a little swiss sojourn by w. d. howells illustrated new york harper & brothers, franklin square illustrations _tourists at montreux_ (frontispiece) _sign of the white cross inn_ _entrance to villeneuve_ _post-office, villeneuve_ _the castle of chillon_ _a railroad servant_ _a bit of villeneuve_ _the prisoner of chillon_ _one of the fountains_ _"they helped to make the hay in the marshes"_ _cattle at the fountains_ _washing clothes in the lake_ _flirtation at the fountains_ _the wine-press_ _castle of aigle_ _the market at vevay_ _the market, vevay--a bargain before the notary_ _germans at montreux_ _church terrace, montreux_ _tour up the lake_ a little swiss sojourn first paper [illustration: _sign of the white cross inn_] i out of eighty or ninety days that we passed in switzerland there must have been at least ten that were fair, not counting the forenoons before it began to rain, and the afternoons when it cleared up. they said that it was an unusually rainy autumn, and we could well believe it; yet i suspect that it rains a good deal in that little corner of the canton vaud even when the autumn is only usually rainy. we arrived late in september and came away early in december, and during that time we had neither the fevers that raged in france nor the floods that raged in italy. we vaudois were rather proud of that, but whether we had much else to be proud of i am not so certain. of course we had our alpine scenery, and when the day was fair the sun came loafing up over the eastern mountains about ten o'clock in the morning, and lounged down behind the western tops about half-past three, after dinner. but then he left the eternal snows of the dent-du-midi all flushed with his light, and in the mean time he had glittered for five hours on the "_bleu impossible_" of the lake of geneva, and had shown in a hundred changing lights and shadows the storied and sentimentalized towers of the castle of chillon. solemn groups and ranks of swiss and savoyard alps hemmed the lake in as far as the eye could reach, and the lateen-sailed craft lent it their picturesqueness, while the steamboats constantly making its circuit and stopping at all the little towns on the shores imparted a pleasant modern interest to the whole effect, which the trains of the railroad running under the lee of the castle agreeably heightened. ii the swiss railroad was always an object of friendly amusement with the children, who could not get used to having the trains started by a small christmas-horn. they had not entirely respected the english engine, with the shrill falsetto of its whistle, after the burly roar of our locomotives; and the boatswain's pipe of the french conductor had considerably diminished the dignity of a sister republic in their minds; but this christmas-horn was too droll. that a grown man, much more imposingly uniformed than an american general, should blow it to start a real train of cars was the source of patriotic sarcasm whenever its plaintive, reedy note was heard. we had come straight through from london, taking the sleeping-car at calais, and rolling and bounding over the road towards basle in a fashion that provoked scornful comparisons with the pullman that had carried us so smoothly from boston to buffalo. it is well to be honest, even to our own adulation, and one must confess that the sleeping-car of the european continent is but the nervous and hysterical daughter of the american mother of sleeping-cars. many express trains are run without any sleeper, and the charges for berths are ludicrously extravagant--five dollars apiece for a single night. it is not strange that the native prefers to doze away the night bolt-upright, or crouched into the corners of his repellently padded carriage, rather than toss upon the expensive pallet of the sleeping-car, which seems hung rather with a view to affording involuntary exercise than promoting dear-bought slumber. one advantage of it is that if you have to leave the car at five o'clock in the morning, you are awake and eager to do so long before that time. at the first swiss station we quitted it to go to berne, which was one of the three points where i was told by the london railway people that my baggage would be examined. i forget the second, but the third was berne, and now at delemont i looked about for the customs officers with the anxiety which the thought of them always awakens in the human heart, whether one has meant to smuggle or not. even the good conscience may suffer from the upturning of a well-packed trunk. but nobody wanted to examine our baggage at delemont, or at the other now-forgotten station; and at berne, though i labored hard in several dialects with all the railway officials, i could not get them to open one of our ten trunks or five valises. i was so resolute in the matter that i had some difficulty to keep from opening them myself and levying duty upon their contents. iii it was the first but not the last disappointment we suffered in switzerland. a friend in london had congratulated us upon going to the vaud in the grape season. "for thruppence," he said, "they will let you go into the vineyards and eat all the grapes you can hold." arrived upon the ground, we learned that it was six francs fine to touch a grape in the vineyards; that every field had a watch set in it, who popped up between the vines from time to time, and interrogated the vicinity with an eye of sleepless vigilance; and that small boys of suspicious character, whose pleasure or business took them through a vineyard, were obliged to hold up their hands as they passed, like the victims of a far western road agency. as the laws and usages governing the grape culture run back to the time of the romans, who brought the vine into the vaud, i was obliged to refer my friend's legend of cheapness and freedom to an earlier period, whose customs we could not profit by. in point of fact, i could buy more grapes for thruppence in london than in the vaud; and the best grapes we had in switzerland were some brought from italy, and sold at a franc a pound in montreux to the poor foreigners who had come to feast upon the wealth of the local vineyards. it was the rain that spoiled the grapes, they said at montreux, and wherever we complained; and indeed the vines were a dismal show of sterility and blight, even to the spectator who did not venture near enough to subject himself to a fine of six francs. the foreigners had protected themselves in large numbers by not coming, and the natives who prosper upon them suffered. the stout lady who kept a small shop of ivory carvings at montreux continually lamented their absence to me: "die fremden kommen nicht, dieses regenes wetter! man muss geduldt haben! die fremden kommen nicht!" she was from interlaken, and the accents of her native dialect were flavored with the strong waters which she seemed always to have been drinking, and she put her face close up to that of the good, all-sympathizing amerikaner who alone patronized her shop, and talked her sorrows loudly into him, so that he should not misunderstand. [illustration: _entrance to villeneuve_] iv but one must not be altogether unreasonable. when we first came in sight of the lake the rain lifted, and the afternoon sun gushed out upon a world of vineyards. in other words, the vines clothe all the little levels and vast slopes of the mountain-sides as far up as the cold will let the grapes grow. there is literally almost no other cultivation, and it is a very pretty sight. on top of the mountains are the chalets with their kine, and at a certain elevation the milk and the wine meet, while below is the water of the lake, so good to mix with both. i do not know that the swiss use it for that purpose, but there are countries where something of the sort would be done. when the train put us down at villeneuve, among railway people as indifferent as our own at country stations, and much crosser and more snubbing, the demand for grapes began with the party who remained with the baggage, while a party of the second part went off to find the _pension_ where we were to pass the next three months. the grape-seekers strolled up the stony, steaming streets of the little town, asking for grapes right and left, at all the shops, in their imperfect french, and returned to the station with a paper of gingerbread which they had bought at a jeweller's. i do not know why this artist should have had it for sale, but he must have had it a long time, for it was densely inhabited. afterwards we found two shops in villeneuve where they had the most delicious _petits gâteaux_, fresh every day, and nothing but the mania for unattainable grapes prevented the first explorers from seeing them. in the mean time the party of the second part had found the pension--a pretty stone villa overlooking the lake, under the boughs of tall walnut-trees, on the level of a high terrace. laurel and holly hemmed it in on one side, and southward spread a pleasant garden full of roses and imperfectly ripening fig-trees. in the rear the vineyards climbed the mountains in irregular breadths to the belt of walnuts, beyond which were only forests and pastures. i heard the roar of the torrent that foamed down the steep; the fountain plashed under the group of laurels at the kitchen door; the roses dripped all round the house; and the lake lapped its shores below. decidedly there was a sense of wet. the house, which had an italian outside covered with jasmine and wistarias, confessed the north within. there was a huge hall stove, not yet heated, but on the hearth of the pleasant salon an acceptable fire of little logs was purring. beside it sat a lady reading, and at a table her daughter was painting flowers. a little italian, a very little english, a good deal of french, helped me to understand that mademoiselle the landlady was momentarily absent, that the season was exceptionally bad, and that these ladies were glad of the sunshine which we were apparently bringing with us. they spoke with those suissesse voices, which are the sweetest and most softly modulated voices in the world, whether they come from the throat of peasant or of lady, and can make a transaction in eggs and butter in the market-place as musical as chanted verse. to the last these voices remained a delight, and the memory of them made most italian women's voices a pang when we heard them afterwards. v at first we were the only people in the house besides these swiss ladies and their son and brother, but later there came two ladies from strasburg, and with them our circle was complete at the table and around the evening lamp in the drawing-room. i am bound to say for the circle, outside of ourselves, that it was a cultivated and even intellectual company, with traits that provoked unusual sympathy and interest. but those friendly people are quite their own property, and i have no intention of compelling them to an involuntary celebrity in these pages, much as i should like to impart their quality to my narrative. in the strasbourgeoises we encountered again that pathos of an insulted and down-trodden nationality which had cast its melancholy over our venice of austrian days. german by name and by origin, these ladies were intensely french in everything else. they felt themselves doomed to exile in their own country, they abhorred their prussian masters, and they had no name for bismarck that was bad enough. our swiss, indeed, hated him almost as bitterly. their sympathies had been wholly with the french, and they could not repress a half-conscious dread of his principle of race nationality, which would be fatal to switzerland, one neither in race nor religion, but hitherto indivisible in her ancient freedom. while he lives this fear can never die in swiss hearts, for they know that if he will, he can, in a europe where he is the only real power. mademoiselle sat at the chief place of the table, and led the talk, imparting to it a flavor of humorous good sense very characteristic. the villa had been her father's country-house, and it abounded in a scholar's accumulations of old books in divers languages. she herself knew literature widely in the better way that it was once read. the memories of many years spent in florence made common italian ground for us, and she spoke english perfectly. as i wish to give a complete notion of our household, so far as it may be honestly set down, i will add that the domestics were three. two of them, the cook and the housemaid, were german swiss, of middle class, who had taken service to earn what money they could, but mainly to learn french, after the custom of their country, where the young people of a french or italian canton would in like manner resort to a german province. the third was louis, a native, who spoke his own _patois_, and found it sufficient for the expression of his ideas. he was chiefly employed about the grounds; in-doors his use was mostly to mount the peculiar clogs used for the purpose, and rub the waxed floors till they shone. these floors were very handsome, of hard woods prettily inlaid; and louis produced an effect upon them that it seemed a pity to mar with muddy shoes. i do not speak of alexis, the farmer, who appeared in domestic exigencies; but my picture would be incomplete without the portrait of poppi. poppi was the large house-dog, who in early life had intended to call himself puppy, but he naturally pronounced it with a french accent. he was now far from young, but he was still poppi. i believe he was the more strictly domestic in his habits because an infirmity of temper had betrayed him into an attack upon a neighbor, or a neighbor's dog, and it was no longer safe for him to live much out-of-doors. the confinement had softened his temper, but it had rendered him effeminate and self-indulgent. he had, in fact, been spoiled by the boarders, and he now expected to be present at meals, and to be fed with choice morsels from their plates. as the cold weather came on he developed rheumatism, and demanded our sympathy as well as our hospitality. if elise in waiting on table brushed him with her skirts, he set up a lamentable cry, and rushed up to the nearest guest, and put his chin on the table for his greater convenience in being comforted. at a dance which we had one evening poppi insisted upon being present, and in his efforts to keep out of the way and in the apprehensions he suffered he abandoned himself to moans and howls that sometimes drowned the piano. yet poppi was an amiable invalid, and he was on terms of perfect friendship with the cats, of which there were three generations--boulette, boulette's mother, and boulette's grandmother. they were not readily distinguishable from one another, and i really forget which it was that used to mount to the dining-room window without, and paw the glass till we let her in; but we all felt that it was a great accomplishment, and reflected credit upon us. vi the vineyard began immediately behind the laurels that enclosed the house, and at a little distance, where the mountain began to lift from the narrow plateau, stood the farmer's stone cottage, with the stables and the wine-vaults under the same roof. mademoiselle gave us grapes from her vines at dinner, and the walnut-trees seemed public property, though i think one was not allowed to knock the nuts off, but was only free of the windfalls. a little later they were all gathered, and on a certain night the girls and the young men of the village have the custom to meet and make a frolic of cracking them, as they used in husking corn with us. then the oil is pressed out, and the commune apportions each family its share, according to the amount of nuts contributed. this nut oil imparts a sentiment to salad which the olive cannot give, and mushrooms pickled in it become the most delicious and indigestible of all imaginable morsels. i have had dreams from those pickled mushrooms which, if i could write them out, would make my fortune as a romantic novelist. the swiss breakfast was our old friend the italian breakfast, with butter and gruyère cheese added to the milk and coffee. we dined at one o'clock, and at six or seven we supped upon a meal that had left off soup and added tea, in order to differ from the dinner. for all this, with our rooms, we paid what we should have paid at a new hampshire farm-house; that is, a dollar a day each. but the air was such as we could not have got in new hampshire for twice the money. it restored one completely every twenty-four hours, and it not only stimulated but supported one throughout the day. our own air is quite as exciting, but after stirring one up, it leaves him to take the consequences, whereas that faithful swiss air stood by and helped out the enterprise. i rose fresh from my forenoon's writing and eager to walk; i walked all afternoon, and came in perfectly fresh to supper. one can't speak too well of the swiss air, whatever one says of the swiss sun. [illustration: _post-office, villeneuve_] vii whenever it came out, or rather whenever the rain stopped, we pursued our explorations of the neighborhood. it had many interesting features, among which was the large hôtel byron, very attractive and almost empty, which we passed every day on our way to the post-office in villeneuve, and noted two pretty american shes in eye-glasses playing croquet amid the wet shrubbery, as resolutely cheerful and as young-manless as if they had been in some mountain resort of our own. in the other direction there were simple villas dropped along the little levels and ledges, and vineyards that crept to the road's edge everywhere. there was also a cement factory, busy and prosperous; and to make us quite at home, a saw-mill. above all, there was the castle of chillon; and one of the first sundays after our arrival we descended the stone staircased steps of our gardened terrace, dripping with ivy and myrtle, and picked our steps over the muddy road to the old prison-fortress, where, in the ancient chapel of the dukes of savoy, we heard an excellent sermon from the _pasteur_ of our parish. the castle was perhaps a bow-shot from our pension: i did not test the distance, having left my trusty cross-bow and cloth-yard shafts in boston; but that is my confirmed guess. in point of time it is much more remote, for, as the reader need not be reminded, it was there, or some castle like it, almost from the beginning, or at least from the day when men first began to fight for the possession of the land. the lake-dwellers are imagined to have had some sort of stronghold there; and it is reasonably supposed that romans, franks, and burgundians had each fortified the rock. count wala, cousin of charlemagne, and grandson of charles martel, was a prisoner in its dungeon in for uttering some words too true for an age unaccustomed to the perpetual veracity of our newspapers. count wala, who was also an abbot, had the misfortune to speak of judith of bavaria as "the adulterous woman," and when her husband, louis le debonair, came back to the throne after the conspiracy of his sons, the lady naturally wanted wala killed; but louis compromised by throwing him into the rock of chillon. this is what wala's friends say: others say that he was one of the conspirators against louis. at any rate, he was the first great captive of chillon, which was a political prison as long as political prisoners were needed in switzerland. that is now a good while ago. [illustration: _the castle of chillon_] chillon fell to the princes of the house of savoy in , and count peter, whom they nicknamed little charlemagne for his prowess and his conquests, built the present castle, after which the barons of the pays de vaud and the duke of cophingen (whoever he may have been) besieged peter in it. perhaps they might have taken him. but the wine was so good, and the pretty girls of the country were so fond of dancing! they forgot themselves in these delights. all at once little charlemagne was upon them. he leaves his force at chillon, and goes by night to spy out the enemy at villeneuve, returning at dawn to his people. he came back very gayly; when they saw him so joyous, "what news?" they asked. "fine and good," he answers; "for, by god's help, if you will behave yourselves well, the enemy is ours." to which they cried with one voice, "seigneur, you have but to command." they fell upon the barons and the duke, and killed a gratifying number of their followers, carrying the rest back to chillon, where peter "used them not as prisoners, but feasted them honorably. much was the spoil and great the booty." afterwards peter lost the castle, and in retaking it he launched fifty thousand shafts and arrows against it. "the castle was not then an isolated point of rock as we now see it, but formed part of a group of defences." viii two or three centuries later--how quickly all those stupid, cruel, weary years pass under the pen!--the spirit of liberty and protestantism began to stir in the heads and hearts of the burghers of berne and of geneva. a savoyard, francis de bonivard, prior of st. victor, sympathized with them. he was noble, accomplished, high-placed, but he loved freedom of thought and act. yet when a deputation of reformers came to him for advice, he said: "it is to be wished, without doubt, that the evil should be cast out of our midst, provided that the good enters. you burn to reform our church; certainly it needs it; but how can you reform it, deformed as you are? you complain that the monks and priests are buffoons; and you are buffoons; that they are gamblers and drunkards, and you are the same. does the hate you bear them come from difference or likeness? you intend to overthrow our clergy and replace them by evangelical ministers. that would be a very good thing in itself, but a very bad thing for you, because you have no happiness but in the pleasures the priests allow you. the ministers wish to abolish vice, but there is where you will suffer most, and after having hated the priests because they are so much like you, you will hate their successors because they are so little like you. you will not have had them two years before you will put them down. meanwhile, if you trust me, do one of two things: if you wish to remain deformed, as you are, do not wonder that others are like you; or, if you wish to reform them, begin by showing them how." [illustration: _a railroad servant_] this was very odd language to use to a deputation of reformers, but i confess that it endears the memory of bonivard to me. he was a thoroughly charming person, and not at all wise in his actions. through mere folly he fell twice into the hands of his enemies, suffered two years' imprisonment, and lost his priory. to get it back he laid siege to it with six men and a captain. the siege was a failure. he trusted his enemy, the duke, and was thrown into chillon, where he remained a sort of guest of the governor for two years. the duke visited the castle at the end of that time. "then the captain threw me into a vault lower than the lake, where i remained four years. i do not know whether it was by order of the duke or from his own motion, but i do know that i then had so much leisure for walking that i wore in the rock which formed the floor of the dungeon a _pathlet_ [_vionnet_], or little path, as if one had beaten it out with a hammer." he was fastened by a chain four feet in length to one of the beautiful gothic pillars of the vault, and you still see where this gentle scholar, this sweet humorist, this wise and lenient philosopher, paced to and fro those weary years like a restless beast--a captive wolf, or a bear in his pit. but his soul was never in prison. as he trod that _vionnet_ out of the stone he meditated upon his reading, his travels, the state of the church and its reform, politics, the origin of evil. "his reflections often lifted him above men and their imperfect works; often, too, they were marked by that scepticism which knowledge of the human heart inspires. 'when one considers things well,' he said, 'one finds that it is easier to destroy the evil than to construct the good. this world being fashioned like an ass's back, the fardel that you would balance in the middle will not stay there, but hangs over on the other side.'" bonivard was set free by the united forces of berne and geneva, preaching political and religious liberty by the cannon's mouth, as has had so often to happen. that too must have seemed droll to bonivard when he came to think it over in his humorous way. "the epoch of the renaissance and the reformation was that of strong individualities and undaunted characters. but let no one imagine a resemblance between the prior of st. victor and the great rebels his contemporaries, luther, zwinglius, and calvin. like them he was one of the learned men of his time; like them he learned to read the evangels, and saw their light disengage itself from the trembling gleams of tradition; but beyond that he has nothing in common with them. bonivard is not a hero; he is not made to obey or to command; he is an artist, a kind of poet, who treats high matters of theology in a humorous spirit; prompt of repartee, gifted with happy dash; his irony has lively point, and he likes to season the counsels of wisdom with _sauce piquante_ and rustic bonhomie.... he prepares the way for calvin, while having nothing of the calvinist; he is gay, he is jovial; he has, even when he censures, i know not what air of gentleness that wins your heart." [illustration: _a bit of villeneuve_] ix this and all the rest that i know of bonivard i learn from a charming historical and topographical study of montreux and its neighborhood, by mm. rambert, lebert, etc.; and i confess it at once, for fear some one else shall find me out by simply buying the book there. it leaves you little ground for classifying bonivard with the great reformers, but it leaves you still less for identifying him historically with byron's great melodramatic prisoner of chillon. if the majority have somewhere that personal consciousness without which they are the nonentity, one can fancy the liberal scholar, the humorous philosopher, meeting the romantic poet, and protesting against the second earthly captivity that he has delivered him over to. nothing could be more alien to bonivard than the character of byron's prisoner; and all that equipment of six supposititious brothers, who perish one by one to intensify his sufferings, is, it must be confessed, odious and ridiculous when you think of the lonely yet cheerful sceptic pacing his _vionnet_, and composing essays and verses as he walked. prisoner for prisoner, even if both were real, the un-byronic bonivard is much more to my mind. but the poet had to make a byronic bonivard, being of the romantic time he was, and we cannot blame him. the love of his sentimentality pervades the region; they have named the nearest hotel after him, and there is a _sentier byron_ leading up to it. but, on the other hand, they have called one of the lake steamboats after bonivard, which, upon the whole, i should think would be more satisfactory to him than the poem. at any rate, i should prefer it in his place. x the fine gothic chapel where we heard our pasteur preach was whitewashed out of all memory of any mural decoration that its earlier religion may have given it; but the gloss of the whitewash was subdued by the dim light that stole in through the long slits of windows. we sat upon narrow wooden seats so very hard that i hope the old dukes and their court were protected by good stout armor against their obduracy, and that they had not to wait a quarter of an hour for the holy father to come walking up the railroad track, as we had for our pasteur. there were but three men in the congregation that day, and all the rest were suissesses, with the hard, pure, plain faces their sex wear mostly in that country. the choir sat in two rows of quaintly carved seats on each side of the pulpit, and the school-master of the village led the singing, tapping his foot to keep time. the pastor, delicate and wan of face, and now no longer living, i came afterwards to know better, and to respect greatly for his goodness and good sense. his health had been broken by the hard work of a mountain parish, and he had vainly spent two winters in nice. now he was here as the assistant of the superannuated pastor of villeneuve, who had a salary of $ a year from the government; but how little our preacher had i dare not imagine, or what the pastor of the free church was paid by his parishioners. m. p---- was a man of culture far above that of the average new england country minister of this day; probably he was more like a new england minister of the past, but with more of the air of the world. he wore the genevan bands and gown, and represented in that tabernacle of the ancient faith the triumph of "the religion" with an effectiveness that was heightened by the hectic brightness of his gentle, spiritual eyes; and he preached a beautiful sermon from the beautiful text, "suffer little children," teaching us that they were the types, not the models, of christian perfection. there was first a prayer, which he read; then a hymn, and one of the psalms; then the sermon, very simply and decorously delivered; then another hymn, and prayer. here, and often again in switzerland, the new england that is past or passing was recalled to me; these swiss are like the people of our hill country in their faith, as well as their hard, laborious lives; only they sang with sweeter voices than our women. the wood-carving of the chapel, which must have been of the fourteenth century or earlier, was delightfully grotesque, and all the queerer for its contrast with the protestant, the calvinistic, whitewash which one of our fellow-boarders found here in the chapel and elsewhere in the castle _un peu vulgaire_--as if he were a boston man. but the whole place was very clean, and up the corner of one of the courts ran a strip of virginia-creeper, which the swiss call the canada vine, blood-red with autumn. there was also a rose-tree sixty years old stretching its arms abroad, over the ancient masonry, and feeling itself still young in that sheltered place. we saw it when we came later to do the whole castle, and to revere the dungeon where bonivard wore his _vionnet_ in the rock. i will not trouble the reader with much about the hall of justice and the chamber of tortures opening out of it, with the pulley for the rack formerly used in cross-questioning prisoners. these places were very interesting, and so were the bedchambers of the duke and duchess, and the great hall of the knights. the wells or pits, armed round with knife points, against which the prisoner struck when hurled down through them into the lake, have long had their wicked throats choked with sand; and the bed hewn out of the rock, where the condemned slept the night before execution, is no longer used for that purpose--possibly because the only prisoners now in chillon are soldiers punished for such social offences as tipsiness. but the place was all charmingly mediæval, and the more so for a certain rudeness of decoration. the artistic merit was purely architectural, and this made itself felt perhaps most distinctly in the prison vaults, which longfellow pronounced "the most delightful dungeon" he had ever seen. a great rose-tree overhung the entrance, and within we found them dry, wholesome, and picturesque. the beautiful gothic pillars rose like a living growth from the rock, out of which the vault was half hewn; but the iron rings to which the prisoners were chained still hung from them. the columns were scribbled full of names, and byron's was among the rest. the _vionnet_ of bonivard was there, beside one of the pillars, plain enough, worn two inches deep and three feet long in the hard stone. words cannot add to the pathos of it. [illustration: _the prisoner of chillon_] xi nothing could be more nobly picturesque than the outside of chillon. its base is beaten by the waves of the lake, to which it presents wide masses of irregularly curving wall, pierced by narrow windows, and surmounted by mansard-roofs. wild growths of vines and shrubs break the broad surfaces of the wall, and out of the shoulders of one of the towers springs a tall young fir-tree. the water at its base is intensely blue and unfathomably deep. this is what nature has done; as for men, they have hugely painted the lakeward wall of the castle with the arms of the canton vaud, which are nearly as ugly as the arms of ohio; and they have wrought into the roof of the tallest tower with tiles of a paler tint the word "chillon," so that you cannot possibly mistake it for any other castle. [illustration: _one of the fountains_] xii first and last, we hung about chillon a good deal, both by land and by water. for the latter purpose we had to hire a boat; and deceived by the fact that the owner spoke a latin dialect, i attempted to beat him down from his demand of a franc an hour. "it's too much," i cried. "it's the price," he answered, laconically. clearly i was to take it or leave it, and i took it. we did not find our fellow-republicans flatteringly polite, but we found them firm, and, for all i know, honest. at least they seemed as honest as we were, and that is saying a great deal. what struck us from the beginning was the surliness of the men and the industry of the women; and i am persuaded that the swiss government is really carried on by the house-keeping sex. at any rate, the postmaster of villeneuve was a woman; her little girl brought the mail up from the railway station in a hand-cart, and her old mother helped her to understand my french. they were rather cross about it, and one day, with the assistance of a child in arms, they defeated me in an attempt i made to get a postal order. i dare say they thought it quite a triumph; but it was not so very much to be proud of. at that period my french, always spoken with the venetian accent of the friend with whom i had studied it many years before, was taking on strange and wilful characteristics, which would have disabled me in the presence of a much less formidable force. i think the only person really able to interpret me was the amiable mistress of the croix blanche, to whose hostelry i went every day for my after-dinner coffee. she knew what i wanted whenever i asked for it, and i simplified my wants so as to meet her in the same spirit. the inn stood midway of the village street that for hundreds of yards followed the curve of the lake shore with its two lines of high stone houses. at one end of it stood a tower springing out of an almost fabulous past; then you came to the first of three plashing fountains, where cattle were always drinking, and bareheaded girls washing vegetables for the pot. aloft swung the lamps that lighted the village, on ropes stretching across the street. i believe some distinction was ascribed to villeneuve for the antiquity of this method of street-lighting. there were numbers of useful shops along the street, which wandered out into the country on the levels of the rhone, where the mountains presently shut in so close that there was scarcely room for the railway to get through. what finally became of the highway i don't know. one day i tried to run it down, but after a long chase i was glad to get myself brought back in a diligence from the next village. [illustration: _"they helped to make the hay in the marshes"_] the road became a street and ceased to be so with an abruptness that admitted nothing of suburban hesitation or compromise, and villeneuve, as far as it went, was a solid wall of houses on either side. it was called villeneuve because it was so very, very old; and in the level beyond it is placed the scene of the great helvetian victory over the romans, when the swiss made their invaders pass under the yoke. i do not know that villeneuve witnessed that incident, but it looks and smells old enough to have done so. it is reasonably picturesque in a semi-italian, semi-french fashion, but it is to the nose that it makes its chief appeal. every house has a cherished manure heap in its back yard, symmetrically shaped, with the projecting edges of the straw neatly braided: it is a source of family pride as well as profit. but it is chiefly the odor of world-old human occupation, otherwise indescribable, that pervades the air of villeneuve, and makes the mildest of foreign sojourners long for the application of a little dynamite to its ancient houses. our towns are perhaps the ugliest in the world, but how open to the sun and wind they are! how free, how pure, how wholesome! on week-days a cart sometimes passed through villeneuve with a most disproportionate banging over the cobble-stones, but usually the walls reverberated the soft tinkle of cow-bells as the kine wound through from pasture to pasture and lingered at the fountains. on sundays the street was reasonably full of young men in the peg-top trousers which the swiss still cling to, making eyes at the girls in the upper windows. these were the only times when i saw women of any age idle. sometimes through the open door i caught a glimpse of a group of them busy with their work, while a little girl read to them. once in a crowded café, where half a hundred men were smoking and drinking and chattering, the girl who served my coffee put down a volume of victor hugo's poems to bring it. but mostly their literary employments did not go beyond driving the cows to pasture and washing clothes in the lake, where they beat the linen with far-echoing blows of their paddles. they helped to make the hay on the marshes beyond the village, and they greatly outnumbered the men in the labors of the vintage. they were seldom pretty either in face or figure; they seemed all to have some stage of goitre; but their manners were charming, and their voices, as i have said, angelically sweet. our pasteur's wife said that there was a great deal of pauperism in villeneuve, "because of the drunkenness of the men and the disorder of the women;" but i saw only one man drunk in the streets there, and what the disorders of the women were i don't know. possibly their labors in the field made them poor house-keepers, though this is mere conjecture. divorce is theoretically easy, but the couple seeking it must go before a magistrate every four months for two years and insist that they continue to desire it. this makes it rather uncommon. [illustration: _cattle at the fountains_] if the women were not good-looking, if their lives of toil stunted and coarsened them, the men, with greater apparent leisure, were no handsomer. among the young i noticed the frequency of what may be called the republican face--thin and aquiline, whether dark or fair. the vaudois as i saw them were at no age a merry folk. in the fields they toiled silently; in the cafés, where they were sufficiently noisy over their new wine, they talked without laughter, and without the shrugs and gestures that enliven conversation among other latin peoples. they had a hard-favored grimness and taciturnity that with their mountain scenery reminded me of new england now and again, and gave me the bewildered sense of having dropped down in some little anterior america. but there was one thing that marked a great difference from our civilization, and that was the prevalence of uniforms, for which the swiss have the true european fondness. this is natural in a people whose men all are or have been soldiers; and the war footing on which the little republic is obliged to keep a large force in that ridiculous army-ridden europe must largely account for the abandonment of the peaceful industries to women. but the men are off at the mountain chalets too, and they are away in all lands, keeping hotels, and amassing from the candle-ends of the travelling public the fortune with which all swiss hope to return home to die. [illustration: _washing clothes in the lake_] xiii sometimes the country people i met greeted me, as sometimes they still do in new hampshire, but commonly they passed in silence. i think the mountains must have had something to do with hushing the people: far and near, on every hand, they rise such bulks of silence. the chief of their stately company was always the dent-du-midi, which alone remains perpetually snow-covered, and which, when not hooded in the rain-bearing mists of that most rainy autumn, gave back the changing light of every hour with new splendors, though of course it was most beautiful in the early sunsets. then its cold snows warmed and softened into something supernally rosy, while all the other peaks were brown and purple, and its vast silence was thrilled with a divine message that spoke to the eye. across the lake and on its farther shores the mountains were dimly blue; but nearer, in the first days of our sojourn, they were green to their tops. away up there we could see the lofty steeps and slopes of the summer pastures, and set low among them the chalets where the herdsmen dwelt. none of the mountains seemed so bare and sterile as mount washington, and though they were on a sensibly vaster scale than the white mountains generally, i remembered the grandeur of chocorua and kearsarge in their presence. but my national--not to say my hemispheric--pride suffered a terrible blow as the season advanced. i had bragged all my life of the glories of our american autumnal foliage, which i had, in common with the rest of my countrymen, complacently denied to all the rest of the world. yet here, before my very eyes, the same beautiful miracle was wrought. day after day the trees on the mountain-sides changed, and kindled and softly smouldered in a thousand delicate hues, till all their mighty flanks seemed draped in the mingling dyes of indian shawls. shall i own that while this effect was not the fiery gorgeousness of our autumn leaves, it was something tenderer, richer, more tastefully lovely? never! [illustration: _flirtation at the fountains_] the clouds lowering, and as it were loafing along, among the tops and crags, were a perpetual amusement, and when the first cold came it was odd to see a cloud in a sky otherwise clear stoop upon some crest, and after lingering there awhile drift off about its business, and leave the mountain all white with snow. this grew more and more frequent, and at last, after a long rain, we looked out on the mountains whitened all round us far down their sides, while it was still summer green and summer bloom in the valley. the moon rose and blackened the mountains below the crags of snow, which shone out above like one of her own dead landscapes. slowly the winter descended, snow after snow, keeping a line beautifully straight along the mountain-sides, till it reached the valley and put out our garden roses at last. the hard-wood trees lost their leaves, and stretched dim and brown along the lower ranges; the pines straggled high up into the snows. the jura, far across the lake; was vaguely roseate, with an effect of perpetual sunset; the dent-du-midi lost the distinction of its eternal drifts; and the cold not only descended upon us, but from the frozen hills all round us hemmed us in with a lateral pressure that pierced and chilled to the marrow. the mud froze, and we walked to church dry-shod. it was quite time to fire the vestibule stove, which, after fighting hard and smoking rebelliously at first, sobered down to its winter work, and afforded poppi's rheumatism the comfort for which he had longed pined. second paper i the winter and the vintage come on together at villeneuve, and when the snows had well covered the mountains around, the grapes in the valley were declared ripe by an act of the commune. there had been so much rain and so little sun that their ripeness was hardly attested otherwise. fully two-thirds of the crop had blackened with blight; the imperfect clusters, where they did not hang sodden and mildewed on the vines, were small and sour. it was sorrowful to see them; and when, about the middle of october, the people assembled in the vineyards to gather them, the spectacle had none of that gayety which the poets had taught me to expect of it. those poor clusters did not "reel to earth purple and gushing," but limply waited the short hooked knife with which the peasants cut them from their stems; and the peasants, instead of advancing with jocund steps and rustic song to the sound of the lute and tabor and other convenient instruments, met in obedience to public notice duly posted about the commune, and set to work, men, women, and children alike silent and serious. so many of the grapes are harvested and manufactured in common that it is necessary the vintage should begin on a fixed day, and no one was allowed to anticipate or postpone. some cut the grapes, and dropped them into the flattish wooden barrels, which others, after mashing the berries with a long wooden pestle, bore off and emptied frothing and gurgling into big casks mounted on carts. these were then driven into the village, where the mess was poured into the presses, and the wine crushed out to the last bitter dregs. the vineyards were a scene of activity, but not hilarity, though a little way off they looked rather lively with the vintagers at work in them. we climbed to one of them far up the mountain-side one day, where a family were gathering the grapes on a slope almost as steep as a house roof, father, mother, daughter, son-in-law, big boy, and big girl all silently busy together. there were bees and wasps humming around the tubs of crushed grapes in the pale afternoon sun; the view of the lake and the mountains was inspiring; but there was nothing bacchanalian in the affair, unless the thick calves of the girl, as she bent over to cut the clusters, suggested a mænad fury. these poor people were quite songless, though i am bound to say that in another vineyard i did hear some of the children singing. it had momentarily stopped raining; but it soon began again, and the vintage went sorrowfully on in the mud. all villeneuve smelt of the harsh juice and pulp arriving from the fields in the wagons, carts, tubs, and barrels which crowded the streets and sidewalks, and in divers cavernous basements the presses were at work, and there was a slop and drip of new wine everywhere. after dark the people came in from the fields and gossiped about their doors, and the red light of flitting lanterns blotched the steady rainpour. outside of the village rose the black mountains, white at the top with their snows. [illustration: _the wine-press_] in the cafés and other public places there were placards advertising american wine-presses, but i saw none of them in use. at a farm-house near us we looked on at the use of one of the old-fashioned swiss presses. under it lay a mighty cake of grapes, stems, and skins, crushed into a common mass, and bulging farther beyond the press with each turn of the screw, while the juice ran in a little rivulet into a tub below. when the press was lifted, the grapes were seen only half crushed. two peasants then mounted the cake, and trimmed it into shape with long-handled spades, piling the trimmings on top, and then bringing the press down again. they invited us with charming politeness to taste the juice, but their heavy boots bore evidence of too recent a visit to the cherished manure heap, and we thanked them with equal courtesy. this grape cake, when it had yielded up its last drop, would be broken to pieces and scattered over the fields as a fertilizer. the juice would meanwhile have been placed to ferment in the tuns, twelve and thirteen feet deep, which lay in the adjoining cellar. for weeks after the vintage people were drinking the new wine, which looked thick and whitish in the glasses, at all the cafés. it seemed to be thought a dainty beverage, but our scruples against it remained, and i cannot say what its effect upon the drinkers might be. perhaps it had properties as a "sweet, oblivious antidote" which rendered necessary the placard we saw in the café of the little hôtel chillon: "die rose blüht, der dorn der sticht; wer gleich bezahlt vergisst es nicht." or, in inadequate english: the roses bloom, the thorns they stick; no one forgets who settles quick. the relation of the ideas is not very apparent, but the lyric cry is distinctly audible. ii one morning, a week before the vintage began, we were wakened by the musical clash of cow-bells, and for days afterwards the herds came streaming from the chalets on all the mountains round to feed upon the lowland pastures for a brief season before the winter should house them. there was something charming to ear and eye in this autumnal descent of the kine, and we were sorry when it ended. they thronged the village in their passage to the levels beside the rhone, where afterwards they lent their music and their picturesqueness to the meadows. with each herd there were two or three goats, and these goats thought they were cows; but, after all, the public interest of this descent of the cows was not really comparable to that of the fall elections, now coming on with handbills and newspaper appeals very like those of our own country at like times. in the cafés, the steamboats, the railway stations, the street corners, vivid posters warned the voters against the wiles of the enemy, and the journals urged the people of the canton vaud to be up and doing; they declared the issue before them a vital one, and the crisis a crisis of the greatest moment. [illustration: _castle of aigle_] in the mean time the people in our pension, who were so intelligent and well informed about other things, bore witness to the real security of the state, and the tranquillity of the swiss mind generally concerning politics, by their ignorance of the name of their existing president. they believed he was a man of the name of schultz; but it appeared that his name was not at all schultz, when we referred the matter to our pasteur. it was from him, indeed, that i learned nearly all i knew of swiss politics, and it was from his teaching that i became a conservative partisan in the question, then before the voters, of a national free-school law. the radicals, who, the pasteur said, wished switzerland to attempt the role "_grande nation_," had brought forward this measure in the federal legislature, and it was now, according to the sensible swiss custom, to be submitted to a popular vote. it provided for the establishment of a national bureau of education, and the conservatives protested against it as the entering wedge of centralization in government affairs. they contended that in a country shared by three races and two religions education should be left as much as possible to the several cantons, which in the swiss constitution are equivalent to our states. i am happy to say that the proposed law was overwhelmingly defeated; i am happy because i liked the pasteur so much, though when i remember the sympathetic bric-à-brac dealer at vevay, who was a radical, but who sold me some old pewters at a very low price, i can't help feeling a little sorry too. however, the swiss still keep their old school law, under which each canton taxes itself for education, as our states do, though all share in the advantages of the universities, which are part of the public-school system. the parties in switzerland are fortunately not divided by questions of race or religion, but the pasteur owned that the catholics were a difficult element, and had to be carefully managed. they include the whole population of the italian cantons, and part of the french and german. in geneva and other large towns the labor question troublesomely enters, and the radicals, like our democrats, are sometimes the retrograde party. the pasteur spoke with smiling slight of the père hyacinthe and the döllinger movements, and he confessed that the protestants were cut up into too many sects to make progress among the catholic populations. the catholics often keep their children out of the public schools, as they do with us, but these have to undergo the state examinations, to which all the children, whether taught at home or in private schools, must submit. he deplored the want of moral instruction in the public schools, but he laughed at the attempts in france to instil non-religious moral principles: when i afterwards saw this done in the florentine ragged schools i could not feel that he was altogether right. he was a member of the communal school committee, and he told me that this body was appointed by the syndic and council of each commune, who are elected by the people. to some degree religion influences local feeling, the protestant church being divided into orthodox and liberal factions; there is a large unitarian party besides, and agnosticism is a qualifying element of religious thought. outside of our pension i had not many sources of information concerning the political or social life at villeneuve. i knew the village shoemaker, a german, who had fixed his dwelling there because it was so _bequem_, and who had some vague aspirations towards chicago, whither a citizen of villeneuve had lately gone. but he was discouraged by my representation, with his wax, his awl, and his hammer, successively arranged as new york, cleveland, and chicago, on his shoe-bench, of the extreme distance of the last from the seaboard. he liked his neighbors and their political system; and so did the _portier_ at the hôtel byron, another german, with whom i sometimes talked of general topics in transacting small affairs of carriage hire and the like, and who invited me to notice how perfectly well these singular swiss, in the midst of a europe elsewhere overrun with royalties, got on without a king, queen, or anything of the kind. in his country, he said, those hills would be covered with fortifications, but here they seemed not to be thought necessary. [illustration: _the market at vevey_] i made friends with the _instituteur_ of the villeneuve public school, who led the singing at church, and kept the village book-store; and he too talked politics with me, and told me that all elections were held on sunday, when the people were at leisure, for otherwise they would not take the time to vote. he was not so clear as to why they were always held in church, but that is the fact; and sometimes the sacred character of the place is not enough to suppress boisterous party feeling, though it certainly helps to control it. after divine service on election sunday i went to the croix blanche for my coffee, to pass the time till the voting should begin. on the church door was posted a printed summons to the electors, and on the café billiard tables i found ballots of the different parties scattered. gendarmes had also distributed them about in the church pews; they were enclosed in envelops, which were voted sealed. on a table before the pulpit the ballot-box--a glass urn--was placed; and beside it sat the judges of election, with lists of the registered voters. but in any precinct of the canton an elector who could prove that he had not voted at home might deposit his ballot in any other. the church bell rang for the people to assemble, and the voting began and ended in perfect quiet. but i could not witness an election of this ancient republic, where freedom was so many centuries old, without strong emotion; it had from its nature and the place the consecration of a religious rite. iii the church itself was old--almost as old as swiss freedom, and older than the freedom of the vaud. the gothic interior, which had once, no doubt, been idolatrously frescoed and furnished with statues, was now naked and coldly protestant; one window, partly stained, let in a little colored light to mix with the wintry day that struck through the others. the pulpit was in the centre of the church, and the clerk's desk diagonally across from it. the floor was boarded over, but a chill struck through from the stones below, and the people seemed to shiver through the service that preceded the election. when the pasteur mounted the pulpit they listened faithfully, but when the clerk led the psalm they vented their suffering in the most dreadful groaning that ever passed for singing outside of one of our country churches. it was all very like home, and yet unlike it, for there is much more government in switzerland than with us, and much less play of individuality. in small communes, for example, like villeneuve, there are features of practical socialism, which have existed apparently from the earliest times. certain things are held in common, as mountain pasturage and the forests, from which each family has a provision of fuel. these and other possessions of the commune are "confided to the public faith," and trespass is punished with signal severity. the trees are felled under government inspection, and the woods are never cut off wholesale. when a tree is chopped down a tree is planted, and the floods that ravage italy from the mountains denuded of their forests are unknown to the wiser swiss. throughout switzerland the state insures against fire, and inflicts penalties for neglect and carelessness from which fires may result. education is compulsory, and there is a rigid military service, and a show of public force everywhere which is quite unknown to our unneighbored, easy-going republic. i should say, upon the whole, that the likeness was more in social than in political things, strange as that may appear. there seemed to be much the same freedom among young people, and democratic institutions had produced a kindred type of manners in both countries. but i will not be very confident about all this, for i might easily be mistaken. the swiss make their social distinctions as we do; and in geneva and lausanne i understood that a more than american exclusivism prevailed in families that held themselves to be peculiarly good, and believed themselves very old. our excursions into society at villeneuve were confined to a single tea at the pasteur's, where we went with mademoiselle one evening. he lived in a certain villa garibaldi, which had belonged to an italian refugee, now long repatriated, and which stood at the foot of the nearest mountain. to reach the front door we passed through the vineyard to the back of the house, where a huge dog leaped the length of his chain at us, and a maid let us in. the pasteur, in a coat of unclerical cut, and his wife, in black silk, received us in the parlor, which was heated by a handsome porcelain stove, and simply furnished, much like such a room at home. madame p----, who was musical, played a tempestuously representative composition called "l'orage" on the upright piano, and joined from time to time in her husband's talk about swiss affairs, which i have already allowed the reader to profit by. they offered us tea, wine, grapes, and cake, and we came away at eleven, lighted home through the vineyards by louis, the farm boy, with his lantern. [illustration: _the market, vevay--a bargain before the notary_] another day mademoiselle did us the pleasure to take us to her sister, married, and living at aigle--a clean, many-hotelled, prosperous town, a few miles off, which had also the merit of a very fine old castle. we found our friends in an apartment of a former convent, behind which stretched a pretty lawn, with flowers and a fountain, and then vineyards to the foot of the mountains and far up their sides. we entered the court by a great stone-paved carriage-way, as in italy, and we found the drawing-room furnished with italian simplicity, and abounding in souvenirs of the hostess's long florentine sojourn; but it was fortified against the swiss winter by the tall swiss stove. the whole family received us, including the young lady daughter, the niece, the well-mannered boys and their father openly proud of them, and the pleasant young english girl who was living in the family, according to a common custom, to perfect her french. this part of switzerland is full of english people, who come not always for the french, but often for the cheapness which they find equally there. mr. k---- was a business man, well-to-do, well educated, agreeable, and interesting; his house and his table, where we sat down to the mid-day dinner of the country, were witness to his prosperity. i hope it is no harm, in the interest of statistics, to say that this good swiss dinner consisted of soup, cold ham put up like sausage, stuffed roast beef which had first been boiled, cauliflower, salad, corn-starch pudding, and apples stewed whole and stuck full of pine pips. there was abundance of the several kinds of excellent wine made upon the estate, both white and red, and it was freely given to the children. mr. k---- seemed surprised when we refused it for ours; and probably he could have given us good reason for his custom. his boys were strong, robust, handsome fellows; he had a charming pride in showing us the prizes they had taken at school; and on the lawn they were equally proud to show the gymnastic feats they had learned there. i believe we are coming to think now that the american schools are better than the swiss; but till we have organized something like the swiss school excursions, and have learned to mix more open air with our instruction, i doubt if the swiss would agree with us. after dinner we went to the _vente_, or charitable fair, which the young ladies of the town were holding in one of the public buildings. it was bewilderingly like the church fair of an american country town, socially and materially. the young ladies had made all sorts of pretty knick-knacks, and were selling them at the little tables set about the room; they also presided, more or less alluringly, at fruit, coffee, and ice-cream stands; and--i will not be sure, but i _think_--some of them seemed to be flirting with the youth of the other sex. there was an auction going on, and the place was full of tobacco smoke, which the women appeared not to mind. a booth for the sale of wine and beer was set off, and there was a good deal of amiable drinking. this was not like our fairs quite; and i am bound to say that the people of aigle had more polished manners, if not better, than our country-town average. to quit this scene for the castle of aigle was to plunge from the present into my favorite middle ages. we were directly in the times when the lords of berne held the vaud by the strong hand, and forced protestant convictions upon its people by the same vigorous methods. the castle was far older than their occupation, but it is chiefly memorable as the residence of their bailiffs before the independence of the vaud was established after the french revolution. they were hard masters, but they left political and religious freedom behind them, where perhaps neither would have existed without them. the castle, though eminently picturesque and delightfully gothic, is very rudely finished and decorated, and could never have been a luxurious seat for the bailiffs. it is now used by the local courts of law; a solitary, pale, unshaven old prisoner, who seemed very glad of our tribute-money, inhabited its tower, and there was an old woman carding wool in the baronial kitchen. her little grandson lighted a candle and showed us the _oubliettes_, which are subterranean dungeons, one above the other, and barred by mighty doors of wood and iron. the outer one bore an inscription, which i copied: "doubles grilles a gros cloux, triples portes, fortes verroux, aux âmes vraiment méchantes vous représentez l'enfer; mais aux âmes innocentes vous n'êtes que du bois, de la pierre, & du fer!" [illustration: _germans at montreux_] but these doors, thus branded as representing the gates of hell to guilty souls, and to the innocent being merely wood, stone, and iron, sufficed equally to shut the blameless in, and i doubt if the reflection suggested was ever of any real comfort to them. for one thing, the captives could not read the inscription; it seems to have been intended rather for the edification of the public. we visited the castle a second time, to let the children sketch it; and even i, who could not draw a line, became with them the centre of popular interest. half a dozen little people who had been playing "snap-the-whip" left off and crowded round, and one of the boys profited by the occasion to lock into the barn, near which we sat, a peasant who had gone in to fodder his cattle. when he got out he criticised the pictures, and insisted that one of the artists should put in a certain window which he had left out of the tower. upon the whole, we liked him better as a prisoner. "what would you do," i asked the children, "if i gave you a piece of twenty-five centimes?" they reflected, and then evidently determined to pose as good children. "we would give it to our mamma." "now don't you think," i pursued, "that it would be better to spend it for little cakes?" this instantly corrupted them, and they cried with one voice, "oh yes!" out of respect to me the oldest girl made a small boy pull up his stocking, which had got down round his ankle, and then they took the money and all ran off. later they returned to show me that they had got it changed into copper and shared equally among them. they must have spent an evening of great excitement talking us over. the october sun set early, chill, and disconsolate after a rain. a weary peasant with a heavy load on his back, which he looked as if he had brought from the dawn of time, approached the castle gate, and bowed to us in passing. i was not his feudal lord, but his sad, work-worn aspect gave me as keen a pang as if i had been. iv the pays de vaud is also the land of castles, and the visitor to vevay should not fail to see blonay castle, the seat of the ancient family which, with intervals of dispossession, has possessed it ever since the crusades. it is only a little way off, on the first rise of the hills, from which it looks over the vineyards on inexpressible glories of lake and distant mountains, and it is most nobly approached through steeps of vine and grove. apparently it is kept up in as much of the sentiment of the past as possible, and one may hire its baronial splendor fully furnished; for the keeper told it had been occupied by an english family for the last three winters. the finish, like that of the castle of aigle, is rude, but the whole place is wonderfully picturesque and impressive. the arched gateway is alone worth a good rent; the long corridors from which the chambers open are suitable to ghosts fond of walking exercise; the superb dining-room is round, and the floor is so old that it would shake under the foot of the lightest spectre. the _répertoire_ of family traditions is almost inexhaustible, and doubtless one might have the use of them for a little additional money. one of the latest is of the seventeenth century, when the daughter of the house was "the beautiful nicolaïde de blonay, before whom many adorers had bent the knee in vain. among them, a certain tavel de villars, vanquished the proud beauty by his constancy. but the marriage was delayed. officer in the service of france, tavel was detained by his military duties. in the mean time jean-françois de blonay, of another branch of the family, the savoyard branch, fell in love with his cousin, and twice demanded her in marriage. twice he was refused. then, listening only to his passion, he assembled some of his friends, and hid himself with them near the castle. they watched the comings and goings of the baron, and suddenly profiting by his absence, they entered his dwelling and carried off the fair nicolaïde, who, transported to savoy, rewarded the boldness of her captor by becoming his wife. this history, which resembles that of the beautiful helen, and is not less authentic, kindled the fiercest hostilities between the tavel and blonay families; the french and italian ambassadors intervened; and it all ended in a sentence pronounced at berne against the blonays--a sentence as useless as it was severe--for the principal offenders had built a nest for their loves in domains which they possessed in savoy. the old baron alone felt its effects. he was severely reprimanded for having so ill fulfilled his paternal duties." the good burghers of berne--the lords as they called themselves--were in fact very hard with all their vaudois subjects. "equally merciless to the vanities and the vices, they confounded luxury and drunkenness in their rules, pleasures and bad manners. they were no less the enemies of innovations. coffee at its introduction was stigmatized as a devilish invention; tea was no better; as to tobacco, whether snuffed or smoked, it was worse yet. low-necked dresses and low-quartered shoes were rigorously forbidden. games and all dances, 'except three modest dances on wedding-days,' were unlawful.... the sabbath was strictly observed; silence reigned in the villages, even those remotest from the church, until the divine service of the afternoon was closed; no cart might pass in the street, and no child play there.... in short, all their ordinances and regulations witness a firm design on the part of their excellencies 'to revive among all those under their domination a life and manners truly christian.' the pays de vaud under this régime acquired its moral and religious education. a more serious spirit gradually prevailed. the bible became the book _par excellence_, the book of the fireside, and on sunday the exercises of devotion took the place of the public amusements." [illustration: _church terrace, montreux_] when the regicides fled from england after the restoration they could not have sought a more congenial refuge than such a land as this. one of them, as is known, died in vevay by the shot of an assassin sent to murder him by charles ii.; with another he is interred in the old church of st. martin there; and i went there to revere the tombs of ludlow and broughton. while i was looking about for them a familiar name on a tablet caught my eye, and i read that "william walter phelps, of new jersey, and charles a. phelps, of massachusetts, his descendants beyond the seas," had set it there in memory of the brave john phelps, who was so anxious to be known as clerk of the court which tried charles stuart that he set his name to every page of its record. that tablet was the most interesting thing in the old church; but i found vevay quaint and attractive in every way. it is, as all the world knows, the paradise of pensions and hotels and boarding-schools, and one may live well and study deeply there for a very little money. it was part of our mission to lunch at the most gorgeous of the hotels, and to look upon such of our fellow-countrymen as we might see there, after our long seclusion at villeneuve; and we easily found all the splendor and compatriotism we wanted. the hotel we chose stood close upon the lake, with a superb view of the mountains, and its evergreens in tubs stood about the gravelled spaces in a manner that consoled us with a sense of being once more in the current of polite travel. the waiter wanted none of our humble french, but replied to our timorous advances in that tongue in a correct and finally expensive english. under the stimulus of this experience we went to a bric-à-brac shop and bought a lot of fascinating old pewter platters and flagons, and then we went recklessly shopping about in all directions. we even visited an exhibition of swiss paintings, which, from an ethical and political point of view, were admirable; and we strolled delightedly about through the market, where the peasant women sat and knitted before their baskets of butter, fruit, cheese, flowers, and grapes, and warbled their gossip and their bargains in their angelic suissesse voices, while their husbands priced the cattle and examined the horses. it was all very picturesque, and prophesied of the greater picturesqueness of italy, which we were soon to see. v in fact, there was a great deal to make one think of italy in that region; but the resemblance ended mostly with the southern architecture and vegetation. our lake coast had its own features, one of the most striking of which was its apparent abandonment to the use and pleasure of strangers. it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the water was everywhere bordered by hotels and pensions. such large places as vevay and lausanne had their proper life, of course, but of smaller ones, like montreux, the tourist seemed to be in exclusive possession. in our walks thither we met her--when the tourist was of that sex--young, gay, gathering the red leaves of the virginia-creeper from the lakeward terraces of the highway; we met him, old, sick, pale, munching the sour grapes, and trying somehow to kill the time. large listless groups of them met every steamboat from which we landed, and parties of them encountered us on every road. "a hash of foreigners," the swiss call montreux, and they scarcely contribute a native flavor to the dish. the englishman no longer characterizes sojourn there, i should say; the americans, who pay and speak little or no french, and the russians, who speak beautiful french but do not pay, are there in about equal abundance; there are some french people; but if it came to my laying my hand upon my heart, i should say there seemed more germans than any other nationality at montreux. they are not pretty to look at, and apparently not pleasant; and it is said that the swiss, who digest them along with the rest of us, do not like them. in fact, the germans seem everywhere to take their new national consequence ungraciously. besides the foreigners, there is not much to see at montreux, though one must not miss the ancient church which looks out from its lofty place over the lake, and offers the visitor many seats on its terrace for the enjoyment of the same view. the day we went he had pretty well covered the gravel with grape-skins; but he had left the prospect undisturbed. what struck me principally in montreux was its extreme suitability to the purposes of the international novelist. it was full of sites for mild incidents, for tacit tragedies, for subdued flirtations, and arrested improprieties. i can especially recommend the kursaal at montreux to my brother and sister fictionists looking about for a pretty _entourage_. its terrace is beaten by the billows of the restless lake, and in soft weather people sit at little tables there; otherwise they take their ices inside the café, and all the same look out on the dent-du-midi, and feel so bored with everybody that they are just in the humor to be interested in anybody. there is a very pretty theatre in the kursaal, where they seldom give entertainments, but where, if you ever go, you see numbers of pretty girls, and in a box a pale, delicate-looking middle-aged englishman in a brown velvet coat, with his two daughters. the concert will be very good, and a young man of cultivated sympathies and disdainful tastes could have a very pleasant time there. for the rest, montreux offers to the novelist's hand perhaps the crude american of the station who says it is the cheapest place he has struck, and he is going to stick it out there awhile; perhaps the group of chattering american school-girls; perhaps the little jewish water-color painter who tells of his narrow escape from the mad dog, which having broken his chain at bouveret, had bitten six persons on the way to clarens, and been killed by the gendarmes near vevay; perhaps two englishwomen who talk for half an hour about their rooms at the hotel, and are presently joined by their husbands, who pursue the subject. these are the true features of modern travel, and for a bit of pensive philosophy, or to have a high-bred, refined widow with a fading sorrow encountered by a sensitive nature of the other sex, there is no better place than the sad little english church-yard at montreux. it is full of the graves of people who have died in the search for health far from home, and it has a pathos therefore which cannot be expressed. the stones grow stained and old under the laurels and hollies, and the rain-beaten ivy creeps and drips all over the grassy mounds. yes, that is a beautiful, lonely, heart-breaking place. now and again i saw black-craped figures silently standing there, and paid their grief the tribute of a stranger's pang as i passed, happy with my children by my side. vi i did not find aigle and blonay enough to satisfy my appetite for castles, and once, after several times passing a certain _château meublé à louer_ in the levels of the rhone valley, i made bold to go in and ask to look at it. i loved it for the certain louis xv. grandiosity there was about it; for the great clock in the stable wall; for the balcony frescos on the front of the garden-house, and for the arched driveway to the court. it seemed to me a wonderfully good thing of its kind, and i liked napoleon's having lodged in it when his troops occupied villeneuve. it had, of course, once belonged to a rich family, but it had long passed out of their hands into those of the sort of farmer-folk who now own it, and let it when they can. it had stood several years empty, for the situation is not thought wholesome, and the last tenant had been an english clergyman, who kept a school in it for baddish boys whom no one else could manage, and who were supposed to be out of harm's way there. i followed a young man whom i saw going into the gateway, and asked him if i could see the house. he said "yes," and summoned his mother, a fierce-looking little dame, in a black vaudois cap, who came out of a farm-house near with jingling keys, and made him throw open the whole house, while she walked me through the sad, forgotten garden, past its silent fountain, and through its grove of pine to the top of an orchard wall, where the dent-du-midi showed all its snow-capped mass. within, the château was very clean and dry; the dining-room was handsomely panelled, and equipped with a huge porcelain stove; the shelves of the library were stocked with soberly bound books, and it was tastefully frescoed; the pretty chambers were in the rococo taste of the fine old rococo time, with successive scenes of the same history painted over the fireplaces throughout the suite; the drawing-room was elegant with silk hangings and carved mirrors; and the noble staircase, whose landing was honored with the bust of the french king of the château's period, looked as if that prince had just mounted it. all these splendors, with the modern comfort of hot and cold water wherever needed, you may have, if you like, for $ a year; and none of the castles i saw compared with this château in richness of finish or furnishing. i am rather particular to advertise it because a question, painfully debating itself in my mind throughout my visit, as to the sum i ought to offer the woman was awkwardly settled by her refusing to take anything, and i feel a lingering obligation. but, really, i do not see how the reader, if he likes solitary state, or has "daughters to educate," or baddish boys to keep out of mischief, or is wearing out a heavy disappointment, or is suffering under one of those little stains or uneasy consciences such as people can manage so much better in europe--i say i do not see how he could suit himself more perfectly or more cheaply than in that pensively superb old château, with its aristocratic seclusion, and possibly malarious, lovely old garden. [illustration: _tour up the lake_] vii early in october, before the vintage began, we seized the first fine day, which the dent-du-midi lifted its cap of mists the night before to promise, and made an early start for the tour of the lake. mademoiselle and her cousins came with us, and we all stood together at the steamer's prow to watch the morning sunshine break through the silvery haze that hung over villeneuve, dimly pierced by the ghostly poplars wandering up the road beside the rhone. as we started, the clouds drifted in ineffable beauty over the mountain-sides; one slowly dropped upon the lake, and when we had sailed through it we had come in sight of the first town on the french border, which the gendarmes of the two nations seemed to share equally between them. all these lake-side villages are wonderfully picturesque, but this first one had a fancy in chimney-tops which i think none of the rest equalled--some were twisted, some shaped like little chalets; and there were groups of old wood-colored roofs and gables which were luxuries of color. a half-built railroad was struggling along the shore; at times it seemed to stop hopelessly; then it began again, and then left off, to reappear beyond some point of hill which had not yet been bored through or blown quite away. i have never seen a railroad laboring under so many difficulties. the landscape was now grand and beautiful, like new england, now pretty and soft, like old england, till we came to evains-les-bains, which looked like nothing but the french watering-place it was. it looked like a watering-place that would be very gay in the season; there were lots of pretty boats; there was a most official-looking gendarme in a cocked hat, and two jolly young priests joking together; and there were green, frivolous french fishes swimming about in the water, and apparently left behind when the rest of the brilliant world had flown. here the little english artist who had been so sociable all the way from villeneuve was reinforced by other englishmen, whom we found on the much more crowded boat to which we had to change. our company began to diversify itself: there were french and german parties as well as english. we changed boats four times in the tour of the lake, and each boat brought us a fresh accession of passengers. by-and-by there came aboard a brave italian, with birds in cages and gold-fish in vases, with a gay southern face, a coral neck button, a brown mustache and imperial, and a black-tasselled red fez that consoled. he was the vividest bit of color in our composition, though we were not wanting in life without him. there began to be some americans besides ourselves, and a pretty girl of our nation, who occupied a public station at the boat's prow, seemed to know that she was pretty, but probably did not. she will recognize herself in this sketch; but who was that other pretty maiden, with brown eyes wide apart, and upper lip projecting a little, as if pulled out by the piquant-nose? i must have taken her portrait so carefully because i thought she would work somewhere into fiction; but the reader is welcome to her as she is. he may also have the _spirituelle_ english girl who ordered tea, and added, "i want some kätzchens with my tea." "kätzchens! kätzchen is a little cat." "yes; it's a word of my own invention." these are the brilliant little passages of foreign travel that make a voyage to europe worth while. i add to this international gallery the german girl in blue calico, who had so strong a belief that she was elegantly dressed that she came up on deck with her coffee, and drank it where we might all admire her. i intersperse also the comment that it is the germans who seem to prevail now in any given international group, and that they have the air of coming forward to take the front seats as by right; while the english, once so confident of their superiority, seem to yield the places to them. but i dare say this is all my fancy. i am sure, however, of the ever-varying grandeur and beauty of the alps all round us. those of the savoyard shore had a softer loveliness than the swiss, as if the south had touched and mellowed them, as it had the light-colored trousers which in geneva recalled the joyous pantaloons of italy. these mountains moulded themselves one upon another, and deepened behind their transparent shadows with a thousand dimmer and tenderer dyes in the autumnal foliage. from time to time a village, gray-walled, brown-roofed, broke the low helving shore of the lake, where the poplars rose and the vineyards spread with a monotony that somehow pleased; and at nyon a twelfth-century castle, as noble as chillon, offered the delight of its changing lines as the boat approached and passed. at geneva we had barely time to think rousseau, to think calvin, to think voltaire, to drive swiftly through the town and back again to the boat, fuming and fretting to be off. there is an old town, gravely picturesque and austerely fine in its fine old burgherly, calvinistic, exclusive way; and outside the walls there is a new town, very clean, very cold, very quiet, with horse-cars like boston, and a new renaissance theatre like paris. the impression remains that geneva is outwardly a small moralized bostonian paris; and i suppose the reader knows that it has had its political rings and bosses like new york. it also has an exact reproduction of the veronese tombs of the scaligeri, which the eccentric duke of brunswick, who died in geneva, willed it the money to build; like most fac-similes, they are easily distinguishable from the original, and you must still go to verona to see the tombs of the scaligeri. but they have the real mont blanc at geneva, bleak to the eye with enduring snow, and the blue rhone, rushing smooth and swift under the overhanging balconies of quaint old houses. with its neat quays, azure lake, symmetrical hotel fronts, and white steamboats, geneva was like an admirable illustration printed in colors, for a holiday number, to imitate a water-color sketch. when we started we were detained a moment by conjugal affection. a lady, who had already kept the boat waiting, stopped midway up the gang-plank to kiss her husband in parting, in spite of the captain's loud cries of "allez! allez!" and the angry derision of the passengers. we were in fact all furious, and it was as much as a mule team with bells, drawing a wagon loaded with bags of flower, and a tree growing out of a tower beside the lake, could do to put me in good-humor. yet i was not really in a hurry to have the voyage end; i was enjoying every moment of it, only, when your boat starts, you do not want to stop for a woman to kiss her husband. again we were passing the wild savoyard shore, where the yellow tops of the poplars jutted up like spires from the road-sides, and on the hill-sides tracts of dark evergreens blotted their space out of the vaster expanses of autumn foliage; back of all rose gray cliffs and crags. now and then we met a boat of our line; otherwise the blue stretch of the water was broken only by the lateen-sails of the black-hulked lake craft. at that season the delicate flame of the virginia-creeper was a prominent tint on the walls all round the lake. lausanne, which made us think gibbon, of course, was a stately stretch of architecture along her terraces; vevay showed us her quaint market square, and her old church on its heights; then came montreux with its many-hotelled slopes and levels, and chalets peeping from the brows of the mountains that crowd it upon the lake. all these places keep multitudes of swans, whose snow reddened in the sunset that stained the water more and more darkly crimson till we landed at villeneuve. viii when december came, and the vintage and elections were over, and the winter had come down into the valley to stay, italy called to us more and more appealingly. yet it was not so easy to pull up and go. i liked the row-boat on the lake, though it was getting too cold and rough for that; i liked the way the railway guards called out "verney-montreux!" and "territey-chillon!" as they ran alongside the carriages at these stations; i liked the pastel portraits of mademoiselle's grandmothers on the gray walls of our pretty chamber that overlooked the lake, and overheard the lightest lisp of that sometimes bellowing body of water; i liked the notion of the wild-ducks among the reeds by the rhone, though i had no wish to kill them; i liked our little corner fireplace, where i covered a log of the _grand bois_ every night in the coals, and found it a perfect line of bristling embers in the morning; i liked poppi and the three generations of boulettes; and, yes, i liked mademoiselle and all her boarders; and i hated to leave these friends. mademoiselle made a grand thanksgiving supper in honor of the american nation, for which we did our best to figure both at the table, where smoked a turkey driven over the alps from his italian home for that fête (there are no swiss turkeys), and in the dance, for which he had wellnigh disabled us. poppi was in uncommon tune that night, and the voice of this pensive rheumatic lent a unique interest to every change of the virginia reel. but these pleasures had to end; it grew colder and colder; we had long since consumed all the old grape-roots which constituted our _petit bois_, and we were ravaging our way through an expensive pile of _grand bois_ without much effect upon the climate. one morning the most enterprising spirit of our party kindled such a mighty blaze on our chamber hearth that she set the chimney on fire, thus threatening the swiss republic with the loss of the insurance, and involving mademoiselle in i know not what penalties for having a chimney that could be set on fire. by the blessing of heaven, the vigor of mademoiselle, and the activity of louis and alexis the farmer, the flames were subdued and the house saved. mademoiselle forgave us, but we knew it was time to go, and the next sunday we were in florence. the end switzerland _in the same series_ austria-hungary england france italy at les plans in april. switzerland by frank fox author of "ramparts of empire" "peeps at the british empire," "australia," and "oceania" with full-page illustrations in colour london adam and charles black preface in switzerland, above all other lands of europe, is the greatness of nature manifest. but not even the alps can overshadow the story of her gallant people. the swiss are more interesting even than switzerland. in this volume therefore--a volume intended to give the reader who cannot hope to see switzerland some idea of its character, as well as to guide those who hope or intend to undertake a swiss tour--an attempt has been made to give a brief sketch of the origins and achievements of the swiss people, as well as to describe the natural beauties of the country. to a very remarkable extent the history of switzerland has affected the general current of european history, partly through the courage of the mercenary soldiers that the alpine communities sent abroad in olden times, partly because always switzerland has provided a house of refuge for political exiles from other countries. the deeds of her people cannot but be interesting in every land where european civilisation rules. they have the interest not only of their essential heroism but of their near relation to the development of other countries. no exhaustive record has been attempted. this volume cannot, for the serious student, serve either as a history of switzerland, as a description of the swiss alps, or as a record of those interesting literary and scientific coteries which grew up beside the swiss lakes. its purpose rather is to give to the reader who cannot devote a special interest to the country some fairly adequate idea of its history, its character, and institutions. the illustrations have been selected to give as comprehensive an impression as possible of the various beauties of swiss scenery. frank fox. contents chapter i the spirit of the mountains chapter ii the earliest swiss: the lake-dwellers: charlemagne chapter iii the swiss in the middle ages chapter iv modern switzerland chapter v some literary associations chapter vi the swiss and human thought chapter vii the swiss people to-day chapter viii alpine climbing chapter ix natural beauties of switzerland chapter x avalanches and glaciers chapter xi the alpine clubs chapter xii the flowers of the alps chapter xiii swiss sports chapter xiv swiss schools chapter xv some statistical facts index list of illustrations in colour . at les plans in april . the matterhorn from the riffelberg . looking down the rhone valley from mt. palerin at the eastern end of the lake of geneva . a distant view of the jura range from the south side of the lake of geneva . fluelen at the end of uri lake . altdorf . a village on the st. gothard railway . the statue of jean-jacques rousseau on the island in the rhone, geneva . château de prangins . geneva from the arve . l'Église de la madeleine, geneva . an alpine village, grindelwald . alpine herdsmen . hay hauling on the alpine snow . sunset on mont blanc from geneva . the palu glacier . winter sunrise in the engadine--cresta, celerina, and samaden . the schiahorn. "the châlets are like fairy houses or toys" . a mountain path, grindelwald . castle of chillon . davos in winter--the home of john addington symonds . märjelen see and great aletsch glacier . looking up valley towards zermatt from near randa . the dents du midi from gryon above bex . the schwartzhorn from the fluela hospice . an alpine meadow in bloom . hepatica in the woods at bex . alpine garden (la linnea) at bourg st. pierre on the road to the great st. bernard, beginning of august . hunting the chamois . a corner of aigle skating rink . berne . lausanne _sketch map at end of volume_ switzerland chapter i the spirit of the mountains the swiss as a people often suffer in the judgment of the tourist by failure to live up to their reputation as a "mountain people"--to a glorious "alpine" character. the dweller by the shores of the sea or by the riverine plains, setting his feet along a mountain path towards the peaks which go up to meet the sky, ordinarily feels a sense of joy and freedom as he climbs to the higher air. he seems to shake off shackles from his mind and to enter into an enjoyment of life which is less earthly and nearer to the spiritual. his imagination is impressed with the thought that truly he is mounting towards the stars. there is, to aid imagination, a definite corporal effect due to a slight change in the nature of the air. a quickening pulse seems to tell of the heart becoming more generous in response to the spirit of the mountains. from this feeling of exhilaration of the mind and the body, which comes when ascending, after a long stay on the plains, to a mountain height, arises an almost universal belief in human thought that there is some special spiritual and ennobling influence in the mountains of the earth. poets have sung of it again and again: philosophers have admitted to it with a more discreet but with a no less certain rapture. many scientists have explained it with as ingenious explanations as were offered by those learned men who were set by a waggish french king to explain to him why it was that: given two dishes, each full to the brim of water, and two fish of equal size, but one dead and the other alive: and allowed that the live fish is put in the one full dish and the dead fish in the other full dish with equal care: then, whilst the water of the dish in which the dead fish is placed will overflow at once, the water of the dish in which the live fish is placed will not overflow. that king's merry jest on his men of learning who set out to find a reason for a "fact" before finding out whether it was a fact, was neatly countered, if my memory of the story be correct, by one courtier-scientist who ingeniously pleaded that what his majesty said on any matter must, by all loyal subjects, be accepted as a fact, and in truth did, to the loyal mind, become a fact, no unworthy suspicions being harboured that a king of france could not make, change, or annul a natural law just as well as any other law. in truth, though, the idea that dwelling on a mountain-top has a strengthening effect on the human frame and an ennobling influence on the human character is mostly fallacious. it may be "explained" but not proved. those who hold it, if questioned in the socratic manner to give proofs in the first place of the existence of the ennobling influence they believe in, could well plead a general human consent on the point--a universal belief. but they would, i think, be hard put to it, to offer any more real proof than the statements of some poet, or of some philosopher, or the explanation of some scientist who had explained a circumstance without first proving it. let there be imagined a cross-examination on the point by some modern follower of socrates' methods: _s._ you say that the swiss people are a noble race because they are a mountain race. will you, if you have time, explain to me why that is so? i am very anxious to know the true reason why the fact of living on a mountain should have this fine effect on the human character. _t._ on that point, surely, there is no difference of opinion at all? every one knows that the mountain races are the most brave, the most eager for liberty, the most virtuous of the earth. _s._ but it happens that i am not so wise as those people. i do not know, and i am very anxious to learn. can you show me that it is a fact that mountain races are as you say? and afterwards, since you evidently have knowledge on this point and i am anxious to be your pupil, perhaps you will tell me why it is so. _t._ you ask a rather difficult question. it is like, almost, raising the question as to whether the earth is round. are you not satisfied to know that nearly all the poets and philosophers who have written about the mountains seem to be agreed on this point when they refer to it at all; and that few have written about mountains without making some reference to the noble nature of mountain peoples? _s._ to tell you the truth, i am not quite satisfied. it is even possible that the poets have been mistaken. probably you have heard of a german wise man named schopenhauer and have read his writings. _t._ (interrupting.) yes. but if he writes against mountain people i would not accept him as an authority on this point about which we are talking, since there are many men on the other side of so much greater authority. _s._ no. i do not wish you to accept him as an authority on the character of mountain peoples. indeed i do not know whether he has ever written at all on that subject. but he has written on the subject of female and male beauty. he does not think that women are more beautiful than men, but less beautiful. and when they would argue against him the words of the great poets, who are all quite agreed that women are more beautiful than men, he retorts that all these poets have been men, and that they have been blinded by their passions for women, and have not been able therefore to come to a sound and cool judgment. he argues that if the greatest poets had been women the beauty of men and not of women would have been sung. does that not seem to you a rational argument? _t._ yes. certainly it is not absurd. there may be some truth in what he says. _s._ so the words of the poets may not always be accepted as proof of the truth, especially if it can be shown that they may be prejudiced regarding the matters of which they speak. _t._ i agree with you there. but i do not see that there is any necessary application to the point about which we were arguing--the noble character of mountain peoples. _s._ i wish to come to that now. i accept what you say that very many poets and wise men have exalted the character of mountain peoples. but now, can you tell me were those poets and wise men themselves generally of mountain peoples? _t._ no, certainly not. you cannot argue that they were prejudiced in that way. indeed in my recollection i can recall no very great poet or philosopher who was of a mountain people and was brought up and educated in his own country. _s._ now that seems to me to be a very pertinent fact. it is the case, then, that though mountain peoples are superior to other peoples, they do not produce and rear poets and philosophers to any extent; that these praises of the better qualities of mountain peoples come from the great men whom the peoples of the plains produce? yet surely the peoples who produce most plentifully great men, poets and philosophers, are the greatest peoples? the dialogue need not be pursued further until t., like euthyphron, finds that he is in a hurry and it is time to be off. its purpose is to suggest that it is not at all necessary to endorse without question the very generally accepted idea that there is some specially beneficent effect on the human character in mountain life. the exhilaration that one feels in going on a journey from the plains to the mountains is real, and on it apparently has been built all the fabric of mountain worship. that exhilaration is in all probability far more the effect of a change of living conditions than of a passing to better conditions. human life primitively flowed fluid, here and there, in nomadic movements. when it began to congeal in cities and communities it departed from natural conditions, and nature often exacts as a penalty some atrophy of the life impulse. but a change of environment and of air--any change--brings usually a stimulus. nature thinks we are off to be nomad children playing at her skirts again, and gives back to us as a reward a hint of the old savage energy. i have felt a keen renewal of energy going up from the plains to the mountains: and after a year on the tableland a far keener renewal on going back to the plains. it is in like case with most people, i think, if they would take the trouble to examine into the matter. but most of us live on the plains and go for our holidays to the hills (or the sea) and associate the exhilaration arising from change of air or surroundings to some special quality of mountain conditions. those who live on the mountains and might in turn proclaim the exhilaration of going down on to the plains are few and not markedly vocal for securing a public hearing. there is an early poem of tennyson, which expresses no more than the orthodox view of the influence of mountains on our human nature: of old sat freedom on the heights, the thunders breaking at her feet: above her shook the starry lights: she heard the torrents meet. there in her place she did rejoice, self-gather'd in her prophet-mind, but fragments of her mighty voice came rolling on the wind. then stept she down thro' town and field to mingle with the human race, and part by part to men reveal'd the fullness of her face. [illustration: the matterhorn from the riffelberg.] our swiss friends are expected by the traveller to carry themselves in all things with the pride and dignity of people who are born in the original home of european liberty. but tennyson's idea, whilst pretty, is exactly false. civilisations and traditions of human freedom have always begun on the plains--by sea-shore and river-bank. there have been born the ideas of freedom and human right, and these ideas have at a later stage made their way to the mountain ranges by various paths. in one set of cases the course of race history has run that the people of the plain have become softened by civilisation and luxury, and hairy savages from the hills have learned to steal first their cattle and then the riches of their cities, and finally their ideas. sometimes in these cases the people of the plain have been aroused to an old vigour by the robbers of the hills, have beaten them back after having imposed upon them some ideas of law and order, and have thus set the foundations for civilised mountain communities. sometimes, again, the people of the hills have succeeded in establishing themselves on the plain, mingling with the civilised people whom they conquered, and in time learning their culture. in another set of cases a nation as it perfected its civilisation on a plain has found it necessary to shed off some of its rougher elements, and these have taken to robber nests in the hills and carried with them some better ideas than those of the hill-tribes. or yet again, one nation of the plain has been invaded and conquered by another nation of the plain, and its remnants have sought refuge in the hills, so forming the best historical type of mountain communities (thus the celts did in the highlands of scotland and wales when the saxon invasion drove them from the plains of britain). but never has any notable civilisation sat first upon the heights and marched from there down to the plains. always, on the contrary, human progress has progressed from the plain to the mountain; and found the path sometimes very difficult, and very treacherously defended. where a mountain range has affected favourably the progress of human thought it has been because it gave a rampart and a refuge to the remnants of some civilisation of the plains threatened with submergence by calamity. to get a fair impression of switzerland and the swiss at the outset, then, it seems to be advisable to clear away this common misconception of mountain ranges as being the nurses inevitably of heroic human natures. the swiss have been absurdly over-praised by some, largely because of this root fallacy that a mountain people must have all the virtues. they have been unfairly over-blamed by others, who seem to have started with a preconceived idea of an impossibly heroic people and to have been soured when they found unreasonable illusions shattered. "the swiss are stubborn, devoid of all generous sentiment, not generous nor humane," said ruskin. there spoke the disappointed sentimentalist. obviously he approached the swiss from the fallacious "alpine character" point of view, and vainly expected them to live up to the super-heroic idea he had formed of the sort of people who ought to inhabit the slopes of such magnificent mountains. voltaire, de staël, hugo, dumas, all abuse the swiss. they demanded of them--carried away by that idea of the mountains enduing people with virtues--an impossible standard, and kicked at them for not living up to it, as a chinaman kicks his joss when it does not bring rain under impossible wind conditions. to inhabit a mountain country is, if all the facts are taken into account, a handicap rather than an advantage to a race. in the earlier stages of civilisation the mountains have imposed upon them the duty of sheltering alike fleeing patriots and fleeing criminals: and the criminals are usually the more numerous. in later stages mountains interfere greatly with the development of the machinery of civilisation. always, too, mountain air sharpens the appetite rather than the wits, and there are some diseases attacking particularly the brain which are almost peculiar to mountain districts. the swiss, then, have to be considered justly rather in the light of a handicapped than of a favoured people. their one favouring national circumstance is that their central position in regard to the great plains of europe has put them in the track of all the chief currents of civilisation. what they have managed to effect in spite of the handicap of their mountains is one of the marvellous stories of the human race; and to the mountains they owe in the main their sense of national unity. they served as the bond of a common misfortune. chapter ii the earliest swiss: the lake-dwellers: charlemagne to her lakes rather than to her mountains switzerland owed the beginnings of civilisation. nowadays, as the curtains of mist are rolled away from the past by geologist and anthropologist, we are coming to a clearer idea of the origins of this wonderful civilisation of ours, which makes the common routine of a plain citizen to-day more full of wonders than any legend told of an ancient god. science, fossicking in the tunnels of the excavators and scanning closely what they bring up to the surface light, is inclined now to tell us that the beginnings of organised community life were on the lake shores of some ancient age. the idea would be reasonable in theory even if it had no facts to support it. a lake means shelter, water, fish: it suggests--in this unlike a river--settling down. in a lake the fish teem thick and become big and fat and slothful. (note how the little fighting trout of the rapid streams grow to the big, stupid, inert things of the new zealand lakes, fish that come and ask to be caught, fish that a family can feed upon.) it was natural that a lake should stimulate into activity those microbes of civilisation which had infected the primitive nomads. in the antipodes you may see to-day, in an anthropological record which is contemporary with us in time but with the neolithic age in development, the working of what one may call the lake forces, towards civilisation. the australian aborigines--poor nomads almost without law, architecture, or clothing--when they won to a good steady fishing-ground managed to advance a little towards a higher civilisation. when a coast lagoon gave good supply of crustaceans and other fish, you may note at the old aboriginal camping-grounds timid ventures towards art, certain rock drawings, effective if crude. stomachs being regularly filled, the minds of these primitives began to work. a step higher in the ascent of man--the papuans have their most advanced communities in villages built on piles over the beaches of the sea or of the coral lagoons. the surrounding water gives some protection against prowling marauders. draw up the bridge which makes a way to the hut, and the water at once serves it in the office of a wall. further, the water is a source of food supply and an easier means of communication than the jungle to other sources of food supply. finally, the water gives the little community a good drainage system without trouble: rubbish can just be cast down and it is carried away. the early european, feeling a call to settle down and form a village, thus found in a lake the best of prompting to community life. it offered some security and so appealed to his dawning sense of property. it offered some steadiness of food supply and so appealed to his dawning sense of stability. it appealed also to the new sense of cleanliness which we must credit him with, a very primitive sense truly and many thousands of years behind ideas of modern sanitation, but still a beginning. recent discoveries of the remains of lake dwellings in england have established the fact that in many parts of europe, and perhaps indeed all over the continent, man in the neolithic time formed the habit of living in villages built on piles over the shores of lakes, and that he kept this habit during the bronze age, and had not wholly abandoned it at the dawn of the iron age. but it was probably in switzerland, the area richest in suitable lakes of all europe, that the primitive lake-dwellers flourished most strongly. a whole chain of lake settlements have been discovered around lake zurich, and recently, when mr. ritter, famous for the gigantic scheme to supply paris with water from the swiss lakes, "corrected" the meanderings of the river thiele which conducts the waters of lake neuchâtel to bienne, his engineering feat, besides gaining huge tracts of fertile land, lowered the level of lake neuchâtel and led to some further valuable discoveries regarding the lake-dwellers. it seems clear that every swiss lake was a centre for a thick population in the later stone age and the bronze age. [illustration: looking down the rhone valley from mont pelerin, at the eastern end of the lake of geneva.] the first important discoveries regarding these swiss lake-dwellers were made in , when the waters of zurich lake sank so low that a stretch of land was laid bare along the shores. the people of meilen, twelve miles from zurich, took advantage of this to carry out some public works, and during the operations the workmen encountered obstacles, which proved to be wooden piles. these piles, the tops of which were but a few inches below the surface of the mud, were found to be planted in rows and squares, in great number. there were picked out of the mud bones, antlers, weapons and implements of various kinds. dr. ferdinand keller was sent from zurich to examine the workings, and he pronounced them to be the site of a lake settlement, probably of some very ancient celtic tribe. many marks of a prehistoric occupation had been found before , but no traces of dwellings. the discovery caused a sensation, and gave a great impulse to archæological studies. dr. keller called these early settlers _pfahl-bauer_, or pile-builders. since then over two hundred of these villages have been discovered--on the shores of the lakes of constance, leman, zurich, neuchâtel, bienne, morat, and other smaller lakes, and on rivers and swampy spots which had once been lakes. the strictly alpine lakes, however, with their steep inaccessible banks, show no trace of these settlements. the early lake dwellings were built on piles driven into the bed of the lake, and as many as thirty or forty thousand of these piles have been found in a single village. the houses were made of hurdlework, and thatched with straw or rushes. layers of wattle and daub alternating formed the floors, and the walls had a covering of clay, or else of bulrushes or straw. a fence of wickerwork ran round each hut. light bridges, easily moved, connected the huts with each other and with the shore. each house contained two rooms at least, and some of the dwellings measured as much as feet by feet. hearthstones blackened by fire in some huts remain to show where the kitchens had been. mats of straw and reeds were found, and proofs of an organised worship of some gods. the lake-dwellers hunted with weapons of bronze. they tilled the ground and had flocks of horses, cattle, and sheep. they wove the wool of animals, and also a fibre of flax, and made a coarse pottery. men and women wore ornaments of metal, of glass, of leather, of carved stones. probably the later generations of lake-dwellers were contemporary with the homeric period in greece, though their state of culture was inferior to that of the people of the grecian peninsula. some idea, then, we may form of the people of switzerland in prehistoric times, those times when the fair-haired achæans were settling in the hellenic peninsula the issue between themselves and an earlier canaanitish race, and giving prompting to the stories of the homeric legends. celtic migrants, making their way along the great watercourses of europe, had come to these swiss lakes resting at the feet of the alps, and had found there prompting to settle and to begin to cultivate a community life. seemingly there were three different epochs in the age of the lake-dwellers, of which two were of the later stone age and one of the bronze age. switzerland had then, probably, as thick a population as most parts of europe, and at the earliest stage of the lake-dwellings that population was almost as advanced in culture as were the forefathers of the grecian and roman civilisations. but later it was not so. those nomadic peoples who found places in the mediterranean sun; and who there came into contact with the civilisations which had grown up on the shores of the levant, in the valley of the nile, and on the north coast of africa; after mingling their blood with the mediterranean peoples and acquiring their culture, were capable of creating great communities which unmeasurably outstripped the little primitive states of their cousins who had settled at the base of the alps. it is probable that, fairly close on the heels of the lake-dwellers, there came other celtic immigrants to switzerland, dispossessing the aboriginal peoples of the mountains, fighting with the lake-dwellers, and coming in time to as high a standard of civilisation as they. with the iron age the lake-dwellings seem to have been abandoned and the lake-dwellers merged into the general body of the helvetians. what we know as switzerland to-day was then occupied by celts, rhætians, and alamanni. helvetia, as it was known to the romans, took its name from the helvetians, a tribe of celts who had been pushed out of their own territories by the advancing tide of the teutonic invasion and had colonised lower switzerland. just as the lake-dwellers had set up a higher standard of civilisation than the mountain-dwellers in their age, so the helvetians, occupying the lower ground of switzerland, showed much more culture than any of their neighbours. they had adopted the greek alphabet and kept written records of their doings. their weapons and armour were good; their cultivation of the soil was skilful, and they had a knowledge of architecture, their fortifications in particular being praised by roman writers as excellent. local traditions said that hercules had once visited helvetia and taught the helvetians arts and laws. that was the picturesque way of stating that their ideas of civilisation had come from greece. these helvetians were the easily traceable ancestors of the present swiss, and many swiss cities of to-day occupy the sites and keep close to the names of the old helvetian centres--geneva, lausanne, soleure, and zurich, for examples. but the helvetians were not strictly an alpine race. they left the great mountains to wilder people and settled on the foothills and around the lakes. the method of government of the helvetians was closely modelled on the aristocratic republicanism of the greek states. wealthy nobles owned the land, and the rest of the population was made up of their vassals and slaves. but no one could aspire to be king. the chief orcitrix, it is told, aspiring to kingly power, was burned to death. the swiss do not seem to have copied the grecian religious system, adhering to their ancient druidical worship. perhaps the gloomy and savage form which protestantism was to take in after years among the swiss, was in part due to the fact that their ancient form of worship seems to have been a particularly fierce kind of druidism, and was very little subjected to the moderating influence of the pagan culture. the mountain barriers kept the helvetii for a long time from hostile encounters with the roman power. but there is evidence that they got in touch with the etruscans for purposes of trade through the alpine passes from a very early age. their chief warlike trouble came from the north, where the german population was constantly pressing down seeking fresh outlets. the first conflict between the helvetii and the romans was when the tigurini tribe of switzerland joined with the cimbri in an attack upon roman gaul and defeated a roman army under cassius and piso. that was b.c. the romans did not make any serious attempt to avenge that humiliation. the next meeting of the helvetii with the romans was not until the days of cæsar ( b.c.). then the helvetii, hemmed in on one side by roman gaul and on the other by the swelling floods of the german migration, resolved on a mass move, abandoning their own country completely and seizing some of the rich lands of gaul. it was a strange design and was carried out with strange persistency. two years were devoted to the organisation of the great move, and on the appointed day practically all the helvetii, men, women, and children, with all their beasts and their property assembled at geneva. their old homes were given to the torch, burned so that there would be no temptation for the people to turn back. julius cæsar (who followed thucydides in the ranks of great war correspondents) tells the story: and it was cæsar who set himself to the breaking up of this great plan. at geneva the helvetii found the bridge over the rhone broken up by cæsar's order. after useless attempts to cross the river, they turned towards the jura mountains, and whilst they were toiling over the steep and rugged pas de l'ecluse, cæsar returned to italy to gather his legions. returning to gaul, he arrived in time to see the helvetians cross the arar (saône). the tigurini were the last to cross. on them cæsar fell and almost exterminated them, thus wiping out the old stain on the roman arms. the roman legions had crossed the saône in twenty-four hours, and this feat so excited the admiration of the helvetians, who had themselves taken twenty days to cross, that they sent legates to treat with cæsar for a free passage. they promised him that they would do no harm to any one if he would comply with their request, but threatened the full rage of their arms if he should intercept them. cæsar asked them to give hostages to confirm their promise. "the helvetians are not accustomed to give hostages; they have been taught by their fathers to receive hostages, and this the romans must well remember," was the reply. [illustration: a distant view of the jura range from the south side of the lake of geneva.] the helvetians continued their march, cæsar watching for an opportunity of attacking them. at bibracte, west of autun in burgundy, cæsar seized a hill, posted his troops there, and charged the enemy with his cavalry. the helvetians fiercely repulsed the attack, and poured on the roman front, but were quite unable to stand against the steady discipline of the legions. they lost the battle but won the respect of cæsar, and the remnant of this "nation on trek" were helped by him to return to their homes and were allowed to become allies of rome, with the task assigned to them of guarding the rhine frontier against the germans. but the helvetii found this vassalage irksome, rebelled, were punished, and their country subjugated by the roman roads as well as the roman legions. the helvetia thus brought under roman sway was not all of the switzerland of to-day. some of the swiss cantons were comprised in the old province of rhætia, which was not subdued by the roman arms until the days of the first augustus. then, however, the rhætians, who were kindred with the italian etruscans, came so completely under roman influence that to this day in the valleys of the engadine a corrupted latin tongue is spoken, somewhat similar to that of the roumanians of the balkan peninsula. under augustus western switzerland was incorporated with the roman province of gaul, having its capital at lyons; eastern switzerland was joined with rhætia, having its capital at augsburg. thus early in history the difference between gallic switzerland and teutonic switzerland begins to show itself. helvetia was much favoured by the romans and became in effect the frontier province for the defence of the empire against the germans. after a time the helvetians were but little distinguishable from the romans, adopting their manners and their faith. wealthy romans loved to make their summer resorts along the lake of geneva, and aventicum, the helvetian capital, became a great roman city. at avenches (which was the roman aventicum) there are to-day but people, but there can be seen remains of a roman wall four miles long and in some places feet high. in the day of vespasian the city was as big as canterbury is to-day, and with its walls, theatre, and aqueduct could look down upon the miserable contemporary village of londinium. helvetia, under the romans, followed, in fine, very much the same course as britain under the romans. with the decay of the roman power helvetia, like britain, was made to feel at the hands of the barbarians a harsh punishment for its acceptance of the italian civilisation. in the third century of the christian era the alamanni swept over the country, looting and devastating and retiring. in the fourth century they came again and took possession of all the east. the burgundians followed, and, to a greater degree than most of the civilised world, switzerland had to face the horrors that followed the disruption of the roman empire. gradually there emerged from the welter the beginnings of the switzerland of to-day, in part representing the old gallic helvetians and etruscan rhætians, in part the alamanni (germans) and the burgundians. with the coming of the northern invaders christianity, which had supplanted paganism in helvetia as it had in rome, was almost stamped out. but as the power of the burgundians grew over that of the alamanni the country began to turn again towards christianity. in the sixth century missionaries from ireland did much to spread the christian faith in switzerland. the most famous of these was st. columban, who established a monastery at luxeuil, of which he soon made a storm centre, involving himself in constant troubles with the gallic clergy and with the italian pope. there is extant a famous letter of his to pope boniface iv. it is addressed by him to "the most beautiful head of all the churches of entire europe. the most sweet pope, the most high president, the most reverent investigator." after that flood of "blarney" st. columban goes on to complain of the _infamia_ in which the papal seat is steeped. out of that remonstrance nothing seems to have come, but when st. columban joined issue with the masterful queen brunhilde of burgundy he met a spirit as imperious as his own. to guard her own power in the court of burgundy the famous brunhilde encouraged her grandson, the reigning king, to keep mistresses rather than to marry a queen. st. columban referred to the children of these mistresses as a "brothel brood." shortly after he was exiled by force from luxeuil, and is next heard of at nantes, ready, it seemed, to embark for ireland, his native land. but he changed his mind, turned back on his tracks, and established himself on the lake of constance, where he preached successfully to the heathen and threw their idols into the lake. next st. columban went over to northern italy, abusing his disciple st. gall who was too sick to accompany him. st. gall remained in switzerland and founded the famous monastery of st. gall, visited by charlemagne in . charlemagne was particularly fond of switzerland and the swiss, and founded many monasteries and schools in the country. often he resided in switzerland, and it is from switzerland that comes the story which tells that his justice and mercy were so well renowned as to be known even to the animals. there was, the story runs, near his palace at zurich a chapel on the river-side where he had placed a bell for people to ring if they wished to appeal for justice. one day as he was at dinner this bell began to ring. none could inform him what was the matter. the bell rang a second time, and then a third. on this the emperor rose from the table, saying, "i am sure there is some poor man you do not wish me to see." he walked down the hill to the chapel, where, hanging to the bell rope, he found a snake. the snake led charlemagne to a tuft of nettles, and examining the spot he found a large toad sitting on the eggs in the serpent's nest. at once, grasping the meaning of the appeal, charlemagne passed sentence that the toad should be killed. the next day the snake entered the dining-hall of the emperor, climbed on the table, and, beckoning the emperor to remove the lid of his golden goblet, dropped into it a beautiful jewel. with the death of charlemagne his empire was broken up and switzerland was doomed to centuries of struggle in the vindication of her independence. the story of that struggle is one of the most fascinating of the national records of the middle ages. chapter iii the swiss in the middle ages throughout the middle ages switzerland and the swiss were always in the eye of europe. sometimes the spectacle they presented was that of a patriot people pushing back the tyrant and the invader with an unearthly courage, and luck more unearthly still. sometimes it was that of a martial clan, safe in a great mountain fastness, offering venal swords to the highest bidder, and giving in return for their mercenary pay as high a courage and as stubborn a fidelity as was ever inspired by love of country. no court but knew the swiss in some capacity. a great london palace, part of which survives to-day as the royal chapel of the savoy, was built by peter of savoy, prince of west switzerland, who built also the castle of chillon sung by byron, and kept great affairs going in both those far-apart countries. there is on record a prediction of machiavelli of florence that the swiss were destined to be "masters of all italy"--a prediction which time has not justified, but which was reasonable enough then in the light of the wonderful military virtue and the unscrupulousness of the swiss. almost every european nation felt their prowess as enemies or allies. a very curious and contradictory-seeming picture--this swiss character in the middle ages, so stubborn in defence of its own poor little home-patch, so cynical in its readiness to do a patriot's service for the pay of a mercenary. the stubborn defence of an essentially poor country was not in itself strange. it is human nature that the man who has little defends it more savagely than the owner of vast possessions. there is false reasoning in that story of the four robbers who attacked a boeotian in order to rob him, and having subdued him after a very fierce fight in which they were almost vanquished, and having found that he had but ten coppers, said in astonishment, "if he had had silver money he would have killed us all." the swiss followed the ordinary course of human character in their fierce defence of a small and poor country. [illustration: fluelen, at the end of uri lake.] but they followed it in an heroic degree. how can one, however, reconcile with that noble patriotism the readiness--suggesting an inherited survival of the desperate migratory spirit of the helvetii of cæsar's time--to go abroad and bear arms for any country rich enough to offer good pay? it is easier to record than to explain the facts. but they are of a piece with the swiss spirit of to-day, which mingles with a high patriotism and a sturdy pride a willingness to take servile occupation in exile abroad for the sake of gain, and finds in that no sacrifice of dignity. in a previous chapter a very slight sketch of the history of switzerland was given to the time of charlemagne. in the confusion which followed his death switzerland was divided up, the treaty of verdun ( ) assigning west switzerland and east switzerland to different kingdoms. west switzerland was part of the burgundian kingdom, and after charlemagne their national pride centred chiefly in bertha, "the spinning queen," who fortified the country against the saracens and the hungarians. by the eleventh century switzerland was united again, but when the dispute between pope gregory vii. and the emperor henry iv. (it was the time when the popes claimed, and to an extent enforced, a temporal and spiritual overlordship over europe) plunged the whole continent into a series of wars, switzerland suffered with the rest of europe. the twelfth century saw an important development for the swiss national character when berne and other "free cities" were founded by bertold v. of the house of zaeringer. these "free cities" acted as a counterpoise to the growing power of the swiss feudal nobles of the country districts, and helped much to shape the country towards its future of a federal republic. this was the time of the crusades and, needless to say, the swiss did not miss that opportunity for martial service. with the thirteenth century comes the first beginning of the swiss republic, the story of which is bound up with the rise of the house of habsburg, a house from which was to spring one of the proudest monarchies of europe, but which kept no foothold in switzerland, the land which was the first seat of its power. habsburg castle still dominates the canton aargau, but it is a monument of swiss independence rather than of austrian empire. it is not certain whether the habsburgs were of swiss or of swabian birth, but certainly their early history is most intimately bound up with the swiss canton. it is the story that one of their ancestors, radbot, hunting in the aargau, lost his favourite hawk, and found it sitting on the ridge of the wülpelsberg. delighted with the view, radbot built a castle there, and called it _hawk castle_, habichtsburg, which became "habsburg." in a book which is designed to give only so much of the history of switzerland as will make interesting its monuments and its people, it would be tedious to attempt to detail all the circumstances which led up to the birth of the swiss republic. but the leading facts are these. during the reign of king albrecht ( - ), son of the famous habsburger rudolf, the eastern cantons of switzerland, which were under the habsburg house but had certain liberties which they closely cherished, were ill-governed. albrecht had set governors over the cantons, who were oppressive in their taxation and cruel in their methods of enforcing payment. so much was their oppression and cruelty resented in the forest cantons--unterwalden, schwyz, and uri--that there was formed by three patriots, attinghausen, stauffacher, and melchthal, a conspiracy of protest. these patriots, explaining their plans to their friends, arranged nightly meetings on the rütli, a secluded alpine meadow above the mytenstein, on uri lake. this became the runnymede of swiss freedom. records, more or less trustworthy, tell that in the swiss patriots decided on definite action. then at a meeting attended by thirty-three men on the rütli rebellion was agreed upon. how far one may accept the story of william tell as giving a correct account of the final incident leading to the revolt of the forest cantons i cannot say. there certainly was a hapsburg governor, gessler, in charge of the canton uri about this time ( ). certainly, too, he was of a cruel and tyrannical disposition. but the story of tell is thought by later historians to have been of much earlier origin as regards its main details.[ ] muller, however, accepts it. kopp, who has subjected historical legends to a very searching analysis, rejects it on grounds which appear clear. but, very wisely, the swiss keep to a story which conveys so valuable a lesson of patriotism. in the national history of switzerland tell's defiance of the tyrant is the first paragraph. [ ] it is difficult to decide whether it is superfluous to tell once again the story of tell. on the principle that a good story cannot be told too often, here are the main "facts" as given in swiss histories: "one day the austrian governor of uri, gessler, set up a pole in the market-place of altdorf. upon this pole he set his hat, and gave orders that every swiss who passed should bow down before it, in homage to his austrian masters. tell came by and did not bow. gessler ordered him to be seized. tell was a very famous archer. so the governor bade his soldiers seize tell's son and set the boy against a tree. an apple was placed on the child's head, and tell was bidden to shoot at that mark. tell took two arrows, placed one on his bow-string, and made careful aim. he shot his arrow, and it cleft the apple in two. gessler demanded then why he had taken two arrows. tell said: 'if the first arrow had injured my son, the second would soon have pierced thy heart.' tell was then bound and placed in the governor's barge, and the boat was rowed across the lake. when the barge was far from the shore, a sudden storm came. tell was the most expert boatman of them all, and gessler ordered that tell should be unbound, and the hero took the tiller and steered the boat through the storm to safety. but then he killed gessler with an arrow and took to the forest and there gave the first call to active revolt." to come back to the region of ascertained fact, it seems clear that the first union for liberty of the forest cantons was formed in . the battle of morgarten, which set the seal of success on their revolt, was fought in . there a great hapsburg force under duke leopold was defeated by a far inferior band of swiss peasants. the story of the battle illustrated once again the triumph of novelty in military strategy and tactics. the swiss had prepared on a hill-side a great artificial avalanche of stones and trees. this was let loose on the austrians as they passed by, killed many, filled the rest with dread and confusion, and made the finish of the battle a mere slaughter. morgarten made the name of switzerland respected all over europe and set the foundations of the liberty of the swiss people. after the battle the allied forest cantons went to brunnen, to renew by oath and enlarge the league of . this for nearly five hundred years remained the fundamental law of union between the three states. the forest cantons, as three independent republics, claimed autonomy in their local affairs. only for national purposes was there to be a central authority. thus was the "federal" idea, which had been much favoured by the greek states, revived in europe. it was the first of the modern federations. the swiss federal plan was followed later, to a greater or less extent, in the constitutions of the united states, germany, canada, australia, and south africa. it is suggested to-day by some optimists as the basis of a possible far-off european combination to end the wars of the world. around the nucleus of the three forest cantons other swiss states gathered. after a while the three states had become eight, lucerne ( ) and zurich ( ) being the first of the recruits. there was during this time a state of almost constant war with austria, in which sometimes the swiss cantons were strong enough to take the offensive. the year saw the great battle of sempach, of which arnold winkelried was the hero. campbell, among many others, has sung of his fame: inspiring and romantic switzers' land, though mark'd with majesty by nature's hand, what charm ennobles most thy landscape's face? th' heroic memory of thy native race, who forced tyrannic hosts to bleed or flee, and made their rocks the ramparts of the free! their fastnesses roll'd back th' invading tide of conquest, and their mountains taught them pride. hence they have patriot names,--in fancy's eye-- bright as their glaciers glittering in the sky: patriots who make the pageantries of kings like shadows seem, and unsubstantial things. their guiltless glory mocks oblivion's rust-- imperishable, for their cause was just. heroes of old! to whom the nine have strung their lyres, and spirit-stirring anthems sung: heroes of chivalry! whose banners grace the aisles of many a consecrated place,-- confess how few of you can match in fame the martyr winkelried's immortal name! duke leopold iii. marching towards lucerne with a great army for those days (some say , , others , men) encountered at sempach the swiss force (said to have been only men). the austrian force formed a phalanx bristling on every side with lances. in the first stages the fight went badly for the brave mountaineers; sixty of them were slain before a single austrian fell. they could not pass the hedge of lances. then said arnold of winkelried, "i'll make a way for you, comrades; take care of my wife and children!" he sprang upon the enemy with arms widely outspread, and gathered into his body the points of all the lances within his reach. thus a gap was formed in the line, and into this gap leapt the swiss, and came to close quarters with their enemy, who fell into confusion. victory for the swiss, a dreadful carnage of the austrians followed. all europe was astounded. the name of swiss came to be associated with heroic courage and invincible might in battle. that the result was no mere "fluke" was proved a little later at naefels, when an austrian army suffered another disastrous defeat at the hands of the swiss patriots. on the first thursday of april each year naefels celebrates that victory, and in all the people of switzerland assembled there, in person or in spirit, to commemorate the th anniversary of the victory. [illustration: altdorf. the traditional scene of william tell's exploits.] the battle of naefels, establishing as it did on an unquestioned pre-eminence the military virtues of the swiss, inaugurated, too, that strange system of foreign service on the part of swiss soldiers which would be shameful if it were not lighted up by so many deeds of high chivalry and noble fidelity. the swiss republic was now safe in its own house against aggression. the terrible prowess of its peasantry had been announced to every possible foe. but it felt the need of a foreign policy to secure an extension of territory, and it was this need which brought it into the orbit of general european diplomacy and into the temptation of mercenary service. by the next century, when the swiss prowess had won new laurels at the battles of grandson, morat, and nancy, the little patch of mountain and valley which is switzerland had become a great diplomatic centre for europe, its republican leaders courted by france, the italian states, hungary, germany, and england. internecine trouble between the swiss themselves was not uncommon, but throughout, despite differences of language, and later differences of religion, a swiss idea of nationality lived constantly. in the swiss league separated definitely from all vassalage to the german empire. in the "league of the thirteen cantons," which represented the swiss nationality until the days of napoleon, was constituted. a severe defeat of the swiss forces in by france left the french with the highest opinion of swiss courage, and eager to take under their patronage the little republic. an alliance in between france and switzerland began a close friendship between the two countries, which continued with but little interruption until the french revolution, when modern switzerland may be said to have come into the arena of history. chapter iv modern switzerland there is carved in the face of a great rock at lucerne a lion, wounded to death, resting upon a broken spear. it is the monument of the swiss guard massacred in the defence of the tuileries at paris in . the close connection between france and switzerland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made it natural that the despotic french kings should employ the faithful and courageous swiss mercenaries as guardians of their palaces. louis xiv. in the dark hours of his fate had no reason to regret the trust he had placed in these swiss mercenaries as the nearest defenders of his person. the mob coming to the tuileries demanded of the swiss guards that they should give up their arms. sergeant blaser replied in the mood with which the helvetii had spoken to cæsar, and with eighteen centuries of records of great bravery to justify the vaunt: "we are swiss, and the swiss never surrender their arms but with their lives." the reply cowed the rioters for the time and the king was safe for that day. when the king had left the tuileries the swiss guards were withdrawn. as they went away from the palace they were attacked by the mob and, disdaining to fly, were slaughtered almost to a man. of officers and men only a handful survived. the incident--showing french patriots furious, cruel, and treacherous, swiss mercenaries steadfast, brave, and true--gives a good standpoint from which to glance at the evolution of the switzerland which had grown up in the middle ages to the modern switzerland with its intensely democratic and socialistic republic. the brewing of the storm which broke over paris in august had been observable in switzerland as well as in france. accepting its traditional position as a hostel of refuge for political exiles, switzerland had sheltered many of the men who had given the first impulse to the revolution. and there had been a domestic movement in switzerland working on parallel lines to that of the french reformers. as far back as the helvetic society was formed by young men aspiring to a political regeneration of switzerland. by there had been several peasant risings among the alpine communities in protest against oligarchic oppression. the cry for liberty, fraternity, equality, found its echo in the mountains as it came in a hoarse roar from the french cities. the exiles from aristocratic france to slightly more liberal switzerland were in time matched by discontented exiles from switzerland to paris. the "helvetic club" formed at paris of swiss refugees had for its purpose the application of the principles of the french revolution to switzerland. in peter ochs of basel was given by napoleon the task of drafting a constitution for switzerland which would follow the system of government of the french directory. in "the lemanic republic" was proclaimed at the instance of france, and, being resisted by some of the swiss, a french invasion followed. the victorious french abolished the swiss confederation and proclaimed "the helvetic republic," with a constitution framed on the lines laid down by peter ochs. the new constitution was not in itself altogether suitable to the political circumstances of the country. and no constitution, however perfect, could have pleased the swiss if it came to them from the hands of a conquering foreigner. but to make quite sure of antagonising the swiss the greedy and impoverished directory of france set to work to rob the national treasuries of the helvetic republic in the cause of republicanism. the forest cantons, always to the fore in the cause of independence, entered upon a hopeless campaign of defence in which reding was the chief hero. brilliant victories were won. tragic defeats were sustained, culminating in the capture of stanz. then, prostrate, switzerland accepted the french command to be free, and "the one and undivided helvetic republic" came into more or less peaceful existence. later a franco-helvetic alliance was signed, and almost immediately afterwards the little land suffered for its alliance by being invaded by russia and austria, then making war upon france. for the first time in history an austrian invader was welcomed by a part of the swiss nation. the story of the campaign need not be told in detail; but it had one vivid incident of which any visitor to switzerland interested in military prowess should seek out the memorials. general suwarow, commanding a russian army, marched from italy to junction with general korsakow at zurich. suwarow forced the pass of st. gothard in the face of a french force and passed down the valley of the reuss to lake uri. here he found his path to zurich blocked, as no boats for the conveyance of his troops could be found on the lake. turning up towards the mountains, suwarow led his army along the kinzig pass to muotta, and there learned that korsakow had been defeated and driven out of switzerland by the french. suwarow led his army then along the pragel pass, hoping to find in the canton of glarus a friendly austrian force. the hope was vain, and the path to naefels was blocked by the french army. the old russian general, indomitable, turned back to the mountains and crossed the alps again by the panixer pass. this was in october. after terrible hardships the russian army reached cranbunden and made its way to austrian territory and safety. it would be an interesting alpine holiday for a stout walker to follow in the track of suwarow's marches. switzerland had an evil time under the french directory, despite its "free and undivided republic." but when napoleon felt himself safe in the saddle and could put the curb on the fiery spirits of the revolution, better days dawned for switzerland as well as for france. the great soldier and statesman, being a man of imagination, could not help having a real sympathy with the heroic swiss. they were people after his own heart. in he took thought for the vexed condition of the swiss people and summoned to paris the "helvetic consulta" of sixty-three swiss representatives to draw up a new system of government. he presided personally at the meetings of this body, and the constitution agreed upon bears the impress of the grand political sagacity which was associated with napoleon's military genius. switzerland, under the napoleonic constitution, became a federal republic of nineteen cantons, each of which preserved its local autonomy but yielded full control of national matters to the federal diet. this new constitution conferred upon switzerland internal peace and a reasonable instrument of government, under which the material and moral advancement of the nation was greater than at any previous period of history. [illustration: a village on the st. gothard railway.] the fall of napoleon in brought a fresh crop of troubles to the swiss. the constitution he had granted to them was put aside by the european powers, not because it was bad but because it was napoleon's. a congress at zurich drew up a new constitution, and this was submitted to the vienna congress in , and with some changes approved. it was far inferior to the napoleonic constitution, and plunged the country into another series of internal troubles. yet it survived from to , when, taking advantage of new troubles in europe, the swiss settled their system of government anew, and shaped a federal constitution which exists to this day. switzerland now is divided into twenty-two cantons, self-governing as far as their local affairs are concerned, but united into a federation for national purposes. the system of government is purely democratic and marked by a republican austerity. all citizens are equal. most offices are elective. the emoluments of office are scanty. there is no standing army, but every male citizen is trained to the use of arms in his youth. thus the whole nation can take up arms in defence of the country. the good quality of the citizen troops has been vouched for by many competent judges. australia has imitated the swiss system in her military organisation, and it is practically the same system which a powerful party in great britain urges as a measure of military reform in this country. the federal government has, of course, the control of the army; it has also the management of the railways, posts and telegraphs, universities and schools, and the regulation of the conditions of labour. full religious liberty is allowed, but the jesuits are not allowed to come into the country. no spiritual courts are allowed. the judges of the supreme court are elected from amongst the legislators. neither capital punishment nor arrest for debt is legal (a defaulting tourist's baggage may, however, be put under arrest). laws passed by the federal legislature must be submitted to the people by direct vote before they become effective. if this referendum does not give them approval they lapse. there is machinery by which the people can directly initiate legislation, _i.e._ propose measures without the intervention of the legislature. so wide-world an interest is taken in the swiss military system (it has its enthusiastic admirers in america as well as in great britain), and so great a part does it take in the general life of the swiss people, that a brief summary of its salient features is worthy of space here. the system dates from , the franco-prussian war on their borders having warned the swiss of the possibility of their land being invaded. from his earliest days the swiss citizen is prepared for his country's service. in the public (cantonal and communal) schools instruction in gymnastic exercise is regularly given ( hours yearly), and almost all the boys participate in this instruction, which is mainly given by the schoolmasters. between the ages of and , when military service begins, there is preparatory military instruction, comprising physical training, gymnastic exercises, marching, obstacle racing, simple drill, the use of the rifle, and preliminary musketry. in the year before he attains the youth is enrolled by the cantonal authorities (in his commune or place of domicile) as a recruit--the canton being subdivided into recruiting districts--and is fitted out with uniform and equipment, and in the year in which he attains (the year, too, in which he becomes entitled to vote at elections) the recruit becomes liable to military service and presents himself for instruction at recruit schools, beginning either about march , may , or july , as directed. all soldiers, whatever the rank they are destined for, pass through the recruit schools, and the periods of duration of these schools (including musketry) are: for infantry, etc., - days; cavalry, days. the soldier on completion of recruit school is considered as having entered the army. as a soldier of the army he has to attend an annual training camp. the demands made on a citizen's time by this system are not very great, say days as a recruit, days as a member of the active army, and a few days afterwards as a member of the landwehr or landsturm. in all the citizen is forced to give about days during his lifetime to the service of his country, an exaction which is very slight in the total compared with the demands of countries where conscription rules, and is almost negligible when allowance is made for the fact that it is so well distributed over the term of the citizen's life. in ordinary times of peace there is no commander-in-chief. the army corps and divisional commanders are the highest appointments. there is a committee of national defence, composed of the minister of war (president), four general officers (militia), four "chefs de service" (staff officers), appointed for three years. this committee stands at the head of the army in time of peace, but, when war is imminent and a general is appointed by the federal assembly, the committee drops out of existence, the general taking all its powers. under this system the active swiss army on a peace footing numbers about , men. the trained army that could be called out for service represents practically the total of the male population. training for military service is looked upon not as a burden but as a pleasure by the citizens, and many of their voluntary sports are designed so as to assist the work of military education. happy switzerland that has thought out a system of military service which imposes little burden on the national exchequer and no burden at all on the national content, and which is yet withal highly efficient if the experts are to be believed! i quote from one of them (lieut.-col. g. f. ellison): of the swiss army, as a war machine, it is impossible to write in terms other than those which, to anyone who has never witnessed its performance, must, i fear, appear somewhat too laudatory. that it is perfect in all its details, or that it is the same highly finished instrument that the french or the german army is, i do not pretend to assert, but i do unhesitatingly affirm, and in this opinion i am supported by more competent judges than myself, that taken as a whole it is, for war purposes, not unworthy, so far as it goes, to court comparison with the most scientifically organised and most highly trained armies of the continent. in some respects it even surpasses all other armies in its readiness for war, for of no other military force in europe can it be stated that the establishment in personnel is the same both for peace and war, and there is certainly no other country, that i am aware of, a fourth of whose army is annually mobilised for manoeuvres on exactly the same scale of equipment and transport as it would be for actual warfare. for the englishman there is certainly no army in the world which can afford more food for serious reflection than that of switzerland. he will learn, too, to appreciate what, for a sum that appears insignificant when compared with the military expenditure of other states, can be done towards producing for home defence a really well-trained force under a militia system, provided that the system is based on universal liability to military service, and that all ranks alike bring goodwill and intelligence to bear on their allotted task. while he watches this army there need be no grave misgivings in his mind such as, perhaps, he may experience elsewhere, lest, in spite of all the pomp and splendour, the burden that such military display means to a nation may be crushing it beyond endurance. and that was written before the revised law of april , , which was the subject of a general referendum. by its acceptance the swiss people intimated their desire to have the army maintained at such a degree of efficiency as would ensure their independence and neutrality, and agreed to several improvements in the system of training imposing further obligations on the citizen soldiers. in the present day the swiss have no navy, and no need of one, and "admiral of the swiss navy" is a title equal to that of the seigneur de château rien. but once upon a time the "swiss admiral" did exist. he was an englishman named colonel williams, who in was in service with the zurich government and commandeered a small fleet on lake zurich, having orders to oppose with it the french army. when the french, under masséna, completely routed the allied armies of austria and russia, colonel williams calmly watched the battle from the lake. then, enraged at his own inaction, he discharged his crews, scuttled his vessels, and took to flight. chapter v some literary associations switzerland has not produced much native literary genius. the literary associations of the land are mostly concerned with strangers who went to it as a land of refuge or as visitors. true, in the thirteenth century zurich was famous for its poets, for its share in the making of the nibelungen and the minnelieder, and for the "codex manesse"--the collection of the works of german and swiss poets of the day. again in the days of rousseau--perhaps the most famous of swiss writers--there was quite a herd of sentimental novelists at lausanne. but, on the whole, it cannot be said that the swiss have shown themselves conspicuously a people of imagination. in war they have a magnificent record: in science and in philosophy a record above the average: in poetry and romance they have little to show. but if colonists and visitors who associated themselves strongly with swiss life be taken into account, then switzerland becomes one of the most interesting literary centres of europe. [illustration: the statue of jean-jacques rousseau on the island in the rhone, geneva.] from madame de staël and her _salon_ at coppet (to cite one example) what invitations crowd to literary pilgrimages! madame de staël was destined by birth for that literary limelight which she loved so well. her mother, mademoiselle curchod, afterwards madame necker, was the charming young swiss who inspired a discreet passion in the stately bosom of gibbon, the historian of _the decline and fall of the roman empire_. gibbon had been sent to switzerland by his father because he had shown leanings towards the roman catholic faith. the robust protestantism of lausanne was prescribed as a cure for a religious feeling which was not welcome to his family. the cure was complete, so complete that gibbon was left with hardly any christian faith at all. whether because that left an empty place in his heart, or in the natural order of things, gibbon took refuge in a love affair, a very discreet, cold-blooded affair on his part; but, judging by the correspondence which has survived, a more serious matter to the girl whose affections he engaged. gibbon tells the story of his early love himself, in a letter which is full of unconscious humour, since he writes of it without a tremor and with all the decorous stateliness which he gave to the narrative of a diocletian: i need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice; and though my love was disappointed of success, i am rather proud that i was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. the personal attractions of mademoiselle susan curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable. her mother, a native of france, had preferred her religion to her country. the profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived content with a small salary and laborious duty in the obscure lot of minister of crassy, in the mountains that separate the pays de vaud from the county of burgundy. in the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal, and even learned, education on his only daughter. she surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of mademoiselle curchod were the theme of universal applause. the report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; i saw and loved. i found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. she permitted me to make two or three visits at her father's house. i passed some happy days there, in the mountains of burgundy, and her parents honourably encouraged the connection. in a calm retirement the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom, and i might presume to hope that i had made some impression on a virtuous heart. at crassy and lausanne i indulged my dream of felicity; but on my return to england i soon discovered that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that without his consent i was myself destitute and helpless. after a painful struggle i yielded to my fate; i sighed as a lover, i obeyed as a son: my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. my cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided in friendship and esteem. gibbon was a very pompous gentleman, but a gentleman. he might otherwise, without departing from the truth, have shown that the little swiss beauty was far more in love with him than he with her, and her tranquillity and cheerfulness in giving him up were of hard earning. she contrived in time to forget the lover who probably would have made her more famous than happy, and married a mr. necker, a rich banker of her own country. (berne at that time was one of the chief financial centres of europe.) to him she bore the girl who was to be madame de staël, as pompous in mind as gibbon, but somewhat warmer in temperament. many years after the romance had died, when madame necker was a happy matron, gibbon, still a bachelor, decided to make switzerland his permanent home. motives of economy, not of romance, dictated this choice. in he moved to lausanne, where he completed his history, established a literary _salon_, and enjoyed life in spite of somewhat serious attacks of gout. m., mdme., and mslle. necker (the last to become madame de staël) were frequent visitors, and he attached himself to madame necker by the bonds of a close but strictly platonic friendship. in gibbon completed his famous history, and seems to have contemplated afterwards a marriage "for companionship sake." but he never fixed on a lady, and died a bachelor six years after. during gibbon's life the neckers had established their country-seat at coppet, near geneva, which was afterwards the seat of madame de staël's court. though born swiss, madame de staël was altogether french in sympathy, detested switzerland, and was impatient at any talk of its natural beauties. "i would rather go miles to hear a clever man talk than open the windows of my rooms at naples to see the beauties of the gulf," she said once. napoleon, as the greatest man of the age, of course, attracted her. i suspect that she would have been a most ardent napoleonist if he had made love to her. "tell me," she said to napoleon once, "whom do you think is the greatest woman in france to-day?" and napoleon answered, "the woman who bears most sons for the army." it was not an ingratiating reply. but napoleon, who detested the idea of petticoat government and was never inclined to chain himself by any bonds to an interfering and ambitious woman, disliked madame de staël: and she in time learned to hate him, and intrigued against the man whom she could not intrigue with. the upshot was exile for her. she was turned out of paris, much to her rage. on several occasions she sought to return. but napoleon was inexorable. she replied to his enmity by industry as a conspirator. fouché, who speaks of her as "the intriguing daughter of necker," credits madame de staël with having been regarded by napoleon as "an implacable enemy," of having been the focus of the senate conspiracy against napoleon in , and of being "the life and soul" of the opposition to him in . it was certainly a remarkable woman who could thus stand up against napoleon. madame de staël's _salon_ at coppet became a centre famous over all europe. her powers of intrigue supplemented her literary fame, and that was very great and well deserved. as an essayist she has a clear and warm style, and as a writer she could be betrayed into forgetting her personal rancours. there is, for example, no more true criticism of the literary style of napoleon (who wrote newspaper "leaders" in his day) than that it was, as de staël wrote, so vigorous that you could see that the writer "wished to put in blows instead of words." an american traveller who paid a pilgrimage to the shrine of madame de staël at coppet gives this picture of the lady: her features were good, but her complexion bad. she had a certain roundness and amplitude of form. she was never at a loss for the happiest expressions; but _deviated into anecdotes that might be an offence to american ears_! baron de voght, who seemingly had not an american puritanism of ear, wrote more warmly about the famous lady to a mutual friend, madame récamier: it is to you that i owe my most amiable reception at coppet. it is no doubt to the favourable expectations aroused by your friendship that i owe my intimate acquaintance with this remarkable woman. i might have met her without your assistance--some casual acquaintance would no doubt have introduced me--but i should never have penetrated to the intimacy of this sublime and beautiful soul, and should never have known how much better she is than her reputation. _she is an angel sent from heaven to reveal the divine goodness upon earth._ to make her irresistible, a pure ray of celestial light embellishes her spirit and makes her amiable from every point of view. at once profound and light, whether she is discovering a mysterious secret of the soul or grasping the lightest shadow of a sentiment, her genius shines without dazzling, and when the orb of light has disappeared, it leaves a pleasant twilight to follow it.... no doubt a few faults, a few weaknesses, occasionally veil this celestial apparition; even the initiated must sometimes be troubled by these eclipses, which the genevan astronomers in vain endeavour to predict. still another pen picture of the same lady, from benjamin constant, who was her lover for many years and found the burden of maintaining an affection to match hers too great: yes, certainly i am more anxious than ever to break it off. she is the most egoistical, the most excitable, the most ungrateful, the most vain, and the most vindictive of women. why didn't i break it off long ago? she is odious and intolerable to me. i must have done with her or die. she is more volcanic than all the volcanoes in the world put together. she is like an old _procureur_, with serpents in her hair, demanding the fulfilment of a contract in alexandrine verse. byron was one of the famous men who visited the _salon_ of madame de staël. he was drawn to switzerland in the course of his "parade of the pageant of his bleeding heart," and found much prompting in swiss scenery to proclaim his sorrows: clear, placid leman! thy contrasted lake, with the wild world i dwelt in is a thing which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. to madame de staël he presented a copy of _glenarvon_, an english novel in which his "devilish" character had been exposed. it was an effective introduction; and was aided in its theatrical effect by the fact that an english lady fainted in madame de staël's drawing-room when byron's name was announced as a visitor. but evidently byron failed sadly to live up to his wicked reputation. whether it was his famous hostess who was disappointed or some one else, he made no fame at coppet. the de staëls' son-in-law, duke victor de broglie, writes with palpable sourness of the visit of this ineffectual satan: [illustration: chÂteau de prangins.] lord byron, an exile of his own free will, having succeeded, not without difficulty, in persuading the world of fashion in his own country that he was, if not the devil in person, at least a living copy of manfred or lara, had settled for the summer in a charming house on the east bank of the lake of geneva. he was living with an italian physician named polidori, who imitated him to the best of his ability. it was there that he composed a good many of his little poems, and that he tried his hardest to inspire the good genevans with the same horror and terror that his fellow-countrymen felt for him; but this was pure affectation on his part, and he only half succeeded with it. "my nephew," louis xiv. used to say of the duc d'orleans, "is, in the matter of crime, only a boastful pretender"; lord byron was only a boastful pretender in the matter of vice. as he flattered himself that he was a good swimmer and sailor, he was perpetually crossing the lake in all directions, and used to come fairly often to coppet. his appearance was agreeable, but not at all distinguished. his face was handsome, but without expression or originality; his figure was round and short; he did not manoeuvre his lame legs with the same ease and nonchalance as m. de talleyrand. his talk was heavy and tiresome, thanks to his paradoxes, seasoned with profane pleasantries out of date in the language of voltaire, and the commonplaces of a vulgar liberalism. madame de staël, who helped all her friends to make the best of themselves, did what she could to make him cut a dignified figure without success; and when the first movement of curiosity had passed, his society ceased to attract, and no one was glad to see him. omitting from this chapter rousseau and voltaire, as having closer kinship to political philosophy than to literature, a next famous name to be recalled of this epoch is the author of _obermann_, Étienne pivert de senancour. senancour was born in france in . he was educated for the priesthood, and passed some time in the seminary of st. sulpice; broke away from the seminary and from france itself, and passed some years in switzerland, where he married; returned to france in middle life, and followed thenceforward the career of a man of letters, but with hardly any fame or success. he died an old man in , desiring that on his grave might be placed these words only: _Éternité, deviens mon asile!_ the influence of rousseau, chateaubriand, and madame de staël shows in senancour. _obermann_ is a collection of letters from switzerland treating almost entirely of nature and of the human soul. senancour has been introduced to the english-speaking public by the lofty praise of matthew arnold, who apostrophises him in _obermann_: how often, where the slopes are green on jaman, hast thou sate by some high chalet-door, and seen the summer-day grow late; and darkness steal o'er the wet grass with the pale crocus starr'd, and reach that shimmering sheet of glass beneath the piny sward, lake leman's waters, far below! and watch'd the rosy light fade from the distant peaks of snow; and on the air of night heard accents of the eternal tongue through the pine branches play---- in a later time practically all the most famous writers of english had some relation to switzerland. trelawney (shelley's friend) was led first to seek shelley's acquaintance through his introduction to "queen mab" by a lausanne bookseller. before he retraced his way to italy in the hope of meeting shelley there, trelawney records that he saw an englishman breakfasting: "evidently a denizen of the north, his accent harsh, his skin white, of an angular and bony build, and self-confident and dogmatic in his opinions. with him, two ladies, whom it would appear from the blisters and blotches on their cheeks, lips and noses, that they were pedestrian tourists, fresh from the snow-covered mountains. the party breakfasted well, while the man cursed the godless wretches who have removed nature's landmarks by cutting roads through alps and apennines. 