Chapter XXIII
I never saw palaces anywhere but at Venice. Those at Rome are dungeons compared to them. They generally come down to the water’s edge, and as there are canals on each side of them, you see them four-square. The views by Canaletti are very like, both for the effect of the buildings and the hue of the water. The principal are by Palladio, Longhena, and Sansovino. They are massy, elegant, well-proportioned, costly in materials, profuse of ornament. Perhaps if they were raised above the water’s edge on low terraces (as some of them are), the appearance of comfort and security would be greater, though the architectural daring, the poetical miracle would appear less. As it is, they seem literally to be suspended in the water.—The richest in interior decoration that I saw, was the Grimani Palace, which answered to all the imaginary conditions of this sort of thing. Aladdin might have exchanged his for it, and given his lamp into the bargain. The floors are of marble, the tables of precious stones, the chairs and curtains of rich silk, the walls covered with looking-glasses, and it contains a cabinet of invaluable antique sculpture, and some of Titian’s finest portraits. I never knew the practical amount to the poetical, or furniture seem to grow eloquent but in this instance. The rooms were not too large for comfort neither; for space is a consideration at Venice. All that it wanted of an Eastern Palace was light and air, with distant vistas of hill and grove. A genealogical tree of the family was hung up in one of the rooms, beginning with the founder in the ninth century, and ending with the present representative of it; and one of the portraits, by Titian, was of a Doge of the family, looking just like an ugly, spiteful old woman; but with a truth of nature, and a force of character that no one ever gave but he. I saw no other mansion equal to this. The Pisani is the next to it for elegance and splendour; and from its situation on the Grand Canal, it admits a flood of bright day through glittering curtains of pea-green silk, into a noble saloon, enriched with an admirable family-picture by Paul Veronese, with heads equal to Titian for all but the character of thought.
Close to this is the Barberigo Palace, in which Titian lived, and in which he died, with his painting-room just in the state in which he left it. It is hung round with pictures, some of his latest works, such as the Magdalen and the Salvator Mundi (which are common in prints), and with an unfinished sketch of St. Sebastian, on which he was employed at the time of his death. Titian was ninety-nine when he died, and was at last carried off by the plague. My guide who was enthusiastic on the subject of Venetian art, would not allow any falling-off in these latest efforts of his mighty pencil, but represented him as prematurely cut off in the height of his career. He knew, he said, an old man, who had died a year ago, at one hundred and twenty. The Venetians may still live to be old, but they do not paint like Titian! The Magdalen is imposing and expressive, but the colouring is tinted (quite different from Titian’s usual simplicity) and it has a flaccid, meretricious, affectedly lachrymose appearance, which I by no means like. There is a slabbery freedom or a stiff grandeur about most of these productions, which, I think, savoured of an infirm hand and eye, accompanied with a sense of it. Titian, it is said, thought he improved to the last, and wished to get possession of his former pictures, to paint them over again, upon broader and more scientific principles, as some authors have wished to re-write their works: there was a small model of him in wax, done by a contemporary artist in his extreme old age, shewn in London a year or two ago, with the black velvet cap, the green gown, and a white sleeve appearing from under it, against a pale, shrivelled hand. The arrangement of colouring was so truly characteristic, that it was probably dictated by himself. It may be interesting to artists to be told, that the room in the Barberigo Palace (said to be his painting-room) has nearly a southern aspect. There are some other indifferent pictures hanging in the room, by painters before his time, probably some that he had early in his possession, and kept longest for that reason. It is an event in one’s life to find one’s-self in Titian’s painting-room. Yet it did not quite answer to my expectations—a hot sun shone into the room, and the gondola in which we came was unusually close—neither did I stoop and kiss the stone which covers his dust, though I have worshipped him on this side of idolatry!
‘Ci giace il gran Titiano di Vecelli, Emulator di Zeusi e di gl’Apelli.’
This is the inscription on his tomb in the church of the Frati. I read it twice over, but it would not do. Why grieve for the immortals? One is not exactly one’s-self on such occasions, and enthusiasm has its intermittent and stubborn fits; besides, mine is, at present, I suspect, a kind of July shoot, that must take its rise from the stock of former impressions. It spread aloft on the withered branches of the St. Peter Martyr, and shot out more kindly still from seeing three pictures of his, close together, at the house of Signor Manfrini (a Venetian tobacconist), an elaborate Portrait of his friend Ariosto—sharp-featured and tawny-coloured, with a light Morisco look—a bronzed duplicate of the Four Ages at the Marquess of Stafford’s—and his Mistress (which is in the Louvre) introduced into a composition with a gay cavalier and a page. I was glad to see her in company so much fitter for her than her old lover; and besides, the varied grouping gave new life and reality to this charming vision. The two last pictures are doubtfully ascribed to Giorgioni, and this critical equivoque was a source of curiosity and wonder. Giorgioni is the only painter with respect to whom this could be made a question (the distinction between Titian and the other painters of the Venetian school, Tintoret and Paul Veronese, is broad and palpable enough)—and for myself, I incline to attribute the last of the three chef d’œuvres above enumerated to Giorgioni. The difference, it appears to me, may be thus stated. There is more glow and animation in Giorgioni than in Titian. He is of a franker and more genial spirit. Titian has more subtilty and meaning, Giorgioni more life and youthful blood. The feeling in the one is suppressed; in the other, it is overt and transparent. Titian’s are set portraits, with the smallest possible deviation from the straight line: they look as if they were going to be shot, or to shoot somebody. Giorgioni, in what I have seen of his pictures, as the Gaston de Foix, the Music-piece at Florence, &c. is full of inflection and contrast; there is seldom a particle of it in Titian. An appearance of silence, a tendency to still-life, pervades Titian’s portraits; in Giorgioni’s there is a bending attitude, and a flaunting air, as if floating in gondolas or listening to music. For all these reasons (perhaps slenderly put together) I am disposed to think the portrait of the young man in the picture alluded to is by Giorgioni, from the flushed cheek, the good-natured smile, and the careless attitude; and for the same reason, I think it likely that even the portrait of the lady is originally his, and that Titian copied and enlarged the design into the one we see in the Louvre, for the head (supposed to be of himself, in the background) is middle-aged, and Giorgioni died while Titian was yet young. The question of priority in this case is a very nice one; and it would be curious to ascertain the truth by tradition or private documents of any kind.
