo-song which it is the fashion to repeat. The immense expanse of the Pays de Vaud at our feet, although in reality diversified by swelling hills, looks as level as the distant sea when only the white specks on its bosom tell of waves and storms. At the extremity of this seeming plain lies the plain of waters ; only different from the former in colour, the indentations of its margin lost in the distance, and the whole presenting an appearance of tameness and uniformity which contrasts disagreeably with the ideal picture we carry within us. Even the mountains of Savoy on the opposite shore seem to have been exaggerated by our imagination; and, with a vain attempt to work ourselves up to the conventional point of admiration, we descend Mount Jura.

And yet, as we descend, a kind of wonder, more absorbing than any feeling which attends the

LAKE LEMAN.

n gratification of mere taste, begins to rise in our minds. The mountain-ocean which lies before us, to the extent of twenty-six square leagues of surface, we know is between eleven and twelve hundred feet above the level of the sea. In relation to the mountains which surround it, nevertheless, and of which the Jura whereon we now stand forms a part, it seems like a drop of water in the palm of the hand. The soul expands in the endeavour to grasp so magnificent a whole ; and, instead of the ideas of romantic beauty which were associated in our fancies with the name of Lake Leman, we receive only impressions of the vast and sublime.

While we are yet in our first reverie, the surface of the water steals away from our eyes, and a sea of white vapour rolls in its place. The play of the sunlight on this unsubstantial mass is magical ; and, in watching the prettiness of the effect, we recover from the feelings of awe which had begun to creep over us. Here and there a blue spot appears in the mist which eddies around it ; now a flash of sunshine, and now a gleam of water ; and by and by the whole lake is seen, in its vast expanse, as blue as heaven itself. Notwithstanding the song of the morning breeze, and the towns, seats, and farm-houses in the distance, the heart cannot get rid of ideas of loneliness and silence : we are yet in the domain of nature ; and the things that belong to human society, with its noise and business, are too far off to trouble the atmosphere of our thoughts. As we descend lower towards the base of the

c a

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J ura, the mountains on the opposite side look more magnificent, and we wonder how our disappointment could have arisen. Mont Blanc is rarely discernible from the clouds which surround it ; but when our perplexity as to which is earth and which air is suddenly removed by some atmospheric change, we start in joy and astonishment. The indentations of the margin grow bolder ; the cliffs rise huge and definite on the Savoy side, capped with woods of pines, beech, and oak ; the lake is broken into fragments, and comes in detail before us ; and, without thinking at the moment that the different aspect in which objects appear is caused by the difference in our situation, and the imperfection of the human faculties — or shaming ourselves by analogies connected with the moral perceptions — we acknowledge remorsefully that we had done Lake Leman injustice.

At the inferior extremity of the lake stands the town of Geneva. The canton, of which it is the capital, interposes between the territories of France and Savoy, where the Jura chain meets the first line of the Alps. Jura looks down upon it from the north-west, Saleve and Voiron from the south and east, and Sion and Vouache from the west. The valley, guarded by these giants, is almost triangular, till it merges in the vast plains of the Pays de Vaud. Towards the east, a break in the chain of mountains affords a view of the Alps of Faucigny, which appear to carry Mont Blanc upon their shoulders ; and beside these the Aiguille Verte and the Buet,

GENEVA.

the Reposoir, and the pyramidal Mole. On the south-west a narrower gorge, called the Pas de T Ecluse, which opens between the mountains 01 Vouache and the western extremity of the Jura, permits the egress of the Rhone from the H happy valley/' The mountains we have named, however, are all at some distance ; they form the outer frame of the precious picture; while another girdle of hills, more beautiful if less sublime, clasps, but not too tightly, the town itself.

The town is divided by the Rhone, as it escapes from the lake, into two unequal parts — or rather into three, as an island in the middle of the river forms a third and intermediate quarter. The whole describes an oval figure, elongated from north-west to south-east. The origin of this place has never been ascertained; but Caesar speaks of it as a walled town (oppidum) of the Allobroges, a Gaulic nation under the dominion of the Romans. It was destroyed by fire in the third century of the Christian era, and rebuilt by the Emperor Aurelian, whose name it bore for some time. Again, however, it was destroyed in the wars of the Franks and Burgundians in the time of Clovis, and almost every vestige obliterated of Roman industry or arms. About the year 426, Geneva was incorporated in the first kingdom of Burgundy ; in a century after, it was torn away by the Ostragoths ; in about another century, we find it passing into the hands of the Franks ; in 879, it becomes a part of the kingdom of Aries ; in nine years after, it enters into the second