'they will be arraigned hereafter with the unjust,' he shouted." trelawney asked wordsworth (for it was he, with his wife and sister) what he thought of shelley as a poet--to which he replied, "nothing." a scotch terrier followed the wordsworths into their carriage; "this hairy fellow our flea-trap," the poet shouted out, as they went off. byron, shelley, wordsworth, ruskin, arnold--all had close associations with switzerland, and there still continues to flow there a constant stream of the world's genius. it is everybody's playground, and seems to have the power to tempt the man of imagination to longer stay. one effect is to give to swiss people of the better educated classes a curiously international knowledge. many of them seem to know all languages and to study all contemporary literature. chapter vi the swiss and human thought the swiss have had always a natural bent towards the heterodox. they have the spirit of that exile from erin who, landing in new york and being asked as to the state of his political soul, demanded: "is there a government here? if so i am agin it." some of the minor swiss heterodoxies have been of great value in urging the world to think. was it not a swiss doctor (tronchin) who first preached the gospel of fresh air, preached it so successfully that he managed to open the windows of the palace of versailles itself? and another swiss doctor (tissot) who dared to tell well-to-do people that their chief cause of ill-health was overfeeding? the open window and the sparing platter are part of the commonplaces of hygiene to-day. when first suggested in switzerland they had an almost impious novelty. as far back as the fifteenth century the council of basel set up an opposition pope, duke amadeus viii. of savoy (which cannot be separated in history from switzerland in those days). he was crowned pope at basel in . after nine years he gave up being an opposition pope. his was a mild note of dissent to that which was to come later, when switzerland provided the most startlingly new theological ideas of the reformation and of the revolution. zwingli and calvin: rousseau and voltaire--those are four names of men intimately associated with switzerland who were destined to have a vast effect on the thought of the world, in regard both to moral and social ideas. two of them were swiss born, two swiss by adoption. ulrich zwingli was born at wildhaus in the canton st. gall, which had before sheltered that stormy saint, columban, and his disciple gall. zwingli was educated at basel and vienna, and was, while at basel, a friend of erasmus. in , having taken holy orders, he became pastor of glarus and at once began to show a reforming spirit. his indignation was aroused first at the mercenary wars in which swiss soldiers engaged--he had accompanied swiss forces into italy as chaplain on two occasions--and so sternly did he inveigh against participation in such wars that he had to give up his pastorate at glarus and take refuge at einsiedeln abbey. there he turned his attention to the abuses of the church, and his reforming sermons soon attracted wide attention. rome seems to have viewed his outbreaks against her discipline more with sorrow than with anger, and he was frequently tempted with offers to accept high office in the church in italy. he refused, and in became pastor of zurich and began definitely his career as a church reformer. he was not a follower of luther. still less was he a follower of calvin, who settled in geneva in . zwingli was a moral and social as well as a religious reformer, and his system of thought was at once more advanced in idea than that of luther and less narrow in method than that of calvin. at zurich he set up a theocratic republic of austere simplicity, but not of the savage gloom of the later calvinist regime at geneva. earnestness of religious opinion smothered national patriotism in the mind of zwingli. he organised a "christian league" of the protestants of switzerland and some of the german protestant cities. the roman catholics then formed a defensive alliance with ferdinand of austria, an ally of the vatican. zurich declared war on the catholic forest cantons. the swiss were obviously reluctant, however, to engage in this fratricidal religious war. at kappel, where the roman catholic and protestant armies lay facing each other, a band of the catholics got hold of a large bowl of milk, and, lacking bread, they placed it on the boundary line between zug and zurich. at once a group of zurich protestant men came up with some loaves, and both parties ate cheerily together the _milchsuppe_, forgetting the duty to slaughter one another for the love of god urgently impressed upon them by their christian pastors. at solothurn, again, a religious war was breaking out, and indeed the first shot had actually been fired, when schultheiss nicolas von wengi, a roman catholic, threw himself before the mouth of a cannon, and exclaimed, "if the blood of the burghers is to be spent, let mine be the first!" wengi's party at once desisted, and matters were settled peacefully. at a later period, alas, religious fervour waxed stronger, and swiss protestant and swiss catholic killed one another with almost as much savagery as modern balkan peninsula christians, wrangling as to whether the path to heaven runs through an exarchate or a patriarchate church. [illustration: geneva from the arve.] zwingli attempted to reconcile the differences between the lutheran protestants and his own followers; and there was a famous conference between the two reformers at marburg at the invitation of the landgrave phillip of hesse. the attempt was a vain one. but zwingli went on with a plan he had formed to unite in diplomacy, if not in the exactness of religious belief, all the protestant states of europe. in the development of this plan civil war within switzerland was fomented, and zwingli was killed in fighting with the protestant forces of zurich against the roman catholics of the forest cantons. zurich was badly defeated in the battle, and militant protestantism received for a while a check. bullinger, who succeeded zwingli, did not concern himself with politics to any great extent, but perfected the zwinglian system of religious thought. bullinger will be best remembered to english-speaking people as the friend and correspondent of that lady jane grey who was sacrificed on the scaffold by queen mary of england. three letters from lady jane grey to him are still treasured at zurich. of bullinger's treatise on "christian marriage" dedicated to her, she translated a portion into greek, and presented it as a christmas present to her father. bullinger's sermons and letters were to her, she wrote once, "as most precious flowers from a garden." she asked his advice as to the best method of learning hebrew, and regarded him as "particularly favoured by the grace of god." at the block she took off her gloves and desired that they should be sent on to her swiss friends. calvin was not swiss-born, but reached basel in as an exile from france. he had been destined for the roman catholic priesthood, changed his plans and became a lawyer, and at paris was drawn into the orbit of the french reformation. persecuted in france, he retired to switzerland, and in published his _christianae religionis institutio_, which set forth his gloomy system of religious faith with, as its most startling belief, the idea that god predestined certain people for eternal salvation and certain others for eternal damnation. in , at the invitation of a local reformer named farel, calvin settled in geneva. it was at the time the head of "french" switzerland, as zurich was the head of "german" switzerland, and was a gay pleasure-loving city. the attempt to impose upon the genevan citizens the gloomy austerities of calvinism led to frequent riots, and at last the civil government banished both the apostles of sadness, calvin going to strasburg. in he was back at geneva with an understood commission to reframe the religious and social life of the city. he set to work with grim fanaticism, aiming at a "kingdom of god on earth" framed on the lines of the old judaic theocracies, with himself as the prophet and autocrat. very terrible was the tyranny of this gloomy presbyter, though the state he set up won the unqualified admiration of john knox, that kindred soul who carried to scotland the tenets of calvinism and set up there a similar theocracy. "they liked a preacher who could weep and howl well in the pulpit," records buckle, describing the reign of calvinism in scotland. in geneva there was, according to john knox, "the most perfect school of christ that was ever in the earth since the days of the apostles." the whole populace was expected to weep and howl in abasement before a terrible god. no human pleasure was too paltry to escape the ban of these ministers of gloom. some of the statutes of geneva at the time are humorous to read nowadays, mournful as was the spirit they showed at the time. a few examples of the prohibitions current in calvin's time: that no citizen, burger, or inhabitant of this city dareth be so hardy to go from henceforth to eat or drink in any tavern. that none be so hardy to walk by night in the town after nine of the clock, without candlelight and also a lawful cause. that no manner of person, of what estate, quality or condition soever they be, shall wear any chains of gold or silver, but those which have been accustomed to wear them shall put them off, and wear them no more upon pain of three score shillings for every time. that no women, of what quality or condition soever they be, shall wear any verdingales, gold upon her head, quoises of gold, billiments or such like, neither any manner of embroidery upon her sleeves. that no manner of person, whatsoever they be, making bride-ales, banquets, or feasts shall have above three courses or services to the said feasts, and to every course or service not above four dishes, and yet not excessive, upon pain of three score shillings for every time, fruit excepted. theatres, the dressing of the hair, music, games, skating, dancing, were all forbidden; so were pictures and statues. a governing body called the _consistoire_, with calvin at its head, had the right to send its spies into every home to detect ungodliness. when the plague came to the city to match with a physical ill this moral blight, geneva became a very hell upon earth. torture was used to extort confessions from the accused. whilst the plague was at its worst the sword, the gallows, the stake were always busy. the jailor asserted that his prisons were filled to excess, and the executioner complained that his arms were wearied. within a period of three years there were passed fifty-eight sentences of death, seventy-six of banishment, and eight to nine thousand of imprisonment, on those whose crime was infringement of the church statutes. offences against himself personally calvin treated as blasphemy, and blasphemy was punishable with death. upon the death of calvin the government of geneva fell into the hands of beza, a man of more human feeling, and calvinism modified a little of its savage gloom. later the influence of the zwinglians exercised a further moderating influence, and the swiss reformed church began to get a little of the spirit of the new testament. after the fame of the reformers had waned switzerland drew the attention of all europe to her cities again by the writings of rousseau and voltaire, the chief makers, i should say, of the french revolution. rousseau was the son of a watchmaker of geneva and was born in . he was a turbulent child and ran away from home to france at the age of sixteen. he returned to his native city a quarter of a century later. rousseau was a revolutionary critic of society, and his _origin of inequality_, _Émile_, and _the social contract_ attacked all the foundations of the then existing society. the last named formed the basis of the constitution of . in _la nouvelle héloïse_, a romance the scenery of which is laid at vevey and montreux, rousseau argued for a return to more natural methods of living. that romance gave the stimulus to the romantic works of goethe and schiller. voltaire was a swiss by adoption and not by birth. he did not settle down at ferney near geneva until he was sixty years of age ( ): but that left him twenty-four years of life to spend there. fear of the french court sent him out of france. he seemed to have carried no fear with him. he braved the consistory of geneva--then still upholding much of the calvinist tradition--and actually established a theatre in the gloomy city. apart from the crowds of distinguished visitors whom voltaire's reputation brought to geneva, he was a useful citizen. he was the sponsor of two important local industries. on his estate at ferney he bred silkworms, and presently he had weavers from geneva to weave stockings of silk. the first pair was sent to the duchesse de choiseul. his correspondence with the duchesse would turn a modern advertiser green with envy. voltaire also started a watch manufactory, and again he advertised his watches in cunning letters and circulars to such people as catherine the great. in a short time the ferney watchmaker's export trade spread everywhere, even to china and to north africa. voltaire, rousseau--these two names kept all eyes on switzerland for a generation, and brought to switzerland practically all the serious thinkers of the day. there was one notable exception. boswell records a vain pilgrimage that he made to ferney. his mission was to reconcile voltaire and johnson. voltaire described johnson as a "superstitious dog." johnson, asked by boswell if he thought rousseau as bad a man as voltaire, said, "sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them." dr. johnson never went to geneva. he would have paid as little homage to calvinism as to voltairism. [illustration: l'Église de la madeleine, geneva.] chapter vii the swiss people to-day the swiss people to-day preserve that element of the paradoxical which in the middle ages produced an arnold winkelried, courageous to gather the spears of a foe into his bosom for the sake of his country, and thousands of other heroes willing to give almost as great service to any cause for the sake of steady pay. the switzer of the twentieth century is intensely patriotic, and to keep his country secure makes cheerful joys of the tasks of universal training for military service. but he is a willing exile wherever there is money to be made. he cherishes a deep national pride: but he has no objection to servile occupation in a foreign land if it is profitable. often he shows himself greedy and rapacious. yet he is markedly hospitable and charitable. he is eager for liberty, but surrounds his life with a host of petty tyrannies of regulation, being more under the shadow of the official _verboten_ than even the german. he loves the wild natural beauty of his mountains, but will spoil any alp with a staring hotel and a funicular railway for the sake of tourist gold. a nation of heroes and hotel-keepers, of patriots and mercenaries, a nation that produced the swiss guard which defended the tuileries, and the _suisse_ who will carry anybody's bag anywhere in europe for a tip--the swiss mingle in a curious way the sublime and the paltry. two characteristics the swiss has clear-cut--thrift and industry. i have never heard of a prodigal swiss. their industry is almost as invariable. very noticeable is it in the swiss abroad. i can recall two typical swiss colonists in australia. the one arrived without other resources than a willing back for a burden and took a porter's post in a hotel. he soon had something better than that in view, and went hawking ingenious coat and trouser hangers which he twisted from fencing wire. next i encountered him selling eggs and fruit: he had bought up a little farm out of the profits of his coat-hangers. his next step was a hotel of his own, and thenceforward he became steadily rich. the other swiss was not of so much resource. he was a printer by trade and earned from £ : s. to £ a week by that calling. he had saved and saved and had bought three acres of land some five miles out of the city. this farm he and his wife cultivated, providing for themselves (and for sale to neighbours) fruit, milk, wine, butter, cheese, vegetables, poultry. he never spent a penny on a railway or tramway fare, walking always to and from his work. nor did he ever enter a restaurant or a hotel. when he had paid for his land and his house out of his earnings, the weekly budget of the household never called for more than ten shillings for food, clothing, taxes, etc. in the appenzeller district, true, one may encounter apparently lazy men. but in most cases it will be found that these men have put in a very hard-working youth abroad to save money for the little household; that they spend the summer laboriously as guides, and only idle around the porcelain stoves of their cottages in the winter (whilst their wives work at lace-making and the household tasks) because there is nothing in particular they can do with any direct profit. certainly, they could help the women. but what the use, or the justice of it? that would only leave idle time on the women's hands, and if any one deserves a rest, they would argue, it is the man who has perhaps spent years of his early life in absolute slavery to save up enough for a home. mr. john addington symonds in his _life in the swiss highlands_ (a. & c. black) has given a detailed and a very sympathetic picture of the life of the swiss peasantry, the class from which stream out all over europe big, hungry, slowwitted, sturdy hotel porters and waiters. in some cases it is a very harsh life these peasants have. he tells: some families subsisted on almost nothing but potatoes and weak coffee. one poor fellow, who has now developed into a hearty man, told me that before he left home he hardly ever tasted bread or cheese or meat, and that he was a mere hungry skeleton with skin upon it. at school he had so little flesh and blood that when he cut his finger to the bone it did not bleed. this man also told me a strange tale, which i will relate. there was a family in the same village, as indigent as his own, but reckless and wild. the long, gaunt, lanky sons grew up like beasts of prey, stealing eggs, climbing into stables and sucking the cows' udders. one of them, more frantically famished than his brethren, confessed to having hacked with his knife a large slice out of the quarters of a richer neighbour's live pig. whether the young brigand cooked this abyssinian beefsteak or ate the delicious morsel raw, i forgot to ask. another of the same brood used to supply himself with animal food by drinking the blood from slaughtered beasts, whenever he got permission to indulge his appetite that way. i was informed that this comparative vampire developed into the stoutest and comeliest fellow of the set; and indeed blood, drunk warm from the veins of a sheep or bullock, ought to be highly nutritious. that is, i suppose, the harshest side of a swiss peasant's life--an example of the very poor folk. but in no case is it luxurious. from that sort of life the young swiss, going to carry burdens in a french hotel of the lower class, or act as waiter and _factotum_ at a bloomsbury boarding-house, finds hardly any degree of hardship unendurable. it is astonishing to note on how little food, how little sleep, how little human comfort the poor swiss on the bottom rung of the ladder can keep soul and body together. afterwards, when he gets on in the world, the swiss sometimes takes his revenge. the rapacious swiss hotel-keeper of a tourist resort whose exactions infuriate the traveller, is perhaps only paying back to the world the bitter lessons he was taught as the slave of some poor house of accommodation. not, of course, that the swiss hotel-keeper is always, or even generally a brigand. indeed he is very rarely so in switzerland. it is _verboten_. but they are always keen, and if dishonest are more keenly dishonest than any others. in their own country regulations safeguard the tourist fairly effectively. hotel-keeping is the chief apparent occupation of the switzerland known to the tourist. but there is apart from that in the towns a busy industrial life. since the use of water-power for generating electricity has come to be understood switzerland has progressed more and more as a manufacturing country. so great are the demands of the new factories that the emigration of the swiss begins to dwindle and there is an immigration of artisans from abroad into the country. in the rural districts, away from the towns, among the alpine villages, the chief industry is the rearing of sheep, goats, and cows. swiss milk, in a preserved form, and swiss cheese go all over the world. the life of the alpine villages rarely comes under the notice of the tourist unless he is a pedestrian without the craze for rock or glacier climbing, and willing to use his legs for the exploring of rough hill paths. in these villages life is very quiet and peaceful. it is not uncommon to find in them very old men living in the houses in which their great-grandfathers had been born and died. they do not know who built these snuff-coloured huts, but only that their ancestors dwelt in them. in an alpine village the two principal buildings are the inn and the white stone church. there is no street. a rough track leads past the dozen or so brown houses. they are two or three stories in height, low ceilinged, lined with pine and built of small pine or hemlock logs dressed smooth and square, laid close and dovetailed at the corners. often the exteriors are carved. the shingle roof is kept in place with heavy stones, and projects to feet beyond the walls. some houses have shingled roofs a dozen layers thick. the windows are many and very small. around the village are sloping meadows, high mountains, steep waterfalls, perhaps a fair blue lake. the short summer is spent in growing a few potatoes, herding the goats, cows, or sheep, pressing the cheese, and cutting and carrying in the grass. winter is spent in eating up the little that summer gave, and in a struggle to keep from freezing. in the high villages the flocks are usually of goats. to save the trouble of each villager herding his own goats, a single shepherd is employed who leads the village drove into the higher alps each day. when the flock return at eve, each goat seeks its familiar home, enters, and bleats to be milked and stalled. in the better country of the valleys the herds are of cows, and it is the custom each summer to drive them to the higher alps to follow the lush grasses of the spring as it climbs up the mountains with the waxing of the sun's power. this general and gradual movement of the cattle from the valleys to the alp pastures is a picturesque business. the herds are assembled in procession, each preceded by its herdsman, and a flock of goats. the herdsmen wear white shirts, broad leather suspenders adorned with images of cows and goats in bright metal, scarlet waistcoats, knee breeches of bright yellow, white stockings, and low shoes. a round black hat bound with flowers, and one long brass ear-ring consisting of a chain carrying a tiny milk-pail, usually complete the costume. after the herdsman come three or more heifers, each wearing a huge bell from a brightly garlanded collar. then come the cattle, with herd-boys to keep them in line. each herd-file is closed by a waggon containing a great copper cheese-kettle and wooden utensils for milk and butter. [illustration: an alpine village, grindelwald.] mr. symonds pictures the joy of man and beast at these annual pilgrimages in the footsteps of the spring: the whole village is astir long before daybreak; and the animals, who know well what a good time is in store for them, are as impatient as their masters. the procession sets forth in a long train, cows lowing, bells tinkling, herdsmen shouting, old men and women giving the last directions about their favourite beasts to the herdsmen. rude pictures of the _zug auf die alpen_, as it is called, may sometimes be seen pasted, like a frieze or bas-relief, along the low panelled walls of mountain cottages. these are the work, in many cases, of the peasants themselves, who write the names of the cattle over the head of each, attach preposterously huge bells to the proud leaders of the herd, and burden the hinds with vast loads of bread and household gear, and implements for making cheese. how many happy memories of summer holidays have been worked into those clumsy but symbolic forms by uncouth fingers in the silence of winter evenings, when possibly phyllis sat by and wondered at her damon's draughtsmanship! it takes two whole days and nights at least to get from emsenau to the panixer alp. but when this journey is accomplished, the human part of the procession installs itself delightfully in little wooden huts, which allow the pure air from the glaciers to whistle through every cranny. the tired cows spread themselves over pastures which the snows have lately left, feeding ravenously on the delicious young grass, starred with gentians and primulas, and hosts of bright-eyed tiny flowers. and then begins a rare time for men and cattle. it is a pity that our british race has lost the habit of making festivals of the great events of the pastoral and agricultural year. i have seen in australia the annual moving of the sheep from the monaro tableland to the "snow leases" of the australian alps, when the hot sun had scorched away all the herbage of the plains. it gives just as much inspiration for joy and thankfulness. but there is no festival. the sheep huddle along, the dogs at their heels. brown-tanned, eager-eyed men ride beside, with the gladness of the expectation of the mountain fastnesses in their hearts but hardly a word of it on their lips. in england--which was once "merrie englande" because of its cheery rustic life--harvest festivals and rural feasts have almost vanished. in many places the alp-horn is still used to call the cows home at milking-time. it is a huge wooden trumpet, often six feet in length, and a swiss can draw deep and powerful notes from its wide throat. its compass consists of only a few notes, but when these ring and echo from height to height the effect is very striking and beautiful. [illustration: alpine herdsman. the piz kesch in the distance.] most striking is it at the hour of sunset. on the loftier alps, to which no sounds of evening bell can climb, the alp-horn proclaims the vesper hour. as the sun drops behind the distant snowy summits, the herdsman takes his huge horn and sends pealing along the mountain-side the first few notes of the psalm "praise ye the lord." from alp to alp he is answered by his brother herdsmen, and the deep, strong notes echo from crag to crag in solemn melody. it is the signal for the evening prayer and for repose. around their dairying industry centres the best of the swiss nation, and it is fitting that the "ranz des vaches" which calls the cattle home should be the national song of the swiss. it is no single air, it is the "cow-call" developed by herdsmen through generations, and it varies in nearly every valley. its common property is the shrill falsetto intonation of the chorus--the curious twist of the throat that results in the yodel. it is singularly sweet heard in alpine air. there is a story that once a regiment of swiss soldiers hired by france deserted, and made for their homes, when the band played the "ranz des vaches." the desertion was not a shameful one. the same men could have been driven away from their mercenary standards by no threat of death. the rural industries of switzerland are fostered with great care. in particular the forests, which protect the soil from being swept away and are ramparts to the villages against avalanches, are jealously preserved. no one may cut down a tree, even his own tree, in switzerland without the authority of a forestry official. the department of forestry supervises carefully the wooded lands and marks those trees which can be felled without harm to the wood. the organisation of the national services, posts, roads, railways, etc., is also shaped to secure the greatest degree of comfort possible for the small land-holders. it is a wise policy. these rustic people, living almost exclusively on their own resources, eating food which they have produced, wearing clothes which they have spun, demanding so little from the outside world, are the very backbone of the swiss nation, and they are the rock-foundations of the national patriotism. the swiss are not bound together by the ties of a common race, a common language, a common religion. their nation is in a sense an artificial one. its cementing bond is an hereditary instinct, nourished among the peasants of these mountain pastures, to keep the mountain slopes free. the town life of the swiss, affected a good deal as it must be by the hotel life of the tourists, is not so admirable as the village life. it is in some aspects irritatingly petty-minded; in others invitingly well-educated. the swiss are interested only in the swiss, and (in a strictly commercial way) the strangers who come to visit and enrich switzerland. a swiss newspaper tells little or nothing of the doings of the outside world. its columns are filled with long accounts of the doings of swiss shooting clubs and gymnastic societies. yet swiss trading and professional people are, in the general rule, astonishingly well versed in foreign languages and foreign literature. offering asylum as it does to political and social rebels of all countries, switzerland is a kind of international clearing-house for thought. the gallic, the teutonic, the slavonic new thought of the day--all are understood and discussed in switzerland, and the swiss book-shops are the most cosmopolitan and representative in the world. the use of national costume dwindles in switzerland as it does in every other part of the world. the peasant women have, however, still a characteristic head-dress, the maidens wearing black caps, the matrons white ones. the caps are two slips of upright lace, which, coming from behind over the head, meet on the forehead, the whole having the air of a butterfly with wings half outspread. between these, the girls' tresses are puffed and held back by a silver pin--called a _rosenadel_, from its head resembling a rosebud. the matrons only vary this mode in covering their hair with an embroidered piece of silk. for the festivals attending the movement of the cattle to the hills, the hay-cutting, and the vintage, the peasants also don gay national costume. traces of the old sumptuary laws of the calvinist communities still linger in the habits of the people, and show, too, in the absence of pomp at public ceremonies or representative meetings. a communal assembly looks like a class-room. the universities carry on their work with a sober absence of pomp, and uniforms are rare. the great amusement of the people in many quarters is still religious disputation and invective. the most popular place in all geneva for the swiss inhabitants is the victoria hall, where "revivalist" preachers of the most damnatory forms of religion hold forth. [illustration: hay hauling on the alpine snow.] chapter viii alpine climbing though switzerland does not contain within its borders more than one-third of the alps, and the greatest height of the alpine range (mount blanc) is wholly within france, the alps are always associated with switzerland in the popular mind; and with good reason, for the country is particularly and almost wholly alpine in its character, and its national existence has been largely shaped by the mountain ranges which have given people differing from one another in racial origin, in language, and in religion a bond of unity. the most famous mountain range of the world historically, the alps are far from being the greatest in height, and they are by no means the oldest of the world's mountains, though they are older probably than the himalayas, older certainly than the _parvenu_ peaks of the south seas, some of which were born amid thunders and lightnings only yesterday, considering time in geological periods. the form of a mountain range and its height give usually some surface indications of its age. new mountains, like those of the south seas, are very sharp and jagged in their outlines. old mountains have been usually smoothed down by erosion. the oldest mountains probably of the world, the australian alps, are near neighbours of the youngest, the fiery volcanoes of the straits of sunda. [illustration: sunset on mont blanc from geneva.] a mountain's first birthday is marked by a movement towards old age. as soon as it begins to live it begins to die. if it is of volcanic origin its term of life is usually short; it comes to being suddenly with a wild upheaval of the earth, and at once the eating rain, and the splitting frost, and the destroying wind set to work to cut away its peak and pull it down to the level of the plain again. if the mountain is of more slow creation, the result of a gradual up-wrinkling of a crease of the earth as she readjusts her surface to the cooling of her bulk, the mountain may go on growing whilst also it goes on dying. from below inward forces are pushing it higher towards the sky. from above the rains and snows and winds are chiselling away its rocks and bearing them to the plains. in time the process of pushing up ceases; the process of grinding down goes on remorselessly, never pausing for a moment. so the mountains are eternal only in the figurative sense. actually their term of existence is strictly finite. once the australian alps had their tremendous peaks, and hills of unmelting ice. to-day they have been ground down to below the line of perpetual snow, and along the gentle grades of the chief peak it is possible to drive a carriage to the very summit. the european alps are being subjected to-day to the same process of softening of outline and lowering of height. but for many generations yet they will lift white peaks to the skies. this though it is clear that the ice area upon them is steadily dwindling. this is a result, however, not of erosion, but of a warming of the climate of europe, indeed of the whole northern hemisphere. some measurements in by the swiss alpine club confirm the recession of the swiss glaciers. the largest of the glaciers, "l'aletsch," had retreated feet, following on nearly feet in , and rather more than that in . the rhine glacier had gone back feet, in addition to the feet lost in the previous two years. an exception to the general rule appeared at first to be furnished by the two glaciers of grindelwald, which had increased since last year; but the advance did not compensate for the loss of the previous year, and since the two glaciers have lost nearly a quarter of a mile. their temporary advance is attributable solely to the inclement weather during . nearly all the smaller glaciers, out of the fifty-two surveyed by the alpine club, show some retreat, and the largest loss appears to be that of the palu glacier, near bernina, which is losing regularly feet a year. this dwindling is not confined to swiss glaciers. a survey of canadian glaciers which was made five years ago shows that other glaciers in the northern hemisphere are retreating. the victoria glacier is doing so; and the only slight exception appeared at that time to be the yoho glacier, which was retreating, but not nearly so fast as it had been in previous years. m. charles rabot asserts that the glaciers in argentina are also retreating, and surmises, from data perhaps not so well established, that there has been a general retreat of glaciers during the last half of the nineteenth century throughout spitzbergen, iceland, central asia, and alaska. he suggests that the cause is a present tendency towards equalisation of the earth's temperature. others more boldly affirm that the swiss glaciers, as well as other great ice masses existing on the globe, are remnants of the last ice age, and are all doomed to disappear as the cycle works round for the full heat of the next warm age. but the disappearance, if it is to come, will not come quickly, and the doom of ice-climbing in switzerland is too remote a threat to disturb the alpinist. to the inexpert a glacier is a glacier all the world over, but the expert knows that the glaciers of different mountains have the same variations of character as the streams of different countries. sir martin conway describes swiss alpine glaciers as of the medium type, lying as they do half-way between the arctic and tropical extremes. they have not the rapid flow of the arctic nor the dry rigidity of the tropical sort. their walls are not silent as in the central andes, nor thundered over by continual avalanches like those of the upper baltoro. they are of medium size also. in a single day almost any of them may be ascended from snout to snow-field, and descended again. to explore their remotest recesses no elaborately equipped expedition is required. yet they are large enough to be imposing, and penetrate deep enough into the heart of the hills to isolate their votaries completely from the world of human habitation. it is to this medium quality that the alps owe much of their charm. this, too, it is that makes them an almost perfect mountain playground. were they but a little smaller, how much they would lose that is most precious! were they larger, how many persons that now can afford the cost and the strength to explore them would have to linger at their gates wistfully looking in. in area, too, they are large enough for grandeur and yet small enough for easy access. no part of them is beyond the range of a summer holiday, yet a commanding view of them is as apparently limitless as is the view from the greatest asiatic peaks which, thus far, have been climbed. they are the only range of snow-mountains in the world thus blessed with moderation. the alps to-day attract geologists and meteorologists from all parts of the world, but their first earnest student was a genevan, horace de saussure, whose writings about his native mountains have a charm from their style as well as from their record of exact observations. born in , he was appointed at the age of twenty-one professor of philosophy at geneva university. he ascended mount blanc in at the age of forty-seven, and spent all his leisure before and after that date in geological exploration of the various peaks. "the one aim," he writes in his journals, "of most of the travellers who call themselves naturalists is the collection of curiosities. they walk, or rather they creep about, with their eyes fixed upon the earth, picking up a specimen here and a specimen there, without any eye to a generalization. they remind me of an antiquary scratching the ground at rome, in the midst of the pantheon or the coliseum, looking for fragments of coloured glass, without ever turning to look at the architecture of these magnificent edifices." this pioneer of geology died in . there had been before him some few alpine climbers, and there were after him some few more; but the twentieth-century tourist to switzerland--who is chiefly interested in the alps as difficult mountains to climb, presenting great problems of ice and cliff traverses, seasoning the joy of difficult achievement with a pronounced spice of danger--follows a sport so modern that there are men now living who were born before the passion for alpine climbing came to birth. certainly the alps were traversed of old. but strictly not for pleasure. the most accessible passes, not the most difficult peaks, were sought out; and the burdens and terrors of the passage, not the joys of it, were uppermost in the minds of travellers. there is not extant any expression of pleasure from hannibal, cæsar, napoleon, suwarow, or any other of those famous conquerors of this mountain barrier. if any references at all to the crossing of the alps come down from past times they are of complaint. an english monk of the middle ages, for example, writes to his brethren of canterbury: pardon me for not writing. i have been on the mount of jove--on the one hand looking up at the heaven of the mountains, on the other shuddering at the hell of the valleys, feeling myself so much nearer heaven that i was more sure my prayer would be heard. lord, i said, restore me to my brethren, that i may tell them, that they come not into this place of torment. place of torment indeed, where the marble pavement of the stony ground is ice, and you cannot set your foot safely; where, strange to say, although it is so slippery that you cannot stand, the death (into which there is every facility to fall) is certain death. i put my hand in my scrip that i might scratch out a syllable or two to your sincerity--lo! i found my ink-bottle filled with a dry mass of ice; my fingers too refused to write, my beard was stiff with frost, and my breath congealed into a long icicle. i could not write the news i wished! in the days, nearer to our own time, of the _salons_ of coppet and ferney, no one of the distinguished writers and thinkers who visited switzerland gave a thought to mountain-climbing as a pleasure. indeed all seemed insensible that there was any particular charm in the mountains' grandeur. the first of the great company of hill-climbers for pleasure, so far as i can discover, was that very typical englishman, mr. albert smith, who in climbed mount blanc, and devoted six years of profitable life afterwards to describing how he did it, to audiences at the egyptian hall, london. a nation which had already invented arctic exploration was quick to seize upon alpine climbing as an outlet for superfluous energy and love of danger. mr. albert smith was the forerunner of a great herd of climbers from this country and--the fashion spreading, as all english fashions do, to europe--from many other countries: though truly i suspect that the continental mind approves at heart more thoroughly the spirit of that amusing satire, _tartarin de tarascon sur les alpes_, than the solemn records of the alpine club. switzerland has not so far raised a national memorial to mr. albert smith, nor do swiss hotel-keepers make pilgrimages to his grave in brompton cemetery. but he has his monument surely in mount blanc, the mountain which he "invented," according to the sober pages of the _dictionary of national biography_. sir leslie stephen, of whom it was said "he walked from alp to alp like a pair of one-inch compasses over a large map," systematised, though he had not invented, alpine climbing. he was one of the leading spirits of the alpine club, which encourages, records, and organises the climbing of alps. [illustration: the palÜ glacier.] so firm a hold on the british imagination has this sport of creeping over slippery ice-masses and fly-crawling along the face of precipices in pursuit of peaks, that the swiss alps do not give sufficient scope for their energies. ascents of the andes and the himalayas are attempted. every year quite a number of travellers cross to canada to encounter the dangers of the rockies and the selkirks there. to far-off new zealand the alpinists go; and i have encountered in sydney an enthusiastic english lady who had climbed peaks in all corners of the earth and had come to australia for the conquest of the australian alps. on learning of their contemptible height, and that it was possible to drive up to their very summit in a carriage, she took the first boat away, convinced that a country without dangerous mountain-climbing was utterly unworthy of any attention. what is the chief charm of this mountain-climbing? the joy of the scenery? the exaltation of the keen high air? these are factors no doubt, but not essential nor even the chief factors. the chief appeal it makes is to the joy of combat and the pride of achievement. some of the peaks which once were difficult have now been made easy: funicular railways run to spots which were once inaccessible except to keen mountaineers. these spots the mountain-climber shuns. it is not the wish to see the dawn from this peak or the sunset from that point which spurs him on, but the sense of danger and difficulty to be overcome, the urging of his human pride to show that he can conquer the obstacles which nature has put in his path. the motive of the mountain-climber is one that lends itself easily to ridicule. but _au fond_ it is the motive of human progress, the spirit which spurs man on to explore the sea, and the depths beneath the sea; the land, and the air above the land. and perhaps there comes to the climber a keener, finer sense of the beauties of the scenery which he has come to see with so much effort and danger. so sir martin conway (_the alps_, a. & c. black) insists, describing dawn on the alps as it comes to the "active mountaineer, keenly awake, with the blood alive within him and a day of hopes ahead." he writes: [illustration: winter sunrise in the engadine--cresta: celerina and samaden.] the night is dying. her rich darks and whites grow pallid. each moment a layer of darkness peels off. the sky turns blue before one knows it: the rocks grow brown: there is blue in the crevasses, and green upon the swards--all low-toned yet distinct. faint puffs of warm air come, we know not whence, touch our faces, and are gone. the lantern has been extinguished; we stride out more freely; the day awakens within us also. now is displayed in all its magnificence the daily drama of the dawn. while the mists yet lie cold and grey in the deep valleys, they glow against the eastern horizon, where all the spectrum is slowly uprolled, more and more fiery beneath, as it tends to red, and cut off below by the jagged outline of countless peaks, looking tiny, away off there on the margin of the world. low floating cloudlets turn to molten gold. the horizon flames along all its fretted eastern edge, a narrow band of lambent light, a smokeless crimson fire. the belt of colour grows broader; it swamps and dyes the cloudlets crimson. long pink streamers of soft light strike up from where the sun is presently to appear. the great moment is at hand. all eyes rove around the view. at last some near high peak salutes the day; its summit glowing like a live coal drawn from a furnace. another catches the light and yet another. the glory spreads downwards, turning from pink to gold, and from gold to pure daylight, and then--lo! the sun himself upon the horizon! a point of blinding light, soon changing to the full round orb. the day has come, and the long shadows gather in their skirts and prepare to flee away. before such enthusiasm who dares to urge that the alpine dawn may be as well seen from a point to which the railway will take you? or that the climber's penalty before the dawn is night in a hut which has but elementary ventilation to counteract the fumes of lamps, stoves, and steaming clothes? going to the alps, climb most certainly if you can climb. but supposing want of ability or inclination to climb, it is yet possible to enjoy most of their beauties. chapter ix natural beauties of switzerland yes, it is not necessary to join a climbing party to enjoy the scenery of switzerland. no place in the world offers greater facilities to the sedentary tourist. there are railways and diligence routes almost everywhere; and in places, too, there are still retreats for the quiet pedestrian who wishes neither to undertake sensational climbs nor to be carried by railway, but loves quiet paths by hill and lake and forest, taking longfellow's advice: i heard the distant waters dash, i saw the current whirl and flash, and richly, by the blue lake's silver beach, the woods were bending with a silent reach. then o'er the vale, with gentle swell, the music of the village bell came sweetly to the echo-giving hills.... if thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, go to the woods and hills! no tears dim the sweet look that nature wears. it has to be admitted sadly that these opportunities for quiet rambles become rarer with each year as mountain railways are multiplied, and roads supplant the old shepherd paths. but still they exist in some districts of switzerland, and the conveniences offered to the walker by the public services of the country prove that the swiss wisely appreciate the value of the patronage of this class of tourist. the roads and paths are wonderfully well sign-posted, and in places where there is a great tangle of paths the device has been adopted of putting vari-coloured marks to indicate different routes. thus going out from a centre, one walk will be marked by black marks on trees, rocks, and fences, another by yellow, another by red, and so on. but best of all are the few districts still left where there are mountain paths with no trace at all of tourist traffic, along which you must find your way by diligent inquiry, by frequent reference to the map, and always with caution against being tangled up hopelessly in some wild valley. the federal post office offers useful service to the walker. you may send on your personal luggage by parcel post very cheaply, and thus walk with very little impedimenta. the happy experience of one tourist was that he walked right across switzerland, never carried more than seven pounds of luggage on his back, and never wanted a change of clothes in the evening, so reliable was the parcel post system. [illustration: the schiahorn. "the chalets are like fairy houses or toys."] mendelssohn has sung the beauty of swiss paths: how beautiful are these paths! this canton de vaud is the most beautiful of the countries that i know. if god should grant me a long old age, this is where i should wish to spend it. what excellent people! what bright expressions on their faces! what charming views! when one returns from italy one almost melts into tears at the sight of this corner of the world, in which so many good and honest people are still to be met. there are no beggars here, no surly functionaries--nothing but smiling countenances! i thank god for having let me see so many beautiful sights. he wrote of a time preceding the modern tourist rush to switzerland. but such delights can still be had, away from the more popular resorts. in the zermatt district the walking is particularly good, for it has not yet been "developed" at the call of the crowding hordes of tourists. the paths have not been broadened into roads and spoilt in the process, and old-fashioned inns have not been replaced by palace hotels. summer, of course, is the chief walking season, but there are many paths in some of the lower districts possible in the winter. certainly those who go to the winter resorts for the sports should make a point of breaking away now and again from skating rink and toboggan run for a quiet prowl along some solitary path, to enjoy in solitude, or in the company of a dear friend, the calm joy of an alpine sunset such as mr. symonds describes: while the west grows momentarily more pale the eastern heavens flush with afterglow, suffuse their spaces with pink and violet. daffodil and tenderest emerald intermingle: and these colours spread until the west again has rose and primrose and sapphire wonderfully blent, and from the burning skies a light is cast upon the valley--a phantom light, less real, more like the hues of molten gems that were the stationary flames of sunset. venus and the moon, meanwhile, are silvery clear. then the whole illumination fades like magic.... there is hardly any colour except the blue of sky and shadow. everything is traced in vanishing tints, passing from the almost amber of the distant sunlight through glittering white into pale grey and brighter blues and deep ethereal azure. the pines stand in black platoons upon the hillsides, with a tinge of red or orange on their sable. some carry masses of snow. others have shaken their plumes free. the châlets are like fairy houses or toys; waist-deep in stores of winter fuel, with their mellow tones of madder and umber relieved against the white, with the fantastic icicles and folds of snow depending from their eaves, or curled like coverlids from roof and window-sill, they are far more picturesque than in the summer. colour, wherever it is found, whether in these cottages or in a block of serpentine by the roadside, or in the golden bulrush-blades by the lake shore, takes more than double value. it is shed upon the pallid landscape like a spiritual and transparent veil. most beautiful of all are the sweeping lines of pure untroubled snow, fold over fold of undulating softness, billowing along the skirts of the peaked hills. there is no conveying the charm of immaterial, aerial, lucid beauty, the feeling of purity and aloofness from sordid things, conveyed by the fine touch on all our senses of light, colour, form, and air, and motion, and rare tinkling sound. the enchantment is like a spirit mood of shelley's lyric verse. [illustration: a mountain path, grindelwald.] to the tourist who contemplates a first visit to switzerland, and can give but little time to the country--making the visit, let us suppose, as part of a european tour,--perhaps the best centre of interest is lucerne. there he may enjoy at the outset all the characteristic charms of swiss scenery--the beautiful lakes, the meadows, and orchards stretching up from the blue waters to the hills, the great mountains of rigi, pilatus (said by an ancient myth to have been the refuge of the despairing pontius pilate), and the stansenhorn. there, too, may be found the delight of the alpine pine forests and of the alpine flowers. there, too, are splendid survivals of the picturesque life of medieval switzerland. and, as the swiss gate of the st. gothard pass, lucerne offers at once the opportunity to explore one of the most wonderful paths of the world, and to pass quickly through to the italian lakes when the time that can be given to switzerland has been exhausted. the st. gothard pass was a middle ages' track across the alps. it was not known to the romans, who used the passes of the valais and the rhaetian alps. from the oldest document in which the gothard is mentioned, it seems that in the middle of the thirteenth century the pass was already frequented by pilgrims. following the pilgrims came merchants from lucerne, zurich, and basel, to trade with the rich towns of fertile lombardy. originally the st. gothard pass was a narrow mountain-path gradually widening into a mule-track. it was not until the early part of the nineteenth century that the pass was made accessible to carriages, and the highway constructed which still is a fine example of a mountain road. under the most favourable conditions four days was the time required to pass from lucerne to milan, and inclement weather would often force the traveller to take shelter for days. now the pass is traversed in a few hours by the st. gothard railway built jointly by italy, germany, and switzerland. after tedious conferences, a treaty was signed by these three countries in , providing that subsidies to the work should be granted by the contracting parties. the share of germany and switzerland was fixed at £ , each, and that of italy at £ , , . during the process of construction, however, a material increase was necessary, so that germany in the end contributed £ , , to the cost, switzerland £ , , , and italy £ , , . in september work was begun, and on february , , after nearly eight years of dangerous work, the piercing of the tunnel was accomplished. the courageous chief engineer, louis favre, eight months before the completion of the tunnel, fell a victim to its close, heavy air, and died of heart failure whilst in the workings. the line was opened in june and is still a great highway of railway traffic, though the simplon railway and the new loetschberg railway have come as rival trans-alpine routes. the oldest pass of the alps is that which is now called the great st. bernard, the _summus penninus_ of the romans. mr. coolidge, in _swiss travel and swiss guide-books_, states that the first known guide-book was written for the crowd of pilgrims crossing this pass, by the abbot of thingör in iceland, about . there was a shelter building on the pass before the year . a century later the little st. bernard was similarly provided. the simplon was equipped with a shelter before , the st. gothard before , and the grimsel before . but before leaving lucerne by the st. gothard pass, the traveller with any claim to historic imagination will visit schwyz, the cradle of swiss independence and the various shrines of the heroes of the forest cantons. zurich, too, is easily accessible from lucerne; also the battlefield of st. jacob on the birse, where, in the year , valiant swiss held their ground against a force of french more than twenty times as great. when night fell, this band, defying death with the cry, "our souls to god, our bodies to the armagnacs," was almost annihilated. along the st. gothard pass are the records of another great military exploit, suwarow's passage of the alps. at the devil's bridge, over the reuss, a russian cross records the desperate fight between the french and suwarow's army in . for the tourist who would mingle with his enjoyment of natural beauty visits to famous literary centres, geneva of course will be the swiss headquarters. from there stretch right and left the storied shores of lake leman. he may visit in turn ferney, coppet, and lausanne, where the gloomy austerity of genevan calvinism seemed to take on something of a comic spirit. there the use of tobacco and snuff was forbidden under the seventh commandment! "here," said a preacher, "we snuff only the word of god." montreux can be visited, or can be made the headquarters of a stay by the lake of leman if economy is a consideration, for it has the reputation of being the cheapest swiss place to live in. near montreux is the castle of chillon, which byron made famous in his "prisoner of chillon" with more regard for sentimentality than for truth. his prisoner of chillon was in truth no stainless patriot imprisoned by a tyrant's rage, but a rather rowdy layman prior, françois bonivard. he conspired against the duke of savoy, entered into a rather undignified kind of civil war, and was imprisoned in the castle of chillon. for some time he was treated fairly well, but afterwards thrust into a dungeon below the level of the lake where he was kept four years. in he was released, and was appointed historian to the genevan republic. he did not get on well with calvin and was frequently before the genevan consistory on various charges of moral wrongdoing. (that argues nothing serious against his character.) he seems to have been an average human man. but byron's poem thrust him on to a pedestal which he did not deserve. the castle of chillon did not end its history as a prison with bonivard's release. it was used as a jail in the days of the french revolution, and its last notable prisoners were some members of the salvation army, accused of causing street disorders by their ministrations. it was a picturesque incident this "persecution" by calvin's lake of leman of a new form of protestantism. but the persecution was not savage. the salvationists (english lasses chiefly) were very well treated in chillon. to mingle a study of modern swiss history with worship of the alps, berne would be the best centre for the tourist. berne dates its foundation back to berchtold v., who in the year erected a stronghold on a rocky promontory on the aare, which was to serve as a rampart against the attacks of the burgundian nobles. the town takes its name from a bear which was killed whilst the building was in course of construction. to safeguard the western part of the city, agrippa d'aubigné, the huguenot leader, commenced the erection of a circle of ramparts, completed in , parts of which still remain and are known as the "greater" and "lesser" ramparts. in , after the zaeringer dynasty had died out, berne became independent, subject only to the german emperor, and remained faithful to the house of hohenstaufen. during the interregnum, berne was forced to place herself under the protection of the duke of savoy, in order to be able to resist her numerous enemies. in the burgundian war of - , berne was victorious at grandson, morat, and nancy, and obtained a strong foothold in vaud, which entered entirely into her possession in , so that her dominion extended from the lake of geneva to the reuss, and from the source of the aare up to its juncture with the rhine. the upheaval caused by the french revolution brought about the fall of the bernese republic. in , after the battles of neuenegg and grauholz, the french entered the town under general schauenburg, and berne lost her independence. since the constitution of , berne has been the capital of the new confederation, the seat of the federal council and of parliament. it is also the headquarters of many international organisations. switzerland excites no jealousy among the european powers and is usually chosen as the summoning nation for conferences in which international agreements are discussed. berne has some fine old monuments; and its medieval fountains are particularly interesting. the bear-pit, which has been kept up for centuries in record of the city's ancient association with the bear, is worth a visit. from the bernese public gardens and from the gurten ( feet high--reached by a funicular railway) there are marvellous views of the alps. there "soul of man has fronting him earth's utmost majesty." lucerne, geneva, berne--these are the three centres i would recommend to the traveller with but a short time available for a swiss tour and seeking to get a general impression of the country: and of the three lucerne is the best centre. but with a month to spare all three may be visited and a very good idea of switzerland obtained. the best time for such a sight-seeing trip is the late spring or the summer, preferably the spring, for with the summer often come dust and flies. [illustration: castle of chillon.] chapter x avalanches and glaciers the avalanche is chiefly associated in the mind of the visitor to switzerland with thoughts of peril and destruction, the glacier with the idea of a permanent field of ice set decoratively to adorn a mountain-side. neither impression represents all of the truth. avalanches are destructive, and glaciers decorative. but the avalanche is normally, to the dweller in the alps, the welcome harbinger of spring; the glacier the hard-working labourer which brings down soil from the mountain rocks for the enrichment of the plains. the first avalanche is the sign to the swiss that _solvitur acris hiems_, and though he will not "draw his fishing boats down by rollers to the sea," in all other respects he will share the song of joy in which horace records for the italian husbandman the welcome due to the spring. the avalanche may be sometimes terrible in its destruction, as in lower lands a flood may sometimes be; but on their record, year by year, they do not cause any appalling loss of life or of property. some deaths, some destruction, can be set to their account, but nature exacts a penalty from man everywhere, on plain, on mountain, and on sea. inundations of plains, storms at sea, cause probably a much greater proportionate loss of life and property than avalanches. in switzerland, spring is the great time for avalanches. they fall all the year round, chiefly from high levels, but it is in the spring that the greatest avalanches come adrift. certain spring avalanches descend with remarkable regularity in particular places, one every year. an avalanche falls at a recognised spot in the neighbourhood of almost every village, which dates from its advent the opening of the spring. this spring avalanche is no sudden freak of nature, but an inevitable affair, slowly engendered. the snow that piles up during the winter months, on what in summer are the grass slopes below the snow-line, gradually becomes unstable as spring melting advances. the mass loses its cohesion, ceases to bind firmly together, and tends to flow downwards. the trend of the ground decides the way of its fall. if the fields upon which it lies are of small area and slope conveniently, the avalanche will slide gently down to its appointed place. but if the disposition of the ground is such that a great mass of snow is collected in a basin which has a narrow outlet, from this a great avalanche will rush like a cataract down the mountain-side until it reaches a barrier sufficiently strong to put a stop to its current. it is this type of avalanche which is the most likely to do great mischief; but even this pours down rather than falls down the hill slope. sir martin conway recalls his observations of avalanches in their actual progress along the simplon road one spring: near berisal i crossed one which had recently come to rest, traversing the road. by its rugged white surface, broken into great protuberances, its solidity, and its general form, it resembled a small glacier. to climb on to it one had to cut steps, so steep were the sides. higher up i crossed several more such fallen masses, through which gangs of workmen were cutting out the road. towards the top of the pass the snow was tumbling in smaller masses. over a hundred little avalanches crossed the road within a couple of hours. then they stopped. on the italian side similar conditions obtained, but it was not till i reached isella that the greatest fall took place, or rather was taking place, for it had begun before i arrived, and it continued after i had passed. there, a narrow gorge, with vertical cliff-sides facing one another, debouches on the main valley. it leads upwards to a great cirque in the hills, a cirque that is a grass-covered alpine pasture in the summer. the avalanche was pouring out through this gorge and piling itself up upon the main valley-floor. how the mass of it was being renewed from behind i could not see. doubtless all the hillsides above were shedding their snow, and it was flowing down and crowding into and through the gorge with a continuous flow. as the pressure was relieved below by the outpouring of the avalanche on to the valley floor, more snow came down--snow mixed with slush, and semi-liquid under the great pressure that must have been developed.... it is not easy to suggest to the reader the grandeur of effect that was produced. the volume of noise was terrific--a noise more massive and continuous than thunder, and no less deep toned.... the avalanche, pouring through the massive gateway of the hills and polishing its sides, came forth with an aspect of weight and resistless force that was extraordinarily impressive. yet nature did not seem to be acting violently, though her might was plain to see. she appeared to act with deliberation: one looked for an end of the snow-stream to come, but it flowed on and on, pulsating but not failing. the pressures that must be developed were easily conceived; correspondingly evident became the strength of the hills that could sustain them as if they had been but the stroking of a hand. later in the season the traveller often encounters, in deep-lying valleys, the black and shrunken remnants of these mighty avalanches, melted down by summer heats. little idea can they give him of the splendour of their birth and the white curdled beauty of their surface when they first come to rest. in the nature of things they travel far and fall low, well into the tree-belt, and even down to the chestnut-level on the italian side. it is a strange sight to see these vast, new-fallen masses lying in their accustomed beds, but surrounded by trees all freshly verdant with the gifts of spring. yearly each one falls in the same place, falls harmlessly and duly expected. its coming is welcomed. its voice is the triumphant shout of the coming season of summer exuberance and fertility. nature, newly awakened, cries aloud with a great and solemnly joyous cry, and the people dwelling around hear her and arise to their work upon the land. the avalanche, then, is one of the great natural forces of the mountains, which is not necessarily or even ordinarily destructive. but, like other natural forces--the fresh in the river or the gale at sea,--it can be very terrible, and, again like other natural forces, the wisdom and precaution of man can do much to minimise the danger of the avalanche and to avert any serious destruction by its agency. the swiss people, so practical, so economical, so courageous, carry on a persistent scientific campaign against the unruly element in these torrents of ice, setting up lines of defence everywhere. the first and most important line of defence is the forest; and for this reason the forest laws of switzerland are very severe. a man is not allowed to fell a tree in his own wood without the forester's consent. everything is done to preserve the natural rampart afforded by a mass of pines. in the second place, where avalanches descend regularly every year, stone galleries are built, or tunnels are mined out of the solid rock to protect roads. there are many examples of these galleries and tunnels in the züge, near davos. scientific engineers are eager to add to these plans of defence. they believe that the root of the mischief ought to be attacked. in places where avalanches are expected, they recommend the building of terraces and dwarf-walls, so as to arrest the earliest snow-slip. lower down, in the forest zone, piles should be driven into the ground, and fenced with wattling. these precautions, and others on similar lines, are now being taken, and most of the well-known avalanche tracks are being surrounded by various defensive works designed to arrest any tendency to mischief that they show. destruction from avalanches there will continue to be in exceptional cases, for nature insists, now and again, on displaying some unwonted, abnormal display of her power which sets at nought all precautions of man. a _titanic_ goes to the bottom of the sea to show that the shipbuilder can claim only a human and therefore limited surety against disaster. an avalanche may one day shock europe by rushing unexpectedly down to overwhelm a whole swiss village. but the danger from them has been diminished largely, and continues to be diminished. it is necessary to go back to the past to obtain the record of any great number of avalanche disasters. the swiss classify avalanches into several sorts. the first of these, in order of maturity, is the _staub-lawine_ or dust-snow avalanche. this is a collection of loose snow, freshly fallen, which has been caught up in one of those sectional tornadoes which spring up on the mountain slopes, and is driven down on the wings of the wind to the valley below. this form of avalanche is, because of its suddenness, the most dangerous to human life, and is also the most difficult to provide against. measures to prevent the accumulation of drift snow in dangerous pockets or wind-swept slopes are in some degree efficacious. mr. symonds records the experience of a swiss who was caught in a dust-avalanche: [illustration: davos in winter. the home of john addington symonds.] a human victim of the dreadful thing, who was so lucky as to be saved from its clutch, once described to me the sensations he experienced. he was caught at the edge of the avalanche just when it was settling down to rest, carried off his feet, and rendered helpless by the swathing snow, which tied his legs, pinned his arms to his ribs, and crawled upward to his throat. there it stopped. his head emerged, and he could breathe; but as the mass set, he felt the impossibility of expanding his lungs, and knew that he must die of suffocation. at the point of losing consciousness, he became aware of comrades running to his rescue. they hacked the snow away around his thorax, and then rushed on to dig for another man who had been buried in the same disaster, leaving him able to breathe, but wholly powerless to stir hand or foot. the usual spring avalanche is called the _schlag-lawine_ or stroke-avalanche. these, as already described, push down a slope of the mountains like a swiftly flowing river. danger from the _schlag-lawine_, which is just as usual and inevitable a process of nature as the growing of the trees or the splitting of rocks by frost, has been very largely reduced. this form of avalanche can be traced to its sources and its course and flow regulated by channels and break-ices. it has a secondary form called the _grund-lawine_ or ground avalanche. this is the avalanche which aroused the poetic anger of mr. symonds: the peculiarity of a _grund-lawine_ consists in the amount of earth and rubbish carried down by it. this kind is filthy and disreputable. it is coloured brown or slaty-grey by the rock and soil with which it is involved. blocks of stone emerge in horrid bareness from the dreary waste of dirty snow and slush of water which compose it; and the trees which have been so unlucky as to stand upon its path are splintered, bruised, rough-handled in a hideous fashion. the _staub-lawine_ is fury-laden like a fiend in its first swirling onset, flat and stiff like a corpse in its ultimate repose of death, containing men and beasts and trees entombed beneath its stern unwrinkled taciturnity of marble. the _schlag-lawine_ is picturesque, rising into romantic spires and turrets, with erratic pine-plumed firths protruding upon sleepy meadows. it may even lie pure and beautiful, heaving in pallid billows at the foot of majestic mountain slopes where it has injured nothing. but the _grund-lawine_ is ugly, spiteful like an asp, tatterdemalion like a street arab; it is the worst, the most wicked of the sisterhood. to be killed by it would mean a ghastly death by scrunching and throttling, as in some grinding machine, with nothing of noble or impressive in the winding-sheet of foul snow and débris heaved above the mangled corpse. but the _grund-lawine_ is really the most beneficial avalanche of the alps, doing quickly the work, which a glacier does slowly, of carrying down soil from the heights to the plains. it is rare in the swiss alps, more common in mountains of younger age going through earlier processes of disintegration. perhaps, if one is to look at an avalanche chiefly as an instrument of death, the _grund-lawine_ has a greater objectionableness than the _staub-lawine_. but any form of death by avalanche is best avoided: and the difference between death by the _grund-lawine_ and death by the _staub-lawine_ is purely æsthetic. and the _grund_ usually kills quickly whilst the _staub_ may take a freakish turn and bury you alive in a cranny or cavern which the avalanche has sealed by passing over it. men have slowly died of hunger in such circumstances. yet, so long as life lasts, there is hope; no pains are spared in ransacking the snow after an avalanche; and cases of almost miraculous deliverance occasionally occur. one february (records mr. symonds) a young man called domiziano roberti, in the neighbourhood of giornico, saw an avalanche descending on him. he crept under a great stone, above which there fell a large tree in such a position that it and the stone together roofed him from the snow, which soon swept over him and shut him up. there he remained hours in a kind of semi-somnolence, and was eventually dug out, speechless and frightfully frost-bitten, but alive. the avalanche record of a single village (fetan) of switzerland--a village which is characterised as a very unlucky one--will give some idea of the real extent of the toll of the avalanche. in the year a great avalanche swept over it. six persons were killed, but the rest of the villagers, expecting some such catastrophe, had abandoned their houses. in one dwelling nothing was left standing but the living-room and one bedroom. these, however, contained the mother of the family and all her children, who escaped unhurt. in an avalanche demolished fifteen houses. in one of them a party of twenty-six young men and women were assembled. they were all buried in the snow, and only three survived. altogether thirty-six persons perished at that time. in a similar catastrophe occurred, destroying houses and stables. but on this occasion the inhabitants had been forewarned and left the village. a curious story is told about the avalanche of . one of the folk of fetan, after abandoning his home to its fate, remembered that he had forgotten to bring away his bible. in the teeth of the impending danger, through the dark night, he waded back across the snowdrifts, and saved the book. in there was further destruction at this village by avalanche, but with no loss of life. that is a particularly unlucky village, evidently badly situated. but since the snow-falls have caused no loss of life there. the down-coming of an avalanche, if it be sudden and swift, is often accompanied by a great blast of wind, which gives it an additional danger. this wind may in some cases be partly caused by the displacement of the air from the fall; in most cases, it is probable, the wind was in chief part the original cause of the snow-fall. the blast of the avalanche is known as the _lawinen-dunst_, and many thrilling stories are told of hairbreadth escapes from its blast. a carter driving with a sledge and two horses across the albula pass was hurled--horses, sledge, and all--across a gully by the wind. a woman was lifted into the air and carried to the top of a lofty pine-tree, to which she clung and was saved. of more tragic tone is the record of the man lifted by an avalanche blast and smashed to pieces against a stone, of a house lifted up in the air and dashed down, killing most of its inhabitants. the avalanche is snow in quick movement towards the valleys. the glacier is snow--pressed into ice--in slow movement. a river of ice, its flow to be measured by the records of months, not of moments--that is the glacier of alps and polar lands. its mission in nature is the same as that of a river, to grind down mountain rocks and to carry the detritus for the enrichment of the plains below. the glaciers of the polar lands, coming down as they do to the edge of the ocean, are responsible for the icebergs of those seas. compared with polar glaciers the alpine ones are puny, no larger, as a rule, than a large iceberg--which represents just a fragment broken off an arctic or antarctic glacier. but the alpine examples of glaciers, small though they be, are grandly impressive in their natural surroundings. such a one as the silvretta, for instance, stretching its length for nearly twenty miles across the mountains, looks magnificently vast. from a distance a glacier seems to be white, with bands of grey, or of black from the moraines (strips of earth and stones showing on the surface). studied at close hand it is a pageant of varied colours due to the variations of light and shade on its surface, and to the manner in which the refraction of the light is affected by the partial melting of the topmost layer of the snow. from this melting come little trickles of water which combine to form streams and then torrents. the beds of these torrents are blue in colour and like transparent glass--a lovely contrast with the general surface of the glacier. for that is made white by the innumerable fissures that penetrate its surface, fissures which are caused by the heat of the sun, from which the beds of the streams are protected. yet more beautiful than the streams are the pools occasionally found on the surface of a glacier, when they have clean floors unsoiled by a moraine. they, too, have blue basins with white edges. looked down upon from a distance, they appear like great sapphires. sometimes a lake may be found not on but beside a glacier, where the ice forms one bank and the mountain another. such are the märjelen see by the great aletsch, and the lake at the west foot of monte rosa. on these one may see floating masses of ice. now and again will be found crevasses filled with water, whose depth gives a yet bluer tone. sir martin conway (from whose expert study of glaciers i have freely quoted) gives the palm for glacier colouring to what is called the dry glacier. "note," he writes, "the brilliance of its surface and the peculiarity of its texture. it consists of an infinite multitude of loosely compacted rounded fragments of ice with a little water soaking down between them. if you watch it closely you will see that the moving water makes a shimmering in the cracks between the ice fragments. you will also observe that the blue of the solid ice below the skin of fragments appears dimly through the white, and the least tap with an ice-axe to scrape away the surface reveals it clearly. each little fragment of ice has a separate glitter of its own, so that the whole surface sparkles with a frosted radiance. it is not the same at dawn after a cold night, for then there is no water between the fragments, but all is hard and solid. no sooner, however, does the sun shine upon them, than the bonds are released and the ice-crystals begin to break up with a gentle tinkling sound and little flashes of light reflected from tiny wet mirror-surfaces. one can spend hours watching these small phenomena as happily as gazing upon the great mountains themselves. size is a relative term. the biggest mountain in relation to the earth is no greater than is one of these small ice-fragments in relation to a glacier. reduce the scale in imagination and the smallest object may be endowed with grandeur, for all such conceptions are subjective. the open crevasses that are never far away on the dry glacier are full of beauties. it is not easy to tire of peering down into them. sometimes one may be found into which a man armed with an ice-axe may effect a descent. he will not stay there long, for the depths are cold. once i was able not only to descend into a crevasse but to follow it beyond its open part into the very substance of the glacier. it was a weird place, good to see but not good to remain in, and i was glad to return to sunshine very soon." [illustration: mÄrjelen see and great aletsch glacier.] ordinarily a glacier surface is not diversified by any large features. but sometimes peaks of rock rise as islands out of a sea of ice. sometimes, too, inequalities in the bed of the glacier acting with the pressure of the ice mass cause great wrinklings on the surface (the col du géant is an instance), and from the ridges thus formed hang very beautiful ice-falls. for the proper study of glacier beauty it is recommended to alpine travellers that they should arrange to camp for some days in the glacier region. but there are good examples of glaciers within walking distance of some of the higher hotels. chapter xi the alpine clubs though the palm for alp-climbing is not held by the swiss themselves--one unkind critic has said that "in this as in all other things the swiss show their invincible mediocrity"--and the swiss alpine club was not the pioneer among climbing clubs, its work has been of very great value in safeguarding the alps against desecration and alpine climbers against accident. in the year it celebrated its jubilee year, and the occasion was marked by great festivities in lucerne. unlike the british alpine club, which is of a somewhat aristocratic constitution, the swiss institution is of a very "democratic" character, not exacting high subscriptions and welcoming all to its ranks who can pay the very moderate subscription. the objects for which the club was originally founded were "to explore the swiss alps, to study them more accurately from every point of view, to make them better known, and to facilitate access to them." this programme has been interpreted in a very liberal sense, for it has been made to include not merely the construction, furnishing, and maintenance of huts, but also the training and insurance of guides, the organisation of rescue parties, and the publication of guide-books, of accurate maps, of an annual, and of two periodicals, one in german and the other in french. the swiss alpine club now numbers , members (the german and austrian , , the italian , the french about , and the british about ). a british section of the swiss alpine club exists, and its members last year presented the parent club with funds to erect and furnish a new hut, the britannia hut, situated above saas fee, a district of switzerland to which british climbers most frequently go. that section of the work of the swiss club which is worthy of the most praise is devoted to urging upon visitors a standard of good conduct and respect for the rights and convenience of others. its recently issued "mottoes for mountaineers" are put up on the walls of railway stations, in mountain inns, or anywhere else where they are likely to attract the notice of those whom it is hoped to educate. they exhort, in particular, to the avoidance of all alcoholic drinks when in the mountains; to suitable equipment; to quiet behaviour and refraining from bawling and shouting; to the clearing up of all litter after a meal, leaving no soiled paper or tins about, and, above all, not throwing away or breaking any bottles. they likewise appeal for merciful treatment of alpine wild flowers. we are all of us familiar with a "tourist resort" of some kind, so general is the habit of travel for curiosity's sake to scenes of beauty or of renown; and we are all of us aware, therefore, of the need there is for popular education to contend against the vulgar defacement of natural beauties and of historic monuments. no place is spared by a type of visitor eager to perpetuate a worthless name, and careless to stain a revered shrine with his untidy litter. an historic grove has its tree-trunks marked with knives; a famous meadow or a field of renowned beauty has its surface scarred with rubbish; a grand cathedral or hall of renown has its stones scratched, its floors littered. all praise to the swiss alpine club for its work to protect alpine meadows from bottles and tins, alpine cliffs from scratched and painted inscriptions. and if, perhaps, it one day takes heart of grace and decides to make a stand against the undue extension of railways and palace hotels upon beautiful peaks, it will earn still warmer praise, and will act, too, in the best interests of switzerland, which gains from tourists now £ , , a year, and is in danger of driving some of the pilgrims of the picturesque away to the carpathians or the balkans by allowing the swiss peaks to be spoiled with too much "modern improvement." before the growth of the influence of the swiss alpine club, the swiss did not indulge in mountain-climbing as a sport on their own account to any very great extent. but the club is working to arouse a national "amateur" (as opposed to mercenary) interest in the national mountains, and the quick growth of its membership seems to argue well for its success. will a climbing knowledge of the mountains lead to a better appreciation of them on the part of the swiss and a better determination to protect them against railway and hotel vandalism? it is a moot point. sir martin conway, who has climbed mountains in three continents, seems to think that familiarity brings increased respect at first, but that afterwards the æsthetic interest begins to fade: almost universal is the feeling aroused by a first sight of a great snowy range that it is unearthly. mystery gathers over it. its shining majesty in full sunlight, its rosy splendours at dawn and eve, its pallid glimmer under the clear moon, its wreathed and ever-changing drapery of cloud, its terrific experiences in storm, all these elements and aspects strike the imagination and appeal broadly to the æsthetic sense. nor are they ever quite forgotten even by the most callous of professional mountaineers. but with increase of experience on the mountains themselves come knowledge and a whole group of new associations.... the mountain, judged by the scale of remembered toil, grows wonderfully in height. the eye thus trained begins to realise and even to exaggerate the vast scale on which peaks are built. but along with this gain in the truthful sense of scale comes the loss of mystery. the peak which was in heaven is brought down to earth. it was a mere thing of beauty to be adored and wondered at; it has become something to be climbed. its details have grown intelligible and interesting. the mind regards it from a new aspect, begins to analyse its forms and features, and to consider them mainly in their relation to man as a climber. as knowledge grows this attitude of mind develops. each fresh peak ascended teaches something.... the longer a climber gratifies his instincts and pursues his sport, the larger becomes his store of reminiscences and the greater his experience. if he confines his attention to a single range of mountains such as the alps, he is almost always in sight of mountains he has climbed and glaciers he has traversed. each view shows him some route he has once pursued, some glacier basin he has explored, some pass he has crossed. the labyrinth of valleys and the crests of successive ridges do not puzzle him. he knows how they are grouped and whither they lead. beyond those mountains is the zermatt valley; that peak looks down on zinal; that col leads to saas. thus there grows in him the sense of the general shape and arrangement of the country. it is no longer a tangled chaos of heights and depths, but an ordered anatomy, formed by the action of definite and continuous forces. so far as his knowledge extends this orderliness is realised. he has developed a geographical sense.... as the seasons go by, it happens that the æsthetic interest, which was at first the climber's main delight, begins to fade. if he be a man of scientific interests it is liable to an even quicker evanescence than if he be not, for problems of geological structure, or of botanical distribution, or of glaciology and the like, are a keen source of intellectual enjoyment. at length, perhaps, the day comes when the loss is felt. there is a gorgeous range of snow mountains with every effect of cloud and sunshine that the eye can desire, displayed about and upon them, yet the climber finds with dismay that his heart is cold. the old glory has vanished from the scene and the old thrill is an unfelt emotion. what is the matter? have his eyes grown dim? has he lost the faculty of delight? is he growing old? whatever the cause, the effect is painful in the extreme. it is one that many of us have felt, especially towards the close of a long and successful climbing season, or extensive journey of exploration. there is but one remedy--to quit the mountains for a while and attend to the common business of life. when winter months have gone by and summer is again at hand, the old enthusiasm is liable to return. sooner or later the true mountain-lover will begin to starve for sight of the snows. [illustration: looking up valley towards zermatt from near randa.] from a tourist-attracting point of view, then, the encouragement of climbing would not seem to be altogether a good thing. but on the other side of the argument it has to be remembered that the population of switzerland is fairly large for its area, that a generation is not eternal, and that there is no likelihood of a very large number ever getting so much alpine climbing as to find the mountains an _ennui_. on the whole it would seem to be good policy on the part of the swiss alpine club to seek to extend its membership and to encourage in other countries similar "democratic" climbing organisations, with the idea of spreading as widely as possible the sport of mountain-climbing in the alps, not in its highest phase of very difficult and dangerous ascents, but in a moderate form available to people of moderate strength and moderate means. so far as the danger of climbing has to be taken into consideration, all the ascents have been so carefully mapped now that in good weather, with good guides, there is practically no risk to careful and strong climbers. yet the present summer ( ) has been a very deadly one on the alps, a fact due to over-much familiarity bringing to climbers some measure of contempt for the dangers of the peaks and inducing foolhardy attempts under unsuitable weather conditions. during september of there were eleven fatal accidents to climbers, and five other accidents causing grave injuries. the climbing season was a late one, as the weather had been consistently unfavourable in july and august. in september the weather still continued uncertain, but there was a general tendency among disappointed climbers and guides to take risks so as to get in some ascents before the season closed. to this willingness to take undue risks most of the accidents were due. a characteristic one was on the zermatt breithorn when a guide allowed himself to be persuaded against his better judgment to continue an ascent in the face of obvious danger. the details regarding this accident are worth recording as illustrating the actual most pressing peril of the alps to-day, that of foolhardiness. three german climbers, one a lady, set out with the guide heinrich julen to attempt to ascend the zermatt breithorn--usually easy. when they reached the gandegg or lower theodule hut ( , feet), the weather being very threatening, they took with them a second guide, an italian. the party ploughed through very deep fresh snow for about an hour and a half, after which one of the men and the lady said they would prefer to turn back. the other, however, dr. schrumm, of kempten, bavaria, insisted on continuing the ascent with the guide julen, who, it is said, was very unwilling to proceed. nevertheless he did so. apparently the party did not leave the gandegg hut, owing to bad weather, until a.m., and it was four in the afternoon when dr. schrumm and the guide julen reached the summit. during the descent a violent snowstorm came on, the guide lost his bearings, and, not being provided with a compass, wandered about for a time without making any progress. he scooped out a hole in the snow for shelter. the doctor and guide remained there the night, and the next morning the doctor died of cold and exhaustion. apparently he was not sufficiently warmly clad. [illustration: the dents du midi from gryon above bex.] this accident caused a good deal of discussion among alpine climbers, and it is possible that one outcome of it will be to protect guides by more stringent regulations against the urgency of climbers who wish to incur dangers of which they are ignorant. there are, however, to be enjoyed in switzerland very many alpine climbs which come within an ample margin of safety, requiring guides in some cases, but not taking any extravagant toll either on the purse or on the muscles. thus from adelboden one may go to the summit of the gemmi pass and back within a day: or over the bunderchrinde to kandersteg; or to the bonderspitze ( feet), the elsighorn ( feet), the elsigfirst ( feet), the albristhorn ( feet), the gsür ( feet). or from the same point of departure with a little more expense, but no more danger, the wildstrubel ( , feet) may be climbed. there is a fine glacier (the strubel) on this route. from another point of departure, champery, the various peaks of the dents du midi are easily reached. in the dents du midi group the highest is the most accessible. to climb the haute cime one usually sleeps at bonaveau, whence one starts off at early morning through the pas d'encel, the valley and the pass of susanfe. with a guide these can easily be done and without difficulty in six hours. from the summit the panorama embraces all of the central and western alps. from les plans (to mention another centre) there are no less than fifty good climbs, most of them suitable for the modest alpinist. for an example of a "big" climb from this centre take the ascent of the grand muveran ( , feet). it is a steep and difficult ascent, not dangerous, but a guide is a necessity. the starting-point is les plans. from there to the summit takes at least five hours. the expedition is less fatiguing if the climber passes the night at the rambert shelter. from this hut to the top of the mountain it is a climb of two hours. from the muveran the view over the valais is particularly good. the ascent of the diablerets ( , feet), the summit of the vaudois alps, is more difficult, but in good weather not attended with any risk. in bad weather almost any climb can be dangerous, and one needs to be a particularly expert and keen alpinist to attempt an ascent when storms are likely. but for that expert and keen alpinist it seems that there is "a music in the thunder and the growling of the gale," and a joy in breasting and overcoming an alpine storm. a stirring description of such a storm by a famous climber: the gathering squadrons of the sky grow dark, and seem to hold the just departed night in their bosoms. their crests impend. they assume terrific shapes. they acquire an aspect of solidity. they do not so much seem to blot out as to destroy the mountains. their motion suggests a great momentum. at first too they act in almost perfect silence. there is little movement in the oppressively warm air, and yet the clouds boil and surge as though violently agitated. they join together, neighbour to neighbour, and every moment they grow more dense and climb higher. to left and right, one sees them, behind also and before. the moments now are precious. we take a last view of our surroundings, note the direction we should follow, and try to fix details in our memories, for sight will soon be impossible. then the clouds themselves are upon us--a puff of mist first, followed by the dense fog. a crepitating sound arises around us; it is the pattering of hard particles of snow on the ground. presently the flakes grow bigger and fall more softly, feeling clammy on the face. and now probably the wind rises and the temperature is lowered. each member of our party is whitened over; icicles form on hair and moustache, and the very aspect of men is changed to match the wild surroundings. under such circumstances the high regions of snow are more impressive than under any other, but climbers must be well-nourished, in good hard condition, and not too fatigued, or they will not appreciate the scene. no one can really know the high alps who has not been out in a storm at some great elevation. the experience may not be, in fact is not, physically pleasant, but it is morally stimulating in a high degree, and æsthetically grand. now must a climber call up all his reserves of pluck and determination. he may have literally to fight his way down to a place of shelter. there can be no rest, neither can there be any undue haste. the right way must be found and followed. all that can be seen is close at hand and that small circle must serve for guidance. all must keep moving on with grim persistence, hour after hour. stimulants are unavailing and food is probably inaccessible. all depends upon reserve stores of health and vigour, and upon moral courage. to give in is treason. each determines that he for his part will not fail his companions. mutual reliance must be preserved. it seems certainly a fine experience--to recall afterwards. but i confess that i never really enjoyed a mountain storm except in the case of one that i saw from above the clouds, fighting out its quarrel in the valleys below mount kosciusko. to see a storm from above--that is a spectacle of grandeur; and there is no threat of danger or of discomfort to the spectator. [illustration: the schwartzhorn from the fluela hospice.] but the idea must not be gathered from the descriptions of the dangers of mountaineering that it is a sport suitable only for the exceptionally sturdy. any one with fair physique who has not reached old age can join an alpine club and enjoy alpine climbing, so long as actually dangerous and freak ascents are avoided. mr. symonds, who went to the alps apparently a hopeless invalid, was able to enjoy alpine climbing, and has given in prose and verse some fine pen-pictures of its joys; this in particular of an ascent of the schwartzhorn: 'neath an uncertain moon, in light malign, we trod those rifted granite crags, whereunder, startling the midnight air with muffled thunder, flowed infant founts of danube and of rhine. our long-drawn file in slow deliberate line scaled stair on stair, subdued to silent wonder; wound among mouldering rocks that rolled asunder, rattling with hollow roar down death's decline. still as we rose, one white transcendent star steered calmly heavenward through the empurpled gloom, escaping from the dim reluctant bar of morning, chill and ashen-pale as doom; where the day's chargers, champing at his ear, waited till sol should quit night's banquet-room. pure on the frozen snows, the glacier steep, slept moonlight with the tense unearthly charm of spells that have no power to bless or harm; but, when we touched the ridge which tempests sweep, death o'er the murk vale, yawning wide and deep, clung to frost-slippery shelves, and sharp alarm, shuddering in eager air, drove life's blood warm back to stout hearts and staunch will's fortress-keep. upward we clomb; till now the emergent morn, belting the horror of dim jagged eastern heights, broadened from green to saffron, primrose-pale, felt with faint finger-tips of rose each horn, crept round the alpine circuit, o'er each dale dwelt with dumb broodings drearier even than night's. thus dawn had come; not yet the day: night's queen and morning's star their state in azure kept: still on the mountain world weird silence slept; earth, air, and heaven held back their song serene. then from the zenith, fiery-white between moonshine and dayspring, with swift impulse swept a splendour of the skies that throbbing leapt down to the core of passionate flame terrene-- a star that ruining from yon throne remote, quenched her celestial yearnings in the pyre of mortal pangs and pardons. at that sign the orient sun with day's broad arrow smote black linard's arrogant brow, while influent fire slaked the world's thirst for light with joy divine. [illustration: an alpine meadow in bloom.] chapter xii the flowers of the alps the swiss alps have their chief worshippers in the summer for the climbing, in the winter for the sports. a few insist that the rich colouring of autumn is the best season of all. a larger and a growing number visit the alps in the spring for the flowers. they are wise, for truly the sight of an alpine meadow in bloom is the most joyous manifestation of nature in a sunny mood that man can know. whether it be that the flowers, fertilised by the detritus which the winter's snow has brought to their roots, are really more luxuriant and brighter in colour than the same flowers in a garden or a woodland dell of the plains; or that the clear air and the contrast with the white snow around make them seem more brilliant--alpine flowers shine out with an exquisite and star-like grace that can be noted nowhere else; and the green of alpine grass seems of a clear brightness that no other herbage can rival. the nearness to the snow has certainly an effect in enhancing the charm of these alpine meadows. the flowers, wearing the colours of the sun, rush bravely to the very edge of the snow-fields as though they were jostling the winter aside. the white has barely disappeared before there is green and gold and red to give cheerful greeting to the spring sky, and declare another foot of territory won from the frost. indeed, if you will look closely at the line of the retreating snow--not a straight line but a billowy one, here receding into a big bay, here stubbornly holding out a promontory of white--you will note that the crevellated edge of the vanishing snow mass is not joined to the earth at all, but forms a little overhanging cliff of ice. the melting warmth is coming up from the ground rather than from the sun in the last stage of the snow-field's flight, and underneath this tiny cliff the vegetation can be seen already pushing up to life. the lower alps in april and may flaunt first the gay banners of the crocus, which "breaks like fire" over the ground as soon as the chains of the ice are broken. but other flowers are but little in the rear, and the snow has scarce gone before under the pine woods there is a carpet of the mauve-blue hepatica, in the gorges the yellow and white of the snowflakes and the red of the sticky primrose, over the meadows the white and purple of the soldanella and the celestial blue of the spring gentian, while the marshes flaunt their marigolds and the rose-red bird's-eye primrose. it is a blaze of rich colour, and yet (to quote mr. g. flemwell's work on alpine flowers): the steel-blue of winter is still in the air--indeed, one feels it in the very flowers. even though no snowy alp be in sight, and nothing but floral gaiety around, there is yet a sense of austerity. the vegetation, though colourfull, is neither coarse nor rank, nor even luxurious, as judged by english standard. nature is crisp and brisk; the air is thin and clear; everywhere is great refinement, quite other than that of spring in england. it were as though the severity of the struggle for existence could be read in the sweet face of things, just as we may often read it in the smiling face of some chastened human being--lines of sweetness running side by side with lines of acute capacity; a strong face beautiful; a face in which optimism reigns sovereign over an active pessimism. nature in the alps is instinct with the stern necessity for perpetual endeavour, whereas in england, where conditions are not so harsh, we have a sense of a certain indolence and ease of circumstance of nature which we call homeliness and repose. repose, in this sense, there certainly is not in the alpine spring. every suspicion of lassitude or _laissez-faire_ is unknown; all is keen and buoyant, quick with an earnest _joie de vivre_ which is as exquisite in its way as anything more voluptuously sentimental that england can produce. following fast upon the earlier flowers come the anemones, the rhododendrons, the ranunculi, the forget-me-nots, the alpine roses, the saxifrages, the violets, the pinks, the heaths, the orchids, st. bruno's lily, the daffodils, and a score of other blossoms. the feast of colour is spread, day after day, in varying shades, but with unvarying richness, until there comes the time when with another riot of colour the herdsmen enter into the field with their cattle, or the scythes lay all prostrate for the winter hay. whilst the best of the alpine spring shows of flowers are in april and may on the lower and richer alpine meadows, one may follow the banners of _primavera_ up the mountains, almost until august, encountering on the higher levels later seasons. writing from zermatt as late as the end of july, a correspondent to the _morning post_ chronicled: [illustration: hepatica in the woods at bex.] the dog roses, the brilliantly pink sweet briar, the willow herb, also of a præternatural brilliance owing to the altitude, still make gay the zermatt valley, while the last of the martagon lilies are being mown ruthlessly down by the peasants in their hayfields. everywhere on the rocks the red house leeks and other plants of the stonecrop, saxifrage, and sedum varieties are appearing; while the mountain pinks, arnica, and alpine asters grow almost down into the village itself. for some reason the flower-plunderer has either stayed his hand in this valley or has passed it by, for here several of the rarer and choicer sorts of alpine blossoms, almost extinct, or at least very rare in most parts of switzerland, are still flourishing. martagon lilies, for instance, are common, though how long they will remain so i cannot say. the paths are often literally bordered with the true alpine rose, deepest crimson in hue. many a meadow is purple and gold with the starry flowers of the alpine aster, common here as a field daisy; many a rock slope is overgrown with mountain pinks; while as for the _arnica montana_, the rhododendrons, and the creeping gypsophila, i have never seen anything like them elsewhere. the arnica covers whole slopes and carpets woods until the ground is oranged completely over with its blossoms; the creeping gypsophila clothes the bare rocks and borders the paths with its tufts of white and pale pink flowers; and the rhododendrons make the semi-shaded slopes beneath the larches almost a sheet of rosy-red. somewhere, too, the true alpine columbine must be growing plentifully. i have not discovered it, but i have, i am sorry to say, seen great handfuls of this loveliest of alpine flowers being brought down from the zermatt slopes. at one altitude or another, indeed, there are few alpine flowers which are not to be found somewhere in the zermatt range during this month of july. certain damp-loving species, such as campanulas and orchis and the whole primula family, are certainly less well represented here than in the rainier bernese oberland, yet still there are entire slopes pale blue with the bearded campanula, and more than one kind of primula is to be found still in bloom high up or in the crevices of rocks, while the slopes at the head of the zermatt valley are even now covered with alpine and sub-alpine blossoms of a variety and brilliance which i have never seen excelled and seldom equalled. the short grass above eight thousand feet or thereabouts is blue with alpine forget-me-nots or mauve with pansies, starred with the small gentian, or patched with the pink of the "marmot's bread" (_silene_); higher up, to , feet and more, _ranunculus glacialis_ and the hardiest and lowest-growing flowers are still blooming; while slightly lower down, especially where there is the moisture of streams and the shelter of rocks, grow fields of _arnica montana_, pinks, asters, geums, rock roses, sweet alyssum, sedums, _semper vivum_, arabis, alpine toadflax, louseworts, wild thyme, edelweiss, rampions, alpine clovers in great variety, gypsophila, even stray orchis and primulæ, the dominant tones being orange and pale yellow, thrown into relief by the many mauves and the bright pinks and creamy whites. the alpine flowers, in addition to their spectacular beauty, have a very definite scientific botanical interest. it has been observed that the magnificence and profusion of flower, in comparison with the size, of the alpine plants is a trait of beauty with a charming scientific explanation. to the alpine flowers more urgently than to most races of mortal things, nature whispers "carpe diem." life for them must be very, very short. its length is inexorably decreed by the snows of winter. the alpine plant, feeling the renewing warmth of the spring, must rush at once into flower, as brilliant, as attractive, as irresistible flower as it may, so that fertilising bees and butterflies will come and ensure the next generation. on the same principle, at the opposite end of the pole, the desert plants store up their seeds in extraordinarily thick and strong capsules, so that they may rest safely through many seasons of fierce drought, awaiting the coming of water to fertilise them. in australia the desert flowers, such as sturt's desert pea, will come up after good rains in places where to the knowledge of man they have not grown for many years; and of some wild australian plants the seeds need to be roasted before they will germinate. accepting that the remarkable beauty and richness of flowering of alpine plants is the response to nature's stern conditions of existence, there seems to lurk in the flowers, as in the people of switzerland, a moral for those gentle enthusiasts who would do away with the cruelty of the struggles between nations and between classes, and set up conditions of universal peace and of general communism. perhaps, alas, it will be found, if ever those ideals are carried far into practice, that without struggle the human race will deteriorate, and with too easy conditions of life will tend to decay. i would not push the case too far, but it is worth recording as a fact, if not an argument, that when the alpine dweller fertilises artificially a meadow the flowers tend to disappear. conditions of life have been made too easy, and sterility follows. alpine flowers, again conforming themselves skilfully to the conditions of their existence, send roots down to astonishing depths. a little tuft or rosette of leaves, the size round of a five-shilling piece, will often have a system of roots extending a foot or more down into the soil or into the depths of some crevice in the rock. these roots are the plants' larders and storerooms. buried often for some nine months in the year beneath the snow, the plants need must have well-stocked larders to draw upon. sometimes, even, it may be years before they see the sun and breathe the mountain air again. it is not every summer that the sun has power to rid the sheltered little alpine valleys of the winter snow; often must a plant wait in patience for at least two years before it can bring forth flowers, and take a new supply of life from the sun. [illustration: alpine garden (_la linnea_) at bourg st. pierre, on the road to the grand st. bernard, at the beginning of august.] apart from winning grateful hymns for their beauty, and interesting the botanist by their curiosities of structure, some of the flowers peculiar to the alps (or to alpine regions) have, because of their rarity, inspired a sport of flower-hunting, the more keenly appreciated when it is associated with danger. since this flower-hunting leads to the destruction of rare species and to some loss of human life, it seems to have a strong hostile case to answer, especially as the rare alpines are now cultivated by the florists, and you may have, for example, edelweiss grown by the gardeners around paris. yet deaths ascribable to "gathering edelweiss" continue to be recorded. the edelweiss is accepted as the typical swiss alpine flower, but it is not at all peculiar to the swiss alps, and is found in siberia, japan, the himalayas, and the new zealand alps. it is fond of growing in the crevices of precipitous rock faces, but can be found in safer places, including the commercial florists' rockeries. the swiss alps are very rich in medicinal plants. there is the aconite plant, much favoured in homoeopathic doses for the cure of colds and fevers, very efficacious to put an end to "life's fitful fever" if used in a strong dose; the arnica plant, sovereign remedy for bruises, its leaves used by the peasants in place of tobacco for smoking; the gentian, which makes a famous tonic bitter, much employed by doctors for the _malade imaginaire_, since it has a most convincingly bitter taste, and may be trusted to do no harm if it does no good; the meadow-rue, used as a specific against jaundice and malarial fever; and the carline thistle, which was said to have been used as a plague specific by charlemagne. it is pleasant to note that the practical swiss recognise the necessity of guarding the flower life as well as the forest life of their land. there is a swiss "association for the protection of plants," formed in , which sets itself to two tasks, that of discouraging vandals who recklessly destroy plant life, and that of setting up shelter gardens where alpine flowers may be collected and strictly preserved. some of the canton authorities help the work of the society by enforcing close seasons for certain plants. the _jardins refuges_ set up by the society are not the least valuable of the means adopted for preserving one of the great natural beauties of the country; and these gardens, where are collected as in a botanical park as many specimens as possible of alpine _flora_, give interesting objectives for special expeditions. the chief of these alpine botanical gardens are at the pont de nant near bex, at rochers de naye above montreux, and at bourg st. pierre on the grand st. bernard. these gardens are at widely differing altitudes, and each one is at its best at a different season of the year. but if one has no fever of botanical curiosity the best way after all to know the alpine flowers is in the mass, with the crocus and the gentian in their vivid green settings flaunting the spring in the face of the snow-fields. chapter xiii swiss sports there is a great distinction between the national sports of the swiss and those of switzerland. the games which attract so many thousands to the alps in winter are in no cases peculiar to switzerland, and are rarely indigenous. tobogganing and ski-ing, like mountain-climbing (as a pleasure), have been introduced to switzerland by visitors. even skating does not seem to have been much favoured by the swiss until there came the great modern incursion of tourists, seeking not an asylum from religious or political persecution, nor the pleasure of seeing voltaire or madame de staël, but ice sports under a bright sun in mid-winter. the swiss national sports make a short and a dull list. they are rifle-shooting, gymnastic games, and rustic dancing to jödelling. they reflect the character of a little nation which, almost alone of the peoples of the world, finds it a matter of joy and not of labour to undertake military training, and carries the love of that training so far as to make rifle-shooting the chief national sport. the swiss become very expert marksmen, and the government wisely encourages this fancy for so patriotic and useful a sport. the citizen is allowed to keep his government rifle at home, and to use it as much as he likes for his private pleasure. the gymnastic sports are organised on national lines like the old greek games. they embrace almost every form of manly exercise from wrestling to weight-lifting. mr. symonds, whose pictures of swiss village life are very intimate and revealing, makes frequent references to the turnfests (sports gatherings) of the turnvereins (gymnastic clubs) of the cantons. he recalls once being invited to drink wine at an inn with a band of gymnastic victors: the gymnasts had thrown off their greatcoats, and stood displayed in a costume not very far removed from nudity. they had gained their crowns, they told me, that evening at an extraordinary meeting of the associated _turnvereins_ of the canton. it was the oddest thing in the world to sit smoking in a dimly-lighted, panelled tap-room with seven such companions. they were all of them strapping bachelors between twenty and twenty-five years of age; colossally broad in the chest and shoulders, tight in the reins, set massively upon huge thighs and swelling calves; wrestlers, boxers, stone-lifters, and quoit-throwers. their short bull-throats supported small heads, closely clipped, with bruised ears and great big-featured faces, over which the wreaths of bright green artificial foliage bristled. i seemed to be sitting in a dream among vitalised statues of the later emperors, executed in the decadence of art, with no grasp on individual character, but with a certain reminiscence of the grand style of portraiture. commodus, caracalla, alexander severus, the three gordians, and pertinax might have been drinking there beside me in the pothouse. the attitudes assumed by these big fellows, stripped to their sleeveless jerseys and tight-fitting flannel breeches, strengthened the illusion. i felt as though we were waiting there for slaves, who should anoint their hair with unguents, gild their wreaths, enwrap them in the paludament, and attend them to receive the shouts of "ave imperator" from a band of gladiators or the legionaries of the gallic army. apart from the rifle-shooting (which is commonly practised on sundays), the frequent gymnastic meetings (which mark every feast-day), and the dancing festivals of the various harvest celebrations, the swiss have no strictly national sport, unless it be chamois hunting. that last has been almost wholly given up to the visitors, who are willing to pay large prices for guides and shooting rights. the chamois is rare in switzerland now; though there are rumours that enterprising hotel-keepers are beginning to "stock up" the heights near their places with bred specimens. a wild chamois hunt offers the perfection of excitement and hunting risk. the animals are very nimble and very wary. as they browse they set an old doe as sentinel--a concession to femininity which seems to be dictated by wisdom--and it needs the greatest skill and daring to get past her watch and approach near enough for a shot. lest there may be a doubt as to the scarcity of the true chamois in the mind of the reader, let me explain that the "chamois skin" of commerce, so plentifully used for gloves and for polishing cloths, is not, as a rule, chamois skin at all, but the dressed hide of rough-woolled sheep--the same hide which, after different methods of dressing, serves for all kinds of gloves--chamois, kid, "reindeer skin," dog-skin, doe-skin. all may come from the sheep. mr. john finnemore gives a picturesque description of a herd of chamois in flight alarmed by the hunter: the merry little kids forsake their gambols, and each runs to its mother and presses closely against her flank. the older ones leap upon boulders and rocks, and gaze eagerly on every hand to discover the whereabouts of the intruder. a few moments of watchful hesitation pass, and then, perhaps, a wandering breeze gives them a sniff of tainted air, and they fix upon the direction from which the foe is advancing. now follows a marvellous scene--that of a band of chamois in full retreat. the speed and agility of their flight is wonderful. they are faced by a precipice. they skim up it one after the other like swallows. there is no path, no ridge, no ledge: but here and there little knobs of rock jut out from the face of the cliff, and they spring from projection to projection with incredible sureness and skill, their four feet sometimes bunched together on a patch of rock not much larger than a man's fist. they vanish with lightning rapidity, and the hunter must turn away in search of another band, for these will not halt till they are far beyond his reach in some sanctuary of the hills quite inaccessible to him. very often a number of hunters go together, and close upon the chamois from every side. then the swift creatures are in a ring, and, as they rush away down-wind, they are bound to come within shot of those posted on the side towards which they flee. sometimes the chamois are turned back by long stretches of cord set upon sticks, and drawn across places where they could escape from the ring of hunters and drivers. from the cord flutter bright pieces of cotton cloth--red, blue, or yellow--and at sight of these the chamois face about and try another path. but when driven to the extremity of terror, chamois have been known to dash upon the line of flags, some clearing the obstacle with a flying leap, others bodily charging the rope, and bursting a way through. very often the latter entangle their horns in the rope, and go whirling through the air in a double somersault. but they are on their legs again in a moment, and off at tremendous speed. [illustration: hunting the chamois.] apart from the national sports of the swiss, the national sports of switzerland--in which, since they were acclimatised, the swiss take part and frequently excel--are skating, hockey, tobogganing, bob-sleighing, curling, and ski-ing. skating is, i suppose, common to all lands where there is much ice. tobogganing was introduced to switzerland from america, and ski-ing from norway. another interesting recent sport is a modification of skating, and is known as ice-sailing. the skater rigs up a sail which he holds with his arms stretched out as yards--himself the ship. skimming the ice one can keep thus up only till the arms are tired, but a most exhilarating speed is possible. ice-sailing with yachts has been recently imported to the swiss lakes from america. for ice-yachting, an expert says, "dress as if you were going through the arctic circle on a fast motor-car in the worst of snow-storms. goggles, leathers, and furs are indispensable. use your eyes like a lynx, your rudder like a silk rein on a blood-mare--and you will quite enjoy it." it has enough of the element of danger as well as of speed to be attractive to the adventurous. tobogganing strictly is a red indian sport, and the name is red indian. but it is so closely related to sleighing that the germ of the sport can be discovered in almost all ice-covered countries. it was natural that in cold climates the wheels of waggons should be replaced, when the earth was frozen, with runners, and thus the sleigh came. the toboggan is a sporting variety of sleigh. early traces of it can be found in switzerland. an english visitor to the alps noticed that the local postman used a rough sleigh to slide down the hills which he had to descend; was intrigued by the idea of the swift gliding; and there thus began to be cultivated the sport which has its culminating glory in the cresta run at st. moritz--said, by the way, to have been planned by an australian. tobogganing has the charm of a great bicycle "coast" many times multiplied. artificial difficulties have been developed to add to its risks and its excitement. the simple toboggan slide, the dragging of a toboggan up a smooth snow slope, and then sliding down at a pace reaching to thirty miles an hour, is old-fashioned and tame. nowadays, the slide must be so arranged as to secure a much higher speed, and to give awkward turnings which need cool courage to negotiate. a speed of sixty miles an hour has been reached tobogganing. perhaps a charm of the toboggan is that it is not very useful. the flat board, set on runners, can only slide down hill, and you must draw it up first. the ski, on the other hand, has a very definite use. it enables snow-covered country to be traversed with safety at great speed, and a proof of its practical value is that the swiss army is trained to march on ski. down a steep slope a pace of forty miles an hour can be reached by the expert ski-runner, and he can leap great heights and great distances with the aid of the momentum of that speed. but to become an expert ski-runner calls for some trouble and pain. with ski the exploration of the alps in all kinds of weather has become possible. a recent _journal de genève_ gave the account of an extraordinary adventure of two swiss ski-runners. on easter sunday, , these two set out with a companion from saas fee for the britannia hut. this hut was reached at a.m., and the three ski-runners went on to the allalin pass, but were compelled by mist to return to the hut, which they reached about p.m. on the sunday evening three genevese climbers came to the hut, and one of the party of three ski-runners went home, leaving two. these two intended to go to zermatt over the adler pass, but the weather was so bad that it was saturday before they could start. they were seen to reach the allalin pass, and no more was seen or heard of them for a very long time. but it seems that the ski-ers went down to the findelen glacier, up to the stockjoch, and down _via_ the monte rosa glacier to the gorner glacier; thence up again to the bétemps hut, where they spent the night. the following day, sunday, in uncertain weather, they went down on to the glacier again, meaning to go to zermatt. one of the two, named dehns, was going on ahead. the wind had blown away all trace of the track made by them the previous day, and the man who had remained behind noticed that dehns was going too much to the left, and called out to him that he was not taking the right way, but too late. he had not gone more than about sixty yards on to the glacier before he disappeared into a crevasse, hidden beneath a quantity of fresh snow. "i advanced," says the narrator, "cautiously to the brink of the crevasse, and called to dehns, who replied that he was all right, only he had torn one ear and broken the point off one of his ski. i must use his rope to help him out, he said. i tied the ends of my puttees to my ski-sticks, my bootlaces, and anything else which could possibly serve the purpose of string, and i let everything down to him so that he could tie the rope to it. dehns could understand what i said, but i could hear nothing that he said owing to the wind and the snowstorm which had begun." finally dehns cut his way out of the crevasse in which he had been for four hours. he was a little frost-bitten and much bruised; and his ski were lost. they made their way to the bétemps hut, and there they remained for twelve days. they had very little in the way of provisions, half of what they had had with them being down the crevasse. eventually the uninjured man contrived to burst open the door of the hut cellar, where he found food and wine. without ski it was impossible for the prisoners to leave, for eight or ten feet of fresh snow had fallen. moreover, the condition of dehns, who was badly bruised and in much pain, was sufficient to prevent him reaching zermatt even with ski. on the twelfth day dehns was better, and they made an expedition to attempt to recover the lost ski, but in vain. next they attempted to make a pair of ski out of planks. but that was not successful. the next day they were rescued by a search party. the facts illustrate the value of ski for travelling in the snow and the helplessness of the voyager without them. skating, of course, is excellent in switzerland in the winter. most of the hotels catering for the tourist have set up rinks which are "artificial" to the extent that nature is assisted a little to produce a clear smooth surface of ice. but the skating, like the tobogganing, is limited in its area. the visitor who would have the keys of the alpine snows must learn the use of the ski. it will be of interest to chronicle the chief winter sports centres. good tobogganing, bob-sleighing, skating, ski-ing, ice-hockey, and curling are to be enjoyed at arosa, celerina, davos, klosters, lenzerheide, maloja, pontresina, and at st. moritz in the canton grisons; at andermatt, at engelberg, at adelboden, beatenberg, grindwald, gstaad and wengen in the bernese oberland; at les brenets, at caux, château-d'-oex, chesieres, diablerets, les avants, st. cergue, villars-ollon in the canton de vaud; at champery and loèche-les-bains in the canton de valais; and at chamonix and le planet in the chamonix valley. as for summer sports, there are golf links at aigle, axen-fels, campfér, celerina, geneva, gottschalkenberg, interlaken, les rasses (near st. croix), lucerne, lugano, lugano-paradiso, maloja, menaggio, montana, mont-pélerin, montreux, pontresina, ragaz, samaden, st. moritz-dorf, territet, villeneuve, and zurich-dolder. tennis courts are almost everywhere attached to the hotels. certainly no large village is without them, and they exist in plenty at adelboden, chamonix, engelberg, grindwald, interlaken, lucerne, berne, st. moritz, wengen, and other cities. the spring season in the alps begins as early as march in some places, but more generally in april. it is the chief season around lake leman. the summer season begins with june, and is the chief season in eastern switzerland, the bernese oberland, lake neuchâtel, zurich, st. gothard, and many other parts. indeed, there is a summer season in all switzerland. for the autumn, many favour the lake of lucerne and the lake of leman. the winter season begins usually with december, and again embraces almost all of switzerland, but the chief centres for this season correspond with the list of the towns (already given) which make special provision for winter sports. i do not know whether bath-resorts can be described fittingly as sport centres; but it is well to chronicle somewhere the fact that switzerland is well off for thermal and medicinal baths. baden is the chief of the bath centres. owing to its excellent climate and to its hot springs baden was, in roman times, the most important watering-place and health-resort to the north of the alps. numerous excavations, inscriptions, remains of temples, statues, coins and surgical instruments confirm this fact. in roman times the principal military road of helvetia led through baden, connecting the watering-place with vindonissa, the great helvetian fortress, six miles away. in the year , beyond the roman road in baden, in the direction of vindonissa, there were discovered the foundations of a large connected block of buildings, which, when fully excavated, revealed fourteen apartments of various sizes, from to feet in length. the architecture of this building, the medical and surgical instruments and utensils found there, and the proximity of the helvetian fortress of vindonissa, where roman legions were stationed, and the thermal springs show without much doubt that this was the site of a roman military hospital. besides those at baden there are medicinal springs at ragaz, champery, lavey-les-bains, passagg, aigle, st. moritz-bad, grinel-les-bains, and many other centres. they will provide entertainment for those whose life is not happy without some devotion to a more or less real ailment. [illustration: a corner of aigle skating rink.] chapter xiv swiss schools coming to the end of the limits set for this volume, the writer finds that many aspects of swiss life have been perforce neglected. no space could be found, for example, to deal with the educational system, which both in its primary and secondary forms and in its devotion to technical instruction has aroused the admiration of experts in many countries. this swiss educational system is at once generous and practical, with compulsory attendance enforced and gratuitous instruction, books, and materials provided. teaching begins in the national schools, called the primarschule, which are attended by children of all ranks and at which attendance is compulsory from the age of nine until the completion of the fifteenth year, unless children pass from these to higher schools. the classes are mixed and contain from to children, who are taught by both men and women teachers. the school course ensures the boys and girls a general elementary education, including a knowledge of french--so essential in a country with three national languages--which is taken during the last two years at school. considerable time is also devoted to physical exercise, carpentry, needlework, and cookery. the plan of studies in the secondary schools, which scholars may enter after four years in the primary schools, and where they remain until the age of fifteen, is much more extensive, and includes a more profound study of french (five years' course) and an advanced course of the sciences, geometry, and drawing. the instruction is gratuitous, and the passing of a preliminary examination the only condition of entry. from the secondary schools scholars have the option of ultimately entering the gymnasium or the industrial and commercial schools. the secondary school is succeeded by the higher schools. the _municipal gymnasium_ (grammar school) accepts all boys and girls above the age of ten who pass the entrance examination. in the _progymnasium_, which corresponds to the secondary school in its course of studies, instruction is gratuitous up to the age of fifteen; after that the annual fees amount to sixty francs. there are great universities in the chief cities, which are much favoured by foreign pupils. it is a sign of the practical side of the swiss character that very special attention should be given to technical schools: the swiss technical schools are said to be the most thorough in the world, and they will teach anything, from waiting to watch-making. another sign of the practical is the swiss custom to keep the schools in mountain villages open only during the long alpine winter--from the beginning of october till the following easter. all through the summer, lads and boys tend sheep or cows in the fields, help their fathers to make hay, roam in the woods, and get their fill of air and sunshine. the schoolmasters have gone to their own villages, where they mow and gather in the crops like the other peasants to whose households they belong. this is good from the point of view of health, and also from that of domestic economy. leaving their schools strong in body because of the organised system of gymnastic training; strong in national pride because of the attention which has been paid by their teachers in impressing the glorious story of the past; with well-balanced, sane, practical minds the swiss are ready to face the tasks of life with a fearless confidence. their pride does not teach them to despise labour, even in forms which may appear contemptible. their sense of thrift, which almost verges on a sense of greed, does not make them inhospitable. they show their virtues in the sphere of the commonplace, as servants, traders, petty masters. but they are heroic in the sphere of commonplace; and no one, looking back on their history, can dare to doubt that if great occasion arose in the future they would respond to it as courageously as in the past, and hold their hills against any attempt at conquest. in every respect they seem to preserve their historic national character. since the earliest of the middle ages, switzerland was accustomed to find asylum for the saint fleeing from a monarch's anger, the reformer dreading the persecution of a church, the thinker seeking a safe corner from which he could invite mankind to consider some daring hypothesis. there was a complaint in the european newspapers only this year ( ) that: geneva has for a long time past been a centre for eccentric and ill-regulated individuals of every description, a certain proportion being in addition idle and generally undesirable characters. her university is, of course, the main cause of a condition of things far from pleasing to the responsible authorities. it has long attracted, and still continues to attract, students from all parts of the world--crop-haired russians, wild-looking bulgarians, greeks, levantines, and egyptians. the chief cause of dissatisfaction at the moment, it seems, was that geneva university had become the headquarters of the so-called permanent committee of the young egyptian party: these young egyptians (often not really egyptians at all, but levantines) loom largely in the public eye. throughout the present summer, for instance, more than a fortnight or three weeks have never elapsed without their meeting in geneva, ostensibly to pass some resolution or to appeal to england to keep her engagements regarding the eventual evacuation of egypt, or, it might be, to draft some letter of protest to be sent to sir edward grey. these resolutions are invariably transmitted without delay to the foreign press agencies established in geneva, and by them telegraphed right and left throughout europe. it frequently happens, of course, that the more serious and better-informed newspapers treat these resolutions for what they are worth, but far more frequently, especially by german newspapers or journals, which for some reason or other are not friendly disposed to great britain, or are wholly ignorant of british administration in egypt, they are published _in extenso_, as if they were the decisions arrived at by the british association, the french academy, or some other society of long-established reputation and recognised standing. it must be admitted that the "young egyptians" in geneva are very clever in hoodwinking a large number of foreign editors, and in causing themselves to be taken far more seriously than they deserve. but it is not likely that the "young egyptians" will find their stay in geneva interfered with by the swiss authorities. the tradition of the "right of asylum" is too strong; and provided that the line is drawn at actual criminality, no power will successfully ask for their expulsion from switzerland. yet the presence of these futile conspirators must be of annoyance to the swiss government, which wishes to live at peace with all the world, and finds sometimes a threat of interference with its tourist traffic in foreign resentment at swiss-sheltered disloyalists. but in this matter historic sentiment defeats the practical. the swiss are determined to be hospitable, even to their own loss. and europe generally is inclined to sympathise with, and respect, this little mountain people set in the midst of great powers, from whose disputes they rigorously hold aloof, seeking to maintain their liberty by a sturdily pacific policy, but keeping in reserve for national defence a great military organisation. [illustration: berne.] chapter xv some statistical facts switzerland is not all scenery and hotels. the little nation has a prosperous life apart from the tourists who make of its mountains a playground. there is interesting matter to be gleaned from the facts given in the publications of the swiss federal statistical bureau. the residential population of switzerland is , , , and the area , , square kilometres, of which , , are counted as productive, and , as unproductive. thus three-quarters of the land is capable of being put to some use. there are over lakes within the swiss area. the population of switzerland lately has grown steadily. the marriage-rate ( · ) is low; the birth-rate ( · ) fairly high; the death-rate ( · ) a little above the average. all three rates show a tendency to dwindle, following the rule of the western european countries. the death-rate from infectious diseases is high, representing one-fifth of the total. emigration to foreign lands is not large now, switzerland losing about people a year from this cause, the great majority of whom go to the united states and the argentine. the chief agricultural and pastoral products of switzerland are milk, cheese, cream, cereals, vines, fruits, and tobacco. the vintage is worth £ , a year. the forests are made to pay well, and are very carefully safeguarded. on an average about £ , a year is devoted to re-planting and to protecting woods. the woods are divided into two classes, protective and non-protective. the former are treated as safe-guards against avalanches, and are exploited only with a due consideration for their primary purpose as bulwarks. altogether per cent of switzerland is forest land, and three-quarters of this area is treated as "protective forest." the governments of the united states and of canada, which are disturbed regarding the de-forestation of their areas and the consequent deterioration of soil and climate, should make a careful study of the admirable swiss system of forestry. the swiss lake and river fisheries are very carefully preserved and cultivated. there are in all fish nurseries maintained within the country, and during a year over , , fish of various sorts (trout chiefly) are hatched out and released in the rivers and lakes. incidentally a steady war is carried on against crows, herons, and other birds destructive to fish. in this, as in every other respect when the life of the swiss people is examined, there will be found a steady, thrifty, scientific effort to make the most of every available resource of the country. there is probably less waste and more utilisation of natural opportunities in switzerland than in any other country of the world. swiss industries are in some cases government monopolies, and help the national revenue considerably. the salt monopoly brings in about £ , , a year, of which a great part is profit. the total trade of switzerland reaches £ , , value a year, of which the exports represent about £ , , and the imports about £ , , . that is exclusive of coin, on which there is a balance in favour of switzerland of about £ , annually. the tourist traffic is mainly responsible for the balance of imports in favour of switzerland, for there is practically no foreign borrowing. the swiss have a flourishing export trade in various manufactures, such as watches (export worth nearly £ , , a year). in all per cent of the swiss export trade is in manufactured goods. of the imports into switzerland per cent are of raw materials, per cent of food supplies, and the balance of manufactured goods. germany claims the largest share of the import trade into switzerland, with france, italy, and great britain next in that order. of the export trade also germany takes the largest share, but that of great britain is very nearly equal. the united states comes third in the list of customers for swiss exports. the public services in switzerland are excellent, and show a high power of organisation. the postal, telegraph, and telephone system has been, in particular, wonderfully organised in switzerland, as the visitor soon finds and the inhabitant fully realises. you may use the post office for almost anything and telephone almost anywhere in switzerland. some £ , , has been sunk in the telegraph and telephone lines in switzerland, and the annual revenue is about £ , . the articles carried by post in switzerland total in a year about , , . the number of telegrams sent per inhabitant in switzerland is greater than in any other european country except great britain. the swiss railways are very well developed, too well developed for some lovers of the alps. each year there are constructed new funicular railways and tramways, until soon it will be hard to find a ten-miles' square in all switzerland which has not a railway of some sort. counting in all the mountain railways, the total length of swiss lines runs to the astonishing total of over , , metres, and additions go on at the rate of over , metres a year. these railways bring in about £ , , a year, on which a good profit is realised--about £ , , a year--representing · per cent on the capital invested. the federal government controls the chief lines and manages them very well, making a good profit out of providing reasonably cheap facilities to the public. tourists are able to buy circular tickets, which frank over all the swiss lines under the control of the federal government. the funicular railways up the mountain sides are usually privately owned. over £ , , of capital has been sunk in these enterprises, and they pay well on the average by the strength of their appeal to the arm-chair alpinist. education, as already observed, has been brought to a high pitch of organisation in switzerland. from the primary schools to the seven universities there are splendid facilities for learning. in the primary schools there are about , pupils yearly under , teachers. the cost of this primary education is a little over £ , , a year. in the secondary (higher) schools there are about , pupils yearly under teachers, and the cost of these schools is about £ , a year. there are, in addition, schools of agriculture, of dairying, of commerce, and other technical schools. in the various agricultural colleges about pupils are trained each year, in the schools of commerce about pupils. in addition, continuation commercial schools give further instruction to some , pupils yearly, who attend holiday and evening classes. but that does not exhaust the list of educational facilities. in all, switzerland spends £ , , a year on state education, nearly £ a year per inhabitant. since salaries are on an extraordinarily thrifty scale in all branches of the swiss public service--the president of the republic getting a salary which would be scorned by the manager of a small business house in london or new york--this appropriation allows for a very large number of teachers. in the seven universities of switzerland (bâle, zurich, berne, geneva, lausanne, fribourg, and neuchâtel) there is an average of students a year, of whom fully a third are foreigners. correctional schools and schools for the feeble-minded are integral parts of the swiss social system. an average of children a year are treated in the correctional schools, and of a year in the schools for the feeble-minded (of which there are in all). there are special schools for deaf mutes, treating an average of pupils a year. switzerland gathers in for federal purposes a public revenue of nearly £ , , a year, about half from the customs, almost all the rest from the posts, telegraphs, and railways. outgoings are on a thrifty scale. the whole of the "general administration" absorbs only £ , a year. the excellent army costs barely £ , , a year. the federal receipts and expenses are, of course, apart from the canton revenues. the cantons separately raise and spend about £ , , a year. that makes the total taxation in switzerland some £ , , a year. the production and sale of alcohol is a federal monopoly in switzerland. the regie makes about £ , a year profit, the bulk of which is returned to the canton governments. some further indications of swiss social life will be given by these facts: there are in switzerland savings banks with , depositors and £ , , in deposits. the gaol population is about , of whom about one-fourth are serious criminals. capital punishment is not allowed in switzerland, nor is imprisonment for debt. the swiss army stands to-day at an effective strength of , for the _elite_ and for the _landwehr_. the efficiency of the _landwehr_ (reserve) is helped much by the general popularity of rifle shooting as a sport. the federation has rifle clubs with , members. the government encourages these clubs with subsidies, and spends about £ , a year in that way. since there are , male voters in switzerland, it will seem that more than a fourth of the total male population belongs to rifle clubs. [illustration: lausanne.] the swiss are keen politicians and go industriously to the polls for the election of representatives, and for the settlement of the numerous questions referred to their decision by direct vote. in there was a swiss referendum on the subject of the new insurance law against sickness and accidents. of the , electors , recorded their votes. switzerland each year attracts more and more the attention of sociologists. its completely popular system of government, which has solved the problem of carrying on a democracy without extravagance and without bureaucratic inefficiency, its close and effective organisation of military, education, and charity matters, its methods of referring political issues for settlement directly to the people--all are being carefully studied in various countries of the world with a view to imitation. it yet remains to be seen whether methods and policies which work notably well in their native land would bear transplanting; whether, too, they would be as suitable for larger areas and larger populations than switzerland has. in some respects the swiss example will doubtless prove useful for imitation (with modifications) in other countries. but it is fair to question whether the happiness to which the little swiss people have reached is the ideal with which civilised democracy would be content. the swiss are happy, but it is a strictly mediocre happiness. they are content because they have a very modest standard of contentment. the people of the country, with all their virtues, are not inspiring; and the life they lead suggests a little too much the life of an excellently-managed institution to be really attractive. at the outset of this volume i ventured to question the justice of some eminent travellers who have abused the swiss. they, it would seem to me, had formed an extraordinarily heroic idea of the swiss character, and were disappointed that close examination showed a people who are very estimable, very well-educated, very firm in their patriotism, but not always suggestive of the heroic. between an unfair depreciation and the idealising of the swiss nation there is a reasonable middle ground, and from that middle ground the social and political inquirer should approach the study of swiss sociological institutions. index aare, river, aargau, achaens, adelboden, adler pass, agricultural and pastoral products, alamanni, , , albristhorn, mt., alcohol monopoly, aletsch, great, , allalin pass, alliance of france and switzerland, , alp pastures, , "alpine" character, the, , alpine climbing, , , , , , clubs, , , , , flowers, , , aconite plant, alyssum, sweet, anemones, arabis, _arnica montana_, , asters, campanulas, crocus, , edelweiss, , forget-me-nots, gentian, , , , geums, gypsophila, hepatica, louseworts, "marmot's bread," orchis, primrose, , primula, rampions, ranunculi, , rhododendrons, rock roses, roses, saxifrages, sedums, _semper vivum_, soldanella, thyme, wild, toadflax, grass, lakes, meadows, , spring, storm, sunset, villages, , alps, the, , - , , andes, arar (saône), argentina, glaciers in, army, swiss, , arnold, matthew, , association for the protection of plants, asylum, switzerland as an, , attinghausen, augsburg, augustus, emperor, austerities of calvinism, , australian aborigines, alps, , , autun, avalanches, , , , , , _grund-lawine_ or ground-avalanche, , _lawinen-dunst_, _schlag-lawine_ or stroke-avalanche, _staub-lawine_ or dust-snow-avalanche, , aventicum (avenches), baden, , basel, , , council of, bath-resorts, bertold v., , berne, , , bernese oberland, republic, bertha, the "spinning queen," bétemps hut, , beza, bibracte, bienne, lake, blanc, mt., , , , blaser, sergeant, bob-sleighing, , bonderchrinde, bonderspitze, mt., boniface iv., pope, bonivard, françois, , boswell, , bourg st. pierre, britannia hut, , bronze age, , brunhilde of burgundy, queen, brunnen, buckle, bullinger, , burgundian kingdom, , burgundians, , byron, , , , , , caesar, , , , , , calvin, , , , , , , campbell, carline thistle, cassius, catherine the great, cattle on alp pastures, , celtic immigrants, celts, , chamois, hunting, skin, champéry, character, swiss, of mountain peoples, charlemagne, , , , chateaubriand, chillon, castle of, , , "chillon, prisoner of," christian league, _christianae religionis institutio_, cimbri, civilisation, birthplace of, of the plains, codex manesse, communism, general, consistory of geneva, , constance, lake, constant, benjamin, constitution of , conway, sir martin, , , , , coppet, , , , , , correctional schools, cranbunden, cresta run, crusades, curchod, mlle, , , curling, , dairying industry, danger of climbing, d'aubigné, agrippa, de broglie, duke victor, de choiseul, duchesse, defence against avalanches, dents du midi, department of forests, de saussure, horace, desert pea, sturt's, desert plants, de staël, madame, , , , , , , , , devil's bridge, de voght, baron, diablerets mts., dr. schrumm's death, druidical worship, dumas, alexandre, education, , einsiedeln abbey, elsigfirst, mt., elsighorn, mt., emigration, _Émile_, engadine, equalisation of the earth's temperature, erasmus, etruscans, , european alps, euthyphron, exhilaration from change of air, farel, favre, louis, federal post office, swiss, states, swiss, ferdinand of austria, ferney, , , , fetan, avalanche record, , findelen glacier, finnemore, john, flemwell, mr. g., flower-hunting, forest cantons, , , , , laws, forests, , fouché, franco-prussian war, free cities, french directory, , , reformation, revolution, , , , , , fresh air, gospel of, funicular railways, , , gallic switzerland, géant, col du, gemmi pass, geneva, , , , , , , lake of, university, genevan consistory, german empire, gessler, gibbon, , , , glacier colouring, glaciers, , beauties of, , swiss, , glarus, , canton of, glenarvon, goethe, golf-links, gorner glacier, grand muveran, grandson, , grauholz, great st. bernard, gregory vii., pope, grey, lady jane, grimsel, grindelwald glaciers, gsur, mt., gymnastic sports, , habsburg, house of, , hannibal, happiness of swiss, harbinger of spring, harvest festival, haute cime, helvetia, , , helvetians, , , , , , , helvetic club, consulta, republic, , society, henry vi., emperor, himalayas, , hohenstaufen, house of, homeric period, horace, hotel-keeping, hugo, victor, hungarians, ice age, ice-hockey, ice-sailing, increase of warmth of climate in europe, influence of mountains, , iron age, , italian civilisation, lakes, _jardins refuges_, jesuits, the, johnson, , jura, mount, kandersteg, keller, dr. ferdinand, kinzig pass, knox, john, kopp, korsakow, general, kosciusko, mt., lake-dwellers, , , , , lake-dwellings, early, , , lake forces, lake prompting to community life, landgrave, phillip of hesse, lausanne, , novelists at, , , league of thirteen cantons, leman, lake, , lemanic republic, leopold, duke, , les plans, loetschberg railway, lombardy, londinium, longfellow, lucerne, , , , , , , luther, luxeuil, , lyons, machiavelli, märjelen sea, mary of england, queen, massena, mediterranean civilisations, meilen, melchthal, mendelssohn, middle ages, , , , milan, _milchsuppe_, the, minnelieder, missionaries from ireland, monte rosa glacier, montreux, , morat, , lake, morgarten, battle of, , "mottoes for mountaineers," mountain's birthday, muller, _municipal gymnasium_, muotta, naefels, battle of, , nancy, , nantes, napoleon, , , , , , , napoleonic constitution, national costume, service, natural beauties of switzerland, necker, madame, , , , necker, mr., neuchâtel, lake, , neuenegg, new zealand lakes, nibelungen, _nouvelle héloïse_, obermann, ochs, peter, orcitrix, _origin of inequality_, palu glacier, panixer pass, papuans, pas d'Éncel, pas de l'Écluse, pastoral and agricultural products, peasant life, , , peoples of the plain, peter of savoy, _pfahl-bauer_ (pile-builders), pilatus, piso, polar glaciers, pont de nant, population of switzerland, pragel pass, prehistoric switzerland, primarschule, _progymnasium_, public revenue, services, , radbot of habsburg, "ranz des vaches," , récamier, madame, reding, referendum, , reformation, - republic, french, helvetic, , lemanic, reuss, valley, "revivalist" preachers, rhætia, rhætians, rhine, glacier, river, rhone, river, rifle clubs, rifle-shooting, , , rigi, ritter, mr., rochers de naye, rockies, roman empire, disruption of, gaul, roads, summer resorts, romans, , rosa, monte, roumanians, rousseau, , , , , royal chapel of the savoy, ruskin, , rütli, saas, saas fee, , safe climbs, st. columban, , , st. gall, , st. gall, monastery of, st. gothard, st. gothard pass, , st. gothard railway, st. jacob, battle of, st. moritz, salt monopoly, salvation army, saracens, savoy, duke of, , saxon invasion, schauenberg, general, schiller, schopenhauer, schwartzhorn, schwyz, selkirks, sempach, senancour, senate conspiracy against napoleon, shelley, , simplon, railway, skating, , ski-ing, , , , , ski-runners, smith, mr. albert, _social contract_, socrates' method, soleure, solothurn, south seas, sports, swiss national, spring season, stansenhorn, statutes of geneva, stauffacher, stephen, sir leslie, stockjoch, stone age, , straits of sunda, strübel, glacier, summer season, sports, sumptuary laws, susanfe, pass of, suwarow, general, , , "swiss admiral," swiss alpine club, army, , character, character in the middle ages, cheese, colonists, cosmopolitan book-shops, courage, , fisheries, guard, , , a handicapped people, heterodoxies, industries, league, mercenaries, , mercenary service, , military organisation, , , milk, "navy," newspapers, prowess, , railways, reformed church, republic, , system of government, thrift, symonds, john addington, , , , , , , _tartarin de tarascon_, technical schools, tell, william, tennis courts, tennyson, teutonic invasion, switzerland, thiele, river, thingor, abbot of, thucydides, tigurini tribe, , tissot, dr., _titanic_, tobogganing, , , , , tourist traffic, town life of the swiss, trade, total, trelawney, troncain, dr., tuileries, defence of, , turnfests, turnvereins, universities, unterwalden, uri, , uri, lake, vatican, vaud, canton of, , vaudois alps, verdun, treaty of, versailles, palace of, vespasian, vevey, vienna congress, vindonissa, voltaire, , , , , , , von wengi, nicolas, warm age, williams, colonel, winkelried, arnold, , , winter season, wordsworth, wülpelsburg, yodel, young egyptian party, zahringer dynasty, , zermatt, , , , zermatt breithorn, zinal, zug, zurich, , , , , , , congress, lake, , , zwingli, , , the end _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. transcriber's note: archaic and inconsistent spelling, punctuation, and syntax retained. transcriber's notes: when italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has been surrounded by _underscores_. ditto marks have been replaced by the text they represent. the oe ligature has been replaced by the letters oe. some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. in particular, punctuation has been normalized and duplicate words were removed. other corrections are listed below with the original text (top) and the replacement text (bottom): contents: gerni gemmi chapter i: herren herren schaffhaussen schaffhausen chapter ii: intere t interest chapter iii: caries carries chapter iv: withont without chapter v: fouud found chapter vi: agazziz agassiz eating-roon eating-room chapter vii: cotages cottages reichenback reichenbach alpback alpbach white lace vails white lace veils chapter viii: replendent resplendent grindenwald grindelwald chapter ix: visiters visitors puplis pupils chapter x: businesss business chapter xii: t m[symbol] the chapter xiii: benificent beneficent grindewald grindelwald chapter xiv: fearfuly fearfully ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [illustration: interlachen and the jungfrau.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ letters from switzerland. --------------------- by samuel irenÆus prime, author of "travels in europe and the east," &c., &c. --------------------- new york: sheldon & company, nassau street. boston: gould & lincoln. . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ entered, according to act of congress, in the year , by sheldon & company, in the clerk's office of the district court for the southern district of new-york. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ contents. chapter i basle and the rhine. the three kings--cathedral--council of basle--puritan rules--dance of death--seats in the diligence--supplement--the rhine--an alderman in trouble--dining in haste--english manners--girls in holiday dress--falls of the rhine--niagara--up the river--old nunneries--gottlieben--prisons of huss and jerome of prague. pages - chapter ii constance and zurich. a decaying town--the kaufhaus--famous council--dungeon of huss--scene of martyrdom--house of huss--lake constance--the ride to zurich--villages--the valley--hotel baur--a swiss cottage--the furnishing--miles coverdale--zwingle--lavater's grave--the library--sunset view from the botanical garden. pages - chapter iii. the mountain tops. climbing the utleberg--fat woman on a donkey--first alpine view--the valley, lake and hills--haunts of lavater, zimmerman, klopstock, gessner--the work of escher--coming down--baur hotel--lake zurich--lake zug--golda--land-side--ruin--ascent of the rigi--the best route--chapels by the way--mary of the snow--convent and monks--the summit--the company--change of temperature--sunset--supper--night--sunrise--glory of the view--getting down again--fat man done up. pages - chapter iv. lucerne and the land of tell. the lake--avalanches--pontius pilate--lucerne--dance of death--fishing--storm on the lake--ramble among the peasantry--two dwarfs--on the lake--rifle shooting--chapel of william tell--scenes in his life--altorf--hay-making--a great day. pages - chapter v. pass of st. gothard the priest's leap--the devil's bridge--night on the mountains--storm--hospenthal--the glaciers--a lady in distress--the furca pass--glacier of the rhone--heinrich and nature--heinrich asks after god--scene in the hospice. pages - chapter vi. glaciers of the aar. my new friend--a wonderful youth--hospice of the grimsel--the valley--a comfortable day--glaciers of the aar--a gloomy vale--climbing a hill--view of the glacier--theory of its formation--caverns in the ice--incidents of men falling in--my leap and fall--an artist lost--return. pages - chapter vii. mountains, streams and falls. pedestrianism--mountain torrents--fall of the handek--the guide and his little ones--falls of the reichenbach--perilous point of view. pages - chapter viii. a glacier and avalanche. alpine horn--beggars--the rosenlaui glacier--beautiful views--glorious mountain scenes--mrs. kinney's "alps"--a lady and babe--the great scheidek--grindelwald--eagle and bear--battle with bugs--wengern alp--a real avalanche--the jungfrau. pages - chapter ix. interlachen and berne. the staubach fall--lauterbrunnen--interlachen--cretins and goitre--dr. guggenbuhl--giesbach fall--berne--inquisitive lady--swiss creed--crossing the gemmi--leuchenbad baths. pages - chapter x. monks of st. bernard. the char-a-banc--the napoleon pass--travellers in winter--monks--dogs--dinner--music--dead house--contributions--a monk's kiss. pages - chapter xi. first sight of mont blanc. the host of martigny--vale of the drance--mount rosa--tete noire--col de balm--the monarch of the alps. pages - chapter xii. geneva a good house--prisoner of chillon--calvin--dr. malan--dr. gaussen--col. tronchin--the cemetery. pages - chapter xiii. pictures in switzerland. waterfalls--constance--zurich--william tell--glaciers--the monarch. pages - chapter xiv. saxon swytz. a model guide--the bastei--banditti of old--a cataract to order--scaling a rampart--konigstein--the kuhstall--the great winterberg--prebisch thor--looking back. pages - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ switzerland. --------------------- chapter i. basle and the rhine. the three kings--cathedral--council of basle--puritan rules--dance of death--seats in the diligence--supplement--the rhine--an alderman in trouble--dining in haste--english manners--girls in holiday dress--falls of the rhine--niagara--up the river--old nunneries--gottlieben--prisons of huss and jerome of prague. switzerland, to be seen aright, must be entered from germany. many travellers rush from paris to geneva, and beginning with chamouni and mont blanc come down from the greater to the less, tapering off with the beautiful instead of rising to the sublime. one lovely summer day in the early part of the month of august, we left baden baden, where we had been resting after a tour in belgium, holland, prussia, saxony, saxon switzerland, austria, bavaria, and bohemia, and came by the duke of baden's railroad to basle. the hotel de _trois rois_, or, _three kings_, was reluctant to receive us, so great was the rush of company. large as some of our own first class hotels, it was crowded to overflowing, but we found lodgings for three at the top of the house. it stands on the very borders of the river rhine, which rushes by with a powerful current, and the verandah in front overhanging the stream is a pleasant lounge after a weary day of travel. lodgings for three gentlemen, or in german, "fur drei herren," we had so often asked for, that we came to be called the "drei herren," or "dry herring," as it sounded in our english ears. the river forms a broad and noble stream along the sloping bank on which the city stands; the jura mountains rise on one side, and the hills of the black forest on the other, while the intermediate region is richly covered with vegetation, and the villas of a wealthy class of people who have retired from the city, or who own the soil. basle is a goodly town, and if the people have some rigid notions of morality in the judgment of travellers of easy virtue, it is refreshing to come into a city where the shops are closed of a sunday, and every one is required to be at home by eleven o'clock at night. a city that bore so conspicuous a part in the reformation, and still cherishes the ashes of so many great and good men, ought not to lose its veneration for the spirit and principles of the past. in the _cathedral_, now in process of renovation, we stood over the dust of the learned erasmus, read his epitaph in latin, walked among the beautiful cloisters which have been burial places for the wise and good for more than _six_ hundred years! where the monuments stand of grynæus, and meyer, and oecolampadius, men who were mighty in the scriptures, in the days when such men were few. we walked through the portal of st. gallus, under the statues of christ and peter, and the wise and foolish virgins, and admired the pulpit of three pieces of stone, carved with great skill and effect; and then we were led to the chamber where the council of basle held its sessions, beginning in , and lasting eight years. it has undergone no alterations in the four hundred years which have since elapsed. in the _library_ are preserved manuscripts of luther, melancthon, erasmus and zwingle, and a huge volume in which illustrious visitors had inscribed their names for two hundred years. the celebrated pictures of the _dance of death_ once adorned the walls of the dominican church in basle, and a few of them still preserved are now hung up in this collection, among others of greater merit but less fame, by holbein. a beautiful picture, which i have seen attempted with far less success before, presents a venus sleeping by the side of a stream, and a skull lying near her, and flowers blooming around, to illustrate the lines: _mortis imago sopor: velut amnis labitur ætas, vix forma reliquium pulvis et ossa manent._ "the image of death is sleep: like the river life glides away, and dust and bones, the only relics of departed beauty, are left behind." in the next room the same sentiment is more impressively taught from an uncovered sarcophagus, in which a female mummy grins horribly at you, as you look into the narrow house which she has slept in for two or three thousand years. the architecture of this old swiss town is very curious, and many of the most antique gateways and fortifications, towers and walls, remain to this hour, showing the quaint but not bad devices in the way of ornament, which were in use years ago. in old times, too, they had moral laws here quite as stringent as those imputed to our new england ancestors. on the sabbath, no one might go to church unless dressed in black; the number of dishes and the quantity of wine for a dinner party were regulated by law, as well as the style and quality of clothes. the good people used to put religious mottoes over their doors, and one or two public houses still have them: "in god i build my hopes of grace, the ancient pig's my dwelling place." and another still more earnest: "wake and repent your sins with grief, i'm called the golden shin of beef." the gates of the town are closed on the sabbath day during the hours of service, and an outward respect paid to the day which is creditable to the people. in the hotel, a small room has been fitted up neatly as a chapel for an english service, a custom not unusual in switzerland, where english travellers are flocking constantly. basle is the great starting point for swiss travelling for those who enter the german frontier. we have now come to the end of railroads, and must depend on horses or go afoot. the sooner one takes his place in the _diligence_ after arriving, the more likely he is to have a good seat when he wishes to depart, and though we were early for this, no less than twelve had the start of us, and the coach carried only nine. "you shall have a _supplement_," we were told, and at nine in the morning with twenty-five travellers we were at the _post office_, to be despatched with the mails and the females to schaffhausen. this posting is a government concern, and the postmaster has charge of the horses as well as the letters. there was no place but the middle of the street in which to remain, till at the appointed hour the heavy diligence lumbered up to the door: the nine predestinated thereunto took their seats; an omnibus and one or two carriages by way of supplement, received the rest of us, many grumbling grievously that they had not places in the coach, and others preferring as we did, an easy carriage with a party of four. the postillion dressed in a yellow jacket with a brass horn under his arm, with which he amused himself and the country people as he passed, mounted the box, and we soon crossed the rhine, and followed its banks upward for many a pleasant mile. the morning was fine after a rainy night, clear, cool and bracing; the distant alps were constantly in sight on the right, and the winding, often rapid, always beautiful river, with its vine-clad shores and smiling cottages was by our side. we left the carriage at _lauffenburg_, and walked to the banks of the rhine, where the river is choked into a narrow gorge, and dashes with terrible force through a deep sunk channel, among opposing rocks, making a fearful pass in which an english nobleman lost his life, attempting to make the rapids in a little boat. resuming our seats, we found one of our fellow travellers belonging to the diligence, alderman ---- of new york left behind. the coach was out of call, and the best he could do was to mount the edge of the postillion's single seat in front of our carriage and ride on to the next post town. the alderman was heavy, the place was too strait for him, and i suggested that a _franc_ would buy the whole seat. he tried the effect of it, the postillion took the silver, dropped down upon the foot rest, and the alderman had the seat to himself. in an hour we stopped to dine. perhaps we were here a few moments sooner than mine host of the _waldshut_ hotel expected us, for the dinner was not on the table, but it gave us a fine opportunity to observe a specimen of manners sufficiently characteristic to be made a matter of record. at the table there sat ten english, six german, and seven american ladies and gentlemen. the dishes were slow in coming in; the english gentlemen all having ladies under their care, left the table, rushed into the kitchen, seized the best dishes of meats they could find, brought them to their own places, and helping themselves and their ladies, devoured them in the presence of the more barbarous germans and americans, who looked on with amazement. i took the liberty of remarking that it was an outrage, of which i had never before seen an example in civilized life, and was happy to observe that the practice was confined to a single nation out of the number represented here. an english lady gave me an approving nod, but the men were too far gone in beef and sour wine to pay any attention to lessons in good breeding. as might be expected, the leader in this grab-game grumbled at his bill, declared he was charged for more wine than he had drunk, and laid himself out in abusing swiss taverns in general, and this in particular, till the postman's horn summoned him and the rest to their seats. the scenery improves as we ascend the rhine. the banks are steeper, the hills are bolder; the water rushes more rapidly through winding channels, and the people we meet bear more characteristic features of another country. it is a catholic holiday. we are meeting the peasantry in great numbers, dressed in their best clothes, some of them gaily; blooming lasses in snow white muslin and no bonnets, but sweet pretty head-dresses and pink ribbons tied as pretty girls in all countries know how to tie them; they are gathering at the churches, and as they wend their way through green fields to the highway, they give a romantic air to the rural picture we are looking on. many of them are paired, and as they saunter along hand in hand, and now and then with an arm thrown lovingly round the waist, we know them as probably paired for life, and send up a little prayer that they may jog along as pleasantly all the way through. "the finest cataract in europe" is at schaffhausen. we arrived at sunset, just in time to see the falls before the last rays had faded into night. the rhine is here feet broad, and after foaming and rushing furiously for a mile or two it takes a bold leap over a shelving precipice sixty feet high, and plunges into a bay of waters below, boiling like a mighty caldron and sending up perpetual clouds of spray. in the midst of the cataract two columnar rocks rise perpendicularly, dividing the fall into three unequal parts. one of these rocks is clothed with shrubbery and the steep banks on either side are lined with trees. a castellated mansion crowns the summit on one side, and several buildings grace the other, so that nature and art have here combined to make a picture of wild romantic beauty, in which there is enough of grandeur to entitle it, at times, to be called sublime. certainly we should so pronounce it, if we had not seen the waterfalls of america. the only place to see a fall to perfection is directly in front of it. we are told to cross the river and go up the hill to a jutting crag and there in the midst of the spray, contemplate the "hell of waters," roaring and tumbling madly on their way into the dreadful deeps below. we went over, but nothing satisfies me but to see a waterfall from its base. it was an easy matter to induce two stout oarsmen to put the nose of their skiff into the teeth of the cataract, and drive her up as near to the falling torrent as their strength would fetch her. i knew the strong current would send the little shell down stream, like an arrow, when they crossed the eddies and struck the channel; and so it proved. we toiled on till the spray-like rain covered us, and there we looked up at the white waves as they marched in fury down upon us, threatening to overwhelm the frail bark tossing on the surface as a shell. when we had studied the scene from various points of view, we returned to the shore and met a party of english gentlemen and ladies at castle _worth_, which commands a fine sight of the falls. "how does it compare with niagara," one of them enquired of me. i replied, "we do not love to make comparisons between these beautiful scenes and those we have left at home. nature there is more majestic in her works, and there is no sight on earth where so much majesty crowned with beauty is revealed as in the cataract of niagara. you see that hill which bounds this valley on the west and that higher one which shuts it in above where the rhine comes down: those hills are not so far asunder as the river of niagara is at the moment it falls! it is a lake broader than this beautiful vale and the precipice to whose brow it comes is loftier than the turrets of that castle, now fading from our view. it comes not creeping down the rocks like _that_, but gathering itself up and with one mighty leap, clearing the barrier, it pours its awful flood, as if an ocean had been spilled, into the abyss below. in the moonlight and in the sunshine rainbows are twined upon its brow, and garlands of diamonds hang from the summit to the base, in beauty indescribable." we climbed up to the hotel weber, which stands on the brow of the hill, and the good man of the house gave us a chamber in full view of the falls, where we went to sleep with the roar of the tumult of many waters in our ears, making music the last we heard at night, and the first in the morning. now the grandeur of the distant alps began to appear. long ranges, peak towering above peak, are seen; the names of some of them are familiar, as they stand there inviting us to come to their feet. let us go. _aug. ._--refreshed by a sweet sleep, and ready for another fine day, we were taken after breakfast to the village of schaffhausen, where a small steamboat received us for _constance_. the current of the rhine above the falls is not so swift as below, but the waters are the same deep green, increased by the reflection of the beautiful sloping banks, covered with luxuriant vineyards. the vines are trained on short upright poles, not on arbors as with us, and at a distance they look not unlike our corn fields. but the river is so narrow here that we seem to be in the midst of them, and enjoy the labors of the dressers, as they work in the sun. now we are passing the old nunneries of paradies, and katherinethal, and that ancient castle above the town of stein is hohenlingen, once the abode of the masters of all this soil. here is the island of _reichenau_, where the remains of an ancient monastery are seen, and on the right as we are ascending is the castle of _gottlieben_, where john huss and jerome of prague were confined in gloomy dungeons from which they were dragged to trial and death. and this brings us to constance. chapter ii. constance and zurich. a decaying town--the kaufhaus--famous council--dungeon of huss--scene of martyrdom--house of huss--lake constance--the ride to zurich--villages--the valley--hotel baur--a swiss cottage--the furnishing--miles coverdale--zwingle--lavater's grave--the library--sunset view from the botanical garden. forty thousand people once lived together within the walls of constance. now less than seven thousand are here. but the old and curious houses still stand, many of them without inhabitants, and the whole city apparently asleep at noonday as we entered. the historic interest hanging about constance is very great, and will always render it attractive to the traveller. on the borders of the lake of constance, and but a very few feet from the landing, we saw the _kaufhaus_, built in , and memorable as the place in which the great "council of constance" sat in - , whose decision for good and for evil were so momentous in the church of rome. we walked up the solid steps into the second story, one wide low room supported by heavy wooden pillars, and with a rough plank floor like that of a barn. here, in this room, more than four hundred years ago were assembled from all parts of the christian world, no less than thirty cardinals, four patriarchs, twenty archbishops, one hundred and fifty bishops, two hundred professors of theology, besides princes, ambassadors, civil and ecclesiastical, abbots, priors, and inferior churchmen. the chair in which the emperor sigismund sat, and the chair in which the pope presided, stand as they stood then, and various relics of those times, historically associated with the council, are gathered, forming a museum of unusual interest. before this council john huss and jerome of prague were brought from their dungeons, and though the council was assembled professedly to reform the church, it condemned these holy men to the flames. the old cathedral is here, where those martyrs stood when the sentence of death was passed upon them, and the model of the dungeon not three feet wide and ten feet long, with the identical door and window in it, where huss was confined for many weary months. here too is the hurdle on which he was dragged to the place of execution, and when we had examined these and many interesting objects which a catholic claiming to be the friend of huss showed us, we walked out of the old chamber, and following the long street to the huss gate, found beyond the walls of the town, in the midst of a garden, the spot where these blessed men were caught up by chariots of fire into heaven. an old capuchin convent, deserted now, is standing near it, and so peaceful and fertile seemed these fields as we stood in the midst of the fruits and flowers, it was hard to believe an infuriated mob had once rioted here, and religious persecution kindled the fires of martyrdom on the flesh of men of whom the world was not worthy. in the council chamber are wax figures of these martyrs, bearing the records which i copied. "jerome of prague, called faulfisch, a learned man of great celebrity, the friend and defender of john huss, born at prague, march , ; burned alive in consequence of the order of the council of constance, may , , in the th year of his age. jerome walked to the place of punishment, as though he went to a place of rejoicing. when the executioner was going to set fire to the pile behind him, jerome said to him, 'come here, light it before me, for if i had feared the fire, i would not have been here.'" "john huss, of housenitts in bohemia, born july , , rector of the university and lecturer at prague, burned alive at constance in consequence of the order of the council, july , , in the d year of his age. his last words were, 'i resign my soul to the hands of my god and my redeemer.'" returning from the place of execution, we paused in front of the house in which john huss lodged before he was imprisoned. a rude image in stone of the reformer, but a strongly marked likeness, was on the outside. every one we met could tell us which way to go to find the huss house, and though there are but a few hundred protestants in the whole city, the idea seemed to be general that a good man was wrongfully and cruelly murdered when huss was burned. in the after part of the day, as the shades of evening were drawing around us, we had a boat and went out on the lake, and skirted along its shores, passing a large monastery where a few brothers of the augustine order are still maintained, and a few miles beyond is a long and beautifully planted nunnery which was suppressed in , and converted into a hospital, though the sisters are permitted to live and die there, without adding to their number. this is the largest of all the swiss lakes, and lies feet above the level of the sea. we floated around until the evening became so cool that we were glad to go ashore. passing an ancient-looking church of which the door was standing open, we walked in: a solitary lamp was burning near the altar, and the sound of voices led us down the aisle to a door opening into one of the cloisters where a group of boys were on their knees, repeating prayers in concert, and vieing with each other in the loudness and sing-song tone with which they performed the service. we returned to our hotel by the light of lamps hung in the middle of a chain stretched across the street, and went early to bed as we were early to rise. _aug. ._--we went by diligence to zurich to-day. the ride was pleasant. some of the swiss towns we passed through were very pretty, showing so much taste in the grounds about the houses, that one was sure there was a pleasant home. part of the way was called the roman road, and the remains of the ancient presence of that people are still visible. the river _thur_ flows along in the valley of the road, and its banks are lined with frequent mansions. chateaus of elegance are on the hill-sides, and just after leaving constance we passed one in which the present emperor of france once resided, and which still belongs to him. _frauenfeld_ is a fine town where we paused to dine, and i there celebrated the day as an anniversary that i am quite sure was not forgotten elsewhere. _winterthur_ is really a beautiful city. its streets intersect one another at right angles, and each intersection has an arched gateway, surmounted by a tower with a clock. as we advance into switzerland, the scenery becomes more commanding: now and then a sharp blue peak shoots up into the sky, and as the road descends we lose sight of it again, to see the same and others as we rise. at last as the day was closing, we came suddenly upon zurich, the capital of the canton of the same name, the most thriving city in switzerland, and rejoicing in the midst of one of the most beautiful valleys in the world. i should be deemed extravagant were i to speak of it as it appeared to me when descending through vineyards and gardens, and among elegant mansions, to the shores of the lake on which this city stands. the hotel _baur_ is the largest and best in the town, but it was crowded, and the gentlemanly landlord said the best he could do for us was to give us rooms in a private house adjoining his own. to this we assented with the more readiness, as it would bring us at once into the residence of the swiss, and we could see more of their indoor life than the hotel would furnish. there is no carpet on the floor, except a beautiful square on which the centre-table with a pot of flowers is standing. a piano with music and books is on one side, a sofa covered with white dimity on the other. the chamber looks out on a square, and the windows fill the entire front of the room, but rich lace curtains hang before them, and some of the panes of glass are replaced with porcelain pictures of exceeding loveliness. before the mirror is suspended a vase, like a pendant lamp, in which a plant is growing, with its leaves as on silver threads falling gracefully on every side of it. another flower-pot has a plant trained upon a flat frame, in the centre of which is one of these porcelain pictures through which the light is streaming. around the walls are many engravings in neat frames, and on the mantel and side-tables are various ornaments, chiefly curiously carved figures in wood, or beautiful glass-work, all displaying the taste of their possessor, and telling us all the time that these are the domestic precincts of some one who has let the lodgings for a season. these delicate cushions of pink silk with white lace edging, assure me that a lady is the rightful tenant; but i am tired, and shall slip into the linen sheets. good night. _aug. ._--to-day we have been exploring zurich, a city famous in the history of the reformation and dear to every protestant heart. here the exiles of england, when bloody mary was on the throne, found a hiding-place from her bitter persecutions. here the first entire english version of the bible, by _miles coverdale_, was printed in . from my window i see the cathedral where zwingle, the soldier of the reformation who resisted unto blood striving against sin, once thundered the wrath of heaven upon the abominations of the church of rome. here is the house yet standing in which he passed the last six years of his noble life. the clock of st. peter is now striking. this church had for its pastor for twenty-three years the celebrated _lavater_, author of the work on physiognomy. he was born here, and in the door of the parsonage which i visited to-day, he was shot by a brutal soldier, when the town was taken by the french in . he had given wine and money to his murderer but a few minutes before: and though he lingered for three months, he refused to give up the name of the assassin to the french commander, who desired to punish the atrocious deed. i plucked a flower and a sprig of myrtle from his grave in the humble churchyard of st. anne, where a simple tablet to his memory bears this inscription: "j. c. lavater's grave. born th nov. . died d jan. ." in the town library of , volumes, admirably arranged, is a fine marble bust of lavater, and also of pestalozzi, with portraits of zwingle and many other reformers. but i was more interested in reading several manuscript letters in latin, by lady jane grey, joanna graia, addressed to bullinger. the beautiful execution of the writing, the quotations in greek and hebrew, the spirit they breathed, and the fate of their lovely author, gave them sacred interest. here, too, in his own bible is the family record of zwingle and his wife anna bullinger; and many greek and arabic manuscripts which dr. raffles or dr. sprague would give a heap of guineas to get. it is said that the sunset view of the city, valley, lake, and mountains is not surpassed by any scene in switzerland. we had been so busy in these old and interesting scenes, that the day was gone before we knew it, and as we walked out to climb the hill, from which the view is to be had, we feared the sun had already set. part of the old rampart of the town remains, an elevated mound which has been tastefully laid out with walks and planted with shrubs and flowers, for a botanical garden. on the summit fine shade-trees stand, and here is one of the most beautiful promenades in the world. the sun was half an hour high, and just as we reached the hill-top it began to come down from behind a dense cloud, like a mass of molten gold distilled into a transparent globe. its liquid form appeared to tremble as it came forth; but the face of nature smiled in his returning beams. the nearer summits first caught the brightness, and then the more distant, invisible before, now stood forth in their majesty, shining in the sunlight. below me lay the lake like a silver sea. and all along its shores and far up the hill-sides, thousands of white cottages and villas, the abodes of wealth and peace and love, sweet swiss homes, rejoiced in the sunshine, as they sent up their evening psalm of praise from ten thousand happy hearts to god. a hundred years hence our valleys may be so peopled: but we have none now like this. for a thousand years these hill-sides have been tilled, and all these acres, wrested from the forest, and subdued by the hand of industry and art, have been planted with corn and wine, neat and many splendid mansions have been reared in every nook and on every sunny slope, and now on all sides the panorama seems to present the very spot where learning, religion, taste and peace would delight to find a refuge and a home. it is now sunset in the valley. the lake is dark. the last ray has played on the spire of st. peter and the minster. but the dome of the dodi still gleams in the sun, and the far-off glarus and uri are reflecting his lingering beams. they are gone. the rose-tints have faded from the loftiest summit of snow, and the sun has gone down to rise on those dearer to me than his light, in a distant land. chapter iii. the mountain tops. climbing the utleberg--fat woman on a donkey--first alpine view--the valley, lake and hills--haunts of lavater, zimmerman, klopstock, gessner--the work of escher--coming down--baur hotel--lake zurich--lake zug--golda--land-side--ruin--ascent of the rigi--the best route--chapels by the way--mary of the snow--convent and monks--the summit--the company--change of temperature--sunset--supper--night--sunrise--glory of the view--getting down again--fat man done up. august . rankin challenged me this morning to walk to the heights of utleberg, on the albis ridge, to the west of zurich. the utleberg is only three thousand feet high! and that is a small matter in switzerland. after a cup of coffee we set off at eight in the morning, and without guide or mules we wandered out of the town, across the river, and through beautiful vineyards, with luxuriant grapes, not ripe enough to be tempting. we climbed along up the hill-side. other parties were on their way, some german, some french, some english, none american but ourselves. at the foot of the hill we met a flock of milk white goats, which their owner was driving down from the mountains to sell in town; beautiful creatures; for the first, we learned that beauty could be affirmed of a goat. here the lame and the lazy supplied themselves with mules, and a comical figure of a fat german lady on a miserable little donkey, will be an amusing memory for many a day. when she was half way up the mountain she looked so jaded with the jerking, that we thought she would have suffered less if she had carried the donkey. we cut stout sticks in the forest, and pushed on, stopping now and then to pick flowers, or to examine a leech or a lizard, in the pools and streams by the side of the path, resting when tired, but pressing onward and upward, steadily and slowly; encouraged often by the splendor of the scene below, as we caught it from some opening in the woods, and feeling that we had the day before us and nothing else to do. the ascent became steeper as we pressed along, and it doubtless seemed steeper to us the more we were wearied with the way, but we made it in less than two hours, winding around the mighty rock that caps the apex, and entered the house of refreshment before we looked off into the world below. i had not felt myself in switzerland till on this summit, we saw for the first time a real alpine view. it has _points_ of view peculiar to itself, nationally characteristic; there is nothing got up on the same scale and the same plan in any other part of god's great world. why it pleased him to heap these hills in such "confusion unconfused," in this little country, we do not know, but they who would see the most remarkable of his works in mountain-building, must come here and climb up to some of the highest peaks, where they can take in at once as much of the majesty of the scene as each man's mind can hold. rankin and i reasoned some time on the question whether these lofty ranges were clouds in the heavens or mountains propping up the sky. now the problem is solved. what we thought might be white clouds, are the snowy ridges of the distant hills, and the dark blue mountains are now facing us as from one height across the valley we see them without looking up. the vale of zurich lies at our feet. the lake for twenty-five miles, and with a breadth of not more than three, stretches itself more like a river than a lake, through the valley to the south as far as we can see; and the hills rise very gradually from the water affording the most delightful grounds for vineyards; while scores of villages, each with its church spire, are scattered on each side, and between the villages so many dwellings are seen, that the whole valley, with its dense population, seems but one great family; certainly, it is one neighborhood, where industry, religion, intelligence and happiness, ought to flourish and have their reward. thalwyl may be seen away to the south, near to which lavater wrote a portion of his work on physiognomy; and still farther on is richtensweil, where zimmerman lived, whose work on "solitude" celebrates the praises of this spot. so does klopstock in his ode, and gessner, the swiss poet, who was born in zurich and has a monument reared to his memory in one of its delightful promenades. there, too, is stafa, where goethe once resided, and rapperschuyl, with the longest bridge in the world, it is said, four thousand eight hundred feet, or three-fourths of a mile; but i think the cayuga bridge is longer. there lies a beautiful islet, in which ulrich von hutten, the friend of luther, found a refuge and a grave. look away to usnach, and you see a valley out of which the river _linth_ is flowing; connected with it is a remarkable story. yesterday in the churchyard of st. anne, we saw a massive rough stone, with a polished spot in the midst of it, on which was engraved in gilt letters, "escher, von der linth," or escher of the linth. the title had plainly been given him for some work connected with the swiss river of that name. some thirty or forty years ago the river, coming down from the glaciers, and bringing with it a vast quantity of stones and soil, had become so much obstructed, that the valley was repeatedly overflowed, terrible pestilences followed, and the inhabitants swept off in great numbers. conrad escher suggested to the government the idea of digging a new bed for the river, and turning its waters off into another lake, the wallenstadt, where its deposits would be received without injury. this lake he connected with that of zurich by a navigable canal, and so complete was the success of all his suggestions, that he is looked upon as a national benefactor. just there, at the opening of the valley, a tablet has been placed in the solid rock, with an appropriate inscription. but that is not all. hard by it is an institution for the education of the poor of the canton, which is called after his name; and a factory where the linth colony are at work, who were brought here and supported while the great work was in progress on which they were employed. whichever way the eye turns from this point of observation, it finds something interesting or wonderful on which to rest. we are now in the morning of our tour in switzerland, and have been assured again and again that this is _mere_ beauty, compared with the glory that awaits us hereafter. but those mighty mountains crowned with eternal snow, and piercing the very skies with their sharp peaks, or supporting the heavens with their broad white shoulders, are certainly most majestic works of god, and what more and greater there can be, it is beyond imagination to conceive. not many travellers climb up here. they are in such haste to see the rigi and the passes, and the vale of chamouni, that they do not give a day to zurich, the most classic and picturesque of any of the cantons of switzerland. an english gentleman and lady are up here with me, who have just been traversing this whole country on foot. they are full of delight with the view, though they have seen everything else that is to be seen. the only incident to give variety to our return was losing the way, and making the walk a mile longer; but that was of small account to swiss pedestrians, ambitious of doing great things, and making nothing of climbing a mountain, and coming down before dinner. we are at zurich now. mr. _baur_ has the most elegant "hotel and pension" on the verge of the lake of zurich, that i have seen in europe. he calls this, as well as the hotel in front of the post office, after his own name, and gives them a degree of personal attention unequalled by any landlord into whose hands it was ever my pleasure to fall. in most of the hotels in europe, the proprietor keeps himself out of sight, and trusts the entire management of affairs to his assistants, the head waiter being the most of a man you are ever able to find. mr. baur is everywhere at once: receives his guests on their arrival, makes himself acquainted with their wants, and sees that they are attended to without fail. his new house on the lake with a charming garden in front, is one of the most delightful places for a weary traveller to rest in for a few days. there are many routes to the rigi. of course we went by the best. every traveller does; at least he thinks so, and that often amounts to the same thing. but in this as in every other road up hill in life, before a man gets half way up, he wishes he had taken the other. so it matters little, if he only reaches the top at last. the steamboat on the zurigsee, leaves at eight in the morning, and at least a hundred passengers crowded the little thing, when with a lovely breeze and a fine clear day we were off for the rigi. the glory of the rigi is at sunset and sunrise, and then there is none unless the sky is clear. nor are you sure of a clear sky up there, if it were ever so bright when you left the base. the group of mountains known by the name of rigi, of which the highest peak is alone the object of interest to the traveller, stand so isolated by the lakes of zug and lucerne from the rest of the ridges and ranges, that the view from the summit, especially at the close of the day and at sunrise, is unequalled. it stands up there alone, as an observatory from which to see the others. an hour on the boat brought us to the village of horgen, where we were carried by stages across the country to zug, on a lake of the same name. at horgen about sixty passengers were landed, and we found that our tickets had been numbered as they were given to us on board the boat, and we were to be seated in the coaches accordingly. my number was forty-seven, very near the end of the list, but it turned up a very good seat, on the shady side of the stage, a very important matter in the middle of a hot day for a ride of three hours. not a winding but