I teazed my valet de place (Mr. Andrew Wyche, a Tyrolese, a very pleasant, companionable, and patriotic sort of person) the whole of the first morning at every fresh landing or embarkation by asking, ‘But are we going to see the Saint Peter Martyr?’ When we reached the Church of Saint John and Saint Paul, the light did not serve, and we got reprimanded by the priest for turning our backs on the host, in our anxiety to find a proper point of view. We returned to the charge at five in the afternoon, when the light fell upon it through a high-arched Gothic window, and it came out in all its pristine glory, with its rich, embrowned, overshadowing trees, its nobly-drawn heroic figures, its blood-stained garments, its flowers and trailing plants, and that cold convent-spire rising in the distance amidst the sapphire mountains and the golden sky. I found every thing in its place and as I expected. Yet I am unwilling to say that I saw it through my former impressions: this picture suffices to itself, and fills the mind without an effort; for it contains all the mighty world of landscape and history, grandeur and breadth of form with the richest depth of colouring, an expression characteristic, powerful, that cannot be mistaken, conveying the scene at the moment, a masterly freedom and unerring truth of execution, and a subject as original as it is stately and romantic. It is the foremost of Titian’s productions, and exhibits the most extraordinary specimen of his varied powers. Most probably, as a picture, it is the finest in the world; or if I cannot say it is the picture which I would the soonest have painted, it is at least the one which I would the soonest have. It is a rich feast to the eye, ‘where no crude surfeit reigns.’ As an instance of the difference between Titian and Raphael, you here see the figures from below, and they stand out with noble grandeur of effect against the sky; Raphael would have buried them under the horizon, or stuck them against the landscape, without relief or motion. So much less knowledge had he of the picturesque! Again, I do not think Raphael could have given the momentary expression of sudden, ghastly terror, or the hurried, disorderly movements of the flying Monk, or the entire prostration of the other (like a rolling ruin) so well as Titian. The latter could not, I know, raise a sentiment to its height like the former; but Raphael’s expressions and attitudes were (so to speak) the working out of ‘foregone conclusions,’ not the accidental fluctuations of mind or matter—were final and fixed,[47] not salient or variable. I observed, in looking closer, that the hinder or foreshortened leg of the flying monk rests upon the edge of a bank of earth, from which he is descending. This explains the action of the part better, but I doubt whether this idea of inequality and interruption from the broken nature of the ground is an addition to the feeling of precipitate fear and staggering perplexity in the mind of the person represented. This may be an hypercriticism. The colouring of the foremost leg of this figure is sufficient to prove that the utter paleness of the rest of it is from its having faded in the course of time. The colour of the face in this and the other monk is the same as it was twenty years ago; it has sustained no injury in that time. But for the sun-burnt, well-baked, robust tone of the flesh-colour, commend me to the leg and girded thigh of the robber. What a difference between this and Raphael’s brick-dust!—I left this admirable performance with regret; yet I do not see why; for I have it present with me, ‘in my mind’s eye,’ and swear, in the wildest scenes of the Alps, that the St. Peter Martyr is finer. That, and the Man in the Louvre, are my standards of perfection; my taste may be wrong; nay, even ridiculous—yet such it is.
The picture of the Assumption, at the Academy of Painting at Venice, which was discovered but the other day under a load of dirt and varnish, is cried up as even superior to the St. Peter: it is indeed a more extraordinary picture for the artist to have painted; but for that very reason it is neither so perfect nor so valuable. Raphael could not paint landscape; Titian could hardly paint history without the help of landscape. A background was necessary to him, like music to a melodrame. He had in this picture attempted the style of Raphael, and has succeeded and even failed—to admiration. He has given the detached figures of the Roman school, the contrasted, uniform colours of their draperies, the same determined outline, no breaking of the colours or play of light and shade, and has aimed at the same elevation and force of expression. The drawing has nearly the same firmness with more scope, the colouring is richer and almost as hard, the attitudes are imposing and significant, and the features handsome—what then is wanting? That glow of heavenward devotion bent on ideal objects, and taking up its abode in the human form and countenance as in a shrine; that high and abstracted expression, that outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, which Raphael alone could give in its utmost purity and intensity. One glimpse of the Crowning of the Virgin in the Vatican is worth it all—lifts the mind nigher to the subject, dissolves it in greater sweetness, sinks it in deeper thoughtfulness. The eager headlong enthusiasm of the Apostle to the right in a green mantle is the best; the lambent eyes and suffused glow of the St. John are only the indications of rosy health, and youthful animation; the Virgin is a well-formed rustic beauty with a little affectation, and the attitude of the Supreme Being is extravagant and distorted. Raphael could have painted this subject, as to its essential qualities, better; he could not have done the St. Peter Martyr in any respect so well. I like Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (notwithstanding the horror of the subject) better than the Assumption, for its characteristic expression, foreshortening, and fine mellow masses of light and shade. Titian could come nearer the manner of Michael Angelo than that of Raphael, from an eye for what was grand and impressive in outward form and position, as his frescoes of Prometheus, Cain and Abel, and another grotesque and gigantic subject on the ceiling of one of the churches, shew. These, in picturesque grouping, in muscular relief, and vastness of contour, surpass Michael Angelo’s figures in the Last Judgment, however they may fall short of them in anatomical knowledge or accuracy. I also was exceedingly delighted with the Salutation of the Virgin at the Academy, which is shewn as one of his masterpieces, for the mixture of airy scenic effect with the truth of individual portraiture. The churches and public buildings here bear ample testimony to the powers of Titian’s historic pencil, though I did not see enough of his portraits in private collections, of which I had hoped to take my fill. In the large hall of the Academy of Painting are also the fine picture of the Miracle of Saint Mark by Tintoret, an inimitable representation of a religious and courtly ceremony by Paris Bourbon (inimitable for the light, rich, gauze-colouring, and magical effect of the figures in perspective), and several others of vast merit as well as imposing dimensions. The Doge’s Palace and the Council-Chamber of the Senate are adorned with the lavish performances of Tintoret and Paul Veronese; and in the allegorical figures in the ceiling of the Council-Chamber, and in the splendid delineation of a Doge returning thanks to the Virgin for some victory over the Infidels, which occupies the end of it, I think the last-named painter has reached the top of his own and of Venetian art. As an art of decoration, addressing itself to the eye, to the vain or voluptuous part of our constitution, it cannot be carried farther. Of all pictures this Thanksgiving is the most dazzling, the most florid. A rainbow is not more rich in hues, a bubble that glitters in the sun is not more light and glossy, a bed of tulips is not more gaudy. A flight of angels with rosy hues and winged glories connects the heavenly and the earthly groups like a garland of blushing flowers. The skill and delicacy of this composition is equal to its brilliancy of effect. His marriage of Cana (another wonderful performance) is still at Paris: it was formerly in the Refectory of the church of St. Giorgio Maggiore, on an island on the opposite side of the harbour, which is well worth attention for the architecture by Palladio and the altar-piece in bronze by John of Bologna, containing a number of figures (as it appears to me) of the most masterly design and execution.
I have thus hastily run through what struck me as most select in fine art in this celebrated city. To enumerate every thing would be endless. There are other objects for the curious. The Mosaics of the church of St. Mark, the Brazen Horses, the belfry or Campanile, the arsenal, and the theatres, which are wretched both as it relates to the actors and the audience. The shops are exceedingly neat and well-stocked, and the people gay and spirited. The harbour does not present an appearance of much traffic. In the times of the Republic, 30,000 people are said to have slept every night in the vessels in the bay. Daniell’s Hotel, at which we were, and to which I would recommend every English traveller, commands a superb view of it, and the scene (particularly by moonlight) is delicious. I heard no music at Venice, neither voice nor lute; saw no group of dancers or maskers, and the gondolas appear to me to resemble hearses more than pleasure-boats. I saw the Rialto, which is no longer an Exchange. The Bridge of Sighs, of which Lord Byron speaks, is not a thoroughfare, but an arch suspended at a considerable height over one of the canals, and connecting the Doge’s palace with the prison.
Chapter XXIV
We left Venice with mingled satisfaction and regret. We had to retrace our steps as far as Padua, on our way to Milan. For four days’ journey, from Padua to Verona, to Brescia, to Treviglio, to Milan, the whole way was cultivated beauty and smiling vegetation. Not a rood of land lay neglected, nor did there seem the smallest interruption to the bounty of nature or the industry of man. The constant verdure fatigued the eye, but soothed reflection. For miles before you, behind you, and on each side, the trailing vines hung over waving corn-fields, or clear streams meandered through rich meadow-grounds, and pastures. The olive we had nearly left behind us in Tuscany, and were not sorry to part with its half-mourning appearance amidst more luxuriant scenes and various foliage. The country is quite level, and the roads quite straight for nearly four hundred miles that we had travelled after leaving Bologna; and every foot or acre of this immense plain is wrought up to a pitch of neatness and productiveness, equal to that of a gentleman’s kitchen-garden, or to the nursery-grounds in the neighbourhood of London. A gravel-pit or a furze-bush by the roadside is a relief to the eye. There is no perceptible difference in approaching the great towns, though their mounds of green earth and the mouldering remains of fortifications give an agreeable and romantic variety to the scene; the whole of the intermediate space is literally, and without any kind of exaggeration, one continued and delightful garden. Whether this effect is owing to the felicity of the soil and climate, or to the art of man, or to former good government, or to all these combined, I shall not here inquire; but the fact is so, and it is sufficient to put an end to the idea that there is neither industry nor knowledge of agriculture nor plenty out of England, and to the common proverbial cant about the sloth and apathy of the Italians, as if they would not lift the food to their mouths, or gather the fruits that are drooping into them. If the complaints of the poverty and wretchedness of Italy are confined to the Campagna of Rome, or to some districts of the Apennines, I have nothing to say; but if a sweeping conclusion is drawn from these to Italy in general, or to the North of it in particular, I must enter my protest against it. Such an inference is neither philosophical, nor, I suspect, patriotic. The English are too apt to take every opportunity, and to seize on every pretext for treating the rest of the world as wretches—a tone of feeling which does not exactly tend to enhance our zeal in the cause either of liberty or humanity. If people are wretches, the next impression is that they deserve to be so; and we are thus prepared to lend a helping hand to make them what we say they are. The Northern Italians are as fine a race of people as walk the earth; and all that they want, to be what they once were, or that any people is capable of becoming, is neither English abuse nor English assistance, but three words spoken to the other powers; ‘Let them alone!’ But England, in the dread that others should follow her example, has quite forgotten what she herself once was. Another idea that the aspect of this country and of the country-people suggests, is the fallacy of some of Mr. Malthus’s theories. The soil is here cultivated to the greatest possible degree, and yet it seems to lead to no extraordinary excess of population. Plenty and comfort abound; but they are not accompanied by an appearance of proportionable want and misery, tracking them at the heels. The present generation of farmers and peasants seem well of; the last, probably, were so: this circumstance, therefore, does not appear to have given any overweening presumptuous activity, or headstrong impulse to the principle of population, nor to have determined those fortunate possessors of a land flowing with milk and honey, from an acquaintance with the good things of this life, to throw all away at one desperate cast, and entail famine, disease, vice, and misery on themselves and their immediate descendants. It is not, however, my intention to enter into politics or statistics: let me, therefore, escape from them.
We reached Verona the second day: it is delightfully situated. Mr. Addison has given a very beautiful description of the Giusti gardens which overlook it on one side. They here shew you the tomb of Juliet: it looks like an empty cistern in a common court-yard: you look round, however, and the carved niches with the frescoes on the walls convince you that you are in the precincts of an ancient monastery. The guide also points to the part of the wall that Romeo leaped over, and takes you to the spot in the garden where he fell. This gives an air of trick and fiction to the whole. The tradition is a thousand years old: it is kept up with a tender and pious awe: the interest taken in the story of a passion faithful to death shews not that the feeling is rare, but common. Many Italian women have read Shakspeare’s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, admire and criticise it with great feeling. What remains of the old monastery is at present a Foundling Hospital. On returning from this spot, which is rather low and gloomy, we witnessed the most brilliant sight we had seen in Italy—the sun setting in a flood of gold behind the Alps that overlook the lake of Garda. The Adige foamed at our feet below; the bank opposite was of pure emerald; the hills which rose directly behind it in the most fantastic forms were of perfect purple, and the arches of the bridge to the left seemed plunged in ebon darkness by the flames of light that darted round them. Verona has a less dilapidated, pensive air than Ferrara. Its streets and squares are airy and spacious; but the buildings have a more modern and embellished look, and there is an appearance of greater gaiety and fashion among the inhabitants. The English sometimes come here to reside, though not in such crowds as at Florence, and things are proportionably less dear. The Amphitheatre is nearly as fine and quite as entire as that at Rome: the Gate of Galienas terminates one of the principal streets. We met with nothing remarkable the rest of the way to Milan, except the same rich, unvaried face of the country; the distant Alps hanging like a thin film over the horizon, or approaching nearer in lofty, solid masses as we advanced; the lake of Garda embosomed in them, and the fine fortress of Peschiera buried in its almost subterranean fastnesses like a mole; the romantic town of Virli, with a rainbow glittering over its verdant groves and hills; a very bad inn at Brescia, and a very excellent one at Treviglio. Milan was alive and full of visitors, thick as the ‘motes that people the sun-beam;’ it felt the presence of its lord. The Emperor of Austria was there! Milan (at least on this occasion) was as gay as Bath or any town in England. How times and the characters of countries change with them! In other parts of Italy, as at Rome and at Florence, the business of the inhabitants seemed to be to hide themselves, neither to see nor be seen: here it was evidently their object to do both. The streets were thronged and in motion, and the promenades full of carriages and of elegantly-dressed women, as on a festival or gala-day. I think I never saw so many well-grown, well-made, good-looking women as at Milan. I did not however see one face strikingly beautiful, or with a very fine expression. In this respect the Romans have the advantage of them. The North has a tinge of robust barbarism in it. Their animation was a little exuberant; their look almost amounts to a stare, their walk is a swing, their curiosity is not free from an air of defiance. The free and unrestrained manners of former periods of Italy appear also to have been driven northward, and to have lingered longer on the confines. The Cathedral or Duomo is a splendid fabric of white marble: it is rich, vast, and the inside solemn and full of a religious awe: the marble is from a quarry on the Lago Maggiore. We also saw the celebrated theatre of the Gran Scala, which is of an immense size and of extreme beauty, but it was not full, nor was the performance striking. The manager is the proprietor of the Cobourg Theatre (Mr. Glossop), and his wife (formerly our Miss Fearon) the favourite singer of the Milanese circles. I inquired after the great pantomime Actress, Pallarini, but found she had retired from the stage on a fortune. The name of Vigano was not known to my informant. I did not see the great picture of the Last Supper by Leonardo nor the little Luini, two miles out of Milan, which my friend Mr. Beyle charged me particularly to see.