very much of a zig-zag road, led us over the hill country that divides the lakes. sometimes we had delightful views, deep ravines through which the mountain streams were finding their way; on the crest, the rigi and pilatus first meet the eye, and then rapidly we make our way to the borders of the lake, on which stands the little town of zug, the capital of the canton of that name, the least among the tribes. after a hasty dinner at the tavern we embarked on another steamboat, and still smaller than the one on the zurich lake. what a lovely sheet of water is this lake zug! it lies eighteen hundred feet higher than the sea; and all around it except at the head, the richly cultivated shores are sloping away from the water's edge. but just before us, as we are going south, the noble rigi rises from the shore of the lake, and in the clear water the whole of that vast mountain clothed with verdure to the very summit is reflected so perfectly, that instead of looking up to study the ridges and precipices and forests and flocks on its rugged sides, it is pleasanter to study it as it lies there in the depths of this pellucid sea. we reached the south end, or head of the lake about three in the afternoon, and here we arranged to ascend the mountain. the ascent from arth is made by many, but it is far better to push on through the village to goldau, and there look at the evidences of the awful work of ruin and death that was wrought in by the slide of a large part of the rossberg mountain; burying human beings in one living grave. there is the fresh white side of the mountain, as if the half of it had fallen away yesterday. it is feet high; and lies in great strata of pudding stone, which is very liable to be split asunder by the water that filters between the layers. you can see the ranges in the strata as the sun falls on this bare side, and it seems as if what was left lying there, might one of these days come down to find the half that left it fifty years ago. then a portion three miles long and a thousand feet broad and at least a hundred feet thick broke away from the rest, after a long succession of heavy rains; and came down into the valley, teeming with a population of happy peasantry, and overwhelmed them with the most awful deluge of modern times. so sudden was the rush of rocks and earth, that a party of travellers going up the rigi, where i ascended, were met by the torrent; seven had passed on yards ahead of the other four and were caught by the descending avalanche, and never seen again. the valley is now covered with vast rocks and masses of the conglomerate, which then came down, and with so much force that some of them now lie scattered some distance up the hill on the other side of the vale! fifty years have not restored the valley to its former fertility and beauty. one of its lakes was nearly filled up, and now little pools are seen where once was the bed of a handsome sheet of water. the stories told of individual cases of suffering, of whole families perishing, and what is on some accounts more distressing, of some being taken and others left, are so many that i will not attempt to repeat them now. i walked into the beautiful little church at goldau, a gem, and on each side of the front door is a black slab with a record of names of some of those who perished in that dreadful day. this is a roman catholic canton, as i had evidence presently. a new scene opens on the eye of the traveller when for the first time he arrives at the foot of a mountain with a large party, and prepares to ascend. we led off on foot from arth to goldau, supposing that the fifty or more from the boat would strike up the hill immediately. but they followed us: some with guides, some without: some carrying their own packs, others with a servant to help them: some were ladies ready to foot it to the summit: some were to be carried in a chair on a bier by four bearers: the lame and the lazy are expected to ride on horses. i was in the former class to-day, recovered from my utleberg tramp, and was glad to have good company to keep me in countenance, for i was a little ashamed of myself in taking a horse when so many, and some of them ladies, were going up on foot. the path for a mile is gently ascending, and then takes a shaded gorge in the hills, and on this account is greatly to be preferred to those paths which lead from arth and weggis, around the mountain, exposing the pilgrim all the way, to the rays of the sun. now we are mounting steadily: turning frequently in the saddle to look at the constantly enlarging and ennobling view. now and then a little cascade diversifies the hour: or we stop to refresh ourselves from the many rills that are gurgling by the path. the noise of running streams and waterfalls is constantly heard, and on the stillness of the air the tintinabula or tinkling of the bells on the necks of the dun-colored cows, that are feeding in numerous herds all up the sides of the mountain, comes gently to the ear as soft music. all along up the mountain are small sheds, called chapels or stations, with some rude image of the saviour in it, and pilgrims, to whom indulgences were promised by the pope in the seventeenth century, are going from one to the other stopping at each and saying their prayers. i dismounted and entered one; where the most hideous sight met my eye which i have yet seen in the miserable romish worship. a full life size figure of christ sinking to the earth beneath the weight of the cross is carved in wood; the countenance indicating agony, but such a horrid face to personate the saviour! and a wig on his head of long dirty hair hanging over his shoulders! it was sickening, and i was glad to hasten away from it, as rapidly as possible. these praying stations, thirteen in number, lead on to a neat church called "mary of the snow," and around it are lodging-houses for pilgrims who are very numerous in the month of august. a small convent is here, where four or five monks of the capuchin order reside; they do service in the church, and among the mountains where their priestly aid is required. these lodging-houses are sometimes resorted to by invalids for the benefit of the mountain air, and the whey of goat's milk, which can be had in great abundance here. beggars beset your path from the valley to the mountain top: old men and old women, young men and young women, and little children trained to toddle into the road and put out their hand before they can speak so as to be understood. many of these are not in want; but every bit of money that can be extracted from travellers is clear gain. the steepest of the ascent is over, long before you reach the summit, and the last mile of winding way is a very easy and pleasant ride. the change of atmosphere is great; and an overcoat is needed at once, if you are warm with walking. fortunately you have had no chance to get the view for some time, till it bursts upon you all at once as you plant your feet on the mountain top, on a piece of table-land, of half an acre, that forms a magnificent platform from which to behold this scene. more than two hundred people are there before us: most of them parties travelling for pleasure from all parts of the civilized world, with guides, couriers and servants, a singular group to find yourself among so suddenly and so far above the level of "the world and the rest of mankind." one large hotel, and one small one are to shelter this company for the night, and we are so fortunate as to find that we are to have a small room with three beds, just under the roof, with holes about the size of a hat to admit light and air! that is better than none, and some of these people will have none. still the two hotels on the summit, and one half an hour down, the rigi staffel, afford abundant accommodations to company, unless as in the present instance, the weather has been bad for a week, and hundreds have been waiting for a fair day, and the promise of a good night above. the album of the house in which visitors register their names records the disappointment of many who have climbed up to see nothing but that mysterious mist which so often shrouds the mountain tops. probably the greater part of visitors are thus mocked, for it is cloudy up here more than half the time. one party thus groans: "seven weary up-hill leagues we sped, the setting sun to see; sullen and grim he went to bed, sullen and grim went we. nine sleepless hours of night we passed the rising sun to see, sullen and grim he rose again, sullen and grim rose we." not such was our fate. the sun was half an hour high when we reached the highest peak; and the first alpine panorama was around us. other views had been partial: this was a great circle of the heavens and the earth, three hundred miles in circumference! a few clouds in the western sky were gorgeously crimson in the declining sun, but the atmosphere was clear enough to reveal every mountain, every lake, every village, city, forest and plain, with the cottages innumerable, dotting the valleys. at our feet the lakes of lucerne and zug are apparently underneath the mountain, and they stretch themselves so curiously among the hills, that we can scarcely determine to what sheets of water they belong, or whether they are new lakes and not those seen before. and away at a distance are other waters, some of them very small, but giving beauty and variety to the plains below. the villages lying close by have their historic interest. all this region is william tell's. his name is associated with many a spot on which the eye is resting. a neat little chapel is built to mark the place where he shot his oppressor gessler. here at the right is the lake and town of zug, and just behind it, rises the spire of the church of cappel, where zwingle fell on the field of battle. but turning from the views at the west and north, and looking to the south and east, and such a prospect of alps on alps is seen as no one had believed could be piled into sight from a single point. the bernese alps clothed in perpetual robes of snow; those of unterwalden and uri, with the dull blue glaciers in the midst of them; sending up the peaks of jungfrau, the titlis, rothstock and bristenstock, are directly in front, and on to the eastward, is the broad white head of the dodi, the sentis and the glarish; but these are a few only of the many named and unnamed that are now reflecting the sunset from their white crowns, or retiring into the shades of evening as the sun goes down. we look to the south east into an opening called the muotta thal, where suwarrow and massena with their hostile armies fought bloody battles in the midst of fearful crags and precipices, and we wonder that this land of mountains and ice has been selected as the scene for so much warfare and blood. the sun was now sinking to the edge of the horizon. a lady standing near me said, "it is fit to light such a scene as this!" there was a fitness between the sun and the scene that was truly striking and glorious. the hum of the hundred voices was hushed. it was also fit that we should be still while the sun took his last look of our world that night. it is for a wonder to me that switzerland has produced so few poets, but not strange that some of the noblest strains of english poetry have been penned under the inspiration of these alpine views. they awaken a train of emotions so profoundly new, and at the same time so elevating and sublime, that the heart wishes to utter itself in the passionate language of poetry rather than in the duller words of prose. "these are thy works," o god: before the mountains were built, and before the hills, thou wert here. thou didst "prepare the heavens, the earth, the fields, and the highest part of the dust of the world." thou hast weighed the alps in a balance, and held these mountains in the hollow of thy hand. they shall flow down at thy presence, when thou comest to shake terribly the earth. they stand now, because thou, lord, dost hold them up, for giants as they are, and touching thy heavens, they still lean on thee. during this half hour of observation on the summit of the rigi, we had been wrapped in our cloaks to protect us from the cold. as soon as the sun was gone, we were glad to go into the house, where a table for a hundred guests was spread, with a hot supper sufficient for half the number; and before ten o'clock we were sound asleep. those who could not find beds spent the night in the dining hall, entertaining themselves and disturbing the rest, but we were so far above them that we heard nothing till the blast of a wooden horn rung through the halls, informing us that the sun would be up before us if we did not hasten to meet him. we hurried on our clothes, wrapped up warmly, and in a few moments stood with our faces to the east, intently watching, like worshippers of the sun, the first signs of his coming. one single peak was precisely between us and the sun, and as the earliest tints of the morning began to redden it, the appearance was not unlike that of a kindling fire in the summit. the blaze gathered around it, and seemed to shoot away into the regions of ice and snow; and then far into the clouds above, the bright hues of day were cast, and the crowd stood still, anxious to enjoy the first view of the emerging sun. the horn was blown again by the trumpeter, a miserable mode of announcing that the king was coming, as if he needed a herald as he rode up the east in his chariot of gold and fire. there was just haze enough in the atmosphere to dim the sun of his dazzling brightness, and we could look steadily on his face as he rose behind the mountain, and seemed to pause on the summit, and calmly to look down on the world he had left in darkness a few hours before. then peak after peak, and mountain ridges, and domes and minarets, fields of fresh snow, and forests of living green, began to catch the morning tints: gorges in the hill sides would lie there in deep shadow, and bosoms of virgin snow, bared to the rising sun, would blush when he looked in upon them, while villages and hamlets in the vale below are still wrapped in the shades of the gray dawn, and have not thought of waking yet to begin another day. we spent an hour or two in the enjoyment of this magnificent prospect, which we are told is one of the most delightful we are to have in switzerland; and when the sun was fairly up to the dwellers in the vale as well as to us on the mountain top, we turned our backs upon him, took a cup of coffee in the rigi culm, and bade farewell to the most splendid of all the prospects we had ever seen, or expect to see on earth. i am greatly moved in the presence of niagara; and there have formed impressions of the active power and glory of the great creator, such as are conveyed by no other of the works of god. but now i am looking on the silent evidence of his creating might in a new and wonderful form; and it seems to me but a short step from those shining glaciers and snow-crowned palaces to the central throne of him who sitteth in the circle of the heavens. "o lord god of hosts, who is a strong lord like unto thee? the heavens are thine: the earth also is thine; as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them: the north and the south thou hast created them; tabor and hermon shall rejoice in thy name. thou hast a mighty arm; strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand." as we had ascended the rigi from goldau, on the eastern side, we now went down on the western to weggis. we were in no haste: the day was before us, and we had nothing to do but to walk till we were tired, choose a shady spot commanding a fine view of the lake of lucerne and the surrounding hills, and then rest and enjoy the scene. the bells from the herds of cattle far below us, and sometimes above us, and the strains of music from the villages in the vales, would come floating to us on the morning air, while nature with all her voices was making one rich psalm. the descent is far less fatiguing than climbing up, but when continued for two or three hours it becomes exceedingly exhausting. we provided ourselves with pike staffs having a chamois horn for a head, and with these we resisted the too constant downward tendency, using them as a drag to a wheel, and making the greatest effort to hold back. on this path to or from the rigi is a boarding and bathing house, over a spring of very clear cold water to which invalids resort; and as walking on the mountain side for an hour or so after bathing is part of the discipline, i have no doubt that the establishment works many wonderful cures. a chapel of the holy virgin is close by, where prayers are daily said for the shepherds on the precipices, whose lives are in constant danger while they pursue the duties to which they are trained. half an hour below the chapel, the path leads through a mighty archway formed by two huge masses of rock supporting a third between them. some great convulsion of nature has thrown them into this remarkable position, and they show in their make the nature of all the upper strata of these hill sides, which are in constant danger of sliding down when the water works its way under them, and separates them from the lower. here we sat down and refreshed ourselves: a cool breeze rushing through the passage, and making a delightful resting place for weary travellers. i said it was easier far to go down than up. so it is, but one who carries much weight, or who has not considerable powers of endurance should be cautious of making the experiment. a very heavy gentleman who came to the foot of the mountain with us yesterday, and rode up, with his son, a fine lad of fourteen, running along by the side of the horse, attempted to come down on foot. we overtook him; and just then he lay down on the grass by the side of a beautiful spring of water: he was exhausted, and had sent his son down for help. presently the faithful and noble boy came running up the mountain with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread, and soon four stout men with a chair, whom the lad had outstripped, came on, and the heavy gentleman was carried by hand the rest of the way. i met them afterwards at the foot of the hill, and congratulated the father on his safe arrival; and more on being the father of such a boy. chapter iv. lucerne and the land of tell. the lake--avalanches--pontius pilate--lucerne--dance of death--fishing--storm on the lake--ramble among the peasantry--two dwarfs--on the lake--rifle shooting--chapel of william tell--scenes in his life--altorf--hay-making--a great day. in the hotel de la _concorde_, the "house of peace," i found a pleasant chamber on the edge of the lake of lucerne; and so near that in its lucid waters i can from my window see the large fish chasing and devouring the little ones, just as big fish on land are doing everywhere. in front, the lofty pilatus rises in heavy grandeur, and the buochsherhorn and stauzerhorn are in full view, with other peaks all white with snow, while it is oppressively hot below. i spent the day here at the foot of the mountain. there is no life in this little settlement except when the boat arrives with travellers for the rigi: the mountain comes down so suddenly to the shore that there is hardly room for dwellings, and a few inhabitants only are scattered along on the water's edge. but it is on the shore of the most enchanting lake in europe, and at a point where some of the finest views of this lake are to be had. we sat on the bank to see the sun set, a sight of which one never tires; hundreds of travellers have passed up or down the rigi to-day, and of that whole number we are the only two who have cared to rest here to study and admire the scenery, and at the same time refresh ourselves for future pilgrimages. there was a crash among the mountains just now: at first we thought it the noise of a steamboat on the lake, but the roar became quickly greater, and we knew that it was an avalanche of ice or of rocks that had come down the side of old pilatus. it was the first that we had heard, and were very willing that the quiet of our evening should be thus disturbed. then as if nothing were to be wanting to make the enjoyment of this scene perfect, the clouds marshaled themselves about the buochsherhorn and played off their lightnings around his head; while torrents of rain came down on the lake below us, and the snow fell in sheets on the loftier mountains in the south. this lake is subject to sudden visitations of storms, and is therefore dangerous for skiffs unless under the guidance of the native boatmen, who know the signs of the weather, and put in for shore when they apprehend the approach of a gale. the hoary mountain _pilatus_ is said to have derived its name from pontius pilate, who was driven away from rome, became a wretched wanderer here in this wild land, and finally in the horrors of a guilty conscience plunged from one of the crags of this mountain into the lake and perished. from its peculiar position and great height, , feet above the sea, and the foremost in the alpine chain at the north, the clouds delight to gather about it, and so many are the storms which come down from this point, the superstitious dwellers on the shores for a long time supposed that poor pilate was at the bottom of them all, and the lake would never be safe till his troubled spirit was put to rest. from the summit of the rigi, the seven towers of lucerne had caught my eye, but they and the city they overlook and defend, appeared more beautiful and exceedingly picturesque as i approached them by water from weggis. the old wall, of which the gates and towers are still remaining, surrounds the land side of the town, which stands on a side hill rising gradually from the water; and all outside of the wall the hill is dotted with handsome dwellings embosomed in orchards and rich meadow lands; a picture of quiet beauty and a spot for classic repose that a weary man might almost be pardoned for coveting. the town itself has no pretensions to taste in its architecture, but for beauty of situation on the most attractive of all the swiss lakes, it is without a rival. the hotels are on the borders of the lake at the very landing, and the lofty pilatus on the right, the rigi on the left, and the far loftier and more majestic heights of the alps in the cantons of schwytz and uri are lying in full view of the _swan_ hotel, where i lodged, a capital house, which i cordially commend. we have been exploring the town to find what of interest may be in it, though it is scarcely worth while for any man to look down for a moment while he is in switzerland, unless he is on the top of a hill. but lucerne has one peculiar feature of interest, in its covered bridges adorned with curious paintings. in berlin a gallery for the fine arts was opened over a stable, and some poet ridiculed the idea by suggesting the inscription "musis et mulis," to the muses and mules; but the lucerne people had the singular fancy of making their bridges over the river reuss, which divides their town in two, the repository of paintings, some of them possessed of no artistic merit, and all of them more or less injured now by the weather. the bridges are roofed, and under the roof, about ten feet apart, these pictures in triangular frames are fastened up, so that the foot passenger, (no carriages are allowed,) may study them as he walks along. one series illustrates scenes in swiss history--another on the reverse of the same canvass, the exploits of the patron saints of the town. these are on the kapell-bridge which starts near the swan hotel, and runs across the very rapid river reuss, which here emerges from the lake. the mill-bridge, lower down the river, has a very rude imitation of the paintings of the "dance of death," a series of pictures that are so often attempted, we may be sure they once had power on the minds of men. the originals are destroyed with the exception of the few fragments at basle. the doggerel verse into which the german text is translated, is about equal in artistic excellence to the painting. the most remarkable bridge which lucerne once boasted was across the end of the lake, but it has now been removed, the waters crowded back by the hand of art, and the large hotels now stand on the site of the old hof-bruche. in the arsenal is a sacred deposit of old armor, and relics of more than doubtful authenticity, including the sword of william tell, and the battle-axe which it is said the reformer zwingle carried in his hand on the field where he fell. a stranger may look at these and a hundred other curiosities, with some interest, if he has not been already surfeited, as i am, with the same sort of thing. [illustration: the monument at lucerne.] they have one lion here that _is_ a lion--one of the noblest monuments and magnificent designs that i have seen in europe. we passed through the weggis gate, and by a shaded pleasant walk in the private grounds of general pfyffer, came to a lonely, lovely dell. on one side of it a huge precipice presents a bare rock face from which the water trickles into a little lake at the base. this rock is fringed on the sides and over the brow with shrubbery and trees, a graceful drapery, and in the solid side of the rock the figure of a dying lion is carved out of the same stone. a broken spear sticks in his side, and the blood oozes from the wound. the agony of death is in his face, but his paw rests on a shield with the arms of france, which even in death he is determined to defend. this monument was designed by the great thorwalsden, but was executed by ahorn, a sculptor of constance, to commemorate the bravery of the swiss guards who were slain at paris while defending the bourbons in the revolution of . this lion is nearly thirty feet long, and in just proportions, making an impressive monument better than the deed deserves. a representative of the swiss guard wearing his uniform, is present to expound the design to those who are not quick at finding "sermons in stones." a cool delightful walk of fifteen minutes from this sequestered spot brought us into the grounds of a little convent, pleasingly situated on the sloping banks, and among cultivated fields, now fragrant with new-mown hay. an aged priest came by, and taking off his hat politely saluted us as we passed. we paused at the door of the chapel; a single lamp was burning before the altar, and one lonely nun was on her knees performing her evening devotions. it was not in our hearts to disturb the calm current of her thoughts, as she was gazing on the picture of her saviour, and we did not enter. so sweetly and gracefully did the villas lie among the green fields and fruit trees, with the lake in front of them and the snowy alps on the other side of it, full in view, but far enough to be in another clime, that i felt very much like setting up a little convent there on a new plan, and sending over the sea, for the community to people it. _aug. ._--we had a storm on the lake this evening. for two or three days the weather had been very hot, so much so that i was not disposed to go tramping, even for the sake of climbing up a hill into a colder atmosphere. we had been lying off, too lazy to write, or to read. so we went a fishing after dinner. the apostles went fishing. they fished all night, and caught nothing: we fished all the afternoon and had the same success. just before nightfall, the wind began to blow all of a sudden as if it had broken out in a new place. it blew all ways at once. the little skiffs that were out on the lake pulled in for shore with all haste; and in less time than i have taken to tell of it, the scene of calm beauty which the lake had presented, was changed to that of an angry tempest-tossed sea. the whole valley was filled with black, fierce clouds. rigi was clothed with thunder. pilatus was totally obscured. the storm was coming from his quarter, confirming the superstition of the natives, that his troubled spirit stirs the tempest. through a single break in the clouds i could see the sunshine playing among the valleys away to the south, while darkness and gloom were all around us. the contrast was striking and peculiar to this region, where the sudden elevation of the mountains makes the transitions from one temperature to another rapid. on the bosom of the lake the reflections of the clouds were exceedingly curious, giving almost as many colors as the rainbow that now began to appear on the rigi. it was a beautiful bow. no rain had yet fallen here; but there on the side of that noble mountain on whose summit i had spent the night, the blessed bow was resting; so pure, so glorious, so full of sweet suggestions of god's promise, that i looked on it as on the face of a friend in a strange land. it is just such a bow as they have in america. the same sun and the same showers make it, and the same god hangs it out there, the sign of his faithfulness, the token of his love. who can be afraid of a storm when the rainbow appears? but it faded, as all bright things fade, and the dark clouds grew darker, and a heavy clap of thunder in the west shook the alps, and another: not preceded by a streak of chain lightning leaping like a red serpent in the clouds, but by a broad lurid sheet of fire, filling the atmosphere, and then suddenly vanishing into darkness. the rain now came down in sheets; the wind blew with increasing power, and for a few moments it did indeed appear as if the prince of the powers of the air had been suffered to reign, and he was doing his worst while he was left unchained. the ignorance of the people could readily be imposed upon, when such scenes as this are frequent; and i am told, in former times so strictly was the ascent of mount pilatus forbidden, lest a storm should be provoked by the intrusion, that a naturalist, gessner, had to obtain a special license to pursue his investigations there. the storm was of short duration. the hundreds, induced by the clear bright morning to go to the summit of rigi for a sunset and a sunrise, found it was not the entertainment to which they were invited. in full view from my window, though five hours distant, i can see where the clouds cap his head, the rain is pouring there in torrents, the western and eastern sky is enveloped in mists that obscure all view of the sun, and more than half of the time, there is as little to be seen from the summit of rigi, as in a cellar. the sun is shining brightly now on the lake near me, and a great fleece, as if a thousand flocks had yielded theirs for a robe, is thrown over the crown of the mountain, making a veil that no glass can see through. the next morning we set off for a walk into the country. the landlord of the swan assured us it would be a pleasant day, and as this prediction was made at the risk of losing two guests in consequence, we were bound to respect his judgment. we resolved to make an expedition into the country behind lucerne, cross some of the spurs of the mountains, come around by the foot of old pilatus, and so return to our lodgings. the whole walk would be only about twelve or fifteen miles, and if we should lose our way and make it a little longer, why so much the better. it was just eight in the morning as we left and wandered slowly through the streets with our alpen-stocks or pike staffs in hand. we paused at a church door or two, and looked in, where a few were paying their silent devotions before the altar, with a single burning lamp, and passing out of the gate underneath one of the seven old feudal towers, we took the bank of the river reuss, and walked by a pleasant path, expecting every moment to find a bridge, as our road was to lead us off to the west, and we must cross the stream to reach it. i asked a little girl, tending two babies in a cottage door, if there was any bridge in that direction, and her ready answer "nein," or _no_, sent us about in a hurry. here was the first mile thrown away, and retracing our steps, we crossed at the bridge near the wall, and taking the high road toward berne, were soon in the midst of rural swiss valley scenery. a path for a mile or more on the bank of the river, shaded by a row of fine trees, led along by the side of the carriage road, but we kept the track, having little desire to miss it again. three miles of easy walking brought us past the village of lindau to a bridge over a deep and frightful gorge, through which a mountain stream is rushing, fifty or sixty feet below the bridge. here it is compressed in one place to a passage it has worn for itself through the solid rock, and not more than three feet wide, but the bed of the ravine gives evidence that the torrent when swollen with melting snows in early summer, or by heavy rains, may be terrible, so that this massive bridge, though very short, is required to resist its force. the sides of this ravine were so precipitous that we did not attempt the descent: but finding a path up the mountain, and learning from a peasant whom we met that it would take us over into a vale, we struck into it, and climbed. the roots of trees in some places made a flight of steps up which we walked, and all the way it was so steep that to get on required resolution and wind. but the ascent though sharp was very short, and in a few minutes we reached a well made winding way, that led us into a lovely vale. thirsty if not weary, we called at the door of a little dwelling and asked for milk. the farmer and his wife were sitting on wooden benches by a table, taking their meal; what meal it was we could not determine, as it was ten o'clock in the morning; too late for breakfast, too early for dinner. they had an earthen pot of weak coffee or something of the same color, and pieces of brown bread which they dipped in and ate, taking a drink of the fluid now and then, and apparently enjoying their frugal meal. the old woman gave me a "yah" in answer to my request for milk, and taking a glass tumbler from a closet, she wiped the dust out of it with her fingers, and going into a dark room, the dairy likely, she brought me a draught of as sweet milk as ever wet the lips of man or boy. the cottage was not clean, i am sorry to say it. i looked up a flight of stairs, and the appearance of things there did not suggest to me the idea of taking lodgings, but giving the woman a bit of silver for which she thanked me in german, we walked on, refreshed with the milk and the moment's rest while getting it. a little farther on, and a fine mansion with castellated towers, stood on the rising hill commanding a wide prospect of mountain scenery, but the road did not lead us near to it. perhaps the proprietor of the valley has his home up there, and the tenants below may not be thriving: certainly it looks as if wealth, state, comfort, and elegance were in those old halls and having had milk in the cottage, i presume we might have wine in the mansion. we soon lost sight of every sign of a dwelling, and walked on through a pine forest, the saddest of all forests to tread in: the sighing of the air through the tree tops making a music "mournful to the soul." a water course, in hollowed logs carried through the woods, led on to a mill by the way-side, into which we entered to see a novel operation, and as queer a little miller as any body ever saw. the water turned an overshot wheel outside of the mill, and this turned two large wooden cog wheels, which raised two beams and let them fall, up and down, upon pine bark, which was thus pounded up fine enough to be used for tanning. but the miller who fed the mill with the bark was a man dwarf about three feet high, well enough proportioned, a stout healthy fellow, forty years old. he looked up and laughed us a good morning, and went on with his work, which made such a noise that it was useless to converse. and just as we left the mill we met a woman not more than three feet long, so nearly the same age and size, we could not but think they might be another remarkable pair of twins, who would have made the fortune of any body bringing them to america for exhibition. we were now in a manufacturing valley. the fine water power was improved to drive looms in a mill where twenty girls were weaving, and when we passed, which was at eleven o'clock, they all quit for dinner, and trooped by us in rows of six abreast: hearty looking girls with no hats on, their hair braided, and hanging in two strips half way to their feet. they seemed to be very happy among themselves, and modest and well behaved as we walked along with them for a while. other establishments for working iron were in the same neighborhood, and a village called _kriens_, had some beautiful houses in it--one of them with twelve windows in a row in front, and three stories high, a fine mansion; and all of them were surrounded with flower gardens, tended with care, and glowing with splendid dahlias, and other flowers. the best houses i have yet seen in switzerland are covered instead of clapboards, with small, round-end shingles, put on so neatly as to look like scollop shell work. so we walked from one to another hamlet, studying life in these secluded places, where the habits of the people are quite as unsophisticated as if they had never been a mile from home--the children did not know of such a place as lucerne, though not five miles off--but there was peace, order, thrift, and contentment--the mountains rise suddenly from behind their dwellings, and shelter them from the winds, and god watches them in the winter when the deep snow fills this vale, and they are as contented as if they knew that people live on the other side of the hills. some of the cottages were beautifully covered with grape vines, trained between the windows, and giving them an appearance of luxurious growth, that might be adopted in our country far more than it is. the vine thus cultivated occupies no space that could otherwise be used, and is an ornament and protection, while it yields delicious and abundant fruit. our walk this morning of five hours brought us through this valley and back to lucerne by one o'clock, and if there had been any good reason for it, we could have done a dozen miles more toward night. we had been brought more immediately into contact with the country people, and saw more of their way of life, than we would in a month of travel on the thoroughfares. none of the places we visited are even named in the guide books, and we thus had the pleasure of breaking out of the beaten path, and finding one that was new and interesting. _lake of the four forest cantons._ lake lucerne is called the lake of the four forest cantons, a longer but a very appropriate name, as its shores are washed by four and only four of the cantons of switzerland--lucerne, uri, unterwalden, and schwytz. above all the lakes of the country, and perhaps of the world, it is distinguished for the majesty of its scenery and the grandeur of its historical associations. speaking of the classic history of the lake and mountains around it, sir james mcintosh says: "it is upon this that the superiority of the lake of lucerne to all other lakes, or as far as i know, to all other scenes upon earth, depends. the vast mountains rising on every side, and closing at the end, with their rich clothing of wood, the soft spots of verdant pasture scattered at their feet, and sometimes on their breast, and the expanse of water unbroken by islands, and almost undisturbed by any signs of living men, make an impression which it would be foolish to attempt to convey by words. the only memorials which would not disgrace such a scene as those of past ages renowned for heroism and virtue, and no part of the world is more full of such venerable ones." the shores of this lake are the scenes of william tell's illustrious deeds, and the theatre also of modern deeds of valor not surpassed by those of ancient times. it was the contemplation of the moral as well as the physical sublime in this region, that led the same elegant author to write: "the combination of whatever is grandest in nature, with whatever is pure and sublime in human conduct, affected me more powerfully in the passage of this lake, than any scene which i had ever seen. perhaps neither greece nor rome would have had such power over me. they are dead. the present inhabitants are a new race who regard with little or no feeling the memorials of former ages. this is perhaps the only place in our globe where deeds of pure virtue, ancient enough to be venerable, are consecrated by the religion of the people, and continue to command interest and reverence. no local superstition so beautiful and so moral anywhere exists. the inhabitants of thermopylae or marathon know no more of those famous spots than that they are so many square feet of earth. england is too extensive a country to make runnymede an object of national affection. in countries of industry and wealth the stream of events sweeps away these old remembrances. the solitude of the alps is a sanctuary destined for the monuments of ancient virtue; grutli and tell's chapel are as much reverenced by the alpine peasants as mecca by a devout musselman; and the deputies of the three ancient cantons met, so late as , to renew their allegiance and their oaths of eternal union." filled with such emotions as these and fresh from the perusal of these fine passages i left lucerne on a lovely morning in august, the atmosphere pleasantly cooled by the previous storms, and now a glorious cloudless sky hanging over this mountain sea. on a little island, and strange to say the only island in the lake, a monument of wood once stood to the memory of william tell, but it was struck by lightning and has disappeared. near it the bay of kussnacht sets up, where is a chapel to mark the spot on which the arrow from tell's unerring bow drank the heart's blood of his enemy and tyrant gessler; and a ruined castle said to have been the prison to which tell was destined when he made his memorable escape of which we shall soon speak. but the boat put up into another bay on the other side under old pilatus and landed passengers who were taken into the small boats which ply continually among these bays, and distribute the passengers at the several points from which they would make their excursions into the country. pilatus rises in gloomy grandeur from the very shores of the water, and its bifurcated peak soon is lost sight of, while but one presents itself. rugged, barren and uninviting as it is, there are those who yet make the ascent, and from this landing, though the ascent is far more difficult, and the view from the summit far less satisfactory than the rigi. we now returned to kussnacht bay; and if the great shooting match which occurred last monday had been coming off to-day, we would go ashore to see it. once a year the marksmen of the canton assemble for a trial of their skill with the rifle, and there is also an annual festival, when the best from all the cantons assemble for the federal shooting match. with music and banners and processions, with garlands and arches of victory and feasting and drinking, they keep up this custom from generation to generation; and the riflemen of the swiss and tyrol mountains, like their ancestors of the bow, have no rival. the military displays were very miserable. having just come from france, prussia, and austria, where the army was evidently the pet of governments, and the curse of the people, i was pleased to see that the swiss had no need of armies, and the military procession was sorry enough. but the music was stirring, and the swiss feel it a part and parcel of their patrimonial inheritance, to be roused by its strains to noble deeds, or melted to tenderness by its subduing power. the lake had assumed to the eye, when looking down upon it from one slope of the rigi, the form of an x, and now the two promontories that divide it come within a mile of each other, and are called the noses, which we pass, and enter the bay of brochs, where the horn of that name and stawzer rear their lofty heads. we touched at bechenried, and then swept the width of the lake again to _gersau_, a little cluster of houses at the foot of a gently-receding hill, one of the most remarkable spots of land in the whole world, in the fact that for four hundred years the people of this village, shut out from the rest of mankind by these mighty ramparts of mountains, and having but three miles long and two wide of territory, maintained an independent democratic government of their own. the french invasion of destroyed their freedom by uniting them to the canton schwytz. the mountain-side is covered with orchards, in the midst of which neat cottages nestle sweetly. all the land they have has been washed down from the mountains, and it would not be strange if trees and cottages and people should one day be washed into the lake together. such a calamity would carry off the old gallows, still standing, but which the government had no occasion to use during its independent existence. here the scenery of the lake becomes in the highest degree sublime. we stop for a moment at brunnen, where goods are deposited that are to go over the alps by st. gothard into italy, and on one of the warehouses you see three men painted in bold colors, and their names affixed, the heroes who with tell achieved the deliverance of switzerland in . on this spot the alliance was formed between the three cantons of uri, unterwalden and schwytz. now the vast mountains rise more perpendicularly from the lake: a solitary rock stands a few feet from the shore on the promontory opposite, and passing it we seem to be issuing into a new lake altogether. away on the ledges, or table land on the heights, stands a little church, and a few dwellings are scattered around, but we lose sight of them, and are now in the midst of a solitude of water, mountain, snow and sky, the grandeur and sublimity of which it is equally impossible for me to exaggerate or describe. no road, not even a footpath can be made along the base of these rocky mountains that literally stand in the water, and thence rear their heads so far into the upper air that the fields of snow lie there in full view, forever whitening in the sun. a little recession from the shore gives lodgment for soil enough to make a secluded bosom in the hills; and this _oasis_ is a sacred spot in swiss history, for here in the dead of night, the three confederates met to form their plans to deliver their country from the austrian yoke. this is grutli, and every american who passes the spot will feel a sympathetic thrill of joy to look on the birth-place of a country's freedom. nearly opposite to grutli, the steamboat slackens its speed, and moves slowly and solemnly by a small chapel, with an open front, and filled with rude paintings of scenes in swiss history. this chapel is to commemorate the spot where tell leaped ashore from the boat in which the tyrant gessler was conveying him from altorf to his dungeon in kussnacht. a storm came up with such fury that gessler, being frightened, and his oarsmen failing, ordered the chains to be taken off from tell, that he might guide the skiff ashore. he ran it to this rock, leaped ashore, and made his escape. before the despot reached his castle, tell had waylaid him and sent an arrow to his heart. this chapel was "built in , by the canton of uri, only thirty-one years after tell's death, and in the presence of one hundred and fourteen persons who had known the hero. once a year, mass is said, and a sermon preached in the chapel to the inhabitants of these borders, who repair hither in boats, forming an aquatic procession." we were at the head of the lake in a few minutes. i was willing that it should be extended for hours, but the little village of fluellen was reached, and here we go ashore. the village stands in a marsh, which is formed at the entrance of the river reuss into the lake, and in consequence the people are subject to goitre and cretinism, those terrible diseases so peculiar to this country. it is not desirable to stay here any longer than is necessary to get away; and there is nothing to attract the stranger. we took the first carriage we found, and rode on to _altorf_. at the hotel two young women came out to receive us, as men waiters would do in another country. it was a novelty to be thus received, and giving a hand to each of the damsels i was assisted from the carriage and escorted into the house. one of them, a fine-looking girl of eighteen, in a picturesque and becoming dress, white spencer and short sleeves with a dark skirt and bracelets, insisted on taking my knapsack, which i declined giving up, and leaning on my alpen stock, i had so much of an argument with her that the travellers formed a circle about us and looked on. while dinner was preparing i walked out to the open square in which that scene was enacted which has been more famous than any other in swiss history. here by this fountain was the tree to which the son of william tell was bound, with the apple on his head, and at the other fountain the father stood, to obey the infamous order of the tyrant to shoot with his cross-bow the apple from the head of his lovely boy. a statue of the father surmounts the fountain. the old village has all the signs of decay, and i found it difficult to believe that here the crowd had gathered five hundred years ago to behold that dreadful spectacle--here stood the monster who had given the cruel order, here fell the arrows from beneath the garment of tell, which he declared he designed for the tyrant if his arrow had slain his son. i walked out of the village into the narrow meadow under the brow of overhanging mountains, and admired the industry that has terraced the slopes and wrung all the support it would yield from the soil. a row of targets was here, with evidences that the people having long since laid aside the cross bow, are now experts with the rifle: and as this village is the capital of the canton of uri, it is the rallying place for those trials of skill in which they take so much delight. the tree on which gessler's hat was hung, with the command that the people should bow down to it, stood here till , when it was removed and a stone erected in its place. the valley of schachen, which we enter on leaving altorf, delighted me with the beauty of its meadows, in which the swiss peasants were making hay under a burning sun, while the mountains rising from the edge of the fields were white with snow. the men and women at noon when we passed were resting from their toil, and lying around on the mown grass, the very picture of slow and easy hay-makers. we crossed a rapid stream foaming in its downward course, in which william tell was drowned while nobly striving to save the life of a child; and a little further on we passed the village in which he was born. thus in a single day which is not yet half gone, we have seen the various spots in switzerland made classic by the deeds of william tell and his compatriots, and the places where that illustrious though rustic hero was born, where he performed his great exploits, and where he perished in the midst of one not less noble than any other that sheds honor on his name. it was a great day to have passed through all these scenes, and i can say, without affectation that my solitary walk in that ruined town of altorf moved me more than the contemplation of any battle field in europe. chapter v. pass of saint gothard. the priest's leap--the devil's bridge--night on the mountains--storm--hospenthal--the glaciers--a lady in distress--the furca pass--glacier of the rhone--heinrich and nature--heinrich asks after god--scene in the hospice. we are now on the great road that leads over the alps into italy by the famous pass of st. gothard. the diligence to milan went off this morning at nine o'clock, and had we come on in the earliest boat from lucerne, we might have been taken on as far as we liked by that lumbering conveyance. a party of students, seven from germany, and two from oxford joined us, and we resolved to hire a carriage to amsteg, two hours onward, and there to begin the ascent and pedestrianism together. the ride to amsteg was lively, but when we were set down at that village, with a walk of five hours before us, all the way up the mountains, i confess to a slight sinking at the heart; and my courage oozed out gradually at the end of my toes. at the inn of altorf, a young german student attracted me by the gracefulness of his manner, the delicacy of his features, and the pleasant expression with which he conversed. he attached himself to our party, and we walked on together, pilgrims to see switzerland, and rejoicing in the power to take leave of all modes of travelling, but that first and best, which nature had provided. the river reuss comes dashing along down with the fury of a young torrent, pouring over rocks, and whirling around precipices with a madness that brooks no control. the bristenock mountain towers aloft into the regions of snow and ice, and nature begins to grow wild and dreary. the soft meadows on which the maids of uri were making hay have disappeared, and the green pastures with frequent herds are now the only hope of the shepherd. the road is no longer a straight path, but in its toilsome way upward, it crosses again and again this foaming river, and bridges of solid masonry, built to resist the flood when it bears the ruins of avalanches on its bosom, and spreads them in the spring on the plains below. we crossed the third bridge and came to a gorge of frightful depth through which the river rages furiously, in a maddened torrent too fearful to look on without awe. it is called pfaffensprung, or the priest's leap, from a story--which no one will believe who stands here--that a monk once leaped across the chasm with a maiden in his arms. i have no doubt a monk would do his best under the circumstances, but i doubt the possibility of his clearing thirty feet at a bound over such an abyss as this, even for the sake of the prize he is said to have carried off. we had been beset by beggars under all sorts of guises, and here a miserable old woman--alas that a woman could come to this--appeared with a huge stone in her hands, which she hurled into the deeps, for us to see it leap from rock to rock and finally sink into the raging waters far below. a few cents she expected for this service, and she received them with gratitude; when an old man, perhaps her husband, came on with another rock which he was willing to drop for a similar consideration. as i turned away from the scene, a carriage came up in which an english gentleman was riding, with two servants on the box. i walked by the side of his carriage and fell into conversation, when he very politely invited me to ride with him. i declined of course, and told him that i was making a pedestrian tour, and designed to walk to andermatt, three hours and a half farther up the mountain. "i spend the night there also," he said, "and i will esteem it an honor, sir, if you will take a seat in my carriage." such an invitation, under the circumstances, was not to be refused, and i took a seat by the gentleman's side. how wonderfully the scenery improved, certainly how much my appreciation of it increased, when i fell back on the cushions! my companion was an accomplished member of the london bar. he knew public men whom i had met, and was well acquainted with all subjects of international interest, so that in fifteen minutes we were comparing minds on those questions in which england and america are so much concerned. we stopped at the little village of wasen for refreshments. i insisted on paying the reckoning, when he stopped me with this remark, "sir, you are my guest to-day: when i meet you in america i shall be happy to be yours." we rode on and upward, the road now assuming the character of a mighty structure of mason work through a savage defile, only wide enough for the carriage-path, and the torrent of the reuss, which no longer flows, but tumbles headlong from one cliff to another, while for three or four miles the lofty precipices hang fearfully on high. in the spring, the rage of this mountain river, swollen by melting snows, and bringing down ice and rocks in its thundering fall, would tear away the foundations of any common pathway, and this must be built to defy the fiercest storm. twenty-five or thirty thousand persons cross the alps by this route every year; and to secure this travel, which would otherwise be carried off to the other passes, the cantons of uri and tessin built a road which has twice been swept away by the avalanches, but one would think that the present might stand while the mountains stand. so rapid is the ascent, that the road is made often to double on itself, so that we are going directly backward on the route; a foot passenger may clamber across the doublets and save his time, but the carriage must keep the zig-zag way, patiently toiling up a smoother and more beautiful highway than can be found in the most level region of the united states of america! not a pebble in the path: the wheels meet no other obstruction than gravitation, which is sufficient to be overcome only by the strongest of horse power. yet through this very defile, long before any road like this had been built, three armies, the french and the russians and the austrians, have pursued each other, contesting every inch of this ground, and each one of these rugged heights, and disputing the possession of dizzy cliffs where the hunter was afraid to tread. never did the feeling of nature's awful wildness so take possession of my soul, as when night was shutting in upon me in this dreary pass. sometimes the road is hewn out of the solid rock in the side of the precipice, which hangs over it as a roof, and again it is borne over the roaring stream, which in a gulf four hundred feet below is boiling in its obstructed course, and making for itself an opening, it leaps away over the rocks, and rushes down while we are toiling up. in the day-time it would be gloomy here; it will be terrible indeed if the darkness overtakes us before we reach our resting-place for the night. more than five hundred years ago an old abbot of einsiedeln built a bridge over an awful chasm here, but such is the fury of the descending stream, the horrid ruggedness of the surrounding scenery, the smoothness and solidity of the impending rocks, the roar and rage of the waters as they are tossed about and beaten into spray, and so unlikely does it appear that human power could ever have reared a bridge over such a cataract, that it has been called from time immemorial the devil's bridge, and so it will be called probably till the end of time. it was just nightfall when we reached it. it was very cold, so far up had we ascended. we had left the carriage and were walking to quicken the blood, when the roar of the waters rose suddenly upon us, the spray swept over us, and we were in the midst of a scene of such awful grandeur, and with terror mingled, as might well make the nerves of a strong man tremble. the river reuss, at this stage of its course, makes a sweeping leap, a tremendous plunge at the very moment it bends nearly in a semi-circle, while the rocks, as if by some superhuman energy, have been hurled into the torrent's path, so as to break its fall, but not to withstand its power. two bridges are here--for when the old road was swept away, the bridge defied the storm, and this one, more solid and of far greater span, has been thrown high above the other which is left as an architectural curiosity in the depths below. and long before that was built, another one was there, and when the french in pursued the austrians over it, and while the embattled hosts were making hell in a furious fight upon and over this frightful gorge, the bridge was blown up, and the struggling foes were whelmed together in the devouring flood. a month afterwards, and the russians met the french at the same spot--no bridge was here, but the fierce russians bound timbers together with the scarfs of the officers, threw them over the chasm, crossed in the midst of a murderous fire, and drove the enemy down the pass into the vales below. [illustration: the devil's bridge.] it was dark before we were willing to quit this fearful place. the strength of the present bridge is so obvious, and the parapet so high, that the scene may be contemplated without fear; but the clouds had now gathered, hoarse thunder muttered among the mountains, spiteful squalls of rain, cold, gloomy, and piercing, were driving into our faces, and we were anxious to find shelter for the night. we left the bridge, but in another moment plunged into utter darkness as we entered a tunnel called the _hole of uri_, where the road is bored one hundred and eighty feet through the solid rock, a hard but the only passage, as the stream usurps the rest of the way, and the precipice admits no possible path over its lofty head. this was made a hundred and fifty years ago, and before that time the passage was made on a shelf supported by chains let down from above. it was called the gallery of uri, and along it a single traveller could creep, if he had the nerve, in the midst of the roar and the spray of the torrent, and with an hungry gulph yawning wide below him.--emerging from this den, we entered a valley five thousand feet above the sea; once doubtless a lake, whence the waters of the reuss have burst the barriers of these giant fortresses, and found their way into more hospitable climes. no corn grows here, but the land flows with milk and honey--by no means an indication of fertility, for the cows and the goats find pasture at the foot of the glaciers, and the bees their nests in the stunted trees and the holes of the rocks. we drove through it till we came to andermatt, where the numerous lights in the windows guided us to a rustic tavern. by this time it had commenced raining hard, and i began to be anxious for my young friend rankin, and a german student, heinrich. but i could do no more for them than to send a man to watch in the highway till they should come up, and lead them into the house where i was resolved to spend the night, whether we could find beds or not. these rural inns in switzerland are rude and often far from comfortable. but travellers here must not stand upon trifles. the house was designed to lodge twenty travellers, and thirty at least were here before us. a large supper table was spread, and around it a company of gentlemen and ladies, mostly german, were enjoying themselves right heartily, after the day's fatigue was over. the london lawyer and myself had a separate table laid for us--we soon gathered on it some of the good things of this life, which by the way you can find almost every where, and had made some progress in the discussion of the various subjects before us, when rankin and heinrich arrived nearly exhausted with their toilsome walk. they had a dreadful tale to tell of the storm they had met--which we just escaped, and barely that. the lightning filled the gloomy gorge, lighting up for an instant the mighty cliffs and hanging precipices, while the thunder roared above the sound of the torrent, and the rain drove into their faces, disputing with them the upward pass. but they were young men, and strong. they told me that i never could have borne the labor and the exposure of the walk. two travellers and a guide had given out, and taken lodgings in a hamlet we had passed, and the man whom we had employed to bring on our light bags, had also halted for the night, and would come up early in the morning. after supper i led them to our chamber. upon my arrival, the landlady assured me that every bed in the house was full, but i insisted so strenuously on having _three_, that the girls exchanged looks of agreement, and one of them offered to show me a chamber, if it would be acceptable. she led me up three pair of stairs, into a low garret bed-room, with one window of boards which could be opened, and one small one of glass that could not, and here were three beds kindly given up by the young women. into this chamber i now conducted my young friends. worn out with their hard day's work, but free from all anxious care, they were asleep in five minutes, while i coaxed the candle to burn as long as it would, fastened it up with a pin on the top of the candlestick, and tried to write the records of the few past hours. it was amusing to hear my companions, one on each side of me, talk in their sleep; heinrich in his native german, and rankin in his english, showing the restlessness of over-fatigue, while i sat wondering at myself, so lately a poor invalid, now in this wild region, exposed to such nights of discomfort, and days of toil. yet was i grateful even there, not only for a safe shelter and a much better bed than my master had, but for the strength to attempt such things, and for the luxury of health that lives and flows in a genial current through every part of a renovated frame. in the morning i met an american gentleman returning from the summit of st. gothard pass, and he advised me strenuously not to go further up, unless i was going now into italy. the most wonderful of the engineering in the construction of the road, had already been seen, and there was nothing else of interest above. the same savage scenery, in the midst of which the reuss leaps down , feet in the course of a two hours' walk, is continued, and the dreariness of desolation reigns alone. a house for the accommodation of travellers has been maintained for hundreds of years, destroyed at times and then restored, and a few monks have been supported here to extend what aid they may to those who require their assistance. we resolved to pursue a route through the _furca_ pass, one of the most romantic and interesting of all the passes in switzerland. a long day's walk it would be over frozen mountains and by the side of never melting glaciers, and no carriage way! nothing but a bridle and a foot path, and a rough one too, was now before us, and if we left the present road, and struck off over the furca, it would be four or five days before we should reach the routes which are traversed by wheels. our baggage, though but a bag apiece and blankets, was too heavy for us to carry if we walked, and i proposed to take a horse, put on him our three bundles, and ride by turns. heinrich had never heard of the mode of travelling called "ride and tie," and he was greatly amused when it was described to him. accordingly we ordered a horse for the day. the price is regulated by law, under the pretence of protecting the traveller, but really for the purpose of extorting from him a sum twice as large as he would have to pay if the business were open to competition. the horse was brought to the door, and when we ordered the bags of three to be strapped on, the landlord flew into a great rage, and declared he would not be imposed upon. i smiled in his red face, and asked, "if he knew how much baggage the law allowed each man to carry on his horse." he said he did, and i then told him to weigh those, and he might have for his own all over and above the legal allowance. he was still dissatisfied, but when we bade him to take his old nag to the stable, he suddenly cooled. without further delay he made fast "the traps," gave me a good stout fellow to conduct the party and bring back the beast. an idle group of guides and tavern hangers, and quite a party of germans and english were looking on when i bestrode the animal, and took my seat in the midst of the bundles rising before and behind, like the humps of a camel. we are yet in the vale of the urseren, not more than a mile wide, and lofty mountains flanking its sides. the mountain of st. anne is clad with a glacier, from which the "thunderbolts of snow" come down with terrific power in the spring, and yet there stands a forest in the form of a triangle, pointing upward, and so placed that the slides of snow as they come down are broken in pieces and guided away from the village below. the great business of the people in this vale is to keep cattle and to fleece the strangers who travel in throngs over the pass of st. gothard. hundreds of horses are kept for hire, and nothing is to be had by a "foreigner" unless he pays an exorbitant price. even the specimens of minerals are held so high, that no reasonable man can afford to buy them. but we are now leaving andermatt, and on the side of the road not long after leaving the village we saw two stone pillars, which need but a beam to be laid across them, and they make a gallows, on which criminals were formerly hung, when this little valley, like gersau on the lake, was an independent state. the pillars are still preserved with care, as a memorial of the former sovereignty of the community. we reached _hospenthal_ in a few moments; a cluster of houses about a church, and with a tower above the hamlet which is attributed to the lombards. i was struck with the exceeding loneliness and forsakenness of this spot. it seemed that men had once been here, but had retired from so wild and barren a land, to some more genial clime. hospenthal has a hotel or two, and it is a great halting place for travellers who are about to take our route over the furca to the hospice of the grimsel. here we quit the st. gothard road, and winding off by a narrow path in which we can go only in single file, we are soon out of the vale, and slowly making our way up the mountain. the hill sides are dotted with the huts of the poor peasants, who have hard work to hold fast to the slopes with one hand, while they work for a miserable living with the other. the morning sun was playing on the blue glacier of st. anne, and a beautiful waterfall wandered and tumbled down the mountain; yet this was but one of many of the same kind that we are constantly meeting as we go through these defiles of the high alps. the vast masses of snow and ice on the summits are sending down streams through the summer, and these sometimes leap from rock to rock, and again they clear hundreds of feet at a single bound; slender, like a long white scarf on the green hill, but very picturesque and beautiful. at the foot of this mountain are the remains of an awful avalanche, which buried a little hamlet here in a sudden grave, and a sad story of a maiden and a babe who perished, was told me with much feeling by the guide as we passed over the spot. the peasant men and women were bringing down bundles of hay on their heads and shoulders from the scanty meadows which here and there in a warm bosom of the hills may be found, and as they descended i recalled the story of orpheus, at whose music the trees are said to have followed him, and i could readily understand that such a procession might be taken or mistaken for the marching of a young forest. we are still following up the river reuss towards its source, and though it is narrower, it is often fiercer and makes longer strides at a step than it did last evening. we cross it now and then on occasional stones, or on rude logs, and come to a spot where the bridge was swept away last night by an avalanche of earth and ice, and well for us that it came in the night before we were here to be caught. an old man with a pickaxe in his hand had been working to repair the crossing, and had managed to get a few stones arranged so that foot passengers could leap over, and the horses after slight hesitation and careful sounding of the bottom, took to the torrent and waded safely over. i held my feet high enough to escape a wetting, but i heard a lady of another party complaining bitterly that the water was so deep or her foot so far down, i could not tell which, but it was evident that very much against her will she had been drawn through the river. at realp, a little handful of houses, we found a small house of refreshment, where two capuchin friars reside to minister to travellers, and this was the last sign of a human habitation we saw for some weary hours. we are now so far up in the world, that the snow lay in banks by the side of the path, while flowers, bright beautiful flowers were blooming in the sun. it is difficult to reconcile this apparent contradiction in nature. the fact is not surprising here, where we see such vast accumulations of snow and remember that a short summer does not suffice to melt it, but it is strange to read of flowery banks all gay and smiling, within a few feet only of these heaps of snow. i counted flowers of seven distinct colors, and gathered those that would press well in my books, souvenirs of this remarkable region. on the right the galenstock glacier now appears, and out of it vast rocks like the battlements of some old castle shoot , feet into the air. i am now among the ice palaces of the earth. the cold winds are sweeping down upon me, and i hug my coat closer as the ice blast strikes a chill to my heart. we were just making the last sharp ascent before reaching the summit of the furca when i overtook a lady sitting disconsolately by the wayside. she cried out as soon as i came up, "o sir, my guide is such a brute--the saddle turns under me and i cannot get him to fix it--my husband has gone on before me--i cannot speak a word of german and the dumb fool cannot speak a word of english. what shall i do?" "madam," said i, "my servant shall arrange your saddle, and i will conduct you to the summit where the rest of your party will doubtless wait." she overpowered me with her expressions of gratitude, and while my servant was putting her saddle girths to rights, i gave her guide the needful cautions, and we crossed a vast snow bank together, climbed the steep pitch, and in ten minutes reached the inn at the top of the furca. distant glaciers, snow clad summits, ridges, and ranges stood around me, a world without inhabitants, desolate, cold and grand in its icy canopy and hoary robes of snow. the descent was too rapid and severe for riding, and giving the horse into the charge of the servant we walked down, discoursing by the way of things rarely talked of in the alps. my young german friend had all the enthusiasm of the french character joined to the mysticism of his own nation. he is well read in english literature, and familiar with ancient and modern authors, so that we had sources unfailing, to entertain us as we wandered on; now sitting down to rest and now bracing ourselves for a smart walk over a rugged pass. i became intensely interested in him, though i had constant occasion to challenge his opinions, and especially to contrast his philosophy with the revealed wisdom of god. we had spoken of these things for an hour or more when i asked him if he had ever read "the pilgrim's progress," and when i found he had not, i told him the design of the allegory, and said "we are pilgrims over these mountains, and have been cheering one another with pleasing discourse as the travellers did on their way to the celestial city. they came at last in sight of its gates of pearl." "but what is that?" we had suddenly turned the shoulder of a hill, and a glacier of such splendor and extent burst upon our view as to fix us to the spot in silent but excited admiration. it was the first we had seen near us. others had been lying away in the far heights, their surface smoothed by the distance, and their color a dull blue; but now we were at the foot of a mountain of ice! we could stand upon it, walk on its face, gaze on its form and features, wonder, admire, look above it and adore! this is the glacier of the rhone! that great river springs from its bosom, first with a strong bound as if suddenly summoned into being, works its way through a mighty cavern of ice, and then winds along the base till it emerges in a roaring, milky white stream and rushes down the valley toward the sea. this glacier has been called a "magnificent sea of ice." it is not so. that description conveys no idea of the stupendous scene. you have stood in front of the _american_ fall of niagara. extend that fall far up the rapids, receding as it rises a thousand feet or more from where you stand to the crest: at each side of it let a tall mountain rise as a giant frame work on which the tableau is to rest; then suddenly congeal this cataract, with its curling waves, its clouds of spray, its falling showers of jewelry, point its brow with pinnacles of ice, and then, then let the bright sun pour on it his beams, giving the brilliancy not of snow but of polished ice to the vast hill-side now before you, and you will then have but a faint conception of the grandeur of this glacier. "it answers," said heinrich, "to burke's definition of the sublime--it is vast, mysterious, terrible!" i replied that "it was impossible for me to have the sensation of fear, and scarcely of awe in looking upon the scene before us--it rather had to me the image of the outer walls of heaven, as if there must be infinite glory within and beyond when such majesty and beauty were without. and then these flowers skirting the borders of this frozen pile, and smiling as lovely as beneath the sunniest slope in italy, forbade the idea that this crystal mountain was of ice." "but will it not vanish if we look away?" said heinrich, as he gazed on the frozen cataracts, and gave utterance to his admiration in the most expressive words that german, french, english, latin or greek would supply, for our discourse was in a mixture of them all. soon after passing the glacier of the rhone we met a peasant who assured us that he had fallen into one of its crevices, seventy feet, and had cut his way up with a hatchet, thus delivering himself from an icy grave. a little wayside inn gave us a brief respite from our toilsome journey. we climbed the grimsel, and reached the dead sea on its summit. it is called the lake of the dead, because the bodies of those who perished in making this journey were formerly cast into it for burial. heinrich and i left the path and climbed to a cliff where we looked down on the pilgrim parties on horses and on foot, winding their way along its borders. we sent our servant onward to engage beds for us at the hospice of the grimsel, and resolved to spend the rest of the day (the sun was yet three hours high) in this wilderness of mountain scenery. we could now look down into the valley, a little valley, but like an immense cauldron, the sides of which are sterile naked rocks, eight hundred feet high! on the west they stand like the walls and towers of a fortified city, and in the bottom of the vale is a single house and a small lake; but a flock of a hundred goats and a score of cows, with tinkling bells, are picking a scanty subsistence among the stones. the scene was wild, savage, grand indeed, and had there been no sun to light it up with the lustre of heaven, it would have been dreary and dismal. heinrich had been very thoughtful for an hour. he had discovered that my thoughts turned constantly to the god who made all these mountains, while he was ever studying the mountains themselves. "here i will commune with nature." i replied, "and i will go on a little further, and commune with god!" "stay," he cried, "i would go with you." "but you cannot see him," i said--"i see him in the mountain and the glacier and the flower: i hear him in the torrent and the still small voice of the rills and little waterfalls that are warbling ever in our ears. i feel his presence and something of his power. i beg you to stay and commune with nature, while i go and commune with god." i left him and wandered off alone, and in an hour went down the mountain, and to my chamber in the hospice. i was sitting on the bedside, arranging the flowers i had gathered during the day, when heinrich entered, and giving me his hand said to me, "i wish you would speak more to me of god!" he sat down by my side, and i asked him if he believed the bible to be the word of god. he said he did, but he would examine it by the light of history and reason, and reject what he did not find to be true. "and do you believe that the soul of man will live hereafter?" "i doubt," was his desponding answer. i then addressed him tenderly, "my dear young friend, i have loved you since the hour i met you at altorf. and now tell me, with all your studies have you yet learned how to die? you _doubt_, but are you so well satisfied with your philosophy that you are able to look upon death among the mountains, or by the lightning, without fear? my faith tells me that when i die my life and joy will just begin, and go on in glory forever. this is the source of all my hopes, and it gives me comfort now when i think that i may never see my native land and those i love on earth again. i _know_ that in another land we shall meet?" "how do you know that you shall meet?" "my faith, my heart, my bible tells me so. i shall meet all the _good_ in heaven. i am sure of one child, an angel now." "and where are your children?" "four in america, and one in heaven. i had a boy four years ago; earth never had a fairer. his locks were of gold and hung in rich curls on a neck and shoulders whiter than the snow: his brow was high and broad like an infant cherub's; and his eye was blue as the evening sky. and he was lovelier than he was fair. but in the budding of his beauty, he fell sick and died." "o no, not died!" "yes, he died here by my heart. and that child is the only one of mine that i am sure of ever seeing again." "i do not understand you." "if my other children grow up to _doubt_ as _you_ doubt, they may wander away on the mountains of error or the glaciers of vice, and fall into some awful gulph and be lost forever. and if i do not live to see my living children, i am as sure of meeting that one now in heaven, as if i saw him here in the light of the setting sun.--heinrich, have you a mother, my dear friend?" "yes, yes," he cried, "and her faith is the same as yours." i had seen his eyes filling, and had felt my own lips quivering as i spoke, but now he burst into tears and fell on my breast. he kissed my lips, and my cheeks, and my forehead, and the hot tears rained on my face, and mingled with my own. "o teach me the way to feel and believe," he said at last, as he clung to me like a frightened child, and clasped me convulsively to his heart. i held him long and tenderly, and felt for him somewhat, i hope, as jesus did for the young man who came to him with a similar inquiry. _i loved him_, and longed to lead him to the light of day. chapter vi. glaciers of the aar. my new friend--a wonderful youth--hospice of the grimsel--the valley--a comfortable day--glaciers of the aar--a gloomy vale--climbing a hill--view of the glacier--theory of its formation--caverns in the ice--incidents of men falling in--my leap and fall--an artist lost--return. heinrich proved to be a wonderful youth. he had a warm heart, and his intellect was cultivated to a degree not parallelled in my acquaintance among young men. he was just one and twenty years of age, and had not completed the usual course of collegiate education. but there was no author in the latin or greek languages, poet, philosopher or historian, whose works i have ever heard of, which were not familiar to him, as the english classics are to well read men in england or america. he discoursed readily of the style, the dialect, the shade of sentiment on any disputed point; he cited passages and drew illustrations from the pages of ancient literature which seemed to him like household words: and one of our amusements when crossing the alps was to discuss the difference in greek or latin words which are usually regarded as synonymes. but classical learning was the least and lowest attainment of this accomplished youth. the whole range of natural sciences had been pursued with a zeal that might be called a passion. botany and mineralogy were child's play to him: and chemistry had been a favorite study evidently, for its principles often came up in our rambling discourse, and he was master of it as if he had been a teacher of the science for years. geology was a hobby of his, and he thrust it upon me often when i wished he would let me alone, or discourse of something else. and yet when i have said all this i have not mentioned the department in which he was most at home, where his soul revelled in profound enjoyment, and in which he was resolved to spend his life. _metaphysics_ was his favorite pursuit. his analytical mind was always on the track of investigation, challenging a reason for everything, questioning the truth of every proposition, and never resting till his reason had subjected it to the most exhausting process. yet in the midst of these studies including many departments to which i have not referred, as the exact sciences, he had polished this fine intellect by the widest course of polite literature, perusing in the german translations, all the old masters of the english tongue, admiring shakespeare and milton, quoting from them as a scholar would from sophocles or homer, and surprising me by reference to english authors, whose works i had not supposed were translated into the german language. of course the poets and philosophers of his father-land were his pride and love. often he would speak of them in terms of endearment, as if they were his personal friends; though of all beings, present or past, in heaven or out of it, i think he loved plato most. this boy was just out of his teens, a student still, and modest as he was learned; burning to learn more; asking questions till it was tiresome to hear them; and never dreaming that he knew more than others. he was the most learned young man i ever saw. and few old men know half as much. he now joined my party, leaving his own altogether, and resolved to follow me to the ends of the earth. we are now in the vale of the grimsel. in the bottom of the valley, by the side of a lake forever dark with the shadows of overhanging hills, is the _hospice_, a name that here combines the idea of hospital and hotel--its design being to furnish lodging and entertainment to travellers, whether they are able to pay for the hospitality or not. last winter the landlord of the grimsel having insured his house, set fire to it, to get the money, and now is in prison for twenty years as the penalty of his crime. in years past there have been terrible avalanches here, and once the house was crushed by the "thunderbolts of snow." often it is surrounded by snow drifts twenty or thirty feet high, yet some one lodges here all winter to keep up a fire and furnish shelter to the benighted traveller. it is strange that these lonely paths should be traversed at all in the depth of winter. but there is no other mode of communication between the valleys, than along these defiles, and the traffic among the people of one canton with another is carried on, and the intercourse of families is kept up at the risk of life here as in other countries. if one has a good home, it were better to stay in it than to cross the grimsel in the winter. a mixed multitude were under the roof of the hospice. the building is yet unfinished; and it must have required prodigious exertions to get it so far under way, since the fire, as to make it habitable for travellers this season. every stick of timber must be brought up by hand from the plain some miles below. the walls are of stone, about three feet thick, and rough enough. no attempt to smooth a wall, or paint a board appears on the edifice, and the rude bedsteads, benches and chairs suggest to the luxurious traveller how few of the good things he has at home are actually essential to his comfort. the house has about forty beds, but these were far from being sufficient to give each weary pilgrim one. many were obliged to choose the softest boards in the dining room floor, and sleep on them. yet in that company of sixty who crowded around the supper table were many of the learned, and titled, and beautiful, and wealthy of many lands; meeting socially in a dreary valley, on a journey of pleasure, and refreshing each other with the "feast of reason and the flow of soul." reserve was banished, and the hour freely given to good cheer, in which all strove to forget the toils of the day, in the pleasures of the evening, and the repose of a peaceful night. within an hour's walk from the door of the hospice is the glacier of the aar, the most interesting and instructive of all the glaciers of switzerland. it has been more studied by men of science than any other. agassiz and forbes had their huts on its bosom, and spent many long and weary months in prying into the mysteries of these stupendous seas of solid water. not one of the whole company who staid at the hospice last night, turned aside for a day to study with us this wonderful scene. a party of english people read the guide book on the route to meyringen, and congratulated themselves on having a "comfortable" day, as there was very little to see! they were _doing_ switzerland, and were evidently pleased to find a day before them when they had nothing to do but to go on, without being worried with fine views and climbing hills. one party after another came down and took a wretched cup of coffee, and were off on their pilgrimage, some on foot, some on mules, and one or two were carried on chairs by porters. we were left alone at the hospice, and after breakfast set off to spend the day on the glaciers. there are two of them, the obi and unter, or upper and lower; the latter being the most easily reached, and happily the most interesting. it is eighteen miles long, and about three miles wide. to circumnavigate it therefore, is not the journey of a day, but it may be explored on foot, and hugi, the naturalist, is said to have rode over it on a horse. the morning was not promising. heavy mists had lodged in the vale of the grimsel. but far above them in gloomy grandeur rose the sterile ridges of rocks, towering aloft, and looking like the battlements of giants' castles, inaccessible save to the chamois and his pursuer, who often risked, and sometimes threw away his life in his daring adventures to secure his prey. even the chamois has now almost entirety disappeared, and the eagles alone have their dwelling places in these desolate abodes. yet from the lofty heights some beautiful cascades are pouring all the way down into the vale, foaming as they fall; and sometimes caught by the intervening rocks, and sent out from the side of the precipice they melt into spray, and again on a lower ledge are gathered to pursue their downward course. along the bottom of this gloomy vale we walked for an hour, till we came in sight of a mighty pile of earth, rocks, ice and snow. at first we thought we had come to a vast heap of sand, or to the _debris_ brought down by an avalanche of soil with stones intermingled, but from the base of it a torrent was rushing, not of clear blue water, but of a dirty milky hue, as are all the streams when they issue from the beds of these glaciers. the front of the mass was perhaps one hundred and fifty feet high, and nearly perpendicular, and here it was half a mile in width. on nearer approach, we could see the rocks of blue ice projecting through the coating of earth, showing plainly that the body of the great pile before us was the cold icebergs hid beneath a covering of earth that had been washed down upon it, from the mountains above. now and then large masses of earth, or a huge boulder would be dislodged from the brow of the pile, and thunder along down, as we sat watching for these miniature avalanches. the sense of the terrible was strong upon us now. it was not beautiful: it was grand and awful, as we changed our position lest the falling rocks should overtake us in their course. but a few little birds were flying about from stone to stone unconscious of danger, the solitary inhabitants of this frozen world. we now determined to ascend and look on its face. with incredible toil we climbed the hill by the side of it. if there ever was a path, we could not find it, but from rock to rock, often pulling ourselves up by the stunted bushes, we worked our way. onward and upward we mounted, and at last were rewarded for the struggle by standing abreast of the glacier, where we could walk around and upon it and contemplate its stupendous proportions. from the bosom of it rises the finster-aarhorn, a lone pyramid that seems now to touch the blue sky: so cold and stern it stands there, its head forever covered with snow and its foot in this everlasting ocean of ice. the schreckhorn is the other peak that stands yet farther off, but the clouds are now so dense around its summit, that i cannot see its hoary head. here we are six thousand feet above the level of the sea, and for three-quarters of the year the snow is falling on these mountains: not an april snow that melts as it falls, but a dry powder, into which a man without snow-shoes would sink out of sight, as in the water. on the loftiest of these mountains, the surface of the snow melts a little every day, and the deeper you descend into the snow, the melting is going on also. but at night it freezes, as by day for a little while it thaws, and this process is continued until the snow is gradually converted into ice. the high valleys are filled with these ever increasing deposits of snow, which are thus constantly undergoing this change, and as the fresh deposit far exceeds what is carried off by melting, the enormous mass is rather increased than diminished by the lapse of time. it becomes a fixed fact; yet not fixed, for the most remarkable, and to my mind, the sublimest fact in this relation, is that these glaciers are actually moving steadily, year by year. the projecting mass in the lowest valley, as where we were standing a few hours ago, is melting away, and sending out the river that leaves its bosom on its mission into a world far below. underneath the glacier, where it presses on the earth, which has a heart of fire, the work of dissolution is rapidly going on, while the sun on the upper surface melts the ice, and streams flow along and cut deep crevices into which the uncautious traveller may fall never to rise again till the last day. some of these glaciers may be traversed underneath, by following the streams. hugi wandered a mile in this way underneath magnificent domes, through which the sun-light was streaming, and among crystal columns which had been left standing as if to support the superincumbent mass. the water, as in rocky caverns, trickles through and freezes in beautiful stalactytes, to adorn these palaces, unseen except by the eye to which darkness and light are both alike. as this decay of the glacier takes place, and it is always more rapid near the lower border of it than above, the pressure of the upper masses brings the whole mountain slowly along: with a steadiness of march that cannot be perceived by the eye, but which is marked with precision, and chronicled from year to year. the place where great rocks are reposing on the surface near the edge of the mountain against which the glacier presses has been carefully noted, and the next year and for many subsequent years, the onward progress of the boulder has been noted. blocks of granite have been inserted in the bosom of the glacier, and their position defined by their relation to the points of land in sight; and years afterwards they are away on their journey, and by and by, they have disappeared altogether as the glacier moves on and heaves and breaks and closes again. more wonderful still, it is recorded that a "mass of granite of twenty six thousand cubic feet, originally buried under the snow, was raised to the surface and even elevated above it upon two pillars of ice, so that a small army might have found shelter under it." the men of science who have pursued investigations here under circumstances quite as fearful and forbidding as the navigators around the north pole, have a rude hut in which they make themselves as comfortable as the nature of the case will admit; but this house though founded on a rock is not stationary. it moves on with the mighty field of ice, about three hundred feet in a year, or nearly one foot every day: not so rapidly in winter as in summer, for the rate of progress depends on the melting, which is arrested for a brief period during the terrible winters of this alpine region. other glaciers move with greater rapidity than this. the mere de glace is believed to move at the rate of four or five hundred feet every year, and it is said that the glacier is gradually wasting out. the surface of this frozen sea is exceedingly irregular, depending on the nature of the ground below, and the progress of the ice. when a stream has cut away a great seam, where the descent of the moving mass will be swift when it does move, the shock will throw up the ice in ridges, in pyramids, in various fantastic shapes, piling rocks on rocks of ice, as if some great explosion underneath had upheaved the surface and the fragments had come down in wild confusion, like the ruins of a crystal city. then the sun gradually melts those towers, and they assume strange shapes of wild and dazzling beauty, unreal palaces, glittering minarets, silvered domes and shining battlements; freaks of nature we call them, but they are too beautiful for chance work, and we do not know to what eyes these forms of glory may give pleasure, nor why it is that god displays so much of his selectest skill and most stupendous power, where few behold it of the race to which we belong. doubtless our own great cataract leaped and thundered in the wilderness thousands of years, with no human ear or eye to receive its majesty and beauty, but it did not roar in vain. god has other and nobler worshippers than man, and while we are groping like moles beneath the surface, and striving in our blindness to discover the mysteries of god's works, there are minds to which these wonders are revelations of their maker's glory and goodness, and they understand, admire and adore. here was a world of solid water, gradually enlarging and then melting away, to send down rivers into the plains below, and this with the other glaciers of the alps, is thus supplying all the rivers in europe which might otherwise be dry. yet as other rivers in other lands are constantly supplied without this provision, we must suppose that some other design in providence is laid, which science may or may not discover, but whether it does or not, we are certain that they are not without a purpose corresponding with the magnitude of their proportions, and the wisdom of him who, though omnipotent, never wastes his strength in works without design. we confined our walks to the edges of this solid but still treacherous sea. we had yesterday conversed with a man who had fallen into the crevices of one of these glaciers, and we had a greater horror of repeating the experiment. the case is on record of a shepherd who was crossing this very glacier with his flock, when he fell into one of the clefts, into which a torrent was pouring. this stream was his guide to life and liberty again; for he followed its course under the archway it had made, until it led him to the foot of the glacier into the open air. but a swiss clergyman, a spiritual shepherd, m. mouron, was leaning on the edge of a fissure to explore a remarkable formation over the brink, when the staff on which he rested gave way, and he fell, only to be drawn out again a mangled corpse. a man was let down by a rope, and after two or three unsuccessful expeditions, found him at last, and was drawn up with the body in his arms. coming down from the hill, we had hard work in crossing some dangerous clefts in the rocks, and once i planted my alpen-stock firmly, as i thought, in the thin soil, and leaped; the spike failed; the foot of the staff slipped on and left the steel in the ground, and i was sprawling generally along down the hill: fortunately i recovered my foothold, and came down standing! and this is a good place in which to say that shoes with iron nails in the soles are not the best for walking over these mountains: a good pair of boots with double soles have served me many times, sticking fast in the face of a slippery rock, while travellers shod with iron have been sliding down with no strength of sole to resist the gravitation. but i met with no such misfortune in all my travels over the most dangerous passes, and under circumstances of trial not often exceeded by those who wander in these parts. we had several sorts of weather in this expedition to the source of the aar. the misty morning was succeeded by a glowing sun at noon, followed by clouds and rain. when this was coming, we thought it time to be going, and gathering a few flowers, as usual, on the verge of the cold beds of ice, we turned our weary steps towards the hospice. it was our good fortune just then to meet an italian artist who had lost his way, and we had the pleasure of guiding him to the hospice. wandering with his knapsack and port folio, in search of the beautiful in nature, which he sketched by the way, it was of no great consequence to him, in which direction he travelled, but a storm was now at hand, it was rapidly growing cold, and he was going every moment farther from any place of shelter. we were soon housed safely in the hospice; and glad enough to stretch ourselves on a bed after the walk of the morning. it was hard to keep warm anywhere else but in bed. the house was yet so unfinished and open, and the storm increasing every moment; a wretched old stove in one corner of the eating-room, scarcely giving any heat with the few sticks of fuel we were able to find. we wrapped blankets around us, and tried to write, and when that proved to be more than we could accomplish under the difficulties, i took my bible and read to my german friend some of the sublimest passages in the psalms, where the lord is revealed among the mountains, and his majesty portrayed by the loftiest of his works. he listened with interest, and when i laid aside the book, he asked for it, and read it long and earnestly. as the evening drew on, a few travellers began to drop in, and at seven o'clock a company, much like the one of last night, but all with new faces, sat down to supper. chapter vii. mountains, streams and falls. pedestrianism--mountain torrents--fall of the handek--the guide and his little ones--falls of the reichenbach--perilous point of view. not in the best of spirits, nor in as good condition as a pedestrian could wish, i set off the next morning, with my young friends. we would have felt better but for a foolish resolution to carry our own knapsacks and overcoats and to make one day's journey without guide or mule. success is apt to make one proud; and we had improved so much in our walking with each day's experience, that we actually began to think we could do anything in that line. the storm of the night before had gone by, and a clear cool day encouraged us. alas, we knew not how soon, in the midst of glaciers, and in sight of dazzling snow-drifts, the hot sun would thaw our resolution, and compel us to call lustily for help, when no hercules would be at hand to lend us aid. not a wilder or more romantic path had we found than the one which led us out of the vale of the grimsel. the river aar is by our side, leaping from ledge to ledge in its rapid descent; dashing now against rocks and foaming around them and onward, as if maddened by every obstacle and brooking no delay. water in motion is always beautiful. here on our right hand a streamlet is falling from the giddy height of a thousand feet above us. at first it slips along on the edge of the rocks, as if afraid to fall, and then with a graceful bound it clears the side of the mountain, and comes down to a lower level, where it reposes for a moment in a basin made without hands, and again it flows along down like a long white robe suspended on the hill side, tastefully winding itself, as in folds. in full view, but far above us the snow lies fresh and white, for much of it fell there yesterday: and among the clouds as they roll open and let us see their beds, the blue glacier lies. some of the views along here are exceedingly grand, and in the midst of barrenness that can hardly be excelled, the soul feels that enough is here to make a world, though there is little vegetation, and not a human habitation. we frequently cross the torrent by narrow bridges, and pause on each of them to watch the angry waters whirling underneath. i was arrested on one of them by the sight of a reservoir hollowed out of the solid rock by the water; it would hold twenty barrels, and was full. the torrent was now raving a few inches below, while the water within was as placid in the sunshine as if it had never moved. the contrast was beautiful. let the mad world rush by, noisy, turbulent and thoughtless: it is better to be calm and trusting: certainly it is better if our rest is on a rock which cannot be moved. the mountains rise suddenly from the edge of the torrent, and there is barely room in some places for the path and the stream. there is great danger too in travelling here in the winter when the avalanches come rushing down the precipitous sides of these mountains. their work of destruction is lying all around us. they sweep across the path and for a long distance have laid the rock perfectly bare, and polished it so smoothly, that there is constant danger of sliding off into the gulf by the side of the way. grooves have been cut in the rock, that the feet of the mules may have some support, but a prudent traveller will trust to his own feet and his staff, and tread cautiously. we become so accustomed to these dangerous places, that we pass them without emotion; but there is never a season without its fatal accidents to travellers, and none but fool-hardy persons will needlessly expose their lives. an american family returned home a few days ago, having left the mangled corpse of their son, a lad of twelve years, in some frightful gorge into which he had fallen while riding on a mule in the midst of the alps. we frequently hear of painful facts like these, yet there is not a pass in switzerland which may not be safely made with prudence and coolness. one of the finest cascades we had yet seen was on our right, after we had made about five miles from the hospice. its width of stream, volume of water, and great height, entitle it to a name and a record which it has not; and this has frequently appeared to me strange in this journey; that _falls_ in switzerland, of comparatively little beauty, have been painted and praised the world over, while others of more romantic and impressive features have no place in the hand-books, but are strictly anonymous. the one we are now speaking of, attracted our attention as decidedly more interesting than any we had seen among the mountains, and in this opinion i presume others will agree. its misfortune is that it is within a mile of the handek, which we are now approaching. a huge log-hut received us, and we found refreshments such as might be expected in a wilderness like this. sour bread and sour wine, with strong cheese, and a strange-looking pie, composed of materials into which it was not prudent to inquire, gave us a lunch that might have been worse. we were glad to get it, but even more pleased to find a place where we could lay down our burdens, under which we had been groaning for an hour. this pedestrianism in the alps is very well to talk about, but it is not the most agreeable mode of travelling to one who is accustomed only to a sedentary life. we could find no mules here, however, but meeting a sturdy fellow who was going up the pass, and who was a guide but not just now engaged, we made a bargain with him to turn about and carry our traps to meyringen. he was on his way over the grimsel into canton vallais to buy eggs and butter, which he and his son, who was with him, would bring back to sell in the lower valleys. this is the way in which the traffic among the cantons is chiefly carried on. we are constantly meeting the traders, men and women, with long baskets or wooden cans on their backs, trudging over these mountains, exchanging the produce of one part of the country for that of another. and this business is driven in winter as well as summer, and many lose their lives in the snow, or are overwhelmed by the avalanches. our man now sent his boy on alone; gave him a few directions as to what articles he should buy, and where to wait his return, and then set off with us. i was astonished that a father would trust a lad of such tender years (he was not more than twelve), to go off on such an expedition alone, in such a region as this; and after they had parted, i slipped some money into the little fellow's hand, and said a cheering word or two, for i felt as if it were cruel thus to leave him. the river aar has been rushing along by us, and now it has reached the verge of a precipice more than a hundred feet high. at this point another stream of only less volume forces its way across the path, and dashes boldly into the aar on the brink of the fall. like two frantic lovers they take the mad leap together into the fearful gulf. standing above the brow of the fall, and looking into the dark abyss, where the vast column of water stands, silvered at the summit, spread and broken into foam as it reaches the base, with clouds of spray rising from the boiling depths below, we see a cataract that combines more of the sublime with the very beautiful than any other in switzerland. after we had gazed upon it from the bridge at the brow, we went around and down through the forest, and reached the ledge from which we could look up and out upon the column of waters now pouring before us in exceeding strength. a faint rainbow trembled midway, but the pine trees were too thick to admit the sun's rays in full blaze upon the face of the fall. but the surrounding scenery adds so much to the gloomy grandeur of the scene, that i am quite willing to write this down as a _real_ cataract, a wonderful leap and rush of waters, in the midst of a ravine of terrific construction; filling the mind with the strongest sense of wildness, horror, desolation and destruction, while the image of beauty in the water and the bow, plays constantly over the face of all. we left it with strong emotions of pleasurable excitement, and shall retain the recollections of the falls of the aar for many days. the path by and by led under an extraordinary projection of rock, shelving over, and making a pavilion. the descent became more rapid, until we took to a long flight of stone steps in the path: and then on a lower grade, we came upon meadow land, through which the grass had been cut away for foot passengers to make a shorter course than that by which the horses must find their way down. we entered a little cottage and refreshed ourselves _again_, with coffee and milk, and had some pleasant talk with the old lady and one or two of the neighbors who had dropped down from some mountain home; for it is even pleasant, if no useful knowledge is gathered, to learn the thoughts and feelings of these secluded people, and to find that enjoyment, and contentment can exist as truly and beautifully in the dreary heights of these alpine pasturages, as in the courts of kings: and a little more so. for we were not very far above a lovely valley, one of the sweetest spots that i carry in my memory. it is surprising how suddenly the line of barrenness is passed, and the region of fruits and abundant vegetation bursts upon you in this country. we had not been two hours from dreary and inhospitable guttanen, when we emerged from the narrow defile into a vale, a plain, a basin of rare loveliness for situation and embellishment. level as a threshing floor, with a hundred swiss cottages scattered over it, and each of them surrounded with a garden stored with fruits, apples, pears, and the like, while a stream flowing through the midst of it divided the vale into two settlements, in one of which a neat church sent up its graceful spire. we had been loitering along down, and it was now drawing toward evening: the bell of the old church was ringing for evening prayers, and the people, a few of them, were gathering in their sanctuary as we passed. four mountains, each of them a distinct pyramid, rise on as many sides of this valley, and seem at once to shut it from the world, and to stand around it as towers of defence, as the mountains are round about jerusalem. this is the vale of upper hasli; the river aar flows through it; on the right as we are going, is the village of im-hof, and on the left the settlement is called im-grund. we passed a low house, like all the rest, and three little children in a row, broke out with a song, a sweet psalm tune, such as our sabbath school children would sing. we stopped to listen, and the guide stood with us in front of the group, while they sang one after another of their native melodies as birds of the forest would warble an evening song. the youngest was not more than two years old; and when we had given them some money for their music, i took the little thing by the hand, and said, "come away with me." the guide took it by the other, and it trotted along between us with so much readiness, that it occurred to me instantly that these might be the children of the man who was with me. i said to him, "are these yours?" "yes sir," said he, and catching up the little thing in his arms, he kissed it fondly, and carried it on with all the burdens already on his back. when he had put it down and the children had returned, i asked him why it was that no sign of recognition passed between him and his children when we first came up to them as they stood by the side of the house. he told me that he had taught them to receive him in this way when he came by with strangers, whom he was guiding, and as they sang to receive what money might be given them it was better that it should not be known there was any relation between him and them. i had detected the connection by the willingness of the babe to follow us, and the father was delighted to be able to discover himself to his child, and to take it for a moment in his arms. this incident reminded me of a striking scene in the well known history of william tell, where the tyrant gessler confronts the son with the father, and they both, without preconcert, but by a common instinct of caution, deny one another, and persist in the denial till the father is about to die. leaving the valley, we have a sharp hill to climb. a zig-zag path for carriages has been made over it at great expense of money and labor; so that this vale may be reached from the other side. the hill must at some distant period in the past have resisted the progress of the aar, and this romantic valley was probably a beautiful lake in the midst of these noble mountains. but the hill by some convulsion has been rent from the top to the bottom, and the river finds its way through a fearful cavern; one of the most awful gorges that can be found in switzerland. after crossing the hill we left the road, and following our guide for twenty minutes came to the mouth of the cave, that leads down to the bed of the river, where it is rushing through with frightful force in darkness but not silence; for the roar of the waters is repeated among the rocks, adding greatly to the terror of the scene. it is only half an hour's walk from the cave to meyringen; but we made it more than an hour, enjoying the fine views that opened upon us as we stood above the village. it is but three miles across the plain, and as i look upon the splendid cataract of the reichenbach falling into it on one side, and the alpbach coming down on the other, and streaming cascades in great numbers pouring into it down the precipitous sides of the mountains, the first thought that strikes the mind is of the danger that the valley would be filled with water one of these days and the people driven out. such a calamity has indeed occurred, and to guard against its return, a stone dyke one thousand feet long and eight feet wide has been built, that the swollen river may be conducted with safety out of the vale. long years ago the mountain torrent brought down a mass of earth with it, so suddenly and so fearfully that in one brief hour, a large part of the village was buried twenty feet deep, and the desolation thus wrought still appears over the whole face of the plain. the church has a black line painted on it to mark the height to which it was filled with the mud and water in this deluge of . there is something very fearful in the idea of dwelling in a region subject to such visitations. but there is a fine race of men and women here. the men are spoken of as models for strength and agility, and the matches and games in which they annually contend with the champions of other cantons decide their claims to the distinction. the women are good looking, and that is more than i can say for most of the women i have met among the alps; where the hardy, exposed, and toilsome life they lead, in poverty and disease, gives them such a look as i cannot bear to see in a female face. in fact i could not tell a man from a woman but by their dress in many parts of the mountains. now we are down in the region of improved civilization, and some taste in dress begins to appear among the women, who rig themselves out in a holiday or sunday suit of black velvet bodice, white muslin sleeves, a yellow petticoat, and a black hat set jauntingly on one side of the head, with their braided hair hanging down their backs. an old woman on the hill at whose house i stopped for a drink, told me i ought to stay there till next sunday and see them all come out of church; "a prettier sight i would never see in all my life." coming down from the hospice of the grimsel, i was filled with admiration when i entered the valley in which the villages of im-hof and im-grund lie, with their single church and hundred cottages. naigle, my guide, was one of the dwellers in this vale, and the meeting with his children as he passed through had deeply interested me in the place and the people. i wished to know more of their habits and especially i would know the spirit and the power of the religion which these people professed. they are so secluded from all the world, so girt with great mountains and compelled to look upwards whenever they would see far, that it seemed to me they must be a thoughtful religious people, even if their way of religion was not the same as mine. it was a protestant canton, and so far their faith was mine, but there is a wide difference between the faith and practice of many churches that profess protestantism, as there is also in the churches under the dominion of the pope of rome. naigle was a character. i was sure of it in five minutes after he was in my service. six feet high on a perpendicular, he was at least six feet four, on a curve, for long service in carrying heavy burdens over the mountains had made a bend in his back like a bow that is never unstrung. i had asked him how many of those children he had, and he had told me eight: and he did not improve in my good opinion when he offered as the only objection to selling me the youngest, that he would be sent to prison if he did. yet naigle loved his children i am sure, and would not part with one of them unless for the sake of improving its prospects for the future. his own were dark enough. one franc a day, less than twenty cents of our money, is the price of a day's labor in the hardest work of the year, though the very men who are glad to get this of their neighbors, will not guide a stranger through their country, or carry his bag, for less than five francs for eight or ten hours. the women will work out doors all day for less than a man's wages, and perform the same kind of labor. this naigle was a hard-working man, it was very plain, and there was a decided streak of good sense in him that assured me, he could give me much valuable information, in spite of that miserable mixture of german and french which was the only language he could speak. fortunately i had my young german friend with me, and we managed among us to extract from naigle all we desired. we had good rooms at meyringen, and naigle was to stay over night there and return to his family in the morning. i asked him where he would sleep; and he said "in the stable," a lodgment i afterwards found to be common in this and other european countries: not in rooms fitted up over the stalls, as in america, but in bunks by the side of the horses: in the midst of foul atmosphere which would be enough, i should suppose, to stifle any man in the course of the night. yet i have heard a german gentleman say that there is no smell so pleasant to him as that of a stable, and i record it as another evidence of the truth of the adage "there is no disputing about _tastes_." naigle came up to my room in the evening, sat down on a trunk, and answered questions for an hour or two, but i can put all i learned of him into a moderate compass, though it will want the freshness and often the peculiar turn of thought with which he imparted it. naigle told me first of his family which he had great difficulty in supporting on the low wages he received, and the small profits he could make on his trade with the neighboring valleys. at least half of the year, he said, they do not have a particle of meat in the house: they live chiefly on potatoes and beans, with bread and milk: few vegetables, and these not the most nutritious. the snow comes on so early in autumn and lies so late in the spring that the season for cultivation is very short, though they try to make the most of it while it lasts, as they do of the little land in their valley, and on the mountain sides. yet poverty often stares them in the face with a melancholy threat of famine. no people on earth dwell in such glorious scenery and in such destitution of the real comforts of life. but what are the morals of such a people? are the virtues of social life held in honor among them, and are the children of these mountain homes trained up in the way they should go? one of the severest replies i have had was given to me by a swiss guide, who had followed his business of showing strangers through the country for thirty years: and when he told me he had three sons grown up to manhood i asked him if they were guides also? he said, "no, he never allowed them to travel about with foreigners: the boys learned too many bad words and ways in that business." very likely intercourse with travellers is not happy on the morals of any people, but it is little that the dwellers in these valleys see of foreigners, who push through them without pausing even to spend a night. naigle gave me however to understand that the standard of social morals was very low among them, and this was confirmed by all that i learned from the various classes of men with whom i came in contact during my journey in this country. it is true everywhere, that virtue does not flourish in the extremes of poverty or wealth. he was greatly interested in the little church, and was pleased to answer all my inquiries. the pastor, he said, was a good man who was kind to them in sickness, visiting them to give the consolations of the gospel, and especially at such times did they prize his instructions and prayers. this service was rendered freely to the poorest among them, on whom the pastor calls as soon as he hears that they are in distress, and he is always engaged in looking among his flock to find those who have need of his peculiar care. the same good shepherd has charge of the parish school, to which all the children are sent; and if the parents are able to pay anything toward their children's education, they are expected to do so, but if not they are not deprived of the privileges of the school. here they are taught to read, to write, and to keep accounts; but more than all this, they are instructed in the catechism of the church, and are examined often on it, and encouraged to become acquainted with the doctrines and duties of religion. it was hard for me to convey my idea to naigle when i sought to learn of him, if the good pastor required of the young people any proof of _regeneration_, or a change of heart, before giving them the second sacrament. he said their children are all baptized in infancy, and admitted to the lord's supper when they are old enough, and good enough, and understand the doctrines taught in the school. "but what if one of those who has come to the holy sacrament falls into some sin, as stealing, or profane swearing?" "o, in that case he is not allowed to come to the sacrament, till he has repented and reformed. the minister is very strict about that, and the people who belong to the church, that is, those who wish to be considered as good christian people, never indulge in any of those things which are forbidden by the bible. there are many loose people in the valley who have no care for god or man, but have no connection with the church." on the whole, i was led to infer from what naigle said that the church of the upper hasli valley is about in the same condition with hundreds of others in this and other lands. there is in the midst of this mountain scenery far removed from the intercourse of the world, where a newspaper is rarely seen, and few books are ever read, a little people among whom god has some friends, who in their way are striving to serve him, and whose service it will be pleasure to accept. many of them have only a form of religion. the romish religion that surrounds these lands, and which is so admirably framed for an ignorant and sensual people, pervades the minds of many who are protestants in name, and who cannot be taught, or rather will not learn, that salvation is only by faith in the saviour. that other gospel which gives heaven to him who does penance for his great sins, and bows often to the picture of a handsome woman, is _the_ religion for a people who cannot read, or who have no books if they can. ignorance and romanism go hand in hand. my estimate of the swiss character has wofully depreciated since i have travelled among these mountains. with a history such as greece might be proud of, and a race of heroes that rome never excelled in the days when women would be mothers only to have sons for warriors; the swiss people now are at a point of national and social depression painful to contemplate. they are indebted largely to the defences of nature for the comparative liberty they enjoy, and perhaps to the same seclusion is to be referred their want of a thousand comforts of life, which an improved state of society brings. all the romance of a swiss cottage is taken out of a traveller's mind, the moment he enters one of these cabins and seeks refreshment or rest. the saddest marks of poverty meet him in the door. the same roof is the shelter of the man, woman and beast. the same room is often the bed chamber of all. scanty food, and that miserably prepared, is consumed without regard to those domestic arrangements which make life at home a luxury. there is no _future_ to the mind of a swiss youth. he lives to live as his father lived--and that is the end of life with him. perhaps he may have a gun, and in that case, to be the best shot in the valley may fill his ambition: or if he is strong in the arms and legs he may aim at distinction in the games which once a year are held at some hamlet in the canton, where the wrestlers and runners contend for victory, and others throw weights and leap bars as of old in greece, when kings were not ashamed to enter the lists. many of the youth of switzerland are willing to sell themselves into the service of foreign powers, as soldiers--swiss soldiers--hired to be shot at, and shoot any body a foreign despot may send them to slay: a service so degrading, and at the same time so decidedly hazardous to life and limb, with so poor a chance for pay, that none but a people far gone in social degradation would be willing thus to make merchandise of their blood. yet they have fought battles bravely with none of the stimulus of patriotism, and their blood has been as freely poured out for tyrants who hired them, as if they were bleeding for their own and the land of william tell. _falls of the reichenbach._ i had enjoyed all the pleasures of pedestrianism that i wished, and told naigle to get me a horse for to-morrow. he was willing to go on with us for a day or two more, but i gave him a trifle for his wife, and to pay him for his evening while i kept him talking when he would have been sleeping; and after he had brought me a man who would go with his horse, and carry me on over the wengern alp, i dismissed him. there is nothing in swiss travelling more annoying than the impositions practised upon you by those who have horses or mules for hire. the price for a horse is at the rate usually of about ten francs or two dollars a day; but if you are not to return the next day to the place from which you started, (and you rarely or never do,) you must pay the same price for the horse to come back. the driver manages to find a traveller to come back with, and so gets double pay both ways in nine trips out of ten. if the business were left open to competition without the help of government, the price would be reduced. naigle brought me a man who would go with his horse as far as i liked for ten francs a day, and nothing for return money, but he desired me to set off in the morning on foot, and he would be a few minutes off, out of the village, for if the landlords who keep horses to let, knew that he was at the business on his own hook, they would molest him. he served me well, and i paid him to his entire satisfaction. leaving meyringen on a lovely morning, the last of august, crossing the aar by a bridge, i came at once to the baths of reichenbach, where there is a good hotel, said to be better than those at meyringen. the grounds about are tastefully arranged, and an establishment fitted up for invalids, with every convenience for warm and cold baths on a moderate scale. if plenty of mountain water and mountain air will make sick people well, here is a fine place for them to come and be cured. i climbed the mountain in haste, to get the finer view of the reichenbach fall, whose roar i had heard, and the spray of which was rising continually before me. i could see the torrent as it took its first leap out of the forest, but it plunged instantly out of sight into a deep abyss, and i must ascend to its brow, and see the rush of waters as they descend into the gorge. the path to those coming down is very difficult, so steep, indeed, that it is safer and pleasanter to leave the horse and come on foot. but we went up slowly till we reached a meadow of table land, which we were permitted to cross on paying a small toll, to a house which has been built at the point where the best view of the fall from below can be had. it is almost a shame to board up such scenes as these, and compel a man to look through a window at a scene where he would have nothing around him but the mountain, flood and sky. the young woman was very civil, and offered us woodwork for sale, and a view through colored glass, and a subscription-book to record our donations for the construction of the foot-path, and we finally had the privilege of taking a look in silence. a narrow, but no mean stream, plunging two thousand feet makes a cataract before which the spectator stands with awe. the leap is not made at once, yet the river rests but twice in all that distance, and only for a moment then. the point of view where we are now beholding it, is midway of the upper and grandest of these successive falls. the fury of the descending torrent is terrible. the spray rises in perpetual clouds from the dread abyss into which the river leaps. it might be a bottomless abyss, so far as human penetration can discover, for no arm can fathom it, no eye can pierce the dark cavern where the waters boil and roar, and whence they issue only to make another leap into the vale below. the bow of god is on the brow of the cataract. i do so love to find it there, not more for its exceeding beauty than the feeling of hope and safety it always inspires. we counted all the colors as it waved and smiled so fondly in the spray, as if it loved its birth-place.--having had the finest opportunity of seeing the fall from this point, we did not return across the field to the horses, but took the foot-path straight up the mountain, over a rough and toilsome way, led on by a little lad who seemed anxious to do us the favor. he guided us by a walk of twenty minutes to the brink of the precipice. the path was just wide enough for one person to pass around the headland, holding by the bushes as we walked, and thus by taking turns in the perilous excursion, we went to the brow of the cataract, and looked down the front of the terrific fall. a single misstep or the slipping of a foot, might plunge the curious gazer into the gulph; yet so seductive and so flattering is such danger, we rarely have the least sense of it till it is over. not the water only, but the whole prospect from this overhanging cliff, is in a high degree sublime. the plains of meyringen, the mountains beyond, from which cascades are hanging like white lace veils on the green hill-sides, villages and scattered cottages, the river aar shooting swiftly across the valley, are now in full view, and we turn away reluctantly from the sight to resume the ascent. chapter viii. a glacier and avalanche. alpine horn--beggars--the rosenlaui glacier--beautiful views--glorious mountain scenes--mrs. kinney's "alps"--a lady and babe--the great scheidek--grindelwald--eagle and bear--battle with bugs--wengern alp--a real avalanche--the jungfrau. a beautiful chamois was standing on the ledge of rock that overhung the path as i turned away from the reichenbach fall, and i was pleased to see so fine a specimen of the animal whose home is the alps and whose pursuit has for ages been the delight of the mountaineer. he would have sprung from crag to crag at my approach and soon disappeared, had he not been held by a string in the hand of a boy who expected a few coppers for showing the animal. this is but one of a hundred ways and means of begging adopted by the swiss peasantry. of all ages from the infant to extreme decrepitude, they plant themselves along the highways of travel, and by every possible pretext seek to obtain the pence of the traveller. some are glad to have a poor cretin or a case of goitre in the family, that they may have an additional plea to put in for charity. others sing or play on some wretched instrument, and the traveller would cheerfully pay them something to be silent, that he may enjoy the beauties of the world around him without the torment of their music. but the alpine horn makes music to which the hills listen. a wooden tube nearly ten feet long and three inches in diameter, curved at the mouth which is slightly enlarged, is blown with great strength of lungs, and the blast at first harsh and startling is caught by the mountain sides and returned in softened strains, echoing again and again as if the spirits of the wood were answering to the calls of the dwellers in the vales. the man who was blowing, had but one hand, and after a single performance, or one blast, he held out that hand for his pay, and then returned to his instrument, making the hills to resound again with his wild notes. the rosenlaui valley into which we now enter is a green and sunny plain, where the verdure is as rich and the fruits as fair as if there were no oceans of never melting ice and hills of snow lying all around and above it. on either side the bare mountains rise perpendicularly: the engel-horner or angel's peaks sending their shining summits so far into the heavens that the pagans would make them the thrones of gods, and the well-horn, and wetter-horn, bleak and cold, but now resplendent in a brilliant sun light. a small but very comfortable inn is fitted up in this valley with conveniences for bathing, and a few invalids are always here for the benefit of the air, scenery and the mountain baths. we rested at the tavern, and then walked a mile out of the way to see the glacier of the rosenlaui. after a short ascent we entered a fine forest, and followed the gorge through which the glacier torrent is rushing: an awful gorge a thousand feet deep it seemed to me, and if some mighty shock has not rent these rocks, and opened the way for the waters that are now roaring in those dark mysterious depths, they must have been a thousand years in wearing out the channel for themselves. a slight bridge is thrown across the ravine, and a terrible pleasure there is in standing on it and listening to the mad leaps of rocks which the peasants are prepared to launch into the abyss, for the amusement of travellers. i shuddered at the thought of falling, and felt a glow of pleasing relief when i was away from the tempting verge. i never could explain to myself the source of that half formed desire which so many, perhaps all have, of trying the leap when standing on the brow of a cataract, the verge of a precipice, the summit of a lofty tower. it is often a question whether persons who have thus perished, designed to commit suicide or not. it is not unlikely that some are suddenly seized with this undefined desire to make the trial: the mind is wrought into a frenzy of excitement, dizziness ensues, and in a moment of fear, desire and delirium the irresponsible victim leaps into the gulf. many of the fearful passes of the alps have their local tragedies of this sort, and i was not disposed to add another. we soon climbed to the foot of the glacier. we have come to a mountain of emerald. the sun is shining on it, at high noon. the melting waters have cut a glorious gateway of solid crystal: we step within and beneath the arch. a ledge of ice affords a standing place for the cool traveller who may plant his pike staff firmly and look over into the depths where the torrent has wrought its passage and from which the mists are curling upwards. the sunlight streams through the blue domes of these caverns, long icicles sparkle in the roof, and jewels, crowns and thrones of ice are all about me in this crystal cave. its outer surface is remarkable for the purity of the ice, its perfect freedom from that deposit of earth and broken stone which mars the beauty of most of the glaciers of switzerland. great white wreaths are twisted on its brow, and on its bosom palaces and towers are brilliant in the sunlight; and from the side of it the well-horn and wetter-horn rise like giants from their bed, and stretch themselves away into the clouds. no sight among the alps had so charmed me with its beauty and sublimity. these hills of pure ice, this great gateway only less bright in the sun than the gates of pearl, cold indeed, but with flowers and evergreens cheating the senses into the feeling that this is not real, it must be a reproduction of fabled palaces and hills of diamonds, and mountains of light. i am sure that i do not exaggerate: the memory of it now that i recur to it after many days is of great glory, such as the eye never can see out of switzerland, and the forms of beauty and the thoughts of majesty, awakened as i stood before and beneath and upon this glacier, must remain among the latest images that will fade from the soul. excited by what i had seen and mindless of the path by which i had ascended, i threw myself back upon my alpen-stock and slid down the face of a long shelving rock, leaping when i could, and gliding when the way was smooth, and reached the bridge and the ravine in safety, though the guides insisted that the longest way around was the surest way down. we are now at the foot of lofty mountains. the warm sun is loosening the masses of snow and ice and we are constantly hearing the roar of the avalanches. at first it startles us, as if behind the clear blue sky above us there is a gathering storm: the sound comes rushing down and multiplied by echoes themselves re-echoed from the surrounding hills, the thunder is forgotten in the majesty of this music of the mountains. we see nothing from which these voices came. there are valleys beyond these peaks where perhaps the foot of man has never trod, and he who directs the thunderbolt when it falls, is guiding these ice-falls into the depths of some abyss where they may not crush even one of the least of the creatures of his care. it is grand to hear them and feel that they will not come nigh us. our path is now so far from the base of this precipitous mountain that if those snow caps fall, and we are constantly wishing that they would, we should be in no peril, and so we ride on with hearts full of worship, rejoicing in the thoughts of him who built these high places, and whose praise is uttered in the silence of all these speechless peaks, and shouted in the avalanche in tones which seem to be reverberated all around the world. one of our own poets, with a soul in harmony with the greatness as well as the beauty of this scenery, exclaims in view of these towering heights-- eternal pyramids, built not with hands, from linked foundations that deep-hidden lie, ye rise apart, and each a wonder stands! your marble peaks, that pierce the clouds so high, seem holding up the curtain of the sky. and there, sublime and solemn, have ye stood while crumbling time, o'erawed, passed reverent by-- since nature's resurrection from the flood, since earth, new-born, again received god's plaudit, "good!" * vast as mysterious, beautiful as grand! forever looking into heaven's clear face, types of sublimest faith, unmoved ye stand, while tortured torrents rave along your base: silent yourselves, while, loosed from its high place, headlong the avalanche loud thundering leaps! like a foul spirit, maddened by disgrace, that in its fall the souls of thousands sweeps into perdition's gulf, down ruin's slippery steeps. dread monuments of your creator's power! when egypt's pyramids shall mouldering fall, in undiminished glory ye shall tower, and still the reverent heart to worship call, yourselves a hymn of praise perpetual; and if at last, when rent is law's great chain, ye with material things must perish all, thoughts which ye have inspired, not born in vain, in immaterial minds for aye shall live again. my mind was full of such thoughts as these, so finely clothed in mrs. kinney's words, when i met a party, of ladies and gentlemen, and one of the ladies was borne along in a chair, with a babe in her arms! here was a contrast, and a suggestive sight. it was certainly the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, but i could readily understand that having overcome every obstacle in her strong desire to see the alps, and to see them now, she was enjoying them perhaps more than any one of the group around her. and i did not fail to admire the energy of soul that in its love of nature, and its thirsting after these mighty manifestations of power and beauty, was equal to all the difficulties that opposed her way. whether ladies may make these difficult passes, which must be made to see the inner life and real character of switzerland, is merely a question of dollars and cents. the feeblest may be borne as tenderly as this infant was on its mother's breast, and the most delicate will gather health and strength from the bracing mountain air, and new life will be inspired in the midst of these exciting scenes. to see switzerland on wheels is impracticable. its brightest glories are hid away in regions of perpetual ice and snow, where no traveller passes except to _see_. the highways of trade are not here. this is a secret place of the most high, where from the foundation of the world, he has wrapt himself in storms and clouds, and thundered among the hills, and has been admired only by those who have come here expressly to behold his works. the solitude of such scenery adds intensely to the sense of the sublime. mountains all around us and god! to be alone with him anywhere is to be near him: in the midnight, or on the ocean or the desert, it is a heart-luxury to feel that only god is near; that his presence fills immensity, and his spirit pervades all matter and all space. but to stand in the midst of these great alps, hoary patriarchs, monuments compared with which the pyramids are children of a day, is to stand in the high places of his dominions and to be raised by his own hand into audience with him at whose presence these mountains shall one day flow down like water and melt away. _heinrich_, my young german friend, was peopling them continually with the creatures of grecian mythology, and his classic history often led him to speak of the lofty seats of divinities where ancient poets had planted the council halls of the gods. i loved to believe that god had made these hills for himself, and as the people who dwell among them have no heart to appreciate them, pilgrims from all lands are flocking here, and offering the incense of praise at the foot of these high altars. how they do lead the soul along upward toward the great white throne! how like that throne is yonder peak in snowy purity shining now in this bright sun. it is very glorious, and no human footstep ever trod the summit. god sits there alone. let us admire and adore. he is fearful in praises, doing wonders! who is like unto him, a great god, and a great king! but this is not getting on with the journey. you have the privilege of skipping my _reflections_ as you read; but to travel without reflection, common as it is, is not my way--and if you would feel the sights that meet the eye in this world of wonders, you must indulge me in pausing now and then, to muse. all this time we have been going steadily up the great scheidek, and have now stopped at a small house, with the word tavern painted on it in two or three different languages. an apology for a dinner we got after waiting for it till an appetite for supper came. the view from this height into the grindelwald valley is enchanting. the descent is so steep that we were willing to leave the mules and walk down, holding back by the alpenstock, and resting often to enjoy the sight, into the valley below. and now we have come to another glacier, in the midst of a sunny slope, stretching down into the bosom of verdant pasturage where herds are grazing and flowers are blossoming, and women and children are laboring under a burning sun. it is hard to believe, even as we stand at the foot of it, that this is everlasting ice: a segment of the frozen zone let fall into the lap of summer, and sleeping here age after age, perishing continually, but renewed day by day, so that it seems unchanged. it is a wonderful growth and decay; and the greater wonder to my mind, and one that does not diminish, is that so much life and beauty can exist and flourish in the midst of this eternal cold.--yet there is a greater contrast even here. we are coming into the valley, and there another, called the upper glacier lies, and yet that is not to furnish the contrast of which i speak. it is in the wide and wonderful difference between this people and their country! degenerate, ignorant, begging and demoralized, this people seem, and indeed are, unworthy of such a land as this. they have a history, but switzerland was, and is not. the race has run down.--disease and hardships have reduced the stock, till now we rarely meet a fine-looking man, never a fine-looking woman, as we cross the mountains and traverse the valleys of this noble country. the vale of grindelwald, into which we have now descended, is one of the most fertile, picturesque, and quiet in switzerland. it is a place to stay in. the hotels, of which there are two, are crowded to overflowing. we sent our guide ahead to get room for us, but he failed. there was no room for us at the inn. we paused first at the _eagle_, a very good-looking establishment, and the balcony running across the front of it was filled with good-looking people--but there were as many there as the house would hold, and we had to go on to the _bear_. and the bear would not let us in. the very best the landlord could do, was to give us a room with three beds in it, in a _cottage_ across the way, where we would be quiet and comfortable. we went over. up stairs, by as dark, narrow, dirty, ricketty, dangerous and disagreeable a passage as i had made among the mountains, we were led by a tall, skinny, slatternly woman, with a tallow candle in her fingers, and shown into our treble chamber. for the first time we were in such a house as the better class of peasants occupy in switzerland. it had been taken by the proprietor of the hotel, as a sort of makeshift when his hotel was overflowing--the lower part of it was his bake and wash house, and this room was reserved for lodgings. i was worn out with the journey of the day, and glad enough to stretch myself on any thing that ventured to call itself a bed. the walls of the chamber around and above were rude boards, and the bare floor had been trodden a hundred years without feeling. the furniture was a mixture of the broken chairs of the hotel and the superannuated relics of the cottage, an amusing study, which helped to pass away half an hour, while our prison keeper, the ugly old woman, was scaring up something for us to eat. bread and milk, with some cheese so strong that we begged her to take it off, made a frugal repast, but sweet to a hungry man: this mountaineering does give a man an appetite--and then he sleeps so well after eating. alas! my dreams were short; a band of bloodthirsty villains attacked me in the dead of night, and for four hours i fought them tooth and nail. the battle made real the poet's description of another scene-- "though hundreds, thousands bleed, still hundreds, thousands, more succeed." how many of the foe found that night a bed of death in my bed, i cannot say, as we took no account of the slain, but the conflict was sanguinary and the destruction of life was immense. the sun rose upon the battle field, but it was hard to say which was the victor. exhausted quite as much by the night's exertions as the travels of the previous day, i rose to address myself to the journey. the rapacious landlord of the bear charged us the same price for our lodgings that was paid by those who had the best rooms in his house, and i told him we were willing to pay him for the privilege of hunting in his grounds, which we had greatly enjoyed for several hours. he was too slow to take my meaning, but when he did, he had no idea there was any harm in a few fleas. all these mountain sides are covered with the huts of the shepherds, where during a part of the year a man remains to tend the flocks, and he takes with him some coarse food to last him during the months of his stay. the shepherds and their families live in the midst of their dogs and cattle, and fleas are no worse to them than they are to us. it only served to amuse the landlord of the _bear_, when we related to him the sufferings of the night, and besought him never to expose travellers to such annoyances again. the ascent of the _faulhorn_ is made from grindelwald. it is a mountain eight thousand feet high, and the view from the summit is said to be an ample reward for the five hours' walk or ride which is necessary to gain it. the long and glorious range of the bernese alps stands majestically in sight, and there are not wanting those who declare the prospect superior to that which is had on the rigi. i took it on trust, and having loftier summits still before me, was willing to leave the faulhorn. and i was willing to leave grindelwald too--glad to escape the scene of my midnight sufferings, but i doubt not that at the _eagle_ (and not at the bear) we might have spent a day or two very pleasantly in this charming vale. and how soon are these little vexations of life forgotten. they are worth mentioning only to remind us how foolish it is to be vexed at trifles, which in a single day are with the things that happened a hundred years ago. thus moralizing and half sorry that i had made any complaint of my quarters for the night, i mounted my horse and set off to cross _the wengern alp._ the ride through the vale in the early morning was refreshing. parties of travellers were emerging from cottages where they had found beds, and winding their way by the bridle paths, in various directions, on foot and on horseback, all seeking to see the world of switzerland, and all enjoying themselves with the various degrees of ability which had been given them. we crossed the lesser _sheideck_, and stopped on the ridge of it at a small house of refreshment to eat alpine strawberries and milk. the berries are small and have very little of the strawberry taste, but are quite a treat in their way. they were apparently more abundant here than we had seen them elsewhere, and with plenty of milk they made a capital lunch. well for us that we had the milk before a dirty boy who was playing at the door when we came up, plunged his mouth and nose into the milkpan and took a long drink, only withdrawing when his father wished to dip some out for a lady who had just arrived. had she seen the operation, she would have declined the draught, but where "ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise." we rested a few moments only at this chalet, and then pushed on, passing a forest, or the ruins of a forest, which the avalanches had mown down as grass. the stumps, and here and there a scraggy tree were the witnesses of the desolation that had been wrought. from the height we are crossing we have one of the most magnificent of alpine views. the jungfrau stands before us clad in white raiment, beautiful as a bride adorned for her husband: in the sunlight she is dazzling and seems so near to heaven, and so pure in her vestal robes, that we are willing to believe the gateway must be there. the name of this mountain jungfrau, or the virgin, is given, on account of the peculiar beauty and purity of the peak which until had never been sullied by the foot of man. rising like a pyramid above the surrounding heights thirteen thousand seven hundred and forty-eight feet, and seeming to be as smooth as if cut with a chisel out of solid marble, she stands there sublimely beautiful, to be gazed at and admired. lord byron has made this region the scene of some of his most terrible passages, and i was forcibly impressed as i read them with the _contrast_, not the similarity, between his emotions and my own in the midst of these mountains. here he conceived some of those images never read in his manfred without a shudder. in his journal he says "the clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the ocean of hell during a spring-tide--it was white and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance." then in manfred he does it into verse: "the mists boil up around the glaciers: clouds rise curling fast beneath me white and sulphury, like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell whose every wave breaks on a living shore, heap'd with the damn'd like pebbles." none but a mind surcharged with horrors, a mind which all bad things inhabit, could find such images to convey its emotions in view of these sights of grandeur, beauty, and glory. the mists were curling along up the precipices as i have seen incense in a great cathedral, mounting the lofty columns, and curling among the arches, a symbol of the praise that goes up from the hearts of worshippers to the god of heaven. these white clouds, not "sulphury"--so far from being suggestive of hell-waves, were heavenly robes rather, and as the sun now nearly at noon, was filling them with light, i loved to watch them, and then look away up to the summit of the mountains around me, rejoicing in the manifestations which the king of kings was making of himself in this dwelling among the munitions of rocks. with these thoughts full on me as i rode along the verge of the tremendous ravine that separates the wengern alp from the jungfrau, we reached a small inn, on the brow of the ravine, where large parties, chiefly english people, were ravening for dinner. this house has been planted here in the jungfrau, that travellers may rest themselves in its beauty, and watch for the avalanches that now and then come thundering down its precipitous sides. streams of water are in some places pouring down. the music of the fall is constantly heard, and every five or ten minutes the roar of a snow-slide thunders on the ear. few of them are seen. they break away from crags that are out of sight, and plunge into dark abysses where the eye of man does not follow them. but this is just the time of day when we might look for one, for it is past noon when the sun's power is the greatest, and if the great toppling mass which seems to be holding on with difficulty would but let go its cold death grasp and come headlong into this mighty grave at the base of the mountain, it would be a sight worth coming to switzerland to see. we watched and wished, and the more we watched, the more it would not come. during the half hour we had sat wrapped up in our blankets, gazing at the cold snow hills, and shivering in the bleak winds, the dinner had been in preparation, and despairing of getting something to see, we determined like sensible people, to have something to eat. the long table was filled with hungry travellers, and all had forgotten in the enjoyment of dinner the wonders of the alps, when suddenly the alarm was given, "_laweenen_," the "_avalanche_." servants dropped the dishes and ran, gentlemen and ladies following them rushed from the table, over chairs and each other, crowding for the doors and windows: and had there been danger of a sudden overwhelming of the house, and the destruction of all the inhabitants, we could not have fled in greater haste and confusion than we now did, to see the descending "thunderbolt of snow." all eyes were upon one point where a stream like powdered marble was pouring from one of the gullies far up the jungfrau and lodging on a ledge. it differed in no respect from a stream of snow, nor indeed from one of water which is perfectly white in the distance when a small cascade is dangling from the rocks. yet we are told, and there is no reason to doubt that this stream is made up of vast blocks of ice and masses of snow, dashed constantly into smaller fragments as it comes "rushing amain down," but still weighing each of them many tons, and capable of dealing destruction to forests and villages if they stood in its path. we looked on in silence, and with disappointment mingled with awe. the stream that had rested for a while on one ledge now began to flow again, and the roar of the torrent increased every instant, filling the air with its reverberations, which were caught by distant mountains and sent back in sharp echoes, and again in deep toned voices that seemed to shake the sky. but i was disappointed. it was just what i did not expect, although i had read enough of them to be prepared for what was to come. this was _said to be_ one of the grandest scenes this season! of course we believed it, and report it accordingly. grand indeed it was, and when we consider that at least four miles are between us and the hill side down which it is rushing, it is not surprising that the masses of ice should be blended into a steady and liquid stream. certainly i prefer to see such a torrent at a distance, to being sufficiently near it to run any risk of being buried alive in an icy grave. chapter ix. interlachen and berne. the staubach fall--lauterbrunnen--interlachen--cretins and goitre--dr. guggenbuhl--giesbach fall--berne--inquisitive lady--swiss creed--crossing the gemmi--leuchenbad baths. the staubach fall, nearly a thousand feet high, is far from being such a thing of beauty as i had hoped to find it. it comes from such a height and has so small a body of water, that it dissolves into spray, and falling upon the rocks gathers itself up again and leaps down into the valley. byron compares it to the tail of the white horse in the apocalypse. wordsworth speaks of it as a "heaven-born waterfall," and murray likens it to a "beautiful lace veil suspended from a precipice." it is just at the entrance of the village of lauterbrunnen, which lies in a valley literally gloomy and sublime. the sides of the mountains that shut it in are precipitous and so lofty that in winter the sun does not climb the eastern side till noon, and so cold is it through the summer, that only the hardiest fruits can be raised. i counted between twenty and thirty cascades leaping over the brow of these mountains and plunging into the valley. in the calm of the evening, after the sun had ceased to shine in it, i rode from the village to interlachen, and thought it the most mournfully pleasing ride in switzerland. others whom i met, and who passed me on the way, appeared to regard it as purely delightful, and perhaps few would find in it as i did, the materials of melancholy musings. but all these feelings soon gave way to those of calm enjoyment, when a weary pilgrimage of a week was brought to a close in the beautiful village of interlachen. we were at the hotel des alpes; the largest and best boarding establishment in the village, where, for a dollar a day the traveller finds every comfort that a first class hotel affords. it was a very bright day, and the sun had been shining with a ravishing clearness on the snow-white breast of the jungfrau. at the dinner-table, one of a party of ladies inquired the meaning of jungfrau, and being told that it was german for a young unmarried lady, i ventured to say that it could not be called the jungfrau to-morrow. "and why not, pray," was instantly demanded. "because," said i, "she is certainly clad in her bridal robes to-day." beyond all doubt, it is the most beautiful single mountain in switzerland. it is a calm, sweet pleasure to sit and look at her, as a bride adorned for her husband: white exceedingly; pure as the sun and snow; bright as the light, and glorious "as the gate of heaven." sometimes its lofty summit seems to be touching the vault of heaven, and i could easily imagine that angels were on it, and not far from home. the wide plain in the midst of which the village is planted is the theatre of those yearly contests of strength and skill in which the inhabitants of all the surrounding hills and valleys engage. on the overhanging heights on your right hand as we go to lauterbrunnen is the castle of _unspunnen_, to which a legend attaches that i have not time to tell. byron is said to have had this scene before him when he made his manfred. instead of telling you the doubtful story of this old castle, i would rather give you some account of a modern and more humble house on the hill. it is in sight from the plain: not an imposing structure, but so far above the vale, that you are tempted to inquire what it is, and with a real pleasure you are told it is dr. guggenbuhl's asylum for cretins. for weeks we have been pained almost daily with the sight of these miserable objects. more distressing to the eye is the victim of the _goitre_, which is a swelling on the neck, gradually enlarging with the growth of the unfortunate subject, till it hangs down on the breast, and sometimes becomes so heavy that the miserable individual is compelled to crawl on the ground. what a strange ordering of providence it is, that these beautiful valleys should be infected with such a disgusting disease. in the higher regions it is not known, but in low, damp valleys where much water remains stagnant, it abounds. and so degraded are many of the inhabitants, that some families regard it a blessing to have a case of goitre, as it gives them a claim on the charity of others. "cretinism, which occurs in the same localities as goitre, and evidently arises from the same cause, whatever it may be, is a more serious malady, inasmuch as it affects the mind. the cretin is an idiot--a melancholy spectacle--a creature who may almost be said to rank a step below a human being. there is a vacancy in his countenance; his head is disproportionately large; his limbs are stunted or crippled; he cannot articulate his words with distinctness; and there is scarcely any work which he is capable of executing. he spends his days basking in the sun, and, from its warmth, appears to derive great gratification. when a stranger appears, he becomes a clamorous and importunate beggar, assailing him with a ceaseless chattering; and the traveller is commonly glad to be rid of his hideous presence at the expense of a batz. at times the disease has such an effect on the mind, that the sufferer is unable to find his way home when within a few feet of his own door." a young swiss physician in zurich, rapidly gaining fame and fortune in his profession, one day saw a little _cretin_ near a fountain of water. his heart was touched with a sudden sympathy, not for the single unfortunate before him only, but for the thousands whom he knew to be scattered over his magnificent country. his noble heart was moved as he made an estimate of the numbers of his fellow beings in this helpless and now hopeless condition. in a single valley where some ten or fifteen thousand people live, not less than _three thousand_ cretins are found. he could not redeem them all, but could he not do something for a few of them--put a new soul into these bodies--snatch them from the lower order of creation, from a lower level than the dog or the horse, and raise them to the scale of man? it was a noble impulse; it was the beginning of a noble work. in the virtuous heroism of the hour, he resolved to give his life to the cause. such a man could not have lived even a few years in a community without gaining the affections of all the good, and when it became known that the young physician would leave zurich to study abroad the subject to which he had consecrated his powers, the poor people flocked about him, and held his knees beseeching him not to forsake them. but his resolution was taken. his observation and study taught him that in the more elevated regions of the country, he would find the only place to locate a hospital, with any hope of making improvement in the miserable cases on whom he might make his experiments. coming to this lovely vale of interlachen, and selecting a lofty and most commanding site, away above the old castle of _unspunnen_, with all the property that he possessed, and what he could obtain from the charity of those who were willing to aid him in his doubtful but philanthropic enterprise, he purchased a tract of mountain land, and built a house of refuge, a hospital for idiots. i rode a donkey up the hill, and with my german friend heinrich on one side of me, and my american friend rankin on the other, we had a delightful excursion through the forest; often emerging upon the side of the hill from which we could look off on one of the loveliest scenes, then winding our way by a most circuitous and sometimes a very steep path, we at last overcame the four miles of travel, and found ourselves at the door of the asylum. at our call a young woman, evidently not a servant, came to the door and showed us into a plainly furnished sitting room, while she retired to announce to the superintendent that strangers would be pleased to view his establishment. she returned with the register of visitors in which we were desired to write our names and address. she then carried the book to the doctor, who soon appeared, gave us a cordial greeting, and invited us to walk with him through the house. while we had been sitting there, an uproar was going on overhead, as if the floor was to be broken through. dr. guggenbuhl led us directly to the room where the riot was in progress. it was hushed as we entered. but the cause was apparent. we were in the school-room, and teachers and pupils were amusing themselves in the recess with all sorts of diverting and boisterous plays. here were thirty-seven idiots, of various ages from three to thirty, in the way of being trained to the first exercise of intelligent humanity, the art of thinking. the teachers are young women, the daughters of swiss protestant pastors chiefly, devoting themselves without fee or reward, like the sisters of charity, to this painfully disagreeable task. around the room are hung large pictures of beasts and birds, which are designed to catch the attention of the cretins, and to induce them to make inquiries. the first indication of a desire to know any thing is seized upon with avidity and stimulated by every encouragement. while we were standing there, several came in with one of the teachers from a ramble in the woods. they had been for some years in training, and were now awake to the world around them. they brought in beautiful wild flowers which they had gathered, and were delighted to show to us, describing their varieties, and exhibiting a familiarity with the study that i did not dream of its being possible for them to acquire. feeble as were the exercises of these poor things, it was a joy to know that they can be taught, and dr. g. assured me that he has had the pleasure and reward of seeing some of them so far restored to sense, that they may be expected to provide for themselves, and have some of the enjoyments of rational beings. he is obliged to use his own discretion in the admission of pupils: his house will contain but his present number, and hundreds must be denied his care, to whom he would gladly extend it, if the rich would give him the means. he devotes all his own property to their relief, and expects to give his life to this self-denying work. in reply to my inquiries if his labors were acknowledged by medical men abroad, he referred me to a score of diplomas that had been sent to him from all the leading societies on the continent of europe and in england, but i saw none from america. does not my country know, and does it not delight to honor a man whose philanthropy and genius are alike deserving the admiration of the world? among the poor idiots in this institution is one, the son of an english lord, sent far away from his native land, in the hope, faint indeed, that the wonderful skill of this heroic man may open the eyes of this child's understanding. what indeed is wealth, and title, and power, to a fool? and o how happy they, who have joyous, bright and knowing little ones, though only bread and milk to eat, and little of that. the good doctor followed us to the brow of the hill, and with us admired the lovely landscape away below, the richly tilled plain--the white cottages scattered over it, and in its midst the beautiful village--wide sheets of water around which the mountains stand and look down, solemn and grand, in their everlasting silence and gray heads: and then we pressed his hands long and earnestly, asking god to bless him, a noble specimen of a christian physician. while at interlachen we made excursions to the geisbach falls, which have the preference in my view decidedly before all others in switzerland. we also made a trip to berne, and passed a few days at the _couronne_ hotel, one of the best in the land.--every body has read of the bears of berne, and there are many lions there to see, in the museum and out. the view of the bernese alps is worth the journey to switzerland. i saw them at sunset, in glory unrivalled and indescribable. returning from berne in the diligence, an elderly english lady sitting in front of me, and hearing me converse with my friends, presumed i must be a countryman of her own, and opened a catechism as follows-- _lady._--"how long since you left england, sir?" _i._--about two months, madam. _lady._--"when do you return, sir?" _i._--i hope in the spring, madam. _lady._--"where do you spend the winter?" _i._--in syria. _lady._--"good lord, what a traveller you are!" she took a pinch of snuff, and i resumed my notes and remarks with my companion. she listened, and grew impatient to get hold of something by which to learn who we were. she at last ventured to come toward the point by asking, "in what part of england do you reside, sir?" i am not an englishman, madam. _lady._--"bless me, and of what country are you, pray?" i am an american. _lady._--"o you are, are you? well, i would not have thought it. would it be an _indiscretion_ for me to ask you what is your name, sir?" i gave her my name of course, but she was not satisfied. "will you," said she, "have the goodness to give me your name in writing?" i handed her my card, for which she thanked me, and then added, "i know that you are making notes, and will write a book, and i shall hear of you, &c.," and so she chatted on, amusing me not a little with her loquacity. we returned to interlachen, and here a german lady who was travelling with her family, begged me to allow her son, a student of heidelberg, to join my party, to make an excursion of a few days, and meet her at geneva. to this i assented, as it would increase our number to four, and be quite agreeable. with this escort of young men, two germans and one american, i set off at daylight in the morning, to make the gemmi pass. along the shores of lake thun and by the castles of wimmis and of spietz, we entered the beautiful vale of frutigen, where the shepherds and flocks, with their crooks and their dogs, gave us a sweet picture of pastoral life. at a little tavern at which we halted for lunch, i found the following creed, framed and hung up in the dining-room. it was in french. "i believe in the swiss country, the brave mother of brave men, and in freedom only begotten daughter of helvetia, conceived in grutli, by the patriot in who suffered under the aristocrats and priests, was crucified for many centuries, died and was buried in ; after sixteen years was again raised from the dead, came back into the bosom of true patriots, from hence she shall come to judge all the wicked. i believe in the human spirit which was delivered from ignorance by knowledge and raised by education. i believe in a holy general brotherhood of the oppressed in spain, portugal, poland and italy, the communion of all patriots, the destruction of all tariffs, and the life everlasting of republics, amen." this is scarcely better than blasphemy; and it is probably one of the formulas of faith on which the continental conspiracies are formed. on and up, the road led us to some beautiful falls of water, and between perpendicular masses of rock that stood as if split asunder to give us a passage through. we reached kanderstey in the middle of the day, and met parties returning from the gemmi, who advised us against going on, as there was every prospect of a coming storm. we were determined however to press forward. i got a mule and a guide, and the young men were ready to walk. we set off in good spirits, but as soon as we struck into the defile which led up the hill, the mists began to thicken around us, and it was impossible to call it any thing but rain. three hours of steady climbing brought us to the wretched inn of schwarenbach, which werner makes the scene of a fearful tale of blood. we were wet and cold, but found no fire, and the set of men and women inside were too dirty and savage to tempt us to spend the night with them, as we were now heartily disposed to do, if the quarters had been safe. i preferred to run the risk of getting over the mountain to staying here. this was the unanimous vote, and again we plunged into the storm. dreary and dismal was the way, along by the side of the lake; the dauben see, and in the midst of broken masses of stone, strewed in wild disorder. we were near the summit when the rain became snow and hail, and the winds swept fearfully over us, so that i could not sit upon my mule. i had scarcely dismounted, before he slipped on a ledge and fell; i might have broken my neck had i fallen with him. no signs of a human habitation are on this lonely height. and if there were, we could not find them in this driving storm. there are no monks to come with their dogs to look us up, if we lose the way. we must go over and down on the other side, or perish. to return is impossible. among the scattered fragments of rocks, no path was to be seen; and we frequently feared that we had lost our way. i followed the guide to the brink of a precipice two thousand feet deep, and perpendicular. down the face of this solid rock leads the most wonderful of all the pathways in switzerland. so narrow as just to allow two mules to pass as they meet, the zigzag path is cut out of the solid rock, and covered with earth and stones to prevent our feet from slipping. the mule, by a wonderful instinct, walks upon the extreme outer verge, lest in making the sudden turn his load should strike the rock and tumble him off. sheltered somewhat from the rain by the overhanging rocks, we pursued our weary way to the bottom; and then, through mud and mire and darkness, drenched to our skins, we reached the hotel blanche at leukenbad. this is the great bathing establishment of switzerland. it is higher above the sea than the summit of any mountain in great britain. again and again it has been swept away by avalanches, and is now protected by a strong wall above the village. the water bursts out from the ground immediately in front of our hotel, and supplies the baths, which are twenty feet square, and in which a dozen or twenty men and women may be seen, for hours, sitting with their heads only out of water, reading the newspapers, or books, on little floats before them; playing chess; or whiling away the time in some more agreeable manner. the next morning, by a most romantic pathway along the borders of a vast abyss, the scene of a bloody battle in , we pursued our journey to the valley of the rhone, and taking the great simplon road, through sion, went to martigny. chapter x. monks of saint bernard. the char-a-banc--the napoleon pass--travellers in winter--monks--dogs--dinner--music--dead-house--contributions--a monk's kiss. the weather was threatening when we set off from martigny, and we had many forebodings that the dogs of saint bernard might have to look us up, if the storm should come before we reached the hospice. a char-a-banc, a narrow carriage in which we sat three in a line with the _tandem_ horses, was to convey us to the village of liddes. on leaving the valley and crossing the river drance, we soon commenced the ascent, by the side of the raving torrent, with majestic heights on either hand. a terrible tale of devastation and misery, of sublime fortitude and heroic courage, is told of the valley of bagnes, where the ice had made a mighty barrier against the descending waters, which accumulated so rapidly that a lake seven thousand feet wide was formed, and a tunnel was cut through the frozen dam with incredible toil, when it burst through and swept madly over the country below, bearing destruction upon its bosom. in two hours some four hundred houses were destroyed with thirty-four lives and half a million dollars' worth of property. we were four hours and a half getting up to liddes, where we had a wretched dinner, and then mounted horses to ride to the summit of the pass. the rain, which had been falling at intervals all the morning, was changed into snow as we got into colder regions. the path became rougher and more difficult, and it was hard to believe that even the indomitable spirit of napoleon could have carried an army with all the munitions of war, over such a route as this. yet the passage now is smooth and easy compared with what it was when in he crossed the alps. leaving the miserable village of saint pierre, through which a roman catholic procession was passing, we had an opportunity of refusing to take off our hats, though some of the peasants insisted on our so doing. we came up to heights where no trees and few shrubs were growing: flowers would sometimes put their sweet faces up through the snow and smile on us as we passed, and i stopped to gather them as emblems of beauty and happiness in the midst of desolation and death. [illustration: the hospice of st. bernard.] the most of the travellers on their upward way, were mounted on mules, but a few were on foot, and among these was one of the monks of the hospice, who with a couple of blooming swiss damsels, was returning to his quarters from a visit below. we passed one or two cottages, and a house of stone which has been built away up here for the reception of benighted travellers, and after a toilsome journey of four hours, just at sunset we came upon the hospice, a large three-story stone house, on the height of the mountain more than eight thousand feet above the sea, the highest inhabited spot in europe. to shelter those who are compelled to cross this formidable pass in winter, when the paths are far down underneath the snow, and travellers are in danger of being overtaken by storms, or overcome with fatigue and sinking in the depths of the drifts, this _hospice_ has been founded and sustained. in the summer season, as now, it is merely a large hotel, where pleasure parties are drawn by curiosity to visit the monks and their establishment, famed the world over for its hospitality and self-denying charity. the snow was falling fast as we ascended the rugged pass, and at least six inches of it lay on the ground at the top. i was glad to have reached it, in the midst of such a storm. it gave me a vivid picture of the hospice when its walls and cheerful fires and kind sympathies are needed for worn and exhausted pilgrims. such were some who arrived here this evening. father maillard, a young monk, received us at the door, and after pleasing salutations conducted us to our chambers, plainly furnished apartments with no carpets on the floor, but with good beds. the house was very cold. as the season is not yet far advanced, perhaps their winter fires were not kindled, and as no fuel is to be had except what is brought up from below on the backs of horses, it is well for the monks to be chary of its use. our host led us to the chamber in which napoleon slept when he was here, and my young german friend occupied the same bed in which the emperor lay. he did not tell me in the morning that his dreams were any better than mine, though i had but a humble pilgrim's. after we had taken possession of our quarters, we were at liberty to survey the establishment. we began at the kitchen, where a small army of servants were preparing dinner, over immense cooking stoves. the house is fitted up to lodge seventy guests, but oftentimes a hundred and even five hundred have been known to be here at one time. to get dinner for such a host, in a house so many miles above the rest of the world, is no small affair. we came up to the cabinet, enriched with a thousand curious objects of nature and art, many of them presented by travellers grateful for kindness they had received, and some of them relics of the old romans who once had a temple to jupiter on this spot. the reception room, which was also a sitting and dining room, was now rapidly filling up with travellers, arriving at nightfall. one english lady, overcome with the exertion of climbing the hill on horseback, sank upon the floor and fainted as soon as she was brought in. a gentleman who had but little more nerve in him, was also exhausted. the kind-hearted priests hastened to bring restoratives, and speedily carried off the invalids to their beds--the best place for them. it was quite late, certainly seven in the evening before dinner was served, and with edged appetites, such as only mountain climbing in snow time can set, we were ready at the call. the monks wait upon their guests, girded with a napkin, taking the place of servants, and thus showing, or making a show of humility. it was not pleasant to my feelings to have a st. augustine monk, in the habit of his order, a black cloth frock reaching to his feet, and buttoned, with a white band around his neck, and passing down in front and behind to his girdle, now standing behind me while i was eating, offering to change my plate, and serving me with an alacrity worth imitating by those whose business it is to wait on table. and when i said, "thank you, father," in italian, it was no more than the tribute of respect due to a gentleman of education and taste, whose religion had condemned him to such a life as this. father maillard presided at the table, and was very conversable with the guests; cheerfully imparting such information as we desired. of the eight or ten monks here, not one of then speaks the english language; but the french, italian and german are all in use among them. i inquired of father maillard if those terrible disasters of which we formerly read so much, travellers perishing in the snow, are of frequent occurrence in late years. he told me that rarely, i think he said never, does a winter pass, without some accident of the sort. hundreds of the peasantry, engaged in trade, or for the sake of visiting friends, will make the pass, and though the paths are marked by high poles set up in summer, these are sometimes completely buried under mountains of snow, and the poor traveller loses his way and sinks as he would in the sea. he also told me that after his brethren reside in this cold climate for a few years, they find their health giving way and they are obliged to retire to some other field of labor, and usually with broken constitutions. yet there are always some who are willing, at this hazard, to devote the best years of their life to the noble work of saving the lives of others. honor to the men, whether their faith be ours or not. our dinner, this being our only dinner where monks were our hosts and servants, is worth being reported. we had no printed bill of fare; but my young friends helped me to make one out the next day as follows: . vermicelli soup. . beef a la mode. . potatoes. . roast lamb. . roast veal stuffed. . dessert of nuts, figs, cheese, &c. this with plenty of wine, for which the cellars of st. bernard are famous, was dinner and supper enough for any, certainly we were prepared to do it justice, as to a table spread in the wilderness. after dinner, the party now numbering fifty or more, assembled from the two or three refectories, in the drawing-room, and the many languages spoken gave us a small idea of babel. one of the priests took his seat at a poor piano, sadly out of tune; and commenced playing some lively airs. the two swiss maidens who had come up with him to visit the hospice, stood one on each side of him, at the piano, and sang with great glee to his music, and at the close of every song, the party applauded with hearty clapping of hands, that would have pleased mario and grisi. i asked father maillard, who stood by me all the evening, and with whom i formed a very pleasant acquaintance, if they had such gay times every night. he said that during the summer travel they had many pleasant people who enjoyed themselves much during their brief visit. we certainly did. and at an hour later than usual we retired to our chambers. it was so cold that i had to take my glasgow blanket and wrap myself well up in it before turning in, but i slept soundly, and was awakened by the convent bell, before daylight, calling the monks to morning prayers. i rose, and hastily dressing, hurried to the chapel. the priests, the servants, and thirty or forty muleteers who had come with the travellers were on their knees on the stone floor of a pretty little chapel, devoutly worshipping. none of the travellers were here: but those who entertained and served them, had left their beds before dawn to pray. breakfast was not prepared for all at once, but each person as he was ready called for his coffee and rolls, and they were immediately brought. the celebrated dogs of st. bernard were playing in the snow as i stepped out after breakfast: a noble set of fellows they were, and invested with a sort of romantic nobility, when we thought of them ploughing their way through drifts, leading on the search for lost travellers, and carrying on their necks a basket of bread and wine which may be as life to the dead. the dead! come and see them. close by the hospice is a square stone house, into which are carried the lifeless bodies of those who perish in the snow, and are found by the dogs, or on the melting of the snow in the summer. they cannot dig graves on these rocky heights, and it is always so cold that the bodies do not rot, but they are placed in this charnel-house just as they are found, and are left to dry up and gradually to turn to dust. i counted thirty skulls lying on the ground in the midst of ribs, arms and legs; and twenty skeletons were standing around the sides of the room, a ghastly sight. in one corner a dead mother held the bones of her dead child in her arms: as she perished so she stood, to be recognized if it might be, by anxious friends, but none had ever come to claim her. what a tale of tender and tragic interest, we read in these bones. sad, and sickening the sight is, and i am willing to get away. father maillard walked with me into the chapel, showed me the paintings, and the monument of gen. dessaix, and when i asked him for the box into which alms are put, he pointed to it, and hastened away that he might not see what i put in. they make no charge for entertaining travellers, but every honest man will give at least as much in the way of a donation as he would pay at a hotel. my friend, as i now call him, father maillard, embraced me tenderly, and even kissed me, when i bade him farewell, and mounting my horse, set off at eight in the morning, with a bright sunshine, to descend the mountain. chapter xi. first sight of mont blanc. the host of martigny--vale of the drance--mount rosa--tete noire--col de balm--the monarch of the alps. "bring me for my ride to-morrow the _easiest_ of all the mules in martigny," i said to antonio, on the evening after my return from the pass of st. bernard. i was knocked up nearly, done over certainly, and contemplated another trip with a sort of shrink. but there is nothing in martigny to see, after you have looked at the measures of the various heights to which the water has risen in times of inundation, to which these valley-villages are sadly subject. so in the morning--a bright glad day it was--antonio came in to tell me that he had a lady's mule for me, so easy i should be in danger of falling asleep on his back; but this hazard i was willing to risk. the past few days of walking and riding had made me so stiff in the joints that i was awkward about mounting, and my host of the _poste_, a huge man as well as an admirable publican, put his hands under my shoulders, and with all ease placed me astride of the beast in a moment. the feat was received with applause by a score of rough-looking peasants, guides, beggars, &c., of whom there are plenty in this unwholesome valley; and we were off for the vale of chamouni. following up the river drance, we turned off to the right, and slowly worked our way by a bad pathway, meeting people now and then coming down with their truck to sell below. one man had a log of wood with a string tied around it, dragging it behind him, women with baskets of knick-knacks, all intent upon driving a trade in a very small way, but industriously, and that commends a people to you wherever you see them. on the left were terrible precipices, along the edge of which the path often led us; till we came to a lovely reach of pasturages, a wide plain where cottages were scattered, and flocks were grazing--a peaceful scene in the midst of rugged mountains. crossing this plain we ascended the forclaz, and from the ridge looked back on the valley of the rhone. the great road over the simplon stretches for many a long mile up this vale, and sion in the distance is seen; and around us more than fifty snowy peaks of the alps with the morning sun gilding their crowns. among them, but in beauty above them all is mount rosa, admired even more than mont blanc; and now that peculiar tint of pink was spread all over it with uncommon lustre. "great glory" was the exclamation which often rose to my lips as from one and another point of observation i looked at these white mountains, and the "excessive brightness" blazing from every summit. but we cannot always be on the mountain tops looking at still higher mountains. we descend into the valley of trient, into which a glacier extends, bringing its perpetual ice into the bosom of a sweet vale, where green meadows were rejoicing, and the peasants were busy with a scant harvest. we have our choice of two roads from this valley to chamouni. the one by the _tete noire_ is the easiest, and we resolved in the freshness of our strength to take this road first, and having pursued it to the _tete_, to enjoy the view, and then come back and go by the col de balm. by this extra effort we accomplished a noble day's work, and were richly repaid for the fatigue. in no part of switzerland are the precipices grander and more fearful, and for an hour we rode along the edge; and when the rocks shoot out over the path, a tunnel or gallery as they call it, is cut through; and near by a rude inscription cut into the rock celebrates an english lady who contributed something to improve the pass. the _tete_ or head, black head, is given to the dark mountain, whose overhanging rocks present a gloomy front which has given its name to this narrow defile. hundreds of feet down in the dark abyss on whose verge we are travelling, the trient is roaring and leaping along its rocky way to the rhone. at every turn in our zigzag single-file march, we are tempted to pause and study the scenes of sublime and terrible that break upon us: for when we are in no danger ourselves, there is a fascination in looking upon scenes where the fearful makes us shudder. but we returned from these out-of-the-way places and were at noon in the valley of trient again, gazing at the lofty crags from which escher de berg fell in , when, like many more fortunate travellers, he disregarded the advice of his guides, and lost his life in showing his temerity and strength in making a leap. the ascent of the col de balm has been described by the most of travellers as one of the most difficult, and we are told it seems incredible that mules can work their way up where travellers are obliged to climb by the roots and shrubs. but over this hill lies the road to chamouni, and over this hill we are going. for an hour we did have hard work, and heinrich and i amused ourselves with digging up some greek roots, while the mules were slowly picking their way among the stones up a path sometimes all but perpendicular. and when at last we emerged from the forest, and reached the high pasturages, we had still a long hour of travel before us, through the open country. our party had been enlarged during the morning by the accession of others on the same route, and as we were nearing the ridge, there began to be quite a strife among us as to whose eyes should have the first sight of mont blanc. for a month we had been on and under the mountains of switzerland; gazing successively upon higher and yet higher heights; and when the jungfrau, and mount rosa, and other of the lesser kings of the country had stood before us, we could not believe that any other could be a monarch in the midst of such mountains as these. but mont blanc was always to come. it was the last, for we had seen them all, rejoiced in them all, looked up through them all to him who holds them in his hand, and counts them only as dust in the balance; and still one more wonderful than they was just before us, on the other side of the ridge, and in a few moments more would stand up and meet us face to face. over the pasturages there were many paths, and we scattered in our attempts to gain upon each other. the mules seemed to catch somewhat of the inspiration of the occasion, and did their best, till we came out together, neck and neck, and we stood on the summit, with the vale of chamouni, the steeple-like _aiguilles_ of charmoz and midi, argentiere and verte, and others shooting up cold and black, sentinels around the hoary old monarch of the alps lying there with a crown of mist on his head, which rises as we look at it, and mont blanc is before us. "disappointed of course," you say. perhaps so. it does not stand in the middle of a plain, and rise right up like a pyramid, till its apex touches the blue sky. in fact, you must be assured by your guide that the round summit to the south of two or three that seem to be higher is actually mont blanc, the loftiest of them all; and as you sit here and take in the wonderful panorama of the glaciers, needles, and majestic summits, the grandeur gradually steals into your soul and takes quiet possession. i wanted to be still and absorb the scene, which i should soon leave and never see again. i would expose my heart to it, till a sort of daguerreotype was made, which i could carry with me, and look at when i should sit down at niagara, or among the white hills of new hampshire. [illustration: chamouni and mt. blanc.] "'pon my honor, 'tis very fine," said a very red-faced, red-whiskered englishman, who had followed me to my solitary stand-point. "what do you think of it? is it not fine: very fine?" and so he kept chattering on, till i crept off gently a few rods, and again essayed to be alone. but my tormentor followed up, and renewed his attack, as if it were impossible for him to see the prospect with any satisfaction unless he could keep talking to somebody all the while. a small house of entertainment stands here, and while my englishman went in to have some brandy and water, i managed to get a few moments of undisturbed possession of the scene. of all the points of observation in this country of stupendous scenes, there is no one that furnishes a more sublime and glorious spectacle than this. it is the crowning hour of the tour of switzerland. i felt that i had reached the climax, and with reverence i could make a parody on the words of old simeon. all my feelings have been of reverence in this country. the alps and god have been around me for a month, and my soul has been rising in high converse with him who covers these hills with his presence, and is glorious in the solitudes of these vales. and now as i look off at these glistening glaciers, so many miles of resplendent ice, a _mer de glace_, a sea of glass, lying among those mountains, and extending far down into the vales below; when i look up at these precipitous peaks actually piercing the clouds, and then at the solemn brows of those giant mountains, where the foot of man has seldom trod, and the glory of god is forever shining, i feel a sense of the presence of the infinite and eternal as no other scene has ever yet awakened in my soul. with the disciples on another mount, i feel "it is good to be here." that was my first sight of mont blanc. the day could not have been more favorable, and that evening as the sun went down, i stood in the vale of chamouni and saw his last rays lingering on the summit, the stars trooping around it at night, and the next morning before sunrise i was out again to see the first beams of day as they kissed his brow. awake, my soul! not only passive praise thou owest; not alone these swelling tears, mute thanks and secret ecstacy! awake, voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake! green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.-- thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale! o struggling with the darkness all the night, and visited all night by troops of stars, or when they climb the sky, or when they sink; companion of the morning-star at dawn, thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn co-herald! wake, o! wake, and utter praise! who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? who filled thy countenance with rosy light? who made thee parent of perpetual streams? and you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad, who called you forth from night and utter death, from dark and icy caverns called you forth, down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, forever shattered, and the same forever? who gave you your invulnerable life, your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, unceasing thunder, and eternal foam? and who commanded, (and the silence came,) "here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?"-- ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow adown enormous ravines slope amain! torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, and stopped at once amid their maddest plunge! motionless torrents! silent cataracts! who made you glorious as the gates of heaven beneath the keen full moon? who bade the sun clothe you with rainbows? who, with living flowers of loveliest hue, spread garlands at your feet? god! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, answer, and the ice-plains echo, god!-- god! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice! ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! and they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, and in their perilous fall shall thunder, god!-- ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost, ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest, ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm, ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds, ye signs and wonders of the element, utter forth, god! and fill the hills with praise.-- once more, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks, oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, shoots downward glittering through the pure serene, into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast.-- thou too, again, stupendous mountain thou that, as i raise my head, awhile bowed low in adoration upward from thy base, slow travelling, with dim eyes suffused with tears, solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, to rise before me,--rise, o! ever rise, rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth! thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven. great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, and tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, earth, with her thousand voices, praises god. _coleridge._ chapter xii. geneva. a good house--prisoner of chillon--calvin--dr. malan--dr. gaussen--col. tronchin--the cemetery. the _hotel des bergues_ stands on the lake of geneva, just where the "arrowy rhone" shoots out from its bosom. this is one of the finest hotels in europe, and with the _trois couronnes_ at vevay, may fairly challenge comparison with any other. i brought up at this house from the vale of chamouni. the dismal rain through which i had been riding on a chill autumn day, had increased to a storm, and the old town, that is gloomy enough at any time, was peculiarly uninviting on its first appearance. but this city i had longed to visit, even from the time that i read in cæsar's commentaries, "the farthest town of the allobroges and the nearest to the frontier of the helvetii, is geneva." julius cæsar took possession of it, and the remains of his erections are to be seen at the present day. the christian religion was introduced in the fifth century, and bishops appointed by the pope by degrees became lords temporal as well as spiritual, which they are very apt to do as fast and as far as they can get the power. the right of naming the bishops, about the year , fell into the hands of the ducal house of savoy, and their creatures became despots of the reddest dye. their oppressions grew to be so intolerable that the citizens rebelled. a bloody persecution ensued. the chapter of its history is among the darkest of the records of popery. the deeds of patriotic heroism which were brought out have scarcely a parallel. one citizen cut his own tongue out with a razor, lest the torture should compel him to betray his friends. bonnivard became the chained prisoner of chillon. but his story is not to be passed over without being told. "in , _francois bonnivard, prior of saint victor_, was seized on the jorat by a band of marauders, whose chief was the sieur de beaufort, governor of chillon, for his bitter enemy, the duke of savoy. as a punishment for his heroic defence of the liberty of geneva, he was condemned by the petty tyrant to perpetual captivity in the castle. here he remained during seven years, buried alive in a dungeon on a level with the waters of the lake, and fastened by a chain round his body to a ring still remaining on one of the pillars. irritated to agony by sad reflections on his own and his adopted country's slavery, he wore away the stone floor beneath his feet, by constantly pacing to and fro, like a wild beast, from end to end of its cage. at length, in , the bernese, with their allies of geneva, effected the conquest of the pays du vaud. chillon was the last place which held out for duke charles v. of savoy, but the bernese having laid siege to it by land, while the genevese gave an assault by water, the garrison was forced to a surrender, and bonnivard, with several other prisoners, was restored to liberty. he had left geneva a roman catholic state, under the domination of the house of savoy, he found her a free republic, openly professing the reformed religion. the citizens were by no means backward in recompensing him for past sufferings; in june, , he was admitted to the highest privileges of the state, and presented with the house previously inhabited by the roman catholic vice-general, besides an annual pension of two hundred crowns of gold, so long as he chose to dwell there." then came the reformation. the people, long sick of roman despotism and disgusted with romish wickedness, embraced the doctrines of the reformers, and geneva became doubly free. john calvin came in , and protestants from other countries fled to geneva as an asylum from persecution. his genius and austere morals, contrasted with the dissoluteness of the romish clergy, gave him unbounded influence in the state. he was called the pope, and geneva the rome of protestantism. john knox was here with him, and hundreds of distinguished men whose principles made it necessary for them to fly from england, france, spain and italy. through the seventeenth century the city had rest, and made great progress in arts and science; the resort of men of learning, and distinguished for the industry and thrift of its inhabitants. the eighteenth century was marked with insurrections, distractions, civil wars and revolution. the scenes of paris were performed in geneva. the blood of her best citizens was shed by the hands of the mob, in the name of liberty. then the city was grafted upon france, and so remained till , when with the aid of austria, it became once more a genevan republic. the next year it became one of the cantons of switzerland, but the city held on to its aristocratic constitution. still it flourished in peace and progress, till the contest between the radical and conservative parties broke out in , and resulted in the revision of the constitution, but not in the establishment of confidence and quiet. in a fierce struggle occurred, still fresh in every memory, which ended in the establishment of the present constitution, on a democratic basis, and in giving an impulse to the attempt to overturn the thrones of despotism in europe; a noble but abortive effort, which failed in . geneva, under john calvin, called europe to religious liberty in , and the people heard the call. if another john calvin had been in geneva in , we should not have been compelled to deplore the miscarriage of that struggle in europe for constitutional liberty, which shook every government, but eventuated in giving a charter to the people of but a single state. i had been wandering a month among the mountains of switzerland, and had not had a line from home. the bankers closed their offices at four o'clock and it was nearly five when we arrived. disappointed and grieved i returned to the hotel, the more sad as to-morrow is to be the sabbath, and i shall not be able to get my letters till monday. it occurred to me that something might have been sent for me to the care of a venerable and well-known clergyman of geneva, whom i should not fail to see, and i would therefore call at once upon him, without ceremony. i soon found his gate. a woman at the lodge answered the bell and took my card up to the house with a message to ask if anything had been left for me; for it was late and saturday evening, and i would not intrude upon the pastor at such an hour. in a few moments the good man stood on the walk, under the trees, with a lantern in his hand; a tall old man, with long grey hair hanging in curls, and a countenance shining with love. he put out his hands and throwing one arm around me drew me to him, as if i were his only son, and kissed me. it was the rev. dr. cæsar malan, and a welcome such as a pilgrim in a strange land can feel. many pleasant hours i had with his interesting family, now reduced by the frequent inroads which my countrymen have made upon it. no less than three of them have repaid this good man's hospitality by carrying off his daughters; and the last but one had been taken but a few days before i arrived. these deeds were done by clergymen from america, and when i was asked in a social gathering of genevan ladies, if my countrymen were obliged to go abroad for their wives, i could only say that no one would blame them for taking a wife at a venture when they come to geneva. the gentle gaussen, author of an excellent work on the inspiration of the scriptures, charmed me with his sweet christian spirit, and his broad-hearted charity, so happily in contrast with much of the foreign half-reformed religion, which in england and france still abounds. d'aubigne was not at home. col. tronchin has a lovely residence out of town and overlooking the lake. he sustains at his own charges an asylum for convalescing invalids, one of the most interesting charities i have ever seen. he took me through the establishment, and i felt, as i never did before, what a blessedness it is to have wealth and a heart to use it for the sake of those who are suffering. a young woman sitting at the door and enjoying the sunshine, pale and thin, but smiling with the prospect of returning health, rose, when he stopped and asked her if she was getting well, and blessed him for her comforts, with looks and words of gratitude that must have been a rich reward. this home for the poor is charmingly situated in the midst of shade-trees, with walks and beds of flowers, and furnished with everything to promote the health and comfort of the patients, who come here when discharged from the hospitals as no longer requiring medical aid, and are yet unable to labor. in the pure air of this rural abode, and surrounded with all the good things which this benevolent man has provided, twenty-five invalids are supported at his expense, and as soon as one departs, another is ready and waiting to come in. indeed it occurred to me that many of them would be slow to get well if they must be banished from this lovely spot to a cellar or garret in a crowded street, to toil and sicken again. begging in the streets is forbidden, and in the whole of switzerland you may distinguish between the protestant and catholic cantons, by the fact that few beggars are in the former, compared with the crowds that infest the latter, annoying and often disgusting the traveller. the morals of the two religions are as strikingly contrasted. the catholics accuse the genevese females of prudery, and sismondi tells us that the young women are "pious, well brought up, prudent and good managers." in the cemetery i found the grave of sir humphrey davy and pictet and other distinguished men, foreigners and citizens, but no man knows where calvin is buried. he forbade any monument to be erected to mark the spot, and so it has passed from the knowledge of man. but in the old cathedral, standing on the spot where once stood a pagan temple of apollo, is the pulpit in which calvin and knox and beza, farel and viret, and a long line of glorious men, have preached: and this noble building, presenting many fine specimens of architecture and sculpture of the middle ages, now wrested from the hands of popery, is a fitting monument to the memory of the reformers. in the public library founded by _bonnivard_, the prisoner of chillon, i saw the manuscripts and portraits of all the genevan reformers, four hundred of the mss. being calvin's, and a collection of literary curiosities of unrivalled interest. there is little else to see in geneva. its attraction lies in its historic interest, its delightful situation, and good society. in and around it, all along the borders of lake leman, are sites made famous by the residence of men and women of taste and letters. chapter xiii. pictures in switzerland.[ ] waterfalls--constance--zurich--william tell--glaciers--the monarch. the waterfalls of switzerland are among its crowning glories; and of these the falls of schaffhausen are altogether the most imposing. the european, who has never worshiped at the foot of our own great cataract, looks down from the base of the castle of lauffen, after paying a franc for the privilege of getting to a standing-place; or he looks up from the opposite shore, where is reared the castle of worth, and he pronounces it magnificent. mrs. bull does not hesitate to declare it charming! mr. murray, in that everlasting red book, without which no englishman could _do_ europe--as this is the authority on which alone he ventures to admire any thing in art or nature, just as he swears only by the _times_--mr. murray, in his never-to-be-dispensed-with hand-book, informs him that this is "the finest cataract in europe," and, of course, in his opinion, it is the finest in the world. he leads the trembling traveller to the verge of the awful precipice, where, covered with spray, he may enjoy the full grandeur of this "hell of waters," and then he adds, "it is only by this close proximity, amidst the tremendous roar and the uninterrupted rush of the river, that a true notion can be formed of the stupendous nature of this cataract!" the rhine here leaps over the rocks into an abyss of fifty feet. the river is cloven in twain by a tower of rock in the centre of the stream, and the spray rises from its base in an eternal cloud. picturesque and beautiful the falls certainly are, but grandeur can hardly be affirmed of them. it was my first day of travel in switzerland when i reached them--a warm day in the summer of last year. a month of hot weather in dresden and munich had been too much for the restoring powers of the waters of baden-baden, and it was like waking up in a new world of beauty, with a new soul to love it, to find myself in the midst of this swiss scenery--the breezes of its snow hills and glaciers fanning me, and its peaks pointing skyward, where there are temples and palaces whose every dome is a sun and every pinnacle a star. but i could not be satisfied till, with the aid of two stout fellows, i made my way through the boiling waters nearly to the foot of the central tower, and there, in the toppling skiff which threatened to tip over on very gentle occasions, i looked up at the mass of waters tumbling from above. the rocks were partially covered with green shrubbery, and a scraggy tree stretched its frightful arms into the spray; but i was not disposed to climb, as some have done, to the top of the cliff, for the sake of enjoying the scene. a curious old town is schaffhausen, so named from the boat-houses, or skiff-houses, which were here erected, for the falls made this the great terminus of navigation on the rhine. we had come by diligence from basle, and after passing a night in weber's excellent hotel at the falls, we came on in the morning, and spent an hour or two looking at the ancient architecture of the town, whose buildings are adorned with such fanciful and extravagant carvings as would hardly be deemed ornamental in the fifth avenue. a very small specimen of a steamer received us now, and bore us up against a strong current. the banks on either side were green with vineyards, now loaded with unripe fruit, and in the midst of the vines the dressers were at their work. on the sloping hillsides the neat cottages of the swiss peasantry were scattered, making a picture of constant beauty through which we were passing. among our passengers were a dozen german students, with their knapsacks on their backs, making a tour of switzerland, the most of which they would perform on foot, gathering health and strength as they trudged on through the mountain passes, and studied the glacier theories on the spot. it was noon when we arrived at constance, on the lake of the same name, and a city to be forever associated with the trial and martyrdom of john huss and jerome of prague--a city on which the curse of shedding innocent blood seems resting to this day. in the loft of a long building, now standing near the water's edge, was gathered a council, in the year of our lord , over which the emperor sigismund presided, and attended by some five hundred princes, cardinals, bishops, archbishops and professors, who deposed two popes and set up another, and crowned their four years' labor of love by condemning to the flames those martyr men of god, whose names are this day fragrant in the churches of a land that was not known when huss was burning. in the midst of a cabbage garden outside the gate, yet called the huss gate, we were led to the spot where he suffered; and returning, we called at the house in which he was lodged before he was brought to trial. but the streets of the city had grass growing in them; for of the forty thousand inhabitants who once filled these houses but seven thousand remain! tenements are now tenantless that once were thronged with life. it was sad to wander by daylight through the streets without meeting a living being; and this was my experience here, and afterward in the island city of rhodes. a chain stretched across the street sustained a lantern in the centre--a very convenient substitute for lamp-posts, if there are no carriages to pass, but a very awkward arrangement for a city infested with omnibuses. another day and the diligence brought us to zurich, on the lake of the same name--the most thriving town in switzerland. here the lion-hearted reformer, zwingle--the soldier of the cross, who perished on the field of battle--preached in the cathedral, and dwelt in a house which is still standing and known as his. here lavater, the physiognomist, had a home and found a grave, over which the flowers are blooming. his was a lovely and loving spirit. switzerland, strange to say, has not given birth to poets, but she is the mother of many noble sons, and her scenery has inspired the souls of the sons of song from other climes, who have wandered here and meditated among her lakes and hills. coming into zurich, as we descended into the vale that holds the city and the lake, i had been charmed with the view; and now at the close of the next day, we were led to the height of one of the old ramparts, to behold a swiss sunset, and certified to be "one of the finest scenes in switzerland." the elevation, no longer needed for purposes of defence, has been tastefully transformed into a flower-garden. enormous shade trees are crowning the summit, and on rude benches the romantically-disposed people, citizens and strangers, are seated. as we came to the top of the hill, the god of day was coming down from the midst of a dense cloud, like a mass of molten gold distilled into a transparent globe. his liquid face was trembling; but the world below sent back a smile of gladness as the king in his glory looked down upon it. the nearer summits seemed to catch the brightness first, and then in the distance others, invisible before, stood forth in their majesty, as if called into being by his quickening beams. at our feet was the lake, like a sea of glass. the spires of the city and the sloping hills were reflected from the mirror; and all over the country side, as far as the eye could reach, were thousands of white cottages and villas, the abode of wealth and peace and love--sweet swiss homes, rejoicing in the sunshine as they send up their evening psalm of praise. it was a scene to make its impress on the memory, and to come up again and again in the far-off dreams of other lands and years. to climb the rigi, to spend the night on the top, to see the sun go down and get up in the morning, these are among the things to be done in a tour of switzerland, and all these we set off to do, taking the steamer at zurich and touching at horgen, crossing over to zug, and by steamer again to the little village of arth, which lies at the foot of the hill we are to ascend. as we were approaching the shore, the reflection of the rigi from the lake was so vivid and perfect that we could study the mountain in the water with as much satisfaction as a good-looking man contemplates his own person in a glass. every particular cliff and crag, individual trees, and winding paths, and torrent beds, which we could see above, were defined with marvelous precision below. on landing, we dispatched a fleet mountain-boy ahead of us to engage beds at the house on the summit; for so many were with us on board the steamer, and so many more were doubtless climbing from the other side at the same time, that we were likely to have a bed on the floor unless we stole a march on our fellow-travellers. most of them pushed upward from arth, while we kept upon the plain for a mile or more to the village of goldau, once the scene of a terrible catastrophe, the gloom of which still seems to be hanging over the ill-fated spot. the rossberg mountain is on the east of it, five thousand feet high, and in the year a mighty mass of it, some three miles long and a thousand feet thick, came sliding down into the valley, burying four hundred and fifty human beings in one untimely, dreadful grave. travellers, like ourselves, who were making their way among these romantic regions, were suddenly overwhelmed in the deluge of earth and stones, and the places of their burial are unknown to this day. this event happened fifty years ago; but the broad, bare strip on the mountain side, which no verdure has since clad, is an ever-present record of the awful fall; and the great rocks that are lying on the opposite side of the valley, and away up the rigi, are present witnesses of the messengers of death that came down in their wrath on that memorable day. the village church was then buried with the people who had been wont to frequent its courts, and nothing of it was ever found but the bell, which was carried a mile or more and now hangs in the steeple of another little temple filled with memorials of the ancient calamity. here we began the ascent of the rigi. some on horses, some on mules, more on foot, two or three ladies in sedan chairs, each borne by four stout men--a very lazy way of getting up hill, where health as well as pleasure is sought in travel; but every one choosing his own mode of ascent, and none having wings, we set off, as motley a party of mountain-climbers as ever undertook to scale a fortress. four hours' steady travel, pausing only to look in occasionally at the chapels in which the catholic pilgrims perform their prayers as they ascend to the church of "mary in the snow," which is about half-way up, brought us to the top where as yet the sun was half an hour high. and now, for the first time, did we know that we were in switzerland. not because we are on a very lofty mountain top--for the rigi is not quite six thousand feet high--but we are on a mountain which stands so isolated that it affords us a better view than any other point, however elevated, of the mountains, the lakes, valleys, and villages, that make this land so peculiar for its beauty and grandeur. on the west, where we gazed with the deepest emotion as soon as we planted our feet on the summit, we saw the hoary mount pilatus, and at its base the lake lucerne, the most romantic of the swiss lakes, and not exceeded by the scenery of any lake in the world. the city of lucerne sends up its towers and battlements, and the whole canton of that name is spread out, with the river reuss flowing over its bosom. at our feet, nestling under the rigi and on the borders of the lake, is the village of kussnacht, and the chapel of william tell, marking the spot where the intrepid patriot pierced the tyrant's heart with his unerring arrow. and now the descending sun is pouring a flood of golden glory over all this broad expanse of lake and forest, plain and towering hills, whose peaks are touching the blue skies, gilded with last rays of declining day. far southward we look away upon the mountains of unterwalden, of berne, and of uri, whose snow-clad summits and blue glaciers are in full view, the beautiful jungfrau rising, queen-like, in the midst of the magnificent group of sisters in white raiment. the eastern horizon is supported by the snowy peaks of the sentis, the glarnisch, and the dodi; and the two mitres start up from the midst of that region where tell and his compatriots conspired to give liberty to their native land. all around us are lakes, so strangely nestled among the mountains that they seem to be innumerable, peeping from behind the hills and forests. and now the sound of the village bells, and the alpine horn, and the evening psalm, comes stealing up the rugged sides of the rigi, and we are assured that, in this world of ice, and snow, and eternal rocks, there are human hearts all warm and musical with the love of him whose is the strength of the hills. we had a short night's sleep, for what with a late supper and a crowd of people who had no beds, our rest was broken; and just as the dawn began, a monster, with a long wooden horn, marched through the halls, startling the sleepers with its blast, and forbidding sleep to come again. we had been warned over night that, at this signal, we must wrap up and run if we would see the sun rise; and as a posted notice in french forbade the use of the bed-blankets, we hurried on our clothes, and in a few moments stood, with a hundred others, like the persian fire-worshippers, gazing eastward to catch the first glimpse of the coming king! not long had we to wait. another blast of the wooden trump gave notice of his approach, and presently a coal of fire seemed to be glowing in the crown of the mountain directly in front of us. it grew till the whole peak was ruddy with the glow, and then the great globe rose and rested on the summit! from this, as from a fount of light new-created and rejoicing in the first morning of its being, the streams of glory were poured out upon the world below and around us. peak after peak, and long mountain ranges and ridges, domes and sky-piercing needles, and fields of fresh snow, and forests of living green, began to smile in the sunlight. in the space of a brief half hour the world was lighted up for the business of another day, and when we had had a cup of wretched coffee and a bit of sour bread, we "marched down again." the steamer from lucerne, on its daily trip from that city, touches at weggis, where we awaited its coming, and were soon in the midst of the most romantic scenery in europe. from the water's edge the mountains rise perpendicularly. broken into ridges, clothed with green forests or smooth pastures, and now and then sheltering a hamlet in the openings, the mountains stand around this lake with a majesty too impressive for words. we have come into the heart of a land of heroes. the waters of this lake are like the life-blood of martyrs. this little village of gersau, on a sloping hillside, shut out from the rest of the world by these mountain ramparts, was an independent democracy of four hundred years, though its domains were only three miles by two! here, at brunnen, are painted, on the outer walls of a building on the waterside, the effigies of the three great men who, with william tell, achieved the independence of switzerland in . across the lake, away up among the ledges of the rocks, there lies a little plain, an _oasis_ in the wilderness, where, in the dead of night, the three confederates met and laid their plans for the deliverance of their country from the yoke of a foreign oppressor. that spot is grutli. it is a holy place, for liberty was there conceived, and every patriot, from whatever land he comes, is thrilled when his eye looks on it. yet not so sacred is grutli as the land upon the opposite side of the lake, where the steamer slackens its speed as we are passing a little chapel that is built upon the margin of the lake. this chapel marks the spot where william tell escaped from the boat in which he was a prisoner on his way to gessler's prison at kussnacht. it does savage violence to one's better feelings to be told that no such man as tell was ever living in this land we are now exploring. he has been our ideal of a patriot chieftain from childhood, and we are not to be cheated out of him without a struggle. skeptical critics may tell us, as they do, that tell is a myth; but we have history for our faith to lean upon, and tradition tells us that this chapel was built in , thirty-one years after the hero's death, and in presence of one hundred and fourteen persons who had known him when he was living. such is our faith, and as we are passing by the chapel, to which, even unto this day, the swiss make an annual pilgrimage and have a solemn mass performed within its narrow walls, and a sermon preached, we will tell the story of tell. when the year was coming in, albert of austria was ruling with a rod of iron over the dwellers in these mountains. he sent magistrates among them who exacted heavy taxes which they were unable to pay, and imposed arbitrary and cruel punishments upon them on slight occasions. arnold, a peasant of uterwalden, was condemned for some insignificant offence to give up a yoke of fine oxen, and the servant of the bailiff seized them while arnold was plowing with them, and said, as he drove them off, "peasants may draw the plow themselves." arnold smote the servant, breaking two of his fingers, and fled. the tyrant seized the father of arnold and put out both his eyes! such cruelties became too many and too grievous to be borne. even the women--brave souls!--refused to submit, and the wife of werner stauffacher said to her husband: "shall foreigners be masters of this soil and of our property? what are the men of the mountain good for? must we mothers nurse beggars at our breasts, and bring up our daughters to be maid-servants to foreign lords? we must put an end to this!" her husband was roused, and went to arnold, whose father's eyes had been put out, and walter furst. these three held their meetings for counsel at grutli. afterward each of them brought ten men there, who bound themselves by a great oath to deliver their land from the oppressor. this oath was taken in the night of november , . not long afterward the bailiff, herman gessler, when he saw the people more restless and bold, resolved to humble them. he placed the ducal hat of austria upon a pole, and ordered every one who passed by to bow down in reverence before it. william tell, one of the men who had taken the oath at grutli, held his head proudly erect as he passed, and when warned of the danger of such disobedience stoutly refused to bow. he was seized and carried before the bailiff, who was told that tell, the most skillful archer of uri, had refused to pay homage to the emblem of austrian power. enraged at tell's audacity, gessler exclaimed, "presumptuous archer, i will humble thee by the display of thine own skill. i will put an apple on the top of the head of thy little son; shoot it off, and you shall be pardoned!" in vain did the wretched father plead against such cruelty. he could pierce the eagle on the wing, and bring down the fleet chamois from the lofty rocks, but his arm would tremble and his eyesight fail him when he took aim at the head of his noble boy. but his remonstrances were all in vain. the boy was bound to a tree, and the apple set upon his head. the strong-hearted father took leave of his son, scarce hoping that he could spare him, and rather believing that his arrow would in another moment be rushing through his brain. with a prayer for help from him who holds the stars in his hand, and without whose providence not a sparrow falls, the wretched father drew his bow. the unerring arrow pierced the apple, and the child was saved. another arrow fell from underneath the garment of the archer as the shout of the people proclaimed the father's triumph. "what means this?" demanded the tyrant. "to pierce thy heart," replied tell, "if the other had slain my son!" gessler ordered the man to be seized and bound, and hurried off to the dungeon he had built at kussnacht. fearing to trust the guards with their prisoner--for he knew not how far the spirit of rebellion might have spread--gessler embarked in the boat with them, and hastened off lest the people should rise to the rescue of their countryman. the lake was subject then, as it is now, to sudden and fearful tempests. the wind rose and swept the waves over the boat, defying the skill of the boatmen, and threatening their speedy destruction. tell was known for his skill with a boat as well as with a bow. tyrants are always cowards, and when the tyrant saw that his own men were not able to manage the craft, he ordered tell's bonds to be removed that he might take the helm in his hand. steering the boat as near to the projecting rock of axenberg as she could run, he suddenly leaped from it to the ledge, and the force of his leap sent the boat backward upon the lake. the prisoner was free. pursuit was hopeless. he was at home among the mountains. every path was familiar to him. but vengeance would be taken on those dearer than his own life. he resolved to preserve them by the death of the monster who had sought to make him slay his own son. with the speed of the chamois he sped his way across the mountains to the very place where he was to have been carried in chains, and there awaited the coming of gessler. the tyrant came but to die. the arrow of the patriot drank his heart's blood. then the inhabitants of the mountain fastnesses flew to arms. the minions of austria were seized, and with a wonderful forbearance were not slain, but sent out of the country under an oath never to return. the king albert came to subdue the rebels. on his way he was murdered by his nephew and a band of conspirators, whom he had thought his friends. he expired at the wayside, his head being supported by a peasant woman who found him lying in his blood. the children of the murdered man and his widow, and agnes the queen of hungary, took terrible vengeance on the murderers, and, confounding the innocent with the guilty, shed blood like water. agnes was a woman-fiend. as the blood of sixty-three guiltless knights was flowing at her feet, she said: "see, now i am bathing in may-dew!" one of the most distinguished of the enemies of the king, the knight rudolf, was, at her orders, broken on the rack, and while yet living was exposed to the birds of prey. while dying, he consoled his faithful wife, who alone knelt near him, and had in vain prostrated herself in the dust at the feet of agnes, imploring her husband's pardon. but the war of oppression went on. an army marched into switzerland, and to the many thousands of their invaders the men of grutli could oppose only thirteen thousand. but they were all true men, and at morgarten, on a rosy morning in , they met the enemy and routed them utterly, after such deeds of valor as history scarcely elsewhere has recorded. this gave freedom to switzerland. of that struggle the first blow was struck by william tell when he smote gessler to the earth. at the head of the lake of lucerne, and a few miles above the chapel of tell, is the village of fluelen, at which we rest only long enough to get away, for the low grounds, where the river reuss comes down into the lake, breeds pestilence, and the inhabitants give proofs of the unhealthiness of the place by the number of cretins and goitred cases that are found among them. two miles beyond is the old town of altorf. lapped in the midst of rugged mountains, which shut down closely on every side, it is secluded from the world that is familiar with its name. here, on this village green, in front of the old tower, a fountain, surmounted by a statue, marks the spot where william tell shot the apple from the head of his son. the tree on which the ducal hat was hung by gessler, and the same to which the boy was bound, is said to have remained there three hundred years after the event. the _tower_ dates back of that time, as records still in existence prove it to be more than five hundred and fifty years old. to this day the hunters of uri come down to altorf to try their skill with the rifle, which has now taken the place of the bow and arrow. a few miles further on we came to the river reuss, in which william tell was drowned while attempting to save the life of a boy. there was something sublime in the thought that a man whose name is now identified with the patriots and heroes of the world should finally lose his life in the performance of a deed that requires more of the self-sacrificing spirit than to scale the walls of a fortress and perish in the midst of a nation's praise. the men of this region are spoken of as the finest race in switzerland. we had no reason to think them remarkable; but the women, who were making hay in the meadows while the men were off hunting, were certainly very good-looking for women who work in the fields in all weathers, braving the storms of rain and snow, tending the sheep and cattle on the hillsides, and carrying the hay on their backs to the barns. as we pressed our way up the great saint gothard road, frowning precipices rise a thousand feet high, black, jagged rocks, almost bare of vegetation, shutting out the sunlight, and making a solitude fearful and solemn, its silence rarely disturbed but by the passing traveller and the ceaseless dashing of the river, which, instead of flowing, tumbles from ledge to ledge. in the spring of the year the avalanches make the passage still more fearful. twenty or thirty thousand persons travel over this pass every year; and to keep the current in this direction, the cantons of uri and tessin built this splendid carriage-path, as smooth as a floor, and so firm in its substructures as to resist the violence of the storms and the swollen torrents that so often rush frightfully down these gorges. twice was the work swept away before this road was completed, which, it is believed, will stand while the mountains stand. so rapid is the ascent, that the road often doubles upon itself, and we are going half the time backward on our route. sometimes the road is hewn out of the solid rock in the side of the precipice, which hangs over it as a roof, and again it is carried over the roaring stream that is boiling in a gulf four hundred feet below. toiling up the gorge, with the savage wildness of the scenery becoming every moment more savage still, we reach the devil's bridge. more than five hundred years ago, an old abbot of einsiedeln built a bridge over an awful chasm here; but such is the fury of the descending stream, the whole mass of waters being beaten into foam among the rocks that lift their heads through the cataracts--such is the horrid ruggedness of the surrounding scenery, and so unlikely does it appear that human power could ever have reared a bridge over such a fearful chasm, it has been called, from time immemorial, the devil's bridge. a christian traveller would much prefer to ascribe its origin to a better source; for whatever miracle it required, we might refer it to the skill and goodness of him who hung the earth upon nothing, and holds the stars in his hand. we were quite cold when we reached the bridge, and, quitting the carriage, walked over it to study its structure, and enjoy the grandeur of a scene that has hardly an equal even in this land of the sublime and terrible. at this spot the river reuss makes a tremendous plunge at the very moment that it bends nearly in a semicircle, and a world of rocks has been hurled and heaped in the midst of the torrent, to increase the rage and roar of the waters, arrested for a moment only to gather strength for a more terrific rush into the abysses below. we approach the parapet, and look calmly over, and there, far below us, is another bridge, which, becoming useless by age and the violence of the elements, was superseded by this new and costly structure. we crossed the bridge and soon entered the long _gallery of uri_--a tunnel cut through the solid rock--a hard but the only passage, as the torrent usurps the whole of the gorge, and the precipice above admits no possible path overhead. a hundred and fifty years ago this hole was bored, and before that time the only passage was made on a shelf supported by chains let down from above, on which a single traveller could creep, if he had the nerve, in the midst of the roar and the spray of the torrent in the yawning gulf below him. to add to the gloom and terror of the scene about us, a storm, with thunder and lightning broke upon us as we emerged from this den, and right speedily set in while as yet we had no shelter. we had come into an upper valley, a vale five thousand feet above the level of the sea, where no corn grows, though the land flows with milk and honey. the cows and goats find pasture at the foot of the glaciers, and the bees, who find flowers even in these realms of eternal snow, make their nests in the stunted trees and the holes in the rocks. at andermatt, a village among the mountains, we come upon an inn whose many lighted windows invited us to seek refuge from the increasing storm, and we entered a room already thronged with travellers who had reached it before us, many of them coming down, and they were now rejoicing over a smoking supper. they made us welcome, and in the good cheer we soon forgot the fatigues and the perils of the most exciting and exhausting day we had had in switzerland. "blessed be he who first invented sleep," the weary traveller says, with sancho, whenever night comes, and wherever, if he is so happy as to have a place wherein and on to lay his head. sleep, that will not come for wooing to him who wastes his hours in idleness at home, now folds her soft arms lovingly about him, kisses his eyelids, whispers gentle memories in his soul, and dreams of the loved and the distant are his as the swift night-hours steal away. the nights are not long enough; for when the first nap is past the sun of another day is struggling to get over the hill-top and look down into the vale of andermatt! we might pursue this st. gothard highway over into italy, but we have not yet seen switzerland.--hitherto we have been traversing only the great roads of travel. now we will strike off into the regions where wheel carriages have never yet been seen. the furca pass leads off from the st. gothard road, and with a guide to pilot us, we struck into a narrow defile. away above us the blue glacier of st. anne was shining in the morning sun, and now we are at the foot of a beautiful waterfall that leaps from its bosom into the vale below. here are the remains of an awful avalanche of rocks and earth that came down a few years since, on a little hamlet clustering on the hillside. the inhabitants fled as they heard it coming, but a maiden, tending a babe, refused to leave her precious charge, and could not fly with it as rapidly as the rest. she perished with it in her arms. soon we came to a mountain stream which crossed our path, and the bridge had been swept away by an avalanche only the very night before. there were no signs of danger now, and we could scarcely believe the stories that were told us of the sudden destruction wrought by these thunderbolts of snow, and ice, and earth, which are the terror of these regions. the village we slept in last night is protected by a forest of trees so arranged as to receive and ward off the slides; but they come at times with such force as to cut off the trees, and bury everything in undistinguished ruin. this _pedestrianism_ is very well to boast of at home, and for those who are used to it and fond of it, it may be a very agreeable mode of travel; i confess i was tired of it the first day, and took to the horse as decidedly a better, as it certainly is an easier method of transit. it was just about as much as i could do to _walk_, and think of the number of miles we had gone, and had yet to go, with scarcely any spirit to enjoy the romance of the scenery, the glaciers and waterfalls, the precipices and snowy summits that were around me; and groaning all the while with the burden of locomotion. it was another thing altogether to sit on a horse, and folding one's arms, to look upward and around rejoicing in the wonders of god's world, and breathing in with the mountain air, the rich inspirations of the scene. we are now so far up in the world that the snow, though the month of august is closing, is lying by the side of the pathway, while the wild flowers, in bright and beautiful colors, are blooming in the sun, and close to the edges of these chilling banks. on our right hand the galenstoch glacier lies among the peaks of naked rock that, like the battlements of some thunder-riven castle, shoot upward eleven thousand feet into the clear blue sky. we are among the ice-palaces of the earth. i hug my great coat closely, as the cold winds from these eternal icebergs search me, and in a few minutes reached the inn at the summit of the furca pass. snow-clad summits of distant mountains glistened in the noonday sun, and blue glaciers wound along and down the gorges, and so far above the valleys were we now that it seemed like a world without inhabitants, desolate, cold, and majestic, in its solitude and icy splendor. the descent was too rapid for safe riding, and, giving the horse to the guide, who would lead him around, i leaped down the steep declivity, and soon found myself in a lovely vale. turning suddenly around a promontory, a scene of such grandeur and beauty burst upon our sight as we had not yet encountered, even in this land of wonders. an ocean lashed into ridges and covered with foam, then suddenly congealed, would not be the spectacle! freeze the cataract of niagara and the rapids above it, and let them rise a thousand feet into the air; congeal the clouds of spray, the falling jewelry; pile up pyramids and minarets, and columns, and battlements of ice, and then, at each side of this magnificent scene, set a tall mountain, with green pasturage on its sides, and its head crowned with everlasting snow, and you have some faint image of the glacier of the rhone! travellers have called it the frozen ocean of switzerland. but it is more than this. and yet out of its bosom, its cold but melting heart, the river rhone is flowing. this is its source. the daring adventurer may follow it up, beneath the blue arches and between the polished walls, till he finds himself far away in these caverns of ice, where no living thing abides. and here he learns the great design of a beneficent creator in forming these glaciers. the snows of winter are here stored up, and, instead of being suddenly melted in the spring, and then sent down in torrents to devastate the lands through which the overwhelming currents would be borne, they are melted by degrees, and led by channels through these mountain passes into the river beds that water all the countries of europe! for this great purpose switzerland was built! it has been lightly said that this swiss country looks as if it had been the leavings of the world when creation was finished, and the refuse material that could not be conveniently worked in had been thrown in dire confusion, heaps on heaps, into this wilderness of jagged rocks, and shapeless mountains, and disordered ranges of hill and vale--impracticable for man or beast--a rude, wild land, doomed to perpetual poverty, and existing only to be an object of curiosity to the traveller. but we find it to be the great fountain of living waters, pouring its inexhaustible streams into the wide and many lands below, carrying fertility and beauty over millions of acres, and food and gladness to countless homes. a hard hill to climb was the grimsel. sometimes i rode, but more frequently i was content to toil upward on my own feet, without taxing the jaded horse with my weight to be added to his own. but when we reached the summit, and overtook other parties who were before us, and were overtaken by yet others coming up behind, we formed a picturesque procession of some forty or fifty pilgrims, who wound slowly along the banks of the _dead sea_--a lake that lies away up among these frozen heights, and derives its name from the fact that it was once the grave of a multitude of soldiers who perished in the fight in these mountain fastnesses. the vale of the grimsel is beneath us, and just before the sun sets we reach the hospice, and eagerly ask for lodgings. on the borders of a little lake, in the bottom of a narrow valley, surrounded by almost perpendicular rocks, stands this solitary house, in former years inhabited by friendly monks who made it their pious care to entertain the traveller and furnish free hospitality to the poor. now it is a hotel, and a very poor one at that, where you may get a supper, and a bed, and a large bill in the morning. this is a dreary spot now, and in the winter more fearful it must be. in the morning we found the path that led us out of the valley to the glaciers of the aar. the mountain of earth, rocks, ice and snow that we encountered put to flight all ideas we had formed of a glacier. we seemed to have come to a vast heap of sand, or to the _debris_ brought down by an avalanche, but from the base of it a torrent was rushing of a dirty milky hue, and out of its front we could see rocks of blue ice projecting. now and then a mass of earth or a huge boulder would be hurled along down the precipice. and this mighty mass of ice, decaying at the front and pressed down from above, is slowly moving onward at the rate of some twelve inches a day. if a stream of water running across it cuts a wide seam, so that the mass is suddenly brought down, the shock will throw up the ice in ridges, and in various fantastic shapes, as if some great explosion had upheaved the frozen ocean, and the fragments had come down in wild confusion, like the ruins of a crystal city. then the sun gradually melts the towers, and they assume shapes of dazzling beauty, palaces of glass, silver domes, and shining battlements--making us to wonder that so much beauty and magnificence are seemingly wasted in these dreary solitudes. nestled charmingly among the hills is the sweet village of interlaken. the plain which it adorns stretches from lake thun to lake brienz, and the quiet retreat it furnishes is improved by hundreds of english people, who make it a summer residence. it combines two advantages, very rarely blended in this world--it is _cheap_ and _genteel_. a large number of neat boarding-houses, some of them aspiring to the rank of first-class hotels, are scattered along the main street of the village; and at the _hotel des alpen_, the largest establishment and admirably kept, the traveller may find good rooms and board for a dollar a day, and at even less than that if he is disposed to be very economical. we had crossed the wengern alp and passed the vale of grindelwald; had seen an avalanche come down from the side of the jungfrau, and been amused with the little cascade called the staubach, about which poets and printers have gone into ecstasies; and we were glad to find so quiet, beautiful, and civilized a spot in which to sit down for a few days and rest. while we were at interlaken we made a beautiful excursion on lake brienz to the giesbach fall. it has some peculiarities that claim for it the very first rank among the falls of switzerland. see the little stream that issues as from a cleft in the rock, nearly a thousand feet above the waters of the lake. then among the dark evergreens the white flood comes swelling and plunging into secret abysses where the eye can not search its hidings, but it rises again with a widened torrent, and now spreads a broad bosom of waters over a mighty precipice; and here a bridge has been thrown across in front of the falls, and a gallery cut away behind it, so that it may be circumvented by the visitor who is provided with an overcoat of india rubber, or is willing to take a thorough sponging for sake of the submarine excursion. when i had completed the circuit, a lady was regretting that she could not venture on the tour, but her scruples were instantly removed when i offered her my water-proof, and in a few minutes she returned "charmed" with her trip. once more the swollen mass of waters plunges over the rocks and shoots out into the lake, in one of the most romantic and beautiful regions that is to be found in this wildly beautiful land. i pass over the experiences of a few days' travel, and come suddenly to the summit of the col de balm. mont blanc is in sight! not a faint and doubtful view of a peak among a hundred peaks, but the monarch of the alps stands there--a king in his glory, revealed from his summit to the base. a cloud is gathered like a halo on his head; but it rises and vanishes as we look upon it with silent admiration and awe. around him are the aiguilles or needles, bare pinnacles of rock stretching up like guards into the heavens, and between are the glaciers--reflecting now the rays of the noonday sun, and among them the _mer de glace_--winding along down the gorges, and resting their cold feet in the vale below. [illustration: under the geisbach falls.] afterward i saw mont blanc from its base, and sought other heights from which it might be surveyed, but i could find nothing comparable to the view from the _col de balm_. there it stands, towering fifteen thousand eight hundred and ten feet toward the sky, the loftiest summit in europe, with thirty-four glaciers around it; and as i gazed, it was a strange question to discuss--but one that might well be argued till sundown--is old ocean, or niagara, a sublimer sight? it seems so near the sky that the blue firmament kisses its brow. it is so far off, yet so near, so bright and pure, that the angels might be sporting on its summit and be safe from the intrusion of men. it is a _solemn_ mountain. even the hills of syria and palestine, on which i afterward gazed, lebanon and hermon, carmel and horeb, with their hallowed memories clustering on them, were not more impressive than this hoary hill--forever clothed in white raiment, standing there like an ivory throne for the king of kings! we went down into the vale of chamouni, and at evening saw the stars like diamonds sparkling in the crown of the monarch, and then the moonbeams fell all cold upon his crest. we rose the next morning early, and saw the summit of mont blanc in a blaze of glory long before the dwellers in the vale had seen the rays of the rising sun. and then we left switzerland. ----- footnote : the preceding letters were originally addressed to the new york observer. this chapter, embracing a general view of the country, with pictures of scenes already noticed, was contributed to harper's monthly magazine. chapter xiv. saxon swytz. a model guide--the bastei--banditti of old--a cataract to order--scaling a rampart--konigstein--the kuhstall--the great winterberg--prebisch thor--looking back. in a corner of saxony is a miniature switzerland. they call it saxon switzerland; perhaps the name is not well chosen, for it has one feature only of swiss scenery--exceeding beauty. only three days are required to see it, and two will give a good traveller all the more prominent points, in a series of views, the romantic loveliness of which will linger a lifetime in the memory of one who has seen them. the elbe is now navigated by little steamboats, which english enterprise introduced, but a better way to reach saxon swytz, if you are pressed for time, is to go with us by rail to rathen, and there strike off into the mountains. a local guide must be had at once, before you take a step. it was now the height of the travelling season, and on a fine morning in july we found ourselves at a small tavern on the banks of the elbe, with half a dozen men about us pressing their claims to be employed as guides among the mountains. "do you speak english?" we inquired of one: to which he answered "yes," and this with the frequent exclamation "look here" proved to be the alpha and omega of our german's knowledge of english. he had a book of certificates which former travellers had given him, and as they were sure he could not read one of them, they had very freely commended him as ignorant, stupid, temperate and faithful, acquainted with the country, and probably no worse a guide than the rest. he was our man. we could get out of him all that was necessary, and as he pleaded hard for employment, and knew three words of english more than the rest, we took him, and in five minutes he took us into a small boat to pull us over the elbe. instantly the bewitching scenery began to surround us. the river was here so winding that we could see a little way only, either up or down, but the lofty banks rose so abruptly from the water and the rocks, in the midst of which evergreens were growing, hung so fearfully above us, that we seemed to be suddenly borne into a land of enchantment. we landed on the other side, a "house of refreshment," where german ladies and gentlemen were recruiting themselves with beer, which like an overflowing stream appears to come from some exhaustless fountain. now we are to decide between a pedestrian tour and mules. we were not long in making up our minds, and soon we were off on the beasts; sorry beasts they were; better men than balaam might have wished for a sword, or some more fitting weapon to make them go. they were indifferent to all minor arguments, such as words and kicks, and only conscious of the _a posteriori_ mode of reasoning, to which the muleteer in the rear continually resorted. we left the common road, and by a narrow path commenced the ascent to one of the most celebrated and splendid points of observation, the bastei. on either side of us as we are ascending, huge precipices frown and deep grottoes in which the fairy spirits of these forests may be supposed to dwell, invite us to rest as weary of the upward way. now a waterfall, beautiful as water in motion always is, and picturesque as a cascade in the green woods must be, tempts us to linger and take the spray on our heated brows. through dense shades of evergreen forests, by a path so steep, at times, that it is difficult to keep your seat in the saddle, we toil on, and in the course of an hour have triumphed over the hardships of the hill, and have reached the summit of the loftiest bastion in the world. it is as perpendicular as a wall that has been reared for defence. the rock on which we were standing projects from the front of the precipice, and we are hanging six hundred feet above the elbe. the river winds round the base of the mountain, and both up and down the stream for many miles the eye rests on similar heights on the same side that we are standing. behind us, ossa upon pelion seems to be piled. giant rocks stand up there in solemn and solitary grandeur, as if by some great convulsion of nature the earth had been torn from their sides, and they were left to brave earthquakes and thunderbolts with their naked heads and sides exposed to perpetual storms. yet the bravery of man has bridged the horrid chasms that yawn between these separated cliffs, and they have in times past, been the hiding places of banditti, who from these heights could watch the elbe, and make their descent upon the hapless navigator of the peaceful stream. on one of the rocks is a huge boulder so evenly balanced on the very pinnacle that it has been called "napoleon's crown," and another from a fancied resemblance, "the turk's head," and all of them have titles more or less fitting. across the river, and in front of us, the plain spreads wide and rises as it recedes from the shore till it meets a range of wooded mountains. from the midst of this plain there rise immense cones, suddenly and remarkably, strange formations, a study for the geologist, probably left there when all the surrounding masses were worn away by the elbe in making its way through this mountainous region. the country is full of legends connected with each and all of these strange columns, the summits of which are sometimes crowned with castles, and one of them, the lilienstein, is so perpendicular and lofty, that the elector of saxony and king of poland, when he had scaled its heights, left a record of his memorable exploit. in the hiding places of this wild and rugged rock, the spirits of the woods are supposed to hover over concealed treasures. "a holy nun miraculously transported from the irregularities of her convent to the summit of the normenstein, that she might spend her days in prayer and purity in its caverns, is commemorated in the name of the rock, and the '_jungfernsprung_,' or leap of the virgin, perpetuates the memory of the saxon maid who when pursued by a brutal lustling threw herself from the brink of its hideous precipice to die unpolluted."--russell. _konigstein_, nearly a thousand feet high, with its impregnable fortress, we shall attempt this afternoon, and enter it with a flag of truce, as it was never taken by force. we came up here for the sake of view, and fully repaid for the toil of the ride, we are now prepared to descend by another route, when we are told for the first time that the mules are not for us to ride down, we must foot it, and the mules be driven by the same road they came up. through the wildest of all wild gorges our winding way led us, at the base of jagged rocks of fearful height, out of the broken breasts of which huge trees were growing, threatening to fall, yet clinging for life to the crevices in which their roots were fastened. now and then a scared eagle would scream and soar away from his nest, but rarely did a sound except the murmur of water, and the sighing of the air through the narrow defile disturb the deep stillness of that solitude. that projecting rock, with its adjacent pillars of stone, is called the devil's pulpit, and that, the throne, and so other points of peculiar configuration have names more or less fanciful, which a lively imagination has given them. suddenly, we came upon a family of peasants, who have a hut under the shelter of the rocks, and a few articles of refreshment for weary travellers; sweet milk, and bread and cheese, and a bottle or two of liquor--but they are chiefly and decidedly in the cold water line; they are in the cataract business! the little stream that takes this gorge in its way to the elbe, at this point would make a leap of some twenty feet among the rocks. with an economy that would do honor to american foresight, these people have made a dam across the rivulet before it falls, and thus accumulating the waters, have them ready for a grand splurge, when a party come along who are willing to pay a few pence for the pleasure of seeing the performance. one of our people gave the word of command in german, of which a free translation would be "let her slide," and down came the young niagara. but for the ludicrous idea of an artificial cataract in the mountains, the sight would have been very pretty. the gorge hitherto had been so narrow and deep, that the sun never shines to the bottom, and no flowers ever cheer its gloom; but now the sun lighted up the falling drops, making them like great diamonds, as we from behind the sheet looked out upon the extempore waterfall. it was a walk of four or five miles, through such scenes, to the place from which we had started, and here we awaited the coming of a little steamer which was creeping along the banks to pick up passengers. it picked us up, and dropped us in a few minutes at konigstein, or the _king's stone_. the little town with a thousand people in it, would not deserve a call, but it is in our way to the fortress on the summit of the rocky height behind. the road is paved all the way with large square stones, making a carriage path, up which enormous guns are dragged for its defence. to this day it boasts of never having fallen into the hands of the enemy. napoleon, with incredible toil, carried some of his heaviest pieces of ordnance to the top of _lilienstein_, but could not reach it with his balls. much of the distance up which we toiled, the road is cut through a living rock, which rises a solid wall on either side, and winds around the hill, till we come to a wooden bridge over an awful chasm, which separates the passage from the cliff on which the fortress stands, on a platform two miles in circuit, inaccessible except to friends, or to foes with wings. one portcullis passed, and we have only come to the gate. iron spikes projecting from the stonework threaten us as we approach. at the gate, soldiers are looking through the port-holes, and challenge us to stand. they take our cards and passports to the commander, and soon return with permission for us to enter. but once admitted within the massive gate, we have still a long bridge across the moat to pass, and then by a covered passage at an angle of forty-five degrees, over a stone road, up which cannon are drawn by a windlass, we come out on the summit of the hill to a scene of transcendent beauty, and of the richest historic interest. the ground is neatly laid out in walks and gardens; there are fields of pasture for herds of cattle and of grain raised for the support of the garrison. their unfailing supply of water is drawn from a well _eighteen hundred feet deep_! we held a mirror to the sun, and sent the reflected light away down into that mysterious depth, and watched it sporting on the waters. then we poured a glass of water into the well, and in _thirty seconds_ by the watch, the sound returned to our listening ears. sound travels eleven hundred and forty-two feet in a second, and would therefore be less than two seconds in coming up; so that if our measure of time was correct, it must have taken the water nearly half a minute to travel down to the surface from which it had been drawn. we drank of that well and found the water cool and delightful. standing on the ramparts, which are defended by enormous guns, we overlooked the plains on one hand, the river and the romantic hills of saxon switzerland on the other. again the columnal rocks arrested our attention, more peculiar now that we are nearer. far, very far higher than the loftiest cathedral spire, and not broader at the base, they rise in solitary grandeur, where the great architect of the earth first placed them, and where they will stand till all the cathedrals and fortresses and pyramids of man's building have crumbled into dust. we bought a few pieces of bohemian glass ware as souvenirs of this visit, and then reluctantly turning away from the scene, which seemed more beautiful the longer we dwelt upon it--so it is with beauty ever--we reluctantly came down. a german full of humor, a rare sort of german, for they are not addicted to the humorous at home or abroad, had joined us in our pedestrian tour to konigstein; and having just come down the river as we were going up, he gave us the information we asked for of the upper country. he spoke a "leetel english," and that made his answers more amusing. "which is the best hotel for us in ichandau?" we inquired. "they is dree hotels, one is so bad as de toder," said he. "and what shall we find at winterberg?" "noding but gray sand-stone and sheating strangers." with this very unpromising prospect, we waited for the steamer to come along to take us to ichandau and winterberg. steaming on the elbe is a very small affair; a narrow boat with a long nose, moves on at the rate of four or five miles an hour, and stops at the end of a plank or two put out from the shore for a wharf. one of these filled with pleasure travellers in the aft and the long bows covered with peasantry, touched at konigstein, and received us. it was near sunset. we were often in the deep shadows of the mountains, and then through the openings, or as the circuitous river brought us into the day again, the declining sun streamed upon us with exceeding beauty. tired with the hard day's work, having mounted the bastei on one side of the elbe, and konigstein on the other, i was glad to lie off upon a bench and enjoy the luxury of this cool delicious hour. ichandau charmingly dropped down among the mountains, is an old town, but only remarkable as the point from which to set off on exploring expeditions into the interior of saxon switzerland. the three hotels were filled with company, who were spending their evening in eating and drinking at small tables on the piazzas, or under the shade trees, a practice of which the germans are more fond than any other people i have met. we found beds in a great ball-room, with low partitions running between them, so that when the room was needed for dancing, these could be readily removed. i was in want of some refreshments after the fatigues of the day, and when the various drinks that i called for were not to be had, the waiter asked me if i would have "yahmah kah rhoom," which i declined after finding that he meant jamaica rum. without any night-cap of the sort, and spite of more noise than would have been agreeable if we had not been so weary, we had a good night of it, and rose with the sun to continue our pilgrimage. a carriage was ready for us, to convey us six miles from ichandau, through a romantic glen, wide enough to afford beautiful meadows on both sides of a stream, by the side of which a good road was leading us into the mountains. the women were at work making hay, scores of them, and not a man to be seen. the brightest of cole's landscapes among the kaatskill mountains came to my mind as we rode on, and admired the green hill sides; then, as we advanced, gnarled trees stood out upon the rocks, immense piles, jagged, riven, blasted and heaped one upon another in such orderly confusion, that it seemed as if architecture had done its worst to make towers for giants here. our ride terminated at _peishll swarl_, where we were surrounded by a troop of men who had horses to let, and in their german tongue, they clamored most importunately for us to engage them. our friend, the rev. dr. k., being of german origin, and better skilled in the language than the rest of us, we left to make the bargain, while we selected the best horses for ourselves with that beautiful selfishness so common to the human species. as we deserved, and as he deserved, we got the worst of the lot, and he was soon mounted on a handsome pony, that easily led the party, the whole day. now it may be known to some who read this, that dr. k. is not a very tall divine, but what he lacks of being gigantic in height, he makes up in breadth, so that seated upon this little animal about four feet high, and riding up a steep mountain pass, when seen from before, he looked like a horse with a man's head, but when we gazed upward at him from behind, we saw a man with a horse's tail. i had selected a good looking beast, but it had a lady's saddle to which i objected, as it was "fur damen," for women: but the owner promptly met the objection by pulling away the _rest_, and crying out with a laugh "fur herren," for men. immediately on mounting we struck into the woods, and soon into a narrow pass where the rocks had been cleft asunder just far enough for a path for a single horseman; a hundred steps lead up to the summit of a lofty hill whence a fine view is had of the columnal rocks and numerous peaks of mountains, whose hard names would not be remembered if we were to repeat them. on this height is the famous _kuhstall_, or in english _cow-stall_, a cave in the rock, to which in the thirty years' war, the peasants in the plains below were in the habit of driving their cattle for safety, and in these all but inaccessible solitudes, the protestant christians fled from persecution, and hid themselves as their primitive brethren did, in dens and caves of the earth. one of these recesses, more retired and better sheltered than the rest, had the name of the "woman's bed." who can tell the sufferings, who can tell the joys that the people of god have known in these high places? no cathedral service could be more sublime than prayer and praise on the mountain tops, and in the grottoes of these rocky heights, where now the weary traveller from a land on the other side of the sea, sits down and recalls the story of those times that "tried men's souls." through a narrow fissure in the rock we ascended to a platform that makes the roof of the kuhstall. before us was a valley surrounded by mighty rocks and pine-covered hills, an amphitheatre in which the present population of the earth could stand, and it required but little stretch of the imagination to believe that a strong voice could be heard by the multitude so assembled. my servant led my horse to the edge of the precipice, many hundred feet high, and he planted his feet firmly on the edge, as if he were accustomed to the spot, and there stood for me to enjoy the glorious scene. on this lofty and far away height, some women had a stand for the sale of strawberries and cream, the taste of which did not interfere with the beauties of the prospect, as i sat on my horse eating, and gazing, and making these notes. but we cannot be on the mount always. we crossed the valley, and on the narrow road met parties of german travellers smoking as they trudged along, women and some children, making the tour of the mountains on foot, and in the course of a couple of hours we commenced the ascent of the great winterberg, and climbed it to the summit. here at the height of one thousand seven hundred feet above the sea we found a good hotel, with every comfort for the entertainment of travellers and a fine lookout from which may be had the grandest sight in saxon switzerland. i wrote the names of sixteen noble peaks that stood up around me, with their thick green foliage, the intervening valleys dense with forest, the beautiful elbe silently circling the base of the mountains, and the pillars of stone rising like sentinels away off in the plains beyond. our way lay through the thick forest, as we came down to the _prebisch thor_ or gate, a mighty arch, a hundred feet broad, and sixty-five feet high, a wonderful freak of nature, not so lofty as the natural bridge of virginia, but more impressive from the position it occupies, away up in these mountains, more than a thousand feet above the river. it might be the gate of the world! how mean the splendid arches of conquerors, compared with this which the king of kings had reared. i exclaimed with reverence as i saw it, "lift up your heads, o ye gates, and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in." a score of visitors were here before us. a row of romantic cottages, clinging like eagles' nests, to the ledges of the rocks, furnish rest and refreshment to the pilgrims, and we sat down in sight of this stupendous wonder of nature, and dined, while we sought to take in at the same time, an image of it which we should never lose. underneath the arch ambitious travellers have vied with each other in seeing how high they could inscribe their names, and some have made the records so as to resemble tombstones, rows of which are cut into the solid rock. visitors from many different lands, have in their several languages left their impressions in the book which is kept here for the purpose, and we added our names and a faint transcript of our feelings to the records of the prebisch thor. the descent was by several hundred steps, sometimes of wood, then of stone, and again of earth, which we made on foot, while the horses were led by a longer road around. as we came down into the valley, we met--for we were now in bohemia, under austrian rule--numerous beggars with various claims upon our charity. among them was an old woman who stretched out a pair of naked arms dried to the bone and the color of bronze, her feet and the lower part of her legs, her head and breast were bare, and all so dried and dark, so unlike a woman that it made me sick to look at her. "can a woman come to that?" i asked myself, as i gave my servant some money for the old crone, and hurried on for fear she would get before me again to thank me. in the stream which comes leaping down from the mountain, were women and children wading, with hooks in their hands to catch the floating bits of wood, and bring them ashore for fuel. the narrow defile through which we passed was picturesque, and the great mountains behind us often called us back to look at the heights where we had stood, and so now looking back, and now plunging on and down, into the regions of human dwellings, by little mills on the leaping stream, and by the side of cottages where some taste appeared in vines and flowers, we arrived at _hirniskretchen_, on the elbe. here we crossed the river, and by the railroad which comes along on the other side, we reached in a few moments the station at _bodenbach_ the frontier town of _austria_. the train is detained an hour, while the passports, and luggage of all the passengers are examined with that minuteness which is always suffered in small towns more inconveniently than in cities. some of the ladies' trunks made such revelations of articles of dress and jewelry, that no protestations of their being designed only for personal use were of any avail. it was impossible in the eyes of these simple officers, that women could need so many gloves, and laces and bracelets, and they were all examined even to the smallest boxes of "_bijouterie_" which could be found. we had no difficulty whatever, being very slightly loaded with baggage of any sort, especially of that sort which custom houses, those pests of nations, are so apt to challenge. at last we were pronounced all right, and the train set off, through a beautiful country, a massive church standing on one side of the river, a towering castle on the other; now rushing by aussig, a precipice and gorge of frightful height, where the road hugs the rock into the side of which it is cut, and so through numerous pleasing villages, we are hurried on to the ancient city of prague. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ sheldon and company. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ a select list of publications. --------------------- messrs. sheldon & company beg leave to say that their publications can generally be found at all book stores, news depots, and religious depositories. when not obtainable at these places, any book on the list will be forwarded, prepaid by mail, on receipt of the retail prices annexed to each book. special attention is called to the list of school and college text books. samples of these are sent to teachers and educators by mail prepaid, on receipt of one half the prices annexed. new york: sheldon & company, nassau st., _publishers and booksellers_. . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ sheldon and co.'s list j. p. thompson, d.d. the christian graces. mo., memoir of the rev. d. t. stoddard. mo., s. irenæus prime, d.d. the bible in the levant. mo., william j. hoge, d.d. blind bartimeus. mo., rev. w. p. balfern. glimpses of jesus. mo., lessons from jesus. mo., rev. henry m. field. from copenhagen to venice. mo., rev. alfred s. patton. losing and taking of mansoul. mo., mrs. maria t. richards. life in israel. mo., manton eastburn, d.d. thornton's family prayers. mo., thornton's family prayers. fine ed., red edges, john dowling, d.d. the power of illustration. mo., the judson memorial. mo., hermann olshausen, d.d. commentaries on the new testament. vols., vo. ed. a. c. kendrick, d.d., the same. vo., sheep, the same. half calf, gilt or antique, augustus neander, d.d. planting and training of the christian church. edited by e. g. robinson, d.d. (_in press_). commentaries, john, philippians & james. vo., history of christian dogmas (_in press_). adolphe monod, d.d. the life and mission of woman. mo., sermons--monod, krummacher, tholuck, &c., w. w. everts, d.d. the bible manual. mo., childhood, its promise, &c. mo., manhood, its duties, &c. mo., the pastor's hand-book. mo., the sanctuary. mo., scripture text book and treasury. mo., rev. chas. buck. anecdotes--religious and entertaining. vo., mrs. h. c. conant. history of the english bible. mo., rev. c. h. spurgeon. sermons, st series. mo., sermons, d series. mo., sermons, d series. mo., sermons, th series. mo., sermons, th series. mo., sermons, th series. mo., the saint and saviour. mo., gems selected from his sermons. mo., life and ministry, mo., smooth stones from ancient brooks. mo., communion of the saints (_in press_). francis wayland, d.d. sermons to the churches. mo., principles and practices of baptists. mo., domestic slavery (fuller & w.). mo., richard fuller, d.d. sermons, st series, mo. (_in press_). mrs. emily c. judson. memoir of sarah b. judson. mo., an olio, poems. mo., geo. c. baldwin, d.d. representative women. mo., mrs. s. r. ford. grace truman. mo., rev. louis l. noble. life and works of thomas cole. mo., the lady angeline and other poems. mo., rev. sidney dyer. songs and ballads for the household. mo., mrs. mary a. denison. gracie amber, a novel. mo., harriet e. bishop. floral home; or, first years of minnesota, rev. joseph barnard. wisdom, &c., of the ancient philosophers, mrs. a. lincoln phelps. ida norman. illustrated. mo., david millard. travels in egypt, arabia petræa, &c. mo., john mcintosh. the north american indians. vo., rev. william arthur. origin and derivation of family names, eliphalet nott, d.d. lectures on temperance. mo., robert turnbull, d.d. life pictures from a pastor's note book, rev. matthew mead. the almost christian. mo., john frost, ll.d. wonders of history. vo., t. j. farnham. california and oregon. vo., -------------- life of spencer h. cone, d.d., the life and works of lorenzo dow, father clark, the pioneer preacher, homoeopathic practice, by m. freleigh, m.d., the napoleon dynasty. illustrated, vo., marble worker's manual, memoir of thomas spencer, the n. y. pulpit, revival of , the baptist library. vo., sheep, the living epistle. tyree, rollin's ancient history. vo., the words of jesus and faithful promiser, mrs. thomas geldart. daily thoughts for a child. mo., truth is everything. mo., emilie the peacemaker. mo., sunday morning thoughts. mo., sunday evening thoughts. mo., s. g. goodrich (peter parley). the cottage library. vols., mo., picture play books. to., francis l. hawks, d.d., ll.d. richard the lion hearted. mo., oliver cromwell. mo., -------------- aunt mary's stories. vols., the little commodore. mo., a treasury of pleasure books. gilt, indestructible pleasure books, each, the illuminated linen primer, the farmer boy's alphabet, the scripture alphabet, little annie's ladder to learning, john f. stoddard, a.m. juvenile mental arithmetic, american intellectual arithmetic, practical arithmetic, philosophical arithmetic, key to intel. and prac. arithmetic, stoddard & henkle (prof. w. d.) elementary algebra, university algebra, j. russell webb, a.m. normal primer, primary lessons, a series of three cards, the word method primer, normal reader, no. , normal reader, no. , normal reader, no. , normal reader, no. , normal reader, no. , edward hazen, a.m. the speller and definer, symbolical spelling book. complete, symbolical spelling book. part st, cuts, symbolical spelling book. part d, cuts, j. l. dagg, d.d. elements of moral science. mo. prof. jean gustave keetels. a new method of learning the french language, a collegiate course in the french language, key to the new method, key to the collegiate course (_in press_). j. r. loomis, d.d. elements of anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, elements of geology, oliver b. goldsmith. copy books in five numbers, each, gems of penmanship, boards, double-entry book-keeping. vo., -------------- exhibition speaker, fitzgerald, normal school song book, history of the united states, peabody, nelson's copy books, numbers, each, united states speller, miles, fitch's mapping plates, parley's geography, the university drawing book, household library. life and martyrdom of joan of arc. by michelet, life of robert burns. by thomas carlyle, life and teachings of socrates. by george grote, life of columbus. by alphonse de lamartine, life of frederick the great. by lord macaulay, life of william pitt. by lord macaulay, life of mahomet. by gibbon, life of luther. by chev. bunsen, life of oliver cromwell. by a. de lamartine, life of torquato tasso. by g. h. wiffen, life of peter the great. compiled by the editor, vols., life of milton. by prof. masson, life of thomas a'becket. by h. h. milman, d.d., life of hannibal. by dr. arnold, life of vittoria colonna. by t. a. trollope, life of julius cæsar. by henry g. liddell, d.d., life of mary stuart. by a. de lamartine (_in press_), none available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations in color. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/lausanne gribiala lausanne * * * * * * _uniform with this volume_ montreux painted by j. hardwicke lewis and may hardwicke lewis described by francis gribble containing full-page illustrations in colour and a sketch-map. square demy vo., cloth, gilt top price / net (_post free, price / _) geneva painted by j. hardwicke lewis and may hardwicke lewis described by francis gribble containing full-page illustrations and a sketch-map. square demy vo., cloth, gilt top price / net (_post free, price / _) published by a. and c. black, soho square, london, w. * * * * * * agents america the macmillan company & fifth avenue, new york australasia oxford university press flinders lane, melbourne canada the macmillan company of canada, ltd. richmond street west, toronto india macmillan & company, ltd. macmillan building, bombay bow bazaar street, calcutta * * * * * * [illustration: lausanne cathedral from montbenon] lausanne painted by j. hardwicke lewis & may hardwicke lewis described by francis gribble [logo] london adam and charles black contents page chapter i the rule of savoy and berne chapter ii emigrants and immigrants chapter iii gibbon chapter iv madame de montolieu--dr. tissot chapter v benjamin constant and madame de staËl chapter vi the revolution chapter vii the english colony--the educational advantages chapter viii vinet and sainte-beuve--juste olivier chapter ix nyon chapter x the french shore chapter xi history of the french shore--felix v chapter xii st. francis de sales chapter xiii joseph de maistre index list of illustrations . lausanne cathedral from montbenon _frontispiece_ facing page . mont blanc from above morges . morges and the lake from the road to vufflens . château de vufflens, above lausanne . the spires of st. françois, lausanne . château de prangins . lausanne, looking east . the market place, lausanne . la tour de haldimand--ouchy--lausanne . lausanne from the signal . in the forest of sauvabelin, above lausanne . château de blonay . the rhone valley from mont pelerin . a street in st. saphorin . the dents du midi and la tour from "entre deux villes" . lutry . cully from epesse--autumn . grandvaux from cully . the rhone valley from chexbres . the church of st. martin, vevey chapter i the rule of savoy and berne though lausanne is so near geneva, its history, in historical times, has been widely different from that of the neighbouring town. geneva enjoyed a modified independence from an early date, and became completely independent early in the sixteenth century. lausanne, until nearly years later, endured the domination, first of savoy, and subsequently of berne. the early history is obscure and full of vexed questions as well as unfamiliar names; but the central fact is that the counts of savoy--they were not promoted to be dukes of savoy until later--took possession of the canton of vaud, as well as of the chablais and the lower valais, after the death of the last of the zaeringen, at the beginning of the thirteenth century. for the next years they exercised overlordship, limited by the charters of the towns, and, in the case of lausanne, by the jurisdiction of the bishop--a complicated state of things which the swiss historical societies may be left to unravel. it seems clear, however, that the savoyards were no hard taskmasters. 'the country of vaud,' says its historian, louis vulliemin, 'was happy and proud to belong to them. they exacted little from it, and accorded it their powerful protection. the various states used to assemble at moudon, the central town, summoned by the council of moudon, or by the governor of vaud, acting as the representative of the prince. there was no palace. they met in an inn, or in the house of one of the citizens of the neighbourhood. often they assembled in such small numbers that, for lack of a quorum, no decision could be taken.... no burdensome or unduly progressive measures were adopted. as a rule, the good old customs were confirmed. when a departure from them was resolved upon, it became law by receiving the sanction of the prince. the business of the herald was to see that it was proclaimed, in the proper places, in a loud and intelligible voice. the prince had sworn an oath to impose no new legislation that was not in accordance with the will of the nation as expressed by the estates of the realm.' the most notable of the governors was peter of savoy--the same peter of savoy whom we meet in english history, fighting in the civil wars of the days of simon de montfort. his headquarters were in the castle of chillon, where he not only dispensed justice, but also amended the criminal law. it was the barbarous rule of the time that an offender who had been fined for a misdemeanour should have his nose cut off if he were unable to pay; peter compelled even the bishops to abandon that cruel custom. for the rest, to quote vulliemin: 'he received his vassals in the great hall of the castle, where their coats of arms hung on the wall around that of the house of savoy. the blowing of a horn announced that the meal was served. the ladies arrived in their emblazoned best. the chaplain read the grace from a volume bound in violet and gold--the precious depositary of divine law and ecclesiastical ritual. after the feast came the hour of merry recreations. the court fool and the minstrels took their seats by the side of the prince, and the nobility thus passed their lives in junketing.' this is the same writer's picture of the lives of the burghers: 'at lausanne the three estates met in the month of may. in they submitted to a fresh drafting of the "plaid général," which defined the respective rights of bishop, canons, and burghers. three days were devoted to the hearing of suits. on the fourth day the plaid, accompanied by elders, went the round of the streets, and ordered the necessary repairs. all the citizens were required to follow, carrying axes or stakes, so as to be able to lend a hand when required. the bishop regaled the artificers with bread, wine, and eggs. in return, the blacksmiths had to shoe his horses, the saddlers to provide him with spurs and bridles, and the coachbuilders to supply him with a carriage. three times a year the seneschal passed in front of the cobblers' shops, and touched with his rod the pair of boots which he selected for his lordship. in time of war the prelate's army had to serve the prince for a day and a night without pay, and as much longer as they might be wanted for wages. the bishop's business was to ransom prisoners, protect the citizens from all injustice, and go to war on their behalf if necessary. [illustration: mont blanc from above morges] 'each district of the town had its special privileges. the fine for assault and battery was sixty livres in the city where the bishop resided, sixty sous in the lower town, and only three sous outside the walls. the bishop could not arrest a citizen without informing the burghers, or hold an inquest on the body of a dead man. the citizens of the rue de la bourg sat in judgment on criminals without assessors. whenever they heard the summons, though they might be at the dinner-table, glass in hand, or in their shops measuring their cloth, they had to run off and give their opinion on the case. in return, they were exempt from certain taxes, had the sole right of placing hucksters' barrows in front of their shops, of using signboards, and of keeping inns.' it was the reformation that terminated this primitive state of affairs. a succession of weak governors had allowed the hold of the dukes of savoy over the country to be relaxed. it was impossible for them to maintain their authority when the people were indoctrinated with the new ideas. the end came when the duke of savoy threatened geneva, and the bernese marched through vaud to the rescue, captured chillon, delivered bonivard, and kept the canton for their reward. from the capture of chillon onwards, lausanne, like the rest of vaud, was a bernese dependency. bernese governors (or baillis) were established in all the strong places, and protestantism became the national religion. the conversion of the inhabitants was chiefly effected by viret, a tailor's son, from orbe, an excellent man, and a persuasive rather than an eloquent speaker. in , after the fashion of the times, he, calvin, and farel challenged the catholic theologians to a great debate. the monks, recognizing him as a formidable antagonist, had previously tried to get rid of him by surreptitious means. one of them had assaulted him at payerne, and another had attempted to poison him at geneva. at lausanne they were obliged to argue with him, and failed still more conspicuously. the argument lasted for a week, and, at the end of the week, the populace, considering that the protestant case was proved, proceeded to the cathedral to desecrate the altars and smash the images, while the governors confiscated the church property and offered it for sale. 'it was thus,' writes vulliemin, 'that jost de diesbach bought the church and vicarage of st. christophe in order to turn the one into a baking house and the other into a country seat, and that michel augsburger transformed the ancient church of baulmes into a stable for his cattle.' at the same time a disciplinary tribunal, somewhat on the lines of calvin's theocracy at geneva, was instituted to supervise the morals of the citizens; and absence from church was made punishable by fine, imprisonment, or banishment. viret, it is true, was driven to resign his pastorate and leave lausanne, because he was not allowed to refuse the holy communion to notorious evil-livers, and fifty other pastors followed his example; but the pastors who remained drafted a new moral code of sufficient severity, consisting, in the main, of a gloss upon each of the ten commandments, giving a list of the offences which it must be understood, for the future, to prohibit. under the heading of seventh commandment, for example, it was written: 'this forbids fornication, drunkenness, baptismal and burial banquets, pride, dancing, and the use of tobacco and snuff.' a number of sumptuary laws were also adopted, to check the spread of luxury; and here again we cannot do better than quote vulliemin: 'the regulations prescribed the dress materials which each class of society might wear, and permitted none but the nobility to appear in gold-embroidered stuffs, brocades, collars of paris point lace, and lace-embellished shoes. the women of the middle classes were forbidden to wear caps costing more than ten crowns, or any sort of false hair, or more than one petticoat at a time. one regulation settled the size of men's wigs, and another determined how low a lady's bodice might be cut. there was a continual battle between authority and fashion, and fashion was always contriving to evade the law. the purpose of the magistracy was not only to maintain the privileges of the upper classes, but also to fortify domestic morality against the imperious demands of vanity. a special government department was instituted to stop the use of tobacco. the baillis alone considered that the law did not apply to them; but one day, when one of these officials opened his snuff-box in church, the preacher interrupted him. "here," he said, "one only snuffs the word of god." above all things, however, morality was the object of the jealous care of the magistrates of vaud. so it was with an outburst of holy wrath that they heard that there was at vevey "a dancing master, a catholic, whose presence caused great scandals, at balls, in the evenings, between the two sexes." the stranger was banished, and the town was censured for its criminal toleration.' [illustration: morges and the lake from the road to vufflens] such was the régime, and though, in externals, it resembled the régime at geneva, there was one very significant difference. the genevan discipline was self-imposed, and at least expressed the will of a working majority of the people. the lausanne discipline represented the will of a conqueror imposed upon a subject race, and the conqueror had a rough and heavy hand, and rigorously excluded the subject people from participation in public affairs. the consequences can be traced in their history, habits, and manners. there was one poor feeble attempt at revolt. a certain major davel, after whom one of the steamboats on the lake is called--a pietist, and perhaps a religious maniac--a soldier of fortune, whose merits had attracted the attention of such good judges as the duke of marlborough and prince eugène, mustered the militia of cully and marched into lausanne, declaring that he had come to set the canton free. asked for explanations, he replied that he had been guided by direct inspiration from on high. the defence did not save him, and he perished on the scaffold in . the revolution at which he aimed was not to be accomplished for another eighty years, and the event constitutes almost the whole of the political history of lausanne during the period under review. chapter ii emigrants and immigrants forbidden to seek careers at home, most of the aristocracy of vaud went abroad to pursue fortune in the service of some foreign power. there was always a good opening for them, whether as mercenary soldiers or as instructors of the young, and many of them achieved distinction and rose to high positions. haldimand of yverdon became a lieutenant-general in the british army and governor of canada. réverdil of nyon was first tutor to christian vii. of denmark, and afterwards his secretary. amédée de laharpe was one of napoleon's generals; the only general, it is said, in the army of italy, who was not guilty of rapacity and extortion. frédéric césar de laharpe held high office under alexander i. of russia; dupuget of yverdon was the tutor of the russian grand dukes nicolas and michael; j. j. cart was with admiral hood in america; glayre became polish minister at st. petersburg; pache became mayor of paris; the list could be almost indefinitely extended. most of these emigrants, moreover, suffered from the nostalgia which is characteristic of the swiss. it was not enough for them to come home to die; they liked to return in middle age, and spend at home the money which they had earned abroad. and when they did return, they had, of course, no longer the homely wits of the home-keeping youths. they were men of experience, men of the world, men of polished manners and cosmopolitan culture. their presence gave a new and a broader tone to lausanne society. they were not to be driven to church like a flock of sheep, or forbidden to go to the theatre like a pack of schoolboys, or stood in the pillory for playing cards, or told by the preachers what they should eat or wherewithal they should be clothed. so far as they were concerned the discipline of the consistory broke down, and the sumptuary laws did not apply to them. their example liberalized even the clergy. they insisted upon making lausanne a pleasant place to live in. strangers found out that it was pleasant, and came to settle there in large numbers. there was already a foreign colony in lausanne from quite an early date in the eighteenth century. [illustration: chÂteau de vufflens, above lausanne] geneva had had its foreign colonists from a still earlier date, but they were exiles--miles coverdale, bishop of exeter, john knox, john bodley, william whittingham, and others, who fled abroad to escape persecution by the bloody mary. with one accord they thanked their hosts for the hospitality bestowed upon them, and departed as soon as the accession of elizabeth made it safe for them to do so. some of the foreigners at lausanne were also exiles, it is true, but hardly for conscience' sake, the opinions which had got them into trouble being more often political than religious. but they selected lausanne as their place of residence because they liked it--not because it was a 'perfect school of christ,' but because the site and the society were agreeable. voltaire himself lived there for a little while before he settled down at ferney, and encountered no theological objection to the theatrical performances which he organized. gibbon, who was there at the time, living in the house of pastor pavilliard, declared that the entertainments, to which he was sometimes invited, 'refined in a visible degree the manners of lausanne';[ ] and the philosopher himself paid a tribute to those manners in a letter to d'alembert, in which he wrote: 'all the amenities of society and sound philosophy have found their way into the part of switzerland in which the climate is most agreeable and wealth abounds. the people here have succeeded in grafting the politeness of athens upon the simplicity of sparta.' footnote: [ ] gibbon's acquaintance with voltaire was only slight. _vidi tantum_, he writes. chapter iii gibbon voltaire belongs to geneva rather than to lausanne. the most distinguished of the strangers upon whom lausanne has an exclusive claim is gibbon. he was sent there, in the first instance, as a punishment for having embraced the roman catholic faith, and was lodged in the house of m. pavilliard, a calvinistic minister, whose instructions were to educate his pupil if possible, but to convert him at all costs. the desired conversion was effected, though it was more thorough than had been intended. gibbon was persuaded to receive the sacrament from a protestant pastor, but never troubled himself with religion afterwards except in the capacity of historian. but, though he was at first treated like a schoolboy, and consoled himself for the loss of his liberty by getting drunk, he soon fell in love with the town--'fanny lausanne,' as he called it in a letter--and also fell in love with mademoiselle suzanne curchod. that is one of the most famous of all literary love-stories, and one may properly pause here to relate it at length. mademoiselle curchod was the daughter of a country clergyman--very well educated, very beautiful, and very generally admired. her earliest admirers were, naturally, the rising young ministers of the gospel.[ ] it amused her to invite them to sign documents, composed in playful imitation of legal contracts, binding themselves 'to come and preach at crassier as often as she required, without waiting to be solicited, pressed, or entreated, seeing that the greatest of their pleasures was to oblige her on every possible occasion.' her female friends, hearing of this, wrote to her expressing their disapproval, and strongly advising her to turn the preachers out of the house as soon as they had finished their sermons; but there is no evidence that she acted on their advice. [illustration: the spires of st. franÇois, lausanne] visiting lausanne, she extended the circle of her admirers. her bright intelligence enabled her to shine as a member of a certain société du printemps, and also of a certain académie des eaux--a debating club given to the discussion of such problems as 'does an element of mystery really make love more agreeable?' or 'can there be friendship between a man and a woman in the same sense as between two women or two men?' her conduct in this connection was such that her friends warned her that her desire to make herself agreeable to young men was too clearly advertised; but it does not appear that the warning made any impression on her. at all events, she was very successful in making herself agreeable to gibbon, then a lad about eighteen years of age. 'saw mademoiselle curchod. omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori,' is one of the early entries in his diary; and we have a picture of gibbon, at about the same date, from mademoiselle curchod's own pen. in middle age--as we can see from his portraits--he was an ugly, ungainly, podgy little man; but it is not thus that he appears in the portrait drawn by the woman who loved him. 'he has beautiful hair,' mademoiselle curchod writes, 'a pretty hand, and the air of a man of rank. his face is so intellectual and strange that i know no one like him. it has so much expression that one is always finding something new in it. his gestures are so appropriate that they add much to his speech. in a word, he has one of those extraordinary faces that one never tires of trying to depict. he knows the respect that is due to women. his courtesy is easy without verging on familiarity. he dances moderately well.' so these two naturally--and rightly and properly--fell in love; they must have seemed each other's ideal complements, if ever lovers were. but they were not to marry. the story of their attachment, their separation, and their subsequent platonic friendship is one of the romances of literature. gibbon himself has told the story in one of the most frequently quoted passages of his autobiography. his version of it is inexact and misleading; but it must be quoted, if only in order that it may be criticized: 'i need not blush,' he writes, 'at recollecting the object of my choice; and though my love was disappointed of success, i am rather proud that i was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. the personal attractions of mademoiselle susan curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable. her mother, a native of france, had preferred her religion to her country. the profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived content with a small salary and laborious duty in the obscure lot of minister of crassy, in the mountains that separate the pays de vaud from the county of burgundy. in the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal, and even learned, education on his only daughter. she surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of mademoiselle curchod were the theme of universal applause. the report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; i saw and loved. i found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. she permitted me to make two or three visits at her father's house. i passed some happy days there, in the mountains of burgundy, and her parents honourably encouraged the connection. in a calm retirement the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom, and i might presume to hope that i had made some impression on a virtuous heart. at crassy and lausanne i indulged my dream of felicity; but on my return to england i soon discovered that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that, without his consent, i was myself destitute and helpless. after a painful struggle i yielded to my fate; i sighed as a lover, i obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. my cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided in friendship and esteem.' such is gibbon's story, which is also the accepted story. it is, perhaps, a palliation of its inaccuracies that, at the time when he wrote it down, he and mademoiselle curchod--then madame necker--were on such pleasant terms of friendship that neither of them cared to remember or be reminded that either had ever treated the other badly. we shall come to that matter presently; here it is proper that the inaccuracies should be noted. [illustration: chÂteau de prangins the steps by which joseph buonaparte escaped in ] gibbon's story, it will be observed, gives us the impression that, on getting home, he lost no time in opening his heart to his father, and, having done this, lost no further time in acquainting mademoiselle curchod with his father's views. m. d'haussonville tells us that he left lausanne in , kept mademoiselle curchod waiting four years for a letter,[ ] and then in sat down and wrote, breaking off the engagement. one shrinks from the attempt to picture the feelings of the poor girl who, after enduring suspense, and trying to frame excuses for silence, broke the seal of the long-expected missive, only to read: 'i do not know how to begin this letter. yet begin it i must. i take up my pen, i drop it, i resume it. this commencement shows you what it is that i am about to say. spare me the rest. yes, mademoiselle, i must renounce you for ever. the sentence is passed; my heart laments it; but, in the presence of my duty, every other consideration must be silent.... 'my father spoke of the cruelty of deserting him, and of sending him prematurely to his grave, of the cowardice of trampling underfoot my duty to my country. i withdrew to my room and remained there for two hours. i will not attempt to picture to you my state of mind. but i left my room to tell my father that i agreed to sacrifice to him the happiness of my life. 'mademoiselle, may you be happier than i can ever hope to be! this will always be my prayer; this will even be my consolation.... assure m. and madame curchod of my respect, my esteem, and my regrets. good-bye. i shall always remember mademoiselle curchod as the most worthy, the most charming, of women. may she not entirely forget a man who does not deserve the despair to which he is a prey.' even this, however, was not the end of the story, though one would think it was if one had only gibbon's narrative to go by. in he revisited lausanne, and his own story of his sojourn does not so much as mention mademoiselle curchod's name. one would gather from it either that he did not see her, or that love had already on both sides 'subsided in friendship and esteem.' but when the vicomte d'haussonville was given access to the archives of the necker family, he found letters proving that this was not by any means the case. mademoiselle curchod's father was then dead, and she was living at geneva, supporting her mother by teaching. some of her friends--notably pastor moultou--tried to bring gibbon to a sense of the obligations which they felt he owed to her. rousseau was brought into the business, and expressed an opinion which led gibbon to retort, 'that extraordinary man, whom i admire and pity, should have been less precipitate in condemning the moral character and conduct of a stranger.' it is useless, however, to try to piece the whole story together--the materials are inadequate. one can only take the letters which the vicomte d'haussonville has published, and which, as he points out, are by no means the whole of the correspondence, and see what sidelights they throw upon it. first we have one of mademoiselle curchod's letters. whether she wrote it because she had met gibbon and found his manner towards her changed, or was perplexed and troubled because he had not sought a meeting, we have no means of knowing. but it is quite clear that she wrote it under the sense of having been treated badly. 'for five years,' she writes, 'i have, by my unique and, indeed, inconceivable behaviour, done sacrifice to this chimera. at last my heart, romantic as it is, has been convinced of my mistake. i ask you, on my knees, to dissuade me from my madness in loving you. subscribe the full confession of your indifference, and my soul will adapt itself to the changed conditions; certainty will bring me the tranquillity for which i sigh. you will be the most contemptible of men if you refuse to be frank with me. god will punish you, in spite of my prayers, if there is the least hypocrisy in your reply.' the reply is lost. mademoiselle curchod presumably destroyed it because it pained her. apparently it contained a proposal of platonic friendship as a substitute for love. at all events, mademoiselle curchod's answer seems to accept that situation, whether with ulterior designs or not, for it begins: 'what is fortune to me? besides, it is not to you that i have sacrificed it, but to an imaginary being which will never exist elsewhere than in a silly, romantic head like mine. from the moment when your letter disillusioned me, you resumed your place, in my eyes, on the same footing as other men; and, after being the only man whom i could love, you have become one of those to whom i feel the least drawn, because you are the one that bears the least resemblance to my chimerical ideal.... follow out the plan that you propose, place your attachment for me on the same footing as that of my other friends, and you will find me as confiding, as tender, and, at the same time, as indifferent as i am to them.' and the writer proceeds to take up the platonic position at once, to criticize gibbon's first essay in literature, to offer him useful introductions, and to ask him to advise her whether she would be likely to be well treated if she took a situation as 'lady companion' in england. even in this platonic correspondence, however, gibbon, with a prudence beyond his years, seems to have scented danger. 'mademoiselle,' he wrote, 'must you be for ever pressing upon me a happiness which sound reason compels me to decline? i have forfeited your love. your friendship is left to me, and it bestows so much honour upon me that i cannot hesitate. i accept it, mademoiselle, as a precious offering in exchange for my own friendship, which is already yours, and as a blessing of which i know the value too well to be disposed to lose it. 'but this correspondence, mademoiselle, i am sensible of the pleasures which it brings me, but, at the same time, i am conscious of its dangers. i feel the dangers that it has for me; i fear the dangers that it may have for both of us. permit me to avoid those dangers by my silence. forgive my fears, mademoiselle; they have their origin in my esteem for you.' and he proceeded to answer her questions concerning the position and prospects of 'lady companions' in england, expecting, no doubt, that he would hear no more from her. even then, however, the story was not ended. the most passionate of mademoiselle curchod's letters bears a later date. it is the letter of a woman who feels that she has been treated shamefully. if it were not that mademoiselle curchod made a happy marriage so very soon afterwards, one would also say that it was the letter of a woman whose heart was broken. one gathers from it that, while mademoiselle curchod appreciated gibbon's difficulty in marrying her while he was dependent upon his father, she was willing to wait for him until his father's death should leave him free to follow the impulse of his heart. in the meantime she reproaches him for having caused her to reject other offers of marriage, and protests that it is not true, whatever calumnious gossips may have said, that, in gibbon's absence, she has flirted with other men. above all, she protests that she has not flirted with gibbon's great friend, m. deyverdun. her last words are: 'i am treating you as an honest man of the world, who is incapable of breaking his promise, of seduction, or of treachery, but who has, instead of that, amused himself in racking my heart with tortures, well prepared, and well carried into effect. i will not threaten you, therefore, with the wrath of heaven--the expression that escaped from me in my first emotion. but i assure you, without laying any claim to the gift of prophecy, that you will one day regret the irreparable loss that you have incurred in alienating for ever the too frank and tender heart of 's. c.' [illustration: lausanne, looking east] the rest is silence; and the presumption is strong that these were actually the last words which sealed the estrangement. if it were not for mademoiselle curchod's subsequent attitude towards him, one would be bound to say that gibbon behaved abominably. but, as we shall see presently, her resentment was not enduring. perhaps she was aware of extenuating circumstances that we do not know of. perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she was conscious of having spread her net to catch a husband who then seemed a very brilliant match to the daughter of the country clergyman. the letter of the friend who begged her not to advertise so clearly her desire to make herself agreeable to men would certainly lend some colour to the suggestion. at any rate, since she herself forgave gibbon, it seems unfair for anyone else to press the case against him. it was nearly twenty years later--in --that gibbon decided to make lausanne his home. a good deal of water had flowed under the bridge in the meantime. he had written, and published, half of his history; and that half had sufficed to make him famous. he had been an officer in the militia and a member of parliament. he had been a constant figure in fashionable society, and an occasional figure in literary society; a fellow-member with charles james fox of boodle's, white's, and brooks's; a fellow-member of the literary club with johnson, burke, adam smith, oliver goldsmith, sir joshua reynolds, and sir joseph banks. he had held office in the department of the board of trade, and lost it at the time of the coalition between fox and north. his applications for employment in the diplomatic service--whether as secretary to the embassy at paris or as minister plenipotentiary at berne--had been politely rejected. and he had become a middle-aged bachelor whose income, unless supplemented by the emoluments of some public office, hardly sufficed for the demands of his social position. in these circumstances it occurred to him to propose to his friend, m. deyverdun--the same m. deyverdun with whom mademoiselle curchod vowed that she had never flirted--that they should keep house together at lausanne. m. deyverdun, who was like himself a confirmed bachelor of moderate means, and had a larger house than he wanted, was delighted with the proposal. all gibbon's friends and relatives told him that he was making a fool of himself; but he knew better. he sold all his property, except his library, and 'bade a long farewell to the _fumum et opes strepitumque romæ_.' his first winter, as he puts it in his delightful style, 'was given to a general embrace without nice discrimination of persons and characters.' the comprehensive embrace completed, he settled down to work. his life at lausanne is faithfully mirrored in his letters, more particularly in his letters to lord sheffield. it was at once a luxurious and an industrious life. one fact which stands out clearly is that gibbon took no exercise. he boasts that, in a period of five years, he never moved five miles from lausanne; he apologizes for a corpulence which makes it absolutely impossible for him to cross the great saint bernard; he admits that, when he entertained mr. fox, he did not go for walks with that statesman, but hired a guide to do so on his behalf. he also drank a great deal of madeira and malvoisie. his letters to lord sheffield are full of appeals for pipes of these exhilarating beverages. he declares that they are necessary for the preservation of his health, and appears to have persuaded himself that they were good for gout. the consequence was that he had several severe attacks of that distressing malady. gout or no gout, however, he freely enjoyed the relaxation of social intercourse. he was never tired of pointing out to his correspondents that, whereas in london he was nobody in particular, in lausanne he was a leader of society. his position there was, in fact, similar in many ways to that of voltaire at geneva; though he differed from voltaire in always keeping on good terms with all his neighbours. to be invited to his parties was no less a mark of distinction than it had been, a generation earlier, to be invited to the philosopher's parties at ferney. one of the letters tells us how he gave a ball, and stole away to bed at a.m., leaving the young people, his guests, to keep it up till after sunrise. he also gave frequent dinners, and still more frequent card-parties. when the gout was very bad, he gave card-parties in his bedroom. distinguished strangers often came to see him, and gave lausanne the tone of a fashionable resort. 'you talk of lausanne,' he writes, 'as a place of retirement, yet, from the situation and freedom of the pays de vaud, all nations, and all extraordinary characters are astonished to meet each other. the abbé raynal, the great gibbon, and mercier, author of the "tableau de paris," have been in the same room. the other day the prince and princesse de ligne, the duke and duchess d'ursel, etc., came from brussels on purpose to act a comedy.' and again: 'a few weeks ago, as i was walking on our terrace with m. tissot, the celebrated physician; m. mercier, the author of the "tableau de paris"; the abbé raynal; monsieur, madame, and mademoiselle necker; the abbé de bourbon, a natural son of lewis the fifteenth; the hereditary prince of brunswick, prince henry of prussia, and a dozen counts, barons, and extraordinary persons,' etc. from time to time he faced the question whether it would be well to marry. madame necker dissuaded him from the adventure on the ground that in order to marry happily it is necessary to marry young. it is not certain that her advice was disinterested, but it was good advice to give to a man who, after expressing his readiness to adopt 'some expedient, even the most desperate, to secure the domestic society of a female companion,' summed up his sentiments upon the subject in this candid language: 'i am not in love with any of the hyænas of lausanne, though there are some who keep their claws tolerably well pared. sometimes, in a solitary mood, i have fancied myself married to one or another of those whose society and conversation are the most pleasing to me; but when i have painted in my fancy all the probable consequences of such a union, i have started from my dream, rejoiced in my escape, and ejaculated a thanksgiving that i was still in possession of my natural freedom.' [illustration: the market-place, lausanne] this, however, was not written until after the history was finished. gibbon never felt the need of a female companion so long as he had his work to occupy him. the fact that he began to feel it acutely as soon as ever the work was done gives an added pathos to this, the most famous and the most frequently quoted passage of his memoirs: 'i have presumed to mark the moment of conception: i shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. it was on the day, or rather night, of the th of june, , between the hours of eleven and twelve, that i wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. after laying down my pen, i took several turns in a _berceau_, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. the air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. i will not dissemble the first emotions on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. but my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that i had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.' the life of the historian was, in fact, destined to last only for another six years--years in which he sometimes was desperately anxious to relieve his loneliness, aggravated by the death of deyverdun, by seeking 'the domestic society of a female companion,' but inclined, on the whole, to the opinion encouraged by madame necker, that the remedy would be worse than the disease. we probably shall not be wrong in conjecturing that the pleasure which he derived from madame necker's correspondence and society assisted him in coming to this decision. at any rate, we must admit that there are few literary romances more remarkable than this story, of the renewal of love some thirty years or so after a lovers' quarrel. the lovers parted, as we have seen, with high-strung feelings--at least upon the lady's side. they met again soon after mademoiselle curchod had accepted the heart and hand of jacques necker, the rich parisian banker, destined to become louis xvi.'s minister of finance. gibbon, coming to paris, called, and was well received. we have accounts of the visit from both of them. madame necker says that her vanity was flattered because gibbon appeared to be dazzled by the contemplation of her wealth. gibbon complains that he was not taken very seriously, that m. necker invited him to supper every evening, and went to bed, leaving him alone with his wife. the philosopher balzac would have called him a fool, and classed him with the _prédestinés_; but it does not appear that scandal, or occasion for scandal, or anything worse than the interchange of sentimental _persiflage_, resulted. a gap in the history of their friendship follows, but in we find the neckers visiting gibbon in bentinck street. gibbon writes patronizingly of the husband as 'a sensible, good-natured creature,' and of the wife he says: 'i live with her just as i used to do twenty years ago, laugh at her paris varnish, and oblige her to become a simple, reasonable suissesse.' we need not interpret this statement _au pied de la lettre_, but the visit certainly marks a stage in the story of their intimacy. gibbon went to see the neckers in paris in the following year, and after his return to london madame du deffand told him how she had talked to madame necker about him. 'we talked of m. gibbon. of what else? of m. gibbon--continually of m. gibbon.' and madame necker herself wrote, at about the same time, with reference to the publication of the first volumes of 'the decline and fall': 'wherever i go your books shall follow me, and give me pleasure and happiness. if you write, too, your letters will be welcome and appreciated. if you do not write ... but i refuse to contemplate this painful possibility.' gibbon's migration to lausanne and the neckers' purchase of their famous country seat at coppet united them by still closer ties, and one cannot help noticing that at this period of their lives--when they were both something over fifty years of age--madame necker's letters to gibbon became at once more frequent and more affectionate. some of those letters, indeed, can only be distinguished from love-letters by reading into them our knowledge of madame necker's reputation for propriety. we have seen her dissuading gibbon from marriage on the ground that to marry late is to marry unhappily. another reason which she gives is that 'without a miracle it would be impossible to find a woman worthy of you.' of a contemplated visit to lausanne she says: 'i am looking forward with a delightful sentiment to the day i am to pass with you.' and afterwards: 'returning here, and finding only the tombs of those i loved so well, i found you, as it were, a solitary tree whose shade still covers the desert which separates me from the first years of my life.' and in another letter, more sentimental still, we read: 'come back to us when you are free. the moment of your leisure ought always to belong to her who has been _your first love and your last_. i cannot make up my mind which of these titles is the sweeter and the dearer to my heart.' what are we to make of it all? nothing, assuredly, that entitles us to cast a stone at madame necker, or to express for her husband a pity which he never felt for himself. yet one imagines that after m. necker, who kept such early hours, had retired to his well-earned repose, there must sometimes have been certain sentimental communings, in which the old note of _persiflage_ was no longer to be heard. one listens in fancy to the regrets of these two who never forgot that they had once been lovers--regrets, no doubt, not openly expressed, but only coyly hinted--for the things that might have been. the regrets, we may take it, were tempered by the lurking consciousness that things were really better as they were. the lovers must have known that, if they had married on nothing a year, the one would never have written his history and the other would never have had her salon, but they would have been two struggling nonentities whom the world would never have heard of. they must have felt, too, that the success in life which they had achieved separately, but could not possibly have achieved together, had meant much to them: that in winning it they had fulfilled their destinies; that their tempers would have soured if they had had to live without it. all this they must have admitted to themselves, and even in their most candid moments, to each other. and yet--and yet---- [illustration: la tour de haldimand, ouchy, lausanne] footnotes: [ ] poems addressed to her by these young theologians may be found in defunct magazines and annuals. [ ] this is not quite accurate. the letter which m. d'haussonville dates conveys a salutation to pastor curchod, who died in . it must have been written, therefore, not in , but in or . chapter iv madame de montolieu--dr. tissot to us, as we look backwards, gibbon in lausanne society figures as a triton among the minnows, but to his contemporaries he probably seemed less important. he certainly did to his contemporaries in london. boswell, as we all know, considered him the intellectual inferior of dr. johnson; and there is the story of the duke of st. albans accepting a presentation copy of his 'decline and fall of the roman empire' with the genial remark, 'hallo! another two d----d thick volumes! always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, mr. gibbon!' no one in lausanne took quite such a philistine tone as that, but it is doubtful whether even lausanne would have voted him a higher position than that of _primus inter pares_. lausanne, after all, had its native notables, and was too near to its celebrities to see them in their true perspective. it had, among others, madame de montolieu. she was a beauty as well as a woman of letters, and gibbon himself admired her in both capacities. he wrote to lord sheffield that there was 'danger' for him, and he was in danger of making himself ridiculous if of nothing worse. the story is told that he fell upon his knees to make a declaration of love to madame montolieu, and being too fat to rise without assistance, had to be helped to his feet by a domestic servant summoned for the purpose. he bore no malice, however, but even persuaded the lady to publish a novel which she had written 'to amuse an aged relative,' offering, when she objected, to attest his belief in its merits by printing it under his own signature. the novel in question was 'caroline de lichtfield,' which has passed through many editions--the first in and the last in --and been translated into english. its enthusiastic reception launched its author upon a career. her collected works, including a french translation of 'the swiss family robinson,' fill volumes; and a host of imitators arose. 'well! are they still turning out novels at lausanne?' was one of the questions that napoleon asked the council of the helvetian republic; and louis bridel, brother of the more famous doyen bridel, writing in , drew a graphic picture of the lausanne ladies, all with one accord engaged in literary toil: 'the romance of "caroline," and the renown which it has brought its author, has caused such a ferment in our feminine heads that, jealous of the reputation of one of their number, they cover an incredible quantity of paper with ink. they pass their days in writing novels; their toilette tables are no longer covered with chiffons, but with sheets of notepaper; and, if one unfolds a curlpaper, one is sure to find that it is a fragment of a love-letter, or of a romantic description.' madame de charrière, a rival craftswoman of whom we shall have to speak, the author of 'lettres de lausanne,' did not like madame de montolieu. she called her a 'provincial coquette,' and ridiculed her 'pretentions,' maintaining that, though her countrymen were attracted by her charms, 'the english who boarded with her stepfather considered her a disgustingly dirty and untidy person.' but gibbon, who was not only english but a man of taste, thought otherwise, as we have seen; and his judgment may be accepted as the less prejudiced of the two. and madame de montolieu's literary success, at any rate, is not to be disputed. she lived to be an octogenarian, and retained her popularity until the last.[ ] she and her only child, dying simultaneously, were buried in the same grave, on which may be read the inscription, 'here i am, o lord, with the son whom thou hast given me!' dr. tissot, whom we have already met on the terrace at lausanne, is another celebrity of the period who merits further mention. he and gibbon once danced a minuet together at an evening party--a penalty imposed upon them in a game of 'forfeits.' they thus, says tissot's german biographer, eynard, 'revived the innocent pleasures of arcadia of old'; but the great physician, is less famous for the way in which he took his pleasures than for the way in which he did his work. tronchin of geneva had been the medical attendant of the cosmopolitan aristocracy, had anticipated rousseau in exhorting mothers to nurse their own children, and had ventured, with a rude hand, to open the windows of the palace of versailles. tissot of lausanne aspired to be the medical adviser of the common people. 'while,' he wrote, 'we are attending the most brilliant portion of humanity in the cities, the most useful members of society are perishing miserably in the country villages.' obviously, he could not do much personally to cure the ailments of a scattered rural population; but he did what he might to help them by writing popular manuals of hygiene. some of his advice is not even now out of date. he denounced the vice of overfeeding the delicate: 'the more one loves an invalid, the more one tries to make him eat; and that is to kill him with kindness.' he also spoke vigorous words against excessive tea-drinking: 'these teapots full of hot water which i find on people's tables remind me of the box of pandora from which all evils issued--but with this difference, that they do not even leave hope behind, but, being a cause of hypochondria, disseminate melancholy and despair.' these excellent pamphlets brought tissot fame and the friendship of the great. joseph ii. offered him a medical chair at the university of padua, which he occupied for two years. he was offered, but did not accept, the posts of physician at the courts of hanover and poland. the prince of wurtemberg--he whom rousseau addressed in the famous letter beginning 'if i had had the misfortune to be born a prince'--settled at lausanne in order to be near him; and many interesting people sought his advice by correspondence. in particular a certain young gunner wrote from ajaccio to ask what his uncle, an archdeacon, had better take for the gout. the orthography is curious: 's'il asseie de remuer les genoux, des douleurs égus lui font cesser son accion.' the signature is 'buonaparte, _officier au régiment de la fère_.' [illustration: lausanne from the signal] footnote: [ ] she sheltered madame de genlis in her flight from the revolution. chapter v benjamin constant and madame de staËl next, though they do not become interesting until a somewhat later date, we may mention the constants: rosalie de constant, the witty little hunchback whose sentimental correspondence with bernardin de saint-pierre has recently been published, and her more famous cousin, benjamin constant de rebecque, the story of whose love for madame de staël has recently been revived.[ ] that is another story which will be here in its proper place. benjamin was a man of many love-affairs; 'constant the inconstant' was the name that women called him by. he was the son of a swiss soldier of fortune, and had a cosmopolitan education at oxford and edinburgh, in belgium and in germany. in his youth he held the post of chamberlain at the court of brunswick, where he acquired distingished manners. he was brilliant, though shallow, and there was something wertheresque about him. born in , he was married, in , to the ugliest of the duchess of brunswick's maids of honour. he said afterwards that he had married her for no particular reason that he could remember, but that his reasons for divorcing her were clear enough. after his separation from her, he consoled himself by an intrigue with madame de charrière--a dutch lady, married to a switzer, residing at colombier, near neuchâtel, and known as the authoress of several sentimental novels. it was an affair that could hardly have lasted long in any case, seeing that the lady was twenty-seven years older than her lover. as a matter of fact it came to a quick end when the lover met madame de staël. the details of that meeting are curious. being at lausanne, benjamin constant set out to call on madame de staël at coppet. his relatives already knew, and he was interested to make her acquaintance. it happened that he met madame de staël on the road, driving from coppet to lausanne. he stopped the carriage and introduced himself. she invited him to get in, and drove him back. finding his company agreeable, she pressed him to stay to supper with her. he did so, and was farther rewarded by an invitation to breakfast with his hostess on the following morning. it was to madame de charrière herself that benjamin constant first confided the impression that madame de staël had made upon him. 'it is the most interesting acquaintance that i have ever made,' he wrote. 'seldom have i seen such a combination of alluring and dazzling qualities, such brilliance, and such good sense, a friendliness so expansive and so cultivated, such generosity of sentiment, and such gentle courtesy. she is the second woman i have met for whom i could have counted the world well lost--you know who was the first. she is, in fact, a being apart--a superior being, such as one meets but once in a century.' having read that, madame de charrière knew that she had passed for ever out of benjamin constant's life. his own writings give us a glimpse of the early days of the new intimacy. two passages from his diary, the second supplementing the first, supply the picture. thus we read, on one day: 'i had agreed with madame de staël that, in order to avoid compromising her, i should never stay with her later than midnight. whatever the charm of her conversation, and however passionate my desire for something more than her conversation, i had to submit to this rule. but this evening, the time having passed more quickly than usual, i pulled out my watch to demonstrate that it was not yet time for me to go. but the inexorable minute-hand having deceived me, in a moment of childish anger i flung the instrument of my condemnation on the floor and broke it. "how silly you are!" madame de staël exclaimed. but what a smile i perceived shining through her reproaches! decidedly my broken watch will do me a good turn.' and the next day we find the entry: 'i have not bought myself a new watch. i do not need one any more.' for a time the affair proceeded satisfactorily, no serious cloud appearing on the horizon until the death of m. de staël. then, of course, madame de staël was free to marry her lover, and benjamin constant proposed that she should do so. but she would not. one reason was that she did not wish to change a name that her writings had made famous; another, and perhaps a weightier one, that, though she loved benjamin, she had no confidence in him--'constant the inconstant' was inconstant still. though he loved madame de staël, he loved other women too. his intimacy with madame talma, the actor's wife, was notorious, and was not the only intimacy of the kind with which rumour credited him. altogether, he was not the sort of man whom any woman could marry with any certainty that he would make her happy. so madame de staël refused to marry benjamin constant, and with her refusal their relations entered upon a fresh and interesting phase. henceforward the story is one of subsiding passion on his part, and very desperate efforts on hers to fan the dying embers of his desire. again and again he tried to break with her; again and again she overwhelmed him with her reproaches, and brought him back, a penitent slave, suing for the renewal of her favour. the time when these things happened was the time when her salon at coppet was at the zenith of its renown. the story is told for us by benjamin constant himself, in his 'journal intime,' a diary not written for publication, but published, long after his death, in the _revue internationale_,[ ] in . the tone, at first, is that of a man whom lassitude has overtaken after elegant debauchery. benjamin constant is only thirty-seven, yet he already feels himself an old man, whose powers are failing, who is no longer capable of strong emotion, or even of taking an intelligent interest in life. he writes, in fact, as if he were very tired. when something happens to remind him of his old attachment to madame de charrière, he writes thus: 'it is seven years since i saw her--ten since our intimacy ended. how easily i then used to break every tie that bored me! how confident i was that i could always form others when i pleased! how clearly i felt that my life was mine to do what i liked with, and what a difference ten years have made! now everything seems precarious, and ready to fly away from me. even the privileges that i have do not make me happy. but i have passed the age of giving up anything, because i feel that i am powerless to replace anything.' [illustration: in the forest of sauvabelin, above lausanne] he describes--sometimes with a languid resignation, and sometimes with a peevish resentment--madame de staël's repeated endeavours to drag him, a more or less reluctant victim, at her chariot wheels. this is a very typical entry: 'a lively supper with the prince de belmonte. left alone with madame de staël. the storm gradually rises. a fearful scene, lasting till three o'clock in the morning--on my lack of sensibility, my untrustworthiness, the failure of my actions to correspond with my sentiments. alas! i would be glad to escape from monotonous lamentations, not over real calamities, but upon the universal laws of nature, and upon the advent of old age. i should be glad if she would not ask me for love after a _liaison_ of ten years' standing, at a time when we are both nearly forty years old, and after i have declared, times out of number, that i have no longer any love to give her. it is a declaration which i have never withdrawn, except for the purpose of calming storms of passion which frightened me.' so is this: 'a letter from madame de staël, who finds my letters melancholy, and asks what it is that i require to make me happy. alas! what i require is my liberty, and that is precisely what i am not allowed to have. i am reminded of the story of the hussar who took an interest in the prisoner whom he had to put to death, and said to him: "ask me any favour you like, except to spare your life."' and this: 'a fearful scene this evening with madame de staël. i announce my intention of leaving her definitely. a second scene follows. frenzy: reconciliation impossible; departure difficult. i must go away and get married.' and this: 'madame de staël has won me back to her again.' until, finally, their relations gradually going from bad to worse, we reach this striking piece of eloquence: 'yes, certainly i am more anxious than ever to break it off. she is the most egoistical, the most excitable, the most ungrateful, the most vain, and the most vindictive of women. why didn't i break it off long ago? she is odious and intolerable to me. i must have done with her or die. she is more volcanic than all the volcanoes in the world put together. she is like an old _procureur_, with serpents in her hair, demanding the fulfilment of a contract in alexandrine verse.' it was in marriage that benjamin constant gradually decided to seek a haven of refuge from these tempestuous passions. but, though he is continually touching on the subject in his diary, he generally refers to it without enthusiasm. marriage is 'necessary' for him, but there are objections to every particular marriage that suggests itself. sometimes the objections are expressed in general terms: 'went to a party, where i met several agreeable women. but i am very unfortunate. in the women whom i might be able and willing to marry there is always a something that does not suit me. meanwhile my life advances.' sometimes the objections are particularized: 'trip to geneva; called on the mesdemoiselles de sellon; saw amélie fabry again. she is as dark as ever, as lively as ever, as wide awake as ever. how i should have hated her, if they had succeeded in making me marry her! yet she is really a very amiable girl. but i am always unfortunate in finding some insuperable objection in every woman whom i think of marrying. madame de hardenberg was tiresome and romantic; mrs. lindsay was forty, and had two illegitimate children. madame de staël, who understands me better than anyone else does, will not be satisfied with my friendship when i can no longer give her my love. this poor amélie, who would like me to marry her, is thirty-two, and portionless, and has ridiculous mannerisms, which become more accentuated as she grows older. antoinette, who is twenty, well off, and not particularly ridiculous, is such a common little thing to look at.' but benjamin constant finally decided to marry madame dutertre.[ ] he bought her from her husband, who, for a sum of money, was willing to divorce her; but it was not without a violent struggle that he tore himself away from madame de staël. let us trace the story of the struggle in his diary. madame dutertre was an old friend: 'called on madame dutertre, who has improved wonderfully in appearance. i made advances which she did not repel. the citadel is to fall to-night. two years' resistance is quite long enough. 'off to the country with charlotte. she is an angel. i love her better every day. she is so sweet, so amiable. what a fool i was to refuse to have anything to do with her twelve years ago! what mad passion for independence drove me to put my neck under the foot of the most imperious woman in the world! 'we are back in paris. joyous days; delights of love. what the devil is the meaning of it? it is twelve years since i last felt a similar emotion. this woman, whom i have refused a hundred times, who has always loved me, whom i have sent away, whom i left eighteen months ago--this woman now turns my head. evidently the contrast with madame de staël is the cause of it all. the contrast of her impetuosity, her egoism, and her continual preoccupation with herself, with the gentleness, the calm, the humble and modest bearing of charlotte, makes the latter a thousand times more dear to me. i am tired of the _man-woman_ whose iron hand has for ten years held me fast, when i have a really womanly woman to intoxicate and enchant me. if i can marry her, i shall not hesitate. everything depends on the line m. dutertre takes.' m. dutertre, as has been stated, took the line of offering to consent to a divorce provided it were made worth his while to do so. madame de staël was more difficult to deal with. the first entry which gives us a glimpse of her feelings is as follows: 'madame de staël is back; she will not hear of our relations being broken off. the best way will be not to see her again, but to wait at lausanne for orders from charlotte--my good angel whom i bless for saving me. schlegel writes that madame de staël declares that, if i leave her, she will kill herself. i don't believe a word of it.' followed by: 'unhappy fool that i am; weakness overcomes me; i start for coppet. tenderness, despair, and then the trump card, "i shall kill myself."' he fled to lausanne, but-- 'what was the good of coming here? madame de staël has come after me, and all my plans are upset. in the evening there was a fearful scene, lasting till five o'clock in the morning. i am violent, and put myself in the wrong. but, my poor charlotte, i will not forsake you.' yet he had hardly written these lines when he was false to them. madame de staël came a second time to lausanne to fetch him, and we read: 'she came; she threw herself at my feet; she raised frightful cries of pain and desolation. a heart of iron would not have resisted. i am back at coppet with her. i have promised to stay six weeks, and charlotte is expecting me at the end of the month. my god! what am i to do? i am trampling my future happiness under my feet.... 'i receive a letter from charlotte, who is more loving and more sure of me than ever. would she forgive me if she knew where i am and what i am doing? how slowly the time passes! into what an abysm have i not hurled myself! last night we had a dreadful scene. shall i ever get out of it all alive? i have to pass my time in falsehood and deceptions in order to avoid the furious outbreaks which so terrify me. if it were not for the hopes which i build upon madame de staël's approaching departure to vienna, this life would be unbearable. to console myself i spend my time in picturing how things will go if they go well. this is my castle in spain. charlotte finishes her arrangements, and makes her preparations secretly. madame de staël, suspecting nothing, sets out for vienna. i marry charlotte, and we pass the winter pleasantly at lausanne.' [illustration: chÂteau de blonay] though this was not exactly how things happened, the marriage was nevertheless speedily and safely celebrated. but alas! poor benjamin! it was now his turn, in the midst of his domestic bliss, to feel the pangs of unrequited love. having fled from madame de staël, he sighed for her. his diary is full of his regrets. it is: 'charlotte is good and sweet. i build myself foolish ideals, and throw the blame of my own folly upon others. at bottom charlotte is what women always are. i have blamed individuals where i ought to have blamed the species. but for my work, and for the good advice that i need, i regret madame de staël more than ever.' or it is: 'a letter from madame de staël, from which i gather that, this time, all is really over between us. so be it. it is my own doing. i must steer my course alone, but i must take care not to fetter myself with other ties which would be infinitely less agreeable.' or again: 'i have lost madame de staël, and i shall never recover from the blow.' and the truth was, indeed, that madame de staël had ceased to care, and that another had succeeded to benjamin constant's place in her heart. his name was albert de rocca, and he was a young french officer who had been wounded in the spanish wars. his personal beauty was such that a spanish woman, finding him left for dead upon a battle-field, had taken him home with her, and nursed him back to health, saying that it was a pity that such a beautiful young man should die. his age was twenty-three, and madame de staël's was forty-five. but the affection that sprang up between them was deep and genuine. 'i will love her,' he said, 'so dearly that she will end by marrying me.' and when she protested that she was old enough to be his mother, he answered that the mention of that word only gave him a further reason for loving her. 'he is fascinated,' baron de voght wrote, 'by his relations with madame de staël, and the tears of his father cannot induce him to abandon it.' so she married him, though, for reasons of her own, she insisted that the marriage should be kept a secret. it seemed to her that a young husband would make her ridiculous, but that a young lover would not; very possibly she was right according to the moral standard of the age. at any rate her husband posed as her lover, and in that capacity quarrelled with constant, with whom he nearly fought a duel, and travelled with her to russia, to sweden, and to england, and lived with her in paris and at coppet. but it was at this period, when her fame was at its zenith, that madame de staël wrote: 'fame is for women only a splendid mourning for happiness.' but the end was drawing near. madame de staël had lived all her life at high pressure, and her health was undermined. a lingering illness, of which the fatal issue was foreseen, overtook her. she struggled against it, declaring that she would live for rocca's sake. but all in vain. she died in paris in . rocca himself, who only survived her a few months, was too ill to be with her. benjamin constant spent a night of mourning in her death-chamber. they buried her at coppet amid general lamentations. footnotes: [ ] by the present author in 'madame de staël and her lovers.' [ ] it has since been republished separately. [ ] madame de hardenberg, divorced and remarried. chapter vi the revolution at lausanne, as at geneva, the thunders of the french revolution echoed. gibbon heard them, and was alarmed, as if at the approach of the end of the world. the patriots of vaud heard them, and rejoiced at the hope of a new era about to be begun. their excellencies of berne felt the edifice of their dominion crumbling about their ears. the burghers of morges began the trouble by disinterring from their archives an old charter, on the strength of which they refused to pay for the mending of the roads, while a pastor named martin exhorted his congregation to withhold the tithe that was levied on potatoes. then a fête was held at rolle to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the bastille, and , bernese invaded the country, arrested the ringleaders, and compelled the magistrates to swear allegiance at the point of the bayonet. césar laharpe and j. j. cart appealed to the french to intervene. at first the french hesitated. robespierre was not ambitious of foreign conquests, having his hands full enough at home, but the directorate took larger views. switzerland was reputed to be rich--and _was für plunder_! a division of the army of italy crossed the lake on january , , and took possession of lausanne. for a space there was civil war. vaudois volunteers fought under their green flag, while a certain loyal legion, under colonel de rovéreaz, distinguished itself at fraubrunnen, in defence of berne. the french, however, were so much stronger than the bernese that the issue could not long remain in doubt. it was the swiss money that the french wanted, and the gold found in the vaults of the treasury of berne was carried off to paris, while the canton of vaud was accorded a new and independent constitution. [illustration: the rhone valley from mont pelerin] there were other revolutions, and revisions, and reconstructions to follow. when the holy alliance remodelled the map of europe in , the fate of vaud, like that of so many other minor nationalities, hung in the balance. the bernese fully expected to be allowed to re-establish their dominion; but alexander i., prompted by laharpe, prevented them. 'you have done a great deal for me,' the emperor is reported to have said to the liberator. 'what can i do for you?' and the liberator's answer was: 'sire, all that i ask is permission to speak to your majesty of my country whenever i wish.' he spoke in , and the emperor listened; and the claims of berne were rejected; and laharpe took a house at lausanne, and looked down on the scene of his triumphs, and fought his battles over again, and frequented madame de staël, whom in more stormy days he had written of as 'une infernale gueuse,' and was reverenced by all as the 'grand old man' of the canton. there were further political changes in , in , and in ; but of these we need not speak. their interest is no more than local. what the english traveller chiefly sees in the lausanne of the nineteenth century is an increasing english colony, and the loudly vaunted educational facilities. chapter vii the english colony--the educational advantages of the english colony there is not perhaps a great deal to be said, except that it fills two churches on sundays, and at all times monopolizes the ouchy road. it has never consisted of distinguished persons like the english colony at florence; on the other hand, it has never included so large a proportion of disreputable persons as the english colonies at brussels and boulogne. gibbon cannot be said to have belonged to it, since, in his day, it did not yet exist; and it can hardly claim dickens, since his sojourn there was of comparatively brief duration. in the main it is composed of very young and rather elderly members of the respectable middle classes. there is an english club, and there are opportunities of playing bridge. the life is inexpensive, not because commodities are specially cheap, but because there are no wealthy residents to set extravagant standards. a small income goes a long way there; and the climate is salubrious for all those whose bronchial tubes are in a condition to resist the _bise_. these are conditions which please a great many people--notably the wandering spinsters who 'live in their boxes,' and the retired officers and civil servants who have to subsist upon their pensions. at lausanne they can economize without feeling the pinch of poverty, and without feeling envious--or perceiving that their wives feel envious--of more prosperous neighbours. the sunshine costs nothing, and the amusements cost very little; they can go about in knickerbockers and wear out their old clothes without fearing that their solvency will be suspected. there is no need for them to learn a foreign tongue, since they form their own society, and mix very little with the swiss who accept them, but do not pretend to like them. they live lazily, but healthily, and, on the whole, contentedly. of course, there is another side to the medal, and a price to be paid for the advantages. the colonists are exiles who have severed old ties, and have a difficulty in forming new ones. their existence is rather animal than human, and rather vegetable than animal. they lose their energy and their intelligence; they are like plants no longer growing in a garden, but uprooted and flung upon the grass. a stranger finds it difficult to converse with them, and fancies that they must be terribly bored. perhaps they are; but perhaps, too, it is better to be bored in the sunshine than busy in a london fog. so they linger on, persuading themselves that they do so for their children's sake rather than their own, and referring the stranger, if he happens to question them, to the wonderful educational advantages of the town. but what is the sober truth about those educational advantages? that is another branch of the subject which seems to be worth a passing word. assuredly the swiss have a great reputation as educators, and that reputation stands nowhere higher than in the canton of vaud. yverdon is in the canton of vaud, and it was there that pestalozzi kept his school. moreover, just as it has been said that every citizen of ticino is by nature a hotel-keeper, so it has been said that every citizen of vaud is by nature a professor. professors, as we have already seen, were among the canton's chief 'articles of export' during the bernese domination, and kings preferred the vaudois professors to any others. yet a sufficient number of professors--and perhaps the best of them--have always remained behind, so that teaching and learning have continued to be great native industries. the question which is left is, how do the swiss systems of education compare with ours? the answer is commonplace, and sounds platitudinous: they are better than ours in some respects, and inferior in others. let us elaborate and particularize. scholarship, in the accepted english sense of the word, hardly exists in switzerland. a swiss jebb is almost unthinkable, and if anyone proposes to find a swiss bentley in casaubon, the answer must be that casaubon was not really swiss, though he was, for a time, a professor at geneva. in the matter of the classics the german scholars have always been more learned than the swiss, and the english scholars have always been both more learned and more graceful; indeed, in the sort of scholarship which enables a man to speak and write his own language properly the swiss have always been sadly to seek. swiss french is atrocious, and the french of lausanne, though a shade better than that of fribourg, is worse than that of geneva or neuchâtel. when the french themselves wish to say that a man's style is clumsy, they liken it to 'a swiss translation from the belgian.' [illustration: a street in st. saphorin] nor have the swiss ever made any notable contribution to original philosophic thought. their principal metaphysicians, like charles bonnet, have been merely theologians in disguise, who have started by assuming the points which they undertook to prove, and have been unable to keep their metaphysics and their theology apart, as did, for example, bishop berkeley and dean mansell. the great names in the history of speculative thought--such names as those of spinoza, locke, hume, kant, hegel, comte, herbert spencer, and t. h. green--have been english, or german, or french, or dutch. one does not find a single swiss name among them. the great swiss names, when we get away from theology, all stand for something scientific, practical, concrete. lavater, gesner, saussure, jomini--such are a few of the instances that may be cited to point our moral and lead us up to our generalization, which is as follows: elementary education is excellent in switzerland; but the higher education is too technical and utilitarian to satisfy those who consider that the function of education is to cultivate the mind. the elementary schools of the canton of vaud are probably better than those of the county of london; but the universities of geneva and lausanne are a poor substitute for those of oxford and cambridge. let us by all means give praise where praise is due. the medical faculties of berne and lausanne have a european reputation; and it is said that engineering is nowhere taught better than at the zurich polytechnic. the practical side of the swiss character is also well exemplified in the various schools for waiters, for watch-makers, and for bee-keepers. but it is possible--or it seems so to an english university man--for education to be too practical; and the swiss have surely committed that excess in devising that educational abomination, the school of commerce. nothing is ever taught in a school of commerce that a man who has been properly educated elsewhere cannot pick up in six weeks; and the curriculum, though it may sharpen the wits, can only, at the best, produce a superior kind of bagman. swiss education, therefore, has its drawbacks even for a switzer; and, for a young englishman of the better class, it has other drawbacks in addition. it is not merely that he learns less than he would in england because an unfamiliar language is the medium of instruction. he also acquires the wrong tone and the wrong manner, misses opportunities of making useful friends, and finds himself, when he grows up, a stranger in his own country--a stranger not only to the people, but to the ways and modes of thought. that is a disadvantage which was pointed out as long ago as the eighteenth century, by dr. john moore, when a nobleman who had thought of sending his son to the university of geneva asked his advice on the subject. 'the boy would return,' said the doctor, 'a kind of a frenchman, and would so be disqualified for success in english life.' the same criticism still applies. we are better cosmopolitans nowadays than were dr. moore's contemporaries, but the differences between the nations still subsist; and, just as each nation has the system of education which it deserves, so it has the system of education which best prepares a man to fight the battle of life in his own country. in england, more than in any other country, success depends comparatively little upon book-learning, and very much upon character and the possession of certain qualities which, in our insular pride, we vaunt as specially 'british.' these qualities are not to be acquired in the swiss schools. the qualities that are to be acquired there may, in some respects, be better and more solid; but they are not so useful in great britain. an english boy educated in a swiss school is, as a rule, when he leaves, rather a clumsy lout, with a smattering of bad french, emancipated from certain prejudices which might be useful to him, but steeped in other prejudices which are likely to stand in his way. one always has the feeling that more might have been made of him at home: not merely at eton or harrow, but at clifton or marlborough, or even at st. paul's or the bedford grammar school. on the whole, therefore, the educational _raison d'être_ of the english colony at lausanne disappears under investigation--at any rate, so far as the boys are concerned. the girls, from a certain point of view, may be better off there; for the swiss girls' schools are good, and the snobbishness which is the vice of english girls' schools is discouraged in them. for the girls, difficulties only arise when they reach a marriageable age. there are no husbands for them at lausanne, or anywhere in switzerland, unless it be at montreux, where anglo-indians sometimes come on leave, since all the men whom they meet--one is speaking only of their own countrymen--are either too young or too old--mere students, or else superannuated veterans. they know it, and lament their lot aloud; and the swiss know it, too, and make remarks. the english colony at lausanne, they say, is _une vraie pépinière de vieilles filles_. but this is an excursus. we must return to lausanne, and take another look at its social and intellectual life. [illustration: the dents du midi and la tour from "entre deux villes"] chapter viii vinet and sainte-beuve--juste olivier the centre of the intellectual life was always the university. it could not be otherwise in a country in which every man is born a pedagogue. in england the view has come to prevail that literature only begins to be vital when it ceases to be academic. in the canton of vaud the literature is academic or nothing, and even the poets are professors, unbending in their hours of sentimental ease; while the literature of revolt is the bitter cry of professors who have forfeited their chairs on account of their religious or political opinions. as the result of each revolution in turn we see a company of professors put to flight. the casualties of that sort are at least as numerous as the broken heads. the detailed relation of such professorial vicissitudes belongs, however, to the native antiquary. here it will suffice to recall a few more notable names. a swiss historian would doubtless say that the greatest of the names is that of alexandre vinet. in his hot youth he wrote riotous poetry: 'o mes amis, vidons bouteille et laissons faire le destin. le dieu qui préside à la treille est notre unique souverain.' afterwards he became austere, and played a great part in theological controversy. he hated the revivalists, whom he described as 'lunatics at large'; but he insisted that religious liberty should be the heritage of all, and, while opposing established churches, exercised a profound spiritual influence. he was a great broad churchman, and we may class him as the f. w. robertson or f. d. maurice of the canton of vaud. sainte-beuve blew his trumpet, and he, on his part, almost persuaded sainte-beuve to become a protestant. sainte-beuve, it is hardly too much to say, came to lausanne in search of a religion. st. simonism had disappointed him, and so had the liberal catholicism of lamennais. lamennais, in fact, had gone too fast and too far for him--had, as it were, he said, taken him for a drive, and spilt him in a ditch, and left him there and driven on. none the less, he earnestly desired to be spiritually-minded and a devout believer, feeling, in particular, an inclination towards mysticism, though unable to profess himself a mystic. 'i have,' he wrote to a friend, 'the sense of these things, but not the things themselves.' it seemed to him that he might find 'the things themselves' at lausanne, if he went there in the proper spirit and sat at vinet's feet. his swiss friend, juste olivier, a professor who was also a poet, procured him an engagement to deliver a course of lectures at the lausanne academy,[ ] and he embarked upon his errand with as much humility as was compatible with professorship. left free to choose his own subject, he decided to treat of port royal and the jansenists--the most spiritually-minded of the catholics, and those who had the closest affinity with the protestants. by means of his lectures he thought to build himself a bridge by which to pass from the one camp to the other. his elocution was defective, and his lectures were not quite such a success as he could have wished. the students used to meet in the cafés to parody them in the evenings. on the other hand, however, serious people eagerly watched the developments of the spiritual drama. not only did it seem to them that the fate of a soul was in the balance--they were also hoping to see protestantism score the sort of triumph that would make a noise in paris. so they asked daily for news of sainte-beuve, as of a sick man lying at death's door, and asked vinet, whom they regarded as his spiritual physician, to issue a bulletin. and vinet's bulletin was to this effect: 'i think he is convinced, but not yet converted.' but vinet, as he was soon to discover, was only partly right. that sainte-beuve was not converted was, indeed, obvious enough, seeing that he was making violent love to his neighbour's wife at the time--between him and 'conversion' stood the obstructive charms of madame olivier. but it is equally true that he was not convinced; and, by a crowning irony, he found his faith evaporating as he got to close quarters with the subject, through the study of which he had expected to achieve conviction. the great history of port royal, begun by a believer, was finished by a sceptic. 'moral bankruptcy,' is m. michaut's description of his condition, and there is a sense in which it might be applied even by those who desire to dissociate morality from creeds. it was the end--at any rate, for sainte-beuve--of all emotion which was not either purely sensual or purely intellectual. he could not be a mystic, as he could not be a poet, because he lacked the necessary genius; and forms of religion which depended, not on intuition, but on authority, were repugnant to his sane intelligence. so he said a sad farewell to christianity, and sought no substitute. 'i am mournfully looking on at the death of my heart,' he wrote to vinet; and he went away and resigned himself to become a materialist, a voluptuary, and a critic. and now a word about that juste olivier to whom sainte-beuve owed his appointment, and to whose wife sainte-beuve made love. the poet and the critic had met at paris, where olivier had gone to prepare himself for the chair of literature at neuchâtel. he was promoted, three years later, to the chair of history at lausanne, which he occupied for twelve years, acting also, during part of the time, as editor of the _revue suisse_, to which sainte-beuve contributed. the revolution of unseated him. he went to paris, where he achieved no great success, and was homesick there for five-and-twenty years. the swiss forgot him, and the parisians did not understand him. but, in , when there was no longer a living to be made in paris, he came home again. one may quote the pathetic picture of his home-coming, drawn by m. philippe godet: 'he had to live. for three winters the poet travelled through french switzerland, lecturing, reading his verses, relating his reminiscences, with that melancholy humour which gave his speech its charm. the public--i speak of what i saw--was polite, respectful, and nothing more. olivier felt almost a stranger in his own country. but he consoled himself, in the summer, at gryon, "the high village facing the alps of vaud," which he has so often celebrated. he was to sing, at the mid-august fête, his song to the shepherds of anzeindaz. and there they understood him and applauded. he had his day of happiness and glory among these simple mountaineers. he was, for an hour, what it had been the dream of his life to be, the national singer of the vaudois country.' but the end is melancholy. he died in a chalet at gryon in january, , a broken and disappointed man, reluctant even to speak of his work or hear it spoken of. there is a deep pathos in one of his last letters which m. godet quotes: 'it is a melancholy history--that of our country. it did nothing for viret or vinet; and, though i do not rank myself with them, i too know what neglect means. "come and have a drink"--that is their last word here. i had hoped for better things. what a beautiful dream it was! at least i have been loyal to it, even if i have not, as i fancy, done all that it was in me to do. since the day when, in one of my first printed poems, i wrote, "un génie est caché dans tous les lieux que j'aime," i have obstinately sought out that genius, and tried to make it speak. it has answered me, i think more often than its voice has been heard.' [illustration: lutry] footnote: [ ] it was not made a university until later. chapter ix nyon lausanne, for the purposes of this volume, must be taken to include such neighbouring lake-side towns as morges, and rolle, and nyon. morges we have already seen distinguishing itself by refusing, on principle, to pay for the mending of the roads, and so paving the way for the subsequent insurrection. nowadays it is the seat of an arsenal, and is said to have an aristocratic population, interested in literature. rolle was the home of the laharpes, and boasts a statue of césar de laharpe by pradier. a colony of french and genevan political exiles once flourished there, and madame de staël was a frequent visitor. voltaire once proposed to buy an estate in the neighbourhood--the château des menthon--but the bernese would not let him do so, alleging the curious reason that the philosopher was a roman catholic. nyon is the dirtiest town on the lake--or would be if villeneuve were not dirtier. but it is also one of the most picturesque--the castle being nobly situated and in a fine state of preservation--and it has its interesting memories. one of its interesting associations is with the waldenses. these persecuted protestants had fled, or been driven out, from their mountain home above turin. switzerland received them hospitably, but they were homesick. they resolved to go back; not to slink back in twos and threes, but to march back, with their flags flying, like courageous christian soldiers. they mustered at nyon, and thence crossed the lake under the leadership of the fighting pastor, henri arnaud, and marched across the mountains to effect their 'glorious re-entry.' it was a great military feat, and no less a judge than napoleon has paid his tribute to the military genius of the commander. the returning exiles defeated the soldiers of savoy in more than one pitched battle. one thinks of them generally as the 'slaughtered saints, whose bones' inspired one of the finest of milton's sonnets, but theirs were not the only bones that whitened the valleys during that notable expedition. nyon again recalls the memory of bonstetten, who governed it for a season on behalf of berne. if all the bernese governors had been like him, vaud would have been a contented country, though he is chiefly remembered as a wit and a man of culture, who lived to be eighty-seven without ever seeming to grow old. in his youth he travelled in england, and was the friend of gray; in his old age he lived at geneva, and was the friend of byron. in the meantime he had been the friend of madame de staël, and a pillar of the cosmopolitan society at coppet. he wrote some books, but they are dead and buried. what lives is the recollection of the genial old gentleman whom everybody liked, and who proved--what needed a great deal of proving--that it was possible for a bernese to be gracious and frivolous, and to have a sense of humour. he detested the society of his native city, and wrote a delightfully sarcastic description of its daily life in a letter to one of the hallers: 'we are living here, as we always do. we sleep, we breakfast, we yawn, we drag through the morning, and we digest our food. and then we dine, and then we dress, and then we swagger in the arcades, and say to ourselves: "i am charming and clever, for the spelling of my name makes me capable of governing and illuminating two hundred thousand souls." and then we accost a lady with a pretty figure decently enveloped in a mantle, and then we go to a party and circle round a dozen turtle-doves, and deliver ourselves of platitudes with the air of saying something clever. then we have something to eat, and, finding our intellectual resources exhausted, amuse ourselves with paper games; and then we go to bed, feeling satisfied with ourselves--for we have been delightful.' out of sympathy with berne, bonstetten had a good deal more sympathy than berne liked with the revolutionary party. it is said that his sympathies lost him his post; but before that happened he had time to render a useful service to one of the most eminent of the revolutionists. he was at supper one day with a considerable number of guests when his servant whispered in his ear that a mysterious stranger was without, asking to speak with him. he stepped into the garden, where a man, miserably dressed, was waiting for him in the summer-house. he inquired his errand, and the answer was: 'i am carnot, and i am perishing from hunger. i implore you to give me shelter for the night.' bonstetten not only gave him shelter for the night, but, on the following morning, gave him a passport under an assumed name. one can understand that his superiors at berne did not regard him as a model functionary, but carnot never forgot his kindness. when he became napoleon's war minister, he invited him to paris, introduced him to the emperor, and heaped proofs of his gratitude upon him. [illustration: cully from epesse: autumn] perhaps it is also worth noting that, in the days before the railways, nyon was on the highroad from france to switzerland. the track descended there from saint-cergues, where it crossed the jura; and by it travelled madame de staël, and benjamin constant, and voltaire, and many another whom we have met in the course of this rambling narrative. there is a new road now, with wide, sweeping curves, and a gentle gradient; but enough of the old road remains to show us how shamefully bad it was--a narrow road, of uneven surface, plunging headlong through the pine-forest. the lumbering old coaches, with their six horses, must have had a very bad time there, and it is no wonder that napoleon ordered a road to be made over the col de la faucille to supersede it. but enough of nyon and the canton de vaud! we must cross the lake to the french shore; and, as first impressions are always the most graphic, permission has been obtained to print here the writer's own first impressions, contributed a few years since, to the columns of the _pall mall gazette_. chapter x the french shore what strikes the holiday traveller about the french shore is that it is so much better managed than the swiss shore. its natural advantages are fewer--they are, in fact, very few indeed. evian--and when one speaks of the french shore one is principally thinking of evian--stands with its back to the high mountains instead of facing them. consequently it has no views to compare with the views from lausanne, geneva, and vevey. its hinterland is commonplace, except for those who make a great effort and go up the dent d'oche. the mouth of the dranse, hard by, is a dreary collection of detritus. there are hardly any literary landmarks, except the few that recall the memory of st. francis de sales. whence english travellers have, almost with one accord, drawn the inference that it is not worth while to go to evian. but they are wrong. the french think otherwise, and the french are right. they do not go there, as some suppose, because they are crippled with diseases and need the waters to wash poisons out of their blood and their organs: the evian water is the sort of water that the whole, as well as the sick, can drink by the bucketful without feeling a penny the worse for it. their purpose in going to evian is to live a life of luxury and leisure. no doubt they pay through the nose for the privilege. inquiry at one hotel elicited the statement that the worst rooms were let at eight and the best at eighty francs a day--with service _à la carte_ on the same scale. but other hotels are cheaper, and it is also possible to hire a villa, a flat, a lodging; and, in any case, it is right that evian should be introduced to the english tourist as the one place on the lake of geneva in which the life of leisure and luxury is possible. there is no real luxury at geneva itself, though there are high prices and immense hotels. instead of having good music at fixed hours, they have indifferent music all day long. the whole air is full of a continual tinkle-tinkle; louder than the tinkle-tinkle rises the hooting of the steamers and the trams; louder still are the voices of the trippers, mostly americans, inquiring the prices of things, or complaining that they have lost their luggage. the society at the boasted kursaal is an unpolished horde, mainly composed of the geneva clerks and shop-assistants losing their salaries at _petits chevaux_. nor are things much better elsewhere on the swiss shore. nyon, for instance, is by nature an earthly paradise, and they have formed a society for developing it. what they really want is a society for cleaning it, since it is the present practice of the inhabitants to empty their dustbins over their garden walls into the lake, with results appalling to the nostrils of the stranger. at lausanne, or vevey, or montreux--other earthly paradises--you escape this nuisance; but even there, in the season, you have the feeling that the place is one vast hotel, and that everybody is waiting with packed boxes for the omnibus. but cross to evian. the town is a little smaller than montreux, but just as full. yet it never seems to be crowded. there is no hurrying or bustling. you are in nobody's way, and nobody is in your way; which means that evian is properly managed. they do not encourage you to come to evian in the capacity of tripper. on the contrary, they try to arrange things so that you must sacrifice your lunch in order to get there, and your dinner in order to get home. but this is a part of the secret of good management, as you will appreciate if you stay there. no knickerbockered army, headed by a polyglot guide in a straw hat with a label on it, will invade your peace, but you will be free to live your lotus-eating life in your own way. you will probably live most of it in the casino, which is a proper casino, differing from the geneva kursaal as cheese from chalk. there is so much shade that it is always cool there, even on the hottest day. you will lunch there on a shaded terrace, assisted by a sympathetic waiter, who understands that a good lunch is an end in itself, and not merely a device for keeping body and soul together until the evening. you will linger long and agreeably over the coffee and liqueurs, without feeling that someone else wants your seat. nor will you be bothered, as in geneva, by the squeaking of a futile fiddle, or by hawkers offering picture postcards. but, at the appointed hour, there will be a proper concert with a programme, and a well-behaved and well-dressed audience: beautiful french ladies looking as if they had stepped out of fashion plates; beautiful french children looking as if they had been cut out of aunt louisa's picture-book; fantastic frenchmen, looking as if they were dressed for amateur theatricals. then, when the evening comes, and you have dined as well as you have lunched, there will be a performance in the little theatre, given by artistes from paris, who come on to evian from aix-les-bains: réjane, jeanne granier, charlotte wiehe, or others. or there will be a ball in the grand style--not in the least like the balls in the hall-by-the-sea at margate--given in as good a ballroom as the heart of a dancer could wish for. but no hurrying, or hustling, or excitement. at evian, if nowhere else on lake leman, life is a leisurely pageant. [illustration: grandvaux from cully] for the rest, there is little enough for you to do--nothing, in fact, except to stroll up and down the long avenue of linked plane-trees by the lake-side, observe how clean they keep the water, and gaze across its calm surface to the swiss shore where the trippers make a noise. but this has always been a favourite occupation of the dwellers on the french shore, whether in fact or works of fiction. from meillerie st. preux gazed across at the _bosquet_ of clarens. from thonon st. francis de sales gazed across, pondering plans for working the counter-reformation in the canton de vaud. from evian itself, madame de warens gazed across, regretting the home of her youth to which she could never return, because, when she left it, she had abandoned her religion, and taken with her certain goods and chattels which her creditors were about to seize. chapter xi history of the french shore--felix v the history of the french shore, which has only recently belonged to france, may be told in briefest outline. in the earliest times of which we need take cognizance it belonged to the dukes of savoy, whose domains continued for a considerable distance up the valley of the rhone. then came the war of , of which we have spoken more than once, in which the bernese took the territory away from them. part of it was recovered by duke emanuel philibert in , and the whole was reassigned by treaty in . the inhabitants had, in the meantime, been converted to protestantism, and the first task of savoy was to reconvert them. a mission for that purpose was led by st. francis de sales, and the principles of the counter-reformation quickly triumphed. the french revolution brought a french army to savoy, but the expelled rulers came to their own again when the holy alliance resettled the map of europe. nothing further happened until the war which resulted in the consolidation of a united italy. savoy (together with nice) was then napoleon iii.'s reward for ejecting the austrian garrison from italian territory. the country had long been french in its language and its sympathies, and the people were quite willing, if not actively anxious, to change their allegiance; and the history of savoy has, since that date, belonged to the history of france. its extreme catholicism, like that of brittany, gave trouble at the time of the expulsion of the religious orders, but that is a question of modern politics into which it is unnecessary to enter here. we will search instead for the historical and literary landmarks. our first interesting name is that of duke amadeus viii. the death of his eldest son caused him profound grief, and 'in ,' says bishop creighton, 'he retired from active life, and built himself a luxurious retreat at ripaille, whither he withdrew with seven companions to lead a life of religious seclusion. his abode was called the temple of st. maurice; he and his followers wore grey cloaks, like hermits, with gold crosses round their necks and long staffs in their hands.' but though duke amadeus dressed as a hermit, he hardly lived as one; and as for religious seclusion, he interpreted it after a fashion of his own. 'vitam magis voluptuosam quam penitentialem degebat,' is the statement of his biographer, Æneas sylvius; and his jovial proceedings added to the french language the new expression 'faire ripaille.' those were the days, however, when the council of basle accused pope eugenius iv. of heresy and schism. an opposition pope was wanted, and the council decided to offer the dignity to the ducal hermit, who was living a voluptuous rather than a penitential life. a deputation was sent to wait upon him at ripaille. amadeus, with his hermit companions, advanced to meet the visitors, with a cross borne before him, and discussed the proposal in a thoroughly business-like spirit. 'what,' he asked, 'do you expect the pope to live on? i cannot consume my patrimony and disinherit my sons.' he was promised a grant of first-fruits of vacant benefices, and that satisfied him, though he made the further stipulation that he should not be required to shave. as a matter of fact, however, he was presently shamed into shaving by the respectful amazement of the devout; and he took the name of felix v. and entered basle attended by his two sons--'an unusual escort for a pope,' as creighton justly remarks--and was crowned by the cardinal of aries, the only cardinal present, on july , . the question then arose, which pope would be recognized by the other european principalities and powers? by degrees it was found that the balance of opinion was against felix v., and in favour of eugenius iv. and his successor nicolas v.; and felix v. then discovered that he did not greatly care about his somewhat shadowy honours. he had had much anxiety, and only a small and irregular stipend. so, on april , , he was persuaded to resign the papal office, and less than two years afterwards he died. 'he was more useful to the church by his death than by his life,' says Æneas sylvius. but that is as it may be. he was, at all events, an interesting figure and a better man than Æneas himself, seeing that Æneas, afterwards pius ii., candidly confessed that he was 'neither holier than david nor wiser than solomon,' and actually wrote love-letters to help sigismund, count of tyrol, 'to overcome the resistance of a girl who shrank from his dishonourable proposals.' [illustration: the rhone valley from chexbres] chapter xii st. francis de sales a greater figure--perhaps the greatest of all figures in the history of savoy--is that of st. francis de sales. it is a little difficult to speak of him without appearing to stir the embers of theological disputation. but the effort must be made, since he is much too notable a man to be passed over; and the task may be made easier by the fact that he is a catholic of whom protestants speak well, even though they have to recognize in him one of the most damaging of their opponents. they respect his character even in the act of examining his propositions; they perceive that it was just because his character was so admirable that he was able to do the cause of the reformation so much harm. he combined qualities which, in that age, were rarely found conjoined, being at once a gentleman and a scholar, a man of saintly humility, and yet of energy and courage. such men were scarce in both religious camps. the reformers had their share of virile vigour, and the best of them were among the most learned men of their time; but, on the whole, they lacked good manners and 'sweet reasonableness.' their methods were often violent, and their speech was often coarse. they upset altars and smashed stained-glass windows, and threw sacred images into the rivers, and, as we have seen, 'crowned roman catholic priests with cow-dung.' their vocabulary, too, was scurrilous, as was natural, seeing that many of them had risen to eminence in their church from some very humble rank in life. they lacked the grand style in theology, and one could find excuses for calling them vulgarians. no doubt there was more of the grand style among their catholic opponents, but they also fell short in many ways of the christian ideal. many of them were dissolute debauchees. the case of Æneas sylvius, already cited, shows that the most cynical immorality was not incompatible with the highest ecclesiastical advancement, and, indeed, it is notorious that the loose lives of ecclesiastical dignitaries did more than their unscriptural doctrines to discredit the church of rome and make the reformation possible. there were prelates of whom it could truly be said that they spared neither men in their anger nor women in their lust; and even among those whose reputation was sweeter, there were a good many who would have passed a very bad quarter of an hour if haled before calvin's consistory and cross-examined. even if they had passed the moral standards, they would have been found guilty of luxury and arrogance. they were unduly addicted to purple and fine linen, and made no pretence to live a simple life. on each side, however, there were exceptions, exempt from the characteristic faults of their parties, and these, even in that age of vehement polemics, were able to recognize and appreciate one another. on the protestant side there was m. de bèze--the 'gentleman reformer,' as he has been called--who, drawing a useful inspiration from the memories of his unregenerate days, was able to speak affably with his enemies in the gate. on the catholic side there was st. francis de sales, whom the study of the humane letters had indeed humanized, who was transparently sincere, and who, by the charm of his character, disarmed antagonism. in an age in which men of all religious opinions (and of none) lived in daily peril of torture and the stake, each of these two men believed that the other was honestly mistaken, and would have liked to be his friend. judged by the historical results of his principal achievement, st. francis can hardly escape condemnation as a maker of mischief and a stirrer-up of strife. to him, and to him alone, was due the triumph of the counter-reformation in chablais. if he had declined that missionary enterprise, or failed in it, the duke of savoy would not have been encouraged to make the treacherous attempt upon genevan independence known as the escalade. that plot was actually laid at thonon, at a meeting held to celebrate and rejoice over st. francis de sales' apostolic achievements. he must have known of it; he was in a position to protest against it; he does not appear to have done anything of the kind. it went forward, and spanish soldiers were hired to cut genevan throats in the name of the church of st. peter. there we have cause and effect--a saintly man interfering with freedom of thought, and so bringing, not peace, but a sword. that is the summing-up of the matter which impartial logic compels; but, somehow or other, it does not much interfere with the friendliness of one's feelings towards st. francis de sales. the rude logic of events did not correspond to any syllogism in his mind. the narrowness of his outlook was that of his country and his age; the sweetness of his temper was his own. he loved his erring brothers, as he considered them, and his concern was for the salvation of their souls. he did disinterestedly, and at great personal sacrifice, the duty which he conceived to lie nearest to him; he did it like a soldier, who must not reason why, and with a serene and lofty courage. the courage of missionaries has often, it is true, been the subject of exaggerated eulogy. courage is no uncommon human quality; and it is doubtful whether good men are, on an average, any braver than bad men. it is not only the soldier who, as a matter of course, takes risks quite equal to those of the missionary. the brigand, the highwayman, and the beach-comber, to say nothing of the terrorist, who is generally an atheist, also do so; and, these things being so, much of the talk about the heroism of christian heroes is almost indecently vainglorious. yet, even when all the necessary deductions have been made, there remains something singularly fascinating in the courage of st. francis de sales. he was not by nature pugnacious, as was, for example, farel, who took an irishman's delight in a row, and considered that it was all in the day's work when he was fustigated by women, or dragged up and down the floor of a church by the beard. his tastes, on the contrary, were refined, and his inclinations were for the life of the cloister or the study. he went into the wilds of chablais--and it was really a wild country in those days--because he had been called and chosen, and because there was work to be done there which he was considered specially capable of doing. men with guns took pot-shots at him in the dark places of the forests; and he once spent a whole winter's night in a tree-top, while a pack of hungry wolves howled at him from below. such adventures were repugnant to his gentle and sensitive nature; but he faced them and persevered, year after year, until at last his pertinacity was rewarded. more as a tribute to his unique personality than to his arguments--which, of course, were only the commonplaces of catholic apologetics--chablais surrendered to the church. even though one wishes that chablais had held out, one cannot help regarding its evangelist as a sympathetic figure. pope alexander vii. canonized him in . [illustration: the church of st. martin, vevey] chapter xiii joseph de maistre st. francis de sales, was not only a missionary, but also a man of letters, and--especially--a patron of letters. thirty years before richelieu founded the french academy, he founded the florimontane academy--with the motto _flores fructusque perennes_--in savoy, and thus forged one of the links between the literature of savoy and that of france. more than one great writer, whom we carelessly class as french, was really of savoyard origin. vaugelas, described by sainte-beuve 'as the first of our correct and polished grammarians,' was the son of the vaugelas who helped st. francis de sales in the formation of his literary society at annecy. st. réal, the forerunner of montesquieu, was also a savoyard; and so were count xavier de maistre, author of the widely-read 'voyage autour de ma chambre,' and count joseph de maistre, his more distinguished brother. joseph de maistre, indeed, is the greatest of the literary sons of savoy, and a worthy inheritor of the traditions of the saint, his predecessor. an aristocrat, and a senator, he was a man of forty when the revolutionary storm burst upon his country. for a season he took refuge in lausanne, where he often met, and argued with, madame de staël, whom he regarded as a woman with a good heart but a perverted head. his discussions with her, he said, 'nearly made the swiss die with laughing, though we conducted them without quarrelling.' afterwards he was sent to represent his sovereign at the court of st. petersburg, where, he complains, he had to get on as best he could, 'without a salary, without a secretary, and without a fur-lined overcoat.' both there and at lausanne he wrote. his date and his circumstances class him with the literary _émigrés_--with madame de staël, châteaubriand, and sénancour; but he lacks their melancholy and their sentimentalism. he and châteaubriand, indeed, resemble one another as two champions of the catholic religion; but they support that religion from widely different points of view. châteaubriand is before all things the religious æsthete. he deduces the truth of a creed from its beauty, and is very little concerned with its bearing upon moral conduct. joseph de maistre, on the contrary, seems to believe in the authority of the church because he believes in authority generally. he is an absolutist who hates all radicals, and regards the schismatic as the worst kind of radical. he makes a religion of the principle of 'keeping people in their place,' and he supports his religion with epigrams. the epigrams are very good, though the religion is very bad. the french, like the sound critics that they are, have proved themselves capable of enjoying the one while refusing to have very much to do with the other. index alexander i., amadeus viii., duke, arnaud, henri, bèze, m. de, bonivard, bonnet, charles, bonstetten, , bridel, doyen, bridel, louis, 'buonaparte,' byron, calvin, carnot, cart, c. c., casaubon, charrière, madame de, , , , châteaubriand, constant de rebecque, benjamin, , , , , , , , , constant, rosalie de, coppet, , , , , curchod, mademoiselle suzanne, , , , , , , , , d'alembert, davel, major, deffand, madame du, dent d'oche, deyverdun, , dickens, dutertre, madame, , , , english colony, , eugenius iv., pope, , evian, , , farel, , felix v., , florimontane academy, fox, charles james, , fraubrunnen, gesner, gibbon, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , godet, m. philippe, hardenberg, madame de, d'haussonville, monsieur, , , , jomini, knox, john, laharpe, césar, , , lavater, 'lettres de lausanne,' ligne, prince and princesse de, lindsay, mrs., maistre, count joseph de, , , maistre, count xavier de, meillerie, mercier, michaut, m., montolieu, madame de, , , moore, dr. john, morges, , moudon, moultou, pastor, necker, jacques, , , necker, madame, , , , , , , necker, m., madame, and mademoiselle, nyon, , , olivier, juste, , olivier, madame, pavilliard, pastor, peter of savoy, pestalozzi, philibert, duke emanuel, raynal, abbé, _revue suisse_, ripaille, , robespierre, rocca, albert de, , rolle, , rousseau, rovéreaz, colonel de, sainte-beuve, , , saint-cergues, st. francis de sales, , , , , , , , saint-pierre, bernardin de, saussure, schlegel, sénancour, sheffield, lord, , staël, madame de, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , staël, m. de, sylvius, Æneas, , , talma, madame, thonon, , tissot, dr., , , vinet, alexandre, , , , viret, , , voght, baron de, voltaire, , , , vulliemin, louis, , , , waldenses, warens, madame de, wurtemberg, prince of, zaeringen, billing and sons, limited, printers, guilford rollo in switzerland, by jacob abbott. new york: sheldon & co., broadway, and & mercer st., grand central hotel. . entered according to act of congress, in the year , by jacob abbott, in the clerk's office of the district court of the district of massachusetts. [illustration: rollo's in europe.] rollo's tour in europe. order of the volumes. rollo on the atlantic. rollo in paris. rollo in switzerland. rollo in london. rollo on the rhine. rollo in scotland. rollo in geneva. rollo in holland. [illustration: mont blanc.] principal persons of the story. rollo; twelve years of age. mr. and mrs. holiday; rollo's father and mother, travelling in europe. thanny; rollo's younger brother. jane; rollo's cousin, adopted by mr. and mrs. holiday. mr. george; a young gentleman, rollo's uncle. contents. chapter page i.--getting a passport, ii.--crossing the frontier, iii.--basle, iv.--the diligence, v.--ride to berne, vi.-the valley of the aar, vii.--interlachen, viii.--lauterbrunnen, ix.--the wengern alp, x.--going down the mountain, xi.--glaciers, xii.--rollo a courier, xiii.--conclusion, engravings. mont blanc, (frontispiece.) page the cottage, the prefecture of police, in the cab, the diligence at the office, the diligence on the road, the lake shore, vicinity of interlachen, the mountain girl, the fall, the crevasse, the narrow path, ascent of mont blanc, [illustration: the cottage. _see page _] rollo in switzerland. chapter i. getting a passport. the last day that rollo spent in paris, before he set out on his journey into switzerland, he had an opportunity to acquire, by actual experience, some knowledge of the nature of the passport system. before commencing the narrative of the adventures which he met with, it is necessary to premise that no person can travel among the different states and kingdoms on the continent of europe without what is called a passport. the idea which prevails among all the governments of the continent is, that the people of each country are the subjects of the sovereign reigning there, and in some sense belong to him. they cannot leave their country without the written permission of the government, nor can they enter any other one without showing this permission and having it approved and stamped by the proper officers of the country to which they wish to go. there are, for example, at paris ministers of all the different governments of europe, residing in different parts of the city; and whoever wishes to leave france, to go into any other kingdom, must first go with his passport to the ministers of the countries which he intends to visit and get them to put their stamp upon it. this stamp represents the permission of the government whose minister affixes it that the traveller may enter the territory under their jurisdiction. besides this, it is necessary to get permission from the authorities of paris to leave the city. nobody can leave france without this. this permission, too, like the others, is given by a stamp upon the passport. to get this stamp, the traveller must carry or send his passport to the great central police office of paris, called the prefecture of police. now, as the legations of the different governments and the prefecture of police are situated at very considerable distances from each other about the city, and as it usually takes some time to transact the business at each office, and especially as the inexperienced traveller often makes mistakes and goes to the wrong place, or gets at the right place at the wrong hour, it usually requires a whole day, and sometimes two days, to get his passport all right so as to allow of his setting out upon his journey. these explanations are necessary to enable the reader to understand what i now proceed to relate in respect to rollo. one morning, while rollo and jennie were at breakfast with their father and mother, rollo's uncle george came in and said that he had concluded to go and make a little tour in switzerland. "i shall have three weeks," said he, "if i can get away to-morrow; and that will give me time to take quite a little run among the mountains. i have come now to see if you will let rollo go with me." "yes, sir," said rollo, very eagerly, and rising at once from his chair. "yes, sir. let me go with him. that's exactly the thing. yes, sir." "have you any objection?" said mr. holiday, quietly, turning towards rollo's mother. "no," said mrs. holiday, speaking, however, in a very doubtful tone,--"no; i don't know that i have--any great objection." whatever doubt and hesitation mrs. holiday might have had on the subject was dispelled when she came to look at rollo and see how eager and earnest he was in his desire to go. so she gave her definitive consent. "how long do you think you will be gone?" said mr. holiday. "three weeks, nearly," replied mr. george. "say twenty days." "and how much do you suppose it will cost you?" asked mr. holiday. "i have made a calculation," said mr. george; "and i think it will cost me, if i go alone, about twenty-five francs a day for the whole time. there would, however, be a considerable saving in some things if two go together." "then i will allow you, rollo," replied mr. holiday, looking towards rollo, "twenty-five francs a day for this excursion. if you spend any more than that, you must take it out of your past savings. if you do not spend it all, what is left when you come back is yours." "yes, sir," said rollo. "i think that will be a great plenty." "twenty-five francs a day for twenty days," continued mr. holiday, "is five hundred francs. bring me that bag of gold, rollo, out of my secretary. here is the key." so rollo brought out the gold, and mr. holiday took from it twenty-five napoleons. these he put in rollo's purse. "there," said mr. holiday, "that's all i can do for you. for the rest you must take care of yourself." "how long will it take you to pack your trunk?" said mr. george. "five minutes," said rollo, promptly, standing up erect as he said it and buttoning his jacket up to his chin. "then put on your cap and come with me," said mr. george. rollo did so. he followed mr. george down stairs to the door, and they both got into a small carriage which mr. george had waiting there and drove away together towards mr. george's hotel. "now, rollo," said mr. george, "i have got a great deal to do to-day, and there are our passports to be stamped. i wonder if you could not attend to that." "yes," said rollo, "if you will only tell me what is to be done." "i don't myself know what is to be done," said mr. george. "that's the difficulty. and i have not time to find out. i have got as much as i can possibly do until four o'clock; and then the office of the prefecture of police is closed. now, if you can take the passports and find out what is to be done, and _do_ it, then we can go to-morrow; otherwise we must wait till next day." "well," said rollo, "i'll try." "you will find the passports, then, on my table at the hotel. i am going to get out at the next street and take another carriage to go in another direction. you can keep this carriage." "very well," said rollo. "you may make inquiries of any body you please," said mr. george, "except your father and mother. we must not trouble your father with any business of any kind till he gets entirely well; and your mother would not know any thing about it at all. perhaps the master of the hotel can tell you. you had better _ask_ him, at any rate." here mr. george pulled the string for the carriage to stop, as they had arrived at the corner of the street where he was to get out. the coachman drew up to the sidewalk and stopped. mr. george opened the door and stepped out upon the curbstone, and then said, as he shut the door,-- "well, good by, rollo. i hope you will have good luck. but, whatever happens, keep a quiet mind, and don't allow yourself to feel perplexed or troubled. if you don't succeed in getting the passports ready to-day we can attend to them to-morrow and then go the next day, which will answer nearly as well." then, directing the coachman to drive to the hotel, mr. george walked rapidly away. when rollo reached the hotel he got the key of his uncle george's room, at the porter's lodge, and went immediately up to see if the passports were there. he found them, as his uncle had said, lying on the table. "now," said rollo, "the first thing i'll do is to find carlos and see if he will go and help me get the passports stamped."[ ] so, taking the passports in his hand, he went along the corridor till he came to the door leading to the apartments where carlos lodged. there was a bell hanging by the side of the door. rollo pulled this cord, and presently the courier came to the door.[ ] rollo inquired for carlos, and the courier said that he would go and get him. in the mean time the courier asked rollo to step in and take a seat. so rollo went in. the room that he entered was a small one, and was used as an antechamber to the apartment; and it was very neatly and pleasantly furnished for such a purpose. there were a sofa and several chairs, and maps and pictures on the walls, and a table with writing materials on it in the centre. rollo sat down upon the sofa. in a few minutes carlos came. "look here!" said rollo, rising when carlos came in. "see these passports! we're going to get them stamped. will you go with me? i have got a carriage at the door." here rollo made a sort of whirling motion with his hand, advancing it forward at the same time as it rolled, to indicate the motion of a wheel. this was to signify to carlos that they were going in a carriage. all that carlos understood was, that rollo was going somewhere, and that he wished him, carlos, to go too. he seemed very much pleased with his invitation, and went eagerly back into the inner apartments. he returned in a very few minutes with his cap in his hand, evidently all ready to go. "now," said rollo, as they went out of the antechamber together, "the first thing is to go and ask the master of the hotel what we are to do." there was a very pleasant little room on the lower floor, on one side of the archway which formed the entrance into the court of the hotel from the street, that served the purpose of parlor, sitting room, counting room, and office. thus it was used both by the master of the hotel himself and by his family. there was a desk at one side, where the master usually sat, with his books and papers before him. at the other side, near a window, his wife was often seated at her sewing; and there were frequently two or three little children playing about the floor with little wagons, or tops, or other toys. rollo went to this room, occupying himself as he descended the stairs in trying to make up a french sentence that would ask his question in the shortest and simplest manner. he went in, and, going to the desk, held out his passports to the man who was sitting there, and said, in french,-- "passports. to switzerland. where to go to get them stamped?" "ah," said the master of the hotel, taking the passports in his hand. "yes, yes, yes. you must get them stamped. you must go to the swiss legation and to the prefecture of police." here rollo pointed to a piece of paper that was lying on the desk and made signs of writing. "ah, yes, yes, yes," said the man. "i will write you the address." so the man took a piece of paper and wrote upon the top of it the words "prefecture of police," saying, as he wrote it, that every coachman knew where that was. then, underneath, he wrote the name of the street and number where the swiss legation was; and, having done this, he gave the paper to rollo. rollo took the memorandum, and, thanking the man for his information, led carlos out to the carriage. "come, carlos," said he; "now we are ready. i know where to go; but i don't know at all what we are to do when we get there. but then we shall find some other people there, i suppose, getting their passports stamped; and we can do as they do." rollo had learned to place great reliance on the rule which his uncle george had given for his guidance in travelling; namely, to do as he saw other people do. it is, in fact, a very excellent rule. carlos got into the carriage; while rollo, looking upon the paper in order to be sure that he understood the words right, said, "to the prefecture of police." the coachman said, "yes, yes;" and rollo got into the coach. the coachman, without leaving his seat, reached his arm down and fastened the door and then drove away. he drove on through various crowded streets, which seemed to lead in towards the heart of the city, until at last the carriage came to the river. rollo and carlos looked out and saw the bridges, and the parapet wall which formed the river side of the street, with the book stalls, and picture stalls, and cake and fruit booths which had been established along the side of it, and the monstrous bathing houses which lay floating on the water below, all gayly painted and adorned with flags and little parterres of flowers; and the washing houses, with their long rows of windows, down close to the water, all filled with women, who were washing clothes by alternately plunging them in the water of the river and then banging them with clubs. these and a great many other similar objects attracted their attention as they rode along. if the reader of this book has the opportunity to look at a map of paris, he will see that the river seine, in passing through the town, forms two channels, which separate from each other so as to leave quite a large island between them. this island is completely covered with streets and buildings, some of which are very ancient and venerable. here is the great cathedral church of notre dame; also the vast hospital called hotel dieu, where twelve thousand sick persons are received and taken care of every year. here also is the prefecture of police--an enormous establishment, with courts, quadrangles, ranges, offices, and officers without number. in this establishment the records are kept and the business is transacted relating to all the departments of the police of the city; so that it is of itself quite a little town. the first indication which rollo had that he had arrived at the place was the turning in of the coach under an arch, which opened in the middle of a very sombre and antique-looking edifice. the carriage, after passing through the arch, came into a court, where there were many other carriages standing. soldiers were seen too, some coming and going and others standing guard. the carriage passed through this court, and then, going under another arch between two ponderous iron gates, it came into another court, much larger than the first. there were a great many carriages in this court, some moving in or out and others waiting. rollo's carriage drove up to the farthest corner of the court; and there the coachman stopped and opened the door. rollo got out. carlos followed him. "where do you suppose we are to go, carlos?" said he. "stop; i can see by the signs over the doors. here it is. "passports." this must be the place. we will go in here." rollo accordingly went in, carlos timidly following him. after crossing a sort of passage way, he opened another door, which ushered him at once into a very large hall, the aspect of which quite bewildered him. there were a great many desks and tables about the hall, with clerks writing at them, and people coming and going with passports and permits in their hands. rollo stepped forward into the room, surveying the scene with great curiosity and wonder, when his attention was suddenly arrested by the voice of a soldier, who rose suddenly from his chair, and said,-- "your cap, young gentleman." rollo immediately recollected that he had his cap on, while all the other people in the room were uncovered. he took his cap off at once, saying to the soldier at the same time, "pardon, sir," which is the french mode of making an apology in such cases. the soldier then resumed his seat, and rollo and carlos walked on slowly up the hall. nobody took any notice of them. in fact, every one seemed busy with his own concerns, except that in one part of the room there were several benches where a number of men and women were sitting as if they were waiting for something. rollo advanced towards these seats, saying to carlos,-- "carlos, let us sit down here a minute or two till we can think what we had better do. we can sit here, i know. these benches must be for any body." as soon as rollo had taken his seat and began to cast his eyes about the room, he observed that among the other desks there was one with the words, "for foreigners," upon it, in large, gilt letters. "carlos," said he, pointing to it, "that must be the place for us. we are foreigners: let us go there. we will give the passports to the man in that little pew." so rollo rose, and, followed by carlos, he went to the place. there was a long desk, with two or three clerks behind it, writing. at the end of this desk was a small enclosure, where a man sat who looked as though he had some authority. people would give him their passports, and he would write something on them and then pass them over to the clerks. rollo waited a moment and then handed his passports in. the man took them, looked over them and then gave them back to rollo, saying something in french which rollo did not understand, and immediately passed to the next in order. "what did he say?" said rollo, turning to carlos. [illustration: the prefecture of police.] "what's the reason he won't take your passports?" said carlos. although rollo did not understand what the official said at the time of his speaking, still the words left a trace upon his ear, and in thinking upon them he recalled the words "american legation," and also the word "afterwards." while he was musing on the subject, quite perplexed, a pleasant-looking girl, who was standing there waiting for her turn, explained to him--speaking very slow in french, for she perceived that rollo was a foreigner--as follows:-- "he says that you must go first and get your passports stamped at the american legation and afterwards come here." "where is the american legation?" said rollo. "i don't know," said the girl. "then i'll make the coachman find it for me," said rollo. "come, carlos; we must go back." so saying, he thanked the girl for her kindness, and the two boys went out. as he was going out rollo made up a french sentence to say to the coachman that he must drive to the american legation, and that he must find out where it was himself. he succeeded in communicating these directions to the coachman, and then he and carlos got into the carriage and drove away. the coachman had some difficulty in learning where the american legation was, which occasioned some delay. besides, the distance was considerable. it was nearly two miles to the place from the prefecture of police; so that it was some time before the carriage arrived there. in fact, rollo had a very narrow escape in this stage of the affair; for he arrived at the american legation only about five minutes before the office was to be closed for the day. when he went to the porter's lodge to ask if that was the place where the office of the american legation was held, the woman who kept the lodge, and who was standing just outside the door at the time, instead of answering, went in to look at the clock. "ah," said she, "you are just in time. i thought you were too late. second story, right-hand door." "there's one thing good about the american legation, carlos," said rollo; "and that is, that they can talk english, i suppose." this was, indeed, a great advantage. rollo found, when he went into the office of the legation, that the secretary not only could talk english, but that he was a very kindhearted and agreeable man. he talked with rollo in english and with carlos in spanish. both the boys were very much pleased with the reception they met with. the necessary stamps were promptly affixed to the passports; and then the boys, giving the secretary both an english and a spanish good by, went down stairs to the carriage again. they directed the coachman to drive as quick as possible to the swiss legation, showing him the address which rollo's uncle had given them. they then got into the carriage, and the coachman drove away. "now, carlos," said rollo, "we are all right; that is, if we only get to the swiss legation before it is shut up." "he said he had been in madrid," rejoined carlos. "he was there three months." "i believe," added rollo, "that uncle george said it did not close till three; and it is only two now." "and he knew the street my father lived in very well," said carlos. very soon the carriage stopped at the place which the coachman said was the swiss legation. rollo got out and went to the porter's lodge with the passports in his hand. the woman in charge knew at once what he wanted, and, without waiting to hear him finish the question which he began to ask, directed him "to the second story on the right." rollo went up the staircase till he came to the door, and there pulled the cord. a clerk opened the door. rollo held out the passports. "enter there," said the clerk, in french, pointing to an inner door. rollo went in and found there a very pleasant little room, with cases of books and papers around it, and maps and plans of switzerland and of swiss towns upon the wall. the clerk took the passports and asked the boys to sit down. in a few minutes the proper stamps were affixed to them both and the proper signatures added. the clerk then said that there was the sum of six francs to pay. rollo paid the money, and then he and carlos went down stairs. they now returned to the prefecture of police. they went in as they had done before, and gave the passports to the man who was seated in the little enclosure in the foreigner's part of the room. he took them, examined the new stamps which had been put upon them, and then said, "very well. take a seat a little minute." rollo and carlos sat down upon one of the benches to wait; but the little minute proved to be nearly half an hour. they were not tired of waiting, however, there was so much to amuse and interest them going on in the room. "i am going to watch and see what the foreigners do to get their passports," said rollo, in an undertone, to carlos; "for we must do the same." in thus watching, rollo observed that from time to time a name was called by one of the clerks behind the desk, and then some of the persons waiting on the seats would rise and go to the place. after stopping there a few minutes, he would take his passport and carry it into an inner room to another desk, where something was done to it. then he would bring it out to another place, where it was stamped once or twice by a man who seemed to have nothing else to do but to stamp every body's passport when they came out. by watching this process in the case of the others, rollo knew exactly what to do when _his_ name was called; so that, in about half an hour from the time that he went into the office, he had the satisfaction of coming out and getting into his carriage with the passports all in order for the journey to switzerland. when he got home and showed them to mr. george, his uncle looked them over carefully; and, when he found that the stamp of the police was duly affixed to them both,--knowing, as he did, that those would not be put on till all the others were right,--he said,-- "well, rollo, you've done it, i declare. i did not think you were so much of a man." footnotes: [footnote : carlos was a spanish boy, who was residing at this time at the same hotel with mr. george. the manner in which rollo became acquainted with him is related in rollo in paris. carlos did not understand english, nor rollo spanish; but when they were together they usually kept talking all the time, each in his own way.] [footnote : a courier is a travelling servant and guide.] chapter ii. crossing the frontier. on the morning when mr. george and rollo were about setting out for switzerland, rollo, having got every thing ready himself half an hour before the time, took out his map of europe and asked his uncle george what route they were going to take. mr. george was busy at that time putting the last things into his trunk and making ready to lock it up and strap it; so he could not come to rollo to show him the route, but was obliged to describe it. "have you found paris?" said he. "yes," said rollo; "i have got my finger on it." "in the first place, then," said mr. george, "there is a railway that goes east from paris a hundred miles across france to strasbourg on the rhine. see if you can find strasbourg on the rhine." "yes," said rollo; "here it is." "then," said mr. george, "we take another railway and go south, up the rhine, towards switzerland." "_down_ the rhine," said rollo, correcting his uncle; "it is _down_." "no," rejoined mr. george. "it is down on the map; that is, it is down the page; but it is really _up_ the river. the rhine flows to the north. it collects the waters of a hundred glaciers in switzerland and carries them north into the north sea." "well," said rollo. "this railway," continued mr. george, "will take us up from strasbourg, along the bank of the rhine, to basle, which is in switzerland, just across the frontier. it is there, i suppose, that we shall have to show our passports; and then we shall know if you got them stamped right." "i did get them stamped right, i am very sure," said rollo. "boys are generally very sure that what they do is done right," rejoined mr. george. soon after this mr. george and rollo took their seats in the carriage, which had been for some time standing ready for them in the court yard of the inn, and drove to the strasbourg station. rollo was greatly interested and excited, when he arrived at the strasbourg station, to see how extensive and magnificent it was. the carriage entered, with a train of other carriages, through a great iron gate and drew up at the front of a very spacious and grand-looking building. porters, dressed in a sort of uniform, which gave them in some degree the appearance of soldiers, were ready to take the two trunks and carry them in. the young gentlemen followed the porters, and they soon found themselves ushered into an immense hall, very neatly and prettily arranged, with great maps of the various railways painted on the walls between the windows on the front side, and openings on the back side leading to ticket offices or waiting rooms. there were seats along the sides of this hall, with groups of neatly-dressed travellers sitting upon them. other travellers were walking about, attending to their baggage or making inquiries of the porter or policemen. others still were standing at the openings of the ticket offices buying their tickets. what chiefly struck rollo's attention, however, and impressed his mind, was the air of silence, order, and decorum which prevailed and which gave to the station an aspect so different from that of an american station. it is true, the hall was very large, and there were a great many people in it going and coming; but they all walked decorously and quietly,--they spoke in an undertone,--and the presence of so many railway officials in their several uniforms, and of police officers with their badges, and here and there a soldier on guard, gave to the whole scene quite a solemn and imposing appearance. rollo gazed about the apartment as he came in, surveying the various objects and groups that presented themselves to his view, until his eye rested upon a little party of travellers, consisting of a lady and two boys, who were standing together near a low railing, waiting for the gentleman who was with them to come back from the ticket office with their tickets. what chiefly attracted rollo's attention, however, was a pretty little dog, with very long ears, and black, glossy hair, which one of the children held by a cord. the cord was attached to the dog's neck by a silver collar. rollo looked at this group for a few minutes--his attention being particularly occupied by the dog,--and then turned again towards his uncle, or rather towards the place where his uncle had been standing; but he found, to his surprise, that he was gone. in a moment, however, he saw his uncle coming towards him. he was clasping his wallet and putting it in his pocket. "uncle george," said he, "see that beautiful little dog!" "yes," said mr. george. "i wish i had such a dog as that to travel with me," said rollo. "but, uncle george where are we to get our tickets?" "i've got mine," said mr. george. "when i come to a railway station i always get my ticket the first thing, and look at the pretty little dogs afterwards." so saying, mr. george took a newspaper out of his pocket and began to walk away, adding, as he went,-- "i'll sit down here and read my newspaper till you have got your ticket, and then we will go into the waiting room." "but, uncle george," said rollo, "why did not you get me a ticket when you got yours?" "because," said mr. george, "among other reasons, i did not know which class carriage you wished to go in." "why, uncle george!" exclaimed rollo, surprised. "i must go in the same carriage that you do of course." "not of course," said mr. george. "i have got a ticket in the first class; and i should like to have your company in my car very much if you choose to pay the price for a first-class ticket. but if you choose to take a second or a third-class ticket you will save, perhaps, half your money." so saying, mr. george went away and left rollo to himself. this was the way that mr. george always treated rollo when he was travelling with him. he left him to act for himself and to take care of himself in almost all the emergencies that occurred. he did this, not because he wished to save himself the trouble of taking care of a boy, but because he thought it was much better for boys early to learn to take care of themselves. the manner in which mr. george thus threw the responsibility upon rollo seemed sometimes to be a little blunt. one would suppose, in some of these cases, from the way in which he spoke and acted, that he did not care at all what became of rollo, so coolly and with such an air of unconcern did he leave him to his own resources. in fact, rollo was frequently at such times a little frightened, or at least perplexed, and often, at first, felt greatly at a loss to know what to do. but, on reflecting a little upon the subject, he usually soon succeeded in extricating himself from the difficulty; and then he was always quite proud of having done so, and was pleased with his uncle george for having given him the opportunity. so mr. george, having learned by experience that rollo liked, on the whole, to be treated in this way, always adopted it; and in carrying it out he sometimes spoke and acted in such a way as might, under other circumstances have appeared somewhat stern. the idea of taking a second-class car for himself in order to save a portion of his money, while his uncle went in one of the first-class, took rollo's imagination strongly, and he was half inclined to adopt it. "on the whole," said he to himself, "i will not do it to-day; but i will some other day. and now i wonder which is the ticket office for strasbourg." so saying, rollo looked about the room and soon found the proper place to apply for his ticket. he procured a ticket without any difficulty, asking for it in french, with a pronunciation which, if it was not perfectly correct, was at least perfectly intelligible. as soon as he had received his ticket and had taken up his change he went to the bench where his uncle george was sitting and said that he was ready. "well," said mr. george, "then we'll go. i like to travel with a boy that is capable of taking care of himself and is willing to be treated like a man." saying these words, mr. george rose from his seat, and, after attending properly to the baggage, he and rollo passed through a door guarded by a man in uniform, who required them to show him their tickets before he would allow them to pass, and then entered a spacious apartment which was reserved as the waiting room for the first-class passengers. this room was beautifully finished and richly adorned, and the splendid sofas and ottomans which were ranged about the sides of it were occupied by well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, carrying shawls, greatcoats, and small travelling bags upon their arms, and exhibiting other similar indications of their being travellers. mr. george and rollo took seats at a vacant place upon one of the sofas. in a few minutes an officer came and informed the company, in a very respectful manner, that the train was ready; whereupon they all rose from their seats and walked out upon the platform where the train was waiting. here there were several railway servants, all dressed in uniform, whose business it was to conduct the passengers to the several cars, or carriages, as they call them, and open the doors. these carriages were entirely different in their construction from the long and open cars used in america, which form but one compartment, that extends through the whole length of the car. the french cars were like three elegant carriages, joined together in such a manner that, though the three formed but one car, they were still entirely distinct from each other. the seats in these carriages were very spacious, and they were richly stuffed and lined, so that they formed soft and luxurious places of repose. the railway porter opened one of the doors and admitted mr. george and rollo, and when they had entered he closed it again. "ah," said rollo, seating himself upon the soft cushion on one of the seats, "is not this superb? i am _very glad_ i did not take a second-class car." "and yet the second-class cars in france are very comfortable and very respectable," said mr. george, "and they are very much cheaper." "how much should we have saved," asked rollo, "in going to strasbourg, if we had taken a second-class car?" "i don't know, precisely," said mr. george. "we should have saved a great deal." the train now began to move; and, soon after it left the station, mr. george took out his newspaper again and began to read. it was a copy of a very celebrated newspaper, called the london times. mr. george had another london paper which was full of humorous engravings. the name of it was punch. mr. george gave the punch to rollo, thinking that the pictures and caricatures in it might perhaps amuse him; but rollo, after turning it over a moment, concluded that he should prefer to amuse himself by looking out the window. [illustration: in the car.] rollo saw a great many beautiful views and witnessed a great many strange and striking scenes as he was whirled onward by the train across the country from paris towards strasbourg. we cannot, however, stop to describe what he saw, but must hasten on to the swiss frontier. the travellers arrived at strasbourg in the evening. they spent the night at a hotel; and the next morning they took another railway which led along the bank of the rhine, up the river, towards switzerland. the country was magnificent. there was the river on one side, and a range of mountains rising sublimely in the interior on the other. the mountains were at a distance of several miles from the river; and the country between was an extremely fertile and luxuriant plain, covered with villages, castles, parks, pleasure grounds, gardens, and cultivated fields, which presented every where most enchanting pictures of rural beauty. this province is called alsatia. the terminus of the railway was at the city of basle, which lies just within the confines of switzerland. a short distance before reaching the gates of basle, the train stopped at what seemed at first to be a station. it was, however, only the custom house, where the trunks and passports were to be examined. "what are we to do here," asked rollo. "_i_ am going to do what i see other people do," replied mr. george. "you can do whatever you please." at this moment a guard, dressed, like all the other railway servants, in a sort of uniform, opened the door of the car in which mr. george and rollo were sitting, and said in a very respectful manner, in french,-- "the custom house, gentlemen." mr. george observed that the passengers were getting out from all the other cars; so he stepped out too, and rollo followed him. when they reached the platform they observed that a company of porters were employed in carrying all the trunks and baggage from the cars to the custom house, and that the passengers were going into the custom house too, though by another door. mr. george and rollo went in with them. they found an office within, and a desk, where one or two secretaries sat and examined the passports of the travellers as they successively presented them. as fast as they were examined they were impressed with a new stamp, which denoted permission for the travellers to pass the swiss frontier. the several travellers, as fast as their passports were examined, found right, and stamped, were allowed to pass between two soldiers through a door into another hall, where they found all the trunks and baggage arranged on a sort of counter, which extended around the centre of the room, so as to enclose a square place within. the custom-house officers who were to examine the baggage were within this enclosure, while the travellers who owned the baggage stood without. these last walked around the counter, looking at the trunks, boxes, bundles, and carpet bags that covered it, each selecting his own and opening the several parcels, in order that the officers within might examine them. the object of examining the trunks of passengers in this way is, to ascertain that they have not any _goods_ concealed in them. as a general thing, persons are not allowed to take _goods_ from one country to another without paying a tax for them. such a tax is called technically a _duty_, and the avails of it go to support the government of the country which the goods are carried into. travellers are allowed to take with them all that is necessary _for their own personal use, as travellers_, without paying any duty; but articles that are intended for sale as merchandise, or those which, though intended for the traveller's own use, are not strictly _personal_, are liable to pay duty. the principle is, that whatever the traveller requires for his own personal use, _in travelling_, is not liable to duty. what he does not so require must pay duty, no matter whether he intends to use it himself or to sell it. many travellers do not understand this properly, and often get into difficulty by not understanding it, as we shall see in the sequel. mr. george and rollo went into the baggage room together, showing their passports as they passed through between the soldiers. they then walked slowly along the room, looking at the baggage, as it was arranged upon the counter, in search of their own. "i see _my_ trunk," said mr. george, looking along at a little distance before him. "there it is." "and where do you suppose mine is?" asked rollo. "i have not the least idea," said mr. george. "i advise you to walk all around the room and see if you can find it; and when you find it, get it examined." rollo, taking this advice, walked on, leaving mr. george in the act of taking out his key in order to open his trunk for the purpose of allowing an officer to inspect it as soon as one should be ready. rollo soon found his trunk. it was in a part of the room remote from his uncle's. near his trunk was a very large one, which the officers were searching very thoroughly. they had found something in it which was not personal baggage and which the lady had not declared. rollo could not see what the article was which the officers had found. it was something contained in a pretty box. the lady had put it into the bottom of her trunk. the officers had taken it out, and were now examining it. the lady stood by, seemingly in great distress. rollo's attention, which had begun to be attracted by this scene, was, however, almost immediately called off from it by the voice of another officer, who pointed to his trunk and asked him if it was his. "is that yours?" said the officer, in french. "yes," replied rollo, in the same language, "it is mine;" and so saying, he proceeded to take out his key and unlock the trunk. "have you any thing to declare?" asked the man. rollo looked perplexed. he did not know what the officer meant by asking him if he had any thing to declare. after a moment's hesitation he said,-- "i don't know; but i will go ask my uncle." so rollo went to the place where he had left his uncle george, and accosted him by saying,-- "they want to know if i have any thing to _declare_. what do they mean?" "they mean whether you have any goods in your trunk that are liable to pay duty. tell them no." so rollo went back and told the officer that he had not any thing to declare. he then opened his trunk; but the officer, instead of examining it, shut down the lid, saying, "very well;" and by means of a piece of chalk he marked it upon the top with some sort of character. a porter then took the trunk and carried it back to the train. rollo perceived that the difficulty about the lady's baggage had been settled in some way or other, but he feared it was settled in a manner not very satisfactory to the lady herself; for, as the porters took up her trunk to carry it back, she looked quite displeased and out of humor. rollo went back to the place where he had left his uncle george, and then they went together out to the platform. here rollo found the lady who had had difficulty about her baggage explaining the case to some friends that she found there. she seemed to be very indignant and angry, and was telling her story with great volubility. rollo listened for a moment; but she spoke so rapidly that he could not understand what she said, as she spoke in french. "what does she say?" he asked, speaking to mr. george. "she says," replied mr. george, "that they were going to seize something that she had in her trunk because she did not declare it." "what does that mean?" said rollo. "why, the law is," said mr. george, "that when people have any thing in their trunks that is dutiable, if they _declare_ it, that is, acknowledge that they have it and show it to the officers, then they have only to pay the duty, and they may carry the article in. but if they do not declare it, but hide it away somewhere in their trunks, and the officers find it there, then the thing is forfeited altogether. the officers seize it and sell it for the benefit of the government." "o, uncle george!" exclaimed rollo. "yes," said mr. george, "that is what they do; and it is right. if people wish to bring any thing that is subject to duty into any country they ought to be willing to pay the duty, and not, by refusing to pay, make other people pay more than their share." "if one man does not pay his duty," rejoined rollo, "do the others have to pay more?" "yes," said mr. george, "in the end they do. at least i suppose so. whatever the amount of money may be that is required for the expenses of government, if one man does not pay his share, the rest must make it up, i suppose." "they did not look into my trunk at all," said rollo. "why didn't they? i might have had ever so many things hid away there." "i suppose they knew from the circumstances of the case," said mr. george, "that you would not be likely to have any smuggled goods in your trunk. they saw at once that you were a foreign boy, and knew that you must be coming to switzerland only to make a tour, and that you could have no reason for wishing to smuggle any thing into the country. they scarcely looked into _my_ trunk at all." while mr. george and rollo had been holding this conversation they had returned to their places in the car, and very soon the train was in motion to take them into the town. thus our travellers passed the swiss frontier. in half an hour afterwards they were comfortably established at a large and splendid hotel called the three kings. the hotel has this name in three languages, english, french, and german, as people speaking those several languages come, in almost equal numbers, to switzerland. thus when you leave the station you may, in your directions to the coachman, say you wish to go to the three kings, or to the trois rois, or to the drei könige, whichever you please. they all mean the same hotel--the best hotel in basle. chapter iii. basle. the city of basle stands upon the banks of the rhine, on the northern frontier of switzerland. the waters of the rhine are gathered from hundreds of roaring and turbid torrents which come out, some from vast icy caverns in the glaciers, some from the melting debris of fallen avalanches, some from gushing fountains which break out suddenly through crevices in the rocks or yawning chasms, and some from dark and frightful ravines on the mountain sides, down which they foam and tumble perpetually, fed by vast fields of melting snow above. the waters of all these torrents, being gathered at last into one broad, and deep, and rapid stream, flow to a vast reservoir called the lake of constance, where they repose for a time, or, rather, move slowly and insensibly forward, enjoying a comparative quiescence which has all the characteristics and effects of repose. the waters enter this reservoir wild and turbid. they leave it calm and clear; and then, flowing rapidly for one hundred miles along the northern frontier of switzerland, and receiving successively the waters of many other streams that have come from hundreds of other torrents and have been purified in the repose of other lakes extending over the whole northern slope of switzerland, they form a broad and rapid river, which flows swiftly through basle, and then, turning suddenly to the northward, bids basle and switzerland farewell together. "and then where does it go?" said rollo to mr. george when his uncle had explained this thus far to him. "straight across the continent to the north sea," said mr. george. thus the whole northern slope of switzerland is drained by a system of waters which, when united at basle, form the river rhine. the morning after mr. george and rollo arrived at basle they were looking out upon the river rhine from the windows of the hotel. "what a swift river!" said rollo. "yes," said mr. george. "and how blue the water is!" continued rollo. "yes," said mr. george. "the water of the streams which come from the swiss mountains is turbid at first and very gray from the grinding up of the rocks in the _moraines_ and glaciers and by the avalanches." "what is a moraine?" asked rollo. "i will explain it to you one of these days," said mr. george, "when you come to see one." "and a glacier," said rollo; "what is that?" "i will explain that to you, too, some other time," said mr. george, "but not now; for the breakfast will come in in a minute or two." "well," said rollo, "i can hear while i am eating my breakfast." "that may be," replied mr. george; "but i cannot lecture very well while i am eating _my_ breakfast." rollo laughed. "i did not think of that," said he. "what queer boats!" continued rollo, looking out again upon the river. "and there is a long bridge leading over to the other side. may i go out and walk over on that bridge after breakfast?" "yes," said mr. george, "you may go any where you please." "but suppose i should get lost," said rollo. "what should i do then?" "i don't know," said mr. george, "unless you should ask somebody to tell you the way to the three kings." "but perhaps they would not understand english," said rollo. "then you must say _trois rois_,[ a] which is the french name for the hotel," rejoined mr. george. "but perhaps they would not understand french," said rollo. "no," replied mr. george; "i think it probable they would not; for people talk german generally in this part of switzerland. in that case you must ask the way to _drei könige_."[ b] here the waiter came in with the breakfast. it consisted of a pot of coffee, another of boiled milk, an omelette, some excellent cakes, and some honey. there was a long table extending up and down the room, which was a very large and handsome apartment, and there were besides several round tables in corners and in pleasant places near the windows. the breakfast for mr. george and rollo was put upon one of the round tables; and, in sitting down to it, rollo took pains to place himself in such a manner that he could look out the window and see the water while he was eating. "what a dreadful river that would be to fall into!" said rollo. "it runs so swift and looks so angry!" "yes," said mr. george. "it runs swift because the descent is very great. switzerland is very high; and the water, in running from it, flows very swiftly." "i did not know that switzerland was all high," said rollo. "i knew that the mountains were high; but the valleys must be low." "no," said mr. george; "it is all high. the bottoms of the valleys are higher than the tops of the mountains in many other countries. in going into switzerland, we go up hill nearly all the way; and so, even when we are at the bottom of the deepest valleys in switzerland, we are up very high. there is chamouni, for example, which is a deep valley near the foot of mont blanc. the bottom of that valley is six or seven times as high as the top of the palisades on the north river." "o, uncle george!" exclaimed rollo. "yes," said mr. george; "and it is so with all the swiss valleys; and, accordingly, the water that comes down through them has a great descent to make in getting to the sea. thus there are a great many falls, and cascades, and rapids; and, even in those places where the rivers run smoothly, the current is very swift and very strong." while mr. george and rollo were eating their breakfast the attention of rollo was occupied partly by the prospect of the river as he saw it through the open window, and partly by the various groups of travellers who were constantly coming into the room, or going out, or taking their breakfasts in little parties at the tables. some who had finished their breakfasts were looking at maps and guide books which they had spread out before them on the tables. the room was very large, and very beautiful; and, as it was lighted on the back side by a row of wide and lofty windows which looked out upon the river, it wore a very bright and cheerful expression. at one end of it were glass doors, which led into another room very similar to this, as it likewise had windows looking out upon the river. this room was used as a sort of sitting room and reading room. there was a table in the centre, with newspapers, some french, some english, and some german, lying upon it. rollo determined to go into this room as soon as he had finished his breakfast to see who was there and what they were doing. "rollo," said mr. george, after a short pause, "do you wish to travel in switzerland intelligently or blindly?" "what do you mean by that?" asked rollo. "why, do you wish to understand something of the general features of the country first, so as to know always, as we go travelling on, where you are, and where you are going, and what you are to expect to see, or would you rather not trouble yourself at all about this, but take things as they come along, and enjoy them as you see them, without thinking or caring what is to come next." "which is the best way?" asked rollo. "either is a very good way," replied mr. george. "there is a pleasure in understanding and anticipating, and there is also a pleasure in wondering what is to come next and meeting with surprises. you can take your choice." rollo reflected a moment, and then he said that he thought he should like best to understand. "very well," said mr. george. "then i will explain to you the general features of switzerland. switzerland--or at least that portion of it which is the chief scene of the rambles of tourists and travellers--consists substantially of a long and deep valley, extending from east to west through the centre, and bordered by a range of mountains on each side. the range of mountains on the northern side of this valley is, of course, towards germany; the one on the southern side is towards italy. on the north side of the northern range of mountains is a broad slope of land, extending a hundred miles towards the german frontier. on the southern side of the southern range of mountains is a steep and narrow slope, extending to the italian frontier. "thus we may say," continued mr. george, "that switzerland consists substantially of a broad northern slope of land and a narrow southern slope, with a deep valley between them. do you understand this?" "yes," said rollo. "if i had some damp sand, and a little wooden shovel, i think i could make it." "people do make models of the swiss valleys and mountains," said mr. george. "in fact, they have maps of switzerland, embossed with all the mountains in relief; and i wish very much that we had one here to look at." "there is one here," said rollo, his face brightening up very luminously as he spoke. "i saw it hanging up in the gallery, and i did not know what it was. it must be that. i'll go and show it to you after breakfast." "i am very glad," said mr. george. "i wished to see one very much. we will go and see it immediately after breakfast. but now let me tell you a little more about the country. you must not imagine that the northern slope, as i called it, is one smooth and uniform surface of descending land. there are mountains, and valleys, and lakes, and precipices, and waterfalls, and every other variety of mountain scenery scattered all over it, making it a most picturesque and romantic region. it is, however, on the whole, a slope. it begins with comparatively smooth and level land on the north and it terminates in a range of lofty mountain crests on the south; and you have to go over this crest somewhere, by some of the steep and difficult passes that cross it, to get into the central valley. we are on the margin of this slope now. when we leave here and strike into the heart of switzerland we shall be gradually ascending it. i am going first to a place called interlachen, which is in a deep valley far up this slope, just under the ridge of mountains. interlachen is surrounded, in fact, by mountains, and a great many pleasant excursions can be made from it. we shall stop there a few days and make excursions, and then cross over by some of the mountain passes into the valley." "well," said rollo, in a tone of great satisfaction. "i shall like that; i should like to go over a mountain pass. shall we go in a carriage, or on horseback." "that depends upon which of the passes we take," said mr. george. "some of them are carriage roads, some are bridle paths; and you ride over on mules or horses. others are too steep and dangerous to ride over in any way. you have to go on foot, climbing up zigzag paths cut out of the rock, and over great patches of snow that horses and mules would sink into." "let's go in one of those," said rollo, straightening himself up. "sometimes the path becomes narrower and narrower," continued mr. george, "until it is finally lost among the rocks, and you have to clamber around the point of some rocky cliff a thousand feet in the air, with scarcely any thing but the jagged roughness of the rocks to cling to." "yes, sir," said rollo, eagerly. "yes, sir. let's go there. that's just the kind of road i want to go in." "well, we'll see," said mr. george. "the first thing is to go to interlachen. that is in the heart of the mountains, and very near the passes which lead over into the valley. when we get there we will study the guide book and the maps and determine which way to go." "and after you get into the valley," said rollo, "shall you go across it, and go over the mountains on the other side, into italy?" "i don't know," said mr. george. "perhaps we shall not have time. i may think it is best to spend the time in rambling about among the mountains and glaciers near the head of the valley, where i believe is to be found the most stupendous scenery in all switzerland." the breakfast was now nearly finished, though the process of eating it had been a good deal impeded by the conversation, so large a share of it having fallen to mr. george. mr. george, however, explained to rollo that their first day's journey from basle would be south, towards berne, the capital of the country--a city which was situated near the centre of the northern slope which mr. george had described. "do we go by a railway?" asked rollo. "no," said mr. george; "by a diligence." footnotes: [footnote a- b: mr. george, in speaking these words, did not pronounce them as you would suppose from the manner in which they are written. he pronounced them very much as if they were spelled tru-ah ru-ah. in the same manner, the german words, drei könige, he pronounced as if they were spelled dhrai ker-nig-ger.] chapter iv. the diligence. a diligence is a sort of stage coach used in france and switzerland, and generally on the continent of europe. it is constructed very differently, however, from an american stage coach, being divided into four distinct compartments. rollo had seen a diligence in paris, and so he could understand very easily the conversation which ensued between himself and his uncle in respect to the seats which they should take in the one in which they were to travel to berne. in order, however, to enable the reader of this book to understand it, i must here give a brief description of this kind of vehicle. the engraving on page is a very faithful representation of one of them. there are three windows in the side of it. each of these windows leads to a different compartment of the coach. in addition to these three compartments, there is, over the foremost of these, on the top of the coach, another, making four in all. this compartment on the top is called the _banquette_. these coaches are so large that they have a conductor. the man who drives sometimes sits on a small seat placed in front of the banquette, and sometimes he rides on one of the horses. in either case, however, he has nothing to do but to attend to his team. the passengers and the baggage are all under the conductor's care. the compartment immediately beneath the banquette, which is the front compartment of the body of the coach, is called the _coupé_. the coupé extends across the whole coach, from one side to the other; but it is quite narrow. it has only one seat,--a seat facing the horses,--with places upon it for three passengers. there are windows in front, by which the passengers can look out under the coachman's seat when there is a coachman's seat there. the doors leading to the coupé are in the sides. the compartment immediately behind the coupé is called the _interior_. it is entirely separate from the coupé. there are two seats, which extend from one side of the coach to the other, and have places upon them for three passengers each, making six in all. the three passengers who sit on one of these seats must, of course, ride with their backs to the horses. the doors leading to the interior are in the sides. in fact, the interior has within exactly the appearance of a common hackney coach, with seats for six passengers. behind the interior is the fourth compartment, which is called the _rotonde_. it is like a short omnibus. the door is behind, and the seats are on the sides. this omnibus compartment is so short that there is only room for three people on each side, and the seats are not very comfortable. very genteel people, who wish to be secluded and to ride somewhat in style, take the coupé. the seats in the coupé are very comfortable, and there is a very good opportunity to see the country through the front and side windows. the price is much higher, however, for seats in the coupé than in any other part of the diligence. the mass of common travellers generally take places in the interior. the seats there are comfortable, only there is not a very good opportunity to see the country; for there are only two windows, one on each side, in the top of the door. people who do not care much about the style in which they travel, but only desire to have the best possible opportunity to view the country and to have an amusing time, generally go up to the banquette. the places here are cheaper than they are even in the interior, and very much cheaper than they are in the coupé. the cheapest place of all, however, is in the rotonde, which is the omnibus-like compartment, in the end of the diligence, behind. this compartment is generally filled with laborers, soldiers, and servants; and sometimes nurses and children are put here. the baggage is always stored upon the top of the diligence, behind the banquette, and directly over the interior and the rotonde. it is packed away very carefully there, and is protected by a strong leather covering, which is well strapped down over it. all these things you see plainly represented in the engraving. we now return to the conversation which was held between rollo and mr. george at the close of their breakfast. "i have got some letters to write after breakfast," said mr. george, "and i should like to go directly to my room and write them. so i wish you would find out when the diligence goes next to berne, and take places in it for you and me." "well," said rollo, "i will; only how shall i do it? where shall i go?" "i don't know any thing about it," replied mr. george. "the guide book says that there is a diligence from basle to berne; and i suppose there is an office for it somewhere about town. do you think you can find it?" "i'll try," said rollo. "but how do we take seats in it? is there a book for us to write our names in, with the place where they are to call for us?" "i do not know any thing about it," said mr. george. "all i know is, that i want to go to berne with you some way or other in the diligence, and i wish to have you plan and arrange it all." "well," said rollo, "i will, if i can find out. only tell me what places i shall take." "i don't care particularly about that," replied mr. george; "only let it be where we can see best. it must be either in the coupé or in the banquette. we can't see at all, scarcely, in the other compartments." "well," said rollo, "i should like to be where i can see. but would you rather it would be in the coupé, or in the banquette?" "that is just as you please," replied mr. george. "there are some advantages in being in the banquette." "what are they?" asked rollo. "there are four advantages," replied mr. george. "first, it is up very high, and is all open, so that you have a most excellent chance to see." "yes," said rollo. "i shall like that." "the second advantage," said mr. george, "is, that it costs less. the places in the banquette are quite cheap." "yes," said rollo. "i like that. so we can save some of our money." "the third advantage," continued mr. george, "is, that we have a great deal better opportunity to hear talking there. there are usually five persons in that part of the coach--the coachman, the conductor, and three passengers. that is, there will be one passenger besides you and me. he will probably be talking with the conductor part of the time, and the conductor will be talking with the coachman, and we shall be amused by hearing what they say." "but there are _six_ persons in the interior," said rollo, "to talk." "true," replied mr. george; "but, then, they are usually not so sociable there as they are up on the banquette. besides, the noise of the wheels on the hard gravel roads is so loud there that we cannot hear very well. then, moreover, when we stop to change horses, the hostlers and postilions come out, and our coachman and conductor often have a great deal of amusing conversation with them, which we can hear from the banquette; but we could not hear it, or see the process of harnessing and unharnessing, from the interior, nor even very well from the coupé." "well," said rollo. "i like that. but that makes only three advantages. you said there were four." "yes," said mr. george. "but as to the fourth, i do not know whether you will consider it an advantage or not." "what is it?" said rollo. "i've no doubt but i shall." "why, in getting up and down to and from the banquette you will have a great deal of hard climbing to do." "yes," said rollo. "i shall like that. they are all advantages--very great advantages indeed." so rollo fully determined in his own mind that he would take places on the banquette. he thought that there was one disadvantage in that part of the coach; and that was, that in case of storm the rain would drive in directly upon them; but he found in the end that an excellent provision was made against this contingency. the young gentlemen had now finished their breakfasts; and so they rose and went out to what rollo called the gallery, to see the embossed map of switzerland which he said that he had seen hanging there. the plan of this hotel was very peculiar. in the centre of it was a very large, open hall, almost like a court, only it was covered above with a roof and lighted by a skylight. around this hall there was, in each story, an open gallery, with a railing on one side, over which you could look down to the floor below; and on the other side, at short intervals, there were doors leading to the various apartments. between these doors, and against the walls, were hanging maps, plans, pictures, and other embellishments, which gave to these galleries a very attractive appearance. here and there, too, on the different stories, there were sofas or other seats, with persons sitting upon them. some were sewing, and some were attending children who were playing near. at the two ends of the hotel there were broad staircases connected with these galleries and leading from one to the other. besides the galleries there were long corridors, extending each way from the centre of the building to ranges of apartments situated in the wings. the hotel, in fact, was very spacious, and it was very admirably arranged. rollo conducted mr. george to the third story; and there, hanging against the wall, he found the embossed map of switzerland which he had described. mr. george and rollo took this map down from its nail, and, seating themselves upon a settee which was near, they held it before them and examined it very attentively for some time. mr. george showed rollo the great central valley of switzerland, with the ranges of mountains on each side of it. he showed him, too, the great slope of land which extended over the whole northern part of switzerland. it was bounded on the north by the river rhine and the frontier, and on the south by the great range of mountains which separated it from the valley. he showed him, too, the numerous lakes which were scattered over the surface of it. "you see," said he, "that the waters which come out from the glaciers and the snow fields, and down through the chasms and ravines in the mountain sides, flow on till they come to some valley or place of comparatively low land; and they spread all over this depression, and flow into it more and more until they fill it up and make a lake there. when the lake is full the surplus waters run off clear wherever they find a channel." "is that the way the lakes are formed?" asked rollo. "yes," said mr. george. "you will see that it is so when we get up to them." "_up_ to them?" said rollo. "you mean down to them." "no," said mr. george. "the lakes are up quite high. many of them are far up the sides of the mountains. the water, in leaving them, runs very rapidly, showing that there is a great descent in the land where they are flowing. sometimes, in fact, these streams and rivers, after they leave the lakes, form great cataracts and cascades in getting down to the level country below. "but now," continued mr. george, "i must go to my writing, and you may see what you can do about the diligence." so mr. george went away towards his room, leaving rollo to hang up the embossed map and then to determine how he should go to work to ascertain what he was to do. rollo found less difficulty than he had anticipated in procuring places in the diligence. he first inquired of the clerk, at the office of the hotel. the clerk offered to send a porter with him to show him the way to the diligence office; but rollo said that he would prefer to go himself alone, if the clerk would tell him in what part of the town it was. so the clerk gave rollo the necessary direction, and rollo went forth. he found the diligence office very easily. in fact, he recognized the place at once when he came near it, by seeing several diligences standing before it along the street. he entered under an archway. on entering, he observed several doors leading to various offices, with inscriptions over each containing the names of the various towns to which the several diligences were going. at length he found berne. rollo did not know precisely in what way the business at such an office was to be transacted; but he had learned from past experience that all that was necessary in order to make himself understood in such cases was, to speak the principal words that were involved in the meaning that he was intending to convey, without attempting to make full and complete sentences of them. in cases where he adopted this mode of speaking he was accustomed usually to begin by saying that he could not speak french very well. accordingly, in this instance he went to the place where the clerk was sitting and said,-- "i do not speak french very well. diligence to berne. two places. banquette." "yes, yes," said the clerk. "i understand very well." the clerk then told him what the price would be of two seats on the banquette, and rollo paid the money. the clerk then made out and signed two very formal receipts and gave them to rollo. rollo walked back towards the hotel, studying his receipts by the way; but he could not understand them, as they were in the german language. chapter v. ride to berne. at length the time arrived for the departure of our two travellers from basle. a porter from the hotel carried their trunks to the diligence office, while rollo and mr. george walked. when they got to the place they found the diligence in the archway, and several men were employed in carrying up trunks and carpet bags to the top of it and stowing them away there. in doing this they ascended and descended by means of a long step ladder. the men took mr. george's trunk and rollo's and packed them away with the rest. there were several persons who looked like passengers standing near, waiting, apparently, for the diligence to be ready. among them were two children, a girl and a boy, who seemed to be about rollo's age. they were plainly but neatly dressed. they were sitting on a chest. the boy had a shawl over his arm, and the girl had a small morocco travelling bag in her hand. the girl looked a moment at rollo as he came up the archway, and then cast her eyes down again. her eyes were blue, and they were large and beautiful and full of meaning. there was a certain gentleness in the expression of her countenance which led rollo to think that she must be a kindhearted and amiable girl. the boy looked at rollo too, and followed him some time with his eyes, gazing at him as he came up the archway with a look of interest and curiosity. it was not yet quite time for the diligence to set out. in fact, the horses were not yet harnessed to it; and during the interval rollo and mr. george stood by, watching the process of getting the coach ready for the journey, and contrasting the appearance of the vehicle, and of the men employed about it, and the arrangements which they were making, with the corresponding particulars in the setting off of a stage coach as they had witnessed it in america. while doing this rollo walked about the premises a little; and at length, finding himself near the two children on the chest, he concluded to venture to accost the boy. "are you going in this diligence?" said he, speaking in french. "yes," replied the boy. "so am i," said rollo. "can you speak english?" "yes," said the boy. he spoke the yes in english. "are you going to berne?" asked rollo. "i don't know," said the boy. the girl, who had been looking at rollo during this conversation, here spoke, and said that they _were_ going to berne. "we are going in that diligence," said she. "so am i," said rollo. "i have got a seat on the banquette." "yes," rejoined the boy. "i wished to have a seat on the banquette, so that i could see; but the seats were all engaged before my father went to the office; so we are going in the coupé; but i don't like it half so well." "nor i," said the girl. "where is your father?" asked rollo. "he is gone," replied the boy, "with mother to buy something at a shop a little way from here. lottie and i were tired, and so we preferred to stay here. but they are coming back pretty soon." "are you all going to ride in the coupé?" said rollo; "because, there will not be room. there is only room for three in the coupé." "i know it," said lottie; "but then, as two of us are children, father thought that we could get along. father had a plan for getting adolphus a seat in the interior; but he was not willing to go there, because, he said, he could not see." just at this moment the father and mother of adolphus and lottie came up the archway into the court yard where the diligence was standing. the horses had been brought out some minutes before and were now nearly harnessed. the gentleman seemed to be quite in a hurry as he came up; and, seeing that the horses were nearly ready, he said,-- "now, children, get in and take your places as soon as possible." so they all went to the coach, and the gentleman attempted to open the door leading to the coupé. it was fastened. "conductor," said he, speaking very eagerly to the conductor, who was standing near, "open this door!" "there is plenty of time," said the conductor. "there is no need of haste." however, in obedience to the request of the gentleman, the conductor opened the door; and the gentleman, helping his wife in, first, afterwards lifted the children in, and then got in himself. the conductor shut the door. "come, uncle george," said rollo, "is not it time for us to get up to our places?" "no," said mr. george. "they will tell us when the proper time comes." so mr. george and rollo remained quietly standing by the side of the diligence while the hostlers finished harnessing the horses. rollo during this time was examining with great interest the little steps and projections on the side of the coach by which he expected that he and mr. george were to climb up to their places. it turned out in the end, however, that he was disappointed in his expectation of having a good climb; for, when the conductor was ready for the banquette passengers to take their places, he brought the step ladder and planted it against the side of the vehicle, and mr. george and rollo went up as easily as they would have gone up stairs. when the passengers were seated the step ladder was taken away, and a moment afterwards the postilion started the horses forward, and the ponderous vehicle began to move down the archway, the clattering of the horses' hoofs and the lumbering noise of the wheels sounding very loud in consequence of the echoes and reverberations produced by the sides and vaulting of the archway. as soon as the diligence reached the street the postilion began to crack his whip to the right and left in the most loud and vehement manner, and the coach went thundering on through the narrow streets of the town, driving every thing from before it as if it were a railway train going express. [illustration: the diligence at the office.] "uncle george," exclaimed rollo, "they have forgotten the conductor!" rollo was, in fact, quite concerned for a few minutes lest the conductor should have been left behind. he knew where this official's proper seat was; namely, at the left end of the banquette--that is, at the right hand, as seen in the engraving; and as he was not there, and as he knew that all the other seats were full, he presumed, of course, that he had been left behind. he was relieved of these fears, however, very soon; for, to his great astonishment, he suddenly perceived the head of the conductor coming up the side of the coach, followed gradually by the rest of his body as he climbed up to his place. rollo wondered how he could manage to get on and climb up, especially as the coach was at this time thundering along a descending portion of the street with a speed and uproar that was terrific. rollo, though at first very much astonished at this performance of the conductor, afterwards ceased to wonder at it; for he found that the conductor could ascend and descend to and from his seat at any time without any difficulty, even while the horses were going at the top of their speed. if the snapper of the coachman's whip got caught in the harness so that he could not liberate it, as it often did on the road, the conductor would climb down, run forward to the horses, set the snapper free, fall back to the coach, catch hold of the side and climb up, the coachman cracking his whip as soon as it was freed, and urging on his horses to a gallop, without troubling himself at all to consider how the conductor was to get up again. but to return to the story. when rollo found that the conductor was safe he amused himself by looking to the right and left into the windows of the houses at the second story. his seat was so high that he could do this very easily. many of these windows were open, and persons were sitting at them, sewing or reading. at some of them groups of children were standing. they were looking out to see the diligence go by. the street was so narrow that rollo found himself very near these persons as he passed by. "a little nearer," said he to his uncle george, "and i could shake hands with them." in a very few minutes the coach passed under a great arched gateway leading through the wall of the city, and thence over a sort of drawbridge which spanned the moat. immediately afterwards it entered a region of smooth, green fields, and pretty rural houses, and gardens, which presented on every side very charming pictures to the view. "now, uncle george," said rollo, "won't we have a magnificent ride?" rollo was not disappointed in his anticipations. he found the ride to berne a very magnificent one indeed. the road was smooth and hard as a floor. from side to side it was flat and level, and all the ascents which it made were so gradual that the horses trotted on at their full speed, without any cessation, sweeping around long and graceful curves, which brought continually into view new landscapes, each one, as it seemed, more varied and beautiful than the one which had preceded it. from his lofty seat on the banquette rollo looked abroad over a very wide extent of country; and when the coach stopped at the villages or post houses to change horses, he could look down with great advantage upon the fresh teams as they were brought out and upon the groups of hostlers and post boys employed in shifting the harness. he could hear, too, all that they said, though they generally talked so fast, and mingled their words with so much laughter and fun, that rollo found that he could understand but little. [illustration: the diligence on the road.] rollo was particularly struck, as he was whirled swiftly along the road, by the appearance of the swiss houses. they were very large, and were covered with a very broad roof, which extended so far over the walls on every side as to appear like a great, square, broad-brimmed hat. under this roof were platforms projecting from the house, one on each story, like piazzas. these piazzas were very broad. they were bordered by balustrades on the outer edge, and were used for sheds, store houses, and tool rooms. there were wood piles, wagons, harrows, and other farming implements, bundles of straw, and stones piled up here and there upon them. in fact, the swiss cottager has his house, and barn, and sheds, and outhouses all under one roof; and what there is not room for within he stores without upon these platforms. these houses were situated in the midst of the most beautiful fields and gardens, the whole forming a series of very charming landscapes. the view, too, as seen in many places along the road, was bounded at the south by a long line of snow-covered mountains, which glittered brilliantly in the sun and imparted an inexpressible fascination to the prospect. the diligence arrived at the city of berne near night, and mr. george and rollo remained in that city until the next day at noon. rollo was extremely interested in walking about the streets in the morning. in almost all the streets of berne the second stories of the houses are extended over the sidewalks, the superincumbent masonry being supported by massive square pillars, built up from the edge of the sidewalk below, and by arches above. of course, in going along the sidewalk the passenger is sheltered by the roof above him, and in the worst weather he can go all over the city without being exposed to the rain excepting at the street crossings. this arrangement is a very convenient one, certainly, for rainy weather; but it gives the streets a very gloomy and forbidding appearance at other times. still rollo was very much amused in walking along under these arcades; the more so because, in addition to the shops in the buildings themselves, there were usually stalls and stands, between and around the pillars, filled with curious things of all sorts, which were for sale; so that in walking along he had a display of goods on both sides of him. these goods consisted of toys, books, pictures, tools, implements, and curiosities, including a multitude of things which rollo had never seen or heard of before. berne is famous for bears. the bear is, in fact, the emblem of the city, and of the canton, or province, in which berne is situated. there is a story that in very ancient times, when berchtold, the original founder of the city, was beginning to build the walls, a monstrous bear came out of the woods to attack him. berchtold, with the assistance of the men who were at work with him on the walls, killed the bear. they gloried greatly in this exploit, and they preserved the skin and claws of the bear for a long time as the trophy of their victory. afterwards they made the bear their emblem. they painted the figure of the animal on their standards. they made images and effigies of him to ornament their streets, and squares, and fountains, and public buildings. they stamped the image of him on their coins; and, to this day, you see figures of the bear every where in berne. carved images of bruin in every attitude are for sale in the shops; and, not contented with these lifeless symbols, the people of berne for a long time had a pit, or den, similar to those in the garden of plants at paris, where they kept living specimens for a long time.[ ] this den was just without the gates of the city. the guide book which rollo read as he was coming into berne, to see what it said about the city, stated that there was one bear in the garden at that time; and he wished very much to go and see it, but he did not have a very convenient opportunity. footnotes: [footnote : see rollo in paris for an account of these dens for bears in the garden of plants.] chapter vi. the valley of the aar. after spending several hours in berne and wondering greatly at the many strange things which they saw there, mr. george and rollo took their passage in another diligence for thun, which was a town still farther in towards the heart of switzerland on the way to interlachen. it took only three or four hours to go to thun. the town, they found, was small, compact, surrounded by walls, and very delightfully situated at the end of a long lake, which extended from that point very far in among the mountains. there was one thing very remarkable about thun, at least it seemed very remarkable to rollo, although he found afterwards that it was a common thing in switzerland; and that was, that the hotels were all outside the town. there was reason in this; for the town--though it was a very curious and romantic place, with a church on a terraced hill at one end of it, surrounded with a beautifully ornamented church yard, with seats and bowers here and there at the corners of it, which overlooked the country and commanded charming views of the lake and mountains--was still, in the main, very contracted and confined, and hotels would not be pleasantly situated in it. a little beyond the town, however, on the margin of the lake, was a delightful region of gardens and pleasure grounds, with four or five very handsome hotels among them. mr. george and rollo stopped to dine at one of these hotels. from the windows of it there were the most brilliant and charming prospects of the lake and the surrounding mountains on one side, and on the other a view of the town and of two or three very pretty little steamboats lying at a pier. behind the hotel the land very soon ascended rapidly, the ascent terminating at last in crags and precipices which towered at a vast height above. among these heights rollo saw a sort of pavilion, built on a small projecting point of a hill, four or five hundred feet, perhaps, above the hotel. "do you think any body can get up there?" said he to his uncle george. they were standing, when rollo said this, on the back piazza of the hotel--a very beautiful place, looking out upon green lawns and gardens. "certainly," said mr. george. "they would not have built such a lookout as that without making a way to get to it." "then let's go up there," said rollo, "and see what we can see." "very well," said mr. george; "lead the way, and i will follow." "well, come," said rollo, moving on. "i am not sure that i can find the way; but i'll try." so saying, rollo chose from among several broad and smooth gravel walks which he saw diverging from the house in various directions, among the groves and copses of shrubbery that ornamented the grounds behind it, the one which seemed to turn most nearly in the right direction; and, running along before, he was soon out of sight of the hotel. the path meandered gracefully among shrubs, and flowers, and pretty green openings a little way, and then began to ascend the hill, sometimes in a winding course and sometimes by zigzags. there were seats placed here and there at proper points for rest. at length both rollo and mr. george were surprised to find coming suddenly into view a small building, which stood in a very romantic and picturesque spot about half way up the hill, which proved, on examination, to be a little chapel. it was an episcopal chapel, built here by the proprietor of the hotel for the accommodation of his english guests on sundays. there are a great many english travellers in switzerland, more perhaps from that nation than from any other, and the english people are very much pleased with the opportunity to worship god, when in foreign lands, according to the rites and usages of their own national church. americans, on the other hand, when travelling, generally prefer to attend churches in which the worship is conducted according to the usages of the people in whose country they chance to be. after looking at the little english chapel as long as they wished, our two travellers went on up the path. the ascent soon became very steep, and the way led through close woods, which allowed of no opportunity to see, except that now and then a brief glimpse was obtained of the hotel, with the gardens and grounds around it, and the gentlemen and ladies walking upon the piazza in the rear of it. after about a quarter of an hour of hard climbing up a wild and romantic but very smooth and well made path the two young gentlemen reached the pavilion. here a boundless and most magnificent prospect was opened before them. rollo was bewildered with astonishment and delight; and even mr. george, who was usually very cool and quiet on such occasions, seemed greatly pleased. i shall not, however, attempt to describe the view; for, though a fine view from an elevated point among lakes and mountains is a very exciting thing actually to witness and enjoy, it is by no means an interesting thing to describe. "what a magnificent prospect!" said rollo. rollo, as he said this, was looking down at the more near and distinctly detailed objects which were to be seen directly below him at the bottom of the hill, towards the right--such as the hotels, the gardens, the roads, the pier, the steamboats, and the town. the attention of mr. george, however, was attracted by the more grand and sublime features of the view which were to be seen in the other direction--the lake, the forests, and the mountains. the mountains that were near were darkened by the groves of evergreens that clothed their sides, and some of them were made more sombre still by the shadows of floating clouds; while over these there towered the glittering summits of more distant ranges, white with everlasting snow. "how cold they look!" said mr. george; "how icy cold!" "how little they look! how very little! see, uncle george," said rollo, pointing; "they are really good large steamboats, and you would think they were only playthings." "there are some men walking along the road," continued rollo, "just like little dots." "see the banks of snow on that mountain, rollo!" said mr. george. "they look like drifts of dry, light snow, as they shine in the sun on a bitter cold winter day." "why doesn't it melt?" asked rollo. "because it is up so high," said mr. george. "as you go up in the air from the surface of the earth the air grows colder and colder, until at last, when you get up to a certain height, it is cold enough to freeze." "is it so every where?" asked rollo. "yes," said mr. george. "if you were to put some water into a vial and tie it to the tail of a kite, and send it up into the air _high enough_, the water would freeze, and when it came down you would find the water turned into ice." "should i?" asked rollo. "would it if i were to send the kite up in america?" "yes," said mr. george, "any where, all over the earth." "i mean to try it," said rollo. "you can't try it very well," replied mr. george; "for you could not easily send a kite up high enough. it would take a very long time." "how long?" asked rollo. "why, that depends upon what part of the earth it is that you make the experiment in," replied mr. george. "at the equator, where the sun is very hot, you would have to go up very high. in temperate regions, as in switzerland or in most parts of america, you would not have to go up so high; and farther north, near the pole, it is only necessary to go up a very little way." "and how high must we go up in switzerland?" asked rollo. "about eight or nine thousand feet, i believe," said mr. george. "some of the alpine summits are sixteen thousand feet high; and so the ice and snow lie upon the upper portions of them all the time." the young gentlemen remained some time longer in the pavilion, gazing upon the stupendous scenery around them, and looking down the lake which lay before them in the bottom of a deep and narrow valley and extended in among the mountains much farther than they could see. "we are going along that lake," said rollo "are we not?" "yes," said mr. george; "it is the lake of thun." "we are going in one of the steamboats that are lying at the pier, are we not?" said rollo. "yes," said mr. george; "unless you would prefer going along the shore." "is there a road along the shore?" asked rollo. "yes," said mr. george; "there are two, i believe, one on each side of the lake. these roads run along at the foot of the mountains, far enough, however, above the level of the lake to enable us to enjoy excellent views of it. but we cannot see the mountains from it as well as we can from the lake itself." "then," said rollo, "if we go by the road we can see the lake best; and if we go by the steamboat we can see the mountains best." "yes," said mr. george; "that is the state of the case, exactly." "then i think we had better go by the boat," said rollo; "for i would rather see the mountains." "so would i," rejoined mr. george. "besides, there will be plenty of occasions on which we shall be obliged to go by land; therefore we had better go by water when we can, in order to have a variety. and, if we are going in the steamer, we must go back to the hotel; for it is almost time for the steamer to sail." so mr. george led the way, and rollo followed, down the path by which they had come up. as they thus walked down they continued the conversation which they had commenced in the pavilion. "what shall we come to when we get to the end of the lake?" asked rollo. "does the lake reach to the end of the valley?" "no," said mr. george. "the valley is about fifty miles long, i suppose, and this lake is only about fifteen miles long; but there is another in the same valley a little farther on. the valley is the valley of the aar. that is the name of the stream which flows through it. it is one of the most remarkable valleys in switzerland. i have been studying it in the guide book and on the map. it is about fifty miles long, and it winds in a serpentine manner between two lofty ranges of mountains, so steep and high that it is not possible to make any road over them." "none at all?" asked rollo. "no," replied mr. george. "they cannot make any road--nothing but bridle paths. the mountains, too, that border the valley along the sides close across at the head of it; so that if you go up the valley at all you cannot get out of it without climbing over the mountains; unless, indeed, you are willing to come back the same way that you went." "i would rather climb over the mountains," said rollo. "so would i," said mr. george. "the beginning of this valley," continued mr. george "is in the very heart of the most mountainous part of switzerland, and the river aar commences there in prodigious cascades and waterfalls, which come down over the cliffs and precipices or gush out from enormous crevices and chasms, and make quite a river at the very beginning." "can we go there and see them?" said rollo. "yes," replied mr. george; "i mean to go and see them. the place is called meyringen. the cascades and waterfalls at meyringen are wonderful. one of them, the guide book says, makes dreadful work in times of flood. it comes out from a great chasm in the rocks in the face of a precipice at a vast height from the ground; and, in times of flood, it brings down such a mass of sand, gravel, stones, rubbish, and black mud as sometimes to threaten to overwhelm the village." "is there a village there?" asked rollo. "yes," said mr. george; "the village of meyringen. this waterfall comes down out of the mountain just back of the village; and they have had to build up an immense wall, a quarter of a mile long and twenty or thirty feet high, to keep the torrent of mud and sand out of the streets. once it broke through and filled up the church four feet deep all over the floor with mud, and gravel, and stones. some of the stones were bigger than your head." rollo was very much interested in hearing this account of the fall of alpbach,--for that was the name of this unmanageable cataract,--and expressed a very strong desire to go to meyringen and see it. "we will go," said mr. george. "it lies at the head of the valley of the aar, which we are now entering. the river aar, after being formed by these cataracts and cascades, flows through the valley, making two long lakes in its course. this lake of thun is the second one. the other is the lake of brienz. the upper end of the lake of thun is a few miles only from the lower end of the lake of brienz; and interlachen is between the two." [illustration: the lake shore.] about an hour after this conversation our two travellers might have been seen sitting together upon the deck of the little steamer which was paddling its way merrily along the lake, and occupying themselves in viewing and talking about the extraordinary spectacle presented by the slopes of the mountains which bordered the lake on either side, and which seemed to shut the lake in, as it were, between two immense walls of green. rollo was extremely interested, as he sailed along, in viewing these mountain slopes, exploring the landscape carefully in every part, studying out all the objects of interest which it contained--the forests, the cultivated fields, the great swiss cottages, the pasturages, the little chalets, the zigzag paths leading up and down, and all the other picturesque and striking characteristics of a swiss landscape. the slopes were very beautiful, and densely inhabited; and they were really very steep, though they looked much steeper than they were, as all hills and slopes do to a person looking upon them from below and facing them. "it seems," said rollo to mr. george, "as if two broad strips of green country were set up on edge for us to see them as we are sailing along." "yes," said mr. george; "with all the houses, farms, pasturages, flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle clinging to the sides of them." the chief charm, however, of the views which presented themselves to the young travellers as they glided along the lake was the glittering refulgence of the snow-clad peaks which appeared here and there through openings among the nearer mountains. the view of these peaks was occasionally obstructed by masses of vapor which were floating along the tops of the mountain ranges; but still they were seen frequently enough to fill the minds both of rollo and mr. george with wonder and delight. after gazing at this scenery for nearly an hour until his curiosity in respect to it was in some measure satisfied, rollo began to turn his attention to his fellow-travellers on board the steamer. these travellers were seated singly or in groups about the deck of the little vessel, and they were all tourists, journeying for pleasure. here was a small group of young men--students apparently--with knapsacks on their backs, spyglasses strapped to their sides, and maps and guide books in their hands. there was a young lady seated with her father, both dressed for the mountains, and gazing with curiosity and wonder on the views presented along the shores of the lake. in another place was a family of parents and children--the father studying a map which he had spread open upon his knees, the mother sitting by his side, silent and thoughtful, as if her mind was far away, dwelling, perhaps, upon the little ones which had been left at home because they were too young to be taken on such a tour. some of these people were talking french, some english, and some german. rollo looked about upon these various groups for a time, and then said,-- "are all these travellers going to see the mountains, do you suppose, uncle george?" "yes," said mr. george; "i suppose so. there is very little travelling in switzerland except pleasure travelling. i presume they are all going to see the mountains and the other scenery of the country." "i should not think that the ladies could climb up the mountains very high," said rollo. "yes," said mr. george, "they can; for in almost all places where people wish to go there are excellent paths. where it is too steep for roads the mountaineers make zigzag paths, not only for travellers, but for themselves, in order that they may go up and down to their chalets and pasturages. the people of the country have been making and improving these paths now for two thousand years or more, and they have got them at last in very excellent condition; so that, except the steepness, they are very easy and very comfortable." "why, uncle george," said rollo, "look!" so saying, rollo pointed his finger out over the water. the mountains had suddenly and entirely disappeared. the vapors and clouds which they had seen floating among them half an hour before had become dense and continuous, and had, moreover, settled down over the whole face of the country in such a manner as to shut out the mountains wholly from view. nothing was to be seen but the water of the lake, with a margin of low and level but beautiful country along the shores of it. in fact, there was nothing but the smallness of the steamer and the costumes and character of the passengers to prevent rollo and mr. george from supposing that they were steaming it from new york to albany, up the north river, in america. chapter vii. interlachen. about eight o'clock on the morning after our travellers arrived at interlachen rollo awoke, and, rising from his bed, he walked to the window and looked out, expecting to find before him a very grand prospect of alpine scenery; but there was nothing of the kind to be seen. before the house was a garden, with a broad gravel walk leading out through it to the road. on each side of this walk were parterres of shrubbery and flowers. there were also two side approaches, wide enough for roads. they came from the main road through great open gates, at a little distance to the right and left of the hotel. the main road, which was broad and perfectly level, extended in front of the house; and two or three swiss peasants, in strange costume, were passing by. beyond were green and level fields, with fruit and forest trees rising here and there among them, forming a very rich and attractive landscape. the sky was covered with clouds, though they were very fleecy and bright, and in one place the sun seemed just ready to break through. "i thought interlachen was among the mountains," said rollo to himself; "and here i am in the middle of a flat plain. "i will go and see uncle george," he continued after a moment's pause, "and ask him what it means." so rollo opened the door of his room and went out into what in america would be called the entry, or hall. he found himself in a long corridor paved with stone, and having broad stone staircases leading up and down from it to the different stories. in one place there was a passage way which led to a window that seemed to be on the back side of the hotel. rollo went there to look out, in order to see what the prospect might be in that direction. he saw first the gardens and grounds of the hotel, extending for a short distance in the rear of the building, and beyond them he obtained glimpses of a rapidly running stream. the water was very turbid. it boiled and whirled incessantly as it swept swiftly along the channel. "ah," said rollo, "that is the river aar, i suppose, flowing through interlachen from one lake to the other. i thought i should see it somewhere here; but i did not know whether it was before the hotels or behind them." a short distance beyond the stream rollo saw the lower part of a perpendicular precipice of gray rock. all except the lower part of this precipice was concealed by the fogs and clouds, which seemed to settle down so low upon the landscape in all directions as to conceal almost every thing but the surface of the ground. "i wonder how high that precipice is," said rollo to himself. "i wonder whether i could climb up to the top of it," he continued, still talking to himself, "if i could only find some way to get across the river? there must be some way, i suppose. perhaps there is a bridge." rollo then turned his eye upward to look at the clouds. in one place there seemed to be a break among them, and the fleecy masses around the break were slowly moving along. the place where rollo was looking was about the middle of the sky; that is, about midway between the horizon and the zenith.[ ] while rollo was looking at this break, which seemed, while he looked at it, to brighten up and open more and more, he saw suddenly, to his utter amazement, a large green tree burst into view in the midst of it, and then disappear again a moment afterwards as a fresh mass of cloudy vapor drifted over. rollo was perfectly bewildered with astonishment. to see a green tree, clear and distinct in form and bright with the beams of the sun which just at that instant caught upon it, breaking out to view suddenly high up among the clouds of the sky, seemed truly an astonishing spectacle. rollo had scarcely recovered from the first emotion of his surprise before the clouds parted again, wider than before, and brought into view, first a large mass of foliage, which formed the termination of a grove of trees; then a portion of a smooth, green field, with a flock of sheep feeding upon it, clinging apparently to the steep slope like flies to a wall; and finally a house, with a little blue smoke curling from the chimney. rollo was perfectly beside himself with astonishment and delight at this spectacle; and he determined immediately to go and ask his uncle to come and see. he accordingly left the window and made all haste to his uncle's door. he knocked. his uncle said, "come in." rollo opened the door. his uncle was standing by the window of his room, looking out. this was on the front side of the hotel. "uncle george!" said rollo, "uncle george! come and look out with me at the back window. there is a flock of sheep feeding in a green field away up in the sky!" "come and look here!" said mr. george. so rollo went to the window where mr. george was standing, and his astonishment at what he saw was even greater than before. the clouds had separated into great fleecy masses and were slowly drifting away, while through the openings that appeared in them there were seen bright and beautiful views of groves, green pasturages, smiling little hamlets and villages, green fields, and here and there dark forests of evergreen trees, with peaks of rocks or steep precipices peeping out among them. at one place, through an opening or gap in the nearer mountains, there could be seen far back towards the horizon the broad sides and towering peak of a distant summit, which seemed to be wholly formed of vast masses of ice and snow, and which glittered with an inexpressible brilliancy under the rays of the morning sun. "that is the jungfrau,"[ ] said mr. george. "that great icy mountain?" said rollo. "yes," said mr. george. "can we get up to the top of it?" asked rollo. "no," said mr. george. "people tried for more than a thousand years to get to the top of the jungfrau before they could succeed." "and did they succeed at last?" asked rollo. "yes," replied mr. george. "you see there is a sort of goatlike animal, called the _chamois_,[ ] which the peasants and mountaineers are very fond of hunting. these animals are great climbers, and they get up among the highest peaks and into the most dangerous places; and the hunters, in going into such places after them, become at last very expert in climbing, and sometimes they become ambitious of surpassing each other, and each one wishes to see how high he can get. so one time, about twenty-five years ago, a party of six of these hunters undertook to get to the top of the jungfrau, and at last they succeeded. but it was a dreadfully difficult and dangerous operation. it was fifteen miles' steep climbing." "not steep climbing all the way," said rollo. "no," said mr. george, "i suppose not all the way. there must have been some up-and-down work, and some perhaps tolerably level, for the first ten miles; but the last five must have been a perpetual scramble among rocks and ice and over vast drifts of snow, with immense avalanches thundering down the mountain sides all around them." "i wish i could go and see them," said rollo. "you can go," replied mr. george. "there is a most excellent chance to see the face of the jungfrau very near; for there is another mountain this side of it, with a narrow valley between. this other mountain is called the wengern alp. it is about two thirds the height of the jungfrau, and is so near it that from the top of it, or near the top, you can see the whole side of the jungfrau rising right before you and filling half the sky, and you can see and hear the avalanches thundering down the sides of it all day long." rollo was quite excited at this account, and was very eager to set off as soon as possible to go up the wengern alp. "how do we get there?" asked he. "you see this great gap in the near mountains," said mr. george, pointing. "yes," said rollo. "that gap," continued mr. george, "is the mouth of a valley. i have been studying it out this morning in my guide book. there is a good carriage road leading up this valley. it is called the valley of the lütschine, because that is the name of the river which comes down through it. in going up this valley for the first two or three miles we are going directly towards the jungfrau." "yes," said rollo. "that i can see very plainly." this was indeed very obvious; for the jungfrau, from the windows of the hotel, was seen through the great gap in the near mountains which mr. george had pointed out as the mouth of the valley of the lütschine. in fact, had it not been for that gap in the near mountains, the great snow-covered summit could not have been seen from the hotels at all. "we go up that valley," continued mr. george, "about three miles, and then we come to a fork in it; that is, to a place where the valley divides into two branches, one turning off to the right and the other to the left. directly ahead there is an enormous precipice, i don't know how many thousand feet high, of bare rock. "one of these branch valleys," continued mr. george, "leads up to one side of the wengern alp and the jungfrau, and the other to the other side. we may take the right-hand valley and go up five or six miles to lauterbrunnen, or we may take the left-hand branch and go up to grindelwald. which way do you think we had better go?" "i do not know," said rollo. "can we get up to the wengern alp from either valley?" "yes," said mr. george. "we can go up from one of these valleys, and then, after stopping as long as we choose on the alp, we can continue our journey and so come down into the other, and thus see them both. one of the valleys is famous for two great glaciers that descend into it. the other is famous for immense waterfalls that come down over the precipices at the sides." "let us go first and see the waterfalls," said rollo. "well," said mr. george, "we will. we shall have to turn to the right in that case and go to lauterbrunnen. when we get to lauterbrunnen we shall have to leave our carriage and take horses to go up to the wengern alp. the way is by a steep path, formed in zigzags, right up the sides of the mountains." "how far is it?" asked rollo. "i don't know precisely," said mr. george; "but it is a good many miles. it takes, at any rate, several hours to go up. we can stop at the wengern alp as long as we please and look at the jungfrau and the avalanches, and after that go on down into the valley of grindelwald on the other side, and so come home." "but how can we get our carriage?" asked rollo. "o, they send the carriage back, i believe," said mr. george, "from lauterbrunnen to the great precipice at the fork of the valley." mr. george, having thus finished his account of the topography of the route to the wengern alp, went away from the window and returned to the table where he had been employed in writing some letters just before rollo had come in. rollo was left at the window. he leaned his arms upon the sill, and, looking down to the area below, amused himself with observing what was going on there. there were several persons standing or sitting upon the piazza. presently he heard the sound of wheels. a carriage came driving up towards the door. a postilion was riding upon one of the horses. there were two servants sitting on the box; and there was a seat behind, where another servant and the lady's maid were sitting. the carriage stopped, the door was opened, and a lady and gentleman with two boys, all dressed like travellers, got out, and were ushered into the house with great civility by the landlord. the baggage was taken off and carried in, and then the carriage was driven away round the corner. this was an english nobleman and his family, who were making the tour of switzerland, and were going to spend a few days at interlachen on the way. as soon as the bustle produced by this arrival had subsided, rollo's attention was attracted by a very sweet musical sound which seemed to be produced by something coming along the road. "what can that be, i wonder?" said he to himself. then in a little louder tone, but without turning round,-- "uncle george, here is some music coming. what do you think it is?" mr. george paused a moment to listen, and then went on with his writing. the mystery was soon solved; for, in a few moments after rollo had spoken, he saw a large flock of goats coming along. these goats all had bells upon their necks,--or at least a great many of them were so provided,--and these bells, having a soft and sweet tone, produced, when their sounds were blended together, an enchanting harmony. the goats walked demurely along, driven by one or two goatherds who were following them, and soon disappeared behind the trees and shrubbery. very soon after their forms had disappeared from view the music of their bells began to grow fainter and fainter until it ceased to be heard. "it was a flock of goats going by," said rollo. rollo next heard voices; and, turning in the direction whence the sounds proceeded, he saw a party of young men coming up towards the door of the hotel along the gravelled avenue. this was a party of german students making the tour of switzerland on foot. they had knapsacks on their backs, and stout walking sticks and guide books in their hands. they came up talking and laughing together, full of hilarity and glee; and yet some of them seemed very tired. they had walked six miles that morning, and were now going to stop at this hotel for breakfast. rollo listened to their conversation; but, as it was in the german language, he could not understand one word that they were saying. "dear me!" said he; "i wish that every body would talk either french or english." as soon as the students had passed on into the inn rollo heard another carriage coming. he looked and found that it was a _char à banc_. a char à banc is a small, one-horse carriage, which looks upon the outside very much like what is called a carryall in america, only it is much narrower. it differs very much, however, from a carryall within; for it has only a seat for two persons, and that is placed sideways, with the end to the horses. you ride in it, therefore, sideways, as you do in an omnibus, only in an omnibus there are two seats, one on each side, and the door is at the end; whereas in the char à banc there is a seat only on one side, and the door is opposite to it on the other. the seat is large and comfortable, being very much like a short sofa. some people, therefore, describe a char à banc as a sofa placed endwise on wheels. the char à banc stopped before the door of the hotel; and the coachman, getting down from his seat in front, opened the door. a very dignified-looking gentleman stepped out; and, after standing a moment on the piazza to give some directions about his portmanteau, he went into the office of the hotel. rollo, looking down from the window of his uncle george's room, could see all these things very plainly; for the roof which protected the piazza from the rain was up at the top of the hotel, and therefore did not interfere with his view. after having made the above-described observations from the window, rollo began to think that he would like to go down below to the door, where he thought he could see what was going on to better advantage. "uncle george," said he, "when are you going down to breakfast?" "in about half an hour," said mr. george. "i have got another letter to write." "then i believe i will go down now," said rollo, "and wait there till you come." "very well," said mr. george; "and please order breakfast, and then it will be all ready when i get my letter finished." "what shall i order?" asked rollo. "i don't know," said mr. george. "i don't know what it is the fashion to have for breakfast here. ask them what they have got, and then choose for yourself and me." so rollo, putting on his cap, went down stairs. he stood for a little time on the piazza, looking at the strange dresses of the people that were sitting or standing there and listening to the outlandish sounds of the foreign languages which they were speaking. at a little distance out upon the gravel walk, near the shrubbery, were a party of guides waiting to be hired for mountain excursions. some of these guides were talking with travellers, forming plans, or agreeing upon the terms on which they were to serve. rollo, after observing these groups a little time, walked along the piazza towards a place where he saw an open door in another large building, which, being connected with the piazza, evidently belonged to the hotel. in fact, it was a sort of wing. as there were people going in and out at this door, rollo thought that he could go in too. he accordingly walked along in that direction. before he reached the door he came to a place which, though open to the air, was covered with a roof, and was so enclosed by the buildings on three sides as to make quite a pleasant little nook. it was ornamented by various shrubs and flowers which grew from tubs and large pots arranged against the sides of it. there were several tables in this space, with chairs around them, and one or two parties of young men were taking their breakfast here. "this will be a good place for uncle george and me to have our breakfast," said rollo to himself, "and we can see the jungfrau all the time while we are eating it." rollo then went on into the open door. he found himself ushered into a very large and beautiful drawing room. there were a great many sofas arranged around the sides of it, on which parties of ladies and gentlemen were sitting talking together; while other gentlemen, their hats in their hands, were standing before them or walking about the floor. there was no carpet; but the floor was formed of dark wood highly polished, and was very beautiful. there was a fireplace in one corner of this room; but there was no fire in it. no fire was necessary; for it was a warm and pleasant morning. on the front side of the room was a row of windows looking out towards the road. on the back side was a door opening to another large room, where rollo saw a table spread and several people sitting at it eating their breakfast. "ah," said rollo, "there is the dining room! i will go in there and see what we can have for breakfast." so he walked through the drawing room and entered the room beyond. he found that this inner room was quite a spacious apartment; and there were one or two long tables extending the whole length of it. there were various separate parties sitting at these tables taking breakfast. some were just beginning. some had just ended. some were waiting for their breakfast to be brought in. near where rollo was standing two gentlemen were seated at the table, with a map of switzerland spread before them; and, instead of being occupied with breakfast, they were planning some excursion for the day. rollo looked out a vacant place at the table and took his seat. a waiter came to him to know what he would have. "i want breakfast for two," said rollo, "my uncle and myself. what have you got for us?" the waiter repeated a long list of very nice things that he could give rollo and his uncle for breakfast. from among these rollo chose a beef steak, some hot rolls and butter, some honey, and some coffee. the waiter went out to prepare them. in about ten minutes mr. george came down. he took his seat by the side of rollo; and very soon afterwards the waiter brought in what had been ordered. rollo liked the breakfast very much, especially the honey. it is very customary to have honey for breakfast in switzerland. footnotes: [footnote : the zenith is the point in the heavens that is directly over our heads.] [footnote : pronounced _yoongfrow_.] [footnote : pronounced _shamwawh_.] chapter viii. lauterbrunnen. "come, uncle george," said rollo, "make haste. we are all ready." rollo was sitting in a char à banc when he said this, at the door of the hotel. he and his uncle were going to make an excursion up the valley of the lütschine to lauterbrunnen, and thence to ascend the wengern alp, in order to see the avalanches of the jungfrau; and rollo was in haste to set out. "come, uncle george," said he, "make haste." mr. george was coming out of the hotel slowly, talking with the landlord. "the guide will take you to lauterbrunnen," said the landlord, "in the char à banc; and then he will send the char à banc back down the valley to the fork, and thence up to grindelwald to wait for you there. you will go up to the wengern alp from lauterbrunnen; and then, after staying there as long as you please, you will keep on and come down to grindelwald on the other side, where you will find the carriage ready for you.[ ] but it seems to me that you had better take another horse." "no," said mr. george. "one will do very well." mr. george had a carpet bag in his hand. it contained nightdresses, to be used in case he and rollo should conclude to spend the night on the mountain. he put the carpet bag into the carriage, and then got in himself. the landlord shut the door, and the coachman drove away. thus they set out on their excursion. this excursion to the wengern alp was only one of many similar expeditions which rollo and mr. george made together while they were in switzerland. as, however, it is manifestly impossible to describe the whole of switzerland in so small a volume as this, i shall give a narrative of the ascent of the wengern alp as a sort of specimen of these excursions. i think it better that i should give a minute and particular account of one than a more vague and general, and so less satisfactory, account of several of them. rollo had taken the precaution to have the curtains of the char à banc rolled up, so that he and mr. george could see out freely on all sides of them as they rode along. the view which was first presented to their observation was that of the lawns and gardens in the midst of which the hotels were situated. these grounds were connected together by walks--some straight, others winding--which passed through bowers and gateways from one enclosure to the other. in these walks various parties were strolling; some were gathering flowers, others were gazing at the mountains around, and others still were moving quietly along, going from one hotel to another for the purpose of taking a pleasant morning walk or to make visits to their friends. the whole scene was a bright and very animated one; but rollo had not time to observe it long; for the char à banc, after moving by a graceful sweep around a copse of shrubbery, passed out through a great gateway in the road, and the hotels and all that pertained to them were soon hidden from view by the great trees which grew along the roadside before them. the coachman, or rather the guide,--for the man who was driving the char à banc was the one who was to act as guide up the mountain when they reached lauterbrunnen,--turned soon into a road which led off towards the gap, or opening, in the nearer mountains which mr. george and rollo had seen from the windows of the hotel. the road was very smooth and level, and the two travellers, as they rode along, had a fine view of the fields, the hamlets, and the scattered cottages which bordered the road on the side to which their faces were turned. "this char à banc," said rollo, "is an excellent carriage for seeing the prospect on _one_ side of the road." "yes," said mr. george; "but there might be the most astonishing spectacle in switzerland on the other side without our knowing any thing about it unless we turned round expressly to see." so saying, mr. george turned in his seat and looked at that side of the road which had been behind them. there was a field there, and a young girl about seventeen years old--with a very broad-brimmed straw hat upon her head, and wearing a very picturesque costume in other respects--was seen digging up the ground with a hoe. the blade of the hoe was long, and it seemed very heavy. the girl was digging up the ground by standing upon the part which she had already dug and striking the hoe down into the hard ground a few inches back from where she had struck before. "do the women work in the fields every where in switzerland, henry?" said mr. george. the guide's name was henry. he could not speak english, but he spoke french and german. mr. george addressed him in french. "yes, sir," said henry; "in every part of switzerland where i have been." "in america the women never work in the fields," said mr. george. "never?" asked henry, surprised. "no," said mr. george; "at least, i never saw any." "what do they do, then," asked henry, "to spend their time?" mr. george laughed. he told rollo, in english, that he did not think he had any satisfactory answer at hand in respect to the manner in which the american ladies spent their time. "i pity that poor girl," said rollo, "hoeing all day on such hard ground. i think the men ought to do such work as that." "the men have harder work to do," said mr. george; "climbing the mountains to hunt chamois, or driving the sheep and cows up to the upper pasturages in places where it would be very difficult for women to go." "we must turn round every now and then," said rollo, "and see what is behind us, or we may lose the sight of something very extraordinary." "yes," said mr. george; "i heard of a party of english ladies who once went out in a char à banc to see a lake. it happened that when they came to the lake the road led along the shore in such a manner that the party, as they sat in the carriage, had their backs to the water. so they rode along, looking at the scenery on the land side and wondering why they did not come to the lake. in this manner they continued until they had gone entirely around the lake; and then the coachman drove them home. when they arrived at the hotel they were astonished to find that they had got home again; and they called out to the coachman to ask where the lake was that they had driven out to see. he told them that he had driven them all round it!" rollo laughed heartily at this story, and henry would probably have laughed too if he had understood it; but, as mr. george related it in english, henry did not comprehend one word of the narration from beginning to end. in the mean time the horse trotted rapidly onward along the valley, which seemed to grow narrower and narrower as they proceeded; and the impending precipices which here and there overhung the road became more and more terrific. the lütschine, a rapid and turbid stream, swept swiftly along--sometimes in full view and sometimes concealed. now and then there was a bridge, or a mill, or some little hamlet of swiss cottages to diversify the scene. mr. george and rollo observed every thing with great attention and interest. they met frequent parties of travellers returning from grindelwald to lauterbrunnen--some on foot, some on horseback, and others in carriages which were more or less spacious and elegant, according to the rank or wealth of the travellers who were journeying in them. at length they arrived at the fork of the valley. here they gazed with astonishment and awe at the stupendous precipice which reared its colossal front before them and which seemed effectually to stop their way. on drawing near to it, however, it appeared that the valley divided into two branches at this point, as has already been explained. the road divided too. the branch which led to the right was the road to lauterbrunnen. the one to the left rollo supposed led to grindelwald. to make it sure, he pointed to the left-hand road and said to henry,-- "to grindelwald?" "yes, sir," said henry, "to grindelwald." the scenery now became more wild than ever. the valley was narrow, and on each side of it were to be seen lofty precipices and vast slopes of mountain land--some smooth and green, and covered, though very steep, with flocks and herds, and others feathered with dark evergreen forests, or covered with ragged rocks, or pierced with frightful chasms. here and there a zigzag path was seen leading from hamlet to hamlet or from peak to peak up the mountain, with peasants ascending or descending by them and bearing burdens of every form and variety on their backs. in one case rollo saw a woman bringing a load of hay on her back down the mountain side. the valley, bordered thus as it was with such wild and precipitous mountain sides, might have had a gloomy, or at least a very sombre, expression, had it not been cheered and animated by the waterfalls that came foaming down here and there from the precipices above, and which seemed so bright and sparkling that they greatly enlivened the scene. these waterfalls were of a great variety of forms. in some cases a thin thread of water, like the jet from a fire engine, came slowly over the brink of a precipice a thousand feet in the air, and, gliding smoothly down for a few hundred feet, was then lost entirely in vapor or spray. in other cases, in the depth of some deep ravine far up the mountain, might be seen a line of foam meandering for a short distance among the rocks and then disappearing. rollo pointed to one of these, and then said to mr. george,-- "uncle, look there! there is a short waterfall half way up the mountain; but i cannot see where the water comes from or where it goes to." "no," said mr. george. "it comes undoubtedly from over the precipice above, and it flows entirely down into the valley; but it only comes out to view for that short distance." "why can't we see it all the way?" asked rollo. "i suppose," said mr. george, "it may flow for the rest of the way in the bottom of some deep chasms, or it may possibly be that it comes suddenly out of the ground at the place where we see it." "yes," said rollo. "i found a great stream coming suddenly out of the ground at interlachen." "where," asked mr. george. "right across the river," said rollo. "i went over there this morning." "how did you get over?" said mr. george. "i went over on a bridge," said rollo. "i took a little walk up the road, and pretty soon i came to a bridge which led across the river. i went over, and then walked along the bank on the other side. there was only a narrow space between the river and the precipice. the ground sloped down from the foot of the precipice to the water. i found several very large springs breaking out in this ground. one of them was _very_ large. the water that ran from it made a great stream, large enough for a mill. it came up right out of the ground from a great hole all full of stones. the water came up from among the stones." "and where did it go to?" asked mr. george. "o, it ran directly down into the river. the place was rather steep where it ran down, so that it made a cascade all the way." "i should like to have seen it," said mr. george. "yes," said rollo; "it was very curious indeed to see a little river come up suddenly out of the ground from a great hole full of stones." talking in this manner about what they had seen, our travellers went on till they came to lauterbrunnen. they found a small village here, in the midst of which was a large and comfortable inn. there were a number of guides and several carriages in the yards of this inn, and many parties of travellers coming and going. the principal attraction of the valley, however, at this part of it, is an immense waterfall, called the fall of the staubach, which was to be seen a little beyond the village, up the valley. this is one of the most remarkable waterfalls in all switzerland. a large stream comes over the brink of a precipice nearly a thousand feet high, and descends in one smooth and continuous column for some hundreds of feet, when it gradually breaks, and finally comes down upon the rocks below a vast mass of foam and spray. rollo and mr. george could see this waterfall and a great many other smaller ones which came streaming down over the faces of the precipices, along the sides of the valley, as they came up in the char à banc, before they reached the inn. "i don't see how such a large river gets to the top of such a high hill," said rollo. that this question should have arisen in rollo's mind is not surprising; for the top of the precipice where the staubach came over seemed, in fact, the summit of a sharp ridge to any one looking up to it from the valley below; and rollo did not imagine that there was any land above. the apparent wonder was, however, afterwards explained, when our travellers began to ascend the mountain on the other side of the valley that afternoon to go up to the wengern alp. the guide drove the char à banc to the door of the inn, and mr. george and rollo got out. they went into the inn and ordered dinner. "we are going to see the staubach," said mr. george to the waiter, "and we will be back in half an hour." "very well," said the waiter; "your dinner shall be ready." so mr. george and rollo came out of the inn again in order to go and see the waterfall. they were beset at the door by a number of young men and boys, and also by several little girls, some of whom wanted to sell them minerals or flowers which they had gathered among the rocks around the waterfall; and others wished to guide them to the place. "to the staubach? to the staubach?" said they. "want a guide? want a guide?" they said this in the german language. mr. george understood enough of german to know what they meant; but he could not reply in that language. so he said, in french,-- "no; we do not wish any guide. we can find the way to the staubach ourselves. there it is, right before our eyes." mr. george, while he was saying this, was taking out some small change from his pockets to give to the children. he gave a small coin apiece to them all. seeing this, the boys who had wished to guide him to the staubach became more clamorous than ever. "to the staubach?" said they. "to the staubach? want a guide? want a guide?" mr. george paid no further attention to them; but, saying "come, rollo," walked on. the would-be guides followed him a short distance, still offering their services; but, finding soon that mr. george would not have any thing more to say to them, they gradually dropped off and went back to the inn to try their fortune with the next arrival. mr. george and rollo walked on along a narrow road, which was bordered by queer, picturesque-looking huts and cottages on either hand, with gardens by the sides of them, in which women and girls were hoeing or weeding. they met two or three parties of ladies and gentlemen returning from the staubach; and presently they came to a place where, close to the side of the road, was a small shop, before which a party of ladies and gentlemen had stopped, apparently to look at something curious. mr. george and rollo went to the place and found that it was a shop for the sale of carved toys and images such as are made in many parts of switzerland to be sold to travellers for souvenirs of their tour through the country. there were shelves put up on the outside of the shop, each side of the door, and these shelves were covered with all sorts of curious objects carved in white or yellow fir, or pine. there were images of swiss peasants with all sorts of burdens on their backs, and models of swiss cottages, and needle boxes, and pin cases, and match boxes, and nut crackers, and groups of hunters on the rocks, or of goats or chamois climbing, and rulers ornamented with cameo-like carvings of wreaths and flowers, and with the word "staubach" cut in ornamental letters. rollo was greatly interested in this store of curiosities, so much so, in fact, that for the moment all thoughts of the staubach were driven from his mind. "let us buy some of these things, uncle george," said he. "and carry them over the wengern alp?" said mr. george. "yes," said rollo. "they won't be very heavy. we can put them in the carpet bag." "well," said mr. george, "you may buy one or two specimens if you wish, but not many; for the guide has got the carpet bag to carry, and we must not make it very heavy." "or we can send them in the carriage round to grindelwald," said rollo, "and not have to carry them at all." "so we can," said mr. george. rollo accordingly bought two swiss cottages, very small ones, and a nut cracker. the nut cracker was shaped like a man's fist, with a hole in the middle of it to put the nut in. then there was a handle, the end of which, when the handle was turned, was forced into the hollow of the fist by means of a screw cut in the wood, and this would crack the nut. while rollo was paying for his toys he felt a small hand taking hold of his own, and heard a voice say, in english,-- "how do you do?" the english "how do you do?" is a strange sound to be heard in these remote swiss valleys. rollo turned round and saw a boy look up to him with a smile, saying again at the same time,-- "how do you do?" in a moment rollo recognized the boy whom he had seen at basle in the court yard of the diligence office while he had been waiting there for the horses to be harnessed. his sister lottie was standing near; and she, as well as her brother, appeared to be much pleased at seeing rollo again. rollo had a few minutes' conversation with his young friends, and then they separated, as rollo went on with his uncle to see the waterfall; while they, having already been with their father and mother to see it, went back to the inn. mr. george had recommended to rollo not to buy too many specimens of the carving, not only on account of the difficulty of transporting them, but also because he thought that they would probably find a great many other opportunities to purchase such things before they had finished their rambles in switzerland. he was quite right in this supposition. in fact, rollo passed three more stands for selling such things on the way to the staubach. mr. george and rollo continued their walk along the road, looking up constantly at the colossal column of water before them, which seemed to grow larger and higher the nearer they drew to it. at length they reached the part of the road which was directly opposite to it. here there was a path which turned off from the road and led up through the pasture towards the foot of the fall. the entrance to this path was beset by children who had little boxes full of crystals and other shining minerals which they wished to sell to visitors for souvenirs of the place. mr. george and rollo turned into this path and attempted to advance towards the foot of the fall; but they soon found themselves stopped by the spray. in fact, the whole region all around the foot of the fall, for a great distance, was so full of mist and driving spray that going into it was like going into a rain storm. mr. george and rollo soon found that they were getting thoroughly wet and that it would not do to go any farther. "and so," said rollo, in a disappointed tone, "though we have taken the pains to come all this way to see the waterfall, we can't get near enough to see it after all." mr. george laughed. "i wish we had brought an umbrella," said rollo. "an umbrella would not have done much good," replied mr. george. "the wind whirls about so much that it would drive the spray upon us whichever way we should turn the umbrella." "the path goes on a great deal nearer," said rollo. "somebody must go there, at any rate, without minding the spray." "perhaps," said mr. george, "when the wind is in some other quarter, it may blow the spray away, so that people can go nearer the foot of the fall without getting wet. at any rate, it is plain that we cannot go any nearer now." saying these words, mr. george led the way back towards the road, and rollo followed him. after retreating far enough to get again into a dry atmosphere, they stopped and looked upward at the fall. it seemed an immense cataract coming down out of the sky. after gazing at the stupendous spectacle till their wonder and admiration were in some measure satisfied, they returned to the inn, where they found an excellent dinner all ready for them. while they were thus employed in eating their dinner, henry was engaged in eating his, with at least as good an appetite, in company with the other guides, in the servants' hall. footnotes: [footnote : see the map at the commencement of the first chapter.] chapter ix. the wengern alp. it was about twelve o'clock when rollo and mr. george, having finished their dinner, came out into the yard of the inn for the purpose of setting out for the ascent of the mountain. "well, rollo," said mr. george, "now for a a scramble." thus far the road which the young gentlemen had travelled since leaving interlachen had been quite level and smooth, its course having been along the bottom of the valley, which was itself quite level, though shut in on both sides by precipitous mountains. now they were to leave the valley and ascend one of these mountain sides by means of certain zigzag paths which had been made with great labor upon them, to enable the peasants to ascend and descend in going to and from their hamlets and pasturages. the paths, though very steep and very torturous, are smooth enough for horses to go up, though the peasants themselves very seldom use horses. a horse would eat as much grass, perhaps, as two cows. they prefer, therefore, to have the cows, and do without the horse. and so every thing which they wish to transport up and down the mountain they carry on their backs. there were various other guides in the yard of the inn besides henry: some were preparing apparently for the ascent of the mountain with other parties; others were bringing up carriages for people who were going to return to interlachen. henry, when he saw mr. george and rollo coming out, asked them if they were ready. "yes," said mr. george. "bring the horse. you shall ride first, rollo." mr. george was to have but one horse for himself and rollo, and they were to ride it by turns. he thought that both he himself and rollo would be able to walk half way up the mountain, and, by having one horse between them, each could ride half the way. besides, it is less fatiguing, when you have a long and steep ascent to make, to walk some portion of the way rather than to be on horseback all the time. there was another consideration which influenced mr. george. every additional horse which should be required for the excursion would cost about two dollars a day, including the guide to take care of him; and, as mr. george expected to spend at least two days on the excursion, it would cost four dollars more to take two horses than to take only one. "and i think," said mr. george to rollo, after having made this calculation, "we had better save that money, and have it to buy beautiful colored engravings of swiss scenery with when we get to geneva." "i think so too," said rollo. so it was concluded to take but one horse with them, on the understanding that each of the travellers was to walk half the way. rollo accordingly, when the horse was brought to the door, climbed up upon his back with the guide's assistance, and, after adjusting his feet to the stirrup, prepared to set out on the ascent. his heart was bounding with excitement and delight. when all was ready the party moved on, rollo on the horse and mr. george and henry walking along by his side. they proceeded a short distance along the road, and then turned into a path which led towards the side of the valley opposite to the staubach. they soon reached the foot of the slope, and then they began to ascend. the path grew more and more steep as they proceeded, until at length it became very precipitous; and in some places the horse was obliged to scramble up, as it were, as if he were going up stairs. rollo clung to his seat manfully in all these places; and he would have been sometimes afraid were it not that, in every case where there could be even any apparent danger, henry would come to his side and keep by him, ready to render assistance at a moment's notice whenever any should be needed. in this way the party moved slowly on up the face of the mountain, making many short turns and windings among the rocks and going back and forth in zigzags on the green declivities. sometimes for a few minutes they would be lost in a grove of firs, or pines; then they would come out upon some rounded promontory of grass land or projecting peak of rocks; and a few minutes afterwards they would move along smoothly for a time upon a level, with a steep acclivity, rough with rocks and precipices on one side, and an abrupt descent on the other down which a stone would have rolled a thousand feet into the valley below. of course the view of the valley became more commanding and more striking the higher they ascended. rollo wished at every turn to stop and look at it. he did stop sometimes, the guide saying that it was necessary to do so in order to let the horse get his breath a little; for the toil for such an animal of getting up so steep an ascent was very severe. rollo would have stopped oftener; but he did not like to be left behind by his uncle george, who, being active and agile, mounted very rapidly. mr. george would often shorten his road very much by climbing directly up the rocks from one turn of the road to the other; while the horse, with rollo on his back, was compelled to go round by the zigzag. at last, after they had been ascending for about half an hour, mr. george stopped, at a place where there was a smooth stone for a seat by the side of the path, to wait for rollo to come up; and, when rollo came, mr. george took him off the horse to let him rest a little. the view of the valley from this point was very grand and imposing. rollo could look down into it as you could look into the bed of a brook in the country, standing upon the top of the bank on one side. the village, the inn, the little cottages along the roadside, the river, the bridges, and a thousand other objects, all of liliputian size, were to be seen below; while on the farther side the streaming staubach was in full view, pouring over the brink of the precipice and falling in a dense mass of spray on the rocks at the foot of them. rollo could understand now, too, where the fall of the staubach came from; for above the brink of the precipice, where the water came over, there was now to be seen a vast expanse of mountain country, rising steep, but not precipitously, far above the summit of the precipice, and of course receding as it ascended, so as not to be seen from the valley below. from the elevation, however, to which rollo had now attained, the whole of this vast region was in view. it was covered with forests, pasturages, chalets, and scattered hamlets; and in the valleys, long, silvery lines of water were to be seen glittering in the sun and twisting and twining down in foaming cascades to the brink of the precipice, where, plunging over, they formed the cataracts which had been seen in the valley below. the staubach was the largest of these falls; and the stream which produced it could now be traced for many miles as it came dancing along in its shining path down among the ravines of the mountains. "i see now what makes the fall of the staubach," said rollo. "yes," said mr. george. "i should like to be on the brink of the precipice where it falls over," said rollo, "and look down." "yes," said mr. george; "so should i. i don't think that we could get near enough actually to look down, but we could get near enough to see the water where it begins to take the plunge." after resting a suitable time at this place and greatly admiring and enjoying the view, our party set out again. rollo proposed that his uncle should ride now a little way and let him walk; but mr. george preferred that rollo should mount again. there was still nearly another hour's hard climbing to do and a long and pretty difficult walk of several miles beyond it, and mr. george was very desirous of saving rollo's strength. it might perhaps be supposed, from the blunt manner in which mr. george often threw the responsibility upon rollo when he was placed in difficult emergencies and left him to act for himself, that he did not think or care much for his nephew's comfort or happiness. but this was by no means the case. mr. george was very fond of rollo indeed. if he had not been fond of him he would not have wished to have him for his companion on his tour. he was very careful, too, never to expose rollo to any real hardship or suffering; and his apparently blunt manner, in throwing responsibilities upon the boy, only amused him by making it appear that his uncle george considered him almost a man. mr. george, knowing that the first part of the way from lauterbrunnen to the wengern alp was by far the most steep and difficult, had accordingly arranged it in his own mind that rollo should ride until this steep part had been surmounted. "you may mount again now, rollo," said he. "i will walk a little longer and take my turn in riding a little farther on." so rollo mounted; and there was now another hour of steep climbing. the zigzags were sometimes sharp and short and at others long and winding; but the way was always picturesque and the views became more and more grand and imposing the higher the party ascended. at one time, when rollo had stopped a moment to let his horse breathe, he saw at a turn of the path a few zigzags below him a little girl coming up, with a basket on her back. rollo pointed to her and asked the guide, in french, who that girl was. henry said he did not know. henry, foolishly enough, supposed that rollo meant to ask what the girl's name was; and so he said that he did not know. but this was not what rollo meant at all. he had no particular desire in asking the question to learn the child's name. what he wished to know was, what, according to the customs of the country, would be the probable province and function of such a sort of girl as that, coming alone up the mountain in that way with a burden on her back. henry, if he had understood the real intent and meaning of the question, could easily have answered it. the girl lived in a little hamlet of shepherds' huts farther up the mountain, and had been down into the village to buy something for her father and mother; and she was now coming home with her purchases in the basket on her back. all this henry knew very well; but, when rollo asked who the girl was, henry thought he meant to ask who she herself was individually; and so, as he did not know her personally, he could not tell. travellers often get disappointed in this way in asking questions of the natives of the country in which they are travelling. the people do not understand the nature and bearing of the question, and they themselves are not familiar enough with the language to explain what they do mean. the guide stood for a minute or two looking intently at the girl as she slowly ascended the path, especially when she passed the angles of the zigzag, for there she turned sometimes in such a manner as to show her face more plainly. "no," said he, at length; "i do not know her. i never saw her before. but i'll ask her who she is when she comes up." "uncle george!" said rollo, calling out very loudly to his uncle, who was at some distance above. "ay, ay," said mr. george, responding. rollo attempted to look up to see where his uncle was standing; but in doing this he had to throw his head back so far as to bring a fear suddenly over him of falling from his horse. so he desisted, and continued his conversation without attempting to look. "here is a girl coming up the mountain with a basket on her back. come down and see her." "come up here," said mr. george, "and we will wait till she comes." so rollo chirruped to his horse and started along again. in a few minutes he reached the place where his uncle george was standing, and there they all waited till the little girl came up. "good morning," said the girl, as soon as she came near enough to be heard. she spoke the words in the german language and with a very pleasant smile upon her face. the peasants in switzerland, when they meet strangers in ascending or descending the mountains, always accost them pleasantly and wish them good morning or good evening. in most other countries, strangers meeting each other on the road pass in silence. perhaps it is the loneliness and solitude of the country and the sense of danger and awe that the stupendous mountains inspire that incline people to be more pleased when they meet each other in switzerland, even if they are strangers, than in the more cheerful and smiling regions of france and england. the guide said something to the girl, but rollo could not understand what it was, for he spoke, and the answer was returned, in german. "she says her name is ninette," said henry. rollo's attention was immediately attracted to the form of the basket which ninette wore and to the manner in which it was fastened to her back. the basket was comparatively small at the bottom, being about as wide as the waist of the girl; but it grew larger towards the top, where it opened as wide as the girl's shoulders--being shaped in this respect in conformity with the shape of the back on which it was to be borne. [illustration: the mountain girl.] the side of the basket, too, which lay against the back was flat, so as to fit to it exactly. the outer side was rounded. it was open at the top. the basket was secured to its place upon the child's back and shoulders by means of two flat strips of wood, which were fastened at the upper ends of them to the back of the basket near the top, and which came round over the shoulders in front, and then, passing under the arms, were fastened at the lower ends to the basket near the bottom. the basket was thus supported in its place and carried by means of the pressure of these straps upon the shoulders. "uncle george," said rollo, "i should like to have such a basket as that and such a pair of straps to carry it by." "what would you do with it," asked mr. george, "if you had it?" "why, it would be very convenient," said rollo, "in america, when i went a-raspberrying. you see, if i had such a basket as that, i could bring my berries home on my back, and so have my hands free." "yes," said mr. george, "that would be convenient." "besides," said rollo, "it would be a curiosity." "that's true," replied mr. george; "but it would be very difficult to carry so bulky a thing home." after some further conversation it was concluded not to buy the basket, but to ask the girl if she would be willing to sell the straps, or bows, that it was fastened with. these straps were really quite curious. they were made of some very hard and smooth-grained wood, and were nicely carved and bent so as to fit to the girl's shoulders quite precisely. accordingly mr. george, speaking in french, requested henry to ask the girl whether she would be willing to sell the straps. henry immediately addressed the girl in the german language, and after talking with her a few minutes he turned again to mr. george and rollo and said that the girl would rather not sell them herself, as they belonged to her father, who lived about half a mile farther up the mountain. but she was sure her father would sell them if they would stop at his cottage as they went by. he would either sell them that pair, she said, or a new pair; for he made such things himself, and he had two or three new pairs in his cottage. "very well," said mr. george; "let us go on. "which would you rather have," said mr. george to rollo, as they resumed their march, "this pair, or some new ones?" "i would rather have this pair," said rollo. "they are somewhat soiled and worn," said mr. george. "yes," said rollo; "but they are good and strong; and as soon as i get home i shall rub them all off clean with sand paper and then have them varnished, so as to make them look very bright and nice; and then i shall keep them for a curiosity. i would rather have this pair, for then i can tell people that i bought them actually off the shoulders of a little girl who was carrying a burden with them up the alps." in due time the party reached the little hamlet where ninette lived. the hamlet consisted of a scattered group of cabins and cow houses on a shelving green more than a thousand feet above the valley. the girl led the party to the door of her father's hut; and there, through the medium of henry as interpreter, they purchased the two bows for a very small sum of money. they also bought a drink of excellent milk for the whole party of ninette's mother and then resumed their journey. as they went on they obtained from time to time very grand and extended views of the surrounding mountains. whether they turned their eyes above or below them, the prospect was equally wonderful. in the latter case they looked down on distant villages; some clinging to the hillsides, others nestling in the valleys, and others still perched, like the one where ninette lived, on shelving slopes of green pasture land, which terminated at a short distance from the dwellings on the brink of the most frightful precipices. above were towering forests and verdant slopes of land, dotted with chalets or broken here and there by the gray rocks which appeared among them. higher still were lofty crags, with little sunny nooks among them--the dizzy pasturages of the chamois; and above these immense fields of ice and snow, which pierced the sky with the glittering peaks and summits in which they terminated. mr. george and rollo paused frequently, as they continued their journey, to gaze around them upon these stupendous scenes. at length, when the steepest part of the ascent had been accomplished, mr. george said that he was tired of climbing, and proposed that rollo should dismount and take his turn in walking. "if you were a lady," said mr. george, "i would let you ride all the way. but you are strong and capable, and as well able to walk as i am--better, i suppose, in fact; so you may as well take your turn." "yes," said rollo; "i should like it. i am tired of riding. i would rather walk than not." so henry assisted rollo to dismount, and then adjusted the stirrups to mr. george's use, and mr. george mounted into the saddle. "how glad i am to come to the end of my walking," said mr. george, "and to get upon a horse!" "how glad i am to come to the end of my riding," said rollo, "and to get upon my feet!" thus both of the travellers seemed pleased with the change. the road now became far more easy to be travelled than before. the steepest part of the ascent had been surmounted, and for the remainder of the distance the path followed a meandering way over undulating land, which, though not steep, was continually ascending. here and there herds of cattle were seen grazing; and there were scattered huts, and sometimes little hamlets, where the peasants lived in the summer, to tend their cows and make butter and cheese from their milk. in the fall of the year they drive the cattle down again to the lower valleys; for these high pasturages, though green and sunny in the summer and affording an abundance of sweet and nutritious grass for the sheep and cows that feed upon them, are buried deep in snows, and are abandoned to the mercy of the most furious tempests and storms during all the winter portion of the year. our travellers passed many scattered forests, some of which were seen clinging to the mountain sides, at a vast elevation above them. in others men were at work felling trees or cutting up the wood. rollo stopped at one of these places and procured a small billet of the alpine wood, as large as he could conveniently carry in his pocket, intending to have something made from it when he should get home to america. the woodman, at henry's request, cut out this billet of wood for rollo, making it of the size which rollo indicated to him by a gesture with his finger. at one time the party met a company of peasant girls coming down from the mountain. they came into the path by which our travellers were ascending from a side path which seemed to lead up a secluded glen. these girls came dancing gayly along with bouquets of flowers in their hands and garlands in their hair. they looked bright and blooming, and seemed very contented and happy. they bowed very politely to mr. george and to rollo as they passed. "_guten abend_," said they. these are the german words for "good evening."