We left Milan, in a calash or small open carriage, to proceed to the Isles Borromees. The first day it rained violently, and the third day the boy drove us wrong, pretending to mistake Laveno for Baveno; so I got rid of him. We had a delightful morning at Como, and a fine view of the lake and surrounding hills, which however rise too precipitously from the shores to be a dwelling-place for any but hunters and fishermen. Several English gentlemen as well as rich Milanese have villas on the banks. I had a hankering after Cadenobia; but the Simplon still lay before me. We were utterly disappointed in the Isles Borromees. Isola Bella, belonging to the Marquis Borromeo, indeed resembles ‘a pyramid of sweetmeats ornamented with green festoons and flowers.’ I had supposed this to be a heavy German conceit, but it is a literal description. The pictures in the Palace are trash. We were accosted by a beggar in an island which contains only a palace and an inn. We proceeded to the inn at Baveno, situated on the high road, close to the lake, and enjoyed for some days the enchanting and varied scenery along its banks. The abrupt rocky precipices that overhang it—the woods that wave in its refreshing breeze—the distant hills—the gliding sails and level shore at the opposite extremity—the jagged summits of the mountains that look down upon Palanza and Feriole, and the deep defiles and snowy passes of the Simplon, every kind of sublimity or beauty, changing every moment with the shifting light or point of view from which you beheld them. We were tempted to stop here for the summer in a suite of apartments (not ill furnished) that command a panoramic view of the lake hidden by woods and vineyards from all curious eyes, or in a similar set of rooms at Intra on the other side of the lake, with a garden and the conveniences of a market-town, for six guineas for the half year. Hear this, ye who pine in England on limited incomes, and with a taste for the picturesque! The temptation was great, and may yet prove too strong. We wished, however, to pass the Simplon first. We proceeded to Domo d’ Ossola for this purpose, and the next day began the ascent. I have already attempted to describe the passage of Mont Cenis: this is said to be finer, and I believe it; but it impressed me less, I believe owing to circumstances. The road does not wind its inconceivable breathless way down the side of the same mountain (like the circumgyrations of an eagle), gallery seeing gallery sunk beneath it, but makes longer reaches, and passes over from one side of the valley to the other. The ascent is nearly by the side of the brook of the Simplon for several miles, and you pass along by the edge of precipices and by slender bridges over mountain-torrents, under huge brown rugged rocks, hanging over the road like mighty masses of ruins or castle walls—some bare, others covered with pine-trees to the top; some too steep for any plant to grow on them, others displaying spots of verdure, the thatched cottage, and the winding path half-way up, and dallying with vernal flowers and the winter’s snow to the last moment. The fir generally clothes them, and its spiny form and dark hues combine well with their ‘star-ypointing pyramids,’ and ashy paleness. The eagle screams over-head, and the chamois looks startled round. Half-way up a little rugged path (the pathway of their life) loitered a young peasant and his mistress hand in hand, with some older people behind, following to their peaceful humble home—half hid among the cliffs and clouds. We passed under one or two sounding arches, and over some lofty bridges. At length we reached the village of the Simplon, and stopped there at a most excellent inn, where we had a supper that might vie, for taste and elegance, with that with which Chiffinch entertained Peveril of the Peak and his companion at the little inn, in the wilds of Derbyshire. The next day we proceeded onwards, and passed the commencement of the tremendous glacier of the Flech Horr. Monteroso ascended to the right, shrouded in cloud and mist, at a height inaccessible even to the eye. This mountain is only a few hundred feet lower than Mont-Blanc, yet its name is hardly known. So a difference of a hair’s breadth in talent often makes all the difference between total obscurity and endless renown! We soon after passed the barrier, and found ourselves involved in fog and driving sleet upon the brink of precipices: the view was hidden, the road dangerous. On our right were drifts of snow left there by the avalanches. Soon after the mist dispersed, or we had perhaps passed below it, and a fine sunny morning disclosed the whole amazing scene above, about, below us. On our right was the Swartzenberg, behind us the Simplon, on our left the Flech Horr, and the pointed Clise-Horn—opposite was the Yung-Frow, and the distant mountains of the lake of Geneva rose between, circled with wreaths of mist and sunshine: stately fir-trees measured the abrupt descent at our side, or the sound of dimly-seen cataracts; and in an opening below, seen through the steep chasm under our feet, lay the village of Brigg (as in a map) still half a day’s journey distant. We wound round the valley at the other extremity of it: the road on the opposite side, which we could plainly distinguish, seemed almost on the level ground, and when we reached it we found a still greater depth below us. Villages, cottages, flocks of sheep in the valley underneath, now came in sight, and made the eye giddy to look at them: huge cedars by the road-side were interposed between us and the rocks and mountains opposite, and threw them into half-tint; and the height above our heads, and that beneath our feet, by being perceptibly joined together, doubled the elevation of the objects. Mountains seem highest either when you are at their very summits and look down on the world, or when you are midway up, and the eye takes in the measure of their height at two distinct stages. I think the finest part of the descent of the Simplon is about four or five miles before you come to Brigg. The valley is here narrow, and affords prodigious contrasts of wood and rock, of hill and vale, of sheltered beauty and of savage grandeur. The red perpendicular chasm in the rock at the foot of the Clise-Horn is tremendous; the look back to the snow-clad Swartzenberg that you have left behind is no less so. I grant the Simplon has the advantage of Mont Cenis in variety and beauty and in sudden and terrific contrasts, but it has not the same simple expansive grandeur, blending and growing into one vast accumulated impression; nor is the descent of the same whirling and giddy character, as if you were hurried, stage after stage, and from one yawning depth to another, into the regions of ‘Chaos and old Night.’ The Simplon presents more picturesque points of view; Mont Cenis makes a stronger impression on the imagination. I am not prejudiced in favour of one or the other; the road over each was raised by the same master-hand. After a jaunt like this through the air, it was requisite to pause some time at the hospitable inn at Brigg to recover. It only remains for me to describe the lake of Geneva and Mont Blanc.
Chapter XXV
We left the inn at Brigg, after having stopped there above a week, and proceeded on our way to Vevey, which had always been an interesting point in the horizon, and a resting-place to the imagination. In travelling, we visit names as well as places; and Vevey is the scene of the New Eloise. In spite of Mr. Burke’s philippic against this performance, the contempt of the Lake School, and Mr. Moore’s late Rhymes on the Road, I had still some overmastering recollections on that subject, which I proposed to indulge at my leisure on the spot which was supposed to give them birth, and which I accordingly did. I did not, on a re-perusal, find my once favourite work quite so vapid, quite so void of eloquence or sentiment as some critics (it is true, not much beholden to it) would insinuate. The following passage, among others, seemed to me the perfection of style:—‘Mais vois la rapidité de cet astre, qui vole et ne s’arrête jamais; le tems fuit, l’occasion échappe, ta beauté, ta beauté même aura son terme, elle doit flétrir et périr un jour comme un fleur qui tombe sans avoir été cueilli!’ What a difference between the sound of this passage and of Mr. Moore’s verse or prose! Nay, there is more imagination in the single epithet astre, applied as it is here to this brilliant and fleeting scene of things, than in all our fashionable poet’s writings! At least I thought so, reading St. Preux’s Letter in the wood near Clarens, and stealing occasional glances at the lake and rocks of Meillerie. But I am anticipating.