[ ] "_guten abend_," said both mr. george and rollo in reply. the girls thus passed by and went on their way down the mountain. "where have they been?" asked mr. george. "they have been at work gathering up the small stones from the pasturages, i suppose," said henry. "companies of girls go out for that a great deal." after getting upon the horse, mr. george took care to keep _behind_ rollo and the guide. he knew very well that if he were to go on in advance rollo would exert himself more than he otherwise would do, under the influence of a sort of feeling that he ought to try to keep up. while rollo was on the horse himself, having the guide with him too, mr. george knew that there was no danger from this source, as any one who is on horseback or in a carriage never has the feeling of being left behind when a companion who is on foot by chance gets before him. consequently, while they were coming up the steep part of the mountain, mr. george went on as fast as he pleased, leaving rollo and henry to come on at their leisure. but now his kind consideration for rollo induced him to keep carefully behind. "now, rollo," said he, "you and henry may go on just as fast or just as slow as you please, without paying any regard to me. i shall follow along at my leisure." thus rollo, seeing that mr. george was behind, went on very leisurely, and enjoyed his walk and his talk with henry very much. "did you ever study english, henry?" said rollo. "no," said henry; "but i wish i could speak english, very much." "why?" asked rollo. "because there are so many english people coming here that i have to guide up the mountains." "well," said rollo, "you can begin now. i will teach you." so he began to teach the guide to say "how do you do?" in english. this conversation between rollo and henry was in french. rollo had studied french a great deal by the help of books when he was at home, and he had taken so much pains to improve by practice since he had been in france and switzerland that he could now get along in a short and simple conversation very well. while our party had been coming up the mountain, the weather, though perfectly clear and serene in the morning, had become somewhat overcast. misty clouds were to be seen here and there floating along the sides or resting on the summits of the mountains. at length, while rollo was in the midst of the english lesson which he was giving to the guide, his attention was arrested, just as they were emerging from the border of a little thicket of stunted evergreens, by what seemed to be a prolonged clap of thunder. it came apparently out of a mass of clouds and vapor which rollo saw moving majestically in the southern sky. "thunder!" exclaimed rollo, looking alarmed. "there's thunder!" "no," said henry; "an avalanche." the sound rolled and reverberated in the sky for a considerable time like a prolonged peal of thunder. rollo thought that henry must be mistaken in supposing it an avalanche. at this moment rollo, looking round, saw mr. george coming up, on his horse, at a turn of the path a little way behind them. "henry," said mr. george, "there is a thunder shower coming up; we must hasten on." "no," said henry; "that was an avalanche." "an avalanche?" exclaimed mr. george. "why, the sound came out of the middle of the sky." "it was an avalanche," said the guide, "from the jungfrau. see!" he added, pointing up into the sky. mr. george and rollo both looked in the direction where henry pointed, and there they saw a vast rocky precipice peering out through a break in the clouds high up in the sky. an immense snow bank was reposing upon its summit. the glittering whiteness of this snow contrasted strongly with the sombre gray of the clouds through which, as through an opening in a curtain, it was seen. presently another break in the clouds, and then another, occurred; at each of which towering rocks or great perpendicular walls of glittering ice and snow came into view. "the jungfrau," said the guide. mr. george and rollo gazed at this spectacle for some minutes in silence, when at length rollo said,-- "why, uncle george! the sky is all full of rocks and ice!" "it is indeed!" said mr. george. it was rather fortunate than otherwise that the landscape was obscured with clouds when mr. george and rollo first came into the vicinity of the jungfrau, as the astonishing spectacle of rocks and precipices and immense accumulations of snow and ice, breaking out as it were through the clouds all over the sky, was in some respects more impressive than the full and unobstructed view of the whole mountain would have been. "i wish the clouds would clear away," said rollo. "yes," said mr. george. "i should like to see the whole side of the mountain very much." here another long and heavy peal, like thunder, began to be heard. mr. george stopped his horse to listen. rollo and henry stopped too. the sound seemed to commence high up among the clouds. the echoes and reverberations were reflected from the rocks and precipices all around it; but the peal seemed slowly and gradually to descend towards the horizon; and finally, after the lapse of two or three minutes, it entirely ceased. the travellers paused a moment after the sound ceased and continued to listen. when they found that all was still they began to move on again. "i wish i could have seen that avalanche," said rollo. "yes," said mr. george. "i hope the clouds will clear away by the time we get to the inn." it was just about sunset when the party reached the inn. rollo was beginning to get a little tired, though the excitement of the excursion and the effect produced on his mind by the strange aspect of every thing around him inspired him with so much animation and strength that he held on in his walk very well indeed. it is true that a great portion of the mountain scenery around him was concealed from view by the clouds; but there was something in the appearance of the rocks, in the character of the vegetation, and especially in the aspect and expression of the patches of snow which were to be seen here and there in nooks and corners near the path,--the remains of the vast accumulations of the preceding winter which the sun had not yet dispelled,--that impressed rollo continually with a sentiment of wonder and awe, and led him to feel that he had attained to a vast elevation, and that he was walking, as he really was, among the clouds. the inn, when the party first came in sight of it, appeared more like a log cabin in america than like a well-known and much-frequented european hotel. it stood on a very small plot of ground, which formed a sort of projection on a steep mountain side, facing the jungfrau. in front of the hotel the land descended very rapidly for a considerable distance. the descent terminated at last on the brink of an enormous ravine which separated the base of the wengern alp from that of the jungfrau. behind the house the land rose in a broad, green slope, dotted with alpine flowers and terminating in a smooth, rounded summit far above. the house itself seemed small, and was rudely constructed. there was a sort of piazza in front of it, with a bench and a table before it. "that is where the people sit, i suppose," said mr. george, "in pleasant weather to see the jungfrau." "yes," said rollo. "for the jungfrau must be over there," said mr. george, pointing among the clouds in the southern sky. all doubt about the position of the mountain was removed at the instant that mr. george had spoken these words, by another avalanche, which just at that moment commenced its fall. they all stopped to listen. the sound was greatly prolonged, sometimes roaring continuously for a time, like a cataract, and then rumbling and crashing like a peal of thunder. "what a pity that the clouds are in the way," said rollo, "so that we can't see! do you think it will clear up before we go away?" "yes," said mr. george. "i am very sure it will; for i am determined not to go away till it does clear up." there were one or two buildings attached to the inn which served apparently as barns and sheds. the door of entrance was round in a corner formed by the connection of one of these buildings with the house. henry led the horse up to this door, and mr. george dismounted. the guide led the horse away, and rollo and mr. george went into the house. a young and very blooming swiss girl received them in the hall and opened a door for them which led to the public sitting room. the sitting room was a large apartment, which extended along the whole front of the house. the windows, of course, looked out towards the jungfrau. there was a long table in the middle of the room, and one or two smaller ones in the back corners. at these tables two or three parties were seated, eating their dinners. in one of the front corners was a fireplace, with a small fire, made of pine wood, burning on the hearth. a young lady was sitting near this fire, reading. another was at a small table near it, writing in her journal. around the walls of the room were a great many engravings and colored lithographs of swiss scenery; among them were several views of the jungfrau. on the whole, the room, though perfectly plain and even rude in all its furniture and appointments, had a very comfortable and attractive appearance. "what a snug and pleasant-looking place!" said rollo, whispering to mr. george as they went in. "yes," said mr. george. "it is just exactly such a place as i wished to find." mr. george and rollo were both of them tired and hungry. they first called for rooms. the maid took them up stairs and gave them two small rooms next each other. the rooms were, in fact, _very_ small. the furniture in them, too was of the plainest description; but every thing was neat and comfortable, and the aspect of the interior of them was, on the whole, quite attractive. in about fifteen minutes rollo knocked at mr. george's door and asked if he was ready to go down. "not quite," said mr. george; "but i wish that you would go down and order dinner." so rollo went down again into the public room and asked the maid if she could get them some dinner. "yes," said the maid. "what would you like to have?" rollo was considerate enough to know that there could be very little to eat in the house except what had been brought up in a very toilsome and difficult manner, from the valleys below, by the zigzag paths which he and his uncle had been climbing. so he said in reply,-- "whatever you please. it is not important to us." the maid then told him what they had in the house; and rollo, selecting from these things, ordered what he thought would make an excellent dinner. the dinner, in fact, when it came to the table, proved to be a very excellent one indeed. it consisted of broiled chicken, some most excellent fried potatoes, eggs, fresh and very nice bread, and some honey. for drink, they had at first water; and at the end of the meal some french coffee, which, being diluted with boiled milk that was very rich and sweet, was truly delicious. "i have not had so good a dinner," said mr. george, "since i have been in europe." "no," said rollo; "nor i." "it is owing in part, i suppose, to the appetite we have got in climbing up the mountain," said mr. george. just as the young gentlemen had finished their dinner and were about to rise from the table, their attention was attracted by an exclamation of delight which came from one of the young ladies who were sitting at the fireplace when mr. george and rollo came in. "o emma," said she, "come here!" mr. george and rollo looked up, and they saw that the young lady whose voice they had heard was standing at the window. emma rose from her seat and went to the window in answer to the call. mr. george and rollo looked out, too, at another window. they saw a spectacle which filled them with astonishment. "it is clearing away," said rollo. "let us go out in front of the house and look." "yes," said mr. george; "we will." so they both left their seats, and, putting on their caps, they went out. as soon as they reached the platform where the bench and the table were standing they gazed on the scene which was presented to their view with wonder and delight. it was, indeed, clearing away. the clouds were "lifting" from the mountains; and the sun, which had been for some hours obscured, was breaking forth in the west and illuminating the whole landscape with his setting beams. opposite to where mr. george and rollo stood, across the valley, they could see the whole mighty mass of the jungfrau coming into view beneath the edge of the cloudy curtain which was slowly rising. the lower portion of the mountain was an immense precipice, the foot of which was hidden from view in the great chasm, or ravine, which separated the jungfrau from the wengern alp. above this were rocks and great sloping fields of snow formed from avalanches which had fallen down from above. still higher, there were brought to view vast fields of ice and snow, with masses of rock breaking out here and there among them, some in the form of precipices and crags, and others shooting up in jagged pinnacles and peaks, rising to dizzy heights, to the summits of which nothing but the condor or the eagle could ever attain. still higher were precipices of blue and pellucid ice, and boundless fields of glittering snow, and immense drifts, piled one above the other in vast volumes, and overhanging the cliffs as if just ready to fall. in a short time the clouds rose so as to clear the summit of the mountain; and then the whole mighty mass was seen revealed fully to view, glittering in the sunbeams and filling half the sky. the other guests of the inn came out upon the platform while rollo and mr. george were there, having wrapped themselves previously in their coats and shawls, as the evening air was cool. some other parties of travellers came, too, winding their way slowly up the same pathway where mr. george and rollo had come. mr. george and rollo paid very little attention to these new comers, their minds being wholly occupied by the mountain. in a very short time after the face of the jungfrau came fully into view, the attention of all the company that were looking at the scene was arrested by the commencement of another peal of the same thundering sound that mr. george and rollo had heard with so much wonder in coming up the mountain. a great many exclamations immediately broke out from the party. "there! hark! look!" said they. "an avalanche! an avalanche!" the sound was loud and almost precisely like thunder. every one looked in the direction from which it proceeded. there they soon saw, half way up the mountain, a stream of snow, like a cataract, creeping slowly over the brink of a precipice, and falling in a continued torrent upon the rocks below. from this place they could see it slowly creeping down the long slope towards another precipice, and where, when it reached the brink, it fell over in another cataract, producing another long peal of thunder, which, being repeated by the echoes of the mountains and rocks around, filled the whole heavens with its rolling reverberations. in this manner the mass of ice and snow went down slope after slope and over precipice after precipice, till at length it made its final plunge into the great chasm at the foot of the mountain and disappeared from view. in the course of an hour several other avalanches were heard and seen; and when at length it grew too dark to see them any longer, the thundering roar of them was heard from time to time all the night long. rollo, however, was so tired that, though he went to bed quite early, he did not hear the avalanches or any thing else until mr. george called him the next morning. footnotes: [footnote : they are pronounced as if spelled gooten arbend.] chapter x. going down the mountain. mr. george and rollo met with various adventures and incidents in going down the next day to grindelwald which are quite characteristic of mountain travelling in switzerland. they did not set out very early in the morning, as mr. george wished to stay as long as possible to gaze on the face of the jungfrau and watch the avalanches. "rollo," said he, as they were standing together in front of the hotel after breakfast, "how would you like to go up with me to the top of that hill?" so saying, mr. george pointed to the great rounded summit which was seen rising behind the hotel. "yes," said rollo; "i should like to go very much indeed." "very well," said mr. george; "we will go. but first let me get my pressing book to put some flowers in, in case we find any." mr. george's pressing book was a contrivance which he had invented for the more convenient desiccation of such flowers as he might gather in his travels and wish to carry home with him and preserve, either for botanical specimens or as souvenirs for his friends. it was made by taking out all the leaves of a small book and replacing them with an equal number of loose leaves, made for the purpose, of blotting paper, and trimmed to the right size. such small flowers as he might gather in the various places that he visited could be much more conveniently pressed and preserved between these loose leaves of blotting paper than between the leaves of an ordinary book.[ ] so mr. george, taking his pressing book in his hand, led the way; and rollo following him, they attempted to ascend the hill behind the inn. they found the ascent, however, extremely steep and difficult. there were no rocks and no roughnesses of any kind in the way. it was merely a grassy slope like the steep face of a terrace; but it was so steep that, after mr. george and rollo had scrambled up two or three hundred feet, it made rollo almost dizzy to look down; and he began to cling to the grass and to feel afraid. "rollo," said mr. george, "i am almost afraid to climb up here any higher. do you feel afraid?" "no, sir," said rollo, endeavoring at the same time to reassure himself. "no, sir; i am not much afraid." "let us stop a few minutes to rest and look at the mountain," said mr. george. mr. george knew very well that there was no real danger; for the slope, though very steep, was very grassy from the top to the bottom; and even if rollo had fallen and rolled down it could not have done him much harm. after a short pause, to allow rollo to get a little familiar with the scene, mr. george began to move on. rollo followed. both rollo and mr. george would occasionally look up to see how far they were from the top. it was very difficult, however, to look up, as in doing so it was necessary to lean the head so far back that they came very near losing their balance. after going on for about half an hour, mr. george said that he did not see that they were any nearer the top of the hill than they were at the beginning. "nor i either," said rollo; "and i think we had better go back again." "well," said mr. george, "we will; but let us first stop here a few minutes to look at the jungfrau." the view of the jungfrau was of course more commanding here than it was down at the inn. so mr. george and rollo remained some time at their resting-place gazing at the mountain and watching for avalanches. at length they returned to the inn; and an hour or two afterwards they set out on their journey to grindelwald. the reader will recollect that grindelwald was the valley on the other side of the wengern alp from lauterbrunnen, and that our travellers, having come up one way, were going down the other.[ ] the distance from the inn at the wengern alp to grindelwald is seven or eight miles. for a time the path ascends, for the inn is not at the summit of the pass. until it attains the summit it leads through a region of hills and ravines, with swamps, morasses, precipices of rocks, and great patches of snow scattered here and there along the way. at one place rollo met with an adventure which for a moment put him in considerable danger. it was at a place where the path led along on the side of the mountain, with a smooth grassy slope above and a steep descent ending in another smooth grassy slope below. at a little distance forward there was a great patch of snow, the edge of which came over the path and covered it. a heavy mist had come up just before rollo reached this place, and he had accordingly spread his umbrella over his head. he was riding along, holding the bridle in one hand and his umbrella in the other, so that both his hands were confined. mr. george was walking at some distance before. the guide, too, was a little in advance, for the path was too narrow for him to walk by the side of the horse; and, as the way here was smooth and pretty level, he did not consider it necessary that he should be in very close attendance on rollo. things being in this condition, the horse--when he came in sight of the snow, which lay covering the path at a little distance before him--concluded that it would be safer both for him and for his rider that he should not attempt to go through it, having learned by experience that his feet would sink sometimes to great depths in such cases. so he determined to turn round and go back. he accordingly stopped; and turning his head towards the grassy bank above the path and his heels towards the brink on the other side, as horses always do when they undertake such a manoeuvre in a narrow path, he attempted to "go about." rollo was of course utterly unable to do any thing to control him except to pull one of the reins to bring him back into the path, and strike his heels into the horse's side as if he were spurring him. this, however, only made the matter worse. the horse backed off the brink; and both he and rollo, falling head over heels, rolled down the steep slope together. [illustration: the fall.] and not together exactly, either; for rollo who was usually pretty alert and ready in emergencies of difficulty or danger, when he found himself rolling down the slope, though he could not stop, still contrived to wriggle and twist himself off to one side, so as to get clear of the horse and roll off himself in a different direction. they both, however, the animal and the boy, soon came to a stop. rollo was up in an instant. the horse, too, contrived, after some scrambling, to gain his feet. all this time the guide remained in the path on the brink of the descent transfixed with astonishment and consternation. "henry," said rollo, looking up to the guide, "what is the french for _head over heels_?" a very decided but somewhat equivocal smile spread itself over henry's features on hearing this question, which, however, he did not understand; and he immediately began to run down the bank to get the horse. "because," said rollo, still speaking in french, "that is what in english we call going _head over heels_." henry led the horse round by a circuitous way back to the path. rollo followed; and as soon as they reached it rollo mounted again. henry then took hold of the bridle of the horse and led him along till they got through the snow; after which they went on without any further difficulty. the path led for a time along a very wild and desolate region, which seemed to be bordered on the right, at a distance of two or three miles, by a range of stupendous precipices, surmounted by peaks covered with ice and snow, which presented to the view a spectacle of the most astonishing grandeur. at one point in the path rollo saw at a distance before him a number of buildings scattered over a green slope of land. "ah," said he to the guide, "we are coming to a village." "no," said the guide. "it is a pasturage. we are too high yet for a village." on asking for a further explanation, rollo learned that the mountaineers were accustomed to drive their herds up the mountains in the summer to places too cold to be inhabited all the year round, and to live there with them in these little huts during the two or three months while the grass was green. the men would bring up their milking pails, their pans, their churns, their cheese presses, and their kettles for cooking, and thus live in a sort of encampment while the grass lasted, and make butter and cheese to carry down the mountain with them when they returned. at one time rollo saw at the door of one of the huts a man with what seemed to be a long pole in his hand. it was bent at the lower end. the man came out of a hut, and, putting the bent end of the pole to the ground, he brought the other up near to his mouth, and seemed to be waiting for the travellers to come down to him. "what is he going to do?" asked rollo. "he has got what we call an alpine horn," said the guide; "and he is going to blow it for you, to let you hear the echoes." so, when mr. george and rollo reached the place, the man blew into the end of his pole, which proved to be hollow, and it produced a very loud sound, like that of a trumpet. the sounds were echoed against the face of a mountain which was opposite to the place in a very remarkable manner. mr. george paid the man a small sum of money, and then they went on. not long afterwards they came to another hut, which was situated opposite to a part of the mountain range where there was a great accumulation of ice and snow, that seemed to hang suspended, as it were, as if just ready to fall. a man stood at the door of this hut with a small iron cannon, which was mounted somewhat rudely on a block of wood, in his hand. "what is he going to do with that cannon?" asked rollo. "he is going to fire it," said henry, "to start down the avalanches from the mountain." henry here pointed to the face of the mountain opposite to where they were standing, and showed rollo the immense masses of ice and snow that seemed to hang suspended there, ready to fall. it is customary to amuse travellers in switzerland with the story that the concussion produced by the discharge of a gun or a cannon will sometimes detach these masses, and thus hasten the fall of an avalanche; and though the experiment is always tried when travellers pass these places, i never yet heard of a case in which the effect was really produced. at any rate, in this instance,--though the man loaded his cannon heavily, and rammed the charge down well, and though the report was very loud and the echoes were extremely sharp and much prolonged,--there were no avalanches started by the concussion. rollo and mr. george watched the vast snow banks that overhung the cliffs with great interest for several minutes; but they all remained immovable. so mr. george paid the man a small sum of money, and then they went on. after going on for an hour or two longer on this vast elevation, the path began gradually to descend into the valley of grindelwald. the village of grindelwald at length came into view, with the hundreds of cottages and hamlets that were scattered over the more fertile and cultivated region that surrounded it. the travellers could look down, also, upon the great glaciers of grindelwald--two mighty streams of ice, half a mile wide and hundreds of feet deep, which come flowing very slowly down from the higher mountains, and terminate in icy precipices among the fields and orchards of the valley.[ ] they determined to go and explore one of these glaciers the next day. as they drew near to the village, the people of the scattered cottages came out continually, as they saw them coming, with various plans to get money from them. at one place two pretty little peasant girls, in the grindelwald costume, came out with milk for them. one of the girls held the pitcher and the other a mug; and they gave mr. george and rollo good drinks.[ ] at another house a boy came out with filberts to sell; and at another the merchandise consisted of crystals and other shining minerals which had been collected in the mountains near. at one time rollo saw before him three children standing in a row by the side of the road. they seemed to have something in their hands. when he reached the place, he found that they had for sale some very cunning little swiss cottages carved in wood. these carvings were extremely small and very pretty. each one was put in a small box for safe transportation. in some cases the children had nothing to sell, and they simply held out their hands to beg as the travellers went by; and there were several lame persons, and idiots, and blind persons, and other objects of misery that occasionally appeared imploring charity. as, however, these unfortunates were generally satisfied with an exceedingly small donation, it did not cost much to make them all look very happy. there is a swiss coin, of the value of a fifth part of a cent, which was generally enough to give; so that, for a new york shilling, rollo found he could make more than sixty donations--which was certainly very cheap charity. "in fact," said rollo, "it is so cheap that i would rather give them the money than not." at length the party arrived safely at grindelwald and put up at an excellent inn, with windows looking out upon the glaciers. the next day they went to see the glaciers; and on the day following they returned to interlachen. footnotes: [footnote : flowers dry faster and better between sheets of blotting paper than between those of common printing paper, such as is used for books; for the surface of this latter is covered with a sort of sizing used in the manufacture of it, and which prevents the moisture of the plant from entering into the paper.] [footnote : see map.] [footnote : it may seem strange that streams of ice, hundreds of feet thick and solid to the bottom, can _flow_; but such is the fact, as will appear more fully in the next chapter.] [footnote : see frontispiece.] chapter xi. glaciers. a glacier, when really understood, is one of the most astonishing and impressive spectacles which the whole face of nature exhibits. mr. george and rollo explored quite a number of them in the course of their travels in switzerland; and rollo would have liked to have explored a great many more. [illustration: the crevasse.] a glacier is a river of ice,--really and truly a river of ice,--sometimes two or three miles wide, and fifteen or twenty miles long, with many branches coming into it. its bed is a steep valley, commencing far up among the mountains in a region of everlasting ice and snow, and ending in some warm and pleasant valley far below, where the warm sun beats upon the terminus of it and melts the ice away as fast as it comes down. it flows very slowly, not usually more than an inch in an hour. the warm summer sun beams upon the upper surface of it, melting it slowly away, and forming vast fissures and clefts in it, down which you can look to the bottom, if you only have courage to go near enough to the slippery edge. if you do not dare to do this, you can get a large stone and throw it in; and then, if you stand still and listen, you hear it thumping and thundering against the sides of the crevasse until it gets too deep to be any longer heard. you cannot hear it strike the bottom; for it is sometimes seven or eight hundred feet through the thickness of the glacier to the ground below. the surface of the glacier above is not smooth and glassy like the ice of a freshly-frozen river or pond; but is white, like a field of snow. this appearance is produced in part by the snow which falls upon the glacier, and in part by the melting of the surface of the ice by the sun. from this latter cause, too, the surface of the glacier is covered, in a summer's day, with streams of water, which flow, like little brooks, in long and winding channels which they themselves have worn, until at length they reach some fissure, or crevasse, into which they fall and disappear. the waters of these brooks--many thousands in all--form a large stream, which flows along on the surface of the ground under the glacier, and comes out at last, in a wild, and roaring, and turbid torrent, from an immense archway in the ice at the lower end, where the glacier terminates among the green fields and blooming flowers of the lower valley. the glaciers are formed from the avalanches which fall into the upper valleys in cases where the valleys are so deep and narrow and so secluded from the sun that the snows which slide into them cannot melt. in such case, the immense accumulations which gather there harden and solidify, and become ice; and, what is very astonishing, the whole mass, solid as it is, moves slowly onward down the valley, following all the turns and indentations of its bed, until finally it comes down into the warm regions of the lower valleys, where the end of it is melted away by the sun as fast as the mass behind crowds it forward. it is certainly very astonishing that a substance so solid as ice can flow in this way, along a rocky and tortuous bed, as if it were semi-fluid; and it was a long time before men would believe that such a thing could be possible. it was, however, at length proved beyond all question that this motion exists; and the rate of it in different glaciers at different periods of the day or of the year has been accurately measured. if you go to the end of the glacier, where it comes out into the lower valley, and look up to the icy cliffs which form the termination of it, and watch there for a few minutes, you soon see masses of ice breaking off from the brink and falling down with a thundering sound to the rocks below. this is because the ice at the extremity is all the time pressed forward by the mass behind it; and, as it comes to the brink, it breaks over and falls down. this is one evidence that the glaciers move. but there is another proof that the ice of the glaciers is continually moving onward which is still more direct and decisive. certain philosophers, who wished to ascertain positively what the truth was, went to a glacier, and, selecting a large rock which lay upon the surface of it near the middle of the ice, they made a red mark with paint upon the rock, and two other marks on the rocks which formed the shore of the glacier. they made these three marks exactly in a line with each other, expecting that, if the glacier moved, the rock in the centre of it would be carried forward, and the three marks would be no longer in a line. this proved to be the case. in a very short time the central rock was found to have moved forward very perceptibly. this was several years ago. this rock is still on the glacier; and the red mark on it, as well as those on the shores, still remains. all the travellers who visit the glacier look at these marks and observe how the great rock on the ice moves forward. it is now at a long distance below the place where it was when its position was first recorded. then, besides, you can actually hear the glaciers moving when you stand upon them. it is sometimes very difficult to get upon them; for at the sides where the ice rubs against the rocks, immense chasms and fissures are formed, and vast blocks both of rock and ice are tumbled confusedly together in such a manner as to make the way almost impracticable. when, however, you fairly get upon the ice, if you stand still a moment and listen, you hear a peculiar groaning sound in the _moraines_. to understand this, however, i must first explain what a moraine is. on each side of the glacier, quite near the shore, there is usually found a ridge of rocks and stones extending up and down the glacier for the whole length of it, as if an immense wall formed of blocks of granite of prodigious magnitude had been built by giants to fence the glacier in, and had afterwards been shaken down by an earthquake, so as to leave only a confused and shapeless ridge of rocks and stones. these long lines of wall-like ruins may be traced along the borders of the glacier as far as the eye can reach. they lie just on the edge of the ice, and follow all the bends and sinuosities of the shore. it is a mystery how they are formed. all that is known, or rather all that can be here explained, is, that they are composed of the rocks which cleave off from the sides of the precipices and mountains that border the glacier, and that, when they have fallen down, the gradual movement of the ice draws them out into the long, ridge-like lines in which they now appear. some of these moraines are of colossal magnitude, being in several places a hundred feet broad and fifty or sixty feet high; and, as you cannot get upon the glacier without crossing them, they are often greatly in the traveller's way. in fact, they sometimes form a barrier which is all but impassable. the glacier which most impressed mr. george and rollo with its magnitude and grandeur was one that is called the sea of ice. it is called by this name on account of its extent. its lower extremity comes out into the valley of chamouni, the beautiful and world-renowned valley, which lies near the foot of mont blanc. in order to reach this glacier, the young gentlemen took horses and guides at the inn at chamouni, and ascended for about two hours by a steep, zigzag path, which led from the valley up the sides of the mountain at the place which formed the angle between the great valley of chamouni and the side valley through which the great glacier came down. after ascending thus for six or eight miles, they came out upon a lofty promontory, from which, on one side, they could look down upon the wild and desolate bed of the glacier, and, upon the other, upon the green, and fertile, and inexpressibly beautiful vale of chamouni, with the pretty little village in the centre of it. this place is called montauvert. there is a small inn here, built expressly to accommodate travellers who wish to come up and go out upon the glacier. although the traveller, when he reaches montauvert, can look directly down upon the glacier, he cannot descend to it there; for, opposite to the inn, the valley of ice is bordered by cliffs and precipices a thousand feet high. it is necessary to follow along the bank two or three miles among stupendous rocks and under towering precipices, until at length a place is reached where, by dint of much scrambling and a great deal of help from the guide, it is possible to descend. [illustration: the narrow path.] rollo was several times quite afraid in making this perilous excursion. in some places there seemed to be no path at all; and it was necessary for him to make his way by clinging to the roughnesses of the rocks on the steep, sloping side of the mountain, with an immense abyss yawning below. there was one such place where it would have been impossible for any one not accustomed to mountain climbing to have got along without the assistance of guides. when they reached this place, one guide went over first, and then reached out his hand to assist rollo. the other scrambled down upon the rocks below, and planted his pike staff in a crevice of the rock in order to make a support for a foot. by this means, first mr. george, and then rollo, succeeded in getting safely over. both the travellers felt greatly relieved when they found themselves on the other side of this dangerous pass. in coming back, however, rollo had the misfortune to lose his pike staff here. the staff slipped out of his hand as he was clinging to the rocks; and, after sliding down five or six hundred feet to the brink of the precipice, it shot over and fell a thousand feet to the glacier below, where it entered some awful chasm, or abyss, and disappeared forever. mr. george and rollo had a pretty hard time in scrambling over the moraine when they came to the place where they were to get upon the glacier. when they were fairly upon the glacier, however, they could walk along without any difficulty. it was like walking on wet snow in a warm day in spring. little brooks were running in every direction, the bright waters sparkling in the sun. the crevasses attracted the attention of the travellers very strongly. they were immense fissures four or five feet wide, and extending downward perpendicularly to an unfathomable depth. rollo and mr. george amused themselves with throwing stones down. there were plenty of stones to be found on the glacier. in fact, rocks and stones of all sizes were scattered about very profusely, so much so as quite to excite mr. george's astonishment. "i supposed," said he, "that the top of the glacier would be smooth and beautiful ice." "i did not think any thing about it," said rollo. "i imagined it to be smooth, and glassy, and pure," said mr. george; "and, instead of that, it looks like a field of old snow covered with scattered rocks and stones." some of the rocks which lay upon the glacier were very large, several of them being as big as houses. it was remarkable, too, that the largest of them, instead of having settled down in some degree into the ice and snow, as it might have been expected from their great weight they would have done, were raised sometimes many feet above the general level of the glacier, being mounted on a sort of pedestal of ice. the reason of this was, that when the block was very large, so large that the beams of the sun shining upon it all day would not warm it through, then the ice beneath it would be protected by its coolness, while the surface of the glacier around would be gradually melted and wasted away by the beams of the sun or by the warm rains which might occasionally fall upon it. thus, in process of time, the great bowlder block rises, as it were, many feet into the air, and remains there perched on the top of a little hillock of ice, like a mass of monumental marble on a pedestal.[ ] in excursions on the glaciers the guides take a rope with them, and sometimes a light ladder. the rope is for various purposes. if a traveller were to fall into any deep pit, or crevasse, or to slip down some steep slope or precipice, so that he could not get up again, the guides might let the rope down to him, and then when he had fastened it around his waist they could draw him up, when, without some such means of rescuing him, he would be wholly lost. in the same manner, when a party are walking along any very steep and slippery place, where if any one were to fall he would slide down into some dreadful abyss, it is customary for them to walk in a line with the rope in their hands, each one taking hold of it. thus, if any one should slip a little, he could recover himself by means of the rope, when, without such a support, he would perhaps have fallen and been dashed to pieces. sometimes, when the place is very dangerous indeed, so that several guides are required to each traveller, they tie the rope round the traveller's waist, so that he can have his hands free and yet avail himself of the support of the rope in passing along. the ladder is used for scaling low precipices, either of rock or ice, which sometimes come in the way, and which could not be surmounted without such aid. in long and dangerous excursions, especially among the higher alps, one of the guides always carries a ladder; and there are frequent occasions where it would not be possible to go on without using it. [illustration: ascent of mont blanc.] a hatchet, too, is of great advantage in climbing among the immense masses of ice which are found at great elevations, since, by means of such an implement, steps may be cut in the ice which will enable the explorer to climb up an ascent too long to be reached by the ladder and too steep to be ascended without artificial footholds. in ascending mont blanc the traveller sometimes comes to a precipice of ice, with a chasm of immense depth, and four or five feet wide, at the bottom of it. in such a case the foot of the ladder is planted on the outside of the chasm, and the top of it is made to rest against the face of the precipice, ten or fifteen feet perhaps from the brink. one of the boldest and most skilful of the guides then ascends the ladder, hatchet in hand, and there, suspended as he is over the yawning gulf below, he begins to cut steps in the face of the precipice, shaping the gaps which he makes in such a manner that he can cling to them with his hands as well as rest upon them with his feet. he thus slowly ascends the barrier, cutting his way as he advances. he carries the end of the rope up with him, tied around his waist; and then by means of it, when he has reached the summit, he aids the rest of the party in coming up to him. mr. george and rollo, however, did not venture into any such dangers as these. they could see all that they desired of the stupendous magnificence and awful desolation of these scenes without it. they spent the whole of the middle of the day on the glacier or on the slopes of the mountains around it; and then in the afternoon they came down the zigzag path again to chamouni, very tired and very hungry. to be tired and hungry, however, when you come home at night to a swiss inn, is a great source of enjoyment--on account of the admirable arrangements for rest and refreshment which you are sure to find there. footnotes: [footnote : any loose rock of large size detached from its native ledge or mountain is called a _bowlder_.] chapter xii. rollo a courier. rollo came in one morning to the hotel at meyringen, after having been taking a walk on the banks of a mighty torrent that flows through the valley, and found his uncle george studying the guide book and map, with an appearance of perplexity. mr. george was seated at a table on a balcony, which opened from the dining room of the inn. this balcony was very large, and rooms opened from it in various directions. there were several tables here, with seats around them, where those who chose to do so could take their breakfast or their dinner in the open air, and enjoy the views of the surrounding mountains and waterfalls at the same time. mr. george was seated at one of these tables, with his map and his guide book before him. "well, uncle george," said rollo, "are you planning our journey?" "yes," said mr. george; "and i am very much perplexed." "why, what is the difficulty?" asked rollo. "there is no possibility of getting out of this valley," said mr. george, "except by going all the way back to thun,--and that i am not willing to do." "is there no _possible_ way?" asked rollo. "no," said mr. george, "unless we go over the brunig pass on foot." "well," said rollo, "let us do that." "we might possibly do that," continued mr. george, still looking intently at his map. "we should have to go over the brunig to lungern on foot, with a horse for our baggage. then we should have to take a car from lungern down the valleys to the shore of lake lucerne, and there get a boat, for six or eight miles, on the lake to the town." "well," said rollo, joyfully, "i should like that." rollo liked the idea of making the journey in the way that his uncle george had described, on account of the numerous changes which would be necessary in it, in respect to the modes of conveyance. it was for this very reason that his uncle did _not_ like it. "yes, uncle george," said rollo, again. "that will be an excellent way to go to lucerne. don't you think it will?" "no," said mr. george. "it will be so much trouble. we shall have three different arrangements to make for conveyance, in one day." "no matter for that, uncle george," said rollo. "i will do all that. let me be the courier, uncle george, and i'll take you from here to lucerne without your having the least trouble. i will make all the arrangements, so that you shall have nothing to do. you may read, if you choose, the whole of the way." "how will you find out what to do?" asked mr. george. "o, i'll study the guide book carefully," replied rollo; "and, besides, i'll inquire of the landlord here." "well," said mr. george, hesitatingly, "i have a great mind to try it." "only you must pay me," said rollo. "i can't be courier without being paid." "how much must i pay?" asked mr. george. "why, about a quarter of a dollar," replied rollo. "it is worth more than that," said mr. george. "i will give you half a dollar if you make all the arrangements and get me safe to lucerne without my having any care or trouble. but then if you get into difficulty in any case, and have to appeal to me, you lose your whole pay. if you carry me through, i give you half a dollar. if you don't really carry me through, you have nothing." rollo agreed to these conditions, and mr. george proceeded to shut up the map and the guide book, and to put them in his hands. "i will sit down here now," said rollo, "and study the map and the guide book until i have learned all i can from them, and then i will go and talk with the landlord." mr. george did not make any reply to this remark, but taking out a small portfolio, containing writing materials, from his pocket, he set himself at work writing some letters; having, apparently, dismissed the whole subject of the mode of crossing the brunig entirely from his mind. rollo took his seat at a table on the balcony in a corner opposite to the place where his uncle was writing, and spread out the map before him. his seat commanded a very extended and magnificent view. in the foreground were the green fields, the gardens, and the orchards of the lower valley. beyond, green pasturages were seen extending over the lower declivities of the mountains, with hamlets perched here and there upon the shelving rocks, and winding and zigzag roads ascending from one elevation to another, while here and there prodigious cataracts and cascades were to be seen, falling down hundreds of feet, over perpendicular precipices, or issuing from frightful chasms. rollo stopped occasionally to gaze upon these scenes; and sometimes he would pause to put a spy glass to his eye, in order to watch the progress of the parties of travellers that were to be seen, from time to time, coming down along a winding path which descended the face of the mountain about two or three miles distant, across the valley. with the exception of these brief interruptions, rollo continued very steadily at his work; and in about half an hour he shut up the map, and put it in its case, saying, in a tone of great apparent satisfaction,-- "there! i understand it now perfectly." he was in hopes that his uncle would have asked him some questions about the route, in order that he might show how fully he had made himself acquainted with it; but mr. george said nothing, and so rollo went away to find the landlord. * * * * * that night, just before bed time, mr. george asked rollo what time he was going to set out the next morning. "immediately after breakfast," said rollo. "are we going to ride or walk?" asked mr. george. "we are going to walk over the pass," said rollo. "the road is too steep and rocky for horses. but then we are going to have a horse to carry the trunk." "can you put our trunk on a horse?" asked mr. george. "yes," replied rollo, "the guide says he can." "very well," said mr. george, "and just as soon as we get through breakfast i am going to walk on, and leave you to pack the trunk on the horse, and come along when you are ready." "well," said rollo, "you can do that." "because, you see," continued mr. george, "you will probably have various difficulties and delays in getting packed and ready, and i don't want to have any thing to do with it. i wish to have my mind entirely free, so as to enjoy the walk and the scenery without any care or responsibility whatever." sometimes, when fathers or uncles employ boys to do any work, or to assume any charge, they stand by and help them all the time, so that the real labor and responsibility do not come on the boy after all. he gets paid for the work, and he _imagines_ that he does it--his father or his uncle allowing him to imagine so, for the sake of pleasing him. but there was no such child's play as this between mr. george and rollo. when rollo proposed to undertake any duty, mr. george always considered well, in the first instance, whether it was a duty that he was really competent to perform. if it was not, he would not allow him to undertake it. if it was, he left him to bear the whole burden and responsibility of it, entirely alone. rollo understood this perfectly well, and he liked such a mode of management. he was, accordingly, not at all surprised to hear his uncle george propose to leave him to make all the arrangements of the journey alone. "you see," said mr. george, "when i hire a courier i expect him to take all the care of the journey entirely off my mind, and leave me to myself, so that i can have a real good time." "yes," said rollo, "that is right." and here, perhaps, i ought to explain that what is called a courier, in the vocabulary of tourists in europe, is a _travelling servant_, who, when he is employed by any party, takes the whole charge of their affairs, and makes all necessary arrangements, so that they can travel without any care or concern. he engages the conveyances and guides, selects the inns, pays the bills, takes charge of the baggage, and does every thing, in short, that is necessary to secure the comfort and safety of the party on their journey, and to protect them from every species of trouble and annoyance. he has himself often before travelled over the countries through which he is to conduct his party, so that he is perfectly familiar with them in every part, and he knows all the languages that it is necessary to speak in them. thus when once under the charge of such a guide, a gentleman journeying in europe, even if he has his whole family with him, need have no care or concern, but may be as quiet and as much at his ease, all the time, as if he were riding about his own native town in his private carriage. the next morning, after breakfast, mr. george rose from the table, and prepared to set out on his journey. he put the belt of his knapsack over his shoulder, and took his alpenstock in his hand. "good by, rollo," said he. "i will walk on, taking the road to the brunig, and you can come when you get ready. you will overtake me in the course of half an hour, or an hour." rollo accompanied mr. george to the door, and then wishing him a pleasant walk, bade him good by. in a few minutes the guide came around the corner of the house, from the inn yard, leading the horse. he stopped to water the horse at a fountain in the street, and then led him to the door. in the mean time the porter of the inn had brought down the trunk, and then the guide proceeded to fasten it upon the saddle of the horse, by means of two strong straps. the saddle was what is called a pack saddle, and was made expressly to receive such burdens. after having placed the trunk and secured it firmly, the guide put on the umbrella, and mr. george's and rollo's greatcoats, and also rollo's knapsack. these things made quite a pile on the horse's back. the burden was increased, too, by several things belonging to the guide himself, which he put on over all the rest, such as a great-coat and a little bag of provisions. at length, when all was ready, rollo bade the innkeeper good by, and set out on his journey. the guide went first, driving the horse before him, and rollo followed, with his alpenstock in his hand. they soon passed out of the village, and then travelled along a very pleasant road, which skirted the foot of the mountain range,--all the time gradually ascending. rollo looked out well before him, whenever he came to a straight part of the road, in hopes of seeing his uncle; but mr. george was nowhere in view. presently he came to a place where there was a gate, and a branch path, turning off from the main road, directly towards the mountain. here rollo, quite to his relief and gratification, found his uncle. mr. george was sitting on a stone by the side of the road, reading. he shut his book when he saw rollo and the guide, and put it away in his knapsack. at the same time he rose from his seat, saying,-- "well, rollo, which is the way?" "i don't know," said rollo. the guide, however, settled the question by taking hold of the horse's bridle, and leading him off into the side path. the two travellers followed him. the path led through a very romantic and beautiful scene of fields, gardens, and groves, among the trees of which were here and there seen glimpses of magnificent precipices and mountains rising very near, a little beyond them. after following this path a few steps, two girls came running out from a cottage. one of them had a board under her arm. the other had nothing. they both glanced at the travellers, as they passed, and then ran forward along the road before them. "what do you suppose those girls are going to do?" asked rollo. "i can't conceive," replied mr. george. "some thing for us to pay for, i'll engage." "and shall you pay them?" asked rollo. "no," said mr. george. "_i_ shall not pay them. i shall leave all such business to my courier." the purpose with which the two girls had come out was soon made to appear; for after running along before the party of travellers for about a quarter of a mile, they came to a place where two shallow but rather broad brooks flowed across the pathway. when rollo and mr. george came up to the place they found that the girls had placed boards over these streams of water for bridges. one of the boards was the one which the girl had brought along with her, under her arm. the other girl, it seems, kept her board under the bushes near the place, because it was too heavy to carry back and forth to the house. it was their custom to watch for travellers coming along the path, and then to run on before them and lay these bridges over the brooks,--expecting, of course, to be paid for it. rollo gave them each a small piece of money, and then he and mr. george went on. soon the road began to ascend the side of the mountain in long zigzags and windings. these windings presented new views of the valley below at every turn, each successive picture being more extended and grand than the preceding. at length, after ascending some thousands of feet, the party came to a resting-place, consisting of a seat in a sort of bower, which had been built for the accommodation of travellers, at a turn of the road where there was an uncommonly magnificent view. here they stopped to rest, while the guide, leading the horse to a spring at the road side, in order that he might have a drink, sat down himself on a flat stone beside him. "how far is it that we have got to walk?" asked mr. george. rollo looked at his watch, and then said, "we have got to walk about three hours more." "and what shall we come to then?" asked mr. george. "we shall come down on the other side of the mountain," said rollo, "to a little village called lungern, where there is a good road; and there i am going to hire a carriage, and a man to drive us to the lake. it is a beautiful country that we are going through, and the road leads along the shores of mountain lakes. the first lake is up very high among the mountains. the next is a great deal lower down, and we have to go down a long way by a zigzag road, till we get to it. then we go along the shore of this second lake, through several towns, and at last we come to the landing on the lake of lucerne. there i shall hire a boat." "what kind of a boat?" asked mr. george. "i don't know," said rollo. "how do you know that there will be any boat there?" asked mr. george. "because the guide book says there will," replied rollo. "they always have boats there to take people that come along this road to lucerne." "why do they not go all the way by land?" asked mr. george. "because," said rollo, "the whole country there is so full of mountains that there is no place for a road." just at this time the guide got up from his seat, and seemed ready to set out upon his journey; and so mr. george and rollo rose and went on. after ascending about an hour more, through a series of very wild and romantic glens, with cottages and curious-looking chalets scattered here and there along the borders of them, wherever the ground was smooth and green enough for cattle to feed, our travellers came, at length, to the summit of the pass, where, in a very pleasant and sheltered spot, surrounded with forest trees, there stood a little inn. on arriving at this place the guide proceeded to take off the load from the horse and to place it upon a sort of frame, such as is used in those countries for burdens which are to be carried on the back of a man. "what is he going to do?" asked mr. george. "he is going to carry the baggage the rest of the way himself," said rollo. "you see it is so steep and rocky from here down to lungern that it is dreadful hard work to get a horse down and up again; especially _up_. so the guide leaves the horse here, and is going to carry the baggage down himself on his back. that rack that he is fastening the trunk upon goes on his back. those straps in front of it come over his shoulders." "it seems to me," said mr. george, "that that is a monstrous heavy load to put on a man's back, to go down a place which is so steep and rocky that a horse could not get along over it. but then i suppose my courier knows what he is about." so mr. george, with an air and manner which seemed to say, it is none of my concern, walked up a flight of steps which led to a sort of elevated porch or platform before the door of the inn. for a moment rollo himself was a little disconcerted, not knowing whether it would be safe for a man to go down a steep declivity with such a burden on his back; but when he reflected that this was the arrangement that the guide himself had proposed, and that the guide had, doubtless, done the same thing a hundred times before, he ceased to feel any uneasiness, and following mr. george up the steps, he took a seat by his side, at a little table, which was placed there for the accommodation of travellers stopping at the inn to rest. rollo and his uncle spent half an hour at this hotel. for refreshment they had some very excellent and rich alpine milk, which they drank from very tall and curiously-shaped tumblers. they also amused themselves in looking at some specimens of carved work, such as models of swiss cottages--and figures of shepherds, and milkmaids with loads of utensils on their backs--and groups of huntsmen, with dogs leaping up around them--and chamois, or goats, climbing about among the rocks and mountains. rollo had bought a pretty good supply of such sculptures before; but there was one specimen here that struck his fancy so much that he could not resist the temptation of adding it to his collection, especially as mr. george approved of his making the purchase. it was a model of what is called a chalet,[ ] which is a sort of hut that the shepherds occupy in the upper pasturages, in the summer, where they go to tend the cows, and to make butter and cheese. the little chalet was made in such a manner that the roof would lift up like a lid, and let you see all there was within. there was a row of cows, with little calves by them, in stalls on one side of the chalet, and on the other side tables and benches, with pans of milk and tubs upon them, and a churn, and a cheese press, and other such like things. there was a bed, too, for the shepherd, in a sort of a garret above, just big enough to hold it. in about half an hour the guide seemed ready to proceed, and the whole party set out again on their journey. the guide went before, with the trunk and all the other baggage piled up on the rack behind him. he had a stout staff in his hand, which he used to prevent himself from falling, in going down the steep and rocky places. some of these places were very steep and rocky indeed--so much so that going down them was a work of climbing rather than walking, and rollo himself was sometimes almost afraid. what made these places the more frightful was, that the path in descending them was often exceedingly narrow, and was bordered, on one side, by a perpendicular wall of rock, and by an unfathomable abyss of rocks and roaring cataracts on the other. to behold the skill and dexterity with which the guide let himself down, from rock to rock, in this dreadful defile, loaded as he was, excited both in mr. george and rollo a continual sentiment of wonder. at length the steepest part of the descent was accomplished, and then the road led, for a mile, through a green and pretty valley, with lofty rocks and mountains on either hand, and chalets and pretty cottages at various distances along the roadside. at one place, in a very romantic and delightful spot, they came to a small chapel. it had been built there to commemorate some remarkable event, and to afford a resting-place for travellers. the door of this chapel was fastened, but rollo could look in through a window and see the altar, and the crucifix, and the tall candles, within. he and mr. george sat down, too, on the stone step of the chapel for a little while, to rest, and to enjoy the view. while they were there another traveller came by, ascending from lungern, and he stopped to rest there too. he was lame, and seemed to be poor. he had a pack on his back. mr. george talked with this man in french while they sat together on the steps of the chapel, and when he went away mr. george gave him a little money. after leaving the chapel the travellers continued their descent, the valley opening before them more and more as they proceeded, until, at length, the village of lungern came in sight, far below them, at the head of a little lake. "there!" said rollo, as soon as the village came in sight. "that is lungern. that is the place where the carriage road begins." "i am glad of that," said mr. george. "a ride in a carriage will be very pleasant after all this scrambling over the mountains--that is, provided you get a good carriage." when, at length, the party reached the inn, the guide set down his load on a bench at the door of it, and, smiling, seemed quite pleased to be rid of the heavy burden. "are we going to take dinner here?" said mr. george to rollo. "no, sir," said rollo. "at least, i don't know. we'll see." the landlord of the inn met the travellers at the door, and conducted them up a flight of stone stairs, and thence into a room where several tables were set, and different parties of travellers were taking refreshments. the landlord, after showing them into this room, went down stairs again to attend to other travellers. mr. george and rollo walked into the room. after looking about the room a moment, however, rollo said he must go down and see about a carriage. "wait here a few minutes, uncle george," said he, "while i go and engage a carriage, and then i will come back." so saying, rollo went away, and mr. george took his seat by a window. presently the waiter came to mr. george, and asked him, in french, if he wished for any refreshment. "i don't know," said mr. george. "i will wait till the boy comes back, and then we'll see." in a short time rollo came back. "the carriage will be ready in twenty minutes," said he. "very well," said mr. george. "and the waiter wants to know whether we are going to have any thing to eat." "yes," said rollo, "we are going to have a luncheon." rollo then went to the waiter, and said, in french, "bread, butter, coffee, and strawberries, for two." "very well, sir," said the waiter, and he immediately went away to prepare what rollo had ordered. in due time the refreshment was ready, and mr. george and rollo sat down to the table, with great appetites. every thing was very nice. the strawberries, in particular, though very small in size, as the alpine strawberries always are, were very abundant in quantity, and delicious in flavor. there was also plenty of rich cream to eat them with. when, at length, the travellers had finished eating their luncheon, the landlord came to say that the carriage was ready. so rollo paid the bill, and then he and mr. george went down to the door. here they found a very pretty chaise, with a seat in front for the driver, all ready for them. the trunk and all the other baggage were strapped securely on behind. mr. george and rollo got in. the top of the chaise was down, so that the view was unobstructed on every side. "well," said rollo, "do you think it _is_ a good carriage?" "a most excellent one," said mr. george. "we shall have a delightful ride, i am sure." mr. george was not disappointed in his anticipations of a delightful ride. the day was very pleasant, and the scenery of the country through which they had to pass was as romantic and beautiful as could be imagined. the road descended rapidly, from valley to valley, sometimes by sharp zigzags, and sometimes by long and graceful meanderings, presenting at every turn some new and charming view. there were green valleys, and shady dells, and foaming cascades, and dense forests, and glassy lakes, and towering above the whole, on either side, were vast mountain slopes, covered with forests, and ranges of precipitous rocks, their summits shooting upward, in pinnacles, to the very clouds. after journeying on in this manner for some hours the carriage arrived at an inn on the shores of the lake of lucerne. there was a landing there, and a number of boats, drawn up near a little pier. "yes," exclaimed rollo, when he saw the boats, "this is the place. the name of it is alpnach. we are to go the rest of the way by water." "that will be very pleasant," said mr. george, as he got out of the carriage. "i shall like a row on the lake very much. i will go directly down to the landing, and you can come when you get ready." so mr. george walked on down to the pier, leaving rollo to perform his duties as a courier, according to his own discretion. rollo first paid the driver of the carriage what was due to him, according to the agreement that he had made with the lungern landlord, and then explained to the alpnach landlord, in as good french as he could command, that he wanted a boat, to take him and the gentleman who was travelling with him to lucerne, and asked what the price would be. the landlord named the regular price, and rollo engaged the boat. the landlord then sent for a boatman. in a few minutes the boatman was seen coming. he was followed by two rather pretty-looking peasant girls, each bringing an oar on her shoulder. these two girls were the boatman's daughters. they were going with their father in the boat, to help him row. the boatman took up the trunk, and the girls the other parcels of baggage, and so carried the whole, together with the oars, down to the boat. rollo followed them, and the whole party immediately embarked. it was a bright and sunny day, though there were some dark and heavy clouds in the western sky. the water of the lake was very smooth, and it reflected the mountains and the skies in a very beautiful manner. mr. george and rollo took their seats in the boat, under an awning that was spread over a frame in the central portion of it. this awning sheltered them from the sun, while it did not intercept their view. the man and the girls took each of them an oar, standing up, however, to row, and _pushing_ the oar before them, instead of _pulling_ it, according to our fashion.[ ] thus they commenced the voyage. every thing went on very pleasantly for an hour, only, as the boatman and his daughters could speak no language but german, mr. george and rollo could have no conversation with them. but they could talk with each other, and they had a very pleasant time. at length, however, the clouds which had appeared in the western sky rose higher and higher, and grew blacker and blacker, and, finally, low, rumbling peals of thunder began to be heard. the boatman talked with his daughters, pointing to the clouds, and then said something to mr. george in german; but neither mr. george nor rollo could understand it. they soon found, however, that the boat was turned towards the shore. they were very glad of this, for rollo said that he had read in the guide book that the swiss lakes were subject to very violent tempests, such as it would be quite dangerous to encounter far from the shore. rollo said, moreover, that the boatmen were very vigilant in watching for the approach of these storms, and that they would always at once make the best of their way to the land whenever they saw one coming on. in this instance the wind began to blow, and the rain to fall, before the boat reached the shore. rollo and mr. george were sheltered by the awning, but the boatman and the two girls got very wet. they, however, continued to work hard at the oars, and at length they reached the shore. the place where they landed was in a cove formed by a point of land, where there was a little inn near the water. as soon as the boat reached the shore mr. george and rollo leaped out of it, and spreading their umbrella they ran up to the inn. they waited here nearly an hour. they sat on a piazza in front of the inn, listening to the sound of the thunder and of the wind, and watching the drops of rain falling on the water. at length the wind subsided, the rain gradually ceased, and the sun came out bright and beaming as ever. the party then got into the boat, and the boatman pushed off from the shore; and in an hour more they all landed safely on the quay at lucerne, very near to a magnificent hotel. our two travellers were soon comfortably seated at a table in the dining room of the hotel before an excellent dinner, which rollo had ordered. mr. george told rollo, as they took their seats at the table, that he had performed his duty as a courier in a very satisfactory manner, and had fully earned his pay. footnotes: [footnote : pronounced _shallay_.] [footnote : the swiss always stand up in rowing, and _push_ the oar. thus they look the way they are going.] chapter xiii. conclusion. it is not possible to describe in such a volume as this more than a small part of the excursions which mr. george and rollo made or the adventures which they met with in the course of their tour in switzerland. they remained in the country of the alps more than a fortnight; and they enjoyed, as rollo said, every moment of the time. there was no end to the cascades and waterfalls, the ice and snow-clad summits, the glaciers, the romantic zigzag paths up the mountain sides, the picturesque hamlets and cottages, and the groups of peasants toiling in the fields or tending flocks and herds in the higher pasturages. rollo's heart was filled all the time that he remained among these scenes with never-ceasing wonder and delight. the inns pleased him, too, as much perhaps as any thing else; for the climbing of mountains and the long excursions on foot gave him a most excellent appetite; and at the inns they always found such nice breakfasts, dinners, and suppers every day that rollo was never tired of praising them. rollo found the cost, too, of travelling in switzerland much less than he had expected. he did not expend nearly all the allowance which his father had granted him. when he came to settle up his accounts, after he had got back to paris, he found that he had saved about seventy-five francs, which made nearly fifteen dollars; and this sum he accordingly added to his _capital_--for that was the name by which he was accustomed to designate the stock of funds which he had gradually accumulated and reserved. just before mr. george and rollo left switzerland, on their return to paris, they received a letter from mr. holiday, who was still in paris, in consequence of which they concluded to make a short tour on the rhine on their way to france. the adventures which they met with on this tour will form the subject of another volume of this series. proofreaders note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/ / / / / / -h.zip) this text includes only germany and those parts of austria-hungary noted in the table of contents. part two (volume vi) is available as a separate text in project gutenberg's library. see http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/ seeing europe with famous authors, volume v germany, austria-hungary, and switzerland, part one selected and edited, with introductions, etc., by francis w. halsey editor of "great epochs in american history" associate editor of "the world's famous orations" and of "the best of the world's classics," etc. in ten volumes illustrated [illustration: berlin: panorama from the tower of the town hall] introduction to volumes v and vi germany, austria-hungary and switzerland the tourist's direct route to germany is by ships that go to the two great german ports--bremen and hamburg, whence fast steamer trains proceed to berlin and other interior cities. one may also land at antwerp or rotterdam, and proceed thence by fast train into germany. either of these routes continued takes one to austria. ships by the mediterranean route landing at genoa or trieste, provide another way for reaching either country. in order to reach switzerland, the tourist has many well-worn routes available. as with england and france, so with germany--our earliest information comes from a roman writer, julius caesar; but in the case of germany, this information has been greatly amplified by a later and noble treatise from the pen of tacitus. tacitus paints a splendid picture of the domestic virtues and personal valor of these tribes, holding them up as examples that might well be useful to his countrymen. caesar found many teutonic tribes, not only in the rhine valley, but well established in lands further west and already gallic. by the third century, german tribes had formed themselves into federations--the franks, alemanni, frisians and saxons. the rhine valley, after long subjection to the romans, had acquired houses, temples, fortresses and roads such as the romans always built. caesar had found many evidences of an advanced state of society. antiquarians of our day, exploring german graves, discover signs of it in splendid weapons of war and domestic utensils buried with the dead. monolithic sarcophagi have been found which give eloquent testimony of the absorption by them of roman culture. western germany, in fact, had become, in the third century, a well-ordered and civilized land. christianity was well established there. in general the country compared favorably with roman england, but it was less advanced than roman gaul. centers of that romanized german civilization, that were destined ever afterward to remain important centers of german life, are augsburg, strasburg, worms, speyer, bonn and cologne. it was after the formation of the tribal federations that the great migratory movement from germany set in. this gave to gaul a powerful race in the franks, from whom came clovis and the other merovingians; to gaul also it gave burgundians, and to england perhaps the strongest element in her future stock of men--the saxons. further east soon set in another world-famous migration, which threatened at times to dominate all teutonic people--the goths, huns and vandals of the black and caspian sea regions. thence they prest on to italy and spain, where the goths founded and long maintained new and thriving states on the ruins of the old. surviving these migrations, and serving to restore something like order to central europe, there now rose into power in france, under clovis and charlemagne, and spread their sway far across the rhine, the great merovingian and carlovingian dynasties. charlemagne's empire came to embrace in central europe a region extending east of the rhine as far as hungary, and from north to south from the german ocean to the alps. when charlemagne, in , received from the pope that imperial crown, which was to pass in continuous line to his successors for a thousand years, germany and france were component parts of the same state, a condition never again to exist, except in part, and briefly, under napoleon. the tangled and attenuated thread of german history from charlemagne's time until now can not be unfolded here, but it makes one of the great chronicles in human history, with its conrads and henrys, its maximilian, its barbarossa, its charles v., its thirty years' war, its great frederick of prussia, its struggle with napoleon, its rise through prussia under bismarck, its war of with france, its new empire, different alike in structure and in reality from the one called holy and called roman, and the wonderful commercial and industrial progress of our century. out of charlemagne's empire came the empire of austria. before his time, the history of the austro-hungarian lands is one of early tribal life, followed by conquest under the later roman emperors, and then the migratory movements of its own people and of other people across its territory, between the days of attila and the merovingians. its very name (oesterreich) indicates its origin as a frontier territory, an outpost in the east for the great empire charlemagne had built up. not until the sixteenth century did austria become a power of first rank in europe. hapsburgs had long ruled it, as they still do, and as they have done for more than six centuries, but the greatest of all their additions to power and dominion came through mary of burgundy, who, seeking refuge from louis xi. of france, after her father's death, married maximilian of austria. out of that marriage came, in two generations, possession by austria of the netherlands, through mary's grandson, charles v., holy roman emperor and king of spain. for years afterward, the hapsburgs remained the most illustrious house in europe. the empire's later fortunes are a story of grim struggle with protestants, frederick the great, the ottoman turks, napoleon, the revolutionists of , and prussia. the story of switzerland in its beginnings is not unlike that of other european lands north of italy. the romans civilized the country--built houses, fortresses and roads. roman roads crossed the alps, one of them going, as it still goes, over the great st. bernard. then came the invaders--burgundians, alemanni, ostrogoths and huns. north switzerland became the permanent home of alemanni, or germans, whose descendants still survive there, around zürich. burgundians settled in the western part which still remains french in speech, and a part of it french politically, including chamouni and half of mont blanc. ostrogoths founded homes in the southern parts, and descendants of theirs still remain there, speaking italian, or a sort of surviving latin called romansch. after these immigrations most parts of the country were subdued by the merovingian franks, by whom christianity was introduced and monasteries founded. with the break-up of charlemagne's empire, a part of switzerland was added to a german duchy, and another part to burgundy. its later history is a long and moving record of grim struggles by a brave and valiant people. in our day the swiss have become industrially one of the world's successful races, and their country the one in which wealth is probably more equally distributed than anywhere else in europe, if not in america. f.w.h. contents of volume v germany, austria-hungary, and switzerland--part one i. the rhine valley introduction to vols. v and vi--by the editor in history and romance--by victor hugo from bonn to mayence--by bayard taylor cologne--by victor hugo round about coblenz--by lady blanche murphy bingen and mayence--by victor hugo frankfort-on-main--by bayard taylor heidelberg--by bayard taylor strasburg--by harriet beecher stowe freiburg and the black forest--by bayard taylor ii. nuremberg as a medieval city--by cecil headlam its churches and the citadel--by thomas frognall dibdin nuremberg to-day--by cecil headlarn walls and other fortifications--by cecil headlam albert dÜrer--by cecil headlam iii. other bavarian cities munich--by bayard taylor augsburg--by thomas frognall dibdin ratisbon--by thomas frognall dibdin iv. berlin and elsewhere a look at the german capital--by theophile gautier charlottenburg--by harriet beecher stowe leipzig and dresden--by bayard taylor weimar in goethe's day--by madame de staël ulm--by thomas frognall dibdin aix-la-chapelle and charlemagne's tomb--by victor hugo the hanseatic league--by james howell hamburg--by theophile gautier schleswig--by theophile gautier lÜbeck--by theophile gautier heligoland--by william george black v. vienna first impressions of the capital--by bayard taylor st. stephen's cathedral--by thomas frognall dibdin the belvedere palace--by thomas frognall dibdin schÖnbrunn and the prater--by thomas frognall dibdin vi. hungary a glance at the country--by h. tornai de kövër budapest--by h. tornai de kövër (_hungary continued in vol. vi_) list of illustrations volume v a panorama of berlin from the town hall cologne cathedral cologne cathedral before the spires were completed bingen-on-the rhine nuremberg castle stolzenfels castle on the rhine wiesbaden strasburg cathedral strasburg frauenkirche, munich door of strasburg cathedral strasburg clock goethe's house, weimar schiller's house, weimar berlin: unter den linden berlin: the brandenburg gate berlin: the royal castle and emperor william bridge berlin: the white hall in the royal castle berlin: the national gallery and frederick's bridge berlin: the gendarmenmarkt the column of victory, berlin the mausoleum at charlottenburg the new palace at potsdam the castle of sans souci, potsdam the cathedral of aix-la-chapelle--tomb of charlemagne schÖnbrunn, vienna salzburg, austria [illustration: cologne cathedral] [illustration: cologne cathedral (before the spires were completed, as shown in a photograph taken in )] [illustration: bingen on the rhine] [illustration: nuremberg castle] [illustration: stolzenfels castle on the rhine] [illustration: wiesbaden] [illustration: strassburg cathedral] [illustration: strassburg and the cathedral] [illustration: the frauenkirche, munich] [illustration: the door of strassburg cathedral] [illustration: the strassburg clock] [illustration: goethe's house in weimar] [illustration: schiller's house in weimar] i the rhine valley in history and romance[a] by victor hugo of all rivers, i prefer the rhine. it is now a year, when passing the bridge of boats at kehl, since i first saw it. i remember that i felt a certain respect, a sort of adoration, for this old, this classic stream. i never think of rivers--those great works of nature, which are also great in history--without emotion. i remember the rhone at valserine; i saw it in , in a pleasant excursion to switzerland, which is one of the sweet, happy recollections of my early life. i remember with what noise, with what ferocious bellowing, the rhone precipitated itself into the gulf while the frail bridge upon which i was standing was shaking beneath my feet. ah well! since that time, the rhone brings to my mind the idea of a tiger--the rhine, that of a lion. the evening on which i saw the rhine for the first time, i was imprest with the same idea. for several minutes i stood contemplating this proud and noble river--violent, but not furious; wild, but still majestic. it was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was washing with its yellow mane, or, as boileau says, its "slimy beard," the bridge of boats. its two banks were lost in the twilight, and tho its roaring was loud, still there was tranquillity. the rhine is unique: it combines the qualities of every river. like the rhone, it is rapid; broad like the loire; encased, like the meuse; serpentine, like the seine; limpid and green, like the somme; historical, like the tiber; royal like the danube; mysterious, like the nile; spangled with gold, like an american river; and like a river of asia, abounding with fantoms and fables. from historical records we find that the first people who took possession of the banks of the rhine were the half-savage celts, who were afterward named gauls by the romans. when rome was in its glory, caesar crossed the rhine, and shortly afterward the whole of the river was under the jurisdiction of his empire. when the twenty-second legion returned from the siege of jerusalem, titus sent it to the banks of the rhine, where it continued the work of martius agrippa. after trajan and hadrian came julian, who erected a fortress upon the confluence of the rhine and the moselle; then valentinian, who built a number of castles. thus, in a few centuries, roman colonies, like an immense chain, linked the whole of the rhine. at length the time arrived when rome was to assume another aspect. the incursions of the northern hordes were eventually too frequent and too powerful for rome; so, about the sixth century, the banks of the rhine were strewed with roman ruins, as at present with feudal ones. charlemagne cleared away the rubbish, built fortresses, and opposed the german hordes; but, notwithstanding all that he did, notwithstanding his desire to do more, rome died, and the physiognomy of the rhine was changed. the sixteenth century approached; in the fourteenth the rhine witnessed the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at strassburg, a printing-office was first established. in the famous cannon, fourteen feet in length, was cast at cologne; and in vindelin de spire printed his bible. a new world was making its appearance; and, strange to say, it was upon the banks of the rhine that those two mysterious tools with which god unceasingly works out the civilization of man--the catapult and the book--war and thought--took a new form. the rhine, in the destinies of europe, has a sort of providential signification. it is the great moat which divides the north from the south. the rhine for thirty ages, has seen the forms and reflected the shadows of almost all the warriors who tilled the old continent with that share which they call sword. caesar crossed the rhine in going from the south; attila crossed it when descending from the north. it was here that clovis gained the battle of tolbiac; and that charlemagne and napoleon figured. frederick barbarossa, rudolph of hapsburg, and frederick the first, were great, victorious, and formidable when here. for the thinker, who is conversant with history, two great eagles are perpetually hovering ever the rhine--that of the roman legions, and the eagle of the french regiments. the rhine--that noble flood, which the romans named "superb," bore at one time upon its surface bridges of boats, over which the armies of italy, spain, and france poured into germany, and which, at a later date, were made use of by the hordes of barbarians when rushing into the ancient roman world; at another, on its surface it floated peaceably the fir-trees of murg and of saint gall, the porphyry and the marble of bâle, the salt of karlshall, the leather of stromberg, the quicksilver of lansberg, the wine of johannisberg, the slates of coab, the cloth and earthenware of wallendar, the silks and linens of cologne. it majestically performs its double function of flood of war and flood of peace, having, without interruption, upon the ranges of hills which embank the most notable portion of its course, oak-trees on one side and vine-trees on the other--signifying strength and joy. [footnote a: from "the rhine." translated by d.m. aird.] from bonn to mayence[a] by bayard taylor i was glad when we were really in motion on the swift rhine, and nearing the chain of mountains that rose up before us. we passed godesberg on the right, while on our left was the group of the seven mountains which extend back from the drachenfels to the wolkenberg, or "castle of the clouds." here we begin to enter the enchanted land. the rhine sweeps around the foot of the drachenfels, while, opposite, the precipitous rock of rolandseck, crowned with the castle of the faithful knight, looks down upon the beautiful island of nonnenwerth, the white walls of the convent still gleaming through the trees as they did when the warrior's weary eyes looked upon them for the last time. i shall never forget the enthusiasm with which i saw this scene in the bright, warm sunlight, the rough crags softened in the haze which filled the atmosphere, and the wild mountains springing up in the midst of vineyards and crowned with crumbling towers filled with the memories of a thousand years. after passing andernach we saw in the distance the highlands of the middle rhine--which rise above coblentz, guarding the entrance to its scenery--and the mountains of the moselle. they parted as we approached; from the foot shot up the spires of coblentz, and the battlements of ehrenbreitstein, crowning the mountain opposite, grew larger and broader. the air was slightly hazy, and the clouds seemed laboring among the distant mountains to raise a storm. as we came opposite the mouth of the moselle and under the shadow of the mighty fortress, i gazed up with awe at its massive walls. apart from its magnitude and almost impregnable situation on a perpendicular rock, it is filled with the recollections of history and hallowed by the voice of poetry. the scene went past like a panorama, the bridge of boats opened, the city glided behind us, and we entered the highlands again. above coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. one feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force. i sat upon the deck the whole afternoon as mountains, towns and castles passed by on either side, watching them with a feeling of the most enthusiastic enjoyment. every place was familiar to me in memory, and they seemed like friends i had long communed with in spirit and now met face to face. the english tourists with whom the deck was covered seemed interested too, but in a different manner. with murray's handbook open in their hands, they sat and read about the very towns and towers they were passing, scarcely lifting their eyes to the real scenes, except now and then to observe that it was "very nice." as we passed boppart, i sought out the inn of the "star," mentioned in "hyperion;" there was a maiden sitting on the steps who might have been paul flemming's fair boat-woman. the clouds which had here gathered among the hills now came over the river, and the rain cleared the deck of its crowd of admiring tourists. as we were approaching lorelei berg, i did not go below, and so enjoyed some of the finest scenery on the rhine alone. the mountains approach each other at this point, and the lorelei rock rises up for four hundred and forty feet from the water. this is the haunt of the water nymph lorelei, whose song charmed the ear of the boatman while his bark was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. it is also celebrated for its remarkable echo. as we passed between the rocks, a guard, who has a little house on the roadside, blew a flourish on his bugle, which was instantly answered by a blast from the rocky battlements of lorelei. the sun came out of the clouds as we passed oberwesel, with its tall round tower, and the light shining through the ruined arches of schonberg castle made broad bars of light and shade in the still misty air. a rainbow sprang up out of the rhine and lay brightly on the mountain-side, coloring vineyard and crag in the most singular beauty, while its second reflection faintly arched like a glory above the high summits in the bed of the river were the seven countesses of schonberg turned into seven rocks for their cruelty and hard-heartedness toward the knights whom their beauty had made captive. in front, at a little distance, was the castle of pfalz, in the middle of the river, and from the heights above caub frowned the crumbling citadel of gutenfels. imagine all this, and tell me if it is not a picture whose memory should last a lifetime. we came at last to bingen, the southern gate of the highlands. here, on an island in the middle of the stream, is the old mouse-tower where bishop hatto of mayence was eaten up by the rats for his wicked deeds. passing rüdesheim and geisenheim--celebrated for their wines--at sunset, we watched the varied shore in the growing darkness, till like a line of stars across the water we saw before us the bridge of mayence. [footnote a: from "views afoot." published by g.p. putnam's sons.] cologne[a] by victor hugo. the sun had set when we reached cologne. i gave my luggage to a porter, with orders to carry it to a hotel at duez, a little town on the opposite side of the rhine; and directed my steps toward the cathedral. rather than ask my way, i wandered up and down the narrow streets, which night had all but obscured. at last i entered a gateway leading to a court, and came out on an open square--dark and deserted. a magnificent spectacle now presented itself. before me, in the fantastic light of a twilight sky, rose, in the midst of a group of low houses, an enormous black mass, studded with pinnacles and belfries. a little farther was another, not quite so broad as the first, but higher; a kind of square fortress, flanked at its angles with four long detached towers, having on its summit something resembling a huge feather. on approaching, i discovered that it was the cathedral of cologne. what appeared like a large feather was a crane, to which sheets of lead were appended, and which, from its workable appearance, indicated to passers-by that this unfinished temple may one day be completed; and that the dream of engelbert de berg, which was realized under conrad de hochsteden, may, in an age or two, be the greatest cathedral in the world. this incomplete iliad sees homers in futurity. the church was shut. i surveyed the steeples, and was startled at their dimensions. what i had taken for towers are the projections of the buttresses. tho only the first story is completed, the building is already nearly as high as the towers of notre dame at paris. should the spire, according to the plan, be placed upon this monstrous trunk, strasburg would be, comparatively speaking, small by its side.[b] it has always struck me that nothing resembles ruin more than an unfinished edifice. briars, saxifrages, and pellitories--indeed, all weeds that root themselves in the crevices and at the base of old buildings--have besieged these venerable walls. man only constructs what nature in time destroys. all was quiet; there was no one near to break the prevailing silence. i approached the façade, as near as the gate would permit me, and heard the countless shrubs gently rustling in the night breeze. a light which appeared at a neighboring window, cast its rays upon a group of exquisite statues--angels and saints, reading or preaching, with a large open book before them. admirable prologue for a church, which is nothing else than the word made marble, brass or stone! swallows have fearlessly taken up their abode here, and their simple yet curious masonry contrasts strangely with the architecture of the building. this was my first visit to the cathedral of cologne. the dome of cologne, when seen by day, appeared to me to have lost a little of its sublimity; it no longer had what i call the twilight grandeur that the evening lends to huge objects; and i must say that the cathedral of beauvais, which is scarcely known, is not inferior, either in size or in detail, to the cathedral of cologne. the hôtel-de-ville, situated near the cathedral, is one of those singular edifices which have been built at different times, and which consist of all styles of architecture seen in ancient buildings. the mode in which these edifices have been built forms rather an interesting study. nothing is regular--no fixt plan has been drawn out--all has been built as necessity required. thus the hôtel-de-ville, which has, probably, some roman cave near its foundation, was, in , only a structure similar to those of our edifices built with pillars. for the convenience of the night-watchman, and in order to sound the alarum, a steeple was required, and in the fourteenth century a tower was built. under maximilian a taste for elegant structures was everywhere spread, and the bishops of cologne, deeming it essential to dress their city-house in new raiment, engaged an italian architect, a pupil, probably, of old michael angelo, and a french sculptor, who adjusted on the blackened façade of the thirteenth century a triumphant and magnificent porch. a few years expired, and they stood sadly in want of a promenade by the side of the registry. a back court was built, and galleries erected, which were sumptuously enlivened by heraldry and bas-reliefs. these i had the pleasure of seeing; but, in a few years, no person will have the same gratification, for, without anything being done to prevent it, they are fast falling into ruins. at last, under charles the fifth, a large room for sales and for the assemblies of the citizens was required, and a tasteful building of stone and brick was added. i went up to the belfry; and under a gloomy sky, which harmonized with the edifice and with my thoughts, i saw at my feet the whole of this admirable town. from thurmchen to bayenthurme, the town, which extends upward of a league on the banks of the river, displays a whole host of windows and façades. in the midst of roofs, turrets and gables, the summits of twenty-four churches strike the eye, all of different styles, and each church, from its grandeur, worthy of the name of cathedral. if we examine the town in detail, all is stir, all is life. the bridge is crowded with passengers and carriages; the river is covered with sails. here and there clumps of trees caress, as it were, the houses blackened by time; and the old stone hotels of the fifteenth century, with their long frieze of sculptured flowers, fruit and leaves, upon which the dove, when tired, rests itself, relieve the monotony of the slate roofs and brick fronts which surround them. round this great town--mercantile from its industry, military from its position, marine from its river--is a vast plain that borders germany, which the rhine crosses at different places, and is crowned on the northeast by historic eminences--that wonderful nest of legends and traditions, called the "seven mountains." thus holland and its commerce, germany and its poetry--like the two great aspects of the human mind, the positive and the ideal--shed their light upon the horizon of cologne; a city of business and of meditation. after descending from the belfry, i stopt in the yard before a handsome porch of the renaissance, the second story of which is formed of a series of small triumphal arches, with inscriptions. the first is dedicated to caesar; the second to augustus; the third to agrippa, the founder of cologne; the fourth to constantine, the christian emperor; the fifth to justinian, the great legislator; and the sixth to maximilian. upon the façade, the poetic sculpture has chased three bas-reliefs, representing the three lion-combatants, milo of crotona, pepin-le-bref, and daniel. at the two extremities he has placed milo of crotona, attacking the lions by strength of body; and daniel subduing the lions by the power of mind. between these is pepin-le-bref, conquering his ferocious antagonist with that mixture of moral and physical strength which distinguishes the soldier. between pure strength and pure thought, is courage; between the athlete and the prophet--the hero. pepin, sword in hand, has plunged his left arm, which is enveloped in his mantle, into the mouth of the lion; the animal stands, with extended claws, in that attitude which in heraldry represents the lion rampant. pepin attacks it bravely and vanquishes. daniel is standing motionless, his arms by his side, and his eyes lifted up to heaven, the lions lovingly rolling at his feet. as for milo of crotona, he defends himself against the lion, which is in the act of devouring him. his blind presumption has put too much faith in muscle, in corporeal strength. these three bas-reliefs contain a world of meaning; the last produces a powerful effect. it is nature avenging herself on the man whose only faith is in brute force.... in the evening, as the stars were shining, i took a walk upon the side of the river opposite to cologne. before me was the whole town, with its innumerable steeples figuring in detail upon the pale western sky. to my left rose, like the giant of cologne, the high spire of st. martin's, with its two towers; and, almost in front, the somber apsed cathedral, with its many sharp-pointed spires, resembling a monstrous hedgehog, the crane forming the tail, and near the base two lights, which appeared like two eyes sparkling with fire. nothing disturbed the stillness of the night but the rustling of the waters at my feet, the heavy tramp of a horse's hoofs upon the bridge, and the sound of a blacksmith's hammer. a long stream of fire that issued from the forge caused the adjoining windows to sparkle; then, as if hastening to its opposite element, disappeared in the water. [footnote a: from "the rhine." translated by d.m. aird.] [footnote b: one of the illustrations that accompany this volume shows the spires in their completed state.] round about coblenz[a] by lady blanche murphy coblenz is the place which many years ago gave me my first associations with the rhine. from a neighboring town we often drove to coblenz, and the wide, calm flow of the river, the low, massive bridge of boats and the commonplace outskirts of a busy city contributed to make up a very different picture from that of the poetic "castled" rhine of german song and english ballad. the old town has, however, many beauties, tho its military character looks out through most of them, and reminds us that the mosel city (for it originally stood only on that river, and then crept up to the rhine), tho a point of union in nature, has been for ages, so far as mankind was concerned, a point of defense and watching. the great fortress, a german gibraltar, hangs over the river and sets its teeth in the face of the opposite shore; all the foreign element in the town is due to the deposits made there by troubles in other countries, revolution and war sending their exiles, émigrés and prisoners. the history of the town is only a long military record, from the days of the archbishops of trèves, to whom it was subject.... there is the old "german house" by the bank of the mosel, a building little altered outwardly since the fourteenth century, now used as a food-magazine for the troops. the church of st. castor commemorates a holy hermit who lived and preached to the heathen in the eighth century, and also covers the grave and monument of the founder of the "mouse" at wellmich, the warlike kuno of falkenstein, archbishop of trèves. the exchange, once a court of justice, has changed less startlingly, and its proportions are much the same as of old; and besides these there are other buildings worth noticing, tho not so old, and rather distinguished by the men who lived and died there, or were born there, such as metternich, than by architectural beauties. such houses there are in every old city. they do not invite you to go in and admire them; every tourist you meet does not ask you how you liked them or whether you saw them. they are homes, and sealed to you as such, but they are the shell of the real life of the country; and they have somehow a charm and a fascination that no public building or show-place can have. goethe, who turned his life-experiences into poetry, has told us something of one such house not far from coblenz, in the village of ehrenbreitstein, beneath the fortress, and which in familiar coblenz parlance goes by the name of "the valley"--the house of sophie de laroche. the village is also clement brentano's birthplace. the oldest of german cities, trèves (or in german trier), is not too far to visit on our way up the mosel valley, whose celtic inhabitants of old gave the roman legions so much trouble. but rome ended by conquering, by means of her civilization as well as by her arms, and augusta trevirorum, tho claiming a far higher antiquity than rome herself, and still bearing an inscription to that effect on the old council-house--now called the red house and used as a hotel--became, as ausonius condescendingly remarked, a second rome, adorned with baths, gardens, temples, theaters and all that went to make up an imperial capital. as in venice everything precious seems to have come from constantinople, so in trier most things worthy of note date from the days of the romans; tho, to tell the truth, few of the actual buildings do, no matter how classic is their look. the style of the empire outlived its sway, and doubtless symbolized to the inhabitants their traditions of a higher standard of civilization. the porta nigra, for instance--called simeon's gate at present--dates really from the days of the first merovingian kings, but it looks like a piece of the colosseum, with its rows of arches in massive red sandstone, the stones held together by iron clamps, and its low, immensely strong double gateway, reminding one of the triumphal arches in the forum at rome. the history of the transformation of this gateway is curious. first a fortified city gate, standing in a correspondingly fortified wall, it became a dilapidated granary and storehouse in the middle ages, when one of the archbishops gave leave to simeon, a wandering hermit from syracuse in sicily, to take up his abode there; and another turned it into a church dedicated to this saint, tho of this change few traces remain. finally, it has become a national museum of antiquities. the amphitheater is a genuine roman work, wonderfully well preserved; and genuine enough were the roman games it has witnessed, for, if we are to believe tradition, a thousand frankish prisoners of war were here given in one day to the wild beasts by the emperor constantine. christian emperors beautified the basilica that stood where the cathedral now is, and the latter itself has some basilica-like points about it, tho, being the work of fifteen centuries, it bears the stamp of successive styles upon its face.... the mosel has but few tributary streams of importance; its own course is as winding, as wild and as romantic as that of the rhine itself. the most interesting part of the very varied scenery of this river is not the castles, the antique towns, the dense woods or the teeming vineyards lining rocks where a chamois could hardly stand--all this it has in common with the rhine--but the volcanic region of the eifel, the lakes in ancient craters, the tossed masses of lava and tufa, the great wastes strewn with dark boulders, the rifts that are called valleys and are like the iceland gorges, the poor, starved villages and the extraordinary rusticity, not to say coarseness, of the inhabitants. this grotesque, interesting country--unique, i believe, on the continent of europe--lies in a small triangle between the mosel, the belgian frontier and the schiefer hills of the lower rhine; it goes by the names of the high eifel, with the high acht, the kellberg and the nurburg; the upper (vorder) eifel, with gerolstein, a ruined castle, and daun, a pretty village; and the snow-eifel (schnee eifel), contracted by the speech of the country into schneifel. the last is the most curious, the most dreary, the least visited. walls of sharp rocks rise up over eight hundred feet high round some of its sunken lakes--one is called the powder lake--and the level above this abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking signposts, shaped like a rough t and set in a heap of loose stones. it is a great contrast to turn aside from this landscape and look on the smiling villages and pretty wooded scenery of the valley of the mosel proper; the long lines of handsome, healthy women washing their linen on the banks; the old ferryboats crossing by the help of antique chain-and-rope contrivances; the groves of old trees, with broken walls and rude shrines, reminding one of southern italy and her olives and ilexes; and the picturesque houses, in kochem, in daun, in travbach, in bernkastel, which, however untiring one may be as a sightseer, hardly warrant one as a writer to describe and re-describe their beauties. klüsserath, however, we must mention, because its straggling figure has given rise to a local proverb--"as long as klüsserath;" and neumagen, because of the legend of constantine, who is said to have seen the cross of victory in the heavens at this place, as well as at sinzig on the rhine, and, as the more famous legend tells us, at the pons milvium over the tiber. the last glance we take at the beauties of this neighborhood is from the mouth of the torrent-river eltz as it dashes into the eifel, washing the rock on which stands the castle of eltz. the building and the family are an exception in the history of these lands; both exist to this day, and are prosperous and undaunted, notwithstanding all the efforts of enemies, time and circumstances to the contrary. the strongly-turreted wall runs from the castle till it loses itself in the rock, and the building has a home-like inhabited, complete look; which, in virtue of the quaint irregularity and magnificent natural position of the castle, standing guard over the foaming eltz, does not take from its romantic appearance, as preservation or restoration too often does. not far from coblenz, and past the island of nonnenwerth, is the old tenth-century castle of sayn, which stood until the thirty years' war, and below it, quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretending, lies the new house of the family of sayn-wittgenstein, built in the year . as we push our way down the rhine we soon come to the little peaceful town of neuwied, a sanctuary for persecuted flemings and others of the low countries, gathered here by the local sovereign, count frederick iii. the little brook that gives its name to the village runs softly into the rhine under a rustic bridge and amid murmuring rushes, while beyond it the valley gets narrower, rocks begin to rise over the rhine banks, and we come to andernach. andernach is the rocky gate of the rhine, and if its scenery were not enough, its history, dating from roman times, would make it interesting. however, of its relics we can only mention, in passing, the parish church with its four towers, all of tufa, the dungeons under the council-house, significantly called the "jew's bath," and the old sixteenth-century contrivances for loading rhine boats with the millstones in which the town still drives a fair trade. at the mouth of the brohl we meet the volcanic region again, and farther up the valley through which this stream winds come upon the retired little watering-place of tönnistein, a favorite goal of the dutch, with its steel waters; and wassenach, with what we may well call its dust-baths, stretching for miles inland, up hills full of old craters, and leaving us only at the entrance of the beech-woods that have grown up in these cauldron-like valleys and fringe the blue laachersee, the lake of legends and of fairies. one of these schlegel has versified in the "lay of the sunken castle," with the piteous tale of the spirits imprisoned; and simrock tells us in rhyme of the merman who sits waiting for a mortal bride; while wolfgang müller sings of the "castle under the lake," where at night ghostly torches are lighted and ghostly revels are held, the story of which so fascinates the fisherman's boy who has heard of these doings from his grandmother that as he watches the enchanted waters one night his fancy plays him a cruel trick, and he plunges in to join the revellers and learn the truth. local tradition says that count henry ii. and his wife adelaide, walking here by night, saw the whole lake lighted up from within in uncanny fashion, and founded a monastery in order to counteract the spell. this deserted but scarcely ruined building still exists, and contains the grave of the founder; the twelfth-century decoration, rich and detailed, is almost whole in the oldest part of the monastery. the far-famed german tale of genovefa of brabant is here localized, and henry's son siegfried assigned to the princess as a husband, while the neighboring grotto of hochstein is shown as her place of refuge. on our way back to the rocky gate we pass through the singular little town of niedermendig, an hour's distance from the lake--a place built wholly of dark gray lava, standing in a region where lava-ridges seam the earth like the bones of antediluvian monsters, but are made more profitable by being quarried into millstones. there is something here that brings part of wales to the remembrance of the few who have seen those dreary slate-villages--dark, damp, but naked, for moss and weeds do not thrive on this dampness as they do on the decay of other stones--which dot the moorland of wales. the fences are slate; the gateposts are slate; the stiles are of slate; the very "sticks" up which the climbing roses are trained are of slate; churches, schools, houses, stables are all of one dark iron-blue shade; floors and roofs are alike; hearth-stones and threshold-stones, and grave-stones all of the same material. it is curious and depressing. this volcanic region of the rhine, however, has so many unexpected beauties strewn pell-mell in the midst of stony barrenness that it also bears some likeness to naples and ischia, where beauty of color, and even of vegetation, alternate surprisingly with tracts of parched and rocky wilderness pierced with holes whence gas and steam are always rising. [footnote a: from "down the rhine."] bingen and mayence[a] by victor hugo bingen is an exceedingly pretty place, having at once the somber look of an ancient town, and the cheering aspect of a new one. from the days of consul drusus to those of the emperor charlemagne, from charlemagne to archbishop willigis, from willigis to the merchant montemagno, and from montemagno to the visionary holzhausen, the town gradually increased in the number of its houses, as the dew gathers drop by drop in the cup of a lily. excuse this comparison; for, tho flowery, it has truth to back it, and faithfully illustrates the mode in which a town near the conflux of two rivers is constructed. the irregularity of the houses--in fact everything, tends to make bingen a kind of antithesis, both with respect to buildings and the scenery which surrounds them. the town, bounded on the left by nahe, and by the rhine on the right, develops itself in a triangular form near a gothic church, which is backed by a roman citadel. in this citadel, which bears the date of the first century, and has long been the haunt of bandits, there is a garden; and in the church, which is of the fifteenth century, is the tomb of barthélemy de holzhausen. in the direction of mayence, the famed paradise plain opens upon the ringau; and in that of coblentz, the dark mountains of leyen seem to frown on the surrounding scenery. here nature smiles like a lovely woman extended unadorned on the greensward; there, like a slumbering giant, she excites a feeling of awe. the more we examine this beautiful place, the more the antithesis is multiplied under our looks and thoughts. it assumes a thousand different forms; and as the nahe flows through the arches of the stone bridge, upon the parapet of which the lion of hesse turns its back to the eagle of prussia, the green arm of the rhine seizes suddenly the fair and indolent stream, and plunges it into the bingerloch. to sit down toward the evening on the summit of the klopp--to see the town at its base, with an immense horizon on all sides, the mountains overshadowing all--to see the slated roofs smoking, the shadows lengthening, and the scenery breathing to life the verses of virgil--to respire at once the wind which rustles the leaves, the breeze of the flood, and the gale of the mountain--is an exquisite and inexpressible pleasure, full of secret enjoyment, which is veiled by the grandeur of the spectacle, by the intensity of contemplation. at the windows of huts, young women, their eyes fixt upon their work, are gaily singing; among the weeds that grow round the ruins birds whistle and pair; barks are crossing the river, and the sound of oars splashing in the water, and unfurling of sails, reaches our ears. the washerwomen of the rhine spread their clothes on the bushes; and those of the nahe, their legs and feet naked, beat their linen upon floating rafts, and laugh at some poor artist as he sketches ehrenfels. the sun sets, night comes on, the slated roofs of the houses appear as one, the mountains congregate and take the aspect of an immense dark body; and the washerwomen, with bundles on their heads, return cheerfully to their cabins; the noise subsides, the voices are hushed; a faint light, resembling the reflections of the other world upon the countenance of a dying man, is for a short time observable on the ehrenfels; then all is dark, except the tower of hatto, which, tho scarcely seen in the day, makes its appearance at night, amid a light smoke and the reverberation of the forge.... mayence and frankfort, like versailles and paris, may, at the present time, be called one town. in the middle ages there was a distance of eight leagues between them, which was then considered a long journey; now, an hour and a quarter will suffice to transport you from one to the other. the buildings of frankfort and mayence, like those of liège, have been devastated by modern good taste, and old and venerable edifices are rapidly disappearing, giving place to frightful groups of white houses. i expected to be able to see, at mayence, martinsburg, which, up to the seventeenth century, was the feudal residence of the ecclesiastical electors; but the french made a hospital of it, which was afterward razed to the ground to make room for the porte franc; the merchant's hotel, built in by the famed league, and which was splendidly decorated with the statues of seven electors, and surmounted by two colossal figures, bearing the crown of the empire, also shared the same fate. mayence possesses that which marks its antiquity--a venerable cathedral, which was commenced in , and finished in . part of this superb structure was burned in , and since that period has, from century to century, undergone some change. i explored its interior, and was struck with awe on beholding innumerable tombs, bearing dates as far back as the eighteenth century. under the galleries of the cloister i observed an obscure monument, a bas-relief of the fourteenth century, and tried, in vain, to guess the enigma. on one side are two men in chains, wildness in their looks, and despair in their attitudes; on the other, an emperor, accompanied by a bishop, and surrounded by a number of people, triumphing. is it barbarossa? is it louis of bavaria? does it speak of the revolt of , or of the war between mayence and frankfort in ? i could not tell, and therefore passed by. as i was leaving the galleries, i discovered in the shade a sculptured head, half protruding from the wall, surmounted by a crown of flower-work, similar to that worn by the kings of the eleventh century. i looked at it; it had a mild countenance; yet it possest something of severity in it--a face imprinted with that august beauty which the workings of a great mind give to the countenance of man. the hand of some peasant had chalked the name "frauenlob" above it, and i instantly remembered the tasso of mayence, so calumniated during his life, so venerated after his death. when henry frauenlob died, which was in the year , the females who had insulted him in life carried his coffin to the tomb, which procession is chiseled on the tombstone beneath. i again looked at that noble head. the sculptor had left the eyes open; and thus, in that church of sepulchers--in that cloister of the dead--the poet alone sees; he only is represented standing, and observing all. the market-place, which is by the side of the cathedral, has rather an amusing and pleasing aspect. in the middle is a pretty triangular fountain of the german renaissance, which, besides having scepters, nymphs, angels, dolphins, and mermaids, serves as a pedestal to the virgin mary. this fountain was erected by albert de brandenburg, who reigned in , in commemoration of the capture of francis the first by charles the fifth. mayence, white tho it be, retains its ancient aspect of a beautiful city. the river here is not less crowded with sails, the town not less incumbered with bales, nor more free from bustle, than formerly. people walk, squeak, push, sell, buy, sing, and cry; in fact in all the quarters of the town, in every house, life seems to predominate. at night the buzz and noise cease, and nothing is heard at mayence but the murmurings of the rhine, and the everlasting noise of seventeen water mills, which are fixt to the piles of the bridge of charlemagne. [footnote a: from "the rhine." translated by d.m. aird.] frankfort-am-main[a] by bayard taylor frankfort is a genuine old german city. founded by charlemagne, afterward a rallying-point of the crusaders, and for a long time the capital of the german empire, it has no lack of interesting historical recollections, and, notwithstanding it is fast becoming modernized, one is everywhere reminded of the past. the cathedral, old as the days of peter the hermit, the grotesque street of the jews, the many quaint, antiquated dwellings and the moldering watch-towers on the hills around, give it a more interesting character than any german city i have yet seen. the house we dwell in, on the markt platz, is more than two hundred years old; directly opposite is a great castellated building gloomy with the weight of six centuries, and a few steps to the left brings me to the square of the römerberg, where the emperors were crowned, in a corner of which is a curiously ornamented house formerly the residence of luther. there are legends innumerable connected with all these buildings, and even yet discoveries are frequently made in old houses of secret chambers and staircases. when you add to all this the german love of ghost-stories, and, indeed, their general belief in spirits, the lover of romance could not desire a more agreeable residence. within the walls the greater part of frankfort is built in the old german style, the houses six or seven stories high and every story projecting out over the other; so that those living in the upper part can nearly shake hands out of the windows. at the corners figures of men are often seen holding up the story above on their shoulders and making horrible faces at the weight. when i state that in all these narrow streets, which constitute the greater part of the city, there are no sidewalks, the windows of the lower stories have iron gratings extending a foot or so into the street, which is only wide enough for one cart to pass along, you can have some idea of the facility of walking through them, to say nothing of the piles of wood and market-women with baskets of vegetables which one is continuously stumbling over. even in the wider streets i have always to look before and behind to keep out of the way of the cabs; the people here get so accustomed to it that they leave barely room for them to pass, and the carriages go dashing by at a nearness which sometimes makes me shudder. as i walked across the main and looked down at the swift stream on its way from the distant thuringian forest to join the rhine, i thought of the time when schiller stood there in the days of his early struggles, an exile from his native land, and, looking over the bridge, said in the loneliness of his heart, "that water flows not so deep as my sufferings." from the hills on the darmstadt road i had a view of the country around; the fields were white and bare, and the dark taunus, with the broad patches of snow on his sides, looked grim and shadowy through the dim atmosphere. it was like the landscape of a dream--dark, strange and silent. i have seen the banker rothschild several times driving about the city. this one--anselmo, the most celebrated of the brothers--holds a mortgage on the city of jerusalem. he rides about in style, with officers attending his carriage. he is a little baldheaded man with marked jewish features, and is said not to deceive his looks. at any rate, his reputation is none of the best, either with jews or christians. a caricature was published some time ago in which he is represented as giving a beggar-woman by the wayside a kreutzer--the smallest german coin. she is made to exclaim, "god reward you a thousand fold!" he immediately replies, after reckoning up in his head, "how much have i then? sixteen florins and forty kreutzers!"... the eschernheim tower, at the entrance of one of the city gates, is universally admired by strangers on account of its picturesque appearance, overgrown with ivy and terminated by the little pointed turrets which one sees so often in germany on buildings three or four centuries old. there are five other watch-towers of similar form, which stand on different sides of the city at the distance of a mile or two, and generally upon an eminence overlooking the country. they were erected several centuries ago to discern from afar the approach of an enemy, and protect the caravans of merchants, which at that time traveled from city to city, from the attacks of robbers. the eschernheim tower is interesting from another circumstance which, whether true or not, is universally believed. when frankfort was under the sway of a prince, a swiss hunter, for some civil offense, was condemned to die. he begged his life from the prince, who granted it only on condition that he should fire the figure nine with his rifle through the vane of this tower. he agreed, and did it; and at the present time one can distinguish a rude nine on the vane, as if cut with bullets, while two or three marks at the side appear to be from shots that failed. [footnote a: from "views afoot." published by g.p. putnam's sons.] heidelberg[a] by bayard taylor here in heidelberg at last, and a most glorious town it is. this is our first morning in our new rooms, and the sun streams warmly in the eastern windows as i write, while the old castle rises through the blue vapor on the side of the kaiserstuhl. the neckar rushes on below, and the odenwald, before me, rejoices with its vineyards in the morning light.... there is so much to be seen around this beautiful place that i scarcely know where to begin a description of it. i have been wandering among the wild paths that lead up and down the mountain-side or away into the forests and lonely meadows in the lap of the odenwald. my mind is filled with images of the romantic german scenery, whose real beauty is beginning to displace the imaginary picture which i had painted with the enthusiastic words of howitt. i seem to stand now upon the kaiserstuhl, which rises above heidelberg, with that magnificent landscape around me from the black forest and strassburg to mainz, and from the vosges in france to the hills of spessart in bavaria. what a glorious panorama! and not less rich in associations than in its natural beauty. below me had moved the barbarian hordes of old, the triumphant followers of arminius and the cohorts of rome, and later full many a warlike host bearing the banners of the red cross to the holy land, many a knight returning with his vassals from the field to lay at the feet of his lady-love the scarf he had worn in a hundred battles and claim the reward of his constancy and devotion. but brighter spirits had also toiled below. that plain had witnessed the presence of luther, and a host who strove with him. there had also trodden the master-spirits of german song--the giant twain with their scarcely less harmonious brethren. they, too, had gathered inspiration from those scenes--more fervent worship of nature and a deeper love for their beautiful fatherland.... then there is the wolfsbrunnen, which one reaches by a beautiful walk up the bank of the neckar to a quiet dell in the side of the mountain. through this the roads lead up by rustic mills always in motion, and orchards laden with ripening fruit, to the commencement of the forest, where a quaint stone fountain stands, commemorating the abode of a sorceress of the olden time who was torn in pieces by a wolf. there is a handsome rustic inn here, where every sunday afternoon a band plays in the portico, while hundreds of people are scattered around in the cool shadow of the trees or feeding the splendid trout in the basin formed by a little stream. they generally return to the city by another walk, leading along the mountain-side to the eastern terrace of the castle, where they have fine views of the great rhine plain, terminated by the alsatian hills stretching along the western horizon like the long crested swells on the ocean. we can even see these from the windows of our room on the bank of the neckar, and i often look with interest on one sharp peak, for on its side stands the castle of trifels, where coeur de lion was imprisoned by the duke of austria, and where blondel, his faithful minstrel, sang the ballad which discovered the retreat of the noble captive. from the carl platz, an open square at the upper end of the city, two paths lead directly up to the castle. by the first walk we ascend a flight of steps to the western gate; passing through which, we enter a delightful garden, between the outer walls of the castle and the huge moat which surrounds it. great linden, oak and beech trees shadow the walk, and in secluded nooks little mountain-streams spring from the side of the wall into stone basins. there is a tower over the moat on the south side, next the mountain, where the portcullis still hangs with its sharp teeth as it was last drawn up; on each side stand two grim knights guarding the entrance. in one of the wooded walks is an old tree brought from america in the year . it is of the kind called "arbor vitae," and uncommonly tall and slender for one of this species; yet it does not seem to thrive well in a foreign soil. i noticed that persons had cut many slips off the lower branches, and i would have been tempted to do the same myself if there had been any i could reach. in the curve of the mountain is a handsome pavilion surrounded with beds of flowers and fountains; here all classes meet together in the afternoon to sit with their refreshments in the shade, while frequently a fine band of music gives them their invariable recreation. all this, with the scenery around them, leaves nothing unfinished to their present enjoyment. the germans enjoy life under all circumstances, and in this way they make themselves much happier than we who have far greater means of being so. at the end of the terrace built for the princess elizabeth of england is one of the round towers which was split in twain by the french. half has fallen entirely away, and the other semicircular shell, which joins the terrace and part of the castle-buildings, clings firmly together, altho part of its foundation is gone, so that its outer ends actually hang in the air. some idea of the strength of the castle may be obtained when i state that the walls of this tower are twenty-two feet thick, and that a staircase has been made through them to the top, where one can sit under the lindens growing upon it or look down on the city below with the pleasant consciousness that the great mass upon which he stands is only prevented from crashing down with him by the solidity of its masonry. on one side, joining the garden, the statue of the archduke louis in his breastplate and flowing beard looks out from among the ivy. there is little to be seen about the castle except the walls themselves. the guide conducted us through passages, in which were heaped many of the enormous cannon-balls which it had received in sieges, to some chambers in the foundation. this was the oldest part of the castle, built in the thirteenth century. we also visited the chapel, which is in a tolerable state of preservation. a kind of narrow bridge crosses it, over which we walked, looking down on the empty pulpit and deserted shrines. we then went into the cellar to see the celebrated tun. in a large vault are kept several enormous hogsheads, one of which is three hundred years old, but they are nothing in comparison with the tun, which itself fills a whole vault. it is as high as a common two-story house; on the top is a platform upon which the people used to dance after it was filled, to which one ascends by two flights of steps. i forget exactly how many casks it holds, but i believe eight hundred. it has been empty for fifty years.... opposite my window rises the heiligenberg, on the other side of the neckar. the lower part of it is rich with vineyards, and many cottages stand embosomed in shrubbery among them. sometimes we see groups of maidens standing under the grape-arbors, and every morning the peasant-women go toiling up the steep paths with baskets on their heads, to labor among the vines. on the neckar, below us, the fishermen glide about in their boats, sink their square nets fastened to a long pole, and haul them up with the glittering fish, of which the stream is full. i often lean out of the window late at night, when the mountains above are wrapt in dusky obscurity, and listen to the low, musical ripple of the river. it tells to my excited fancy a knightly legend of the old german time. then comes the bell rung for closing the inns, breaking the spell with its deep clang, which vibrates far away on the night-air till it has roused all the echoes of the odenwald. i then shut the window, turn into the narrow box which the germans call a bed, and in a few minutes am wandering in america. halfway up the heidelberg runs a beautiful walk dividing the vineyards from the forest above. this is called "the philosopher's way," because it was the favorite ramble of the old professors of the university. it can be reached by a toilsome, winding path among the vines, called the snake-way; and when one has ascended to it, he is well rewarded by the lovely view. in the evening, when the sun has got behind the mountain, it is delightful to sit on the stone steps and watch the golden light creeping up the side of the kaiserstuhl, till at last twilight begins to darken in the valley and a mantle of mist gathers above the neckar. we ascended the mountain a few days ago. there is a path which leads up through the forest, but we took the shortest way, directly up the side, tho it was at an angle of nearly fifty degrees. it was hard enough work scrambling through the thick broom and heather and over stumps and stones. in one of the stone-heaps i dislodged a large orange-colored salamander seven or eight inches long. they are sometimes found on these mountains, as well as a very large kind of lizard, called the "eidechse," which the germans say is perfectly harmless, and if one whistles or plays a pipe will come and play around him. the view from the top reminded me of that from catskill mountain house, but is on a smaller scale. the mountains stretch off sideways, confining the view to but half the horizon, and in the middle of the picture the hudson is well represented by the lengthened windings of the "abounding rhine." nestled at the base below us was the little village of handschuhheim, one of the oldest in this part of germany. the castle of its former lords has nearly all fallen down, but the massive solidity of the walls which yet stand proves its antiquity. a few years ago a part of the outer walls which was remarked to have a hollow sound was taken down, when there fell from a deep niche built therein, a skeleton clad in a suit of the old german armor. we followed a road through the woods to the peak on which stands the ruins of st. michael's chapel, which was built in the tenth century and inhabited for a long time by a company of white monks. there is now but a single tower remaining, and all around is grown over with tall bushes and weeds. it had a wild and romantic look, and i sat on a rock and sketched at it till it grew dark, when we got down the mountain the best way we could.... we have just returned from a second visit to frankfort, where the great annual fair filled the streets with noise and bustle. on our way back we stopt at the village of zwingenberg, which lies at the foot of the melibochus, for the purpose of visiting some of the scenery of the odenwald. passing the night at the inn there, we slept with one bed under and two above, and started early in the morning to climb up the side of the melibochus. after a long walk through the forests, which were beginning to change their summer foliage for a brighter garment, we reached the summit and ascended the stone tower which stands upon it. this view gives one a better idea of the odenwald than that from the kaiserstuhl at heidelberg. this is a great collection of rocks, in a wild pine wood, heaped together like pebbles on the seashore and worn and rounded as if by the action of water; so much do they resemble waves that one standing at the bottom and looking up can not resist the idea that they will flow down upon him. it must have been a mighty tide whose receding waves left these masses piled up together. the same formation continues at intervals to the foot of the mountains. it reminded me of a glacier of rocks instead of ice. a little higher up lies a massive block of granite called the giant's column. it is thirty-two feet long and three to four feet in diameter, and still bears the mark of the chisel. when or by whom it was made remains a mystery. some have supposed it was intended to be erected for the worship of the sun by the wild teutonic tribes who inhabited this forest; it is more probably the work of the romans. a project was once started to erect a monument on the battlefield of leipsic, but it was found too difficult to carry into execution. after dining at the little village of reichelsdorf, in the valley below--where the merry landlord charged my friend two kreutzers less than myself because he was not so tall--we visited the castle of schönberg, and joined the bergstrasse again. we walked the rest of the way here. long before we arrived the moon shone down on us over the mountains; and when we turned around the foot of the heiligenberg, the mist descending in the valley of the neckar rested like a light cloud on the church-spires. [footnote a: from "views afoot." published by g.p. putnam's sons.] strassburg[a] by harriet beecher stowe i left the cars with my head full of the cathedral. the first thing i saw, on lifting my eyes, was a brown spire. we climbed the spire; we gained the roof. what a magnificent terrace! a world in itself; a panoramic view sweeping the horizon. here i saw the names of goethe and herder. here they have walked many a time, i suppose. but the inside--a forest-like firmament, glorious in holiness; windows many-hued as the hebrew psalms; a gloom solemn and pathetic as man's mysterious existence; a richness gorgeous and manifold as his wonderful nature. in this gothic architecture we see earnest northern races, whose nature was a composite of influences from pine forest, mountain, and storm, expressing in vast proportions and gigantic masonry those ideas of infinite duration and existence which christianity opened before them. the ethereal eloquence of the greeks could not express the rugged earnestness of souls wrestling with those fearful mysteries of fate, of suffering, of eternal existence, declared equally by nature and revelation. this architecture is hebraistic in spirit, not greek; it well accords with the deep ground-swell of the hebrew prophets. "lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art god. a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past. and as a watch in the night." the objection to gothic architecture, as compared with greek, is, that it is less finished and elegant. so it is. it symbolizes that state of mind too earnest for mere polish, too deeply excited for laws of exact proportions and architectural refinement. it is alpine architecture--vast, wild, and sublime in its foundations, yet bursting into flowers at every interval. the human soul seems to me an imprisoned essence, striving after somewhat divine. there is a struggle in it, as of suffocated flame; finding vent now through poetry, now in painting, now in music, sculpture, or architecture; various are the crevices and fissures, but the flame is one. moreover, as society grows from barbarism upward, it tends to inflorescence, at certain periods, as do plants and trees; and some races flower later than others. this architecture was the first flowering of the gothic race; they had no homers; the flame found vent not by imaged words and vitalized alphabet; they vitalized stone, and their poets were minster-builders; their epics, cathedrals. this is why one cathedral--like strassburg, or notre dame--has a thousandfold the power of any number of madeleines. the madeleine is simply a building; these are poems. i never look at one of them without feeling that gravitation of soul toward its artist which poetry always excites. often the artist is unknown; here we know him; erwin von steinbach, poet, prophet, priest, in architecture. we visited his house--a house old and quaint, and to me full of suggestions and emotions. ah, if there be, as the apostle vividly suggests, houses not made with hands, strange splendors, of which these are but shadows, that vast religious spirit may have been finding scope for itself where all the forces of nature shall have been made tributary to the great conceptions of the soul. save this cathedral, strassburg has nothing except peaked-roofed houses, dotted with six or seven rows of gable windows. [footnote a: from "sunny memories of foreign lands." mrs. stowe published this work in , after returning from the tour she made soon after achieving great fame with "uncle tom's cabin." during this visit she was received everywhere with distinction--and especially in england.] freiburg and the black forest[a] by bayard taylor the airy basket-work tower of the freiburg minster rises before me over the black roofs of the houses, and behind stand the gloomy pine-covered mountains of the black forest. of our walk to heidelberg over the oft-trodden bergstrasse, i shall say nothing, nor how we climbed the kaiserstuhl again, and danced around on the top of the tower for one hour amid cloud and mist, while there was sunshine below in the valley of the neckar. i left heidelberg yesterday morning in the "stehwagen" for carlsruhe. the engine whistled, the train started, and, altho i kept my eyes steadily fixt on the spire of the hauptkirche, three minutes hid it and all the rest of the city from sight. carlsruhe, the capital of baden--which we reached in an hour and a half--is unanimously pronounced by travelers to be a most dull and tiresome city. from a glance i had through one of the gates, i should think its reputation was not undeserved. even its name in german signifies a place of repose. i stopt at kork, on the branch-road leading to strassburg, to meet a german-american about to return to my home in pennsylvania, where he had lived for some time. i inquired according to the direction he had sent me to frankfort, but he was not there; however, an old man, finding who i was, said herr otto had directed him to go with me to hesselhurst, a village four or five miles off, where he would meet me. so we set off immediately over the plain, and reached the village at dusk.... my friend arrived at three o'clock the next morning, and, after two or three hours' talk about home and the friends whom he expected to see so much sooner than i, a young farmer drove me in his wagon to offenburg, a small city at the foot of the black forest, where i took the cars for freiburg. the scenery between the two places is grand. the broad mountains of the black forest rear their fronts on the east, and the blue lines of the french vosges meet the clouds on the west. the night before, in walking over the plain, i saw distinctly the whole of the strassburg minster, whose spire is the highest in europe, being four hundred and ninety feet, or but twenty-five feet lower than the pyramid of cheops. i visited the minster of freiburg yesterday morning. it is a grand, gloomy old pile, dating back from the eleventh century--one of the few gothic churches in germany that have ever been completed. the tower of beautiful fretwork rises to the height of three hundred and ninety-five feet, and the body of the church, including the choir, is of the same length. the interior is solemn and majestic. windows stained in colors that burn let in a "dim religious light" which accords very well with the dark old pillars and antique shrines. in two of the chapels there are some fine altar-pieces by holbein and one of his scholars, and a very large crucifix of silver and ebony, kept with great care, which is said to have been carried with the crusaders to the holy land.... we went this afternoon to the jägerhaus, on a mountain near, where we had a very fine view of the city and its great black minster, with the plain of the briesgau, broken only by the kaiserstuhl, a long mountain near the rhine, whose golden stream glittered in the distance. on climbing the schlossberg, an eminence near the city, we met the grand duchess stephanie, a natural daughter of napoleon, as i have heard. a chapel on the schönberg, the mountain opposite, was pointed out as the spot where louis xv.--if i mistake not--usually stood while his army besieged freiburg. a german officer having sent a ball to this chapel which struck the wall just above the king's head, the latter sent word that if they did not cease firing he would point his cannons at the minster. the citizens thought it best to spare the monarch and save the cathedral. after two days delightfully spent, we shouldered our knapsacks and left freiburg. the beautiful valley at the mouth of which the city lies runs like an avenue for seven miles directly into the mountains, and presents in its loveliness such a contrast to the horrid defile which follows that it almost deserves the name which has been given to a little inn at its head--the "kingdom of heaven." the mountains of the black forest enclose it on each side like walls, covered to the summit with luxuriant woods, and in some places with those forests of gloomy pine which give this region its name. after traversing its whole length, just before plunging into the mountain-depths the traveler rarely meets with a finer picture than that which, on looking back, he seems framed between the hills at the other end. freiburg looks around the foot of one of the heights, with the spire of her cathedral peeping above the top, while the french vosges grow dim in the far perspective. the road now enters a wild, narrow valley which grows smaller as we proceed. from himmelreich, a large rude inn by the side of the green meadows, we enter the höllenthal--that is, from the "kingdom of heaven" to the "valley of hell." the latter place better deserves its appellation than the former. the road winds between precipices of black rock, above which the thick foliage shuts out the brightness of day and gives a somber hue to the scene. a torrent foams down the chasm, and in one place two mighty pillars interpose to prevent all passage. the stream, however, has worn its way through, and the road is hewn in the rock by its side. this cleft is the only entrance to a valley three or four miles long which lies in the very heart of the mountains. it is inhabited by a few woodmen and their families, and, but for the road which passes through, would be as perfect a solitude as the happy valley of rasselas. at the farther end a winding road called "the ascent" leads up the steep mountain to an elevated region of country thinly settled and covered with herds of cattle. the cherries--which in the rhine-plain below had long gone--were just ripe here. the people spoke a most barbarous dialect; they were social and friendly, for everybody greeted us, and sometimes, as we sat on a bank by the roadside, those who passed by would say "rest thee!" or "thrice rest!" passing by the titi lake, a small body of water which was spread out among the hills like a sheet of ink, so deep was its stygian hue, we commenced ascending a mountain. the highest peak of the schwarzwald, the feldberg, rose not far off, and on arriving at the top of this mountain we saw that a half hour's walk would bring us to its summit. this was too great a temptation for my love of climbing heights; so, with a look at the descending sun to calculate how much time we could spare, we set out. there was no path, but we prest directly up the steep side through bushes and long grass, and in a short time reached the top, breathless from such exertion in the thin atmosphere. the pine-woods shut out the view to the north and east, which is said to be magnificent, as the mountain is about five thousand feet high. the wild black peaks of the black forest were spread below us, and the sun sank through golden mist toward the alsatian hills. afar to the south, through cloud and storm, we could just trace the white outline of the swiss alps. the wind swept through the pines around, and bent the long yellow grass among which we sat, with a strange, mournful sound, well suiting the gloomy and mysterious region. it soon grew cold; the golden clouds settled down toward us, and we made haste to descend to the village of lenzkirch before dark. next morning we set out early, without waiting to see the trial of archery which was to take place among the mountain-youths. their booths and targets, gay with banners, stood on a green meadow beside the town. we walked through the black forest the whole forenoon. it might be owing to the many wild stories whose scenes are laid among these hills, but with me there was a peculiar feeling of solemnity pervading the whole region. the great pine-woods are of the very darkest hue of green, and down their hoary, moss-floored aisles daylight seems never to have shone. the air was pure and clear and the sunshine bright, but it imparted no gayety to the scenery; except the little meadows of living emerald which lay occasionally in the lap of a dell, the landscape wore a solemn and serious air. in a storm it must be sublime. about noon, from the top of the last range of hills, we had a glorious view. the line of the distant alps could be faintly traced high in the clouds, and all the heights between were plainly visible, from the lake of constance to the misty jura, which flanked the vosges on the west. from our lofty station we overlooked half switzerland, and, had the air been a little clearer, we could have seen mont blanc and the mountains of savoy. i could not help envying the feelings of the swiss who, after long absence from their native land, first see the alps from this road. if to the emotions with which i then looked on them were added the passionate love of home and country which a long absence creates, such excess of rapture would be almost too great to be borne. [footnote a: from "views afoot." published by g.p. putnam's sons.] ii nuremberg as a medieval city[a] by cecil headlam in spite of all changes, and in spite of the disfigurements of modern industry, nuremberg is and will remain a medieval city, a city of history and legend, a city of the soul. she is like venice in this, as in not a little of her history, that she exercises an indefinable fascination over our hearts no less than over our intellects. the subtle flavor of medieval towns may be likened to that of those rare old ports which are said to taste of the grave; a flavor indefinable, exquisite. rothenburg has it; and it is with rothenburg, that little gem of medievalism, that nuremberg is likely to be compared in the mind of the modern wanderer in franconia. but tho rothenburg may surpass her greater neighbor in the perfect harmony and in the picturesqueness of her red-tiled houses and well-preserved fortifications, in interest at any rate she must yield to the heroine of this story. for, apart from the beauty which nuremberg owes to the wonderful grouping of her red roofs and ancient castle, her coronet of antique towers, her gothic churches and renaissance buildings or brown riverside houses dipping into the mud-colored pegnitz, she rejoices in treasures of art and architecture and in the possession of a splendid history such as rothenburg can not boast. to those who know something of her story nuremberg brings the subtle charm of association. while appealing to our memories by the grandeur of her historic past, and to our imaginations by the work and tradition of her mighty dead, she appeals also to our senses with the rare magic of her personal beauty, if one may so call it. in that triple appeal lies the fascination of nuremberg.... the facts as to the origin of nuremberg are lost in the dim shadows of tradition. when the little town sprang up amid the forests and swamps which still marked the course of the pegnitz, we know as little as we know the origin of the name nürnberg. it is true that the chronicles of later days are only too ready to furnish us with information; but the information is not always reliable. the chronicles, like our own peerage, are apt to contain too vivid efforts of imaginative fiction. the chroniclers, unharassed by facts or documents, with minds "not by geography prejudiced, or warped by history," can not unfortunately always be believed. it is, for instance, quite possible that attila, king of the huns, passed and plundered nuremberg, as they tell us. but there is no proof, no record of that visitation. again, the inevitable legend of a visit from charlemagne occurs. he, you may be sure, was lost in the woods while hunting near nuremberg, and passed all night alone, unhurt by the wild beasts. as a token of gratitude for god's manifest favor he caused a chapel to be built on the spot. the chapel stands to this day--a twelfth-century building--but no matter! for did not otho i., as our chroniclers tell us, attend mass in st. sebald's church in , tho st. sebald's church can not have been built till a century later? the origin of the very name of nuremberg is hidden in the clouds of obscurity. in the earliest documents we find it spelt with the usual variations of early manuscripts--nourenberg, nuorimperc, niurenberg, nuremberc, etc. the origin of the place, we repeat, is equally obscure. many attempts have been made to find history in the light of the derivations of the name. but when philology turns historian it is apt to play strange tricks. nur ein berg (only a castle), or nero's castle, or norix tower--what matter which is the right derivation, so long as we can base a possible theory on it? the norixberg theory will serve to illustrate the incredible quantity of misplaced ingenuity which both of old times and in the present has been wasted in trying to explain the inexplicable. be that as it may, the history of our town begins in the year . it is most probable that the silence regarding the place--it is not mentioned among the places visited by conrad ii. in this neighborhood--points to the fact that the castle did not exist in , but was built between that year and . that it existed then we know, for henry iii. dated a document from here in , summoning a council of bavarian nobles "to his estate nourinberc." the oldest portion, called in the fifteenth century altnürnberg, consisted of the fünfeckiger thurm--the five-cornered tower--the rooms attached and the otmarkapelle. the latter was burned down in , rebuilt in , and called the walpurgiskapelle. these constituted the burggräfliche burg--the burggraf's castle. the rest of the castle was built on by friedrich der rotbart (barbarossa), and called the kaiserliche burg. the old five-cornered tower and the surrounding ground was the private property of the burggraf, and he was appointed by the emperor as imperial officer of the kaiserliche burg. whether the emperors claimed any rights of personal property over nuremberg or merely treated it, at first, as imperial property, it is difficult to determine. the castle at any rate was probably built to secure whatever rights were claimed, and to serve generally as an imperial stronghold. gradually around the castle grew up the straggling streets of nuremberg. settlers built beneath the shadow of the burg. the very names of the streets suggest the vicinity of a camp or fortress. söldnerstrasse, schmiedstrasse, and so forth, betray the military origin of the present busy commercial town. from one cause or another a mixture of races, of germanic and non-germanic, of slavonic and frankish elements, seems to have occurred among the inhabitants of the growing village, producing a special blend which in dialect, in customs, and in dress was soon noticed by the neighbors as unique, and stamping the art and development of nuremberg with that peculiar character which has never left it. various causes combined to promote the growth of the place. the temporary removal of the mart from fürth to nuremberg under henry iii. doubtless gave a great impetus to the development of the latter town. henry iv., indeed, gave back the rights of mart, customs and coinage to fürth. but it seems probable that these rights were not taken away again from nuremberg. the possession of a mart was, of course, of great importance to a town in those days, promoting industries and arts and settled occupations. the nurembergers were ready to suck out the fullest advantage from their privilege. that mixture of races, to which we have referred, resulted in remarkable business energy--energy which soon found scope in the conduct of the business which the natural position of nuremberg on the south and north, the east and western trade routes, brought to her. it was not very long before she became the center of the vast trade between the levant and western europe, and the chief emporium for the produce of italy--the "handelsmetropole" in fact of south germany. nothing in the middle ages was more conducive to the prosperity of a town than the reputation of having a holy man within its borders, or the possession of the miracle-working relics of a saint. just as st. elizabeth made marburg so st. sebaldus proved a very potent attraction to nuremberg. as early as and we hear of pilgrimages to nuremberg in honor of her patron saint. another factor in the growth of the place was the frequent visits which the emperors began to pay to it. lying as it did on their way from bamberg and forcheim to regensburg, the kaisers readily availed themselves of the security offered by this impregnable fortress, and of the sport provided in the adjacent forest. for there was good hunting to be had in the forest which, seventy-two miles in extent, surrounded nuremberg. and hunting, next to war, was then in most parts of europe the most serious occupation of life. all the forest rights, we may mention, of wood-cutting, hunting, charcoal burning and bee-farming belonged originally to the empire. but these were gradually acquired by the nuremberg council, chiefly by purchase in the fifteenth century. in the castle the visitor may notice a list of all the emperors--some thirty odd, all told--who have stayed there--a list that should now include the reigning emperor. we find that henry iv. frequently honored nuremberg with his presence. this is that henry iv., whose scene at canossa with the pope--kaiser of the holy roman empire waiting three days in the snow to kiss the foot of excommunicative gregory--has imprest itself on all memories. his last visit to nuremberg was a sad one. his son rebelled against him, and the old king stopt at nuremberg to collect his forces. in the war between father and son nuremberg was loyal, and took the part of henry iv. it was no nominal part, for in she had to stand a siege from the young henry. for two months the town was held by the burghers and the castle by the prefect conrad. at the end of that time orders came from the old kaiser that the town was to surrender. he had given up the struggle, and his undutiful son succeeded as henry v. to the holy roman empire, and nuremberg with it. the mention of this siege gives us an indication of the growth of the town. the fact of the siege and the words of the chronicler, "the townsmen (oppidani) gave up the town under treaty," seem to point to the conclusion that nuremberg was now no longer a mere fort (castrum), but that walls had sprung up round the busy mart and the shrine of st. sebald, and that by this time nuremberg had risen to the dignity of a "stadt" or city state. presently, indeed, we find her rejoicing in the title of "civitas" (state). the place, it is clear, was already of considerable military importance or it would not have been worth while to invest it. the growing volume of trade is further illustrated by a charter of henry v. ( ) giving to the citizens of worms customs' immunity in various places subject to him, among which frankfort, goslar and nuremberg are named as royal towns ("oppida regis"). [footnote a: from "the story of nuremberg." published by e.p. dutton & co.] its churches and the citadel[a] by thomas frognall dibdin it may be as well briefly to notice the two churches--st. sebald and st. lawrence. the former was within a stone's throw of our inn. above the door of the western front is a remarkably fine crucifix of wood--placed, however, in too deep a recess--said to be by veit stoss. the head is of a very fine form, and the countenance has an expression of the most acute and intense feeling. a crown of thorns is twisted around the brow. but this figure, as well as the whole of the outside and inside of the church, stands in great need of being repaired. the towers are low, with insignificant turrets; the latter evidently a later erection--probably at the commencement of the sixteenth century. the eastern extremity, as well indeed as the aisles, is surrounded by buttresses; and the sharp-pointed, or lancet, windows, seem to bespeak the fourteenth, if not the thirteenth, century. the great "wonder" of the interior is the shrine of the saint (to whom the church is dedicated), of which the greater part is silver. at the time of my viewing it, it was in a disjointed state--parts of it having been taken to pieces, for repair; but from geisler's exquisite little engraving, i should pronounce it to be second to few specimens of similar art in europe. the figures do not exceed two feet in height, and the extreme elevation of the shrine may be about eight feet. nor has geisler's almost equally exquisite little engraved carving of the richly carved gothic font in this church, less claim upon the admiration of the connoisseur. the mother church, or cathedral of st. lawrence, is much larger, and portions of it may be of the latter end of the thirteenth century. the principal entrance presents us with an elaborate doorway--perhaps of the fourteenth century--with the sculpture divided into several compartments, as at rouen, strassburg, and other earlier edifices. there is a poverty in the two towers, both from their size and the meagerness of the windows; but the slim spires at the summit are, doubtless, nearly of a coeval date with that which supports them. the bottom of the large circular or marigold window is injured in its effect by a gothic balustrade of a later period. the interior of this church has certainly nothing very commanding or striking, on the score of architectural grandeur or beauty; but there are some painted glass windows--especially by volkmar--which are deserving of particular attention. nuremberg has one advantage over many populous towns; its public buildings are not choked up by narrow streets; and i hardly know an edifice of distinction, round which the spectator may not walk with perfect ease, and obtain a view of every portion which he is desirous of examining.... of all edifices, more especially deserving of being visited at nuremberg, the citadel is doubtless the most curious and ancient, as well as the most remarkable. it rises to a considerable height, close upon the outer walls of the town, within about a stone's throw of the end of albrecht dürer strasse--or the street where albert dürer lived--and whose house is not only yet in existence, but still the object of attraction and veneration with every visitor of taste, from whatever part of the world he may chance to come. the street running down is the street called (as before observed) after albert dürer's own name; and the well, seen about the middle of it, is a specimen of those wells--built of stone--which are very common in the streets of nuremberg. the upper part of the house of albert dürer is supposed to have been his study. the interior is so altered from its original disposition as to present little or nothing satisfactory to the antiquary. it would be difficult to say how many coats of whitewash have been bestowed upon the rooms, since the time when they were tenanted by the great character in question. passing through this street, therefore, you may turn to the right, and continue onward up a pretty smart ascent; when the entrance to the citadel, by the side of a low wall--in front of an old tower--presents itself to your attention. it was before breakfast that my companion and self visited this interesting interior, over every part of which we were conducted by a most loquacious cicerone, who spoke the french language very fluently, and who was pleased to express his extreme gratification upon finding that his visitors were englishmen. the tower and the adjoining chapel, may be each of the thirteenth century; but the tombstone of the founder of the monastery, upon the site of which the present citadel was built, bears the date of . this tombstone is very perfect; lying in a loose, unconnected manner, as you enter the chapel; the chapel itself having a crypt-like appearance. this latter is very small. from the suite of apartments in the older parts of the citadel, there is a most extensive and uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, which is rather flat. at the distance of about nine miles, the town of fürth (furta) looks as if it were within an hour's walk; and i should think that the height of the chambers (from which we enjoyed this view) to the level ground of the adjacent meadows could be scarcely less than three hundred feet. in these chambers there is a little world of curiosity for the antiquary; and yet it was but too palpable that very many of its more precious treasures had been transported to munich. in the time of maximilian ii., when nuremberg may be supposed to have been in the very height of its glory, this citadel must have been worth a pilgrimage of many score miles to have visited. the ornaments which remain are chiefly pictures; of which several are exceedingly precious.... in these curious old chambers, it was to be expected that i should see some wohlegemuths--as usual, with backgrounds in a blaze of gold, and figures with tortuous limbs, pinched-in waists, and caricatured countenances. in a room, pretty plentifully encumbered with rubbish, i saw a charming snyders; being a dead stag, suspended from a pole. there is here a portrait of albert dürer, by himself; but said to be a copy. if so, it is a very fine copy. the original is supposed to be at munich. there was nothing else that my visit enabled me to see particularly deserving of being recorded; but, when i was told that it was in this citadel that the ancient emperors of germany used oftentimes to reside, and make carousal, and when i saw, now, scarcely anything but dark passages, unfurnished galleries, naked halls, and untenanted chambers--i own that i could hardly refrain from uttering a sigh over the mutability of earthly fashions, and the transitoriness of worldly grandeur. with a rock for its base, and walls almost of adamant for its support--situated also upon an eminence which may be said to look frowningly down over a vast sweep of country--the citadel of nuremberg should seem to have bid defiance, in former times, to every assault of the most desperate and enterprising foe. it is now visited only by the casual traveler--who is frequently startled at the echo of his own footsteps. while i am on the subject of ancient art--of which so many curious specimens are to be seen in this citadel--it may not be irrelevant to conduct the reader at once to what is called the town hall--a very large structure--of which portions are devoted to the exhibition of old pictures. many of these paintings are in a very suspicious state, from the operations of time and accident; but the great boast of the collection is the "triumphs of maximilian i.," executed by albert dürer--which, however, has by no means escaped injury. i was accompanied in my visit to this interesting collection by mr. boerner, and had particular reason to be pleased by the friendliness of his attentions, and by the intelligence of his observations. a great number of these pictures (as i understood) belonged to a house in which he was a partner; and among them a portrait, by pens, struck me as being singularly admirable and exquisite. the countenance, the dress, the attitude, the drawing and coloring, were as perfect as they well might be. but this collection has also suffered from the transportation of many of its treasures to munich. the rooms, halls, and corridors of this hôtel de ville give you a good notion of municipal grandeur. in the neighborhood of nuremberg--that is to say, scarcely more than an english mile from thence--are the grave and tombstone of albert dürer. the monument is simple and striking. in the churchyard there is a representation of the crucifixion, cut in stone. it was on a fine, calm evening, just after sunset, that i first visited the tombstone of albert dürer; and i shall always remember the sensations, with which that visit was attended, as among the most pleasing and impressive of my life. the silence of the spot--its retirement from the city--the falling shadows of night, and the increasing solemnity of every monument of the dead--together with the mysterious, and even awful, effect produced by the colossal crucifix--but yet, perhaps, more than either, the recollection of the extraordinary talents of the artist, so quietly sleeping beneath my feet--all conspired to produce a train of reflections which may be readily conceived, but not so readily described. if ever a man deserved to be considered as the glory of his age and nation, albert dürer was surely that man. he was, in truth, the shakespeare of his art--for the period. [footnote a: from "a bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque tour." dibdin's tour was made in .] nuremberg to-day[a] by cecil headlam nuremberg is set upon a series of small slopes in the midst of an undulating, sandy plain, some feet above the sea. here and there on every side fringes and patches of the mighty forest which once covered it are still visible; but for the most part the plain is now freckled with picturesque villages, in which stand old turreted châteaux, with gabled fronts and latticed windows, or it is clothed with carefully cultivated crops or veiled from sight by the smoke which rises from the new-grown forest of factory chimneys. the railway sets us down outside the walls of the city. as we walk from the station toward the frauen thor, and stand beneath the crown of fortified walls three and a half miles in circumference, and gaze at the old gray towers and picturesque confusion of domes, pinnacles and spires, suddenly it seems as if our dream of a feudal city has been realized. there, before us, is one of the main entrances, still between massive gates and beneath archways flanked by stately towers. still to reach it we must cross a moat fifty feet deep and a hundred feet wide. true, the swords of old days have been turned into pruning-hooks; the crenelles and embrasures which once bristled and blazed with cannon are now curtained with brambles and wall-flowers, and festooned with virginia creepers; the galleries are no longer crowded with archers and cross-bowmen; the moat itself has blossomed into a garden, luxuriant with limes and acacias, elders, planes, chestnuts, poplars, walnut, willow and birch trees, or divided into carefully tilled little garden plots. true it is that outside the moat, beneath the smug grin of substantial modern houses, runs that mark of modernity, the electric tram. but let us for the moment forget these gratifying signs of modern prosperity and, turning to the left ere we enter the frauen thor, walk with our eyes on the towers which, with their steep-pitched roofs and myriad shapes and richly colored tiles, mark the intervals in the red-bricked, stone-cased galleries and mighty bastions, till we come to the first beginnings of nuremberg--the castle. there, on the highest eminence of the town, stands that venerable fortress, crowning the red slope of tiles. roofs piled on roofs, their pinnacles, turrets, points and angles heaped one above the other in a splendid confusion, climb the hill which culminates in the varied group of buildings on the castle rock. we have passed the spittler, mohren, haller and neu gates on our way, and we have crossed by the hallerthorbrücke the pegnitz where it flows into the town. before us rise the bold scarps and salient angles of the bastions built by the italian architect, antonio fazuni, called the maltese ( - ). crossing the moat by a wooden bridge which curls round to the right, we enter the town by the thiergärtnerthor. the right-hand corner house opposite us now is albert dürer's house. we turn to the left and go along the obere schmiedgasse till we arrive at the top of a steep hill (burgstrasse). above, on the left, is the castle. we may now either go through the himmels thor to the left, or keeping straight up under the old trees and passing the "mount of olives" on the left, approach the large deep-roofed building between two towers. this is the kaiserstallung, as it is called, the imperial stables, built originally for a granary. the towers are the luginsland (look in the land) on the east, and the fünfeckiger thurm, the five-cornered tower, at the west end (on the left hand as we thus face it). the luginsland was built by the townspeople in the hard winter of . the mortar for building it, tradition says, had to be mixed with salt, so that it might be kept soft and be worked in spite of the severe cold. the chronicles state that one could see right into the burggraf's castle from this tower, and the town was therefore kept informed of any threatening movements on his part. to some extent that was very likely the object in view when the tower was built, but chiefly it must have been intended, as its name indicates, to afford a far look-out into the surrounding country. the granary or kaiserstallung, as it was called later, was erected in , and is referred to by hans behaim as lying between the five-cornered and the luginsland towers. inside the former there is a museum of curiosities (hans sachs' harp) and the famous collection of instruments of torture and the maiden (eiserne jungfrau). the open space adjoining it commands a splendid view to the north. there, too, on the parapet-wall, may be seen the hoof-marks of the horse of the robber-king, ekkelein von gailingen. here for a moment let us pause, consider our position, and endeavor to make out from the conflicting theories of the archeologists something of the original arrangement of the castles and of the significance of the buildings and towers that yet remain. stretching to the east of the rock on which the castle stands is a wide plain, now the scene of busy industrial enterprise, but in old days no doubt a mere district of swamp and forest. westward the rock rises by three shelves to the summit. the entrance to the castle, it is surmised, was originally on the east side, at the foot of the lower plateau and through a tower which no longer exists. opposite this hypothetical gate-way stood the five-cornered tower. the lower part dates, we have seen, from no earlier than the eleventh century. it is referred to as alt-nürnberg (old nuremberg) in the middle ages. the title of "five-cornered" is really somewhat a misnomer, for an examination of the interior of the lower portion of the tower reveals the fact that it is quadrangular. the pentagonal appearance of the exterior is due to the fragment of a smaller tower which once leaned against it, and probably formed the apex of a wing running out from the old castle of the burggrafs. the burggräfliche burg stood below, according to mummenhof, southwest and west of this point. it was burned down in , and the ruined remains of it are supposed to be traceable in the eminence, now overgrown by turf and trees, through which a sort of ravine, closed in on either side by built-up walls, has just brought us from the town to the vestner thor. the burggraf's castle would appear to have been so situated as to protect the approach to the imperial castle (kaiserburg). the exact extent of the former we can not now determine. meisterlin refers to it as a little fort. we may, however, be certain that it reached from the five-cornered tower to the walpurgiskapelle. for this little chapel, east of the open space called the freiung, is repeatedly spoken of as being on the property of the burggrafs. besides their castle proper, which was held at first as a fief of the empire, and afterward came to be regarded as their hereditary, independent property, the burggrafs were also entrusted with the keeping of a tower which commanded the entrance to the castle rock on the country side, perhaps near the site of the present vestner thor. the guard door may have been attached to the tower, the lower portion of which remains to this day, and is called the bailiff's dwelling (burgamtmannswohnung). the exact relationship of the burggraf to the town on the one hand, and to the empire on the other, is somewhat obscure. originally, it would appear, he was merely an imperial officer, administering imperial estates, and looking after imperial interests. in later days he came to possess great power, but this was due not to his position as castellan or castle governor as such, but to the vast private property his position had enabled him to amass and to keep. as the scope and ambitions of the burggrafs increased, and as the smallness of their castle at nuremberg, and the constant friction with the townspeople, who were able to annoy them in many ways, became more irksome, they gave up living at nuremberg, and finally were content to sell their rights and possessions there to the town. beside the guard door of the burggrafs, which together with their castle passed by purchase into the hands of the town ( ), there were various other similar guard towers, such as the one which formerly occupied the present site of the luginsland, or the hasenburg at the so-called himmels thor, or a third which once stood near the deep well on the second plateau of the castle rock. but we do not know how many of these there were, or where they stood, much less at what date they were built. all we do know is that they, as well as the burggrafs' possessions, were purchased in succession by the town, into whose hands by degrees came the whole property of the castle rock. above the ruins of the "little fort" of the burggrafs rises the first plateau of the castle rock. it is surrounded by a wall, strengthened on the south side by a square tower against which leans the walpurgiskapelle. the path to the kaiserburg leads under the wall of the plateau, and is entirely commanded by it and by the quadrangular tower, the lower part of which alone remains and is known by the name of burgamtmannswohnung. the path goes straight to this tower, and at the foot of it is the entrance to the first plateau. then along the edge of this plateau the way winds southward, entirely commanded again by the wall of the second plateau, at the foot of which there probably used to be a trench. over this a bridge led to the gate of the second plateau. the trench has been long since filled in, but the huge round tower which guarded the gate still remains and is the vestner thurm. the vestner thurm of sinwel thurm (sinwel = round), or, as it is called in a charter of the year , the "middle tower," is the only round tower of the burg. it was built in the days of early gothic, with a sloping base, and of roughly flattened stones with a smooth edge. it was partly restored and altered in , when it was made a few feet higher and its round roof was added. it is worth paying the small gratuity required for ascending to the top. the view obtained of the city below is magnificent. the vestner thurm, like the whole imperial castle, passed at length into the care of the town, which kept its tower watch here as early as the fourteenth century. the well which supplied the second plateau with water, the "deep well," as it is called, stands in the center, surrounded by a wall. it is feet deep, hewn out of the solid rock, and is said to have been wrought by the hands of prisoners, and to have been the labor of thirty years. so much we can easily believe as we lean over and count the six seconds that elapse between the time when an object is dropt from the top to the time when it strikes the water beneath. passages lead from the water's edge to the rathaus, by which prisoners came formerly to draw water, and to st. john's churchyard and other points outside the town. the system of underground passages here and in the castle was an important part of the defenses, affording as it did a means of communication with the outer world and as a last extremity, in the case of a siege, a means of escape. meanwhile, leaving the deep well and passing some insignificant modern dwellings, and leaving beneath us on the left the himmelsthor, let us approach the summit of the rock and the buildings of the kaiserburg itself. as we advance to the gateway with the intention of ringing the bell for the castellan, we notice on the left the double chapel, attaching to the heathen tower, the lower part of which is encrusted with what were once supposed to be pagan images. the tower protrudes beyond the face of the third plateau, and its prominence may indicate the width of a trench, now filled in, which was once dug outside the enclosing wall of the summit of the rock. the whole of the south side of this plateau is taken up by the "palast" (the vast hall, two stories high, which, tho it has been repeatedly rebuilt, may in its original structure be traced back as far as the twelfth century), and the "kemnate" or dwelling-rooms which seem to have been without any means of defense. this plateau, like the second, is supplied with a well. but the first object that strikes the eye on entering the court-yard is the ruined limetree, the branches of which once spread their broad and verdant shelter over the whole extent of the quadrangle. on leaving the castle we find ourselves in the burgstrasse, called in the old days unter der veste, which was probably the high street of the old town. off both sides of this street and of the bergstrasse ran narrow crooked little alleys lined with wooden houses of which time and fire have left scarcely any trace. as you wander round the city tracing the line of the old walls, you are struck by the general air of splendor. most of the houses are large and of a massive style of architecture, adorned with fanciful gables and bearing the impress of the period when every inhabitant was a merchant, and every merchant was lodged like a king. the houses of the merchant princes, richly carved both inside and out, tell of the wealth and splendor of nuremberg in her proudest days. but you will also come upon a hundred crooked little streets and narrow alleys, which, tho entrancingly picturesque, tell of yet other days and other conditions. they tell of those early medieval days when the houses were almost all of wood and roofed with straw-thatching or wooden tiles; when the chimneys and bridges alike were built of wood. only here and there a stone house roofed with brick could then be seen. the streets were narrow and crooked, and even in the fifteenth century mostly unpaved. in wet weather they were filled with unfathomable mud, and even tho in the lower part of the town trenches were dug to drain the streets, they remained mere swamps and morasses. in dry weather the dust was even a worse plague than the mud. pig-styes stood in front of the houses; and the streets were covered with heaps of filth and manure and with rotting corpses of animals, over which the pigs wandered at will. street police in fact was practically non-existent. medievalism is undoubtedly better when survived. [footnote a: from "the story of nuremberg." published by e.p. dutton & co.] walls and other fortifications[a] by cecil headlam a glance at the map will show us that nuremberg, as we know it, is divided into two almost equal divisions. they are called after the names of the principal churches, the st. lorenz, and the st. sebald quarter. the original wall included, it will be seen, only a small portion of the northern or st. sebald division. with the growth of the town an extension of the walls and an increase of fortification followed as a matter of course. it became necessary to carry the wall over the pegnitz in order to protect the lorenzkirche and the suburb which was springing up around it. the precise date of this extension of the fortifications can not be fixt. the chronicles attribute it to the twelfth century, in the reign of the first hohenstaufen, konrad iii. no trace of a twelfth-century wall remains; but the chroniclers may, for all that, have been not very wide of the mark. the mud and wood which supplied the material of the wall may have given place to stone in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. however that may be, it will be remembered that the lower part of the white tower, which is the oldest fragment of building we can certainly point to dates from the thirteenth century. all other portions of the second wall clearly indicate the fourteenth century, or later, as the time of their origin.... beyond the white tower the moat was long ago filled up, but the section of it opposite the unschlittplatz remained open for a longer period than the rest, and was called the klettengraben, because of the burdocks which took root there. hereabouts, on a part of the moat, the waizenbräuhaus was built in , which is now the famous freiherrlich von tuchersche brewery. here, too, the unschlitthaus was built at the end of the fifteenth century as a granary. it has since been turned into a school. we have now reached one of the most charming and picturesque bits of nuremberg. once more we have to cross the pegnitz, whose banks are overhung by quaint old houses. their projecting roofs and high gables, their varied chimneys and overhanging balconies from which trail rich masses of creepers, make an entrancing foreground to the towers and the arches of the henkersteg. the wall was carried on arches over the southern arm of the pegnitz to the point of the saumarkt (or trödelmarkt) island which here divides the river, and thence in like manner over the northern arm. the latter portion of it alone survives and comprises a large tower on the north bank called the wasserthurm, which was intended to break the force of the stream; a bridge supported by two arches over the stream, which was the henkersteg, the habitation of the hangman, and on the island itself a smaller tower, which formed the point of support for the original, southern pair of arches, which joined the unschlitthaus, but were so badly damaged in by the high flood that they were demolished and replaced by a wooden, and later by an iron bridge. somewhere in the second half of the fourteenth century, then, in the reign of karl iv., they began to build the outer enceinte, which, altho destroyed at many places and broken through by modern gates and entrances, is still fairly well preserved, and secures to nuremberg the reputation of presenting most faithfully of all the larger german towns the characteristics of a medieval town. the fortifications seem to have been thrown up somewhat carelessly at first, but dread of the hussites soon inspired the citizens to make themselves as secure as possible. in times of war and rumors of war all the peasants within a radius of two miles of the town were called upon to help in the construction of barriers and ramparts. the whole circle of walls, towers, and ditches was practically finished by , when with pardonable pride tucher wrote, "in this year was completed the ditch round the town. it took twenty-six years to build, and it will cost an enemy a good deal of trouble to cross it." part of the ditch had been made and perhaps revetted as early as , but it was not till twenty years later that it began to be dug to the enormous breadth and depth which it boasts to-day. the size of it was always a source of pride to nurembergers, and it was perhaps due to this reason that up till as recently as it was left perfectly intact. on the average it is about feet broad. it was always intended to be a dry ditch, and, so far from there being any arrangements for flooding it, precautions were taken to carry the little fischbach, which formerly entered the town near the modern sternthor, across the ditch in a trough. the construction of the ditch was provided for by an order of the council in , to the effect that all householders, whether male or female, must work at the ditch one day in the year with their children of over twelve years of age, and with all their servants, male or female. those who were not able to work had to pay a substitute. subsequently this order was changed to the effect that every one who could or would not work must pay ten pfennige. there were no exemptions from this liturgy, whether in favor of councillor, official, or lady. the order remained ten years in force, tho the amount of the payment was gradually reduced.... at the time of the construction of these and the other lofty towers it was still thought that the raising of batteries as much as possible would increase their effect. in practise the plunging fire from platforms at the height of some eighty feet above the level of the parapets of the town wall can hardly have been capable of producing any great effect, more especially if the besieging force succeeded in establishing itself on the crest of the counterscarp of the ditches, since from that point the swell of the bastions masked the towers. but there was another use for these lofty towers. the fact is that the nuremberg engineers, at the time that they were built, had not yet adopted a complete system of flank-works, and not having as yet applied with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external defenses from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round the walls of his castle, and send up his support to any point of attack. the great round towers of nuremberg are more properly, in fact, detached keeps than portions of a combined system, rather observatories than effective defenses. the round towers, however, were not the sole defenses of the gates. outside each one of them was a kind of fence of pointed beams after the manner of a chevaux-de-frise, while outside the ditch and close to the bridge stood a barrier, by the side of which was a guard-house. tho it was not till that all the main gates were fitted with drawbridges, the wooden bridges that served before that could doubtless easily be destroyed in cases of emergency. double-folding doors and portcullises protected the gateways themselves. once past there, the enemy was far from being in the town, for the road led through extensive advanced works, presenting, as in the case of the laufer thor outwork, a regular "place d'armes." further, the road was so engineered as not to lead in a straight line from the outer main gates to the inner ones, but rather so as to pursue a circuitous course. thus the enemy in passing through from the one to the other were exposed as long as possible to the shots and projectiles of the defenders, who were stationed all round the walls and towers flanking the advanced tambour. this arrangement may be traced very clearly at the frauen thor to-day. the position of the round tower, it will be observed, was an excellent one for commanding the road from the outer to the inner gate. at intervals of every or feet the interior wall is broken by quadrilateral towers. some eighty-three of these, including the gate towers, can still be traced. what the number was originally we do not know. it is the sort of subject on which chroniclers have no manner of conscience. the hartmann schedel chronicle, for instance, gives nuremberg towers in all. the fact that there are days in the year is of course sufficient proof of this assertion! the towers, which rise two or even three stories above the wall, communicated on both sides with the covered way. they are now used as dwelling-houses. on some of them there can still be seen, projecting near the roof, two little machicoulis turrets, which served as guard-rooms for observing the enemy, and also, by overhanging the base of the tower, enabled the garrison to hurl down on their assailants at the foot of the wall a hurricane of projectiles of every sort. like the wall the towers are built almost entirely of sandstone, but on the side facing the town they are usually faced with brick. the shapes of the roofs vary from flat to pointed, but the towers themselves are simple and almost austere in form in comparison with those generally found in north germany, where fantasy runs riot in red brick. the nuremberg towers were obviously intended in the first place for use rather than for ornament. at the end of our long perambulations of the walls it will be a grateful relief to sit for a while at one of the "restaurations" or restaurants on the walls. there, beneath the shade of acacias in the daytime, or in the evening by the white light of incandescent gas, you may sit and watch the groups of men, women, and children all drinking from their tall glasses of beer, and you may listen to the whirr and ting-tang of the electric cars, where the challenge of sentinels or the cry of the night-watchman was once the most frequent sound. or, if you have grown tired of the horn- and the schloss-zwinger, cross the ditch on the west side of the town and make your way to the rosenau, in the fürtherstrasse. the rosenau is a garden of trees and roses not lacking in chairs and tables, in bowers, benches, and a band. there, too, you will see the good burgher with his family drinking beer, eating sausages, and smoking contentedly. [footnote a: from "the story of nuremberg." published by e.p. dutton & co.] albert dÜrer[a] by cecil headlam among the most treasured of nuremberg's relics is the low-ceilinged, gabled house near the thiergärtnerthor, in which albert dürer lived and died, in the street now called after his name. the works of art which he presented to the town, or with which he adorned its churches, have unfortunately, with but few exceptions, been sold to the stranger. it is in vienna and munich, in dresden and berlin, in florence, in prague, or the british museum, that we find splendid collections of dürer's works. not at nuremberg. but here at any rate we can see the house in which he toiled--no genius ever took more pains--and the surroundings which imprest his mind and influenced his inspiration. if, in the past, nuremberg has been only too anxious to turn his works into cash, to-day she guards albert dürer's house with a care and reverence little short of religious. she has sold, in the days of her poverty and foolishness, the master's pictures and drawings, which are his own best monument; but she has set up a noble monument to his memory (by rauch, ) in the dürer platz, and his house is opened to the public between the hours of a.m. and p.m., and and p.m. on week days. the albert-dürer-haus society has done admirable work in restoring and preserving the house in its original state with the aid of professor wanderer's architectural and antiquarian skill. reproductions of dürer's works are also kept here. the most superficial acquaintance with dürer's drawings will have prepared us for the sight of his simple, unpretentious house and its contents. in his "birth of the virgin" he gives us a picture of the german home of his day, where there were few superfluous knick-knacks, but everything which served for daily use was well and strongly made and of good design. ceilings, windows, doors and door-handles, chests, locks, candlesticks, banisters, waterpots, the very cooking utensils, all betray the fine taste and skilled labor, the personal interest of the man who made them. so in dürer's house, as it is preserved to-day, we can still see and admire the careful simplicity of domestic furniture, which distinguishes that in the "birth of the virgin." the carved coffers, the solid tables, the spacious window-seats, the well-fitting cabinets let into the walls, the carefully wrought metal-work we see there are not luxurious; their merit is quite other than that. in workmanship as in design, how utterly do they put to shame the contents of the ordinary "luxuriously furnished apartments" of the present day! and what manner of man was he who lived in this house that nestles beneath the ancient castle? in the first place a singularly loveable man, a man of sweet and gentle spirit, whose life was one of high ideals and noble endeavor. in the second place an artist who, both for his achievements and for his influence on art, stands in the very front rank of artists, and of german artists is "facile princeps." at whatever point we may study dürer and his works we are never conscious of disappointment. as painter, as author, as engraver, or simple citizen, the more we know of him the more we are morally and intellectually satisfied. fortunately, through his letters and writings, his journals and autobiographical memoirs we know a good deal about his personal history and education. dürer's grandfather came of a farmer race in the village of eytas in hungary. the grandfather turned goldsmith, and his eldest son, albrecht dürer the elder, came to nuremberg in and settled in the burgstrasse (no. ). he became one of the leading goldsmiths of the town; married and had eighteen children, of whom only three, boys, grew up. albrecht, or as we call him albert dürer, was the eldest of these. he was born may , , in his father's house, and anthoni koberger, the printer and bookseller, the stein of those days, stood godfather to him. the maintenance of so large a family involved the father, skilful artist as he was, in unremitting toil. his father, who was delighted with albert's industry, took him from school as soon as he had learned to read and write and apprenticed him to a goldsmith. "but my taste drew me toward painting rather than toward goldsmithry. i explained this to my father, but he was not satisfied, for he regretted the time i had lost." benvenuto cellini has told us how his father, in like fashion, was eager that he should practise the "accurst art" of music. dürer's father, however, soon gave in and in apprenticed the boy to michael wolgemut. that extraordinary beautiful, and, for a boy of that age, marvelously executed portrait of himself at the age of thirteen (now at vienna) must have shown the father something of the power that lay undeveloped in his son. so "it was arranged that i should serve him for three years. during that time god gave me great industry so that i learned many things; but i had to suffer much at the hands of the other apprentices." when in his apprenticeship was completed dürer set out on his wanderjahre, to learn what he could of men and things, and, more especially, of his own trade. martin schongauer was dead, but under that master's brothers dürer studied and helped to support himself by his art at colmar and at bâsle. various wood-blocks executed by him at the latter place are preserved there. whether he also visited venice now or not is a moot point. here or elsewhere, at any rate, he came under the influence of the bellini, of mantegna, and more particularly of jacopo dei barbari--the painter and engraver to whom he owed the incentive to study the proportions of the human body--a study which henceforth became the most absorbing interest of his life. "i was four years absent from nuremberg," he records, "and then my father recalled me. after my return hans frey came to an understanding with my father. he gave me his daughter agnes and with her florins, and we were married." dürer, who writes so lovingly of his parents, never mentions his wife with any affection; a fact which to some extent confirms her reputation as a xantippe. she, too, in her way, it is suggested, practised the art of cross-hatching. pirkheimer, writing after the artist's death, says that by her avariciousness and quarreling nature she brought him to the grave before his day. she was probably a woman of a practical and prosaic turn, to whom the dreamy, poetic, imaginative nature of the artist-student, her husband, was intolerably irritating. yet as we look at his portraits of himself--and no man except rembrandt has painted himself so often--it is difficult to understand how any one could have been angry with albert dürer. never did the face of man bear a more sweet, benign, and trustful expression. in those portraits we see something of the beauty, of the strength, of the weakness of the man so beloved in his generation. his fondness for fine clothes and his legitimate pride in his personal beauty reveal themselves in the rich vestments he wears and the wealth of silken curls, so carefully waved, so wondrously painted, falling proudly over his free neck. [footnote a: from "the story of nuremberg." published by e.p. dutton & co.] iii other bavarian cities munich[a] by bayard taylor art has done everything for munich. it lies on a large flat plain sixteen hundred feet above the sea and continually exposed to the cold winds from the alps. at the beginning of the present century it was but a third-rate city, and was rarely visited by foreigners; since that time its population and limits have been doubled and magnificent edifices in every style of architecture erected, rendering it scarcely secondary in this respect to any capital in europe.