The mountains on either side of the Valley of the Simplon present a gloomy succession of cliffs, often covered with snow, and contrasting by no means agreeably with the marshy grounds below, through which the Rhone wanders scarce noticed, scarce credited. It is of a whitish muddy colour (from the snow and sand mingled with its course, very much as if had been poured out of a washing-tub), and very different from the deep purple tint it assumes on oozing out from the other side of the Lake, after having drank its cerulean waters. The woods near the lofty peaks of the Clise-Horn, and bordering on Monteroso, are said to be still the frequent haunt of bears, though a price is set upon their heads. As we advanced farther on beyond Tortomania, the whole breadth of the valley was sometimes covered with pine-forests, which gave a relief to the eye, and afforded scope to the imagination. The fault of mountain scenery in general is, that it is too barren and naked, and that the whole is exposed in enormous and unvarying masses to the view at once. The clothing of trees is no less wanted as an ornament than partially to conceal objects, and thus present occasional new points of view. Without something to intercept and break the aggregate extent of surface, you gain no advantage by change of place; the same elevation and ground-plan of hill and valley are still before you—you might as well carry a map or landscape in your hand. In this part of our journey, however, besides the natural wildness and grandeur of the scenery, the road was rough and uneven, and frequently crossed rude bridges over the Rhone, or over rivulets pouring into it: the gloomy recesses of the forests might be the abode of wild beasts or of the lurking robber. The huge fragments of rock that had tumbled from the overhanging precipices often made a turning in the road necessary, and for a moment interrupted the view beyond; the towns, built on the sides of the hills, resembled shattered heaps of rock, scarcely distinguishable from the grey peaks and crags with which they were surrounded, giving an agreeable play to the fancy; while the snowy tops of the Simplon mountains, now coming in sight, now hidden behind the nearer summits, threw us back to the scenes we had left, and measured the distance we had traversed. The way in which these mighty landmarks of the Alpine regions ascertain this point is, however, contrary to the usual one: for it is by appearing plainer, the farther you retire from them. They tower with airy shape and dazzling whiteness above the lengthening perspective; and it is the intervening objects that dwindle in the comparison, and are lost sight of in succession. In the midst of the most lonely and singular part of this scene, just as we passed a loose bridge of rough fir-planks over a brawling brook, and as a storm seemed to threaten us, we met a party of English gentlemen in an open carriage, though their courteous looks and waving salutation almost ‘forbade us to interpret them such.’ Certainly there is no people in whom urbanity is more a duty than the English; for there is no people that feel it more. Travelling confounds our ideas, not of place only, but of time; and I could not help making a sudden transition from the party we had by chance encountered to the Chevalier Grandison and his friends, paying their last visit to Bologna. Pshaw! Why do I indulge in such idle fancies? Yet why in truth should I not, when I am a thousand miles from home, and when every object one meets is like a dream? Passe pour cela.
We reached Sion that evening. It is one of the dirtiest and least comfortable towns on the road; nor does the chief inn deserve the epithet so applicable to Swiss inns in general—simplex munditiis. It was here that Rousseau, in one of his early peregrinations, was recommended by his landlord to an iron-foundry in the neighbourhood (the smoke of which, I believe, we saw at a little distance), where he would be likely to procure employment, mistaking ‘the pauper lad’ for a journeyman blacksmith. Perhaps the author of the Rhymes on the Road will think it a pity he did not embrace this proposal, instead of forging thunderbolts for kingly crowns. Alas! Mr. Moore would then never have had to write his ‘Fables for the Holy Alliance.’ Haunted by some indistinct recollection of this adventure, I asked at the Inn, ‘If Jean Jacques Rousseau had ever resided in the town?’ The waiter himself could not tell, but soon after brought back for answer, ‘That Monsieur Rousseau had never lived there, but that he had passed through about fourteen years before on his way to Italy, when he had only time to stop to take tea!’—Was this a mere stupid blunder, or one of the refractions of fame, founded on his mission as Secretary to the Venetian Ambassador a hundred years before? There is a tradition in the neighbourhood of Milton’s house in York-street, Westminster, that ‘one Mr. Milford, a celebrated poet, formerly lived there!’ We set forward the next morning on our way to Martigny, through the most dreary valley possible, and in an absolute straight line for twelve or fifteen miles of level road, which was terminated by the village-spire and by the hills leading to the Great St. Bernard and Mont-Blanc. The wind poured down from these tremendous hills, and blew with unabated fury in our faces the whole way. It was a most unpleasant ride, nor did the accommodations at the inn (the Swan, I think) make us amends. The rooms were cold and empty. It might be supposed that the desolation without had subdued the imagination to its own hue and quality, so that it rejected all attempts at improvement; that the more niggard Nature had been to it, the more churlish it became to itself; and through habit, neither felt the want of comforts nor a wish to supply others with them. Close to the bridge stands a steep rock with a castle at the top of it (attributed to the times of the Romans). At a distance it was hardly discernible; and afterwards, when we crossed over to Chamouni, we saw it miles below us like a dove-cot, or a dirt-pye raised by children. Yet viewed from beneath, it seemed to present an imposing and formidable attitude, and to elevate its pigmy front in a line with the stately heights around. So Mr. Washington Irvine binds up his own portrait with Goldsmith’s in the Paris edition of his works, and to many people seems the genteeler man! From the definite and dwarfish, we turned to the snow-clad and cloud-capt; and strolled to the other side of the village, where the road parts to St. Bernard and Chamouni, anxiously gazing at the steep pathway on either side, and half tempted to launch into that billowy sea of mist and mountain: but we reserved this for a subsequent period. As we were loitering at the foot of the dizzy ascent, our postilion, who had staid behind us a couple of hours the day before to play at bowls, now drove on half an hour before his time, and when we turned a corner which gave us a view of our inn, no cabriolet was there. He, however, soon found his mistake, and turned back to meet us. The only picturesque objects between this and Bex are a waterfall about two hundred feet in height, issuing through the cavities of the mountain from the immense glacier in the valley of Trie, and the romantic bridge of St. Maurice, the boundary between Savoy and the Pays de Vaud. On the ledge of a rocky precipice, as you approach St. Maurice, stands a hermitage in full view of the road; and possibly the inmate consoles himself in his voluntary retreat by watching the carriages as they come in sight, and fancying that the driver is pointing out his aërial dwelling to the inquisitive and wondering traveller! If a man could transport himself to one of the fixed stars, so far from being lifted above this sublunary sphere, he would still wish his fellow-mortals to point to it as his particular abode, and the scene of his marvellous adventures. We go into a crowd to be seen: we go into solitude that we may be distinguished from the crowd, and talked of. We travel into foreign parts to get the start of those who stay behind us; we return home to hear what has been said of us in our absence. Lord Byron mounted on his pedestal of pride on the shores of the Adriatic, as Mr. Hobhouse rides in the car of popularity through the streets of Westminster. The one object could be seen at a distance; the other, whose mind is more Sancho-Panza-ish and pug-featured, requires to be brought nearer to the eye for stage-effect! Bex itself is delicious. It stands in a little nook of quiet, almost out of the world, nestling in rural beauty, in mountain sublimity. There is an excellent inn, a country church before it, a large ash tree, a circulating library, a rookery, every thing useful and comfortable for the life of man. Behind, there is a ridge of dark rocks; beyond them tall and bare mountains—and a higher range still appears through rolling clouds and circling mists. Our reception at the inn was every way what we could wish, and we were half disposed to stop here for some months. But something whispered me on to Vevey:—this we reached the next day in a drizzling shower of rain, which prevented our seeing much of the country, excepting the black masses of rock and pine-trees that rose perpendicularly from the roadside. The day after my arrival, I found a lodging at a farm-house, a mile out of Vevey, so ‘lapped in luxury,’ so retired, so reasonable, and in every respect convenient, that we remained here for the rest of the summer, and felt no small regret at leaving it.