[b] every art that wealth or taste could devise seems to have been spent in its decoration. broad, spacious streets and squares have been laid out, churches, halls and colleges erected, and schools of painting and sculpture established which draw artists from all parts of the world. all this was principally brought about by the taste of the present king, ludwig i., who began twenty or thirty years ago, when he was crown-prince, to collect the best german artists around him and form plans for the execution of his grand design. he can boast of having done more for the arts than any other living monarch; and if he had accomplished it all without oppressing his people, he would deserve an immortality of fame.... we went one morning to see the collection of paintings formerly belonging to eugène beauharnais, who was brother-in-law to the present king of bavaria, in the palace of his son, the duke of leuchtenberg. the first hall contains works principally by french artists, among which are two by gérard--a beautiful portrait of josephine, and the blind belisarius carrying his dead companion. the boy's head lies on the old man's shoulder; but for the livid paleness of his limbs, he would seem to be only asleep, while a deep and settled sorrow marks the venerable features of the unfortunate emperor. in the middle of the room are six pieces of statuary, among which canova's world-renowned group of the graces at once attracts the eye. there is also a kneeling magdalen, lovely in her wo, by the same sculptor, and a very touching work of schadow representing a shepherd-boy tenderly binding his sash around a lamb which he has accidentaly wounded with his arrow. we have since seen in the st. michael's church the monument to eugene beauharnais from the chisel of thorwaldsen. the noble, manly figure of the son of josephine is represented in the roman mantle, with his helmet and sword lying on the ground by him. on one side sits history writing on a tablet; on the other stand the two brother-angels death and immortality. they lean lovingly together, with arms around each other, but the sweet countenance of death has a cast of sorrow as he stands with inverted torch and a wreath of poppies among his clustering locks. immortality, crowned with never-fading flowers, looks upward with a smile of triumph, and holds in one hand his blazing torch. it is a beautiful idea, and thorwaldsen has made the marble eloquent with feeling. the inside of the square formed by the arcades and the new residence is filled with noble old trees which in summer make a leafy roof over the pleasant walks. in the middle stands a grotto ornamented with rough pebbles and shells, and only needing a fountain to make it a perfect hall of neptune. passing through the northern arcade, one comes into the magnificent park called the english garden, which extends more than four miles along the bank of the isar, several branches of whose milky current wander through it and form one or two pretty cascades. it is a beautiful alteration of forest and meadow, and has all the richness and garden-like luxuriance of english scenery. winding walks lead along the isar or through the wood of venerable oaks, and sometimes a lawn of half a mile in length, with a picturesque temple at its farther end, comes in sight through the trees. the new residence is not only one of the wonders of munich, but of the world. altho commenced in and carried on constantly since that time by a number of architects, sculptors and painters, it is not yet finished; if art were not inexhaustible, it would be difficult to imagine what more could be added. the north side of the max joseph platz is taken up by its front of four hundred and thirty feet, which was nine years in building, under the direction of the architect klenze. the exterior is copied after the palazzo pitti, in florence. the building is of light-brown sandstone, and combines an elegance, and even splendor, with the most chaste and classic style. the northern front, which faces the royal garden, is now nearly finished. it has the enormous length of eight hundred feet; in the middle is a portico of ten ionic columns. instead of supporting a triangular façade, each pillar stands separate and bears a marble statue from the chisel of schwanthaler. the interior of the building does not disappoint the promise of the outside. it is open every afternoon, in the absence of the king, for the inspection of visitors. we went early to the waiting-hall, where several travelers were already assembled, and at four o'clock were admitted into the newer part of the palace, containing the throne-hall, ball-room, etc. on entering the first hall, designed for the lackeys and royal servants, we were all obliged to thrust our feet into cloth slippers to walk over the polished mosaic floor. the walls are of scagliola marble and the ceilings ornamented brilliantly in fresco. the second hall, also for servants, gives tokens of increasing splendors in the richer decorations of the walls and the more elaborate mosaic of the floor. we next entered the audience chamber, in which the court-marshal receives the guests. the ceiling is of arabesque sculpture profusely painted and gilded.... finally we entered the hall of the throne. here the encaustic decoration so plentifully employed in the other rooms is dropt, and an effect even more brilliant obtained by the united use of marble and gold. picture a long hall with a floor of polished marble, on each side twelve columns of white marble with gilded capitals, between which stand colossal statues of gold. at the other end is the throne of gold and crimson, with gorgeous hangings of crimson velvet. the twelve statues in the hall are called the "wittelsbach ancestors" and represent renowned members of the house of wittelsbach from which the present family of bavaria is descended. they were cast in bronze by stiglmaier after the models of schwanthaler, and then completely covered with a coating of gold; so that they resemble solid golden statues. the value of the precious metal on each one is about three thousand dollars, as they are nine feet in height. we visited yesterday morning the glyptothek, the finest collection of ancient sculpture except that in the british museum i have yet seen, and perhaps elsewhere unsurpassed north of the alps. the building, which was finished by klenze in , has an ionic portico of white marble, with a group of allegorical figures representing sculpture and the kindred arts. on each side of the portico there are three niches in the front, containing on one side pericles, phidias and vulcan; on the other, hadrian, prometheus and daedalus. the whole building forms a hollow square and is lighted entirely from the inner side. there are in all twelve halls, each containing the remains of a particular era in the art, and arranged according to time; so that, beginning with the clumsy productions of the ancient egyptians, one passes through the different stages of grecian art, afterward that of rome, and finally ends with the works of our own times--the almost grecian perfection of thorwaldsen and canova. these halls are worthy to hold such treasures, and what more could be said of them? the floors are of marble mosaic, the sides of green or purple scagliola and the vaulted ceilings covered with raised ornaments on a ground of gold. no two are alike in color and decoration, and yet there is a unity of taste and design in the whole which renders the variety delightful. from the egyptian hall we enter one containing the oldest remains of grecian sculpture, before the artists won power to mold the marble to their conceptions. then follow the celebrated aegina marbles, from the temple of jupiter panhellenius, on the island of aegina. they formerly stood in the two porticoes, the one group representing the fight for the body of laomedon, the other the struggle for the dead patroclus. the parts wanting have been admirably restored by thorwaldsen. they form almost the only existing specimens of the aeginetan school. passing through the apollo hall, we enter the large hall of bacchus, in which the progress of the art is distinctly apparent. a satyr lying asleep on a goatskin which he has thrown over a rock is believed to be the work of praxiteles. the relaxation of the figure and perfect repose of every limb is wonderful. the countenance has traits of individuality which led me to think it might have been a portrait, perhaps of some rude country swain. in the hall of niobe, which follows, is one of the most perfect works that ever grew into life under a sculptor's chisel. mutilated as it is, without head and arms, i never saw a more expressive figure. ilioneus, the son of niobe, is represented as kneeling, apparently in the moment in which apollo raises his arrow, and there is an imploring supplication in his attitude which is touching in the highest degree. his beautiful young limbs seem to shrink involuntarily from the deadly shaft; there is an expression of prayer, almost of agony, in the position of his body. it should be left untouched. no head could be added which would equal that one pictures to himself while gazing upon it. the pinacothek is a magnificent building of yellow sandstone, five hundred and thirty feet long, containing thirteen hundred pictures selected with great care from the whole private collection of the king, which amounts to nine thousand. above the cornice on the southern side stand twenty-five colossal statues of celebrated painters by schwanthaler. as we approached, the tall bronze door was opened by a servant in the bavarian livery, whose size harmonized so well with the giant proportions of the building that until i stood beside him and could mark the contrast i did not notice his enormous frame. i saw then that he must be near eight feet high and stout in proportion. he reminded me of the great "baver of trient," in vienna. the pinacothek contains the most complete collection of works by old german artists anywhere to be found. there are in the hall of the spanish masters half a dozen of murillo's inimitable beggar-groups. it was a relief, after looking upon the distressingly stiff figures of the old german school, to view these fresh, natural countenances. one little black-eyed boy has just cut a slice out of a melon, and turns with a full mouth to his companion, who is busy eating a bunch of grapes. the simple, contented expression on the faces of the beggars is admirable. i thought i detected in a beautiful child with dark curly locks the original of his celebrated infant st. john. i was much interested in two small juvenile works of raphael and his own portrait. the latter was taken, most probably, after he became known as a painter. the calm, serious smile which we see on his portrait as a boy had vanished, and the thin features and sunken eye told of intense mental labor. [footnote a: from "views afoot." published by g.p. putnam's sons.] [footnote b: this was written about . the population of munich is now ( ), , . munich is rated as third in importance among german cities.] augsburg[a] by thomas frognall dibdin in ancient times--that is to say, upward of three centuries ago--the city of augsburg was probably the most populous and consequential in the kingdom of bavaria. it was the principal residence of the noblesse, and the great mart of commerce. dukes, barons, nobles of every rank and degree, became domiciled here. a thousand blue and white flags streamed from the tops of castellated mansions, and fluttered along the then almost impregnable ramparts. it was also not less remarkable for the number and splendor of its religious establishments. here was a cathedral, containing twenty-four chapels; and an abbey or monastery (of saints ulric and afra) which had no rival in bavaria for the size of its structure and the wealth of its possessions. this latter contained a library, both of mss. and printed books, of which the recent work of braun has luckily preserved a record; and which, but for such record, would have been unknown to after ages. the treasures of this library are now entirely dispersed; and munich, the capital of bavaria, is the grand repository of them. augsburg, in the first instance, was enriched by the dilapidations of numerous monasteries; especially upon the suppression of the order of the jesuits. the paintings, books, and relics, of every description, of such monasteries as were in the immediate vicinity of this city, were taken away to adorn the town hall, churches, capitals and libraries. of this collection (of which no inconsiderable portion, both for number and intrinsic value, came from the neighboring monastery of eichstadt), there has of course been a pruning; and many flowers have been transplanted to munich. the principal church, at the end of the maximilian street, is that which once formed the chief ornament of the famous abbey of sts. ulric and afra. i should think that there is no portion of the present building older than the fourteenth century; while it is evident that the upper part of the tower is of the middle of the sixteenth. it has a nearly globular or mosque-shaped termination--so common in the greater number of the bavarian churches. it is frequented by congregations both of the catholic and protestant persuasion; and it was highly gratifying to see, as i saw, human beings assembled under the same roof, equally occupied in their different forms of adoration, in doing homage to their common creator. augsburg was once distinguished for great learning and piety, as well as for political consequence; and she boasts of a very splendid martyrological roll. at the present day, all is comparatively dull and quiet; but you can not fail to be struck with the magnificence of many of the houses, and the air of importance hence given to the streets; while the paintings upon the outer walls add much to the splendid effect of the whole. the population of augsburg is supposed to amount to about thirty thousand. in the time of maximilian and charles v. it was, i make no doubt, twice as numerous.[b] [footnote a: from "a bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque taur," published in .] [footnote b: augsburg has now ( ) a population of , . woolen and cotton goods and machinery are its manufactured products.] ratisbon[a] by thomas frognall dibdin it was dark when we entered ratisbon, and, having been recommended to the hotel of the agneau blanc, we drove thither, and alighted--close to the very banks of the danube--and heard the roar of its rapid stream, turning several mills, close, as it were, to our very ears. the master of the hotel, whose name is cramer, and who talked french very readily, received us with peculiar courtesy; and, on demanding the best situated room in the house, we were conducted on the second floor, to a chamber which had been occupied, only two or three days before, by the emperor of austria himself, on his way to aix-la-chapelle. the next morning was a morning of wonder to us. our sitting-room, which was a very lantern, from the number of windows, gave us a view of the rushing stream of the danube, of a portion of the bridge over it, of some beautifully undulating and vine-covered hills, in the distance, on the opposite side--and, lower down the stream, of the town walls and water-mills, of which latter we had heard the stunning sounds on our arrival. the whole had a singularly novel and pleasing appearance. the town hall was large and imposing; but the cathedral, surrounded by booths--it being fair-time--was, of course, the great object of my attention. in short, i saw enough within an hour to convince me that i was visiting a large, curious, and well-peopled town; replete with antiquities, and including several of the time of the romans, to whom it was necessarily a very important station. ratisbon is said to contain a population of about , souls.[b] the cathedral can boast of little antiquity. it is almost a building of yesterday; yet it is large, richly ornamented on the outside, especially on the west, between the towers--and is considered one of the noblest structures of the kind in bavaria. the interior wants that decisive effect which simplicity produces. it is too much broken into parts, and covered with monuments of a very heterogeneous description. near it i traced the cloisters of an old convent or monastery of some kind, now demolished, which could not be less than five hundred years old. the streets of ratisbon are generally picturesque, as well from their undulating forms, as from the antiquity of a great number of the houses. the modern parts of the town are handsome, and there is a pleasant intermixture of trees and grass plats in some of these more recent portions. there are some pleasing public walks, after the english fashion; and a public garden, where a colossal sphinx, erected by the late philosopher gleichen, has a very imposing appearance. here is also an obelisk erected to the memory of gleichen himself, the founder of these gardens; and a monument to the memory of kepler, the astronomer; which latter was luckily spared in the assault of this town by the french in . but these are, comparatively, every-day objects. a much more interesting source of observation, to my mind, were the very few existing relics of the once celebrated monastery of st. emmeram--and a great portion of the remains of another old monastery, called st. james--which latter may indeed be designated the college of the jacobites; as the few members who inhabit it were the followers of the house and fortunes of the pretender, james stuart. the monastery or abbey of st. emmeram was one of the most celebrated throughout europe; and i suspect that its library, both of mss. and printed books, was among the principal causes of its celebrity. of all interesting objects of architectural antiquity in ratisbon, none struck me so forcibly--and, indeed, none is in itself so curious and singular--as the monastery of st. james. the front of that portion of it, connected with the church, should seem to be of an extremely remote antiquity. it is the ornaments, or style of architecture, which give it this character of antiquity. the ornaments, which are on each side of the doorway, or porch, are quite extraordinary. [footnote a: from "a bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque tour," published in .] [footnote b: ratisbon has now ( ) a population of , . its manufactured products consist chiefly of pottery and lead pencils.] iv berlin and elsewhere a look at the german capital[a] by theophile gautier the train spins along across great plains gilded by the setting sun; soon night comes, and with it, sleep. at stations remote from one another, german voices shout german names; i do not recognize them by the sound, and look for them in vain upon the map. magnificent great station buildings are shown up by gaslight in the midst of surrounding darkness, then disappear. we pass hanover and minden; the train keeps on its way; and morning dawns. on either side stretched a peat-moss, upon which the mist was producing a singular mirage. we seemed to be upon a causeway traversing an immense lake whose waves crept up gently, dying in transparent folds along the edge of the embankment. here and there a group of trees or a cottage, emerging like an island, completed the illusion, for such it was. a sheet of bluish mist, floating a little above the ground and curling up along its upper surface under the rays of the sun, caused this aqueous phantasmagoria, resembling the fata morgana of sicily. in vain did my geographical knowledge protest, disconcerted, against this inland sea, which no map of prussia indicates; my eyes would not give it up, and later in the day, when the sun, rising higher, had dried up this imaginary lake, they required the presence of a boat to make them admit that any body of water could be real. suddenly upon the left were massed the trees of a great park; tritons and nereids appeared, dabbling in the basin of a fountain; there was a dome and a circle of columns rising above extensive buildings; and this was potsdam.... a few moments later we were in berlin, and a fiacre set me down at the hotel. one of the keenest pleasures of a traveler is that first drive through a hitherto unknown city, destroying or confirming his preconceived idea of it. all that is peculiar and characteristic seizes upon the yet virgin eye, whose perceptive power is never more clear. my idea of berlin had been drawn in great measure from hoffman's fantastic stories. in spite of myself, a berlin, strange and grotesque, peopled with aulic councillors, sandmen, kreislers, archivist lindursts, and student anselms, had reared itself within my brain, amid a fog of tobacco-smoke; and there before me was a city regularly built, stately, with wide streets, extensive public grounds, and imposing edifices of a style half-english, half-german, and modern to the last degree. as we drove along i glanced down into those cellars, with steps so polished, so slippery, so well-soaped, that one might slide in as into the den of an ant-lion--to see if i might not discover hoffman himself seated on a tun, his feet crossed upon the bowl of his gigantic pipe, and surrounded by a tangle of grotesque chimeras, as he is represented in the vignette of the french translation of his stories; and, to tell the truth, there was nothing of the kind in these subterranean shops whose proprietors were just opening their doors! the cats, of benignant aspect, rolled no phosphorescent eyeballs, like the cat murr in the story, and they seemed quite incapable of writing their memoirs, or of deciphering a score of richard wagner's. these handsome stately houses, which are like palaces, with their columns and pediments and architraves, are built of brick for the most part, for stone seems rare in berlin; but the brick is covered with cement or tinted stucco, to simulate hewn stone; deceitful seams indicate imaginary layers, and the illusion would be complete, were it not that in spots the winter frosts have detached the cement, revealing the red shades of the baked clay. the necessity of painting the whole façade, in order to mask the nature of the material, gives the effect of enormous architectural decorations seen in open air. the salient parts, moldings, cornices, entablatures, consoles, are of wood, bronze, or cast-iron, to which suitable forms have been given; when you do not look too closely the effect is satisfactory. truth is the only thing lacking in all this splendor. the palatial buildings which border regent's park in london present also these porticoes, and these columns with brick cores and plaster-fluting, which, by aid of a coating of oil paint, are expected to pass for stone or marble. why not build in brick frankly, since its water-coloring and capacity for ingeniously varied arrangement furnish so many resources? even in berlin i have seen charming houses of this kind which had the advantage of being truthful. a fictitious material always inspires a certain uneasiness. the hotel is very well located, and i propose to sketch the view seen from its steps. it will give a fair idea of the general character of the city. the foreground is a quay bordering the spree. a few boats with slender masts are sleeping on the brown water. vessels upon a canal or a river, in the heart of a city, have always a charming effect. along the opposite quay stretches a line of houses; a few of them are ancient, and bear the stamp thereof; the king's palace makes the corner. a cupola upon an octagonal tower rises proudly above the other roofs, the square sides of the tower adding grace to the curve of the dome. a bridge spans the river, reminding me, with its white marble groups, of the ponte san angelo at rome. these groups--eight in number, if my memory does not deceive me--are each composed of two figures; one allegorical, winged, representing the country, or glory; the other, a young man, guided through many trials to victory or immortality. these groups, in purely classic taste, are not wanting in merit, and show in some parts good study of the nude; their pedestals are ornamented with medallions, whereon the prussian eagle, half-real, half-heraldic, makes a fine appearance. considered as a decoration, the whole is, in my opinion, somewhat too rich for the simplicity of the bridge, which opens midway to allow the passage of vessels. farther on, through the trees of a public garden of some kind, appears the old museum, a great structure in the greek style, with doric columns relieved against a painted background. at the corners of the roof, bronze horses held by grooms are outlined upon the sky. behind this building, and looking sideways, you perceive the triangular pediment of the new museum. on crossing the bridge, the dark façade of the palace comes in view, with its balustraded terrace; the carvings around the main entrance are in that old, exaggerated german rococo which i have seen before and have admired in the palace in dresden. this kind of barbaric taste has something charming about it, and entertains the eye, satiated with chefs d'oeuvre. it has invention, fancy, originality; and tho i may be censured for the opinion, i confess i prefer this exuberance to the coldness of the greek style imitated with more erudition than success in our modern public buildings. at each side stand great bronze horses pawing the ground, and held by naked grooms. i visited the apartments of the palace; they are rich and elegant, but present nothing interesting to the artist save their ancient recessed ceilings filled with curious figures and arabesques. in the concert-hall there is a musicians' gallery in grotesque carving, silvered; its effect is really charming. silver is not used enough in decorations; it is a relief from the classic gold, and forms admirable combinations with colors. the chapel, whose dome rises above the rest of the building, is well planned and well lighted, comfortable, reasonably decorated. let us cross the square and take a look at the museum, admiring, as we pass, an immense porphyry vase standing on cubes of the same material, in front of the steps which lead up to the portico. this portico is painted in fresco by various hands, under the direction of the celebrated peter cornelius. the paintings form a broad frieze, folding itself back at each end upon the side wall of the portico, and interrupted in the middle to give access to the museum. the portion on the left contains a whole poem of mythologic cosmogony, treated with that philosophy and that erudition which the germans carry into compositions of this kind; the right, purely anthropologie, represents the birth, development, and evolution of humanity. if i were to describe in detail these two immense frescoes, you would certainly be charmed with the ingenious invention, the profound knowledge, and the excellent judgment of the artist. the mysteries of the early creation are penetrated, and everything is faultlessly scientific. also, if i should show you them in the form of those fine german engravings, the lines heightened by delicate shadows, the execution as accurate as that of albrecht dürer, the tone light and harmonious, you would admire the ordering of the composition, balanced with so much art, the groups skilfully united one to another, the ingenious episodes, the wise selection of the attributes, the significance of each separate thing; you might even find grandeur of style, an air of magisterial dignity, fine effects of drapery, proud attitudes, well-marked types, muscular audacities à la michel angelo, and a certain germanic savagery of fine flavor. you would be struck with this free handling of great subjects, this vast conceptive power, this carrying out of an idea, which french painters so often lack; and you would think of cornelius almost as highly as the germans do. but in the presence of the work itself, the impression is completely different. i am well aware that fresco-painting, even in the hands of the italian masters, skilful as they were in the technical details of their art, has not the charm of oil. the eye must become habituated to this rude, lustreless coloring, before we can discern its beauties. many people who never say so--for nothing is more rare than the courage to avow a feeling or an opinion--find the frescoes of the vatican and the sistine frightful; but the great names of michel angelo and raphael impose silence upon them; they murmur vague formulas of enthusiasm, and go off to rhapsodize--this time with sincerity--over some magdalen of guido, or some madonna of carlo dolce. i make large allowance, therefore, for this unattractive aspect which belongs to fresco-painting; but in this case, the execution is by far too repulsive. the mind may be content, but the eye suffers. painting, which is altogether a plastic art, can express its ideal only through forms and colors. to think is not enough; something must be done.... [illustration: berlin: unter den linden] [illustration: berlin: the brandenburg gate] [illustration: berlin: the royal castle and emperor william bridge] [illustration: berlin: the white hall in the royal castle] [illustration: berlin: the national gallery and frederick's bridge] [illustration: berlin: the gendarmenmarkt] [illustration: the column of victory in berlin] [illustration: the mausoleum at charlottenburg] [illustration: the new palace at potsdam] [illustration: the castle of sans souci, potsdam] [illustration: the cathedral of aix-la-chapelle, tomb of charlemagne] [illustration: the royal palace of schÖnbrunn, near vienna (the man on the sidewalk at the left is the emperor francis joseph)] [illustration: salzburg, austria] i shall not now give an inventory of the museum in berlin, which is rich in pictures and statues; to do this would require more space than is at my command. we find represented here, more or less favorably, all the great masters, the pride of royal galleries. but the most remarkable thing in this collection is the very numerous and very complete collection of the primitive painters of all countries and all schools, from the byzantine down to those which immediately precede the renaissance. the old german school, so little known in france, and on many accounts so curious, is to be studied to better advantage here than anywhere else. a rotunda contains tapestries after designs by raphael, of which the original cartoons are now in hampton court. the staircase of the new museum is decorated with those remarkable frescoes by kaulbach, which the art of engraving and the universal exposition have made so well known in france. we all remember the cartoon entitled "the dispersion of races," and all paris has admired, in goupil's window that poetic "defeat of the huns," where the strife begun between the living warriors is carried on amidst the disembodied souls that hover above that battlefield strewn with the dead. "the destruction of jerusalem" is a fine composition, tho somewhat too theatrical. it resembles a "close of the fifth act" much more than beseems the serious character of fresco painting. in the panel which represents hellenic civilization, homer is the central figure; this composition pleased me least of all. other paintings as yet unfinished present the climacteric epochs of humanity. the last of these will be almost contemporary, for when a german begins to paint, universal history comes under review; the great italian painters did not need so much in achieving their master-pieces. but each civilization has its peculiar tendencies, and this encyclopedic painting is a characteristic of the present time. it would seem that, before flinging itself into its new career, the world has felt the necessity of making a synthesis of its past.... this staircase, which is of colossal size, is ornamented with casts from the finest antiques. copies of the metopes of the pantheon and friezes from the temple of theseus are set into its walls, and upon one of the landings stands the pandrosion, with all the strong and tranquil beauty of its caryatides. the effect of the whole is very grand. at the present day there is no longer any visible difference between the people of one country and of another. the uniform domino of civilization is worn everywhere, and no difference in color, no special cut of the garment, notifies you that you are away from home. the men and women whom i met in the street escape description; the flâneurs of the unter den linden are exactly like the flâneurs of the boulevard des italiens. this avenue, bordered by splendid houses, is planted, as its name indicates, with lindens; trees "whose leaf is shaped like a heart," as heinrich heine remarks--a peculiarity which makes unter den linden dear to lovers, and eminently suited for sentimental interviews. at its entrance stands the equestrian statue of frederick the great. like the champs-elysées in paris, this avenue terminates at a triumphal arch, surmounted by a chariot with four bronze horses. passing under the arch, we come out into a park in some degrees resembling the bois de boulogne. along the edge of this park, which is shadowed by great trees having all the intensity of northern verdure, and freshened by a little winding stream, open flower-crowded gardens, in whose depths you can discern summer retreats, which are neither châlets, nor cottages, nor villas, but pompeiian houses with their tetrastylic porticos and panels of antique red. the greek taste is held in high esteem in berlin. on the other hand, they seem to disdain the style of the renaissance, so much in vogue in paris; i saw no edifice of this kind in berlin. night came; and after paying a hasty visit to the zoological garden, where all the animals were asleep, except a dozen long-tailed paroquets and cockatoos, who were screaming from their perches, pluming themselves, and raising their crests, i returned to my hotel to strap my trunk and betake myself to the hamburg railway station, as the train would leave at ten, a circumstance which prevented me from going, as i had intended, to the opera to hear cherubini's "deux journées," and to see louise taglioni dance the sevillana.... for the traveler there are but two ways: the instantaneous proof, or the prolonged study. time failed me for the latter. deign to accept this simple and rapid impression. [footnote a: from "a winter in russia." by permission of, and by arrangement with, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, . since gautier wrote, berlin has greatly increased in population and in general importance. what is known as "greater berlin" now embraces about , , souls. many of the quaint two-story houses, which formerly were characteristic of the city, have given way to palatial houses and business blocks. berlin is a thoroughly modern commercial city. it ranks among european cities immediately after london and paris.] charlottenburg[a] by harriet beecher stowe then we drove to charlottenburg to see the mausoleum. i know not when i have been more deeply affected than there; and yet, not so much by the sweet, lifelike statue of the queen as by that of the king, her husband, executed by the same hand.[b] such an expression of long-desired rest, after suffering the toil, is shed over the face--so sweet, so heavenly! there, where he has prayed year after year--hoping, yearning, longing--there, at last, he rests, life's long anguish over! my heart melted as i looked at these two, so long divided--he so long a mourner, she so long mourned--now calmly resting side by side in a sleep so tranquil. we went through the palace. we saw the present king's writing desk and table in his study, just as he left them. his writing establishment is about as plain as yours. men who really mean to do anything do not use fancy tools. his bedroom, also, is in a style of severe simplicity. there were several engravings fastened against the wall; and in the anteroom a bust and medallion of the empress eugenie--a thing which i should not exactly have expected in a born king's palace; but beauty is sacred, and kings can not call it parvenu. then we went into the queen's bed-room, finished in green, and then through the rooms of queen louisa. those marks of her presence, which you saw during the old king's lifetime, are now removed; we saw no traces of her dresses, gloves, or books. in one room, draped in white muslin over pink, we were informed the empress of russia was born. in going out to charlottenburg, we rode through the thiergarten, the tuileries of berlin. in one of the most quiet and sequestered spots is the monument erected by the people of berlin to their old king. the pedestal is carrara marble, sculptured with beautiful scenes called garden pleasures--children in all manner of outdoor sports, and parents fondly looking on. it is graceful, and peculiarly appropriate to those grounds where parents and children are constantly congregating. the whole is surmounted by a statue of the king, in white marble--the finest representation of him i have ever seen. thoughtful, yet benign, the old king seems like a good father keeping a grave and affectionate watch over the pleasures of his children in their garden frolics. there was something about these moss-grown gardens that seemed so rural and pastoral, that i at once preferred them to all i had seen in europe. choice flowers are planted in knots, here and there, in sheltered nooks, as if they had grown by accident: and an air of sweet, natural wildness is left amid the most careful cultivation. the people seemed to be enjoying themselves less demonstratively and with less vivacity than in france, but with a calm inwardness. each nation has its own way of being happy, and the style of life in each bears a certain relation of appropriateness to character. the trim, dressy, animated air of the tuileries suits admirably with the mobile, sprightly vivacity of society there. both, in their way, are beautiful; but this seems less formal, and more according to nature. [footnote a: from "sunny memories of foreign lands."] [footnote b: king frederick william iii. and queen louise are here referred to. since mrs. stowe's visit ( ) the emperor william i. and the empress augusta have been buried in this mausoleum.] leipsic and dresden[a] by bayard taylor i have now been nearly two days in wide-famed leipsic, and the more i see of it, the better i like it. it is a pleasant, friendly town, old enough to be interesting and new enough to be comfortable. there is much active business-life, through which it is fast increasing in size and beauty. its publishing establishments are the largest in the world, and its annual fairs attended by people from all parts of europe. this is much for a city to accomplish situated alone in the middle of a great plain, with no natural charms of scenery or treasures of art to attract strangers. the energy and enterprise of its merchants have accomplished all this, and it now stands in importance among the first cities of europe. on my first walk around the city, yesterday morning, i passed the augustus platz--a broad green lawn on which front the university and several other public buildings. a chain of beautiful promenades encircles the city on the site of its old fortifications. following their course through walks shaded by large trees and bordered with flowering shrubs, i passed a small but chaste monument to sebastian bach, the composer, which was erected almost entirely at the private cost of mendelssohn, and stands opposite the building in which bach once directed the choirs. as i was standing beside it a glorious choral swelled by a hundred voices came through the open windows like a tribute to the genius of the great master. having found my friend, we went together to the sternwarte, or observatory, which gives a fine view of the country around the city, and in particular the battlefield. the castellan who is stationed there is well acquainted with the localities, and pointed out the position of the hostile armies. it was one of the most bloody and hard-fought battles which history records. the army of napoleon stretched like a semicircle around the southern and eastern sides of the city, and the plain beyond was occupied by the allies, whose forces met together here. schwarzenberg, with his austrians, came from dresden; blücher, from halle, with the emperor alexander. their forces amounted to three hundred thousand, while those of napoleon ranked at one hundred and ninety-two thousand men. it must have been a terrific scene. four days raged the battle, and the meeting of half a million of men in deadly conflict was accompanied by the thunder of sixteen hundred cannon. the small rivers which flow through leipsic were swollen with blood, and the vast plain was strewed with more than fifty thousand dead. it is difficult to conceive of such slaughter while looking at the quiet and tranquil landscape below. it seemed more like a legend of past ages, when ignorance and passion led men to murder and destroy, than an event which the last half century witnessed. for the sake of humanity it is to be hoped that the world will never see such another. there are some lovely walks around leipsic. we went yesterday afternoon with a few friends to the rosenthal, a beautiful meadow, bordered by forests of the german oak, very few of whose druid trunks have been left standing. there are swiss cottages embowered in the foliage where every afternoon the social citizens assemble to drink their coffee and enjoy a few hours' escape from the noisy and dusty streets. one can walk for miles along these lovely paths by the side of the velvet meadows or the banks of some shaded stream. we visited the little village of golis, a short distance off, where, in the second story of a little white house, hangs the sign, "schiller's room." some of the leipsic "literati" have built a stone arch over the entrance, with the inscription above: "here dwelt schiller in , and wrote his hymn to joy." everywhere through germany the remembrances of schiller are sacred. in every city where he lived they show his dwelling. they know and reverence the mighty spirit who has been among them. the little room where he conceived that sublime poem is hallowed as if by the presence of unseen spirits. i was anxious to see the spot where poniatowsky fell. we returned over the plain to the city, and passed in at the gate by which the cossacks entered, pursuing the flying french. crossing the lower part, we came to the little river elster, in whose waves the gallant prince sank. the stone bridge by which we crossed was blown up by the french to cut off pursuit. napoleon had given orders that it should not be blown up till the poles had all passed over as the river, tho narrow, is quite deep and the banks are steep. nevertheless, his officers did not wait, and the poles, thus exposed to the fire of the enemy, were obliged to plunge into the stream to join the french army, which had begun retreat toward frankfort. poniatowsky, severely wounded, made his way through a garden near, and escaped on horseback into the water. he became entangled among the fugitives, and sank. by walking a little distance along the road toward frankfort we could see the spot where his body was taken out of the river; it is now marked by a square stone covered with the names of his countrymen who have visited it. we returned through the narrow arched way by which napoleon fled when the battle was lost. another interesting place in leipsic is auerbach's cellar, which, it is said, contains an old manuscript history of faust from which goethe derived the first idea of his poem. he used to frequent this cellar, and one of his scenes in "faust" is laid in it. we looked down the arched passage; not wishing to purchase any wine, we could find no pretense for entering. the streets are full of book-stores, and one-half the business of the inhabitants appears to consist in printing, paper-making and binding. the publishers have a handsome exchange of their own, and during the fairs the amount of business transacted is enormous. at last in this "florence of the elbe," as the saxons have christened it! exclusive of its glorious galleries of art, which are scarcely surpassed by any in europe, dresden charms one by the natural beauty of its environs. it stands in a curve of the elbe, in the midst of green meadows, gardens and fine old woods, with the hills of saxony sweeping around like an amphitheater and the craggy peaks of the highlands looking at it from afar. the domes and spires at a distance give it a rich italian look, which is heightened by the white villas embowered in trees gleaming on the hills around. in the streets there is no bustle of business--nothing of the din and confusion of traffic which mark most cities; it seems like a place for study and quiet enjoyment. the railroad brought us in three hours from leipsic over the eighty miles of plain that intervene. we came from the station through the neustadt, passing the japanese palace and the equestrian statue of augustus the strong. the magnificent bridge over the elbe was so much injured by the late inundation as to be impassable; we were obliged to go some distance up the river-bank and cross on a bridge of boats. next morning my first search was for the picture-gallery. we set off at random, and after passing the church of our lady, with its lofty dome of solid stone, which withstood the heaviest bombs during the war with frederick the great, came to an open square one side of which was occupied by an old brown, red-roofed building which i at once recognized from pictures as the object of our search. i have just taken a last look at the gallery this morning, and left it with real regret; for during the two visits raphael's heavenly picture of the madonna and child had so grown into my love and admiration that it was painful to think i should never see it again. there are many mere which clung so strongly to my imagination, gratifying in the highest degree the love for the beautiful, that i left them with sadness and the thought that i would now only have the memory. i can see the inspired eye and godlike brow of the jesus-child as if i were still standing before the picture, and the sweet, holy countenance of the madonna still looks upon me. yet, tho this picture is a miracle of art, the first glance filled me with disappointment. it has somewhat faded during the three hundred years that have rolled away since the hand of raphael worked on the canvas, and the glass with which it is covered for better preservation injures the effect. after i had gazed on it a while, every thought of this vanished. the figure of the virgin seemed to soar in the air, and it was difficult to think the clouds were not in motion. an aërial lightness clothes her form, and it is perfectly natural for such a figure to stand among the clouds. two divine cherubs look up from below, and in her arms sits the sacred child. those two faces beam from the picture like those of angels. the mild, prophetic eye and lofty brow of the young jesus chain one like a spell. there is something more than mortal in its expression--something in the infant face which indicates a power mightier than the proudest manhood. there is no glory around the head, but the spirit which shines from those features marks its divinity. in the sweet face of the mother there speaks a sorrowful foreboding mixed with its tenderness, as if she knew the world into which the savior was born and foresaw the path in which he was to tread. it is a picture which one can scarce look upon without tears. there are in the same room six pictures by correggio which are said to be among his best works--one of them, his celebrated magdalen. there is also correggio's "holy night," or the virgin with the shepherds in the manger, in which all the light comes from the body of the child. the surprise of the shepherds is most beautifully exprest. in one of the halls there is a picture of van der werff in which the touching story of hagar is told more feelingly than words could do it. the young ishmael is represented full of grief at parting with isaac, who, in childish unconsciousness of what has taken place, draws in sport the corner of his mother's mantle around him and smiles at the tears of his lost playmate. nothing can come nearer real flesh and blood than the two portraits of raphael mengs, painted by himself when quite young. you almost think the artist has in sport crept behind the frame and wishes to make you believe he is a picture. it would be impossible to speak of half the gems of art contained in this unrivalled collection. there are twelve large halls, containing in all nearly two thousand pictures. the plain south of dresden was the scene of the hard-fought battle between napoleon and the allied armies in . on the heights above the little village of räcknitz, moreau was shot on the second day of the battle. we took a footpath through the meadows, shaded by cherry trees in bloom, and reached the spot after an hour's walk. the monument is simple--a square block of granite surmounted by a helmet and sword, with the inscription, "the hero moreau fell here by the side of alexander, august , ," i gathered as a memorial a few leaves of the oak which shades it. by applying an hour before the appointed time, we obtained admission to the royal library. it contains three hundred thousand volumes--among them, the most complete collection of historical works in existence. each hall is devoted to a history of a separate country, and one large room is filled with that of saxony alone. there is a large number of rare and curious manuscripts, among which are old greek works of the seventh and eighth centuries, a koran which once belonged to the sultan bajazet, the handwriting of luther and melanchthon, a manuscript volume with pen-and-ink sketches by albert dürer, and the earliest works after the invention of printing. among these latter was a book published by faust and schaeffer, at mayence, in . there were also mexican manuscripts written on the aloe leaf, and many illuminated monkish volumes of the middle ages. we were fortunate in seeing the grüne gewölbe, or green gallery, a collection of jewels and costly articles unsurpassed in europe. the first hall into which we were ushered contained works in bronze. they were all small, and chosen with regard to their artistical value. some by john of bologna were exceedingly fine, as was also a group in iron cut out of a single block, perhaps the only successful attempt in this branch. the next room contained statues, and vases covered with reliefs in ivory. the most remarkable work was the fall of lucifer and his angels, containing ninety-two figures in all, carved out of a single piece of ivory sixteen inches high. it was the work of an italian monk, and cost him many years of hard labor. there were two tables of mosaic-work that would not be out of place in the fabled halls of the eastern genii, so much did they exceed my former ideas of human skill. the tops were of jasper, and each had a border of fruit and flowers in which every color was represented by some precious stone, all with the utmost delicacy and truth to nature. it is impossible to conceive the splendid effect it produced. besides some fine pictures on gold by raphael mengs, there was a madonna, the largest specimen of enamel-painting in existence. however costly the contents of these halls, they were only an introduction to those which followed. each one exceeded the other in splendor and costliness. the walls were covered to the ceiling with rows of goblets, vases, etc., of polished jasper, agate, and lapis lazuli. splendid mosaic tables stood around with caskets of the most exquisite silver and gold work upon them, and vessels of solid silver, some of them weighing six hundred pounds, were placed at the foot of the columns. we were shown two goblets, each prized at six thousand thalers, made of gold and precious stones; also the great pearl called the "spanish dwarf," nearly as large as a pullet's egg, globes and vases cut entirely out of the mountain-crystal, magnificent nuremberg watches and clocks, and a great number of figures made ingeniously of rough pearls and diamonds. the officer showed me a hen's egg of silver. there was apparently nothing remarkable about it, but by unscrewing it came apart and disclosed the yolk of gold. this again opened, and a golden chicken was seen; by touching a spring a little diamond crown came from the inside, and, the crown being again taken apart, out dropt a valuable diamond ring. the seventh hall contains the coronation-robes of augustus ii. of poland, and many costly specimens of carving in wood. a cherry-stone is shown in a glass case which has one hundred and twenty-five facets, all perfectly finished, carved upon it. the next room we entered sent back a glare of splendor that perfectly dazzled us; it was all gold, diamond, ruby, and sapphire. every case sent out such a glow and glitter that it seemed like a cage of imprisoned lightnings. wherever the eye turned it was met by a blaze of broken rainbows. they were there by hundreds, and every gem was a fortune--whole cases of swords with hilts and scabbards of solid gold studded with gems, the great two-handed coronation sword of the german emperors, daggers covered with brilliants and rubies, diamond buttons, chains, and orders, necklaces and bracelets of pearl and emerald, and the order of the golden fleece made in gems of every kind. we were also shown the largest known onyx, nearly seven inches long and four inches broad. one of the most remarkable works is the throne and court of aurungzebe, the indian king, by dinglinger, a celebrated goldsmith of the last century. it contains one hundred and thirty-two figures, all of enameled gold and each one most perfectly and elaborately finished. it was purchased by prince augustus for fifty-eight thousand thalers,[b] which was not a high sum, considering that the making of it occupied dinglinger and thirteen workmen for seven years. it is almost impossible to estimate the value of the treasures these halls contain. that of the gold and jewels alone must be many millions of dollars, and the amount of labor expended on these toys of royalty is incredible. as monuments of patient and untiring toil they are interesting, but it is sad to think how much labor and skill and energy have been wasted in producing things which are useless to the world and only of secondary importance as works of art. perhaps, however, if men could be diverted by such playthings from more dangerous games, it would be all the better. [footnote a: from "views afoot." published by g.p. putnam's sons.] [footnote b: a prussian or saxon thaler is about seventy cents. author's note--the thaler went out of use in germany in .] weimar in goethe's day[a] by madame de staËl of all the german principalities, there is none that makes us feel so much as weimar the advantages of a small state, of which the sovereign is a man of strong understanding, and who is capable of endeavoring to please all orders of his subjects, without losing anything in their obedience. such a state is as a private society, where all the members are connected together by intimate relations. the duchess louisa of saxe weimar is the true model of a woman destined by nature to the most illustrious rank; without pretension, as without weakness, she inspires in the same degree confidence and respect; and the heroism of the chivalrous ages has entered her soul without taking from it any thing of her sex's softness. the military talents of the duke are universally respected, and his lively and reflective conversation continually brings to our recollection that he was formed by the great frederic. it is by his own and his mother's reputation that the most distinguished men of learning have been attracted to weimar, and by them germany, for the first time, has possest a literary metropolis; but, as this metropolis was at the same time only an inconsiderable town, its ascendency was merely that of superior illumination; for fashion, which imposes uniformity in all things, could not emanate from so narrow a circle. herder was just dead when i arrived at weimar; but wieland, goethe, and schiller were still there. their writings are the perfect resemblances of their character and conversation. this very rare concordance is a proof of sincerity; when the first object in writing is to produce an effect upon others, a man never displays himself to them, such as he is in reality; but when he writes to satisfy an internal inspiration which has obtained possession of the soul, he discovers by his works, even without intending it, the very slightest shades of his manner of thinking and acting. the residence in country towns has always appeared to me very irksome. the understanding of the men is narrowed, the heart of the women frozen there; people live so much in each other's presence that one is opprest by one's equals; it is no longer this distant opinion, the reverberation of which animates you from afar like the report of glory; it is a minute inspection of all the actions of your life, an observation of every detail, which prevents the general character from being comprehended; and the more you have of independence and elevation of mind, the less able you are to breathe amidst so many little impediments. this painful constraint did not exist at weimar; it was rather a large palace than a little town; a select circle of society, which made its interest consist in the discussion of all the novelties of art and science: women, the amiable scholars of some superior men, were constantly speaking of the new literary works, as of the most important public events. they enjoyed the whole universe by reading and study; they freed themselves by the enlargement of the mind from the restraint of circumstances; they forgot the private anecdotes of each individual, in habitually reflecting together on those great questions which influence the destiny common to all alike. and in this society there were none of those provincial wonders, who so easily mistake contempt for grace, and affectation for elegance. [footnote a: from "germany."] ulm[a] by thomas frognall dibdin we were now within about twenty english miles of ulm. nothing particular occurred, either by way of anecdote or of scenery, till within almost the immediate approach or descent to that city--the last in the suabian territories, and which is separated from bavaria by the river danube. i caught the first glance of that celebrated river (here of comparatively trifling width) with no ordinary emotions of delight. it recalled to my memory the battle of blenheim, or of hochstedt; for you know that it was across this very river, and scarcely a score of miles from ulm, that the victorious marlborough chased the flying french and bavarians--at the battle just mentioned. at the same moment, almost, i could not fail to contrast this glorious issue with the miserable surrender of the town before me--then filled by a large and well-disciplined army, and commanded by that nonpareil of generals, j.g. mack!--into the power of bonaparte almost without pulling a trigger on either side--the place itself being considered, at the time, one of the strongest towns in europe. these things, i say, rushed upon my memory, when, on the immediate descent into ulm, i caught the first view of the tower of the minster which quickly put marlborough, and mack, and bonaparte out of my recollection. i had never, since quitting the beach at brighton, beheld such an english-like looking cathedral--as a whole; and particularly the tower. it is broad, bold, and lofty; but, like all edifices, seen from a neighboring and perhaps loftier height, it loses, at first view, very much of the loftiness of its character. however, i looked with admiration, and longed to approach it. this object was accomplished in twenty minutes. we entered ulm about two o'clock: drove to an excellent inn (the white stag--which i strongly recommend to all travelers), and ordered our dinner to be got ready by five; which, as the house was within a stone's cast of the cathedral, gave us every opportunity of visiting it beforehand. the day continued most beautiful: and we sallied forth in high spirits, to gaze at and to admire every object of antiquity which should present itself. the cathedral of ulm is doubtless among the most respectable of those on the continent. it is large and wide, and of a massive and imposing style of architecture. the buttresses are bold, and very much after the english fashion. the tower is the chief exterior beauty. before we mounted it, we begged the guide, who attended us, to conduct us all over the interior. this interior is very noble, and even superior, as a piece of architecture, to that of strasburg. i should think it even longer and wider--for the truth is, that the tower of strasburg cathedral is as much too tall, as that of ulm cathedral is too short, for its nave and choir. not very long ago, they had covered the interior by a whitewash; and thus the mellow tint of probably about five centuries--in a spot where there are few immediately surrounding houses--and in a town of which the manufactories and population are comparatively small--the latter about , --thus, i say, the mellow tint of these five centuries (for i suppose the cathedral to have been finished about the year ) has been cruelly changed for the staring and chilling effects of whiting.[b] the choir is interesting in a high degree. at the extremity of it is an altar--indicative of the lutheran form of worship being carried on within the church--upon which are oil paintings upon wood, emblazoned with gilt backgrounds--of the time of hans burgmair, and of others at the revival of the art of painting in germany. these pictures turn upon hinges, so as to shut up, or be thrown open; and are in the highest state of preservation. their subjects are entirely scriptural; and perhaps old john holbein, the father of the famous hans holbein, might have had a share in some of them. perhaps they may come down to the time of lucas cranach. wherever, or by whomsoever executed, this series of paintings, upon the high altar of the cathedral of ulm, can not be viewed without considerable satisfaction. they were the first choice specimens of early art which i had seen on this side of the rhine; and i, of course, contemplated them with the hungry eye of an antiquary. after a careful survey of the interior, the whole of which had quite the air of english cleanliness and order, we prepared to mount the famous tower. our valet, rohfritsch, led the way; counting the steps as he mounted, and finding them to be about in number. he was succeeded by the guide. mr. lewis and myself followed in a more leisurely manner; peeping through the interstices which presented themselves in the open fretwork of the ornaments, and finding, as we continued to ascend, that the inhabitants and dwelling houses of ulm diminished gradually in size. at length we gained the summit, which is surrounded by a parapet wall of some three or four feet in height. we paused a minute, to recover our breath, and to look at the prospect which surrounded us. the town, at our feet, looked like the metropolis of laputa. yet the high ground, by which we had descended into the town--and upon which bonaparte's army was formerly encamped--seemed to be more lofty than the spot whereon we stood. on the opposite side flowed the danube; not broad, nor, as i learned, very deep; but rapid and in a serpentine direction. upon the whole, the cathedral of ulm is a noble ecclesiastical edifice; uniting simplicity and purity with massiveness of composition. few cathedrals are more uniform in the style of their architecture. it seems to be, to borrow technical language, all of a piece. near it, forming the foreground of the munich print, are a chapel and a house surrounded by trees. the chapel is very small, and, as i learned, not used for religious purposes. the house (so professor veesenmeyer informed me) is supposed to have been the residence and offices of business of john zeiner, the well-known printer, who commenced his typographical labors about the year , and who uniformly printed at ulm; while his brother gunther as uniformly exercised his art in the city whence i am now addressing you. they were both natives of reutlingen, a town of some note between tübingen and ulm. [footnote a: from "a bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque tour," published in .] [footnote b: ulm has now ( ) a population of , .] aix-la-chapelle and charlemagne's tomb[a] by victor hugo for an invalid, aix-la-chapelle is a mineral fountain--warm, cold, irony, and sulfurous; for the tourist, it is a place for redouts and concerts; for the pilgrim, the place of relics, where the gown of the virgin mary, the blood of jesus, the cloth which enveloped the head of john the baptist after his decapitation, are exhibited every seven years; for the antiquarian, it is a noble abbey of "filles à abbesse," connected with the male convent, which was built by saint gregory, son of nicephore, emperor of the east; for the hunter, it is the ancient valley of the wild boars; for the merchant, it is a "fabrique" of cloth, needles, and pins; and for him who is no merchant, manufacturer, hunter, antiquary, pilgrim, tourist, or invalid, it is the city of charlemagne. charlemagne was born at aix-la-chapelle, and died there. he was born in the old place, of which there now only remains the tower, and he was buried in the church that he founded in , two years after the death of his wife fastrada. leo the third consecrated it in , and tradition says that two bishops of tongres, who were buried at maestricht, arose from their graves, in order to complete, at that ceremony, bishops and archbishops--representing the days of the year. this historical and legendary church, from which the town has taken its name, has undergone, during the last thousand years, many transformations. no sooner had i entered aix than i went to the chapel.... the effect of the great "portail" is not striking; the façade displays the different styles of architecture--roman, gothic, and modern--without order, and consequently, without grandeur; but if, on the contrary, we arrive at the chapel by chevet, the result is otherwise. the high "abside" of the fourteenth century, in all its boldness and beauty, the rich workmanship of its balustrades, the variety of its "gargouilles," the somber hue of the stones, and the large transparent windows--strike the beholder with admiration. here, nevertheless, the aspect of the church--imposing tho it is--will be found far from uniform. between the "abside" and the "portail," in a kind of cavity, the dome of otho iii., built over the tomb of charlemagne in the tenth century, is hid from view. after a few moments' contemplation, a singular awe comes over us when gazing at this extraordinary edifice--an edifice which, like the great work that charlemagne began, remains unfinished; and which, like his empire that spoke all languages, is composed of architecture that represents all styles. to the reflective, there is a strange analogy between that wonderful man and this great building. after having passed the arched roof of the portico, and left behind me the antique bronze doors surmounted with lions' heads, a white rotundo of two stories, in which all the "fantasies" of architecture are displayed, attracted my attention. at casting my eyes upon the ground, i perceived a large block of black marble, with the following inscription in brass letters:-- "carolo magno." nothing is more contemptible than to see, exposed to view, the bastard graces that surround this great carlovingian name; angels resembling distorted cupids, palm-branches like colored feathers, garlands of flowers, and knots of ribbons, are placed under the dome of otho iii., and upon the tomb of charlemagne. the only thing here that evinces respect to the shade of that great man is an immense lamp, twelve feet in diameter, with forty-eight burners; which was presented, in the twelfth century, by barbarossa. it is of brass, gilt with gold, has the form of a crown, and is suspended from the ceiling above the marble stone by an iron chain about seventy feet in length. it is evident that some other monument had been erected to charlemagne. there is nothing to convince us that this marble, bordered with brass, is of antiquity. as to the letters, "carolo magno," they are not of a late date than . charlemagne is no longer under this stone. in frederick barbarossa--whose gift, magnificent tho it was, does by no means compensate for this sacrilege--caused the remains of that great emperor to be untombed. the church claimed the imperial skeleton, and, separating the bones, made each a holy relic. in the adjoining sacristy, a vicar shows the people--for three francs seventy-five centimes--the fixt price--"the arm of charlemagne"--that arm which held for a time the reins of the world. venerable relic! which has the following inscription, written by some scribe of the twelfth century: "arm of the sainted charles the great." after that i saw the skull of charlemagne, that cranium which may be said to have been the mold of europe, and which a beadle had the effrontery to strike with his finger. all were kept in a wooden armory, with a few angels, similar to those i have just mentioned, on the top. such is the tomb of the man whose memory has outlived ten ages, and who, by his greatness, has shed the rays of immortality around his name. "sainted, great," belong to him--two of the most august epithets which this earth could bestow upon a human being. there is one thing astonishing--that is, the largeness of the skull and arm. charlemagne was, in fact, colossal with respect to size of body as well as extraordinary mental endowments. the son of pepin-le-bref was in body, as in mind, gigantic; of great corporeal strength, and of astounding intellect. an inspection of this armory has a strange effect upon the antiquary. besides the skull and arm, it contains the heart of charlemagne; the cross which the emperor had round his neck in his tomb; a handsome ostensorium, of the renaissance, given by charles the fifth, and spoiled, in the last century, by tasteless ornaments; fourteen richly sculptured gold plates, which once ornamented the arm-chair of the emperor; an ostensorium, given by philippe the second; the cord which bound our savior; the sponge that was used upon the cross; the girdle of the holy virgin, and that of the redeemer. in the midst of innumerable ornaments, heaped up in the armory like mountains of gold and precious stones, are two shrines of singular beauty. one, the oldest, which is seldom opened, contains the remaining bones of charlemagne, and the other, of the twelfth century, which frederick barbarossa gave to the church, holds the relics, which are exhibited every seven years. a single exhibition of this shrine, in , attracted , pilgrims, and drew, in ten days , florins. this shrine has only one key, which is in two pieces; the one is in the possession of the chapter, the other in that of the magistrates of the town. sometimes it is opened on extraordinary occasions, such as on the visit of a monarch.... the tomb, before it became the sarcophagus of charlemagne, was, it is said, that of augustus. after mounting a narrow staircase, my guide conducted me to a gallery which is called the hochmünster. in this place is the arm-chair of charlemagne. it is low, exceedingly wide, with a round back; is formed of four pieces of white marble, without ornaments or sculpture, and has for a seat an oak board, covered with a cushion of red velvet. there are six steps up to it, two of which are of granite, the others of marble. on this chair sat--a crown upon his head, a globe in one hand, a scepter in the other, a sword by his side, the imperial mantle over his shoulders, the cross of christ round his neck, and his feet in the sarcophagus of augustus--carolus magnus in his tomb, in which attitude he remained for three hundred and fifty-two years--from to , when frederick barbarossa, coveting the chair for his coronation, entered the tomb. barbarossa was an illustrious prince and a valiant soldier; and it must, therefore, have been a moment singularly strange when this crowned man stood before the crowned corpse of charlemagne--the one in all the majesty of empire, the other in all the majesty of death. the soldier overcame the shades of greatness; the living became the despoliator of inanimate worth. the chapel claimed the skeleton, and barbarossa the marble chair, which afterward became the throne where thirty-six emperors were crowned. ferdinand the first was the last; charles the fifth preceded him. in , when bonaparte became known as napoleon, he visited aix-la-chapelle. josephine, who accompanied him, had the caprice to sit down on this chair; but napoleon, out of respect for charlemagne, took off his hat, and remained for some time standing, and in silence. the following fact is somewhat remarkable, and struck me forcibly. in charlemagne died; a thousand years afterward, most probably about the same hour, napoleon fell. in that fatal year, , the allied sovereigns visited the tomb of the great "carolus." alexander of russia, like napoleon, took off his hat and uniform; frederick william of prussia kept on his "casquette de petite tenue;" francis retained his surtout and round bonnet. the king of prussia stood upon the marble steps, receiving information from the provost of the chapter respecting the coronation of the emperors of germany; the two emperors remained silent. napoleon, josephine, alexander, frederick william, and francis, are now no more. a few minutes afterward i was on my way to the hôtel-de-ville, the supposed birthplace of charlemagne, which, like the chapel, is an edifice made of five or six others. in the middle of the court there is a fountain of great antiquity, with a bronze statue of charlemagne. to the left and right are two others--both surmounted with eagles, their heads half turned toward the grave and tranquil emperor. the evening was approaching. i had passed the whole of the day among these grand and austere "souvenirs;" and, therefore, deemed it essential to take a walk in the open fields, to breathe the fresh air, and to watch the rays of the declining sun. i wandered along some dilapidated walls, entered a field, then some beautiful alleys, in one of which i seated myself. aix-la-chapelle lay extended before me, partly hid by the shades of evening, which were falling around. by degrees the fogs gained the roofs of the houses, and shrouded the town steeples; then nothing was seen but two huge masses--the hôtel-de-ville and the chapel. all the emotions, all the thoughts and visions which flitted across my mind during the day, now crowded upon me. the first of the two dark objects was to me only the birthplace of a child; the second was the resting-place of greatness. at intervals, in the midst of my reverie, i imagined that i saw the shade of this giant, whom we call charlemagne, developing itself between this great cradle and still greater tomb. [footnote a: from "the rhine." translated by d.m. aird.] the hanseatic league[a] by james howell the hans, or hanseatic league, is very ancient, some would derive the word from hand, because they of the society plight their faith by that action; others derive it from hansa, which in the gothic tongue is council; others would have it come from hander see, which signifies near or upon the sea, and this passeth for the best etymology, because their towns are all seated so, or upon some navigable river near the sea. the extent of the old hans was from the nerve in livonia to the rhine, and contained sixty-two great mercantile towns, which were divided into four precincts. the chiefest of the first precinct was lübeck, where the archives of their ancient records and their prime chancery is still, and this town is within that verge; cullen is chief of the second precinct, brunswick of the third, and dantzic of the fourth. the kings of poland and sweden have sued to be their protector, but they refused them, because they were not princes of the empire. they put off also the king of denmark with a compliment, nor would they admit the king of spain when he was most potent in the netherlands, tho afterward, when it was too late, they desired the help of the ragged staff; nor of the duke of anjou, notwithstanding that the world thought he should have married our queen, who interceded for him, and so it was probable that thereby they might recover their privileges in england. so i do not find that they ever had any protector but the great master of prussia; and their want of a protector did do them some prejudice in that famous difference they had with our queen. the old hans had extraordinary immunities given them by our henry the third, because they assisted him in his wars with so many ships, and as they pretend, the king was not only to pay them for the service of the said ships but for the vessels themselves if they miscarried. now it happened that at their return to germany, from serving henry the third, there was a great fleet of them cast away, for which, according to covenant, they demanded reparation. our king in lieu of money, among other facts of grace, gave them a privilege to pay but one per cent., which continued until queen mary's reign, and she by advice of king philip, her husband, as it was conceived, enhanced the one to twenty per cent. the hans not only complained but clamored loudly for breach of their ancient privileges confirmed unto them, time out of mind, by thirteen successive kings of england, which they pretended to have purchased with their money. king philip undertook to accommodate the business, but queen mary dying a little after, and he retiring, there could be nothing done. complaint being made to queen elizabeth, she answered that as she would not innovate anything, so she would maintain them still in the same condition she found them. hereupon their navigation and traffic ceased a while, wherefore the english tried what they could do themselves, and they thrived so well that they took the whole trade into their own hands, and so divided themselves (tho they be now but one), to staplers and merchant-adventurers, the one residing constant in one place, where they kept their magazine of wool, the other stirring and adventuring to divers places abroad with cloth and other manufacturies, which made the hans endeavor to draw upon them all the malignancy they could from all nations. moreover, the hans towns being a body politic incorporated in the empire, complained thereof to the emperor, who sent over persons of great quality to mediate an accommodation, but they could effect nothing. then the queen caused a proclamation to be published that the easterlings or merchants of the hans should be entreated and used as all other strangers were, within her dominations, without any mark of difference in point of commerce. this nettled them more, thereupon they bent their forces more eagerly, and in a diet at ratisbon they procured that the english merchants who had associated themselves into fraternities in emden and other places should be declared monopolists; and so there was a committal edict published against them that they should be exterminated and banished out of all parts of the empire; and this was done by the activity of one sudennan, a great civilian. there was there for the queen, gilpin, as nimble a man as suderman, and he had the chancellor of emden to second and countenance him, but they could not stop the said edict wherein the society of english merchant-adventurers was pronounced to be a monopoly; yet gilpin played his game so well, that he wrought underhand, that the said imperial ban should not be published till after the dissolution of the diet, and that in the interim the emperor should send ambassadors to england to advise the queen of such a ban against her merchants. but this wrought so little impression upon the queen that the said ban grew rather ridiculous than formidable, for the town of emden harbored our merchants notwithstanding and afterward stade, but they not being able to protect them so well from the imperial ban, they settled in the town of hamburg. after this the queen commanded another proclamation to be divulged that the easterlings or hanseatic merchants should be allowed to trade in england upon the same conditions and payment of duties as her own subjects, provided that the english merchants might have interchangeable privilege to reside and trade peaceably in stade or hamburg or anywhere else within the precincts of hans. this incensed them more, thereupon they resolved to cut off stade and hamburg from being members of the hans or of the empire; but they suspended this decision till they saw what success the great spanish fleet should have, which was then preparing in the year eighty-eight, for they had not long before had recourse to the king of spain and made him their own, and he had done them some material good offices; wherefore to this day the spanish consul is taxed of improvidence and imprudence, that there was no use made of the hans towns in that expedition. the queen finding that they of the hans would not be contented with that equality she had offered betwixt them and her own subjects, put out a proclamation that they should carry neither corn, victuals, arms, timber, masts, cables, minerals, nor any other materials, or men to spain or portugal. and after, the queen growing more redoubtable and famous, by the overthrow of the fleet of eighty-eight, the easterlings fell to despair of doing any good. add hereunto another disaster that befell them, the taking of sixty sails of their ships about the mouth of tagus in portugal by the queen's ships that were laden with "ropas de contrabando," viz., goods prohibited by her former proclamation into the dominions of spain. and as these ships were upon point of being discharged, she had intelligence of a great assembly at lübeck, which had met of purpose to consult of means to be revenged of her thereupon she stayed and seized upon the said sixty ships, only two were freed to bring news what became of the rest. hereupon the pope sent an ambassador to her, who spoke in a high tone, but he was answered in a higher. ever since our merchants have beaten a peaceful and free uninterrupted trade into this town and elsewhere within and without the sound, with their manufactures of wool, and found the way also to the white sea to archangel and moscow. insomuch that the premises being well considered, it was a happy thing for england that that clashing fell out betwixt her and the hans, for it may be said to have been the chief ground of that shipping and merchandising, which she is now come to, and wherewith she hath flourished ever since. but one thing is observable, that as that imperial or committal ban, pronounced in the diet at ratisbon against our merchants and manufactures of wool, incited them more to industry. so our proclamation upon alderman cockein's project of transporting no white cloths but dyed, and in their full manufacture, did cause both dutch and germans to turn necessity to a virtue, and made them far more ingenious to find ways, not only to dye but to make cloth, which hath much impaired our markets ever since. for there hath not been the third part of our cloth sold since, either here or in holland. [footnote a: from "familiar letters." "montaigne and 'howell's letters'," says thackeray, in one of the "roundabout papers," "are my bedside books." howell wrote this letter in hamburg in october, .] hamburg[a] by thÉophile gautier to describe a night journey by rail is a difficult matter; you go like an arrow whistling through a cloud; it is traveling in the abstract. you cross provinces, kingdoms even, unawares. from time to time during the night, i saw through the window the comet, rushing down upon the earth, with lowered head and hair streaming far behind; suddenly glares of gaslight dazzled my eyes, sanded with the goldust of sleep; or the pale bluish radiance of the moon gave an air of fairy-land to scenes doubtless poor enough by day. conscientiously, this is all i can say from personal observation; and it would not be particularly amusing if i should transcribe from the railway guide the names of all the stations between berlin and hamburg. it is a.m., and here we are in the good hanse town of hamburg; the city is not yet awake, or at most is rubbing its eyes and yawning. while they are preparing my breakfast, i sally forth at random, as my custom is, without guide or cicerone, in pursuit of the unknown. the hotel, at which i have been set down, is situated on the quay of the alster, a basin as large as the lac d'enghien, which it still further resembles in being peopled with tame swans. on three sides, the alster basin is bordered with hotels and handsome modern houses. an embankment planted with trees and commanded by a wind-mill in profile forms the fourth; beyond extends a great lagoon. from the most frequented of these quays, a café painted green and built on piles, makes out into the water, like that café of the golden horn where i have smoked so many chibouques; watching the sea-birds fly. at the sight of this quay, this basin, these houses, i experienced an inexplicable sensation: i seemed to know them already. confused recollections of them arose in my memory; could i have been in hamburg without being aware of it? assuredly all these objects are not new to me, and yet i am seeing them for the first time. have i preserved the impression made by some picture, some photograph? while i was seeking philosophic explanations for this memory of the unknown, the idea of heinrich heine suddenly presented itself, and all became clear. the great poet had often spoken to me of hamburg, in those plastic words he so well knew how to use--words that were equivalent to realities. in his "reisebilder," he describes the scene--café basin, swans, and townsfolk upon the quays--heaven knows what portraits he makes of them! he returns to it again in his poem, "germania," and there is so much life to the picture, such distinctness, such relief, that sight itself teaches you nothing more. i made the circuit of the basin, graciously accompanied by a snow-white swan, handsome enough to make one think it might be jupiter in disguise, seeking some hamburg leda, and, the better to carry out the deception, snapping at the bread-crumbs offered him by the traveler. on the farther side of the basin, at the right, is a sort of garden or public promenade, having an artificial hillock, like that in the labyrinth in the "jardin des plantes." having gone thus far, i turned and retraced my steps. every city has its fashionable quarter--new, expensive, handsome--of which the citizens are proud, and through which the guide leads you with much complacency. the streets are broad and regular, and cut one another at right angles; there are sidewalks of granite, brick, or bitumen; there are lamp-posts in every direction. the houses are like palaces; their classically modern architecture, their irreproachable paint, their varnished doors and well-scoured brasses, fill with joy the city fathers and every lover of progress. the city is neat, orderly, salubrious, full of light and air, and resembles paris or london. there is the exchange! it is superb--as fine as the bourse in paris! i grant it; and, besides, you can smoke there, which is a point of superiority. farther on you observe the palace of justice, the bank, etc., built in the style you know well, adored by philistines of every land. doubtless that house must have cost enormously; it contains all possible luxury and comfort. you feel that the mollusk of such a shell can be nothing less than a millionaire. permit me, however, to love better the old house with its overhanging stories, its roof of irregular tiles, and all its little characteristic details, telling of former generations. to be interesting, a city must have the air of having lived, and, in a sense, of having received from man a soul. what makes these magnificent streets built yesterday so cold and so tiresome, is that they are not yet impregnated with human vitality. leaving the new quarter, i penetrated by degrees into the chaos of the old streets, and soon i had before my eyes a characteristic, picturesque hamburg; a genuine old city with a medieval stamp which would delight bonington, isabey or william wyld. i walked slowly, stopping at every street-corner that i might lose no detail of the picture; and rarely has any promenade amused me so well. houses, whose gables are denticulated or else curved in volutes, throw out successive overhanging stories, each composed of a row of windows, or, more properly, of one window divided into sections by carved uprights. beneath each house are excavated cellars, subterranean recesses, which the steps leading to the front door bestride like a drawbridge. wood, brick, stone and slate, mingled in a way to content the eye of a colorist, cover what little space the windows leave on the outside of the house. all this is surmounted by a roof of red or violet tiles, or tarred plank, interrupted by openings to give light to the attics, and having an abrupt pitch. these steep roofs look well against the background of a northern sky; the rains run off them in torrents, the snow slips from them; they suit the climate, and do not require to be swept in winter. some houses have doors ornamented with rustic columns, scroll-work, recessed pediments, chubby-cheeked caryatides, little angels and loves, stout rosettes and enormous shells, all glued over with whitewash renewed doubtless every year. the tobacco sellers in hamburg can not be counted. at every third step you behold a bare-chested negro cultivating the precious leaf or a grand seigneur, attired like the theatrical turk, smoking a colossal pipe. boxes of cigars, with their more or less fallacious vignettes and labels, figure, symmetrically disposed, in the ornamentation of the shop-fronts. there must be very little tobacco left at havana, if we can have faith in these displays, so rich in famous brands. as i have said, it was early morning. servant-maids, kneeling on the steps or standing on the window-sills, were going on with the saturday scrubbing. notwithstanding the keen air, they made a display of robust arms bare to the shoulder, tanned and sunburned, red with that astonishing vermilion that we see in some of rubens' paintings, which is the joint result of the biting of the north wind and the action of water upon these blond skins; little girls belonging to the poorer classes, with braided hair, bare arms, and low-necked frocks, were going out to obtain articles of food; i shivered in my paletot, to see them so lightly clad. there is something strange about this; the women of northern countries cut their dresses out in the neck, they go about bare-headed and bare-armed, while the women of the south cover themselves with vests, haicks, pelisses, and warm garments of every description. walking on, still at random, i came to the maritime part of the city, where canals take the place of streets. as yet it was low water, and vessels lay aground in the mud, showing their hulls, and careening over in a way to rejoice a water-color painter. soon the tide came up, and everything began to be in motion. i would suggest hamburg to artists following in the track of canaletto, guardi, or joyant; they will find, at every step, themes as picturesque as and more new than those which they go to venice in search of. this forest of salmon-colored masts, with their maze of cordage and their yellowish-brown sails drying in the sun, these tarred sterns with apple-green decks, these lateen-yards threatening the windows of the neighboring houses, these derricks standing under plank roofs shaped like pagodas, these tackles lifting heavy packages out of vessels and landing them in houses, these bridges opening to give passage to vessels, these clumps of trees, these gables overtopped here and there by spires and belfries; all this bathed in smoke, traversed by sunlight and here and there returning a glitter of polished metal, the far-off distance blue and misty, and the foreground full of vigorous color, produced effects of the most brilliant and piquant novelty. a church-tower, covered with plates of copper, springing from this curious medley of rigging and of houses, recalled to me by its odd green color the tower of galata, at constantinople.... as the hour advanced, the crowd became more numerous, and it was largely composed of women. in hamburg they seem to enjoy great license. very young girls come and go alone without anyone's noticing it, and--a remarkable thing!--children go to school by themselves, little basket on the arm, and slate in hand; in paris, left to their own free will, they will run off to play marbles, tag, or hop-scotch. dogs are muzzled in hamburg all the week, but on sundays they are left at liberty to bite whom they please. they are taxed, and appear to be esteemed; but the cats are sad and unappreciated. recognizing in me a friend, they cast melancholy glances at me, saying in their feline language, to which long use has given me the key: "these philistines, busy with their money-getting, despise us; and yet our eyes are as yellow as their louis d'or. stupid men that they are, they believe us good for nothing but to catch rats; we, the wise, the meditative, the independent, who have slept upon the prophet's sleeve, and lulled his ear with the whir of our mysterious wheel! pass your hand over our backs full of electric sparkles--we allow you this liberty, and say to charles baudelaire that he must write a fine sonnet, deploring our woes." as the lübeck boat was not to leave until the morrow, i went to wilkin's to get my supper. this famous establishment occupies a low-ceiled basement, which is divided into cabinets ornamented with more show than taste. oysters, turtle-soup, a truffled filet, and a bottle of veuve cliquot iced, composed my simple bill of fare. the place was filled, after the hamburg fashion, with edibles of all sorts; things early and things out of season, dainties not yet in existence or having long ceased to exist, for the common crowd. in the kitchen they showed us, in great tanks, huge sea-turtles which lifted their scaly heads above the water, resembling snakes caught between two platters. their little horny eyes looked with uneasiness at the light which was held near them, and their flippers, like oars of some disabled galley, vaguely moved up and down, as seeking some impossible escape. i trust that the personnel of the exhibition changes occasionally. in the morning i went for my breakfast to an english restaurant, a sort of pavilion of glass, whence i had a magnificent panoramic view. the river spread out majestically through a forest of vessels with tall masts, of every build and tonnage. steam-tugs were beating the water, towing sailing-vessels out to sea; others, moving about freely, made their way hither and thither, with that precision which makes a steam-boat seem like a conscious being, endowed by a will of its own, and served by sentient organs. from the elevation the elbe is seen, spreading broadly like all great rivers as they near the sea. its waters, sure of arriving at last, are in no haste; placid as a lake, they flow with an almost invisible motion. the low opposite shore was covered with verdure, and dotted with red houses half-effaced by the smoke from the chimneys. a golden bar of sunshine shot across the plain; it was grand, luminous, superb. [footnote a: from "a winter in russia." by arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, . hamburg is now the largest seaport on the continent of europe. london and new york are the only ports in the world that are larger. exclusive of its rural territory, it had in a population of , .] schleswig[a] by thÉophile gautier when you are in a foreign country, reduced to the condition of a deaf-mute, you can not but curse the memory of him who conceived the idea of building the tower of babel, and by his pride brought about the confusion of tongues! an omnibus took possession of myself and my trunks, and, with the feeling that it must of necessity take me somewhere, i confidingly allowed myself to be stowed in and carried away. the intelligent omnibus set me down before the best hotel in the town, and there, as circumnavigators say in their journals, "i held a parley with the natives." among them was a waiter who spoke french in a way that was transparent enough to give me an occasional glimpse of his meaning; and who--a much rarer thing!--even sometimes understood what i said to him. my name upon the hotel register was a ray of light. the hostess had been notified of my expected arrival, and i was to be sent for as soon as my appearance should be announced; but it was now late in the evening, and i thought it better to wait till the next day. there was served for supper a "chaud-froid" of partridge--without confiture--and i lay down upon the sofa, hopeless of being able to sleep between the two down-cushions which compose the german and the danish bed.... i explored schleswig, which is a city quite peculiar in its appearance. one wide street runs the length of the town, with which narrow cross streets are connected, like the smaller bones with the dorsal vertebræ of a fish. there are handsome modern houses, which, as usual, have not the slightest character. but the more modest dwellings have a local stamp; they are one-story buildings, very low--not over seven or eight feet in height--capped with a huge roof of fluted red tiles. windows, broader than they are high, occupy the whole of the front; and behind these windows, spread luxuriantly in porcelain or faience or earthen flowerpots, plants of every description; geraniums, verbenas, fuchsias--and this absolutely without exception. the poorest house is as well adorned as the best. sheltered by these perfumed window-blinds, the women sit at work, knitting or sewing, and, out of the corner of their eye, they watch, in the little movable mirror which reflects the streets, the rare passer-by, whose boots resound upon the pavement. the cultivation of flowers seem to be a passion in the north; countries where they grow naturally make but little account of them in comparison. the church in schleswig had in store for me a surprise. protestant churches in general, are not very interesting from an artistic point of view, unless the reformed faith may have installed itself in some catholic sanctuary diverted from its primitive designation. you find, usually, only whitewashed naves, walls destitute of painting or bas-relief, and rows of oaken benches well-polished and shining. it is neat and comfortable, but it is not beautiful. the church at schleswig contains, by a grand, unknown artist, an altar-piece in three parts, of carved wood, representing in a series of bas-reliefs, separated by fine architectural designs, the most important scenes in the drama of the passion. around the church stand sepulchral chapels of fine funereal fancy and excellent decorative effect. a vaulted hall contains the tombs of the ancient dukes of schleswig; massive slabs of stone, blazoned with armorial devices, covered with inscriptions which are not lacking in character. in the neighborhood of schleswig are great saline ponds, communicating with the sea. i paced the high-road, remarking the play of light upon this grayish water, and the surface crisped by the wind; occasionally i extended my walk as far as the chateau metamorphosed into a barrack, and the public gardens, a miniature st. cloud, with its cascade, its dolphins, and its other aquatic monsters all standing idle. a very good sinecure is that of a triton in a louis quinze basin! i should ask nothing better myself. [footnote a: from "a winter in russia." by arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, .] lÜbeck[a] by thÉophile gautier in the evening the train carried me to lübeck, across magnificent cultivated lands, filled with summer-houses, which lave their feet in the brown water, overhung by spreading willows. this german venice has its canal, the brenta, whose villas, tho not built by sanmichele or palladio, none the less make a fine show against the fresh green of their surroundings. on arriving at lübeck, a special omnibus received me and my luggage, and i was soon set down at the hotel. the city seemed picturesque as i caught a glimpse of it through the darkness by the vague light of lanterns; and in the morning, as i opened my chamber-window, i perceived at once i had not been mistaken. the opposite house had a truly german aspect. it was extremely high and overtopped by an old-fashioned denticulated gable. at each one of the seven stories of the house, iron cross-bars spread themselves out into clusters of iron-work, supporting the building, and serving at once for use and ornament, in accordance with an excellent principle in architecture, at the present day too much neglected. it is not by concealing the framework, but by making it distinct, that we obtain more character. this house was not the only one of its kind, as i was able to convince myself on walking a few steps out of doors. the actual lübeck is still to the eye the lübeck of the middle ages, the old capital of the hanseatic league.[b] all the drama of modern life is enacted in the old theater whose scenery remains the same, its drop-scene even not repainted. what a pleasure it is to be walking thus amid the outward life of the past, and to contemplate the same dwellings which long-vanished generations have inhabited! without doubt, the living man has a right to model his shell in accordance with his own habits, his tastes, and his manners; but it can not be denied that a new city is far less attractive than an old one. when i was a child, i sometimes received for a new year's present one of those nuremberg boxes containing a whole miniature german city. in a hundred different ways i arranged the little houses of painted wood around the church, with its pointed belfry and its red walls, where the seam of the bricks was marked by fine white lines. i set out my two dozen frizzed and painted trees, and saw with delight the charmingly outlandish and wildly festal air which these apple-green, pink, lilac, fawn-colored houses with their window-panes, their retreating gables, and their steep roofs, brilliant with red varnish, assumed, spread out on the carpet. my idea was that houses like these had no existence in reality, but were made by some kind fairy for extremely good little boys. the marvelous exaggeration of childhood gave this little parti-colored city a respectable development, and i walked through its regular streets, tho with the same precautions as did gulliver in liliput. lübeck gave back to me this long-forgotten feeling of my childish days. i seemed to walk in a city of the imagination, taken out of some monstrous toy-box. i believe, considering all the faultlessly correct architecture that i have been forced to see in my traveler's life, that i really deserved that pleasure by way of compensation. a cloister, or at least a gallery, a fragment of an ancient monastery, presented itself to view. this colonnade ran the whole length of the square, at the end of which stood the marienkirche, a brick church of the fourteenth century. continuing my walk, i found myself in a market-place, where awaited me one of those sights which repay the traveler for much fatigue: a public building of a new, unforeseen, original aspect, the old stadthaus in which was formerly the hanse hall, rose suddenly before me. it occupies two sides of the square. imagine, in front of the marienkirche, whose spires and roof of oxydized copper rise above it, a lofty brick façade, blackened by time, bristling with three bell-towers with pointed copper-covered roofs, having two great empty rose-windows, and emblazoned with escutcheons inscribed in the trefoils of its ogives, double-headed black eagles on a gold field, and shields, half gules, half argent, ranged alternately, and executed in the most elaborate fashion of heraldry. to this façade is joined a palazzino of the renaissance, in stone and of an entirely different style, its tint of grayish-white marvelously relieved by the dark-red background of old brick-work. this building, with its three gables, its fluted ionic columns, its caryatides, or rather its atlases (for they are human figures), its semicircular window, its niches curved like a shell, its arcades ornamented with figures, its basement of diamond-shaped stones, produces what i may call an architectural discord that is most unexpected and charming. we meet very few edifices in the north of europe of this style and epoch. in the façade, the old german style prevails: arches of brick, resting upon short granite columns, support a gallery with ogive-windows. a row of blazons, inclined from right to left, bring out their brilliant color against the blackish tint of the wall. it would be difficult to form an idea of the character and richness of this ornamentation. this gallery leads into the main building, a structure than which no scene-painter, seeking a medieval decoration for an opera, ever invented anything more picturesque and singular. five turrets, coiffed with roofs like extinguishers, raise their pointed tops above the main line of the façade with its lofty ogive-windows--unhappily now most of them partially bricked up, in accordance, doubtless, with the exigencies of alterations made within. eight great disks, having gold backgrounds, and representing radiating suns, double-headed eagles, and the shields, gules and argent, the armorial bearings of lübeck, are spread out gorgeously upon this quaint architecture. beneath, arches supported upon short, thick pillars yawn darkly, and from far within there comes the gleam of precious metals, the wares of some goldsmith's shop. turning back toward the square again, i notice, rising above the houses, the green spires of another church, and over the heads of some market-women, who are chaffering over their fish and vegetables, the profile of a little building with brick pillars, which must have been a pillory in its day. this gives a last touch to the purely gothic aspect of the square which is interrupted by no modern edifice. the ingenious idea occurred to me that this splendid stadthaus must have another façade; and so in fact it had; passing under an archway, i found myself in a broad street, and my admiration began anew. five bell-towers, built half into the wall and separated by tall ogive-windows now partly blocked up, repeated, with variations, the façade i have just described. brick rosettes exhibited their curious designs, spreading with square stitches, so to speak, like patterns for worsted work. at the base of the somber edifice a pretty little lodge, of the renaissance, built as an afterthought, gave entrance to an exterior staircase going up along the wall diagonally to a sort of mirador, or overhanging look-out, in exquisite taste. graceful little statues of faith and justice, elegantly draped, decorated the portico. the staircase, resting on arches which widened as it rose higher, was ornamented with grotesque masks and caryatides. the mirador, placed above the arched doorway opening upon the market-place, was crowned with a recessed and voluted pediment, where a figure of themis held in one hand balances, and in the other a sword, not forgetting to give her drapery, at the same time, a coquettish puff. an odd order formed of fluted pilasters fashioned like pedestals and supporting busts, separated the windows of this aërial cage. consoles with fantastic masks completed the elegant ornamentation, over which time had passed his thumb just enough to give to the carved stone that bloom which nothing can imitate.... the marienkirche, which stands, as i have said, behind the stadt-haus, is well worth a visit. its two towers are feet in height; a very elaborate belfry rises from the roof at the point of intersection of the transept. the towers of lübeck have the peculiarity, every one of them, of being out of the perpendicular, leaning perceptibly to the right or left, but without disquieting the eye, like the tower of asinelli at bologna, or the leaning tower of pisa. seen two or three miles away, these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to nod at the horizon, present a droll and hilarious silhouette. on entering the church, the first curious object that meets the eye is a copy of the todtentanz, or dance of death, of the cemetery at bâsle. i do not need to describe it in detail. the middle ages were never tired of composing variations upon this dismal theme. the most conspicuous of them are brought together in this lugubrious painting, which covers all the walls of one chapel. from the pope and the emperor to the infant in his cradle, each human being in his turn enters upon the dance with the inevitable terror. but death is not depicted as a skeleton, white, polished, cleaned, articulated with copper wire like the skeleton of an anatomical cabinet: that would be too ornamental for the vulgar crowd. he appears as a dead body in a more or less advanced state of decomposition, with all the horrid secrets of the tomb carefully revealed.... the cathedral, which is called in german the dom, is quite remarkable in its interior. in the middle of the nave, filling one whole arch, is a colossal christ of gothic style, nailed to a cross carved in open-work, and ornamented with arabesques. the foot of this cross rests upon a transverse beam, going from one pillar to another, on which are standing the holy women and other pious personages, in attitudes of grief and adoration; adam and eve, one on either side, are arranging their paradisaic costume as decently as may be; above the cross the keystone of the arch projects, adorned with flowers and leafage, and serves as a standing-place for an angel with long wings. this construction, hanging in mid-air, and evidently light in weight, notwithstanding its magnitude, is of wood, carved with much taste and skill. i can define it in no better way than to call it a carved portcullis, lowered halfway in front of the chancel. it is the first example of such an arrangement that i have ever seen.... the holstenthor, a city gate close by the railway station, is a most curious and picturesque specimen of german medieval architecture. imagine two enormous brick towers united by the main portion of the structure, through which opens an archway, like a basket-handle, and you have a rude sketch of the construction; but you would not easily conceive of the effect produced by the high summit of the edifice, the conical roofs of the towers, the whimsical windows in the walls and in the roofs, the dull red or violet tints of the defaced bricks. it is altogether a new gamut for painters of architecture or of ruins; and i shall send them to lübeck by the next train. i recommend to their notice also, very near the holstenthor, on the left bank of the trave, five or six crimson houses, shouldering each other for mutual support, bulging out in front, pierced with six or seven stories of windows, with denticulated gables, the deep red reflection of them trailing in the water, like some high-colored apron which a servant-maid is washing. what a picture van den heyden would have made of this! following the quay, along which runs a railway, where freight-trains were constantly passing, i enjoyed many amusing and varied scenes. on the other side of the trave were to be seen, amid houses and clumps of trees, vessels in various stages of building. here, a skeleton with ribs of wood, like the carcass of some stranded whale; there, a hull, clad with its planking near which smokes the calker's cauldron, emitting light yellowish clouds. everywhere prevails a cheerful stir of busy life. carpenters are planing and hammering, porters are rolling casks, sailors are scrubbing the decks of vessels, or getting the sails half way up to dry them in the sun. a barque just arriving comes alongside the quay, the other vessels making room for her to pass. the little steamboats are getting up steam or letting it off; and when you turn toward the city, through the rigging of the vessels, you see the church-towers, which incline gracefully, like the masts of clippers. [footnote a: from "a winter in russia." by arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, henry holt & co. copyright, .] [footnote b: the decline of lübeck dates from the first quarter of the sixteenth century and was chiefly due to the discovery of america and the consequent diversion of commerce to new directions. other misfortunes came with the thirty years' war. as early as , one of the constant sources of lübeck's wealth had begun to fail her--the herring, which was found to be deserting baltic waters. the discovery by the portuguese of a route to india by the cape of good hope was another cause of lübeck's decline.] heligoland[a] by william george black in heligoland itself there are few trees, no running water, no romantic ruins, but an extraordinary width of sea-view, seen as from the deck of a gigantic ship; and yet the island is so small that one can look around it all, and take the sea-line in one great circle. seen from a distance, as one must first see it, heligoland is little more than a cloud on the horizon; but as the steamer approaches nearer, the island stands up, a red rock in the ocean, without companion or neighbor. a small ledge of white strand to the south is the only spot where boats can land, and on this ledge nestle many white-walled, red-roofed houses; while on the rim of the rock, nearly two hundred feet above, is a sister hamlet, with the church-tower and lighthouse for central ornaments. on the unterland are the principal streets and shops, on the oberland are many of the best hotels and government-house. as there is no harbor, passengers reach the shore in large boats, and get their first glimpse of the hardy, sun-browned natives in the boatmen who, with bright jackets and hats of every picturesque curve that straw is capable of, pull the boat quickly to the steps of the little pier. crowds of visitors line the way, but one gets quickly through, and in a few minutes returns either to familiar quarters in the oberland, or finds an equally clean and moderate home among the lodging-house keepers or seamen. the season is a very short one, only ten weeks out of fifty-two, but the prices are moderate and the comfort unchallengeable.... heligoland is only one mile long from pier to nordkap, and a quarter of a mile wide at its widest--in all it is three-quarters of a square mile in size. there are no horses or carts in heligoland--only six cows, kept always in darkness, and a few sheep and goats tethered on the oberland. the streets are very narrow, but very clean, and the constant repetition in houses and scarves and flags of the national colors gives heligoland a gay aspect; for the national colors are anything but dull. green land, red rocks, white strand--nothing could be better descriptive of the island than these colors. they are easily brought out in domestic architecture, for with a whitewashed cottage and a red-tiled roof the heligolander has only to give his door and window-shutters a coat of bright green paint, and there are the colors of heligoland. in case the unforgettable fact should escape the tourist, the government have worked the colors into the ingenious and pretty island postage-stamp, and many of our german friends wear bathing-pants of the same unobtrusive tints. life is a very delightful thing in summer in this island. on your first visit you feel exhilarated by the novelty of everything as much as by the strong warm sea wind which meets you wherever you go. when you return, the novelty has worn away, but the sense of enjoyment has deepened. as you meet friendly faces and feel the grip of friendly hands, so you also exchange salutations with nature, as if she, too, were an old heligoland friend. you know the view from this point and from that; but, like the converse of a friend, it is always changing, for there is no monotony in the sea. the waves lap the shore gently, or roar tumultuously in the red caverns, and it is all familiar, but none the less welcome and soothing because of that familiarity. it is not a land of lotus-eating delights, but it is a land where there is little sound but what the sea makes, and where every face tells of strong sun and salt waves. no doubt, much of its charm lies in its contrast to the life of towns or country places. whatever comes to heligoland comes from over the sea; there is no railway within many a wide mile; the people are a peculiar people, with their own peculiar language, and an island patriotism which it would be hard to match.... from the little pier one passes up the narrow white street, no broader than a cologne lane, but clean and bright as is no other street in europe, past the cafés with low balconies, and the little shops--into some there are three or four steps to descend, into others there is an ascent of a diminutive ladder--till the small square or garden is reached in front of the conversation house, a spacious building with a good ball-room and reading-room, where a kiosque, always in summer full of the fragrant heligoland roses, detains the passer-by. then another turn or two in the street, and the bottom of the treppe is approached--the great staircase which winds upward to the oberland, in whose crevices grow masses of foliage, and whose easy ascent need not be feared by any one, for the steps are broad and low. the older flight of steps was situated about a hundred paces northward from the present treppe. it was cut out of the red crumbling rock, and at the summit passed through a guard-house. undoubtedly the present treppe should be similarly fortified. it was built by the government in . during the smuggling days, it is said, an englishman rode up to the oberland, and the apparition so shocked an old woman, who had never seen a horse before, that she fell senseless to the ground. from the falm or road skirting the edge of the precipice from the head of the stairs to government house, one of the loveliest views in all the world lies before our eyes. immediately beneath are the winding stairs, with their constant stream of broad-shouldered seamen, or coquettish girls, or brown boys, passing up and down, while at each resting-place some group is sitting on the green-red-white seats gossiping over the day's business. trees and plants nestle in the stair corners, and almost conceal the roadway at the foot. lifting one's eyes away from the little town, the white pier sprawls on the, sea, and countless boats at anchor spot with darkness the shining water. farther away, the düne lies like a bar of silver across the view, ribbed with emerald where the waves roll in over white sand; and all around it, as far as the eye can reach, white sails gleam in the light, until repose is found on the horizon where sea and sky meet in a vapory haze. at night the falm is a favorite resort of the men whose houses are on the oberland. with arms resting on the broad wall, they look down on the twinkling lights of the houses far beneath, listen to the laughter or song which float up from the small tables outside the café, or watch the specks of light on the dark gleam of the north sea. it is a prospect of which one could hardly tire, if it was not that in summer one has in heligoland a surfeit of sea loveliness.... heligoland is conjecturally identified with the ocean island described by tacitus as the place of the sacred rites of the angli and other tribes of the mainland. it was almost certainly sacred to forsete, the son of balder the sun-god--if he be identified, as grimm and all frisian writers identify him, with fosite the frisian god. forsete, a personification to men of the great white god, who dwelt in a shining hall of gold and silver, was among all gods and men the wisest of judges. it is generally supposed that heligoland was first named the holy island from its association with the worship of forsete, and latterly in consequence of the conversion of the frisian inhabitants. hallier has, however, pointed out that the heligolanders do not use this name for their home. they call the island "det lunn"--the land; their language they call "hollunner," and he suggests that the original name was hallig-lunn. a hallig is a sand-island occasionally covered with water. when the düne was connected with the rock there was a large stretch of sand covered by winter floods. hallig-lunn would then mean the island that is more than a hallig; and from the similarity of the words to heligoland a series of etymological errors may have arisen; but hallier's derivation is, after all, only a guess. [footnote a: from "heligoland and the islands of the north sea." heligoland, an island and fortress in the north sea, lies thirty-six miles northwest of the mouth of the elbe--hamburg. it was ceded to germany by great britain in ; and is attached to schleswig holstein. as a fortress, its importance has been greatly increased since the germans recovered possession of the island.] v vienna first impressions of the capital[a] by bayard taylor i have at last seen the thousand wonders of this great capital, this german paris, this connecting-link between the civilization of europe and the barbaric magnificence of the east. it looks familiar to be in a city again whose streets are thronged with people and resound with the din and bustle of business. it reminds me of the never-ending crowds of london or the life and tumult of our scarcely less active new york. the morning of our arrival we sallied out from our lodgings in the leopoldstadt to explore the world before us. entering the broad praterstrasse, we passed down to the little arm of the danube which separates this part of the new city from the old. a row of magnificent coffee-houses occupy the bank, and numbers of persons were taking their breakfasts in the shady porticos. the ferdinand's bridge, which crosses the stream, was filled with people; in the motley crowd we saw the dark-eyed greek, and turks in their turbans and flowing robes. little brown hungarian boys were going around selling bunches of lilies, and italians with baskets of oranges stood by the sidewalk. the throng became greater as we penetrated into the old city. the streets were filled with carts and carriages, and, as there are no side-pavements, it required constant attention to keep out of their way. splendid shops fitted up with great taste occupied the whole of the lower stories, and goods of all kinds hung beneath the canvas awnings in front of them. almost every store or shop was dedicated to some particular person or place, which was represented on a large panel by the door. the number of these paintings added much to the splendor of the scene; i was gratified to find, among the images of kings and dukes, one dedicated "to the american," with an indian chief in full costume. the altstadt, or "old city," which contains about sixty thousand inhabitants, is completely separated from the suburbs, whose population, taking the whole extent within the outer barrier, numbers nearly half a million.[b] it is situated on a small arm of the danube and encompassed by a series of public promenades, gardens and walks, varying from a quarter to half a mile in length, called the "glacis." this formerly belonged to the fortifications of the city, but as the suburbs grew up so rapidly on all sides, it was changed appropriately to a public walk. the city is still surrounded with a massive wall and a deep wide moat, but, since it was taken by napoleon in , the moat has been changed into a garden with a beautiful carriage-road along the bottom around the whole city. it is a beautiful sight to stand on the summit of the wall and look over the broad glacis, with its shady roads branching in every direction and filled with inexhaustible streams of people. the vorstaedte, or new cities, stretch in a circle, around beyond this; all the finest buildings front on the glacis, among which the splendid vienna theater and the church of san carlo borromeo are conspicuous. the mountains of the vienna forest bound the view, with here and there a stately castle on their woody summits. there is no lack of places for pleasure or amusement. besides the numberless walks of the glacis there are the imperial gardens, with their cool shades and flowers and fountains; the augarten, laid out and opened to the public by the emperor joseph; and the prater, the largest and most beautiful of all. it lies on an island formed by the arms of the danube, and is between two and three miles square. from the circle at the end of the praterstrasse broad carriage-ways extend through its forests of oak and silver ash and over its verdant lawns to the principal stream, which bounds it on the north. these roads are lined with stately horse-chestnuts, whose branches unite and form a dense canopy, completely shutting out the sun. every afternoon the beauty and nobility of vienna whirl through the cool groves in their gay equipages, while the sidewalks are thronged with pedestrians, and the numberless tables and seats with which every house of refreshment is surrounded are filled with merry guests. here on sundays and holidays the people repair in thousands. the woods are full of tame deer, which run perfectly free over the whole prater. i saw several in one of the lawns lying down in the grass, with a number of children playing around or sitting beside them. it is delightful to walk there in the cool of the evening, when the paths are crowded and everybody is enjoying the release from the dusty city. it is this free social life which renders vienna so attractive to foreigners and draws yearly thousands of visitors from all parts of europe.... we spent two or three hours delightfully one evening in listening to strauss's band. we went about sunset to the odeon, a new building in the leopoldstadt. it has a refreshment-hall nearly five hundred feet long, with a handsome fresco ceiling and glass doors opening into a garden-walk of the same length. both the hall and garden were filled with tables, where the people seated themselves as they came and conversed sociably over their coffee and wine. the orchestra was placed in a little ornamental temple in the garden, in front of which i stationed myself, for i was anxious to see the world's waltz-king whose magic tones can set the heels of half christendom in motion. after the band had finished tuning their instruments, a middle-sized, handsome man stept forward with long strides, with a violin in one hand and bow in the other, and began waving the latter up and down, like a magician summoning his spirits. as if he had waved the sound out of his bow, the tones leaped forth from the instruments, and, guided by his eye and hand, fell into a merry measure. the accuracy with which every instrument performed its part was truly marvelous. he could not have struck the measure or the harmony more certainly from the keys of his own piano than from that large band. the sounds struggled forth so perfect and distinct that one almost expected to see them embodied, whirling in wild dance around him. sometimes the air was so exquisitely light and bounding the feet could scarcely keep on the earth; then it sank into a mournful lament with a sobbing tremulousness, and died away in a long-breathed sigh. strauss seemed to feel the music in every limb. he would wave his fiddle-bow a while, then commence playing with desperate energy, moving his whole body to the measure, till the sweat rolled from his brow. a book was lying on the stand before him, but he made no use of it. he often glanced around with a kind of half-triumphant smile at the restless crowd, whose feet could scarcely be restrained from bounding to the magic measure. it was the horn of oberon realized. the composition of the music displayed great talent, but its charm consisted more in the exquisite combination of the different instruments, and the perfect, the wonderful, exactness with which each performed its part--a piece of art of the most elaborate and refined character. the company, which consisted of several hundred, appeared to be full of enjoyment. they sat under the trees in the calm, cool twilight with the stars twinkling above, and talked and laughed sociably together between the pauses of the music, or strolled up and down the lighted alleys. we walked up and down with them, and thought how much we should enjoy such a scene at home, where the faces around us would be those of friends and the language our mother-tongue. we went a long way through the suburbs one bright afternoon to a little cemetery about a mile from the city to find the grave of beethoven. on ringing at the gate a girl admitted us into the grounds, in which are many monuments of noble families who have vaults there. i passed up the narrow walk, reading the inscriptions, till i came to the tomb of franz clement, a young composer who died two or three years ago. on turning again my eye fell instantly on the word "beethoven" in golden letters on a tombstone of gray marble. a simple gilded lyre decorated the pedestal, above which was a serpent encircling a butterfly--the emblem of resurrection. here, then, moldered the remains of that restless spirit who seemed to have strayed to earth from another clime, from such a height did he draw his glorious conceptions. the perfection he sought for here in vain he has now attained in a world where the soul is freed from the bars which bind it in this. there were no flowers planted around the tomb by those who revered his genius; only one wreath, withered and dead, lay among the grass, as if left long ago by some solitary pilgrim, and a few wild buttercups hung with their bright blossoms over the slab. it might have been wrong, but i could not resist the temptation to steal one or two while the old gravedigger was busy preparing a new tenement. i thought that other buds would open in a few days, but those i took would be treasured many a year as sacred relics. a few paces off is the grave of schubert, the composer whose beautiful songs are heard all over germany. we visited the imperial library a day or two ago. the hall is two hundred and forty-five feet long, with a magnificent dome in the center, under which stands the statue of charles v., of carrara marble, surrounded by twelve other monarchs of the house of hapsburg. the walls are of variegated marble richly ornamented with gold, and the ceiling and dome are covered with brilliant fresco-paintings. the library numbers three hundred thousand volumes and sixteen thousand manuscripts, which are kept in walnut cases gilded and adorned with medallions. the rich and harmonious effect of the whole can not easily be imagined. it is exceedingly appropriate that a hall of such splendor should be used to hold a library. the pomp of a palace may seem hollow and vain, for it is but the dwelling of a man; but no building can be too magnificent for the hundreds of great and immortal spirits to dwell in who have visited earth during thirty centuries. among other curiosities preserved in the collection, we were shown a brass plate containing one of the records of the roman senate made one hundred and eighty years before christ, greek manuscripts of the fifth and sixth centuries, and a volume of psalms printed on parchment in the year by faust and schoeffer, the inventors of printing. there were also mexican manuscripts presented by cortez, the prayer-book of hildegard, wife of charlemagne, in letters of gold, the signature of san carlo borromeo, and a greek testament of the thirteenth century which had been used by erasmus in making his, translation and contains notes in his own hand. the most interesting article was the "jerusalem delivered" of tasso, in the poet's own hand, with his erasures and corrections. the chapel of st. augustine contains one of the best works of canova--the monument of the grand duchess maria christina of sachsen-teschen. it is a pyramid of gray marble, twenty-eight feet high, with an opening in the side representing the entrance to a sepulcher. a female figure personating virtue bears in an urn to the grave the ashes of the departed, attended by two children with torches. the figure of compassion follows, leading an aged beggar to the tomb of his benefactor, and a little child with its hands folded. on the lower step rests a mourning genius beside a sleeping lion, and a bas-relief on the pyramid above represents an angel carrying christina's image, surrounded with the emblem of eternity, to heaven. a spirit of deep sorrow, which is touchingly portrayed in the countenance of the old man, pervades the whole group. while we looked at it the organ breathed out a slow, mournful strain which harmonized so fully with the expression of the figures that we seemed to be listening to the requiem of the one they mourned. the combined effect of music and sculpture thus united in their deep pathos was such that i could have sat down and wept. it was not from sadness at the death of a benevolent tho unknown individual, but the feeling of grief, of perfect, unmingled sorrow, so powerfully represented, came to the heart like an echo of its own emotion and carried it away with irresistible influence. travelers have described the same feeling while listening to the "miserere" in the sistine chapel at rome. canova could not have chiselled the monument without tears. one of the most interesting objects in vienna is the imperial armory. we were admitted through tickets previously procured from the armory direction; as there was already one large company within, we were told to wait in the court till our turn came. around the wall, on the inside, is suspended the enormous chain which the turks stretched across the danube at buda in the year to obstruct the navigation. it has eight thousand links and is nearly a mile in length. the court is filled with cannon of all shapes and sizes, many of which were conquered from other nations. i saw a great many which were cast during the french revolution, with the words "liberté! egalité!" upon them, and a number of others bearing the simple letter "n.".... the first wing contains banners used in the french revolution, and liberty-trees with the red cap, the armor of rudolph of hapsburg, maximilian, i., the emperor charles v., and the hat, sword and order of marshal schwarzenberg. some of the halls represent a fortification, with walls, ditches and embankments, made of muskets and swords. a long room in the second wing contains an encampment in which twelve or fifteen large tents are formed in like manner. there was also exhibited the armor of a dwarf king of bohemia and hungary who died a gray-headed old man in his twentieth year, the sword of marlborough, the coat of gustavus adolphus, pierced in the breast and back with the bullet which killed him at lützen, the armor of the old bohemian princess libussa, and that of the amazon wlaska, with a steel vizor made to fit the features of her face. the last wing was the most remarkable. here we saw the helm and breastplate of attila, king of the huns, which once glanced at the head of his myriads of wild hordes before the walls of rome; the armor of count stahremberg, who commanded vienna during the turkish siege in , and the holy banner of mohammed, taken at that time from the grand vizier, together with the steel harness of john sobieski of poland, who rescued vienna from the turkish troops under kara mustapha; the hat, sword and breastplate of godfrey of bouillon, the crusader-king of jerusalem, with the banners of the cross the crusaders had borne to palestine and the standard they captured from the turks on the walls of the holy city. i felt all my boyish enthusiasm for the romantic age of the crusaders revive as i looked on the torn and moldering banners which once waved on the hills of judea, or perhaps followed the sword of the lion-heart through the fight on the field of ascalon. what tales could they not tell, those old standards cut and shivered by spear and lance! what brave hands have carried them through the storm of battle, what dying eyes have looked upward to the cross on the folds as the last prayer was breathed for the rescue of the holy sepulcher. [footnote a: from "views afoot." published by g.p. putnam's sons.] [footnote b: the population of vienna, according to the census of , was , , .] st. stephen's cathedral[a] by thomas frognall dibdin of the chief objects of architecture which decorate street scenery in vienna, there are none, to my old-fashioned eyes, more attractive and thoroughly beautiful and interesting--from a thousand associations of ideas than places of worship, and of course, among these, none stands so eminently conspicuous as the mother-church, or the cathedral, which in this place, is dedicated to st. stephen. the spire has been long distinguished for its elegance and height. probably these are the most appropriate, if not the only, epithets of commendation which can be applied to it. after strasburg and ulm, it appears a second-rate edifice. not but what the spire may even vie with that of the former, and the nave may be yet larger than that of the latter; but, as a whole, it is much inferior to either--even allowing for the palpable falling off in the nave of strasburg cathedral. the spire, or tower--for it partakes of both characters--is indeed worthy of general admiration. it is oddly situated, being almost detached--and on the south side of the building. indeed the whole structure has a very strange, and i may add capricious, if not repulsive, appearance, as to its exterior. the western and eastern ends have nothing deserving of distinct notice or commendation. the former has a porch; which is called "the giant's porch;" it should rather be designated as that of the dwarf. it has no pretensions to size or striking character of any description. some of the oldest parts of the cathedral appear to belong to the porch of the eastern end. as you walk round the church, you can not fail to be struck with the great variety of ancient--and to an englishman, whimsical looking mural monuments, in basso and alto relievos. some of these are doubtless both interesting and curious. but the spire is indeed an object deserving of particular admiration. it is next to that of strasburg in height; being feet of vienna measurement. it may be said to begin to taper from the first stage or floor; and is distinguished for its open and sometimes intricate fretwork. about two-thirds of its height, just above the clock, and where the more slender part of the spire commences, there is a gallery or platform, to which the french quickly ascended, on their possession of vienna, to reconnoiter the surrounding country. the very summit of the spire is bent, or inclined to the north; so much so, as to give the notion that the cap or crown will fall in a short time. as to the period of the erection of this spire, it is supposed to have been about the middle, or latter end, of the fifteenth century. it has certainly much in common with the highly ornamental gothic style of building in our own country, about the reign of henry vi. the colored glazed tiles of the roof of the church are very disagreeable and unharmonizing. these colors are chiefly green, red, and blue. indeed the whole roof is exceedingly heavy and tasteless. i will now conduct you to the interior. on entering, from the southeast door, you observe, to the left, a small piece of white marble--which every one touches, with the finger or thumb charged with holy water, on entering or leaving the cathedral. such have been the countless thousands of times that this piece of marble has been so touched, that, purely, from such friction, it has been worn nearly half an inch below the general surrounding surface. i have great doubts, however, if this mysterious piece of masonry be as old as the walls of the church (which may be of the fourteenth century), which they pretend to say it is. the first view of the interior of this cathedral, seen even at the most favorable moment--which is from about three till five o'clock--is far from prepossessing. indeed, after what i had seen at rouen, paris, strassburg, ulm, and munich, it was a palpable disappointment. in the first place, there seems to be no grand leading feature of simplicity; add to which, darkness reigns everywhere. you look up, and discern no roof--not so much from its extreme height, as from the absolute want of windows. everything not only looks dreary, but is dingy and black--from the mere dirt and dust which seem to have covered the great pillars of the nave--and especially the figures and ornaments upon it--for the last four centuries. this is the more to be regretted, as the larger pillars are highly ornamented; having human figures, of the size of life, beneath sharply pointed canopies, running up the shafts. the extreme length of the cathedral is feet of vienna measurement. the extreme width, between the tower and its opposite extremity--or the transepts--is feet. there are comparatively few chapels; only four--but many bethstühle or prie-dieus. of the former, the chapels of savoy and st. eloy are the chief; but the large sacristy is more extensive than either. on my first entrance, while attentively examining the choir, i noticed--what was really a very provoking, but probably not a very uncommon sight--a maid servant deliberately using a long broom in sweeping the pavement of the high altar, at the moment when several very respectable people, of both sexes, were kneeling upon the steps, occupied in prayer. but the devotion of the people is incessant--all the day long--and in all parts of the cathedral. meanwhile, service is going on in all parts of the cathedral. they are singing here; they are praying there; and they are preaching in a third place. but during the whole time, i never heard one single note of the organ. i remember only the other sunday morning--walking out beneath one of the brightest blue skies that ever shone upon man--and entering the cathedral about nine o'clock. a preacher was in the principal pulpit; while a tolerably numerous congregation was gathered around him. he preached, of course, in the german language, and used much action. as he became more and more animated, he necessarily became warmer, and pulled off a black cap--which, till then, he had kept upon his head; the zeal and piety of the congregation at the same time seeming to increase with the accelerated motions of the preacher. in other more retired parts, solitary devotees were seen--silent, and absorbed in prayer. among these, i shall not easily forget the head and the physiognomical expression of one old man--who, having been supported by crutches, which lay by the side of him--appeared to have come for the last time to offer his orisons to heaven. the light shone full upon his bald head and elevated countenance; which latter indicated a genuineness of piety, and benevolence of disposition, not to be soured, even by the most bitter of worldly disappointments! it seemed as if the old man were taking leave of this life, in full confidence of the rewards which await the righteous beyond the grave. so much for the living. a word or two now for the dead. of course this letter alludes to the monuments of the more distinguished characters once resident in and near the metropolis. among these, doubtless the most elaborate is that of the emperor frederick iii.--in the florid gothic style, surmounted by a tablet, filled with coat-armor, or heraldic shields. some of the mural monuments are very curious, and among them are several of the early part of the sixteenth century--which represent the chins and even mouths of females, entirely covered by drapery; such as is even now to be seen and such as we saw on descending from the vosges. but among these monuments--both for absolute and relative antiquity--none will appear to the curious eye of an antiquary so precious as that of the head of the architect of the cathedral, whose name was pilgram. [footnote a: from "a bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque tour," published in .] the belvedere palace[a] by thomas frognall dibdin to the belvedere palace, therefore, let us go. i visited it with mr. lewis--taking our valet with us, immediately after breakfast--on one of the finest and clearest-skied september mornings that ever shone above the head of man. we had resolved to take the ambras, or the little belvedere, in our way; and to have a good, long, and uninterrupted view of the wonders of art--in a variety of departments. both the little belvedere and the large belvedere rise gradually above the suburbs; and the latter may be about a mile and a half from the ramparts of the city. the ambras contains a quantity of ancient horse- and foot-armor, brought thither from a chateau of that name, near inssbruck, built by the emperor charles v. such a collection of old armor--which had once equally graced and protected the bodies of their wearers, among whom the noblest names of which germany can boast may be enrolled--was infinitely gratifying to me. the sides of the first room were quite embossed with suspended shields, cuirasses, and breast-plates. the floor was almost filled by champions on horseback--yet poising the spear, or holding it in the rest--yet almost shaking their angry plumes, and pricking the fiery sides of their coursers. here rode maximilian--and there halted charles his son. different suits of armor, belonging to the same character, are studiously shown you by the guide; some of these are the foot-, and some the horse-, armor; some were worn in fight--yet giving evidence of the mark of the bullet and battle-ax; others were the holiday suits of armor, with which the knights marched in procession, or tilted at the tournament. the workmanship of the full-dress suits, in which a great deal of highly wrought gold ornament appears, is sometimes really exquisite. the second, or long room, is more particularly appropriated to the foot- or infantry-armor. in this studied display of much that is interesting from antiquity, and splendid from absolute beauty and costliness, i was particularly gratified by the sight of the armor which the emperor maximilian wore as a foot-captain. the lower part, to defend the thighs, consists of a puckered or plated steel petticoat, sticking out at the bottom of the folds, considerably beyond the upper part. it is very simple, and of polished steel. a fine suit of armor--of black and gold--worn by an archbishop of salzburg in the middle of the fifteenth century, had particular claims upon my admiration. it was at once chaste and effective. the mace was by the side of it. this room is also ornamented by trophies taken from the turks; such as bows, spears, battle-axes, and scimitars. in short, the whole is full of interest and splendor. i ought to have seen the arsenal--which i learn is of uncommon magnificence; and, altho not so curious on the score of antiquity, is yet not destitute of relics of the warriors of germany. among these, those which belong to my old bibliomaniacal friend corvinus, king of hungary, cut a conspicuous and very respectable figure. i fear it will be now impracticable to see the arsenal as it ought to be seen. it is now approaching mid-day, and we are walking toward the terrace in front of the great belvidere palace, built by the immortal eugene[b] in the year , as a summer residence. probably no spot could have been selected with better judgment for the residence of a prince--who wished to enjoy, almost at the same moment, the charms of the country with the magnificence of a city view, unclouded by the dense fumes which forever envelop our metropolis. it is in truth a glorious situation. walking along its wide and well-cultivated terraces, you obtain the finest view imaginable of the city of vienna. indeed it may be called a picturesque view. the spire of the cathedral darts directly upward, as it were, to the very heavens. the ground before you, and in the distance, is gently undulating; and the intermediate portion of the suburbs does not present any very offensive protrusions. more in the distance, the windings of the danube are seen; with its various little islands, studded with hamlets and fishing-huts, lighted up by a sun of unusual radiance. indeed the sky, above the whole of this rich and civilized scene, was at the time of our viewing it, almost of a dazzling hue; so deep and vivid a tint we had never before beheld. behind the palace, in the distance, you observe a chain of mountains which extends into hungary. as to the building itself, it is perfectly palatial in its size, form, ornaments, and general effect. among the treasures, which it contains, it is now high time to enter and to look about us. my account is necessarily a mere sketch. rubens, if any artist, seems here to "rule and reign without control!" two large rooms are filled with his productions; besides several other pictures, by the same hand, which are placed in different apartments. here it is that you see verified the truth of sir joshua's remark upon that wonderful artist: namely, that his genius seems to expand with the size of his canvas. his pencil absolutely riots here--in the most luxuriant manner--whether in the majesty of an altarpiece, in the gaiety of a festive scene, or in the sobriety of portrait-painting. his ignatius loyola and st. francis xavier--of the former class--each seventeen feet high, by nearly thirteen wide--are stupendous productions in more senses than one. the latter is, indeed, in my humble judgment, the most marvelous specimen of the powers of the painter which i have ever seen; and you must remember that both england and france are not without some of his celebrated productions, which i have frequently examined. in the old german school, the series is almost countless; and of the greatest possible degree of interest and curiosity. here are to be seen wohlgemuths, albert dürers, both the holbeins, lucas cranachs, ambergaus, and burgmairs of all sizes and degrees of merit. among these ancient specimens--which are placed in curious order, in the very upper suite of apartments, and of which the backgrounds of several, in one solid coat of gilt, lighten up the room like a golden sunset--you must not fail to pay particular attention to a singularly curious old subject--representing the life, miracles, and passion of our savior, in a series of one hundred and fifty-eight pictures--of which the largest is nearly three feet square, and every other about fifteen inches by ten. these subjects are painted upon eighty-six small pieces of wood; of which seventy-two are contained in six folding cabinets, each holding twelve subjects. in regard to teniers, gerard dow, mieris, wouvermann, and cuyp, you must look at home for more exquisite specimens. this collection contains, in the whole, not fewer than fifteen hundred paintings, of which the greater portion consists of pictures of very large dimensions. i could have lived here for a month; but could only move along with the hurried step, and yet more hurrying eye, of an ordinary visitor. [footnote a: from "a bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque tour," published in .] [footnote b: the celebrated austrian general, who defeated the turks in , and shared with marlborough in the victories of blenheim and malplaquet.] schÖnbrunn and the prater[a] by thomas frognall dibdin about three english miles from the great belvedere--or rather about the same number of miles from vienna, to the right, as you approach the capital--is the famous palace of schönbrunn. this is a sort of summer-residence of the emperor; and it is here that his daughter, the ex-empress of france, and the young bonaparte usually reside.[b] the latter never goes into italy, when his mother, as duchess of parma, pays her annual visit to her principality. at this moment her son is at baden, with the court. it was in the schönbrunn palace that his father, on the conquest of vienna, used to take up his abode, rarely venturing into the city. he was surely safe enough here; as every chamber and every court yard was filled by the élite of his guard--whether as officers or soldiers. it is a most magnificent pile of building; a truly imperial residence--but neither the furniture nor the objects of art, whether connected with sculpture or painting, are deserving of anything in the shape of a catalogue raisonné. i saw the chamber where young bonaparte frequently passes the day; and brandishes his flag staff, and beats upon his drum. he is a soldier (as they tell me) every inch of him; and rides out, through the streets of vienna, in a carriage of state drawn by four or six horses, receiving the homage of the passing multitude. to return to the schönbrunn palace. i have already told you that it is vast, and capable of accommodating the largest retinue of courtiers. it is of the gardens belonging to it, that i would now only wish to say a word. these gardens are really worthy of the residence to which they are attached. for what is called ornamental, formal, gardening--enriched by shrubs of rarity, and trees of magnificence--enlivened by fountains--adorned by sculpture--and diversified by vistas, lawns, and walks--interspersed with grottoes and artificial ruins--you can conceive nothing upon a grander scale than these: while a menagerie in one place (where i saw a large but miserably wasted elephant)--a flower-garden in another--a labyrinth in a third, and a solitude in a fourth place--each, in its turn, equally beguiles the hour and the walk. they are the most spacious gardens i ever witnessed. it was the other sunday evening when i visited the prater, and when--as the weather happened to be very fine--it was considered to be full, but the absence of the court, of the noblesse, necessarily gave a less joyous and splendid aspect to the carriages and their attendant liveries. in your way to this famous place of sabbath evening promenade, you pass a celebrated coffee-house, in the suburbs, called the leopoldstadt, which goes by the name of the greek coffee-house--on account of its being almost entirely frequented by greeks--so numerous at vienna. do not pass it, if you should ever come hither, without entering it--at least once. you would fancy yourself to be in greece, so thoroughly characteristic are the countenances, dresses, and language of everyone within. but yonder commences the procession of horse and foot; of cabriolets, family coaches, german wagons, cars, phaetons and landaulets, all moving in a measured manner, within their prescribed ranks, toward the prater. we must accompany them without loss of time. you now reach the prater. it is an extensive flat, surrounded by branches of the danube, and planted on each side with double rows of horse-chestnut trees. the drive, in one straight line, is probably a league in length. it is divided by two roads, in one of which the company move onward, and in the other they return. consequently, if you happen to find a hillock only a few feet high, you may, from thence, obtain a pretty good view of the interminable procession of the carriages before mentioned: one current of them, as it were, moving forward, and another rolling backward. but, hark! the notes of a harp are heard to the left, in a meadow, where the foot passengers often digress from the more formal tree-lined promenade. a press of ladies and gentlemen is quickly seen. you mingle involuntarily with them; and, looking forward, you observe a small stage erected, upon which a harper sits and two singers stand. the company now lie down upon the grass, or break into standing groups, or sit upon chairs hired for the occasion--to listen to the notes so boldly and so feelingly executed. the clapping of hands, and exclamations of bravo succeed, and the sounds of applause, however warmly bestowed, quickly die away in the open air. the performers bow, receive a few kreutzers, retire, and are well satisfied. the sound of the trumpet is now heard behind you. tilting feats are about to be performed; the coursers snort and are put in motion; their hides are bathed in sweat beneath their ponderous housings; and the blood, which flows freely from the pricks of their riders' spurs, shows you with what earnestness the whole affair is conducted. there, the ring is thrice carried off at the point of the lance. feats of horsemanship follow in a covered building, to the right; and the juggler, conjurer, or magician, displays his dexterous feats, or exercises his potent spells, in a little amphitheater of trees, at a distance beyond. here and there rise more stately edifices, as theaters, from the doors of which a throng of heated spectators is pouring out. in other directions, booths, stalls and tables are fixt; where the hungry eat, the thirsty drink, and the merry-hearted indulge in potent libations. the waiters are in a constant state of locomotion. rhenish wine sparkles here; confectionery glitters there; and fruit looks bright and tempting in a third place. no guest turns round to eye the company; because he is intent upon the luxuries which invite his immediate attention, or he is in close conversation with an intimate friend, or a beloved female. they talk and laugh--and the present seems to be the happiest moment of their lives. all is gaiety and good humor. you return again to the foot-promenade, and look sharply about you, as you move onward, to catch the spark of beauty, or admire the costume of taste, or confess the power of expression. it is an albanian female who walks yonder, wondering, and asking questions, at every thing she sees. the proud jewess, supported by her husband and father, moves in another direction. she is covered with brocade and flaunting ribbons; but she is abstracted from everything around her, because her eyes are cast downward upon her stomacher, or sideways to obtain a glimpse of what may be called her spangled epaulettes. her eye is large and dark; her nose is aquiline; her complexion is of an olive brown; her stature is majestic, her dress is gorgeous, her gait is measured--and her demeanor is grave and composed. "she must be very rich," you say--as she passes on. "she is prodigiously rich," replies the friend, to whom you put the question--for seven virgins, with nosegays of choicest flowers, held up her bridal train; and the like number of youths, with silver-hilted swords, and robes of ermine and satin, graced the same bridal ceremony. her father thinks he can never do enough for her; and her husband, that he can never love her sufficiently. whether she be happy or not, in consequence, we have no time to stop to inquire, for see yonder! three "turbaned turks" make their advances. how gaily, how magnificently they are attired! what finely proportioned limbs--what beautifully formed features! they have been carousing, peradventure, with some young greeks--who have just saluted them, en passant--at the famous coffee-house before mentioned. everything around you is novel and striking; while the verdure of the trees and lawns is yet fresh, and the sun does not seem yet disposed to sink below the horizon. the carriages still move on, and return, in measured procession. those who are within, look earnestly from the windows, to catch a glance of their passing friends. the fair hand is waved here; the curiously-painted fan is shaken there; and the repeated nod is seen in almost every other passing landaulet. not a heart seems sad; not a brow appears to be clouded with care. such--or something like the foregoing--is the scene which usually passes on a sunday evening--perhaps six months out of the twelve--upon the famous prater at vienna; while the tolling bell of st. stephen's tower, about nine o'clock--and the groups of visitors hurrying back, to get home before the gates of the city are shut against them--usually conclude the scene just described. [footnote a: from "a bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque tour." published in .] [footnote b: marie louise, second wife of napoleon, and their son, the king of rome.] vi hungary a glance at the country[a] by h. tornai de kÖvËr hungary consists of hungary proper, with transylvania (which had independent rule at one time), croatia and slavonia (which have been added), and the town of fiume on the shores of the adriatic sea. the lowlands are exceedingly beautiful in the northeast and west, where the great mountain, peaks rise into the clear blue sky or are hidden by big white clouds, but no beauty can be compared to the young green waving corn or the ripe ears when swaying gently in the breeze. one sees miles and miles of corn, with only a tree here and there to mark the distances, and one can not help comparing the landscape to a green sea, for the wind makes long silky waves, which make the field appear to rise and fall like the ocean. in the heat of midday the mirage, or, as the hungarians call it, "délibáb," appears and shows wonderful rivers, villages, cool green woods--all floating in the air. sometimes one sees hundreds of white oxen and church towers, and, to make the picture still more confusing and wonderful, it is all seen upside down. this, the richest part of the country, is situated between the rivers danube and theiss, and runs right down to the borders of servia. two thirds of hungary consist of mountainous districts, but one third has the richest soil in europe. great rivers run through the heart of the country, giving it the fertility which is its great source of wealth. the great lowlands, or "alföld," as the magyars call them, are surrounded by a chain of mountains whose heights are nearly equal to some alpine districts. there are three principal mountain ranges--the tátra, mátra, and fátra--and four principal rivers--the danube, theiss, drave, and save. hungary is called the land of the three mountains and four rivers, and the emblem of these form the chief feature in the coat-of-arms of the country. the carpathian range of mountains stretches from the northwest along the north and down the east, encircling the lowlands and sending forth rivers and streams to water the plains. these mountains are of a gigantic bulk and breadth; they are covered with fir and pine trees, and in the lower regions with oaks and many other kinds. the peaks of the high tátra are about , feet high, and, of course, are bare of any vegetation, being snow-covered even in summer-time. on the well-sheltered sides of these mountains numerous baths are to be found, and they abound in mineral waters. another curious feature are the deep lakes called "tengerszem" (eyes of the sea). according to folklore they are connected with the sea, and wonderful beings live in them. however, it is so far true that they are really of astonishing depth. the summer up in the northern carpathians is very short, the nights always cold, and there is plenty of rain to water the rich vegetation of the forests. often even in the summer there are snowstorms and a very low temperature. the northeastern carpathians include a range of lower hills running down to the so-called hegyalja, where the wonderful vine which produces the wine of tokay is grown. the southeastern range of the carpathians divides the county of máramaros from erdély (transylvania). the main part of this country is mountainous and rugged, but here also there is wonderful scenery. everything is still very wild in these parts of the land, and tho mineral waters abound everywhere, the bathing-places are very primitive. the only seaport the country possesses is fiume, which was given to hungary by maria theresa, who wanted to give hungary the chance of developing into a commercial nation. besides the deep but small mountain lakes, there are several large ones; among these the most important is the balaton, which, altho narrow, is about fifty miles long. along its borders there are summer bathing-places, considered very healthy for children. very good wine is produced here, as in most parts of hungary which are hilly, but not situated too high up among the mountains. the lake of balaton is renowned for a splendid kind of fresh-water fish, the fogas. it is considered the best fish after trout--some even prefer it--and it grows to a good size. the chief river of hungary is the danube, and the whole of hungary is included in its basin. it runs through the heart of the country, forming many islands; the greatest is called the csallóköz, and has over a hundred villages on it. one of the prettiest and most cultivated of the islands is st. margaret's isle, near budapest, which has latterly been joined to the mainland by a bridge. some years ago only steamers conveyed the visitors to it; these still exist, but now carriages can drive on to the island too. it is a beautiful park, where the people of budapest seek the shade of the splendid old trees. hot sulfur springs are to be found on the island, and there is a bath for the use of visitors. the danube leaves hungary at orsova, and passes through the so-called iron gates. the scenery is very beautiful and wild in that part, and there are many points where it is exceedingly picturesque, especially between vienna and budapest. it is navigable for steamships, and so is the next largest river, the theiss. this river begins its course in the southeastern carpathians, right up among the snow-peaks, amid wild and beautiful scenery, and it eventually empties its waters into the danube at titel. the three largest rivers of hungary feed the danube, and by that means reach the black sea. hungary lies under the so-called temperate zone, but there does not seem much temperance in the climate when we think of the terrible, almost siberian winters that come often enough and the heat waves occasioning frequent droughts in the lowlands. the summer is short in the carpathians; usually in the months of august and september the weather is the most settled. june and july are often rainy--sometimes snowstorms cause the barometer to fall tremendously. in the mountain districts there is a great difference between the temperature of the daytime and that of the night. all those who go to the carpathians do well to take winter and alpine clothing with them. the winter in the mountains is perhaps the most exhilarating, as plenty of winter sport goes on. the air is very cold, but the sun has great strength in sheltered corners, enabling even delicate people to spend the winter there. in the lowlands the summer is exceedingly hot, but frequent storms, which cool the air for some days, make the heat bearable. now and then there have been summers when in some parts of hungary rain has not fallen for many weeks--even months. the winter, too, even in the more temperate parts, is often severe and long, there being often from eight to ten weeks of skating, altho the last few years have been abnormally mild. in the valleys of the carpathians potatoes, barley, oats, and cabbages are grown, while in the warmer south wheat, maize, tobacco, turnips, and the vine are cultivated. down by the adriatic sea the climate is much warmer, but hungary, as already mentioned, has only the town of fiume of her own to boast of. the visitors who look for a temperate winter and want to get away from the raw cold must go to the austrian town of abbazia, which is reached in half an hour by steamboat, and is called the austrian riviera. those who visit hungary should come in spring--about may--and spend some weeks in the capital, the lowlands and hilly districts, and go north to the mountains and bathing-places in the summer months. tokay produces some of the finest wine in the world, and the vintage time in that part of the country is most interesting and picturesque. [footnote a: from "hungary." published by the macmillan co.] budapest[a] by h. tornai de kÖvËr budapest is one of the most beautifully situated cities in europe. nobody can ever forget the wonderful sight of the two sister towns divided by the wide and swiftly flowing danube, with the steamers and barges on her waters. buda, the old stronghold, is on one side with the fantastic "gellért" hill, which is a formidable-looking mass of rocks and caves; farther on is the lovely royal palace with its beautifully kept gardens clinging to the hillside; then the oldest part, called the stronghold, which has been rebuilt exactly in the style matthias corvinus built it, and which was demolished during the turkish invasion. here is the old church of matthias too, but it is so much renovated that it lacks the appearance of age. behind the smaller hills larger ones are to be seen covered with shady woods; these are the villa regions and summer excursion places for the people. along the danube are green and shady islands of which the most beautiful is st. margaret's isle, and on the other side of the waters is the city of "pest," with the majestic houses of parliament, palace of justice, academy of science, and numerous other fine buildings. at the present time four bridges join the two cities together, and a huge tunnel leads through the first hill in buda into another part of the town. one can not say which is the more beautiful sight: to look from pest, which stands on level ground, up to the varying hilly landscape of buda; or to look from the hillside of the latter place on to the fairy-land of pest, with the broad silver danube receding in the distance like a great winding snake, its scales all aglitter in the sunshine. it is beautiful by day, but still more so at night, for myriads of lights twinkle in the water, and the hillsides are dotted as if with flitting fairy-lamps. even those who are used to the sight look at it in speechless rapture and wonder. what must it be like to foreigners! besides her splendid natural situation, budapest has another great treasure, and this is the great quantity of hot sulfur springs which exists on both sides of the danube. the romans made use of these at the time of their colonization, and we can find the ruins of the roman baths in aquincum half an hour from budapest. during the turkish rule many turkish baths were erected in buda. the rudas bath exists to this day, and with its modernized system is one of the most popular. császár bath, st. lukács bath, both in buda, have an old-established reputation for the splendid cures of rheumatism. a new bath is being built in pest where the hot sulfur water oozes up in the middle of the park--the same is to be found in st. margaret's isle. besides the sulfur baths there are the much-known bitter waters in buda called "hunyady" and "franz joseph," as well as salt baths. the city, with the exception of some parts in buda, is quite modern, and has encircling boulevards and wide streets, one of the finest being the andrássy street. the electric car system is one of the most modern, while underground and overground electric railways lead to the most distant suburbs. the city has a gay and new look about it; all along the walks trees are planted, and cafés are to be seen with a screen of shrubs or flowers around them. in the evening the sound of music floats from the houses and cafés. there are plenty of theaters, in which only the hungarian language is used, and a large and beautiful opera-house under government management. there are museums, institutions of art and learning, academies of painting and music, schools, and shops, and life and movement everywhere. at present [ ] the city numbers about , souls, but the more distant suburbs are not reckoned in this number. [footnote a: from "hungary." published by the macmillan co.] available by internet archive (http://www.archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see http://www.archive.org/details/carthatwentabroa painuoft the car that went abroad * * * * * books by albert bigelow paine _for grown-ups_ the car that went abroad the lure of the mediterranean dwellers in arcady from van-dweller to commuter moments with mark twain mark twain's letters mark twain: a biography peanut: the story of a boy short life of mark twain life of thomas nast the tent-dwellers _for young readers_ the boys' life of mark twain hollow tree nights and days the hollow tree and deep-woods book the hollow tree snowed-in book _small books of several stories each, selected from the above hollow tree books:_ how mr. dog got even how mr. rabbit lost his tail mr. rabbit's big dinner making up with mr. dog mr. 