The country round Vevey is, I must nevertheless own, the least picturesque part of the borders of the Lake of Geneva. I wonder Rousseau, who was a good judge and an admirable describer of romantic situations, should have fixed upon it as the scene of the ‘New Eloise.’ You have passed the rocky and precipitous defiles at the entrance into the valley, and have not yet come into the open and more agreeable parts of it. The immediate vicinity of Vevey is entirely occupied with vineyards slanting to the south, and inclosed between stone-walls without any kind of variety or relief. The walks are uneven and bad, and you in general see little (for the walls on each side of you) but the glassy surface of the Lake, the rocky barrier of the Savoy Alps opposite (one of them crowned all the year round with snow, and which, though it is twenty miles off, seems as if you could touch it with your hand, so completely does size neutralize the effect of distance), the green hills of an inferior class over Clarens, with the Dent de Jamant sticking out of them like an iron tooth, and the winding valley leading northward towards Berne and Fribourg. Here stands Gelamont (the name of the Campagna which we took), on a bank sloping down to the brook that passes by Vevey, and so entirely embosomed in trees and ‘upland swells,’ that it might be called, in poetical phrase, ‘the peasant’s nest.’ Here every thing was perfectly clean and commodious. The fermier or vineyard-keeper, with his family, lived below, and we had six or seven rooms on a floor (furnished with every article or convenience that a London lodging affords) for thirty Napoleons for four months, or about thirty shillings a week. This first expense we found the greatest during our stay, and nearly equal to all the rest, that of a servant included. The number of English settled here had made lodgings dear, and an English gentleman told me he was acquainted with not less than three-and-twenty English families in the neighbourhood. To give those who may feel an inclination to try foreign air, an idea of the comparative cheapness of living abroad, I will mention that mutton (equal to the best Welch mutton, and fed on the high grounds near Moudon) is two batz, that is, threepence English per pound; and the beef (which is also good, though not of so fine a quality) is the same. Trout, caught in the Lake, you get almost for nothing. A couple of fowls is eighteen-pence. The wine of the country, which though not rich, is exceedingly palatable, is three pence a bottle. You may have a basket of grapes in the season for one shilling or fifteen pence.[48] The bread, butter and milk are equally cheap and excellent. They have not the art here of adulterating every thing. You find the same things as in England, served up in the same plain and decent manner, but in greater plenty, and generally speaking, of a better and more wholesome quality, and at least twice as cheap. In England they have few things, and they contrive to spoil those few. There is a good deal of ill-nature and churlishness, as well as a narrow policy in this. The trading principle seems to be to give you the worst, and make you pay as dear for it as possible. It is a vile principle. As soon as you land at Dover, you feel the force of this home truth. They cheat you to your face, and laugh at you. I must say, that it appears to me, whatever may be the faults or vices of other nations, the English population is the only one to which the epithet blackguard is applicable. They are, in a word, the only people who make a merit of giving others pain, and triumph in their impudence and ill-behaviour, as proofs of a manly and independent spirit. Afraid that you may complain of the absence of foreign luxuries, they are determined to let you understand beforehand, they do not care about what you may think, and wanting the art to please, resort to the easier and surer way of keeping up their importance by practising every kind of annoyance. Instead of their being at your mercy, you find yourself at theirs, subjected to the sullen airs of the masters, and to the impertinent fatuity of the waiters. They dissipate your theory of English comfort and hospitality at the threshold. What do they care that you have cherished a fond hope of getting a nice, snug little dinner on your arrival, better than any you have had in France? ‘The French may be d——,’ is the answer that passes through their minds—‘the dinner is good enough, if it is English!’ Let us take care, that by assuming an insolent local superiority over all the world, we do not sink below them in every thing, liberty not excepted. While the name of any thing passes current, we may dispense with the reality, and keep the start of the rest of mankind, simply by asserting that we have it, and treating all foreigners as a set of poor wretches, who neither know how, nor are in truth fit to live! Against this post, alas! John Bull is continually running his head, but as yet without knocking his brains out. The beef-steak which you order at Dover with patriotic tender yearnings for its reputation, is accordingly filled with cinders—the mutton is done to a rag—the soup not eatable—the porter sour—the bread gritty—the butter rancid. Game, poultry, grapes, wine it is in vain to think of; and as you may be mortified at the privation, they punish you for your unreasonable dissatisfaction by giving you cause for it in the mismanagement of what remains.[49] In the midst of this ill fare you meet with equally bad treatment. While you are trying to digest a tough beef-steak, a fellow comes in and peremptorily demands your fare, on the assurance that you will get your baggage from the clutches of the Custom-house in time to go by the six o’clock coach; and when you find that this is impossible, and that you are to be trundled off at two in the morning, or by the next day’s coach, if it is not full, and complain to that personification of blind justice, an English mob, you hear the arch slang reply, ‘Do you think the Gentleman such a fool as to part with his money without knowing why?’ and should the natural rejoinder rise to your lips—‘Do you take me for a fool, because I did not take you for a rogue?’ the defendant immediately stands at bay upon the national character for honesty and morality. ‘I hope there are no rogues here!’ is echoed through the dense atmosphere of English intellect, though but the moment before they had been laughing in their sleeves (or out loud) at the idea of a stranger having been tricked by a townsman. Happy country! equally and stupidly satisfied with its vulgar vices and boasted virtues!
‘Oh! for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless continuity of shade!’
Yet to what purpose utter such a wish, since it is impossible to stay there, and the moment you are separated from your fellows, you think better of them, begin to form chimeras with which you would fain compare the realities, find them the same as ever to your cost and shame—
‘And disappointed still, are still deceived!’
I found little of this tracasserie at Gelamont. Days, weeks, months, and even years might have passed on much in the same manner, with ‘but the season’s difference.’ We breakfasted at the same hour, and the tea-kettle was always boiling (an excellent thing in housewifery)—a lounge in the orchard for an hour or two, and twice a week we could see the steam-boat creeping like a spider over the surface of the lake; a volume of the Scotch novels (to be had in every library on the Continent, in English, French, German, or Italian, as the reader pleases), or M. Galignani’s Paris and London Observer, amused us till dinner time; then tea and a walk till the moon unveiled itself, ‘apparent queen of night,’ or the brook, swoln with a transient shower, was heard more distinctly in the darkness, mingling with the soft, rustling breeze; and the next morning the song of peasants broke upon refreshing sleep, as the sun glanced among the clustering vine-leaves, or the shadowy hills, as the mists retired from their summits, looked in at our windows. The uniformity of this mode of life was only broken during fifteen weeks that we remained in Switzerland, by the civilities of Monsieur Le Vade, a Doctor of medicine and octogenarian, who had been personally acquainted with Rousseau in his younger days; by some attempts by our neighbours to lay us under obligations, by parting with rare curiosities to Monsieur l’Anglois for half their value; and by an excursion to Chamouni, of which I must defer the account to my next.
Chapter XXVI
We crossed over in a boat to St. Gingolph, a little town opposite to Vevey, and proceeded on the other side of the lake to Martigny, from which we could pass over either on foot or by the help of mules to Mont-Blanc. It was a warm day towards the latter end of August, and the hills before us drew their clear outline, and the more distant Alps waved their snowy tops (tinged with golden sunshine) in the gently-undulating surface of the crystal lake. As we approached the Savoy side, the mountains in front, which from Vevey look like a huge battery or flat upright wall, opened into woody recesses, or reared their crests on high; rich streaks of the most exquisite verdure gleamed at their feet, and St. Gingolph came distinctly in view, with its dingy-looking houses and smoking chimneys. It is a small manufacturing town, full of forges and workshops, and the inn is dirty and disagreeable. The contrast to Vevey was striking. But this side of the lake is in the dominions of the King of Sardinia, and cleanliness seems to be in general the virtue of republics, or of free states. There is an air of desolation, sluttishness, and indifference, the instant you cross the water, compared with the neatness, activity, regularity, and cheerfulness of the Pays de Vaud. We walked out to take a view of the situation, as soon as we had bespoken our room and a supper. It was a brilliant sunset; nor do I recollect having ever beheld so majestic and rich a scene, set off to such advantage. A steep pathway led to a village embayed between two mountains, whose tops towered into the sky: conical hills rose to about half their height, covered with green copses: fields and cottages were seen climbing as it were the sides of others, with cattle feeding; the huge projecting rocks gave new combinations and a new aspect to the most picturesque objects; tall branching trees (ash, or beech, or chesnut) hung from green sloping banks over the road-side, or dipped their foliage in the transparent wave below: their bold luxuriant forms threw the rocks and mountains into finer relief, and elevated them into a higher atmosphere, so that they seemed trembling (another airy world) over our heads. The lake shone like a broad golden mirror, reflecting the thousand dyes of the fleecy purple clouds, while Saint Gingolph, with its clustering habitations, shewed like a dark pitchy spot by its side; and beyond the glimmering verge of the Jura (almost hid in its own brightness) hovered gay wreaths of clouds, fair, lovely, visionary, that seemed not of this world, but brought from some dream of fancy, treasured up from past years, emblems of hope, of joy and smiling regret, that had come to grace a scene so heavenly, and to bid it a last, lingering farewell. No person can describe the effect; but so in Claude’s landscapes the evening clouds drink up the rosy light, and sink into soft repose! Every one who travels into Switzerland should visit this secluded spot, and witness such a sunset, with the heaven stooping its face into the lake on one side, and the mountains, rocks, and woods, lifting earth to heaven on the other. We had no power to leave it or to admire it, till the evening shades stole in upon us, and drew the dusky veil of twilight over it.
We had a pleasant walk the next morning along the side of the lake under the grey cliffs, the green hills and azure sky; now passing under the open gateway of some dilapidated watch-tower that had in former times connected the rocky barrier with the water, now watching the sails of a boat slowly making its way among the trees on the banks of the Rhone, like butterflies expanding their wings in the breeze, or the snowy ridges that seemed close to us at Vevey receding farther into a kind of lofty back-ground as we advanced. The speculation of Bishop Berkeley, or some other philosopher, that distance is measured by motion and not by the sight, is verified here at every step. After going on for hours, and perceiving no alteration in the form or appearance of the object before you, you begin to be convinced that it is out of ordinary calculation, or, in the language of the Fancy, an ‘ugly customer;’ and our curiosity once excited, is ready to magnify every circumstance relating to it to an indefinite extent. The literal impression being discarded as insufficient, the imagination takes out an unlimited letter of credit for all that is possible or wonderful, and what the eye sees is considered thenceforward merely as an imperfect hint, to be amplified and filled up on a colossal scale by the understanding and rules of proportion. To say the truth, you also suffer a change, feel like Lilliputians, and can fancy yourselves transported to a different world, where the dimensions and relations of things are regulated by some unknown law. The inn where we stopped at Vionnax is bad. Beyond this place, the hills at the eastern end of the lake form into an irregular and stupendous amphitheatre; and you pass through long and apparently endless vistas of tall flourishing trees, without being conscious of making much progress. There is a glass-manufactory at Vionnax, which I did not go to see; others who have more curiosity may. It will be there (I dare say) next year for those who choose to visit it: I liked neither its glare nor its heat. The cold icy crags that hang suspended over it have been there a thousand years, and will be there a thousand years to come. Short-lived as we are, let us attach ourselves to the immortal, and scale (assisted by earth’s giant brood) the empyrean of pure thought! But the English abroad turn out of their way to see every pettifogging, huckstering object that they could see better at home, and are as fussy and fidgetty, with their smoke-jacks and mechanical inventions among the Alps, as if they had brought Manchester and Sheffield in their pockets! The finest effect along this road is the view of the bridge as you come near St. Maurice. The mountains on either side here descend nearly to a point, boldly and abruptly; the river flows rapidly through the tall arch of the bridge, on one side of which you see an old fantastic turret, and beyond it the hill called the Sugar-loaf, rising up in the centre of immense ranges of mountains, and with fertile and variously-marked plains stretching out in the intervening space. The landscape painter has only to go there, and make a picture of it. It is already framed by nature to his hand! I mention this the more, because that kind of grouping of objects which is essential to the picturesque, is not always to be found in the most sublime or even beautiful scenes. Nature (so to speak) uses a larger canvass than man, and where she is greatest and most prodigal of her wealth, often neglects that principle of concentration and contrast which is an indispensable preliminary before she can be translated with effect into the circumscribed language of art. We supped at Martigny, at the Hotel de la Poste (formerly a convent), and the next morning proceeded by the Valley of Trie and the Col de Peaume to Chamouni.
We left the great St. Bernard, and the road by which Buonaparte passed to Marengo, on our left, and Martigny and the Valley of the Simplon directly behind us. These last were also soon at an immeasurable depth below us; but the summits of the mountains that environed us on all sides, seemed to ascend with us, and to add our elevation to their own. Crags, of which we could only before discern the jutting tops, gradually reared their full stature at our side; and icy masses, one by one, came in sight, emerging from their lofty recesses, like clouds floating in mid-air. All this while a green valley kept us company by the road-side, watered with gushing rills, interspersed with cottages and well-stocked farms: fine elms and ash grew on the sides of the hills, under the shade of one of which we saw an old peasant asleep. The road, however, was long, rough, and steep; and from the heat of the sun, and the continual interruption of loose stones and the straggling roots of trees, I felt myself exceedingly exhausted. We had a mule, a driver, and a guide. I was advised, by all means, to lessen the fatigue of the ascent by taking hold of the queue of Monsieur le Mulet, a mode of travelling partaking as little of the sublime as possible, and to which I reluctantly acceded. We at last reached the top, and looked down on the Valley of Trie, bedded in rocks, with a few wooden huts in it, a mountain-stream traversing it from the Glacier at one end, and with an appearance as if summer could never gain a footing there, before it would be driven out by winter. In the midst of this almost inaccessible and desolate spot, we found a little inn or booth, with refreshments of wine, bread, and fruit, and a whole drove of English travellers, mounted or on foot.
‘Nor Alps nor Apennines can keep them out, Nor fortified redoubt!’
As we mounted the steep wood on the other side of the valley, we met several mules returning, with their drivers only, and looking extremely picturesque, as they were perched above our heads among the jagged pine-trees, and cautiously felt their perilous way over the edges of projecting rocks and stumps of trees, down the zigzag pathway. The view here is precipitous, extensive, and truly appalling, both from the size of the objects and their rugged wildness. The smell of the pine-trees, the clear air, and the golden sunshine gleaming through the dark foliage refreshed me; and the fatigue from which I had suffered in the morning completely wore off. I had concluded that when we got to the top of the wood that hung over our heads, we should have mastered our difficulties; but they only then began. We emerged into a barren heath or morass of a most toilsome ascent, lengthening as we advanced, with herds of swine, sheep, and cattle feeding on it, and a bed of half-melted snow marking the summit over which we had to pass. We turned aside, half-way up this dreary wilderness, to stop at a chalet, where a boy, who tended the straggling cattle, was fast asleep in the middle of the day; and being waked up, procured us a draught of most delicious water from a fountain. We at length reached the Col de Peaume, and saw Mont Blanc, the King of Mountains, stretching away to the left, with clouds circling round its sides, and snows forever resting on its head. It was an image of immensity and eternity. Earth had heaved it from its bosom; the ‘vast cerulean’ had touched it with its breath. It was a meeting of earth and sky. Other peaked cliffs rose perpendicularly by its side, and a range of rocks, of red granite, fronted it to the north; but Mont-Blanc itself was round, bald, shining, ample, and equal in its swelling proportions—a huge dumb heap of matter. The valley below was bare, without an object—no ornament, no contrast to set it off—it reposed in silence and in solitude, a world within itself.
‘Retire, the world shut out, thy thoughts call home.’
There is an end here of vanity and littleness, and all transitory jarring interests. You stand, as it were, in the presence of the Spirit of the Universe, before the majesty of Nature, with her chief elements about you; cloud and air, and rock, and stream, and mountain are brought into immediate contact with primeval Chaos and the great First Cause. The mind hovers over mysteries deeper than the abysses at our feet; its speculations soar to a height beyond the visible forms it sees around it. As we descended the path on foot (for our muleteer was obliged to return at the barrier between the two states of Savoy and Switzerland marked by a solitary unhewn stone,) we saw before us the shingled roofs of a hamlet, situated on a patch of verdure near inaccessible columns of granite, and could hear the tinkling bells of a number of cattle pasturing below (an image of patriarchal times!)—we also met one or two peasants returning home with loads of fern, and still farther down, found the ripe harvests of wheat and barley growing close up to the feet of the glaciers (those huge masses of ice arrested in their passage from the mountains, and collected by a thousand winters,) and the violet and gilliflower nestling in the cliffs of the hardest rocks. There are four of these glaciers, that pour their solid floods into the valley, with rivulets issuing from them into the Arbe. The one next to Chamouni is, I think, the finest. It faces you like a broad sheet of congealed snow and water about half-way up the lofty precipice, and then spreads out its arms on each side into seeming batteries and fortifications of undistinguishable rock and ice, as though winter had here ‘built a fortress for itself,’ seated in stern state, and amidst frowning horrors. As we advanced into the plain, and before it became dusk, we could discern at a distance the dark wood that skirts the glaciers of Mont-Blanc, the spire of Chamouni, and the bridges that cross the stream. We also discovered, a little way on before us, stragglers on mules, and a cabriolet, that was returning from the valley of Trie, by taking a more circuitous route. As the day closed in and was followed by the moonlight, the mountains on our right hung over us like a dark pall, and the glaciers gleamed like gigantic shrouds opposite. We might have fancied ourselves inclosed in a vast tomb, but for the sounding cataracts and the light clouds that flitted over our heads. We arrived at Chamouni at last, and found the three inns crowded with English. The entrance to that to which we had been recommended, or rather were conducted by our guide (the Hotel de Londres,) was besieged by English loungers, like a bazaar, or an hotel at some fashionable watering-place, and we were glad to secure a small but comfortable room for the night.
We had an excellent supper, the materials of which we understood came from Geneva. We proceeded the next morning to Saleges, on our way to this capital. If the entrance to the valley of Chamouni is grand and simple, the route from it towards Geneva unites the picturesque to the sublime in the most remarkable degree. For two or three miles you pass along under Mont-Blanc, looking up at it with awe and wonder, derived from a knowledge of its height. The interest, the pleasure you take in it is from conviction and reflection; but turn a corner in the road at a homely village and a little bridge, and it shoots up into the sky of its own accord, like a fantastic vision. Its height is incredible, its brightness dazzling, and you notice the snow crusted upon its surface into round hillocks, with pellucid shadows like shining pavilions for the spirits of the upper regions of the air. Why is the effect so different from its former desolate and lumpish appearance? Tall rocks rise from the roadside with dark waving pine-trees shooting from them, over the highest top of which, as you look up, you see Mont-Blanc; a ruined tower serves as a foil to the serene smiler in the clouds that mocks at the defences of art, or the encroachments of time. Another mountain opposite, part bare, part clothed with wood, intercepts the view to the left, giving effect to what is seen, and leaving more to the imagination; and the impetuous torrent roars at your feet, a hundred fathoms below, with the bright red clusters of the mountain-ash and loose fragments of rock bending over it, and into which a single step would precipitate you. One of the mightiest objects in nature is set off by the most appropriate and striking accidents; and the impression is of the most romantic and enchanting kind. The scene has an intoxicating effect; you are relieved from the toil of wishing to admire, and the imagination is delighted to follow the lead of the senses. We passed this part of the road in a bright morning, incessantly turning back to admire, and finding fresh cause of pleasure and wonder at every step or pause, loth to leave it, and yet urged onward by continual displays of new and endless beauties. Chamouni seems to lie low enough; but we found that the river and the road along with it winds and tumbles for miles over steep banks or sloping ground; and as you revert your eye, you find that which was a flat converted into a table-land; the objects which were lately beneath you now raised above you, and forming an intermediate stage between the spot where you are and the more distant elevations; and the last snow-crowned summits reflected in translucent pools of water by the roadside, with spots of the brightest azure in them (denoting mineral springs); the luxuriant branches of the ash, willow, and acacia waving over them, and the scarlet flowers of the geranium, or the water-lilies, ‘all silver white,’ stuck like gems in the girdle of old winter, and offering a sparkling foreground to the retiring range of icebergs and avalanches. This rapid and whirling descent continued almost to Saleges, about twenty miles from Chamouni. Here we dined, and proceeded that night to Bonneville, on nearly level ground; but still with the same character the whole way of a road winding through the most cultivated and smiling country, full of pastures, orchards, vineyards, cottages, villas, refreshing streams, long avenues of trees, and every kind of natural and artificial beauty, flanked with rocks and precipices (on each side) of the most abrupt and terrific appearance, and on which, from the beginning of time, the hand of man has made no impression, except that here and there you see a patch of verdure, a cottage, a flock of sheep, at a height which the eye can hardly reach, and which you think no foot could tread. I have seen no country where I have been more tempted to stop and enjoy myself, where I thought the inhabitants had more reason to be satisfied, and where, if you could not find happiness, it seemed in vain to seek farther for it. You have every kind and degree of enjoyment; the extremes of luxury and wildness, gigantic sublimity at a distance or over your head, elegance and comfort at your feet; you may gaze at the air-drawn Alps, or shut out the prospect by a flowering shrub, or by a well-clipped hedge, or neatly-wainscoted parlour: and you may vary all these as you please, ‘with kindliest interchange.’ Perhaps one of these days I may try the experiment, and turn my back on sea-coal fires, and old English friends! The inn at Bonneville was dirty, ill-provided, and as it generally happens in such cases, the people were inattentive, and the charges high. We were, however, indemnified by the reception we met with at Geneva, where the living was luxurious, and the expence comparatively trifling. I shall not dwell on this subject, lest I should be thought an epicure, though indeed I rather ‘live a man forbid,’ being forced to deny myself almost all those good things which I recommend to others. Geneva is, I think, a very neat and picturesque town, not equal to some others we had seen, but very well for a Calvinistic capital. It stands on a rising ground, at the end of the lake, with the purple Rhone running by it, and Mont-Blanc and the Savoy Alps seen on one side, and the Jura on the other. I was struck with the fine forms of many of the women here. Though I was pleased with my fare, I was not altogether delighted with the manners and appearance of the inhabitants. Their looks may be said to be moulded on the republican maxim, that ‘you are no better than they,’ and on the natural inference from it, that ‘they are better than you.’ They pass you with that kind of scrutinizing and captious air, as if some controversy was depending between you as to the form of religion or government. I here saw Rousseau’s house, and also read the Edinburgh Review for May. The next day we passed along in the Diligence through scenery of exquisite beauty and perfect cultivation—vineyards and farms, and villas and hamlets of the most enviable description, succeeding each other in uninterrupted connexion, by the smooth margin of the silver lake. We saw Lausanne by moonlight. Its situation, as far as I could judge, and the environs were superb. We arrived that night at Vevey, after a week’s absence and an exceedingly delightful tour.