'possum's great balloon trip mr rabbit's wedding mr. crow and the whitewash mr. turtle's flying adventure when jack rabbit was a little boy harper & brothers, new york established * * * * * [illustration: "the normandy road to cherbourg is as wonderful as any in france"--see p. ] the car that went abroad motoring through the golden age by albert bigelow paine author of "dwellers in arcady," "the ship dwellers," etc. illustrated from drawings by walter hale [illustration] harper & brothers publishers new york and london copyright, , by harper & brothers contents part i the car that went abroad chapter page i. don't hurry through marseilles ii. motoring by tram iii. across the crau iv. mistral v. the rome of france vi. the way through eden vii. to tarascon and beaucaire viii. glimpses of the past ix. in the citadel of faith x. an old tradition and a new experience xi. wayside adventures xii. the lost napoleon xiii. the house of heads xiv. into the hills xv. up the isÈre xvi. into the haute-savoie xvii. some swiss impressions xviii. the little town of vevey xix. mashing a mud guard xx. just french--that's all xxi. we luge part ii motoring through the golden age i. the new plan ii. the new start iii. into the juras iv. a poem in architecture v. vienne in the rain vi. the chÂteau i did not rent vii. an hour at orange viii. the road to pont du gard ix. the luxury of nÎmes x. through the cÉvennes xi. into the auvergne xii. le puy xiii. the center of france xiv. between billy and bessey xv. the haute-loire xvi. nearing paris xvii. summing up the cost xviii. the road to cherbourg xix. bayeux, caen, and rouen xx. we come to grief xxi. the damage repaired--beauvais and compiÈgne xxii. from paris to chartres and chÂteaudun xxiii. we reach tours xxiv. chinon, where joan met the king, and azay xxv. tours xxvi. chenonceaux and amboise xxvii. chambord and clÉry xxviii. orlÉans xxix. fontainebleau xxx. rheims xxxi. along the marne xxxii. domremy xxxiii. strassburg and the black forest xxxiv. a land where storks live xxxv. back to vevey xxxvi. the great upheaval xxxvii. the long trail ends illustrations "the normandy road to cherbourg is as wonderful as any in france" _frontispiece_ "where roads branch or cross there are signboards.... you can't ask a man 'quel est le chemin' for anywhere when you are in front of a signboard which is shouting the information" _facing p._ mark twain's "lost napoleon"--"the colossal sleeping figure in its supreme repose" marchÉ vevey--"in each town there is an open square, which twice a week is picturesquely crowded" "you can see son loup from the hotel steps in vevey, but it takes hours to get to it" descending the juras the tomb of margaret of austria, church of brou "through hillside villages where never a stone had been moved, i think, in centuries" birthplace of joan of arc strassburg, showing the cathedral preface fellow-wanderer: the curtain that so long darkened many of the world's happy places is lifted at last. quaint villages, old cities, rolling hills, and velvet valleys once more beckon to the traveler. the chapters that follow tell the story of a small family who went gypsying through that golden age before the war when the tree-lined highways of france, the cherry-blossom roads of the black forest, and the high trails of switzerland offered welcome to the motor nomad. the impressions set down, while the colors were fresh and warm with life, are offered now to those who will give a thought to that time and perhaps go happily wandering through the new age whose dawn is here. a. b. p. _june, ._ part i the car that went abroad chapter i don't hurry through marseilles originally i began this story with a number of instructive chapters on shipping an automobile, and i followed with certain others full of pertinent comment on ocean travel in a day when all the seas were as a great pleasure pond. they were very good chapters, and i hated to part with them, but my publisher had quite positive views on the matter. he said those chapters were about as valuable now as june leaves are in november, so i swept them aside in the same sad way that one disposes of the autumn drift and said i would start with marseilles, where, after fourteen days of quiet sailing, we landed with our car one late august afternoon. most travelers pass through marseilles hastily--too hastily, it may be, for their profit. it has taken some thousands of years to build the "pearl of the mediterranean," and to walk up and down the rue cannebière and drink coffee and fancy-colored liquids at little tables on the sidewalk, interesting and delightful as that may be, is not to become acquainted with the "pearl"--not in any large sense. we had a very good and practical reason for not hurrying through marseilles. it would require a week or more to get our car through the customs and obtain the necessary licenses and memberships for inland travel. meantime we would do some sight-seeing. we would begin immediately. besides facing the old port (the ancient harbor) our hotel looked on the end of the cannebière, which starts at the quai and extends, as the phrase goes, "as far as india," meaning that the nations of the east as well as those of the west mingle there. we understood the saying as soon as we got into the kaleidoscope. we were rather sober-hued bits ourselves, but there were plenty of the other sort. it was the end of august, and marseilles is a semi-tropic port. there were plenty of white costumes, of both men and women, and sprinkled among them the red fezzes and embroidered coats and sashes of algiers, morocco, and the farther east. and there were ladies in filmy things, with bright hats and parasols; and soldiers in uniforms of red and blue, while the wide pavements of that dazzling street were literally covered with little tables, almost to the edges. and all those gay people who were not walking up and down, chatting and laughing, were seated at the little tables with red and green and yellow drinks before them and pitchers of ice or tiny cups of coffee, and all the seated people were laughing and chattering, too, or reading papers and smoking, and nobody seemed to have a sorrow or a care in the world. it was really an inspiring sight, after the long, quiet days on the ship, and we loitered to enjoy it. it was very busy around us. tramcars jangled, motors honked, truckmen and cabmen cracked their whips incessantly. newswomen, their aprons full of long pockets stuffed with papers, offered us journals in phrases that i did not recognize as being in my french phonograph; cabmen hailed us in more or less english and wanted to drive us somewhere; flower sellers' booths lined both sides of a short street, and pretty girls held up nosegays for us to see. now and then a beggar put out a hand. the pretty drinks and certain ices we saw made us covetous for them, but we had not yet the courage to mingle with those gay people and try our new machine-made french right there before everybody. so we slipped into a dainty place--a _pâtisserie boulangerie_--and ordered coffee and chocolate ice cream, and after long explanations on both sides got iced coffee and hot chocolate, which was doing rather well, we thought, for the first time, and, anyhow, it was quite delicious and served by a pretty girl whose french was so limpid that one could make himself believe he understood it, because it was pure music, which is not a matter of arbitrary syllables at all. we came out and blended with the panaroma once more. it was all so entirely french, i said; no suggestion of america anywhere. but narcissa, aged fifteen, just then pointed to a flaming handbill over the entrance of a cinematograph show. the poster was foreign, too, in its phrasing, but the title, "_l'aventures d'arizona bill_" certainly had a flavor of home. the joy, who was ten, was for going in and putting other things by, but we overruled her. other signs attracted us--the window cards and announcements were easy lessons in french and always interesting. by and by bouquets of lights breaking out along the streets reminded us that it was evening and that we were hungry. there were plenty of hotels, including our own, but the dining rooms looked big and warm and expensive and we were dusty and economical and already warm enough. we would stop at some open-air place, we said, and have something dainty and modest and not heating to the blood. we thought it would be easy to find such a place, for there were perfect seas of sidewalk tables, thronged with people, who at first glance seemed to be dining. but we discovered that they were only drinking, as before, and perhaps nibbling at little cakes or rolls. when we made timid and rudimentary inquiries of the busy waiters, they pointed toward the hotels or explained things in words so glued together we could not sort them out. how different it all was from new york, we said. narcissa openly sighed to be back on "old rue de broadway," where there were restaurants big and little every twenty steps. we wandered into side streets and by and by found an open place with a tiny green inclosure, where a few people certainly seemed to be eating. we were not entirely satisfied with the look of the patrons, but they were orderly, and some of them of good appearance. the little tables had neat white cloths on them, and the glassware shone brightly in the electric glow. so we took a corner position and studied the rather elaborate and obscure bill of fare. it was written, and the few things we could decipher did not seem cheap. we had heard about food being reasonable in france, but single portions of fish or cutlets at ". " and broiled chicken at " . " could hardly be called cheap in this retired and unpretentious corner. one might as well be in a better place--in new york. we wondered how these unfashionable people about us could look so contented and afford to order such liberal supplies. then suddenly a great light came. the price amounts were not in dollars and cents, but in francs and centimes. the decimals were the same, only you divided by five to get american values. there is ever so much difference.[ ] the bill of fare suddenly took on a halo. it became almost unbelievable. we were tempted to go--it was too cheap to be decent. but we were weary and hungry, and we stayed. later we were glad. we had those things which the french make so well, no matter how humble the place--"_pot au feu, bouillabaisse_" (the fish soup which is the pride of marseilles--our first introduction to it), lamb chops, a crisp salad, gruyère cheese, with a pint of red wine; and we paid--i try to blush when i tell it--a total for our four of less than five francs--that is to say, something under a dollar, including the tip, which was certainly large enough, if one could judge from the lavish acknowledgment of the busy person who served us. we lingered while i smoked, observing some curious things. the place filled up with a democratic crowd, including, as it did, what were evidently well-to-do tradesmen and their families, clerks with their young wives or sweethearts, single derelicts of both sexes, soldiers, even workmen in blouses. many of them seemed to be regular customers, for they greeted the waiters and chatted with them during the serving. then we discovered a peculiar proof that these were in fact steady patrons. in the inner restaurant were rows of hooks along the walls, and at the corners some racks with other hooks. upon these were hanging, not hats or garments, but dozens of knotted white cloths which we discovered presently to be table napkins, large white serviettes like our own. while we were trying to make out why they should be variously knotted and hung about in that way a man and woman went in and, after a brief survey of the hooks, took down two of the napkins and carried them to a table. we understood then. the bill of fare stated that napkins were charged for at the rate of five centimes (one cent) each. these were individual leaseholdings, as it were, of those who came regularly--a fine example of french economy. we did not hang up our napkins when we went away. we might not come back, and, besides, there were no empty hooks. footnotes: [ ] the old rates of exchange are used in this book. chapter ii motoring by tram a little book says: "thanks to a unique system of tramways, marseilles may be visited rapidly and without fatigue." they do not know the word "trolley" in europe, and "tramway" is not a french word, but the french have adopted it, even with its "w," a letter not in their alphabet. the marseilles trams did seem to run everywhere, and they were cheap. ten centimes (two cents) was the fare for each "zone" or division, and a division long enough for the average passenger. being sight-seers, we generally paid more than once, but even so the aggregate was modest enough. the circular trip around the corniche, or shore, road has four of these divisions, with a special rate for the trip, which is very long and very beautiful. we took the corniche trip toward evening for the sake of the sunset. the tram starts at the rue de rome and winds through the city first, across shaded courts, along streets of varying widths (some of them so old and ever so foreign, but always clean), past beautiful public buildings always with deep open spaces or broad streets in front of them, for the french do not hide their fine public architectures and monuments, but plant them as a landscape gardener plants his trellises and trees. then all at once we were at the shore--the mediterranean no longer blue, but crimson and gold with evening, the sun still drifting, as it seemed, among the harbor islands--the towers of château d'if outlined on the sky. on one side the sea, breaking against the rocks and beaches, washing into little sheltered bays--on the other the abrupt or terraced cliff, with fair villas set in gardens of palm and mimosa and the rose trees of the south. here and there among the villas were palace-like hotels, with wide balconies that overlooked the sea, and down along the shore were tea houses and restaurants where one could sit at little tables on pretty terraces just above the water's edge. so we left the tram at the end of a zone and made our way down to one of those places, and sat in a little garden and had fish, freshly caught, and a cutlet, and some ripe grapes, and such things; and we watched the sun set, and stayed until the dark came and the corniche shore turned into a necklace of twinkling lights. then the tram carried us still farther, and back into the city at last, by way of the prado, a broad residential avenue, with trees rising dark on either side. at the end of a week in marseilles we had learned a number of things--made some observations--drawn some conclusions. it is a very old city--old when the greeks settled there twenty-five hundred years ago--but it has been ravaged and rebuilt too often through the ages for any of its original antiquity to remain. some of the buildings have stood five or six hundred years, perhaps, and are quaint and interesting, with their queer roofs and moldering walls which have known siege and battle and have seen men in gaudy trappings and armor go clanking by, stopping to let their horses drink at the scarred fountains where to-day women wash their vegetables and their clothing. we were glad to have looked on those ancient relics, for they, too, would soon be gone. the spirit of great building and progress is abroad in marseilles--the old clusters of houses will come down--the hoary fountains worn smooth by the hands of women and the noses of thirsty beasts will be replaced by new ones--fine and beautiful, for the french build always for art, let the race for commercial supremacy be ever so swift. fifty or one hundred years from now it will be as hard to find one of these landmarks as it is to-day relics of the greek and roman times, and of the latter we found none at all. tradition has it that lazarus and his family came to marseilles after his resuscitation, but the house he occupied is not shown. indeed, there is probably not a thing above ground that lucian the greek saw when he lived here in the second century. the harbor he sailed into remains. its borders have changed, but it is the same inclosed port that sheltered those early galleys and triremes of commerce and of war. we looked down upon it from our balcony, and sometimes in the dim morning, or in the first dusk of evening when its sails were idle and its docks deserted, it seemed still to have something of the past about it, something that was not quite reality. certain of its craft were old in fashion and quaint in form, and if even one trireme had lain at anchor there, or had come drifting in, we might easily have fancied this to be the port that somewhere is said to harbor the missing ships. it is a busy place by day. its quays are full of trucks and trams and teams, and a great traffic going on. lucian would hardly recognize any of it at all. the noise would appall him, the smoking steamers would terrify him, the _transbordeur_--an aërial bridge suspended between two eiffel towers, with a hanging car that travels back and forth like a cash railway--would set him praying to the gods. possibly the fishwives, sorting out sea food and bait under little awnings, might strike him as more or less familiar. at least he would recognize their occupation. they were strung along the east quay, and i had never dreamed that the sea contained so many strange things to eat as they carried in stock. they had oysters and clams, and several varieties of mussels, and some things that looked like tide-worn lumps of terra cotta, and other things that resembled nothing else under heaven, so that words have not been invented to describe them. then they had _oursins_. i don't know whether an _oursin_ is a bivalve or not. it does not look like one. the word "_oursin_" means hedgehog, but this _oursin_ looked a great deal more like an old, black, sea-soaked chestnut bur--that is, before they opened it. when the _oursin_ is split open-- but i cannot describe an opened _oursin_ and preserve the proprieties. it is too--physiological. and the marseillais eat those things--eat them raw! narcissa and i, who had rather more limb and wind than the others, wandered along the quay a good deal, and often stood spellbound watching this performance. once we saw two women having some of them for early breakfast with a bottle of wine--fancy! by the way, we finally discovered the restaurants in marseilles. at first we thought that the marseillais never ate in public, but only drank. this was premature. there are restaurant districts. the rue colbert is one of them. the quay is another, and of the restaurants in that precinct there is one that no traveler should miss. it is pascal's, established a hundred years ago, and descended from father to son to the present moment. pascal's is famous for its fish, and especially for its _bouillabaisse_. if i were to be in marseilles only a brief time, i might be willing to miss the palais longchamps or a cathedral or two, but not pascal's and _bouillabaisse_. it is a glorified fish chowder. i will say no more than that, for i should only dull its bloom. i started to write a poem on it. it began: oh, bouillabaisse, i sing thy praise. but narcissa said that the rhyme was bad, and i gave it up. besides, i remembered that thackeray had written a poem on the same subject. one must go early to get a seat at pascal's. there are rooms and rooms, and waiters hurrying about, and you must give your order, or point at the bill of fare, without much delay. sea food is the thing, and it comes hot and delicious, and at the end you can have melon--from paradise, i suppose, for it is pure nectar--a kind of liquid cantaloupe such as i have seen nowhere else in this world.[ ] you have wine if you want it, at a franc a bottle, and when you are through you have spent about half a dollar for everything and feel that life is a song and the future made of peace. there came moments after we found pascal's when, like the lotus eaters, we felt moved to say: "we will roam no more. this at last is the port where dreams come true." our motor clearance required a full ten days, but we did not regret the time. we made some further trips by tram, and one by water--to château d'if, on the little ferry that runs every hour or so to that historic island fortress. to many persons château d'if is a semi-mythical island prison from which, in dumas' novel, edmond dantes escapes to become the count of monte cristo, with fabulous wealth and an avenging sword. but it is real enough; a prison fortress which crowns a barren rock, twenty minutes from the harbor entrance, in plain view from the corniche road. françois i laid its corner stone in and construction continued during the next seventy years. it is a place of grim, stubby towers, with an inner court opening to the cells--two ranges of them, one above the other. the furniture of the court is a stone stairway and a well. château d'if is about as solid and enduring as the rock it stands on, and it is not the kind of place one would expect to go away from alive, if he were invited there for permanent residence. there appears to be no record of any escapes except that of edmond dantes, which is in a novel. when prisoners left that island it was by consent of the authorities. i am not saying that dumas invented his story. in fact, i insist on believing it. i am only saying that it was a remarkable exception to the general habit of the guests in château d'if. of course it happened, for we saw cell b where dantes was confined, a rayless place; also cell a adjoining, where the abbé faria was, and even the hole between, through which the abbé counseled dantes and confided the secret of the treasure that would make dantes the master of the world. all of the cells have tablets at their entrances bearing the names of their most notable occupants, and that of edmond dantes is prominently displayed. it was good enough evidence for us. those cells are on the lower level, and are merely black, damp holes, without windows, and with no floors except the unleveled surface of the rock. prisoners were expected to die there and they generally did it with little delay. one bernadot, a rich marseilles merchant, starved himself, and so found release at the end of the twelfth day; but another, a sailor named jean paul, survived in that horrible darkness for thirty-one years. his crime was striking his commander. many of the offenses were even more trifling; the mere utterance of a word offensive to some one in power was enough to secure lodging in château d'if. it was even dangerous to have a pretty daughter or wife that a person of influence coveted. château d'if had an open door for husbands and fathers not inclined to be reasonable in such matters. the second-story prisons are larger and lighter, but hardly less interesting. in no. count mirabeau lodged for nearly a year, by suggestion of his father, who did not approve of his son's wild ways and thought château d'if would tame him. but mirabeau put in his time writing an essay on despotism and planning revolution. later, one of the neighboring apartments, no. , a large one, became the seat of the _tribunal révolutionnaire_ which condemned there sixty-six to the guillotine. many notables were sent to château d'if on the charge of disloyalty to the sovereign. in one of the larger cells two brothers were imprisoned for having shared the exile of one chevalier glendèves who was obliged to flee from france because he refused to go down on his knees to louis xiv. royalty itself has enjoyed the hospitality of château d'if. louis philippe of orléans occupied the same large apartment later, which is really quite a grand one for a prison, with a fireplace and space to move about. another commodious room on this floor was for a time the home of the mysterious man of the iron mask. these are but a few--one can only touch on the more interesting names. "dead after ten years of captivity"; "dead after sixteen years of captivity"; such memoranda close many of the records. some of the prisoners were released at last, racked with disease and enfeebled in mind. some went forth to the block, perhaps willingly enough. it is not a place in which one wishes to linger. you walk a little way into the blackest of the dungeons, stumbling over the rocks of the damp, unleveled floor, and hurry out. you hesitate a moment in the larger, lighter cells and try to picture a king there, and the iron mask; you try to imagine the weird figure of mirabeau raging and writing, and then, a step away, the grim tribunal sorting from the nobility of france material for the guillotine. it is the kind of thing you cannot make seem real. you can see a picture, but it is always away somewhere--never quite there, in the very place. outside it was sunny, the sea blue, the cliffs high and sharp, with water always breaking and foaming at their feet. the joy insisted on being shown the exact place where dantes was flung over, but i was afraid to try to find it. i was afraid that there would be no place where he could be flung into the water without hitting the sharp rocks below, and that would end the story before he got the treasure. i said it was probably on the other side of the island, and besides it was getting late. we sailed home in the evening light, this time into the ancient harbor, and landed about where lucian used to land, i should think, such a long time ago. it was our last night in marseilles. we had been there a full ten days, altogether, and time had not hung upon our hands. we would still have lingered, but there was no longer an excuse. even the car could not furnish one. released from its prison, refreshed with a few liters of gasoline--_essence_, they call it--and awakened with a gentle hitch or two of the crank, it began its sweet old murmur, just as if it had not been across some thousands of miles of tossing water. then, the clutch released, it slipped noiselessly out of the docks, through the narrow streets, to a garage, where it acquired its new numbers and a bath, and maybe a french lesson or two, so that to-morrow it might carry us farther into france. footnotes: [ ] our honey-dew melon is a mild approach to it. chapter iii across the crau there are at least two ways to leave marseilles for the open plain of the provence, and we had hardly started before i wished i had chosen the other one. we were climbing the rue de la république, or one of its connections, when we met, coming down on the wrong side of the tram line, one of the heaviest vehicles in france, loaded with iron castings. it was a fairly crowded street, too, and i hesitated a moment too long in deciding to switch to the wrong side, myself, and so sneak around the obstruction. in that moment the monstrous thing decided to cross to its own side of the road, which seemed to solve the problem. i brought the car to a standstill to wait. but that was another mistake; i should have backed. the obstruction refused to cross the tram track. evidently the rails were slippery and when the enormous wheels met the iron they slipped--slipped toward us--ponderously, slowly, as inevitable as doomsday. i was willing to back then, but when i shifted the lever i forgot something else and our engine stopped. there was not enough gravity to carry us back without it; neither was there room, or time, to crank.[ ] so there we were, with that mountain closing in upon us like a wall of poe's collapsing room. it was fascinating. i don't think one of us thought of jumping out and leaving the car to its fate. the truck driver was frantically urging his team forward, hoping the wheels would catch, but only making them slide a little quicker in our direction. they were six inches away, now--five inches--three inches--one inch--the end of the hub was touching our mud guard. what we _might_ have done then--what _might_ have happened remains guesswork. what did happen was that the huge steel tire reached a joint in the tram rail and unhurriedly lifted itself over, just as if that was what it had been intending to do all the time. i had strength enough left to get out and crank up, then, but none to spare. a little more paint off the front end of the mud guard, but that was nothing. i had whetted those guards on a variety of things, including a cow, in my time. at home i had a real passion for scraping them against the door casing of the garage, backing out. still, we were pretty thoughtful for several miles and missed a road that turns off to arles, and were on the way to aix, which we had already visited by tram. never mind; aix was on the way to arles, too, and when all the roads are good roads a few miles of motor travel more or less do not count. only it is such a dusty way to aix, and we were anxious to get into the cleaner and more inviting byways. we were at the outskirts, presently, and when we saw a military-looking gentleman standing before a little house marked "_l'octroi_" we stopped. i had learned enough french to know that _l'octroi_ means a local custom house, and it is not considered good form to pass one of them unnoticed. it hurts the _l'octroi_ man's feelings and he is backed by the _gendarmerie_ of france. he will let you pass, and then in his sorrow he will telephone to the police station, just ahead. there you will be stopped with a bayonet, or a club, or something, and brought back to the _l'octroi_, where you will pay an _amend_ of six francs; also costs; also for the revenue stamp attached to your bill of particulars; also for any little thing which you may happen to have upon which duty may be levied; also for other things; and you will stand facing a half-open cell at the end of the corridor while your account is being made up--all of which things happened to a friend of mine who thought that because an _octroi_ man looked sleepy he was partly dead. being warned in this way, we said we would stop for an _octroi_ man even if he were entirely dead; so we pulled up and nodded politely, and smiled, and said, "bon joor, messoor," and waited his pleasure. you never saw a politer man. he made a sweeping salute and said--well, it doesn't matter just what he said--i took it to be complimentary and narcissa thought it was something about vegetables. whatever it was, we all smiled again, while he merely glanced in the car fore and aft, gave another fine salute and said, "_allay_" whereupon we understood, and _allayed_, with counter-salutes and further smiles--all of which seemed pleasanter than to be brought back by a _gendarme_ and stood up in front of a cell during the reckoning process. inquiring in aix for the road to arles we made a discovery, to wit: they do not always pronounce it "arl" in the french way, but "arlah," which is provençal, i suppose, the remains of the old name "arlate." one young man did not seem even to recognize the name arles, though curiously it happened that he spoke english--enough, at least, to direct us when he found that it was his provençal "arlah" that we wanted. so we left aix behind us, and with it the dust, the trams, and about the last traces of those modern innovations which make life so comfortable when you need them and so unpeaceful when you prefer something else. the one great modern innovation which bore us silently along those level roads fell into the cosmic rhythm without a jar--becoming, as it seemed, a sort of superhuman activity, such as we shall know, perhaps, when we get our lost wings again. i don't know whether provence roads are modern or not. i suspect they were begun by the roman armies a good while ago; but in any case they are not neglected now. they are boulevards--no, not exactly that, for the word "boulevard" suggests great width. they are avenues, then, ample as to width, and smooth and hard, and planted on both sides with exactly spaced and carefully kept trees. leaving aix, we entered one of these highways running straight into the open country. naturally we did not expect it to continue far, not in that perfectly ordered fashion, but when with mile after mile it varied only to become more beautiful, we were filled with wonder. the country was not thickly settled; the road was sparsely traveled. now and then we passed a heavy team drawing a load of hay or grain or wine barrels, and occasionally, very occasionally, we saw an automobile. it was a fair, fertile land at first. there were rich, sloping fields, vineyards, olive gardens, and plumy poplars; also, an occasional stone farmhouse that looked ancient and mossy and picturesque, and made us wish we could know something of the life inside its heavy walls. we said that sometime we would stop at such a place and ask them to take us in for the night. now and then we passed through a village, where the streets became narrow and winding, and were not specially clean. they were interesting places enough, for they were old and queer, but they did not invite us to linger. they were neither older nor more queer than corners of marseilles we had seen. once we saw a kind of fair going on and the people in holiday dress. at salon, a still larger and cleaner place, we stopped to buy something for our wayside luncheon. near the corner of a little shaded square a man was selling those delectable melons such as we had eaten in marseilles; at a shop across the way was a window full of attractions--little cheeses, preserved meats, and the like. i gathered up an assortment, then went into a _boulangerie_ for bread. there was another customer ahead of me, and i learned something, watching his transaction. bread, it seemed, was not sold by the loaf there, but by exact weight. the man said some words and the woman who waited on him laid two loaves, each about a yard long, on the scales. evidently they exceeded his order, for she cut off a foot or so from one loaf. still the weight was too much, and she cut off a slice. he took what was left, laid down his money, and walked out. i had a feeling that the end and slice would lie around and get shopworn if i did not take them. i pointed at them, and she put them on the scales. then i laid down a franc, and she gave me half a gill of copper change. it made the family envious when they saw how exactly i had transacted my purchase. there is nothing like knowing the language. we pushed on into the country again, stopped in a shady, green place, and picnicked on those good things for which we had spent nearly four francs. there were some things left over, too; we could have done without the extra slice of bread. there were always mountains in view, but where we were the land had become a level plain, once, ages ago, washed by the sea. we realized this when the fertile expanse became, little by little, a barren--a mere waste, at length, of flat smooth stones like cobble, a floor left by the departing tides. "la crau" it is called, and here there were no homes. no harvest could grow in that land--nothing but a little tough grass, and the artificially set trees on either side of the perfectly smooth, perfectly straight road that kept on and on, mile after mile, until it seemed that it must be a band around the world. how can they afford to maintain such a road through that sterile land? the sun was dropping to the western horizon, but we did not hurry. i set the throttle to a point where the speedometer registered fifteen miles an hour. so level was the road that the figures on the dial seemed fixed there. there was nothing to see but the unbroken barren, the perfectly regular rows of sycamore or cypress, and the evening sky; yet i have seldom known a drive more inspiring. steadily, unvaryingly, and silently heading straight into the sunset, we seemed somehow a part of the planetary system, little brother to the stars. it was dusk when we reached the outskirts of arles and stopped to light the lamps. the wide street led us into the business region, and we hoped it might carry us to the hotels. but this was too much to expect in an old french, provençal, roman city. pausing, we pronounced the word "hotel," and were directed toward narrower and darker ways. we had entered one of these when a man stepped out of the shadow and took charge of us. i concluded that we were arrested then, and probably would not need a hotel. but he also said "hotel," and, stepping on the running-board, pointed, while i steered, under his direction. i have no idea as to the way we went, but we came out into a semi-lighted square directly in front of a most friendly-looking hostelry. then i went in and aired some of my phonograph french, inquiring about rooms on the different _étages_ and the cost of _dîners_ and _déjeuners_, and the landlady spoke so slowly and distinctly that it made one vain of his understanding. so we unloaded, and our guide, who seemed to be an _attaché_ of the place, directed me to the garage. i gathered from some of the sounds he made that the main garage was _complet_--that is to say, full--and we were going to an annex. it was an interesting excursion, but i should have preferred to make it on foot and by daylight. we crossed the square and entered a cobbled street--no, a passage--between ancient walls, lost in the blackness above, and so close together below that i hesitated. it was a place for armored men on horseback, not for automobiles. we crept slowly through and then we came to an uphill corner that i was sure no car without a hinge in the middle could turn. but my guard--guide, i mean, signified that it could be done, and inch by inch we crawled through. the annex--it was really a stable of the middle ages--was at the end of the tunnel, and when we came away and left the car there i was persuaded that i should never see it again. back at the hotel, however, it was cheerful enough. it seemed an ancient place of stone stairways and thick walls. here and there in niches were roman vases and fragments found during the excavations. somewhere underneath us were said to be catacombs. attractive things, all of them, but the dinner we had--hot, fine and french, with _vin compris_ two colors--was even more attractive to travelers who had been drinking in oxygen under the wide sky all those steady miles across the crau. footnotes: [ ] the reader is reminded that this was in a day when few cars cranked otherwise than by hand. chapter iv mistral (from my notes, september , ) adjoining our hotel--almost a part of it, in fact, is a remnant of the ancient roman forum of arles. some columns, a piece of the heavy wall, sections of lintel, pediment, and cornice still stand. it is a portion of the corinthian entrance to what was the superb assembly place of roman arles. the square is called place du forum, and sometimes now place mistral--the latter name because a bronze statue of the "homer of the provence" has been erected there, just across from the forum entrance. frédéric mistral, still alive at eighty-three, is the light of the modern provence.[ ] we had begun to realize something of this when we saw his photographs and various editions of his poems in the windows of marseilles and aix, and handbills announcing the celebration at st. remy of the fiftieth anniversary of gounod's score of mistral's great poem, "mireille." but we did not at all realize the fullness of the provençal reverence for "the master," as they call him, until we reached arles. to the provence mistral is a god--an apollo--the "central sun from which other provençal singers are as diverging rays." whatever mistral touches is glorified. provençal women talk with a new grace because mistral has sung of them. green slopes and mossy ruins are viewed through the light of mistral's song. a mistral anniversary is celebrated like a declaration of independence or a louisiana purchase. they have even named a wind after him. or perhaps he was named after the wind. whichever way it was, the wind has taken second place and the people smile tenderly now, remembering the master, when its name is mentioned. i believe mistral does not sing in these later days. he does not need to. the songs he sang in youth go on singing for him, and are always young. outside of france they are not widely known; their bloom and fragrance shrink under translation. george meredith, writing to janet ross in , said: "mistral i have read. he is really a fine poet." but to meredith the euphonies of france were not strange. and mistral has loved the provence. not only has he sung of it, but he has given his labor and substance to preserve its memories. when the academy voted him an award of three thousand francs he devoted it to the needs of his fellow poets;[ ] when he was awarded the nobel prize he forgot that he might spend it on himself, and bought and restored an old palace, and converted it into a museum for arles. then he devoted his time and energies to collecting provençal relics, and to-day, with its treasures and associations, the place has become a shrine. everything relating to the life and traditions of the provence is there--roman sculpture, sarcophagi, ceramics, frescoes, furnishings, implements--the place is crowded with precious things. lately a room of honor has been devoted to the poet himself. in it are cases filled with his personal treasures; the walls are hung with illustrations used in his books. on the mantel is a fine bust of the poet, and in a handsome reliquary one finds a lock of hair, a little dress, and the cradle of the infant mistral. in the cradle lies the manuscript of mistral's first and greatest work, the "mireille." the provence has produced other noted men--among them alphonse daudet, who was born just over at nîmes, and celebrated the town of tarascon with his tartarin. but daudet went to paris, which is, perhaps, a sin. the provence is proud of daudet, and he, too, has a statue, at nîmes; but the provence worships mistral. footnotes: [ ] written in . mistral died march th of the following year. [ ] daudet in his _lettres de mon moulin_ says: "_ii y à quatre ans, lorsque l'académie donna à l'auteur de 'mireille' le prix de trois mille francs. mme. mistral [sa mère] eut une idée._ "'_si nous faisons tapisser et plafonner ta chambre?' dit elle à son fils._ "'_non! non!' répondit mistral. 'ca c'est l'argent des poëtes, on n'y touche pas._'" chapter v the rome of france there is no record of a time when there was not a city at arles. the rhone divides to form its delta there--loses its swiftness and becomes a smooth highway to the sea. "as at arles, where the rhone stagnates," wrote dante, who probably visited the place on a journey he made to paris. there the flat barrenness of the crau becomes fertile slopes and watered fields. it is a place for men to congregate and it was already important when julius cæsar established a roman colony and built a fleet there, after which it became still more important--finally, with its one hundred thousand inhabitants, rivaling even marseilles. it was during those earlier years--along through the first and second centuries--that most of the great building was done, remnants of which survive to this day. prosperity continued even into the fourth century, when the christian emperor constantine established a noble palace there and contemplated making it the capital of his kingdom. but then the decline set in. in the next century or two clouds of so-called barbarians swept down from the north and east, conquering, plundering, and establishing new kingdoms. gauls, goths, saracens, and francs each had their turn at it. following came the parlous years of the middle period. for a brief time it was an independent republic; then a monarchy. by the end of the fifteenth century it was ready to be annexed to france. always a battle ground, raided and sacked so often that the count is lost, the wonder is that any of its ancient glories survive at all. but the romans built well; their massive construction has withstood the wild ravage of succeeding wars, the sun and storm of millennial years. we knew little of arles except that it was the place where there was the ruin of a roman arena, and we expected not much from that. the romans had occupied france and had doubtless built amusement places, but if we gave the matter any further thought it was to conclude that such provincial circus rings would be small affairs of which only a few vestiges, like those of the ruined forum, would remain. we would visit the fragments, of course, and meantime we drifted along one side of the place du forum in the morning sunlight, looking in show windows to find something in picture postals to send home. what we saw at first puzzled, then astonished us. besides the pictures of mistral the cards were mostly of ruins--which we expected, perhaps, but not of such ruins. why, these were not mere vestiges. ephesus, baalbec, rome itself, could hardly show more impressive remains. the arena on these cards seemed hardly a ruin at all, and here were other cards which showed it occupied, filled with a vast modern audience who were watching something--clearly a bull fight, a legitimate descendant of nero's rome. i could not at first believe that these structures could be of arles, but the inscriptions were not to be disputed. then i could not wait to get to them. we did not drive. it was only a little way to the arena, they told us, and the narrow streets looked crooked and congested. it was a hot september morning, but i think we hurried. i suppose i was afraid the arena would not wait. then all at once we were right upon it, had entered a lofty arch, climbed some stairs, and were gazing down on one of the surviving glories of a dead empire. what a structure it is! an oval by feet--more than half as big again as a city block; the inner oval, the arena itself,[ ] by feet, the tiers of stone seats rising terrace above terrace to a high circle of arches which once formed the support for an enormous canvas dome. all along the terraces arches and stairways lead down to spacious recesses and the great entrance corridor. the twenty thousand spectators which this arena once held were not obliged to crowd through any one or two entrances, but could enter almost anywhere and ascend to their seats from any point of the compass. they held tickets--pieces of parchment, i suppose--and these were numbered like the seats, just as tickets are numbered to-day. down near the ringside was the pit, or _podium_, and that was the choice place. some of the seats there were owned, and bore the owners' names. the upper seats are wide stone steps, but comfortable enough, and solid enough to stand till judgment day. they have ranged wooden benches along some of them now, i do not see why, for they are very ugly and certainly not luxurious. they are for the entertainments--mainly bull fights--of the present; for strange, almost unbelievable as it seems, the old arena has become no mere landmark, a tradition, a monument of barbaric tastes and morals, but continues in active service to-day, its purpose the same, its morals not largely improved. it was built about the end of the first century, and in the beginning stags and wild boars were chased and put to death there. but then roman taste improved. these were tame affairs, after all. so the arena became a prize ring in which the combatants handled one another without gloves--that is to say, with short swords--and were hacked into a mince instead of mauled into a pulp in our more refined modern way. to vary the games lions and tigers were imported and matched against the gladiators, with pleasing effect. public taste went on improving and demanding fresh novelties. rome was engaged just then in exterminating christians, and the happy thought occurred to make spectacles of them by having them fight the gladiators and the wild beasts, thus combining business and pleasure in a manner which would seem to have been highly satisfactory to the public who thronged the seats and applauded and laughed, and had refreshments served, and said what a great thing christianity was and how they hoped its converts would increase. sometimes, when the captures were numerous and the managers could afford it, christians on crosses were planted around the entire arena, covered with straw and pitch and converted into torches. these were night exhibitions, when the torches would be more showy; and the canvas dome was taken away so that the smoke and shrieks could go climbing to the stars. attractions like that would always jam an amphitheater. this one at arles has held twenty-five thousand on one of those special occasions. centuries later, when the christians themselves came into power, they showed a spirit of liberality which shines by contrast. they burned their heretics in the public squares, free. only bulls and worn-out, cheap horses are tortured here to-day. it seems a pretty tame sport after those great circuses of the past. but art is long and taste is fleeting. art will keep up with taste, and all that we know of the latter is that it will change. because to-day we are satisfied with prize fights and bull fights is no sign that those who follow us will not demand sword fights and wild beasts and living torches. these old benches will last through the ages. they have always been familiar with the sport of torture of one sort or another. they await quite serenely for what the centuries may bring. it was hard to leave the arena. one would like to remain and review its long story. what did the barbarians do there--those hordes that swarmed in and trampled rome? the saracens in the eighth century used it for a fortress and added four watch towers, but their masonry is not of the everlasting roman kind, and one of their towers has tumbled down. it would be no harm if the others would tumble, too. they lend to the place that romance which always goes with the name "saracen," but they add no beauty. we paid a franc admission when we came into the amphitheater, our tickets being coupon affairs, admitting us to a variety of other historic places. the proceeds from the ruins are devoted to their care and preservation, but they cannot go far. very likely the bull-fight money is also used. that would be consistent. we were directed to the roman theater, near at hand, where the ruin is ruin indeed. a flight of rising stone seats, two graceful corinthian columns still standing, the rest fragments. more graceful in its architecture than the arena, the theater yielded more readily to the vandalisms of the conquerors and the corrosions of time. as early as the third century it was partially pulled down. later it was restored, but not for long. the building bishops came and wanted its materials and ornaments for their churches. not much was left after that, but to-day the fragments remaining have been unearthed and set up and give at least a hint of its former glory. one wonders if those audiences who watched christian slaughter at the arena came also to this chaste spot. plays are sometimes given here to-day, i am told, classic reproductions, but it is hard to believe that they would blend with this desolated setting. the bull fight in the arena is even better. we went over to the church of st. trophime, which is not a ruin, though very old. st. trophime, a companion of st. paul, was the founder of the church of arles. he is said to have set up a memorial to st. Étienne, the first martyr, and on this consecrated spot three churches have been built, one in the fourth century, another in the seventh, and this one, dedicated to st. trophime, in the twelfth, or earlier. it is of supreme historical importance. by the faithful it is believed to contain the remains of st. trophime himself. barbarossa and other great kings were crowned here; every important ceremony of mediæval arles has been held here. it is one of the oldest-looking places i ever saw--so moldy, so crumbly, and so dim. though a thousand years older, the arena looks fresh as compared with it, because even sun and storm do not gnaw and corrode like gloom and dampness. but perhaps this is a softer stone. the cloister gallery, which was not built until the twelfth century, is so permeated with decay that one almost fears to touch its delicately carved ornamentations lest they crumble in his hands. mistral has celebrated the cloister portal in a poem, and that alone would make it sacred to the provence. the beautiful gallery is built around a court and it is lined with sculpture and bas-relief, rich beyond words. saints and bible scenes are the subjects, and how old, how time-eaten and sorrowful they look. one gets the idea that the saints and martyrs and prophets have all contracted some wasting malady which they cannot long survive now. but one must not be flippant. it is a place where the feet of faith went softly down the centuries; and, taken as a whole, st. trophime, with its graceful architecture--gothic and byzantine, combined with the roman fragments brought long ago from the despoiled theater--is beautiful and delicate and tender, and there hangs about it the atmosphere that comes of long centuries of quiet and sacred things. mistral's museum is just across from the church, but i have already spoken of that--briefly, when it is worth a volume. one should be in a patient mood for museums--either to see or to write of them--a mood that somehow does not go with automobile wandering, however deliberate. but i must give a word at least to two other such institutions of arles, the musée lapidaire, a magnificent collection of pagan and early christian sarcophagi and marble, mostly from the ancient burial field, the aliscamp--and the musée réattu. réattu was an arlesian painter of note who produced many pictures and collected many beautiful things. his collections have been acquired by the city of arles, and installed in one of its most picturesque old buildings--the ancient grand priory of the knights of malta. the stairway is hung with tapestries and priceless arras; the rooms are filled with paintings, bas-reliefs, medallions, marbles, armor,--a wealth of art objects. one finds it hard to believe that such museums can be owned and supported by this little city--ancient, half forgotten, stranded here on the banks of the rhone. its population is given as thirty thousand, and it makes sausages--very good ones--and there are some railway shops that employ as many as fifteen hundred men. some boat building may still be done here, too. but this is about all arles can claim in the way of industries. it has not the look of what we call to-day a thriving city. it seems, rather, a mediæval setting for the more ancient memories. yet it has these three splendid museums, and it has preserved and restored its ruins, just as if it had a j. pierpont morgan behind it, instead of an old poet with a nobel prize, and a determined little community, too proud of its traditions and its taste to let them die. danbury, connecticut, has as many inhabitants as arles, and it makes about all the hats that are worn in america. it is a busy, rich place, where nearly everybody owns an automobile, if one may judge by the street exhibit any pleasant afternoon. it is an old place, too, for america, with plenty of landmarks and traditions. but i somehow can't imagine danbury spending the money and the time to establish such superb institutions as these, or to preserve its prerevolutionary houses. but, after all, danbury is young. it will preserve something two thousand years hence--probably those latest greco-roman façades which it is building now. near to the réattu museum is the palace of the christian emperor constantine. constantine came here after his father died, and fell in love with the beauty and retirement of the place. here, on the banks of the rhone, he built a palace, and dreamed of passing his days in it--of making arles the capital of his empire. his mother, st. helene, whose dreams at jerusalem located the holy sepulcher, the true cross, and other needed relics, came to visit her son, and while here witnessed the treason and suicide of one maximus hercules, persecutor of the christians. that was early in the fourth century. the daughter of maximus seems to have been converted, for she came to stay at the palace and in due time bore constantine a son. descendants of constantine occupied the palace for a period, then it passed to the gauls, to the goths, and so down the invading and conquering line. once a king, euric iii, was assassinated here. other kings followed and several varieties of counts. their reigns were usually short and likely to end with a good deal of suddenness. it was always a good place for royalty to live and die. until the beginning of the nineteenth century it was known as the "house of the king," but it was a ruin by that time. only portions of it remain now, chiefly a sort of rotunda of the grand hall of state. very little is left to show the ancient richness of its walls, but one may invite himself to imagine something--its marbles and its hangings--also that it was just here that m. hercules and king euric and their kind went the violent way; it would be the dramatic place for those occasions. one may not know to-day just what space the palace originally covered, but it was very large. portions of its walls appear in adjoining buildings. excavations have brought to light marbles, baths, rich ornamentations, all attesting its former grandeur. arles preserves it for its memories, and in pride of the time when she came so near to being the capital of the world. footnotes: [ ] the word arena derives its name from the sand, strewn to absorb the blood. chapter vi the way through eden there is so much to see at arles. one would like to linger a week, then a month, then very likely he would not care to go at all. the past would get hold of him by that time--the glamour that hangs about the dead centuries. there had been rain in the night when we left arles, much needed, for it was the season of drought. it was mid-morning and the roads were hard and perfect, and led us along sparkling waysides and between refreshed vineyards, and gardens, and olive groves. it seemed a good deal like traveling through eden, and i don't suppose heaven--the automobilist's heaven (assuming that there is one)--is much better. i wish i could do justice to the midi, but even mistral could not do that. it is the most fruitful, luscious land one can imagine. everything there seems good to eat, to smell of--to devour in some way. the vines were loaded with purple and topaz grapes, and i was dying to steal some, though for a few francs we had bought a basket of clusters, with other luncheon supplies, in arles. it finally became necessary to stop and eat these things--those grape fields were too tempting. it is my opinion that nothing in the world is more enjoyable than an automobile roadside luncheon. one does not need to lug a heavy basket mile after mile until a suitable place is found, and compromise at last because the flesh rebels. with a car, a mile, two miles, five miles, are matters of a few minutes. you run along leisurely until you reach the brook, the shade, the seclusion that invites you. then you are fresh and cool and deliberate. no need to hurry because of the long tug home again. you enjoy the things you have brought, unfretted by fatigue, undismayed by the prospect ahead. you are in no hurry to go. you linger and smoke and laze a little and discuss the environment--the fields, the growing things, the people through whose lands and lives you are cutting a cross-section, as it seems. you wonder about their customs, their diversions, what they do in winter, how it is in their homes. you speculate on their history, on what the land was like in its primeval period before there were any fields and homes--civilized homes--there at all. perhaps--though this is unlikely--you _know_ a little about these things. it is no advantage; your speculations are just as valuable and more picturesque. there are many pleasant things about motor gypsying, but our party, at least, agreed that the wayside luncheon is the pleasantest of all. furthermore, it is economical. unless one wants hot dishes, you can get more things, and more delicious things, in the village shops or along the way than you can find at the wayside hotel or restaurant, and for half the amount. our luncheon that day--we ate it between arles and tarascon--consisted of tinned chicken, fresh bread with sweet butter, roquefort cheese, ripe grapes, and some french cakes--plenty, and all of the best, at a cost of about sixty cents for our party of four. and when we were finally ready to go, and had cleaned up and secreted every particle of paper or other refuse (for the true motorist never leaves a place unsightly) we felt quite as pleased with ourselves and the world, and the things of the infinite, as if we had paid two or three times as much for a meal within four walls. chapter vii to tarascon and beaucaire it is no great distance from arles to tarascon, and, leisurely as we travel, we had reached the home of tartarin in a little while. we were tempted to stop over at tarascon, for the name had that inviting sound which always belongs to the localities of pure romance--that is to say, fiction--and it has come about that tarascon belongs more to daudet than to history, while right across the river is beaucaire, whose name, at least, booth tarkington has pre-empted for one of his earliest heroes. after all, it takes an author to make a town really celebrated. thousands of americans who have scarcely heard the name of arles are intimately familiar with that of tarascon. of course the town has to contribute something. it must either be a place where something has happened, or _could_ happen, or it must have a name with a fine sound, and it should be located in about the right quarter of the globe. when such a place catches the fancy of an author who has the gift of making the ideal seem reality, he has but to say the magic words and the fame of that place is sure. not that tarascon has not had real history and romance; it has had plenty of both. five hundred years ago the "good king rené" of anjou, who was a painter and a writer, as well as a king, came to tarascon to spend his last days in the stern, perpendicular castle which had been built for him on the banks of the rhone. it is used as a jail now, but king rené held a joyous court there and a web of romance clings to his memory. king rené's castle does not look like a place for romance. it looks like an artificial precipice. we were told we could visit it by making a sufficiently polite application to the _mairie_, but it did not seem worth while. in the first place, i did not know how to make a polite application to visit a jail--not in french--and then it was better to imagine king rené's festivities than to look upon a reality of misfortune. the very name of tarascon has to do with story. far back, in the dim traditionary days, one st. martha delivered the place from a very evil dragon, the tarasque, for whom they showed their respect by giving his name to their town. beaucaire, across the river, is lighted by old tradition, too. it was the home of aucassin and nicollette, for one thing, and anyone who has read that poem, either in the original or in andrew lang's exquisite translation, will have lived, for a moment at least, in the tender light of legendary tale. we drove over to beaucaire, and narcissa and i scaled a garden terrace to some ruined towers and battlements, all that is left of the ancient seat of the montmorencys. it is a romantic ruin from a romantic day. it was built back in the twelve hundreds--when there were still knights and troubadours, and the former jousted at a great fair which was held there, and the latter reclined on the palace steps, surrounded by ladies and gallants in silken array, and sang songs of palestine and the crusades. as time went on a light tissue of legend was woven around the castle itself--half-mythical tales of its earlier centuries. figures like aucassin and nicollette emerged and were made so real by those who chanted or recited the marvel of their adventures, that they still live and breathe with youth when their gallant castle itself is no more than vacant towers and fragmentary walls. the castle of beaucaire looks across to the defiant walls of king rené's castle in tarascon and i believe there used to be some sturdy wars between them. if not, i shall construct one some day, when i am less busy, and feeling in the romantic form. it will be as good history as most castle history, and i think i shall make beaucaire win. king rené was a good soul, but i am doubtful about those who followed him, and his castle, so suitable to-day for a jail, does not invite sympathy. the montmorency castle was dismantled in , according to the guidebook, by richelieu, who beheaded its last tenant--some say with a cleaver, a serviceable utensil for such work. beaucaire itself is not a pretty town--not a clean town. i believe nicollette was shut up for a time in one of its houses--we did not inquire which one--any of them would be bad enough to-day. [illustration: "where roads branch or cross there are signboards.... you can't ask a man 'quel est le chemin' for anywhere when you are in front of a signboard which is shouting the information"] it is altogether easy to keep to the road in france. you do not wind in and out with unmarked routes crossing and branching at every turn. you travel a hard, level way, often as straight as a ruling stick and pointed in the right direction. where roads branch, or cross, there are signboards. all the national roads are numbered, and your red-book map shows these numbers--the chances of mistake being thus further lessened. we had practiced a good deal at asking in the politest possible french the way to any elusive destination. the book said that in france one generally takes off his hat in making such an inquiry, so i practiced that until i got it to seem almost inoffensive, not to say jaunty, and the formula "_je vous demande pardon, but--quel est le chemin pour--_" whatever the place was. sometimes i could even do it without putting in the "but," and was proud, and anxious to show it off at any opportunity. but it got dusty with disuse. you can't ask a man "_quel est le chemin_" for anywhere when you are on the straight road going there, or in front of a signboard which is shouting the information. i only got to unload that sentence twice between arles and avignon, and once i forgot to take off my hat; when i did, the man didn't understand me. with the blue mountains traveling always at our right, with level garden and vineland about us, we drifted up the valley of the rhone and found ourselves, in mid-afternoon, at the gates of avignon. that is not merely a poetic figure. avignon has veritable gates--and towering crenelated walls with ramparts, all about as perfect as when they were built, nearly six hundred years ago. we had heard avignon called the finest existing specimen of a mediæval walled city, but somehow one does not realize such things from hearing the mere words. we stopped the car to stare up at this overtopping masonry, trying to believe that it had been standing there already three hundred years, looking just about as it looks to-day, when shakespeare was writing plays in london. those are the things we never really believe. we only acknowledge them and pass on. very little of avignon has overflowed its massive boundaries; the fields were at our backs as we halted in the great portals. we halted because we noticed the word "_l'octroi_" on one of the towers. but, as before, the _l'octroi_ man merely glanced into our vehicle and waved us away. we were looking down a wide shaded avenue of rather modern, even if foreign, aspect, and full of life. we drove slowly, hunting, as we passed along, for one of the hotels set down in the red-book as "comfortable, with modern improvements," including "gar. _grat._"--that is to say, garage gratis, such being the custom of this land. narcissa, who has an eye for hotels, spied one presently, a rather imposing-looking place with a long, imposing name. but the management was quite modest as to terms when i displayed our t. c. de france membership card, and the "gar. _grat._"--this time in the inner court of the hotel itself--was a neat place with running water and a concrete floor. not very ancient for mediæval avignon, but one can worry along without antiquities in a hotel. chapter viii glimpses of the past avignon, like arles, was colonized by the romans, but the only remains of that time are now in its museum. at arles the romans did great things; its heyday was the period of their occupation. conditions were different at avignon. avenio, as they called it, seems to have been a kind of outpost, walled and fortified, but not especially glorified. very little was going on at avenio. christians were seldom burned there. in time a roman emperor came to arles, and its people boasted that it was to become the roman capital. nothing like that came to avenio; it would require another thousand years and another roman occupation to mature its grand destiny. i do not know just how it worried along during those stormy centuries of waiting, but with plenty of variety, no doubt. i suppose barbarians came like summer leafage, conquered and colonized, mixing the blood of a new race. it became a republic about twelve hundred and something--small, but tough and warlike--commanding the respect of seigneurs and counts, even of kings. christianity, meantime, had prospered. avignon had contributed to the crusades and built churches. also, a cathedral, though little dreaming that in its sacristy would one day lie the body of a pope. avignon's day, however, was even then at hand. sedition was rife in italy and the popes, driven from rome, sought refuge in france. near avignon was a small papal dominion of which carpentras was the capital, and the pope, then clement v, came often to avignon. this was honor, but when one day the bishop of avignon was made pope john xxii, and established his seat in his own home, the little city became suddenly what arles had only hoped to be--the capital of the world. if one were permitted american parlance at this point, he would say that a boom now set in in avignon.[ ] everybody was gay, everybody busy, everybody prosperous. the new pope straightway began to enlarge and embellish his palace, and the community generally followed suit. during the next sixty or seventy years about everything that is to-day of importance was built or rebuilt. new churches were erected, old ones restored. the ancient roman wall was replaced by the splendid new one. the papal palace was enlarged and strengthened until it became a mighty fortress--one of the grandest structures in europe. the popes went back to rome, then, but their legates remained and from their strong citadel administered the affairs of that district for four turbulent centuries. in , avignon united her fortunes to those of france, and through revolution and bloodshed has come again to freedom and prosperity and peace. i do not know what the population of avignon was in the day of her greater glory. to-day it is about fifty thousand, and, as it is full to the edges, it was probably not more populous then. we did not hurry in avignon. we only loitered about the streets a little the first afternoon, practicing our french on the sellers of postal cards. it was a good place for such practice. if there was a soul in avignon besides ourselves with a knowledge of english he failed to make himself known. not even in our hotel was there a manager, porter, or waiter who could muster an english word. narcissa and i explored more than the others and discovered the city hall and a theater and a little open square with a big monument. we also got a distant glimpse of some great towering walls which we knew to be the palace of the popes. now and again we were assailed by beggars--soiled and persistent small boys who annoyed us a good deal until we concocted an impromptu cure. it was a poem, in french--and effective: _allez! allez!_ _je n'ai pas de monnaie!_ _allez! allez!_ _je n'ai pas de l'argent!_ a frenchman might not have had the courage to mortify his language like that, but we had, and when we marched to that defiant refrain the attacking party fell back. we left the thoroughfare and wandered down into narrow side streets, cobble-paved and winding, between high, age-stained walls--streets and walls that have surely not been renewed since the great period when the coming of the popes rebuilt avignon. so many of the houses are apparently of one age and antiquity they might all have sprung up on the same day. what a bustle and building there must have been in those first years after the popes came! nothing could be too new and fine for the chosen city. now they are old again, but not always shabby. many of them, indeed, are of impressive grandeur, with carved casings and ponderous doors. no sign of life about these--no glimpse of luxury, faded or fresh--within. whatever the life they hold--whatever its past glories or present decline, it is shut away. only the shabbier homes were open--women at their evening duties, children playing about the stoop. _they_ had nothing to conceal. tradition, lineage, pride, poverty--they had inherited their share of these things, but they did not seem to be worrying about it. their affairs were open to inspection; and their habits of dress and occupation caused us to linger, until the narrow streets grew dim and more full of evening echoes, while light began to twinkle in the little basement shops where the ancestors of these people had bought and sold for such a long, long time. footnotes: [ ] alphonse daudet's "la mule de pape," in his _lettres de mon moulin_, gives a delightful picture of avignon at this period. chapter ix in the citadel of faith we were not very thorough sight-seers. we did not take a guidebook in one hand and a pencil in the other and check the items, thus cleaning up in the fashion of the neat, businesslike tourist. we seldom even had a program. we just wandered out in some general direction, and made a discovery or two, looked it over, surmised about it and passed judgment on its artistic and historical importance, just as if we knew something of those things; then when we got to a quiet place we took out the book and looked up what we had seen, and quite often, with the book's assistance, reversed our judgments and went back and got an altogether new set of impressions, and kept whichever we liked best. it was a loose system, to be recommended only for its variety. at the church of st. agricole, for instance, which we happened upon when we started out one morning, we had a most interesting half hour discussing the age and beauty of its crumbling exterior and wandering about in its dimness, speculating concerning its frescoes and stained marbles and ancient tombs. when, later, we sat on the steps outside and looked it up and found it had been established away back in , and twice since restored; that the fifteenth-century holy-water basin was an especially fine one; that the tombs and altar piece, the sculpture and frescoes were regarded as "remarkable examples," we were deeply impressed and went back to verify these things. then we could see that it was all just as the book said. but the procedure was somewhat different at the palace of the popes. we knew where we were going then, for we saw its towers looming against the sky, and no one could mistake that pile in avignon. furthermore, we paid a small fee at its massive arched entrance, and there was a guardian, or guide, to show us through. it is true he spoke only french--provençal french--but two gracious italian ladies happened to be going through at the same time and, like all cultured continentals, they spoke a variety of tongues, including american. the touch of travel makes the whole world kin, and they threw out a line when they saw us floundering, and towed us through. it was a gentle courtesy which we accepted with thankful hearts. we were in the central court first, the dull, sinister walls towering on every side. the guide said that executions had taken place there, and once, in later times--the period of the revolution--a massacre in which seventy perished. he also mentioned a bishop of the earlier period who, having fallen into disfavor, was skinned alive and burned just outside the palace entrance. think of doing that to a bishop! our conductor showed us something which we were among the first to see. excavation was going on, and near the entrance some workmen were uncovering a large square basin--a swimming pool, he said--probably of roman times. whatever had stood there had doubtless fallen into obliterated ruin by the time the papal palace was begun. a survey of the court interior showed that a vast scheme of restoration was going on. the old fortress had suffered from siege more than once, and time had not spared it; but with that fine pride which the french have in their monuments, and with a munificence which would seem to be limitless, they were reconstructing perfectly every ruined part, and would spend at least two million dollars, we were told, to make the labor complete. battered corners of towers had been carefully rebuilt, tumbled parapets replaced. we stood facing an exquisite mullioned window whose carved stone outlines were entirely new, yet delicately and finely cut, certainly at a cost of many thousand francs. the french do not seem to consider expense in a work of that sort. concrete imitations will not do. whatever is replaced must be as it was in the beginning. inside we found ourselves in the stately audience room, measuring some fifty by one hundred and eighty feet, its lofty ceiling supported by massive gothic arches, all as complete as when constructed. each missing piece or portion has been replaced. it was scarcely more perfect when the first papal audience was held there and when queen jeanne of naples came to plead for absolution, nearly six centuries ago. it was of overpowering size and interest, and in one of the upper corners was a picture i shall not soon forget. it was not a painting or tapestry, but it might have been either of these things and less beautiful. it was a living human being, a stone carver on a swinging high seat, dressed in his faded blue cap and blouse and chopping away at a lintel. but he had the face and beard and, somehow, the figure of a saint. he turned to regard us with a mild, meditative interest, the dust on his beard and dress completing the harmony with the gray wall behind him, the embodied spirit of restoration. we ascended to the pontifical chapel, similar in size and appearance to the room below. we passed to other gigantic apartments, some of them rudely and elaborately decorated by the military that in later years made this a garrison. we were taken to the vast refectory, where once there was a great central table, the proportions of which were plainly marked by an outline on the stone floor, worn by the feet of feasting churchmen. then we went to the kitchen, still more impressive in its suggestion of the stouter needs of piety. its chimney is simply a gigantic central funnel that, rising directly from the four walls, goes towering and tapering toward the stars. i judge the cooks built their fires in the center of this room, hanging their pots on cranes, swinging their meats barbecue fashion, opening the windows for air and draught. those old popes and legates were no weaklings, to have a kitchen like that. their appetites and digestions, like their faith, were of a robust and militant sort. i dare say it would require a week to go through all this palace, so the visitor is shown only samples of it. we ascended to one of the towers and looked down, far down, on the roofs of avignon--an expanse of brown tiling, toned by the ages, but otherwise not greatly different from what the popes saw when this tower and these housetops were new. beyond are the blue hills which have not changed. somewhere out there petrarch's laura was buried, but the grave has vanished utterly, the church is a mere remnant. as we stood in the window a cold breath of wind suddenly blew in--almost piercing for the season. "the mistral," our conductor said, and, though he did not cross himself, we knew by his exalted smile that he felt in it the presence of the poet of the south. then he told us that mistral had appointed him as one of those who were commissioned to preserve in its purity the provençal tongue. that he was very proud of it was certain, and willing to let that wind blow on him as a sort of benediction. it is said, however, that the mistral wind is not always agreeable in avignon. it blows away disease, but it is likely to overdo its work. "windy avignon, liable to the plague when it has not the wind, and plagued by the wind when it has it," is a saying at least as old as this palace. we got a generous example of it when we at last descended to the street. there it swirled and raced and grabbed at us until we had to button everything tightly and hold fast to our hats. we took refuge in the old cathedral of notre dame des dômes, where john xxii, who brought this glory to avignon, lies in his gothic tomb. all the popes of avignon were crowned here; it was the foremost church of christendom for the better part of a century. we could see but little of the interior, for, with the now clouded sky, the place was too dark. in the small chapel where the tomb stands it was dim and still. it is the holy place of avignon. a park adjoins the church and we went into it, but the mistral wind was tearing through the trees and we crossed and descended by a long flight to the narrow streets. everywhere about us the lower foundations of the papal palace joined the living rock, its towers seeming to climb upward to the sky. it was as if it had grown out of the rock, indestructible, eternal, itself a rock of ages. we are always saying how small the world is, and we had it suddenly brought home to us as we stood there under the shadow of those overtopping heights. we had turned to thank our newly made friends and to say good-by. one of them said, "you are from america; perhaps you might happen to know a friend of ours there," and she named one whom we did know very well indeed--one, in fact, whose house we had visited only a few months before. how strange it seemed to hear that name from two women of florence there in the ancient city, under those everlasting walls. chapter x an old tradition and a new experience among the things i did on the ship was to read the _automobile instruction book_. i had never done it before. i had left all technical matters to a man hired and trained for the business. now i was going to a strange land with a resolve to do all the things myself. so i read the book. it was as fascinating as a novel, and more impressive. there never was a novel like it for action and psychology. when i came to the chapter "thirty-seven reasons why the motor may not start," and feverishly read what one had better try in the circumstances, i could see that as a subject for strong emotional treatment a human being is nothing to an automobile. then there was the oiling diagram. a physiological chart would be nowhere beside it. it was a perfect maze of hair lines and arrow points, and looked as if it needed to be combed. there were places to be oiled daily, others to be oiled weekly, some to be oiled monthly, some every thousand miles. there were also places to be greased at all these periods, and some when you happened to think of it. you had to put on your glasses and follow one of the fine lines to the lubricating point, then try to keep the point in your head until you could get under the car, or over the car, or into the car, and trace it home. i could see that this was going to be interesting when the time came. i did not consider that it had come when we landed at marseilles. i said to the garage man there, in my terse french idiom, "make it the oil and grease," and walked away. now, at avignon, the new regime must begin. in the bright little, light little hotel garage we would set our car in order. i say "we" because narcissa, aged fifteen, being of a practical turn, said she would help me. i would "make it the oil and grease," and narcissa would wash and polish. so we began. the joy, aged ten, was audience. narcissa enjoyed her job. there was a hose in it, and a sponge and nice rubbing rags and polish, and she went at it in her strenuous way, and hosed me up one side and down the other at times when i was tracing some blind lead and she wasn't noticing carefully. i said i would make a thorough job of it. i would oil and grease all the daily, weekly, and monthly, and even the once-in-a-while places. we would start fair from avignon. i am a resolute person. i followed those tangled lines and labyrinthian ways into the vital places of our faithful vehicle. some led to caps, big and little, which i filled with grease. most of them were full already, but i gave them another dab for luck. some of the lines led to tiny caps and holes into which i squirted oil. some led to a dim uncertainty, into which i squirted or dabbed something in a general way. some led to mere blanks, and i greased those. it sounds rather easy, but that is due to my fluent style. it was not easy; it was a hot, messy, scratchy, grunting job. those lines were mostly blind leads, and full of smudgy, even painful surprises. some people would have been profane, but i am not like that--not with narcissa observing me. one hour, two, went by, and i was still consulting the chart and dabbing with the oil can and grease stick. the chart began to show wear; _it_ would not need greasing again for years. meantime narcissa had finished her washing and polishing, and was putting dainty touches on the glass and metal features to kill time. i said at last that possibly i had missed some places, but i didn't think they could be important ones. narcissa looked at me, then, and said that maybe i had missed places on the car but that i hadn't missed any on myself. she said i was a sight and probably never could be washed clean again. it is true that my hands were quite solidly black, and, while i did not recall wiping them on my face, i must have done so. when narcissa asked how soon i was going to grease the car again, i said possibly in about a thousand years. but that was petulance; i knew it would be sooner. underneath all i really had a triumphant feeling, and narcissa was justly proud of her work, too. we agreed that our car had never looked handsomer and shinier since our first day of ownership. i said i was certain it had never been so thoroughly greased. we would leave avignon in style. we decided to cross the rhone at avignon. we wanted at least a passing glance at villeneuve, and a general view of avignon itself, which was said to be finest from across the river. we would then continue up the west bank--there being a special reason for this--a reason with a village in it--one beauchastel--not set down on any of our maps, but intimately concerned with our travel program, as will appear later. we did not leave avignon by the st. bénézet bridge. we should have liked that, for it is one of those bridges built by a miracle, away back in the twelfth century when they used miracles a good deal for such work. sometimes satan was induced to build them overnight, but i believe that was still earlier. satan seems to have retired from active bridge-building by the twelfth century. it was a busy period for him at home. so the bénézet bridge was built by a boy of that name--a little shepherd of twelve, who received a command in a dream to go to avignon and build a bridge across the rhone. he said: "i cannot leave my sheep, and i have but three farthings in the world." "your flocks will not stray," said the voice, "and an angel will lead thee." bénézet awoke and found beside him a pilgrim whom he somehow knew to be an angel. so they journeyed together and after many adventures reached avignon. here the pilgrim disappeared and bénézet went alone to where a bishop was preaching to the people. there, in the presence of the assembly, bénézet stated clearly that heaven had sent him to build a bridge across the rhone. angry at the interruption, the bishop ordered the ragged boy to be taken in charge by the guard and punished for insolence and untruth. that was an ominous order. men had been skinned alive on those instructions. but bénézet repeated his words to the officer, a rough man, who said: "can a beggar boy like you do what neither the saints nor emperor charlemagne has been able to accomplish? pick up this stone as a beginning, and carry it to the river. if you can do that i may believe in you." it was a sizable stone, being thirteen feet long by seven broad--thickness not given, though probably three feet, for it was a fragment of a roman wall. it did not trouble bénézet, however. he said his prayers, and lightly lifted it to his shoulder and carried it across the town! some say he whistled softly as he passed along. i wish i had lived then. i would almost be willing to trade centuries to see bénézet surprise those people, carrying in that easy way a stone that reached up to the second-story windows. bénézet carried the stone to the bank of the river and set it down where the first arch of the bridge would stand. there was no trouble after that. everybody wanted to stand well with bénézet. labor and contributions came unasked. in eleven years the great work was finished, but bénézet did not live to see it. he died four years before the final stones were laid, was buried in a chapel on the bridge itself and canonized as a saint. there is another story about him, but i like this one best. bénézet's bridge was a gay place during the days of the popes at avignon. music and dancing were continuously going on there. it is ready for another miracle now. only four arches of its original eighteen are standing. storm and flood did not destroy it, but war. besiegers and besieged broke down the arches, and at last, more than two hundred years ago, repairs were given up. it is a fine, firm-looking fragment that remains. one wishes, for the sake of the little shepherd boy, that it might be restored once more and kept solid through time. passing along under the ramparts of avignon, we crossed the newer, cheaper bridge, and took the first turn to the right. it was a leafy way, and here and there between the trees we had splendid glimpses of the bastioned walls and castle-crowned heights of avignon. certainly there is no more impressive mediæval picture in all europe. but on one account we were not entirely satisfied. it was not the view that disturbed us; it was ourselves--our car. we were smoking--smoking badly, disgracefully; one could not deny it. in new york city we would have been taken in charge at once. at first i said it was only a little of the fresh oil burning off the engine, and that it would stop presently. but that excuse wore out. it would have taken quarts to make a smudge like that. when the wind was with us we traveled in a cloud, like prophets and deities of old, and the passengers grumbled. the joy suggested that we would probably blow up soon. then we began to make another discovery; when now and then the smoke cleared away a little, we found we were not in villeneuve at all. we had not entirely crossed the river, but only halfway; we were on an island. i began to feel that our handsome start had not turned out well. we backed around and drove slowly to the bridge again, our distinction getting more massive and solid every minute. disaster seemed imminent. the passengers were inclined to get out and walk. i said, at last, that we would go back to a garage i had noticed outside the walls. i put it on the grounds that we needed gasoline. it was not far, and the doors stood open. the men inside saw us coming with our gorgeous white tail filling the landscape behind us, and got out of the way. then they gathered cautiously to examine us. "too much oil," they said. in my enthusiasm i had overdone the thing. i had poured quarts into the crank case when there was probably enough there already. i had not been altogether to blame. two little telltale cocks that were designed to drip when there was sufficient oil had failed to drip because they were stopped with dust. being new and green, i had not thought of that possibility. a workman poked a wire into those little cocks and drew off the fuel we had been burning in that lavish way. so i had learned something, but it seemed a lot of smoke for such a small spark of experience. still, it was a relief to know that it was nothing worse, and while the oil was dripping to its proper level we went back into the gates of avignon, where, lunching in a pretty garden under some trees, we made light of our troubles, as is our way. chapter xi wayside adventures so we took a new start and made certain that we entirely crossed the river this time. we were in villeneuve-les-avignon--that is, the "new town"--but it did not get that name recently, if one may judge from its looks. villeneuve, in fact, is fourteen hundred years old, and shows its age. it was in its glory six centuries ago, when king philippe le bel built his tower at the end of bénézet's bridge, and jean le bon built one of the sternest-looking fortresses in france--fort st. andré. time has made the improvements since then. it has stained the walls and dulled the sharp masonry of these monuments; it has crushed and crumbled the feebler structures and filled the streets with emptiness and silence. villeneuve was a thronging, fighting, praying place once, but the throng has been reduced and the fighting and praying have become matters of individual enterprise. i wish now we had lingered at villeneuve-les-avignon. i have rarely seen a place that seemed so to invite one to forget the activities of life and go groping about among the fragments of history. but we were under the influence of our bad start, and impelled to move on. also, villeneuve was overshadowed by the magnificence of the palace of the popes, which, from its eternal seat on le rocher des doms, still claimed us. we briefly visited st. andré, the tower of philippe le bel, and loitered a little in a chartreuse monastery--a perfect wilderness of ruin; then slipped away, following the hard, smooth road through a garden and wonderland, the valley of the rhone. i believe there are no better vineyards in france than those between avignon and bagnols. the quality of the grapes is another matter; they are probably sour. all the way along those luscious topaz and amethyst clusters had been disturbing, but my conscience had held firm and i had passed them by. sometimes i said: "there are tons of those grapes; a few bunches would never be missed." but narcissa and the others said it would be stealing; besides, there were houses in plain view. but there is a limit to all things. in a level, sheltered place below bagnols we passed a vineyard shut in by trees, with no house in sight. and what a vineyard! ripening in the afternoon sun, clustered such gold and purple bunches as were once warmed by the light of eden. i looked casually in different directions and slowed down. not a sign of life anywhere. i brought the car to a stop. i said, "this thing has gone far enough." conscience dozed. the protests of the others fell on heedless ears. i firmly crossed the irrigating ditch which runs along all those french roads, stepped among the laden vines, picked one of those lucent, yellow bunches and was about to pick another when i noticed something with a human look stir to life a little way down the row. conscience awoke with something like a spasm. i saw at once that taking those grapes was wrong; i almost dropped the bunch i had. narcissa says i ran, but that is a mistake. there was not room. i made about two steps and plunged into the irrigating canal, which i disremembered for the moment, my eyes being fixed on the car. narcissa says she made a grab at my grapes as they sailed by. i seemed to be a good while getting out of the irrigating ditch, but narcissa thinks i was reasonably prompt. i had left the engine running, and some seconds later, when we were putting temptation behind us on third speed, i noticed that the passengers seemed to be laughing. when i inquired as to what amused them they finally gasped out that the thing which had moved among the grapevines was a goat, as if that made any difference to a person with a sensitive conscience. it is not likely that any reader of these chapters will stop overnight at bagnols. we should hardly have rested there, but evening was coming on and the sky had a stormy look. later we were glad, for we found ourselves in an inn where d'artagnan, or his kind, lodged, in the days when knights went riding. travelers did not arrive in automobiles when that hostelry was built, and not frequently in carriages. they came on horseback and clattered up to the open door and ordered tankards of good red wine, and drank while their horses stretched their necks to survey the interior scenery. the old worn cobbles are still at the door, and not much has changed within. a niche holds a row of candles, and the traveler takes one of them and lights himself to bed. his room is an expanse and his bed stands in a curtained alcove--the bedstead an antique, the bed billowy, clean, and comfortable, as all beds are in france. nothing has been changed there for a long time. the latest conveniences are of a date not more recent than the reign of marie antoinette, for they are exactly the kind she used, still to be seen at versailles. and the dinner was good, with red and white flagons strewn all down the table--such a dinner as d'artagnan and his wild comrades had, no doubt, and if prices have not changed they paid five francs fifty, or one dollar and ten cents each, for dinner, lodging, and _petit déjeuner_ (coffee, rolls, and jam)--garage free. bagnols is unimportant to the tourist, but it is old and quaint, and it has what may be found in many unimportant places in france, at least one beautiful work of art--a soldier's monument, in this instance; _not_ a stiff effigy of an infantryman with a musket, cut by some gifted tombstone sculptor, but a female figure of victory, full of vibrant life and inspiration--a true work of art. france is full of such things as that--one finds them in most unexpected places. the valley of the rhone grew more picturesque as we ascended. now and again, at our left, rocky bluffs rose abruptly, some of them crowned with ruined towers and equally ruined villages, remnants of feudalism, of the lord and his vassals who had fought and flourished there in that time when france was making the romantic material which writers ever since have been so busily remaking and adorning that those old originals would stare and gasp if they could examine some of it now. how fine and grand it seems to picture the lord and his men, all bright and shining, riding out under the portcullis on glossy prancing and armored horses to meet some aggressive and equally shining detachment of feudalism from the next hilltop. in the valley they meet, with ringing cries and the clash of steel. foeman matches foeman--it is a series of splendid duels, combats to be recounted by the fireside for generations. then, at the end, the knightly surrender of the conquered, the bended knee and acknowledgment of fealty, gracious speeches from the victor as to the bravery and prowess of the defeated, after which, the welcome of fair ladies and high wassail for all concerned. everybody happy, everybody satisfied: wounds apparently do not count or interfere with festivities. the dead disappear in some magic way. i do not recall that they are ever buried. just above rochemaure was one of the most imposing of these ruins. the castle that crowned the hilltop had been a fine structure in its day. the surrounding outer wall which inclosed its village extended downward to the foot of the hill to the road--and still inclosed a village, though the more ancient houses seemed tenantless. it was built for offense and defense, that was certain, and doubtless had been used for both. we did not stop to dig up that romance. not far away, by the roadside, stood what was apparently a roman column. it had been already old and battered--a mere fragment of a ruin--when the hilltop castle and its village were brave and new. it was above rochemaure--i did not identify the exact point--that an opportunity came which very likely i shall never have again. on a bluff high above an ancient village, so old and curious that it did not belong to reality at all, there was a great château, not a ruin--at least, not a tumbled ruin, though time-beaten and gray--but a good complete château, and across its mossy lintel a stained and battered wooden sign with the legend, "_a louer_"--that is, "to let." i stopped the car. this, i said, was our opportunity. nothing could be better than that ancient and lofty perch overlooking the valley of the rhone. the "to let" sign had been there certainly a hundred years, so the price would be reasonable. we could get it for a song; we would inherit its traditions, its secret passages, its donjons, its ghosts, its-- i paused a moment, expecting enthusiasm, even eagerness, on the part of the family. strange as it may seem, there wasn't a particle of either. i went over those things again, and added new and fascinating attractions. i said we would adopt the coat of arms of that old family, hyphenate its name with ours, and so in that cheap and easy fashion achieve a nobility which the original owner had probably shed blood to attain. it was no use. the family looked up the hill with an interest that was almost clammy. narcissa asked, "how would you get the car up there?" the joy said, "it would be a good place for bad dreams." the head of the expedition remarked, as if dismissing the most trivial item of the journey, that we'd better be going on or we should be late getting into valence. so, after dreaming all my life of living in a castle, i had to give it up in that brief, incidental way. chapter xii the lost napoleon now, it is just here that we reach the special reason which had kept us where we had a clear view of the eastward mountains, and particularly to the westward bank of the rhone, where there was supposed to be a certain tiny village, one beauchastel--a village set down on none of our maps, yet which was to serve as an important identifying mark. the reason had its beginning exactly twenty-two years before; that is to say, in september, . mark twain was in europe that year, seeking health and literary material, and toward the end of the summer--he was then at ouchy, switzerland--he decided to make a floating trip down the river rhone. he found he could start from lake bourget in france, and, by paddling through a canal, reach the strong rhone current, which would carry him seaward. joseph very, his favorite guide (mentioned in _a tramp abroad_), went over to lake bourget and bought a safe, flat-bottomed boat, retaining its former owner as pilot, and with these accessories mark twain made one of the most peaceful and delightful excursions of his life. indeed, he enjoyed it so much and so lazily that after the first few days he gave up making extended notes and surrendered himself entirely to the languorous fascination of drifting idly through the dreamland of southern france. on the whole, it was an eventless excursion, with one exception--a startling exception, as he believed. one afternoon, when they had been drifting several days, he sighted a little village not far ahead, on the west bank, an ancient "jumble of houses," with a castle, one of the many along that shore. it looked interesting and he suggested that they rest there for the night. then, chancing to glance over his shoulder toward the eastward mountains, he received a sudden surprise--a "soul-stirring shock," as he termed it later. the big blue eastward mountain was no longer a mere mountain, but a gigantic portrait in stone of one of his heroes. eagerly turning to joseph very and pointing to the huge effigy, he asked him to name it. the courier said, "napoleon." the boatman also said, "napoleon." it seemed to them, indeed, almost uncanny, this lifelike, reclining figure of the conqueror, resting after battle, or, as mark twain put it, "dreaming of universal empire." they discussed it in awed voices, as one of the natural wonders of the world, which perhaps they had been the first to discover. they landed at the village, beauchastel, and next morning mark twain, up early, watched the sun rise from behind the great stone face of his discovery. he made a pencil sketch in his notebook, and recorded the fact that the figure was to be seen from beauchastel. that morning, drifting farther down the rhone, they watched it until the human outlines changed. mark twain's rhone trip was continued as far as arles, where the current slackened. he said that some one would have to row if they went on, which would mean work, and that he was averse to work, even in another person. he gave the boat to its former owner, took joseph, and rejoined the family in switzerland. events thronged into mark twain's life: gay winters, summers of travel, heavy literary work, business cares and failures, a trip around the world, bereavement. amid such a tumult the brief and quiet rhone trip was seldom even remembered. but ten or eleven years later, when he had returned to america and was surrounded by quieter things, he happened to remember the majestic figure of the first napoleon discovered that september day while drifting down the rhone. he recalled no more than that. his memory was always capricious--he had even forgotten that he made a sketch of the figure, with notes identifying the locality. he could picture clearly enough the incident, the phenomenon, the surroundings, but the name of the village had escaped him, and he located it too far down, between arles and avignon. all his old enthusiasm returned now. he declared if the presence of this great natural wonder was made known to the world, tourists would flock to the spot, hotels would spring up there--all other natural curiosities would fall below it in rank. his listeners caught his enthusiasm. theodore stanton, the journalist, declared he would seek and find the "lost napoleon," as mark twain now called it, because he was unable to identify the exact spot. he assured stanton that it would be perfectly easy to find, as he could take a steamer from arles to avignon, and by keeping watch he could not miss it. stanton returned to europe and began the search. i am not sure that he undertook the trip himself, but he made diligent inquiries of rhone travelers and steamer captains, and a lengthy correspondence passed between him and mark twain on the subject. no one had seen the "lost napoleon." travelers passing between avignon and arles kept steady watch on the east range, but the apparition did not appear. mark twain eventually wrote an article, intending to publish it, in the hope that some one would report the mislaid emperor. however, he did not print the sketch, which was fortunate enough, for with its misleading directions it would have made him unpopular with disappointed travelers. the locality of his great discovery was still a mystery when mark twain died. so it came about that our special reason for following the west bank of the rhone--the beauchastel side, in plain view of the eastward mountains--was to find the "lost napoleon." an easy matter, it seemed in prospect, for we had what the others had lacked--that is to say, exact information as to its locality--the notes, made twenty-two years before by mark twain himself[ ]--the pencil sketch, and memoranda stating that the vision was to be seen opposite the village of beauchastel. but now there developed what seemed to be another mystery. not only our maps and our red-book, but patient inquiry as well, failed to reveal any village or castle by the name of beauchastel. it was a fine, romantic title, and we began to wonder if it might not be a combination of half-caught syllables, remembered at the moment of making the notes, and converted by mark twain's imagination into this happy sequence of sounds. so we must hunt and keep the inquiries going. we had begun the hunt as soon as we left avignon, and the inquiries when there was opportunity. then presently the plot thickened. the line of those eastward mountains began to assume many curious shapes. something in their formation was unlike other mountains, and soon it became not difficult to imagine a face almost anywhere. then at one point appeared a real face, no question this time as to the features, only it was not enough like the face of the sketch to make identification sure. we discussed it anxiously and with some energy, and watched it a long time, thinking possibly it would gradually melt into the right shape, and that beauchastel or some similarly sounding village would develop along the river bank. but the likeness did not improve, and, while there were plenty of villages, there was none with a name the sound of which even suggested beauchastel. altogether we discovered as many as five faces that day, and became rather hysterical at last, and called them our collection of lost napoleons, though among them was not one of which we could say with conviction, "behold, the lost napoleon!" this brought us to bagnols, and we had a fear now that we were past the viewpoint--that somehow our search, or our imagination, had been in vain. but then came the great day. up and up the rhone, interested in so many things that at times we half forgot to watch the eastward hills, passing village after village, castle after castle, but never the "jumble of houses" and the castle that commanded the vision of the great chief lying asleep along the eastern horizon. i have not mentioned, i think, that at the beginning of most french villages there is a signboard, the advertisement of a firm of auto-stockists, with the name of the place, and the polite request to "_ralentir_"--that is, to "go slow." at the other end of the village is another such a sign, and on the reverse you read, as you pass out, "_merci_"--which is to say, "thanks," for going slowly; so whichever way you come you get information, advice, and politeness from these boards, a feature truly french. well, it was a little way above the château which i did not rent, and we were driving along slowly, thinking of nothing at all, entering an unimportant-looking place, when narcissa, who always sees everything, suddenly uttered the magical word "beauchastel!" [illustration: mark twain's "lost napoleon" "the colossal sleeping figure in its supreme repose"] it was like an electric shock--the soul-stirring shock which mark twain had received at the instant of his great discovery. beauchastel! not a figment, then, but a reality--the veritable jumble of houses we had been seeking, and had well-nigh given up as a myth. just there the houses interfered with our view, but a hundred yards farther along a vista opened to the horizon, and there at last, in all its mightiness and dignity and grandeur, lay the lost napoleon! it is not likely that any other natural figure in stone ever gave two such sudden and splendid thrills of triumph, first, to its discoverer, and, twenty-two years later, almost to the day, to those who had discovered it again. there was no question this time. the colossal sleeping figure in its supreme repose confuted every doubt, resting where it had rested for a million years, and would still rest for a million more. at first we spoke our joy eagerly, then fell into silence, looking and looking, loath to go, for fear it would change. at every opening we halted to look again, and always with gratification, for it did not change, or so gradually that for miles it traveled with us, and still at evening, when we were nearing valence, there remained a great stone face on the horizon. footnotes: [ ] at mark twain's death his various literary effects passed into the hands of his biographer, the present writer. chapter xiii the house of heads i ought to say, i suppose, that we were no longer in provence. even at avignon we were in venaissin, according to present geography, and when we crossed the rhone we passed into languedoc. now, at valence, we were in dauphiné, of which valence is the "chief-lieu," meaning, i take it, the official headquarters. i do not think these are the old divisions at all, and in any case it all has been "the midi," which to us is the provence, the vineland, songland, and storyland of a nation where vine and song and story flourish everywhere so lavishly that strangers come, never to bring, but only to carry away. at valence, however, romance hesitates on the outskirts. the light of other days grows dim in its newer electric glow. old castles surmount the hilltops, but one needs a field glass to see them. the city itself is modern and busy, prosperous in its manufacture of iron, silk, macaroni, and certain very good liquors. i believe the chief attraction of valence is the "house of the heads." our guidebook has a picture which shows napoleon bonaparte standing at the entrance, making his adieus to montalivet, who, in a later day, was to become his minister. napoleon had completed his military education in the artillery school of valence, and at the moment was setting out to fulfill his dream of conquest. it is rather curious, when you think of it, that the great natural stone portrait already described should be such a little distance away. to go back to the house of the heads: our book made only the briefest mention of its construction, and told nothing at all of its traditions. we stood in front of it, gazing in the dim evening light at the crumbling carved faces of its façade, peering through into its ancient court where there are now apartments to let, wondering as to its history. one goes raking about in the dusty places of his memory at such moments; returning suddenly from an excursion of that sort, i said i recalled the story of a house of carved heads--something i had heard, or read, long ago--and that this must be the identical house concerning which the story had been told. it was like this: there was a wealthy old bachelor of ancient days who had spent his life in collecting rare treasures of art; pictures, tapestries, choice metal-work, arms--everything that was beautiful and rare; his home was a storehouse of priceless things. he lived among them, attended only by a single servant--the old woman who had been his nurse--a plain, masculine creature, large of frame, still strong and brawny, stout of heart and of steadfast loyalty. when the master was away gathering new treasures she slept in the room where the arms were kept, with a short, sharp, two-edged museum piece by her couch, and without fear. one morning he told her of a journey he was about to take, and said: "i hesitate to leave you here alone. you are no longer young." but she answered: "only by the count of years, not by the measure of strength or vigilance. i am not afraid." so he left her, to return on the third day. but on the evening of the second day, when the old servant went down to the lower basement for fuel--silently, in her softly slippered feet--she heard low voices at a small window that opened to the court. she crept over to it and found that a portion of the sash had been removed; listening, she learned that a group of men outside in the dusk were planning to enter and rob the house. they were to wait until she was asleep, then creep in through the window, make their way upstairs, kill her, and carry off the treasures. it seemed a good plan, but as the old servant listened she formed a better one. she crept back upstairs, not to lock herself in and stand a siege, but to get her weapon, the short, heavy sword with its two razor edges. then she came back and sat down to wait. while she was waiting she entertained herself by listening to their plans and taking a little quiet muscle exercise. by and by she heard them say that the old hag would surely be asleep by this time. the "old hag" smiled grimly and got ready. a man put his head in. it was pitch dark inside, but just enough light came in from the stars for her to see where to strike. when half his body was through she made a clean slicing swing of the heavy sword and the robber's head dropped on a little feather bed which she had thoughtfully provided. the old woman seized the shoulders and firmly drew the rest of the man inside. another head came in, slowly, the shoulders following. with another swing of the sword they had parted company, and the grim avenging hands were silently dragging in the remnant. another head and shoulders followed, another, and another, until six heads and bodies were stacked about the executioner and there was blood enough to swim in. the seventh robber did not appear immediately; something about the silence within made him reluctant. he was suspicious, he did not know of what. he put his head to the opening and whispered, asking if everything was all right. the old woman was no longer calm. the violent exercise and intense interest in her occupation had unnerved her. she was afraid she could not control her voice to answer, and that he would get away. she made a supreme effort and whispered, "yes, all right." so he put in his head--very slowly--hesitated, and started to withdraw. the old woman, however, did not hesitate. she seized him by the hair, brought the sword down with a fierce one-hand swing, and the treasures of this world troubled him no more. then the old servant went crazy. returning next morning, her master found her covered with blood, brandishing her sword, and repeating over and over, "seven heads, and all mine," and at sight of him lost consciousness. she recovered far enough to tell her story, then, presently, died. but in her honor the master rebuilt the front of his dwelling and had carved upon it the heads of the men she had so promptly and justly punished. now, i said, this must be the very house, and we regarded it with awe and tried to locate the little cellar window where the execution had taken place. it was well enough in the evening dimness, but in the morning when we went around there again i privately began to have doubts as to the legend's authenticity, at least so far as this particular house was concerned. the heads, by daylight, did not look like the heads of house breakers--not any house breakers of my acquaintance--and i later consulted a guidebook which attached to them the names of homer, hippocrates, aristotle, pythagoras, etc., and i don't think those were the names of the parties concerned in this particular affair. it's very hard to give up a good and otherwise perfectly fitting legend, but one must either do that or change the guidebook. ah, well, it isn't the first sacrifice i've had to make for the sake of history. valence has been always a place of culture and educational activity. it was capital of segalauni before the romans came, and there was a celebrated school there, even then. this information also came from the guidebook, and it surprised me. it was the first time i had heard that the segalaunians had a school prior to the roman conquest. it was also the first time i had heard of the segalaunians. i thought they were all gauls and goths and vandals up that way, and that their education consisted in learning how to throw a spear convincingly, or to divert one with a rawhide buckler. now i discovered they had a college before the romans conquered them. one can hardly blame them for descending upon those romans later, with fire and sword. valence shared the usual fate. it was ravished by the so-called barbarians, and later hacked to pieces by christian kings. to-day again it is a fair city, with parks, wide boulevards, and imposing monuments. chapter xiv into the hills turning eastward from valence, we headed directly for the mountains and entered a land with all the wealth of increase we had found in provence, and with even more of picturesqueness. the road was still perfect--hard and straight, with an upward incline, but with a grade so gradual and perfect as to be barely noticeable. indeed, there were times when we seemed actually to be descending, even when the evidence of gravity told us that we were climbing; that is to say, we met water coming toward us--water flowing by the roadside--and more than once narcissa and i agreed that the said water was running uphill, which was not likely--not in france. of course, in england, where they turn to the left, it might be expected. the village did not seem quite like those along the rhone. the streets were as narrow, the people as mildly interested in us, but, on the whole, we thought the general aspect was less ancient, possibly less clean. but they were interesting. once we saw a man beating a drum, stopping on every corner to collect a little crowd and read some sort of proclamation, and once by the roadside we met a little negro child in a straw hat and a bright dress, a very bit of the american south. everywhere were pretty gardens, along the walls gay flowers, and always the valleys were rich in orchard and vineyard, plumed with tall poplars, divided by bright rivers, and glorified with hazy september sunlight. we grew friendly with the mountains in the course of the afternoon, then intimate. they sprang up before us and behind us; just across the valleys they towered into the sky. indeed, we suddenly had a most dramatic proof that we were climbing one. we had been shut in by wooded roads and sheltered farmsteads for an hour or two when we came out again into the open valley, with the river flowing through. but we were no longer _in_ the valley! surprise of surprises! we were on a narrow, lofty road hundreds of feet above it, skirting the mountainside! it seemed incredible that our gradual, almost imperceptible, ascent had brought us to that high perch, overlooking this marvelous vale of cashmere. everyone has two countries, it is said; his own and france. one could understand that saying here, and why the french are not an emigrating race. we stopped to gaze our fill, and as we went along, the scenery attracted my attention so much that more than once i nearly drove off into it. we were so engrossed by the picture that we took the wrong road and went at least ten miles out of our way to get to grenoble. but it did not matter; we saw startlingly steep mountainsides that otherwise we might not have seen, and dashing streams, and at the end we had a wild and glorious coast of five or six miles from our mountain fastness down into the valley of the isère, a regular toboggan streak, both horns going, nerves taut, teeth set, probable disaster waiting at every turn. we had never done such a thing before, and promised ourselves not to do it again. one such thrill was worth while, perhaps, but the ordinary lifetime might not outlast another. down in that evening valley we were in a wonderland. granite walls rose perpendicularly on our left; cottages nestled in gardens at our right--bloom, foliage, fragrance, the flowing isère. surely this was the happy valley, the land of peace and plenty, shut in by these lofty heights from all the troubling of the world. even the towers and spires of a city that presently began to rise ahead of us did not disturb us. in the evening light they were not real, and when we had entered the gates of ancient gratianopolis, and crossed the isère by one of its several bridges, it seemed that this modern grenoble was not quite a city of the eager world. the hotel we selected from the red-book was on the outskirts, and we had to draw pretty heavily on our french to find it; but it was worth while, for it was set in a wide garden, and from every window commanded the alps. we realized now that they _were_ the alps, the alps of the savoy, their high green slopes so near that we could hear the tinkle of the goat bells. we did not take the long drive through the "impossibly beautiful" valleys of grenoble which we had planned for next morning. when we arose the air was no longer full of stillness and sunlight. in fact, it was beginning to rain. so we stayed in, and by and by for luncheon had all the good french things, ending with fresh strawberries, great bowls of them--in september--and apparently no novelty in this happy valley of the isère. all the afternoon, too, it rained, and some noisy french youngsters raced up and down the lower rooms and halls, producing a homelike atmosphere, while we gathered about the tables to study the french papers and magazines. it was among the advertisements that i made some discoveries about french automobiles. they are more expensive than ours, in proportion to the horsepower, the latter being usually low. about twelve to fifteen horsepower seems to be the strength of the ordinary five-passenger machine. our own thirty-horsepower engine, which we thought rather light at home, is a giant by comparison. heavy engines are not needed in france. the smooth roads and perfectly graded hills require not half the power that we must expend on some of our rough, tough, rocky, and steep highways. again, these lighter engines and cars take less gasoline, certainly, and that is a big item, where gasoline costs at least per cent more than in america. i suppose the lightest weight car consistent with strength and comfort would be the thing to take to europe. there would be a saving in the gasoline bill; and then the customs deposit, which is figured on the weight, would not be so likely to cripple the owner's bank account. chapter xv up the isÈre sometime in the night the rain ceased, and by morning nature had prepared a surprise for us. the air was crystal clear, and towering into the sky were peaks no longer blue or green or gray, but white with drifted snow! we were in warm, mellow september down in our valley, but just up there--such a little way it seemed--were the drifts of winter. with our glass we could bring them almost within snowballing distance. feathery clouds drifted among the peaks, the sun shooting through. it was all new to us, and startling. these really were the alps; there was no further question. "few french cities have a finer location than grenoble," says the guidebook, and if i also have not conveyed this impression i have meant to do so. not many cities in the world, i imagine, are more picturesquely located. it is also a large city, with a population of more than seventy-five thousand--a city of culture, and it has been important since the beginning of recorded history. gratian was its patron roman emperor, and the name gratianopolis, assumed in his honor, has become the grenoble of to-day. gratian lived back in the fourth century and was a capable sort of an emperor, but he had one weak point. he liked to array himself in outlandish garb and show off. it is a weakness common to many persons, and seems harmless enough, but it was not a healthy thing for gratian, who did it once too often. he came out one day habited like a scythian warrior and capered up and down in front of his army. he expected admiration, and probably the title of scythianus, or something. but the unexpected happened. the army jeered at his antics, and eventually assassinated him. scythian costumes for emperors are still out of style. we may pass over the riot and ruin of the middle ages. all these towns were alike in that respect. the story of one, with slight alterations, fits them all. grenoble was the first town to open its gates to napoleon, on his return from elba, in , which gives it a kind of distinction in more recent times. another individual feature is its floods. the isère occasionally fills its beautiful valley, and fifteen times during the past three centuries grenoble has been almost swept away. there has been no flood for a long period now, and another is about due. prudent citizens of grenoble keep a boat tied in the back yard instead of a dog. we did not linger in grenoble. the tomb of bayard--_sans peur, sans reproche_--is there, in the church of st. andré; but we did not learn of this until later. the great sight at grenoble is its environment--the superlative beauty of its approaches, and its setting--all of which we had seen in the glory of a september afternoon. there were two roads to chambéry, one by the isère, and another through the mountains by way of chartreuse which had its attractions. i always wanted to get some of the ancient nectar at its fountainhead, and the road was put down as "picturesque." but the rains had made the hills slippery; a skidding automobile and old chartreuse in two colors did not seem a safe combination for a family car. so we took the river route, and i am glad now, for it began raining soon after we started, and we might not have found any comfortable ruined castle to shelter us if we had taken to the woods and hills. as it was, we drove into a great arched entrance, where we were safe and dry, and quite indifferent as to what happened next. we explored the place, and were rather puzzled. it was unlike other castles we have seen. perhaps it had not been a castle at all, but an immense granary, or brewery, or an ancient fortress. in any case, it was old and massive, and its high main arch afforded us a fine protection. the shower passed, the sun came out, and sent us on our way. the road was wet, but hard, and not steep. it was a neighborly road, curiously intimate with the wayside life, its domestic geography and economies; there were places where we seemed to be actually in front dooryards. the weather was not settled; now and then there came a sprinkle, but with our top up we did not mind. it being rather wet for picnicking, we decided that we would lunch at some wayside inn. none appeared, however, and when we came to think about it, we could not remember having anywhere passed such an inn. there were plenty of cafés where one could obtain wines and other beverages, but no food. in england and new england there are plenty of hostelries along the main roads, but evidently not in france. one must depend on the towns. so we stopped at challes-les-eaux, a little way out of chambéry, a pretty place, where we might have stayed longer if the september days had not been getting few. later, at chambéry, we visited the thirteenth-century château of the duc de savoy, which has been rebuilt, and climbed the great square tower which is about all that is left of the original structure, a grand place in its time. we also went into the gothic chapel to see some handsomely carved wainscoting, with a ceiling to match. we were admiring it when the woman who was conducting us explained by signs and a combination of languages that, while the wainscoting was carved, the ceiling was only painted, in imitation. it was certainly marvelous if true, and she looked like an honest woman. but i don't know-- i wanted to get up there and feel it. she was, at any rate, a considerate woman. when i told her in the beginning that we had come to see the duke of savoy's old hat, meaning his old castle, she hardly smiled, though narcissa went into hysterics. it was nothing--even a frenchman might say "_chapeau_" when he meant "_château_" and, furthermore--but let it go--it isn't important enough to dwell upon. anything will divert the young. speaking of hats, i have not mentioned, i believe, the extra one that we carried in the car. it belonged to the head of the family and when we loaded it (the hat) at marseilles it was a fresh and rather fluffy bit of finery. there did not seem to be any good place for it in the heavy baggage, shipped by freight to switzerland, and decidedly none in the service bags strapped to the running-board. besides, its owner said she might want to wear it on the way. there was plenty of space for an extra hat in our roomy car, we said, and there did seem to be when we loaded it in, all neatly done up in a trim package. but it is curious how things jostle about and lose their identity. i never seemed to be able to remember what was in that particular package, and was always mistaking it for other things. when luncheon time came i invariably seized it, expecting some pleasant surprise, only to untie an appetizing, but indigestible, hat. the wrapping began to have a travel-worn look, the package seemed to lose bulk. when we lost the string, at last, we found that we could tie it with a much shorter one; when we lost that, we gave the paper a twist at the ends, which was seldom permanent, especially when violently disturbed. not a soul in the car that did not at one time or another, feeling something bunchy, give it a kick, only to expose our surplus hat, which always had a helpless, unhappy look that invited pity. no concealment insured safety. once the joy was found to have her feet on it. at another time the owner herself was sitting on it. we seldom took it in at night, but once when we did we forgot it, and drove back seven miles to recover. i don't know what finally became of it. chapter xvi into the haute-savoie it is a rare and beautiful drive to aix-les-bains, and it takes one by lake bourget, the shimmering bit of blue water from which mark twain set out on his rhone trip. we got into a street market the moment of our arrival in aix, a solid swarm of dickering people. in my excitement i let the engine stall, and it seemed we would never get through. aix did not much interest us, and we pushed on to annecy with no unnecessary delay, and from annecy to thones, a comfortable day's run, including, as it did, a drive about beautiful ancient annecy, chief city of the haute-savoie. we might have stayed longer at annecy, but the weather had an unsettled look, and there came the feeling that storms and winter were gathering in the mountains and we would better be getting along somewhere else. also a woman backed her donkey cart into us at annecy and put another dent in our mudguard, which was somehow discouraging. as it was, we saw the lake, said to be the most beautiful in france, though no more beautiful, i think, than bourget; an ancient château, now transformed into barracks; the old prison built out in the river; the narrow, ancient streets; and a house with a tablet that states that jean-jacques rousseau lived there in , and there developed his taste for music. the haute-savoie is that billowy corner of far-eastern france below lake geneva--a kind of neutral, no man's territory hemmed by the huge heights of switzerland and italy. leaving annecy, we followed a picturesque road through a wild, weird land, along gorges and awesome brinks, under a somber sky. at times we seemed to be on the back of the world; at others diving to its recesses. it was the kind of way that one might take to supernatural regions, and it was the kind of evening to start. here and there on the slopes were flocks and herds, attended by grave-faced women, who were knitting as they slowly walked. they barely noticed us or their charges. they never sat down, but followed along, knitting, knitting, as though they were patterning the fates of men. sometimes we met or passed a woman on the road, always knitting, like the others. it was uncanny. probably for every human being there is somewhere among those dark mountains a weird woman, knitting the pattern of his life. that night at thones, a forgotten hamlet, lost there in the haute-savoie, a storm broke, the wind tore about our little inn, the rain dashed fearsomely, all of which was the work of those knitting women, beyond doubt. but the sun came up fresh and bright, and we took the road for geneva. for a time it would be our last day in france. all the forenoon we were among the mountain peaks, skirting precipices that one did not care to look over without holding firmly to something. but there were no steep grades and the brinks were protected by solid little walls. at the bottom of a long slope a soldier stepped out of a box of a house and presented arms. i dodged, but his intent was not sanguinary. he wanted to see our papers--we were at the frontier--so i produced our customs receipts, called _triptyques_, our t. c. de f. membership card, our car license, our driving license, and was feeling in my pocket for yet other things when he protested, "_pas nécessaire, pas nécessaire_" and handed all back but the french _triptyque_, which he took to his _bureau_, where, with two other military _attachés_, he examined, discussed, finally signed and witnessed it, and waved us on our way. so we were not passing the swiss customs yet, but only leaving the french outpost. the ordeal of the swiss _douane_ was still somewhere ahead; we had entered the neutral strip. we wished we might reach the swiss post pretty soon and have the matter over with. we had visions of a fierce person looking us through, while he fired a volley of french questions, pulled our baggage to pieces, and weighed the car, only to find that the result did not tally with the figures on our triple-folded sheet. i had supplied most of those figures from memory, and i doubted their accuracy. i had heard that of all countries except russia, switzerland was about the most particular. so we went on and on through that lofty scenery, expecting almost anything at every turn. but nothing happened--nothing except that at one place the engine seemed to be running rather poorly. i thought at first that there was some obstruction in the gasoline tube, and my impulse was to light a match and look into the tank to see what it might be. on second thought i concluded to omit the match. i remembered reading of a man who had done that, and almost immediately his heirs had been obliged to get a new car. we passed villages, but no _douane_. then all at once we were in the outskirts of a city. why, this was surely geneva, and as we were driving leisurely along a fat little man in uniform came out and lifted his hand. we stopped. here it was, then, at last. for a moment i felt a slight attack of weakness, not in the heart, but about the knees. however, the little man seemed friendly. he held out his hand and i shook it cordially. but it was the papers he was after, our swiss _triptyque_. i said to myself, "a minute more and we probably shall be on the scales, and the next in trouble." but he only said, "_numero de moteur._" i jerked open the hood, scrubbed off the grease, and showed it to him. he compared it, smiled, and handed back our paper. then he waved me to a _bureau_ across the street. now it was coming; he had doubtless discovered something wrong at a glance. there was an efficient-looking, sinister-looking person in the office who took the _triptyque_, glanced at it, and threw something down before me. i thought it was a warrant, but it proved to be a copy of the swiss law and driving regulations, with a fine road map of switzerland, and all information needed by motorists; "price, frs." stamped on the cover. i judged that i was required to buy this, but i should have done it, anyway. it was worth the money, and i wished to oblige that man. he accepted my two francs, and i began to feel better. then he made a few entries in something, handed me my _triptyque_, said "_bonjour, et bon voyage_," and i was done. i could hardly believe it. i saw then what a nice face he had, while the little fat man across the street was manifestly a lovely soul. he had demanded not a thing but the number of the motor. not even the number of the car had interested him. as for the weight, the bore of the cylinders, the number of the chassis, and all those other statistics said to be required, they were as nonexistent to him as to me. why, he had not even asked us to unstrap our baggage. it was with feelings akin to tenderness that we waved him good-by and glided across the imaginary line of his frontier into switzerland. we glided very leisurely, however. "everybody gets arrested in switzerland"--every stranger, that is--for breaking the speed laws. this, at least, was our new york information. so we crept along, and i kept my eye on the speedometer all the way through geneva, for we were not going to stop there at present, and when we had crossed our old friend, the rhone, variously bridged here, skirted the gay water-front and were on the shore road of that loveliest of all lakes--lake léman, with its blue water, its snow-capped mountains, its terraced vineyards, we still loafed and watched the _gendarmes_ to see if they were timing us, and came almost to a stop whenever an official of any kind hove in sight. also we used the mellow horn, for our book said that horns of the klaxon type are not allowed in switzerland. we were on soft pedal, you see, and some of the cars we met were equally subdued. but we observed others that were not--cars that were just bowling along in the old-fashioned way, and when these passed us, we were surprised to find that they were not ignorant, strange cars, but swiss cars, or at least cars with swiss number-plates and familiar with the dangers. as for the whistles, they were honking and snorting and screeching just as if they were in connecticut, where there is no known law that forbids anything except fishing on sunday. indeed, one of the most sudden and violent horns i have ever heard overtook us just then, and i nearly jumped over the windshield when it abruptly opened on me from behind. "good g--, that is, goodness!" i said, "this is just like france!" and i let out a few knots and tooted the klaxonette, and was doing finely when suddenly a mounted policeman appeared on the curve ahead. i could feel myself scrouging as we passed, going with great deliberation. he did not offer to molest me, but we did not hurry again--not right away. not that we cared to hurry; the picture landscape we were in was worth all the time one could give it. still, we were anxious to get to lausanne before dusk, and little by little we saw and heard things which convinced us that "everybody gets arrested in switzerland" is a superstition, the explosion of which was about due. fully half the people we met, _all_ that passed us, could properly have been arrested anywhere. by the time we reached lausanne we should have been arrested ourselves. chapter xvii some swiss impressions now, when one has reached switzerland, his inclination is not to go on traveling, for a time at least, but to linger and enjoy certain advantages. first, of course, there is the scenery; the lakes, the terraced hills, and the snow-capped mountains; the châteaux, chalets, and mossy villages; the old inns and brand-new, heaven-climbing hotels. and then switzerland is the land of the three f's--french, food, and freedom, all attractive things. for switzerland is the model republic, without graft and without greed; its schools, whether public or private, enjoy the patronage of all civilized lands, and as to the matter of food, switzerland is the _table d'hôte_ of the world. swiss landlords are combined into a sort of trust, not, as would be the case elsewhere, to keep prices up, but to keep prices down! it is the result of wisdom, a far-seeing prudence which says: "our scenery, our climate, our pure water--these are our stock in trade. our profit from them is through the visitor. wherefore we will encourage visitors with good food, attractive accommodations, courtesy; and we will be content with small profit from each, thus inviting a general, even if modest, prosperity; also, incidentally, the cheerfulness and good will of our patrons." it is a policy which calls for careful management, one that has made hotel-keeping in switzerland an exact science--a gift, in fact, transmitted down the generations, a sort of magic; for nothing short of magic could supply a spotless room, steam heated, with windows opening upon the lake, and three meals--the evening meal a seven-course dinner of the first order--all for six francs fifty (one dollar and thirty cents) a day.[ ] it is a policy which prevails in other directions. not all things are cheap in switzerland, but most things are--the things which one buys oftenest--woolen clothing and food. cotton goods are not cheap, for switzerland does not grow cotton, and there are a few other such items. shoes are cheap enough, if one will wear the swiss make, but few visitors like to view them on their own feet. they enjoy them most when they hear them clattering along on the feet of swiss children, the wooden soles beating out a rhythmic measure that sounds like a coopers' chorus. not all swiss shoes have wooden soles, but the others do not gain grace by their absence. swiss cigars are also cheap. i am not a purist in cigars, but at home i have smoked a good many and seldom with safety one that cost less than ten cents, straight. one pays ten centimes, or two cents, in switzerland, and gets a mild, evenly burning article. i judge it is made of tobacco, though the head of the family suggested other things that she thought it smelled like. if she had smoked one of them, she would not have noticed this peculiarity any more. wine is cheap, of course, for the hillsides are covered with vines; also, whisk--but i am wandering into economic statistics without really meaning to do so. they were the first things that impressed me. the next, i believe, was the lack of swiss politics. switzerland is a republic that runs with the exactness of a swiss watch, its machinery as hermetically concealed. i had heard that the swiss republic sets the pattern of government for the world, and i was anxious to know something of its methods and personnel. i was sorry that i was so ignorant. i didn't even know the name of the swiss president, and for a week was ashamed to confess it. i was hoping i might see it in one of the french papers i puzzled over every evening. but at the end of the week i timidly and apologetically inquired of our friendly landlord as to the name of the swiss chief executive. but then came a shock. our landlord grew confused, blushed, and confessed that he didn't know it, either! he had known it, he said, of course, but it had slipped his mind. slipped his mind! think of the name of roosevelt, or wilson, or taft slipping the mind of anybody in america--and a landlord! i asked the man who sold me cigars. he had forgotten, too. i asked the apothecary, but got no information. i was not so timid after that. i asked a fellow passenger--guest, i mean, an american, but of long swiss residence--and got this story. i believe most of it. he said: "when i came to switzerland and found out what a wonderful little country it was, its government so economical, so free from party corruption and spoils, from graft and politics, so different from the home life of our own dear columbia, i thought, 'the man at the head of this thing must be a master hand; i'll find out his name.' so i picked out a bright-looking subject, and said: "'what is the name of the swiss president?' "he tried to pretend he didn't understand my french, but he did, for i can tear the language off all right--learned it studying art in paris. when i pinned him down, he said he knew the name well enough, _parfaitement_, but couldn't think of it at that moment. "that was a surprise, but i asked the next man. he couldn't think of it, either. then i asked a police officer. of course he knew it, all right; '_oh oui, certainement, mais_'--then he scratched his head and scowled, but he couldn't dig up that name. he was just a plain prevaricator--_toute simplement_--like the others. i asked every man i met, and every one of them knew it, had it right on the end of his tongue; but somehow it seemed to stick there. not a man in vevey or montreux could tell me the name of the swiss president. it was the same in fribourg, the same even in berne, the capital. i had about given it up when one evening, there in berne, i noticed a sturdy man with an honest face, approaching. he looked intelligent, too, and as a last resort i said: "'could you, by any chance, tell me the name of the swiss president?' "the effect was startling. he seized me by the arm and, after looking up and down the street, leaned forward and whispered in my ear: "_'mon dieu! c'est moi!_ _i_ am the swiss president; but--ah _non_, don't tell anyone! i am the only man in switzerland who knows it!' "you see," my friend continued, "he is elected privately, no torchlight campaigns, no scandal, and only for a year. he is only a sort of chairman, though of course his work is important, and the present able incumbent has been elected a number of times. his name is--is--is--ah yes, that's my tram. so sorry to have to hurry away. see you to-night at dinner." one sees a good many nationalities in switzerland, and some of them i soon learned to distinguish. when i saw a man with a dinky panama hat pulled down about his face, and wearing a big black mustache or beard, i knew he was a frenchman. when i met a stout, red-faced man, with a pack on his back and with hobnailed shoes, short trousers, and a little felt hat with a feather stuck in it, i knew him for a german. when i noticed a very carefully dressed person, with correct costume and gaiters--also monocle, if perfect--saying, "aw--swiss people--so queah, don't you know," i was pretty sure he was an englishman. when i remarked a tall, limber person, carrying a copy of the paris _herald_ and asking every other person he met, "hey, there! vooly voo mir please sagen--" all the rest incomprehensible, i knew him for an american of the deepest dye. the swiss themselves have no such distinguishing mark. they are just sturdy, plainly dressed, unpretentious people, polite and friendly, with a look of capability, cleanliness, and honesty which invites confidence. an englishwoman said to me: "i have heard that the swiss are the best governed and the least intelligent people in the world." i reflected on this. it had a snappy sound, but it somehow did not seem to be firm at the joints. "the best governed and the least intelligent"--there was something drunken about it. i said: "it doesn't quite seem to fit. and how about the magnificent swiss public-school system, and the manufacturing, and the national railway, with all the splendid engineering that goes with the building of the funiculars and tunnels? and the swiss prosperity, and the medical practice, and the sciences? i always imagined those things were in some way connected with intelligence." "oh, well," she said, "i suppose they do go with intelligence of a kind; but then, of course, you know what i mean." but i was somehow too dull for her epigram. it didn't seem to have any sense in it. she was a grass widow and i think she made it herself. later she asked me whereabouts in america i came from. when i said connecticut, she asked if connecticut was as big as lausanne. a woman like that ought to go out of the epigram business.[ ] as a matter of fact, a good many foreigners are inclined to say rather peevish things about sturdy little, thriving little, happy little switzerland. i rather suspect they are a bit jealous of the pocket-de-luxe nation that shelters them, and feeds them, and entertains them, and cures them, cheaper and better and kindlier than their home countries. they are willing to enjoy these advantages, but they acknowledge rather grudgingly that switzerland, without a great standing army, a horde of grafters, or a regiment of tariff millionaires to support, can give lessons in national housekeeping to their own larger, more pretentious lands. i would not leave the impression, by the way, that the swiss are invariably prosperous. indeed, some of them along the lake must have been very poor just then, for the grape crop had failed two years in succession, and with many of them their vineyard is their all. but there was no outward destitution, no rags, no dirt, no begging. whatever his privation, the swiss does not wear his poverty on his sleeve. switzerland has two other official languages besides french--german and italian. government documents, even the postal cards, are printed in these three languages. it would seem a small country for three well-developed tongues, besides all the canton dialects, some of which go back to the old romanic, and are quite distinct from anything modern. the french, german, and italian divisions are geographical, the lines of separation pretty distinct. there is rivalry among the cantons, a healthy rivalry, in matters of progress and education. the cantons are sufficiently a unit on all national questions, and together they form about as compact and sturdy a little nation as the world has yet seen--a nation the size and shape of an english walnut, and a hard nut for any would-be aggressor to crack. there are not many entrances into switzerland, and they would be very well defended. the standing army is small, but every swiss is subject to a call to arms, and is trained by enforced, though brief, service to their use. he seems by nature to be handy with a rifle, and never allows himself to be out of practice. there are regular practice meets every sunday, and i am told the government supplies the cartridges. boys organize little companies and regiments and this the government also encourages. it is said that switzerland could put half a million soldiers in the field, and that every one would be a crack shot.[ ] the german kaiser, once reviewing the swiss troops, remarked, casually, to a sub-officer, "you say you could muster half a million soldiers?" "yes, your majesty." "and suppose i should send a million of my soldiers against you. what would you do then?" "we should fire two shots apiece, your majesty." [illustration: marchÉ vevey "in each town there is an open square, which twice a week is picturesquely crowded"] in every swiss town there are regular market days, important events where one may profitably observe the people. the sale of vegetables and flowers must support many families. in each town there is an open square, which twice a week is picturesquely crowded, and there one may buy everything to eat and many things to wear; also, the wherewith to improve the home, the garden, and even the mind; for besides the garden things there are stalls of second-hand books, hardware, furniture, and general knick-knacks. flanking the streets are displays of ribbons, laces, hats, knitted things, and general dry-goods miscellany; also antiques, the scrapings of many a swiss cupboard and corner. but it is in the open square itself that the greater market blooms--really blooms, for, in season, the vegetables are truly floral in their rich vigor, and among them are pots and bouquets of the posies that the swiss, like all europeans, so dearly love. most of the flower and vegetable displays are down on the ground, arranged in baskets or on bits of paper, and form a succession of gay little gardens, ranged in long narrow avenues of color and movement, a picture of which we do not grow weary. nor of the setting--the quaint tile-roofed buildings; the blue lake, with its sails and swans and throng of wheeling gulls; the green hills; the lofty snow-capped mountains that look down from every side. how many sights those ancient peaks have seen on this same square!--markets and military, battles and buffoonery. there are no battles to-day, but the swiss cadets use it for a drill ground, and every little while lightsome shows and merry-go-rounds establish themselves in one end of it, and the little people skip about, and go riding around and around to the latest ragtime, while the mountains look down with their large complaisance, just as they watched the capering ancestors of these small people, ages and ages ago; just as they will watch their light-footed descendants for a million years, maybe. the market is not confined entirely to the square. on its greater days, when many loads of wood and hay crowd one side of it, it overflows into the streets. around a floral fountain may be found butter, eggs, and cheese--oh, especially cheese, the cheese of gruyère, with every size and pattern of holes, in any quantity, cut and weighed by a handsome apple-faced woman who seems the living embodiment of the cheese industry. i have heard it said--this was in america--that the one thing not to be obtained in switzerland is swiss cheese. the person who conceived that smartness belongs with the one who invented the "intelligence" epigram. on the market days before christmas our square had a different look. the little displays were full of greenery, and in the center of the market place there had sprung up a forest of christmas trees. they were not in heaps, lying flat; but each, mounted on a neat tripod stand, stood upright, as if planted there. they made a veritable santa claus forest, and the gayly dressed young people walking among them, looking and selecting, added to this pretty sight. the swiss make much of christmas. their shop windows are overflowing with decorations and attractive things. vevey is "chocolate town." most of the great chocolate factories of europe are there, and at all holiday seasons the grocery and confectionary windows bear special evidence of this industry. chocolate santa clauses--very large--chickens, rabbits, and the like--life size; also trees, groups, set pieces, ornaments--the windows are wildernesses of the rich brown confection, all so skillfully modeled and arranged. the toy windows, too, are fascinating. you would know at once that you were looking into a swiss toy window, from the variety of carved bears; also, from the toy châteaux--very fine and large, with walled courts, portcullises, and battlements--with which the little swiss lad plays war. the dolls are different, too, and the toy books--all in french. but none of these things were as interesting as the children standing outside, pointing at them and discussing them--so easily, so glibly--in french. how little they guessed my envy of them--how gladly i would buy out that toy window for, say, seven dollars, and trade it to them for their glib unconsciousness of gender and number and case. on the afternoon before christmas the bells began. from the high mountainsides, out of deep ravines that led back into the hinterland, came the ringing. the hills seemed full of bells--a sound that must go echoing from range to range, to the north and to the south, traveling across europe with the afternoon. then, on christmas day, the trees. in every home and school and hotel they sparkled. we attended four in the course of the day, one, a very gorgeous one in the lofty festooned hall of a truly grand hotel, with tea served and soft music stealing from some concealed place--a slow strain of the "tannenbaum," which is like our "maryland," only more beautiful--and seemed to come from a source celestial. and when one remembered that in every corner of europe something of the kind was going on, and that it was all done in memory and in honor of one who, along dusty roadsides and in waste places, taught the doctrine of humility, one wondered if the world might not be worth saving, after all. footnotes: [ ] in - . the rate to-day is somewhat higher. [ ] i have thought since that she may have meant that the swiss do not lead the world in the art and literary industries. she may have connected those things with intelligence--you never can tell. [ ] when the call to arms came, august , , switzerland put , men on her frontier in twenty-four hours. chapter xviii the little town of vevey it would seem to be the french cantons along the lake of geneva (or léman) that most attract the deliberate traveler. the north shore of this lake is called the swiss riviera, for it has a short, mild winter, with quick access to the mountaintops. but perhaps it is the schools, the _pensionnats_, that hold the greater number. the whole shore of the lake of geneva is lined with them, and they are filled with young persons of all ages and nations, who are there mainly to learn french, though incidentally, through that lingual medium, other knowledge is acquired. some, indeed, attend the fine public schools, where the drill is very thorough, even severe. parents, as well as children, generally attend school in switzerland--visiting parents, i mean. they undertake french, which is the thing to do, like mountain climbing and winter sports. some buy books and seclude their struggles; others have private lessons; still others openly attend one of the grown-up language schools, or try to find board at french-speaking _pensions_. their progress and efforts form the main topic of conversation. in a way it makes for a renewal of youth. we had rested at vevey, that quiet, clean little picture-city, not so busy and big as lausanne, or so grand and stylish as montreux, but more peaceful than either, and, being more level, better adapted for motor headquarters. off the main street at montreux, the back or the front part of a car is always up in the air, and it has to be chained to the garage. we found a level garage in vevey, and picked out _pensionnats_ for narcissa and the joy, and satisfactory quarters for ourselves. though still warm and summer-like, it was already late autumn by the calendar, and not a time for long motor adventures. we would see what a swiss winter was like. we would wrestle with the french idiom. we would spend the months face to face with the lake, the high-perched hotels and villages, the snow-capped, cloud-capped hills. probably everybody has heard of vevey, but perhaps there are still some who do not know it by heart, and will be glad of a word or two of details. vevey has been a place of habitation for a long time. a wandering asian tribe once came down that way, rested a hundred years or so along the léman shore, then went drifting up the rhone and across the simplon to make trouble for rome. but perhaps there was no rome then; it was a long time ago, and it did not leave any dates, only a few bronze implements and trifles to show the track of the storm. the helvetians came then, sturdy and warlike, and then the romans, who may have preserved traditions of the pleasant land from that first wandering tribe. cæsar came marching down the rhone and along this waterside, and his followers camped in the vevey neighborhood a good while--about four centuries, some say. certain rich romans built their summer villas in switzerland, and the lake shore must have had its share. but if there were any at vevey, there is no very positive trace of them now. in the depths of the castle of chillon, they show you roman construction in the foundations, but that may have been a fortress. i am forgetting, however. one day, when we had been there a month or two, and were clawing up the steep hill--mount pelerin--that rises back of the hotel to yet other hotels, and to compact little villages, we strayed into a tiny lane just below chardonne, and came to a stone watering trough, or fountain, under an enormous tree. such troughs, with their clear, flowing water, are plentiful enough, but this one had a feature all its own. the stone upright which held the flowing spout had not been designed for that special purpose. it was, in fact, the upper part of a small column, capital and all, very old and mended, and _distinctly of roman design_. i do not know where it came from, and i do not care to inquire too deeply, for i like to think it is a fragment of one of those villas that overlooked the lake of geneva long ago. there are villas enough about the lake to-day, and châteaux by the dozen, most of the latter begun in the truculent middle ages and continued through the centuries down to within a hundred years or so ago. you cannot walk or drive in any direction without coming to them, some in ruins, but most of them well preserved or carefully restored, and habitable; some, like beautiful blonay, holding descendants of their ancient owners. from the top of our hotel, with a glass, one could pick out as many as half a dozen, possibly twice that number. they were just towers of defense originally, the wings and other architectural excursions being added as peace and prosperity and family life increased. one very old and handsome one, la tour de peilz, now gives its name to a part of vevey, though in the old days it is said that venomous little wars used to rage between vevey proper and the village which clustered about the château de peilz. readers of _little women_ will remember la tour de peilz, for it was along its lake wall that laurie proposed to amy. but a little way down the lake there is a more celebrated château than la tour de peilz; the château of chillon, which byron's poem of the prisoner bonivard has made familiar for a hundred years.[ ] chillon, which stands not exactly on the lake, but on a rock _in_ the lake, has not preserved the beginning of its history. those men of the bronze age camped there, and, if the evidences shown are genuine, the romans built a part of the foundation. also, in one of its lower recesses there are the remains of a rude altar of sacrifice. it is a fascinating place. you cross a little drawbridge, and through a heavy gateway enter a guardroom and pass to a pretty open court, where to-day there are vines and blooming flowers. then you descend to the big barrack room, a hall of ponderous masonry, pass through a small room, with its perfectly black cell below for the condemned, through another, where a high gibbet-beam still remains, and into a spacious corridor of pillars called now the "prison of bonivard." there are seven pillars of gothic mold in chillon's dungeons deep and old;... dim with a dull imprisoned ray, a sunbeam which has lost its way ... and in each pillar there is a ring and in each ring there is a chain. that iron is a cankering thing, for in these limbs its teeth remain.... bonivard's ring is still there, and the rings of his two brothers who were chained, one on each side of him; chained, as he tells us, so rigidly that we could not move a single pace; we could not see each other's face. we happened to be there, once, when a sunbeam that "had lost its way" came straying in, a larger sunbeam now, for the narrow slits that serve for windows were even narrower in bonivard's time, and the place, light enough to-day in pleasant weather, was then somber, damp, and probably unclean. bonivard was a geneva patriot, a political prisoner of the duke of savoy, who used chillon as his château. bonivard lived six years in chillon, most of the time chained to a column, barely able to move, having for recreation shrieks from the torture chamber above, or the bustle of execution from the small adjoining cell. how he lived, how his reason survived, are things not to be understood. both his brothers died, and at last bonivard was allowed more liberty. the poem tells us that he made a footing in the wall, and climbed up to look out on the mountains and blue water, and a little island of three trees, and the "white-walled distant town"--bouveret, across the lake. he was delivered by the bernese in , regaining his freedom with a sigh, according to the poem. yet he survived many years, dying in , at the age of seventy-four. on the columns in bonivard's dungeon many names are carved, some of them the greatest in modern literary history. byron's is there, victor hugo's, shelley's, and others of the sort. they are a tribute to the place and its history, of course, but even more to bonivard--the bonivard of byron. prisoners of many kinds have lived and died in the dungeons of chillon--heretics, witches, traitors, poor relations--persons inconvenient for one reason or another--it was a vanishing point for the duke's undesirables, who, after the execution, were weighted and dropped out a little door that opens directly to an almost measureless depth of blue uncomplaining water. right overhead is the torture chamber, with something ghastly in its very shape and color, the central post still bearing marks of burning-irons and clawing steel. next to this chamber is the hall of justice, and then the splendid banquet hall; everything handy, you see, so that when the duke had friends, and the wine had been good, and he was feeling particularly well, he could say, "let's go in and torture a witch"; or, if the hour was late and time limited, "now we'll just step down and hang a heretic to go to bed on." the duke's bedroom, by the way, was right over the torture chamber. i would give something for that man's conscience. one might go on for pages about chillon, but it has been told in detail so many times. it is the pride to-day of this shore--pictures of it are in every window--postal cards of it abound. yet, somehow one never grows tired of it, and stops to look at every new one. for a thousand years, at least, chillon was the scene of all the phases of feudalism and chivalry; its history is that of the typical castle; architecturally it is probably as good an example as there is in switzerland. it has been celebrated by other authors besides byron. jean jacques rousseau has it in his _nouvelle héloïse_, hugo in _le rhin_, and it has been pictured more or less by most of the writing people who have found their way to léman's pleasant shore. these have been legion. the vevey and montreux neighborhood has been always a place for poor but honest authors. rousseau was at vevey in , and lodged at the hotel of the key, and wrote of it in his _confessions_, though he would seem to have behaved very well there. the building still stands, and bears a tablet with a medallion portrait of rousseau and an extract in which he says that vevey has won his heart. in his _confessions_ he advises all persons of taste to go to vevey, and speaks of the beauty and majesty of the spectacle from its shore. when lord byron visited lake léman he lodged in clarens, between vevey and montreux, and a tablet now identifies the house. voltaire also visited here, lodging unknown. dumas the elder was in vevey in the thirties of the last century, and wrote a book about switzerland--a book of extraordinary interest, full of duels, earthquakes, and other startling things, worthy of the author of _monte cristo_ and _the three musketeers_. switzerland was not so closely reported in those days; an imagination like dumas' had more range. thackeray wrote a portion of the _newcomes_ at the hotel trois couronnes in vevey, and it was on the wide terrace of the same gay hostelry that henry james's _daisy miller_ had her parasol scene. we have already mentioned laurie and amy on the wall of tour de peilz, and one might go on citing literary associations of this neighborhood. perhaps it would be easier to say that about every author who has visited the continent has paused for a little time at vevey, a statement which would apply to travelers in general. vevey is not a great city; it is only a picturesque city, with curious, winding streets of constantly varying widths, and irregular little open spaces, all very clean, also very misleading when one wishes to go anywhere with direction and dispatch. you give that up, presently. you do not try to save time by cutting through. when you do, you arrive in some new little rectangle or confluence, with a floral fountain in the middle, and neat little streets winding away to nowhere in particular; then all at once you are back where you started. in this, as in some other points of resemblance, vevey might be called the boston of switzerland. not that i pretend to a familiarity with boston--nobody has that--but i have an aunt who lives there, and every time i go to see her i am obliged to start in a different direction for her house, though she claims to have been living in the same place for thirty years. some people think boston is built on a turn-table. i don't know; it sounds reasonable. to come back to vevey--it is growing--not in the wild, woolly, new york, chicago, and western way, but in a very definite and substantial way. they are building new houses for business and residence, solid structures of stone and cement, built, like the old ones, to withstand time. they do not build flimsy fire-traps in switzerland. whatever the class of the building, the roofs are tile, the staircases are stone. we always seem to court destruction in our american residential architecture. we cover our roofs with inflammable shingles to invite every spark, and build our stairways of nice dry pine, so that in the event of fire they will be the first thing to go. this encourages practice in jumping out of top-story windows. by day vevey is a busy, prosperous-looking, though unhurried, place, its water-front gay with visitors; evening comes and glorifies the lake into wine, turns to rose the snow on _grammont_, the _dents de midi_, and the _dents de morcles_. as to the sunset itself, not many try to paint it any more. once, from our little balcony we saw a monoplane pass up the lake and float into the crimson west, like a great moth or bird. night in vevey is full of light and movement, but not of noise. there is no wild clatter of voices and outbursts of nothing in particular, such as characterize the towns of italy and southern france. on the hilltops back of vevey the big hotels are lighted, and sometimes, following the dimmer streets, we looked up to what is apparently a city in the sky, suggesting one's old idea of the new jerusalem, a kind of vision of heaven, as it were--heaven at night, i mean. footnotes: [ ] written at the anchor inn, ouchy, lausanne, in . chapter xix mashing a mud guard one does not motor a great deal in the immediate vicinity of vevey; the hills are not far enough away for that. one may make short trips to blonay, and even up pelerin, if he is fond of stiff climbing, and there are wandering little roads that thread cozy orchard lands and lead to secluded villages tucked away in what seem forgotten corners of a bygone time. but the highway skirts the lake-front and leads straight away toward geneva, or up the rhone valley past martigny toward the simplon pass. it has always been a road, and in its time has been followed by some of the greatest armies the world has ever seen--the troops of cæsar, of charlemagne, of napoleon. we were not to be without our own experience in motor mountain climbing. we did not want it or invite it; it was thrust upon us. we were returning from martigny late one sunday afternoon, expecting to reach vevey for dinner. it was pleasant and we did not hurry. we could not, in fact, for below villeneuve we fell in with the homing cows, and traveled with attending herds--beside us, before us, behind us--fat, sleek, handsome animals, an escort which did not permit of haste. perhaps it was avoiding them that caused our mistake; at any rate, we began to realize presently that we were not on our old road. still, we seemed headed in the right direction and we kept on. then presently we were climbing a hill--climbing by a narrow road, one that did not permit of turning around. very well, we said, it could not be very high or steep; we would go over the hill. but that was a wrong estimate. the hill was high and it was steep. up and up and up on second speed, then back to first, until we were getting on a level with the clouds themselves. it was a good road of its kind, but it had no end. the water was boiling in the radiator--boiling over. we must stop to reduce temperature a little and to make inquiries. it was getting late--far too late to attempt an ascension of the alps. we were on a sort of bend, and there was a peasant chalet a few rods ahead. i went up there, and from a little old woman in short skirts got a tub of cool water, also some information. the water cooled off our engine, and the information our enthusiasm for further travel in that direction. we were on the road to château d'oex, a hilltop resort for winter sports. we were not in a good place to turn around, there on the edge of a semi-precipice, but we managed to do it, and started back. it was a steep descent. i cut off the spark and put the engine on low speed, which made it serve as a brake, but it required the foot and emergency brake besides. it would have been a poor place to let the car get away. then i began to worry for fear the hind wheels were sliding, which would quickly cut through the tires. i don't know why i thought i could see them, for mud guards make that quite impossible. nevertheless i leaned out and looked back. it was a poor place to do that, too. we were hugging a wall as it was, and one does not steer well looking backward. in five seconds we gouged into the wall, and the front guard on that side crumpled up like a piece of tinfoil. i had to get out and pull and haul it before there was room for the wheel to turn. i never felt so in disgrace in my life. i couldn't look at anything but the disfigured guard all the way down the mountain. the passengers were sorry and tried to say comforting things, but that guard was fairly shrieking its reproach. what a thing to go home with! i felt that i could never live it down. happily it was dark by the time we found the right road and were drawing into montreux--dark and raining. i was glad it was dark, but the rain did not help, and i should have been happier if the streets had not been full of dodging pedestrians and vehicles and blinding lights. the streets of montreux are narrow enough at best, and what with a busy tram and all the rest of the medley, driving, for a man already in disgrace, was not real recreation. a railway train passed us just below, and i envied the engineer his clear right of way and fenced track, and decided that his job was an easy one by comparison. one used to hear a good deal about the dangers of engine driving, and no doubt an engineer would be glad to turn to the right or left now and then when meeting a train head on--a thing, however, not likely to happen often, though i suppose once is about enough. all the same, a straight, fenced and more or less exclusive track has advantages, and i wished i had one, plunging, weaving, diving through the rain as we were, among pedestrians, cyclists, trams, carriages, other motors, and the like; misled by the cross lights from the shops, dazzled by oncoming headlights, blinded by rain splashing in one's face. it is no great distance from montreux to vevey, but in that night it seemed interminable. and what a relief at last were vevey's quiet streets, what a path of peace the semi-private road to the hotel, what a haven of bliss the seclusion of the solid little garage! next morning before anybody was astir i got the car with that maltreated mud guard to the shop. it was an awful-looking thing. it had a real expression. it looked as if it were going to cry. i told the repair man that the roads had been wet and the car had skidded into a wall. he did not care how it happened, of course, but i did; besides, it was easier to explain it that way in french. it took a week to repair the guard. i suppose they had to straighten it out with a steam roller. i don't know, but it looked new and fine when it came back, and i felt better. the bill was sixteen francs. i never got so much disgrace before at such a reasonable figure. chapter xx just french--that's all perhaps one should report progress in learning french. of course narcissa and the joy were chattering it in a little while. that is the way of childhood. it gives no serious consideration to a great matter like that, but just lightly accepts it like a new game or toy and plays with it about as readily. it is quite different with a thoughtful person of years and experience. in such case there is need of system and strategy. i selected different points of assault and began the attack from all of them at once--private lessons; public practice; daily grammar, writing and reading in seclusion; readings aloud by persons of patience and pronunciation. i hear of persons picking up a language--grown persons, i mean--but if there are such persons they are not of my species. the only sort of picking up i do is the kind that goes with a shovel. i am obliged to excavate a language--to loosen up its materials, then hoist them with a derrick. my progress is geological and unhurried. still, i made progress, of a kind, and after putting in five hours a day for a period of months i began to have a sense of results. i began to realize that even in a rapid-fire conversation the sounds were not all exactly alike, and to distinguish scraps of meaning in conversations not aimed directly at me, with hard and painful distinctness. i began even to catch things from persons passing on the street--to distinguish french from patois--that is to say, i knew, when i understood any of it, that it was not patois. i began to be proud and to take on airs--always a dangerous thing. one day at the pharmacy i heard two well-dressed men speaking. i listened intently, but could not catch a word. when they went i said to the drug clerk--an englishman who spoke french: "strange that those well-dressed men should use patois." he said: "ah, but that was not patois--that was very choice french--parisian." i followed those men the rest of the afternoon, at a safe distance, but in earshot, and we thus visited in company most of the shops and sights of vevey. if i could have followed them for a few months in that way it is possible--not likely, but possible--that their conversation might have meant something to me. which, by the way, suggests the chief difference between an acquired and an inherited language. an acquired language, in time, comes to _mean_ something, whereas the inherited language _is_ something. it is bred into the fiber of its possessor. it is not a question of considering the meaning of words--what they convey; they do not come stumbling through any anteroom of thought, they are embodied facts, forms, sentiments, leaping from one inner consciousness to another, instantaneously and without friction. probably every species of animation, from the atom to the elephant, has a language--perfectly understood and sufficient to its needs--some system of signs, or sniffs, or grunts, or barks, or vibrations to convey quite as adequately as human speech the necessary facts and conditions of life. persons, wise and otherwise, will tell you that animals have no language; but when a dog can learn even many words of his master's tongue, it seems rather unkind to deny to him one of his own. because the oyster does not go shouting around, or annoy us with his twaddle, does not mean that he is deprived of life's lingual interchanges. it is not well to deny speech to the mute, inglorious mollusk. remember he is our ancestor. to go back to french: i have acquired, with time and heavy effort, a sort of next-room understanding of that graceful speech--that is to say, it is about like english spoken by some one beyond a partition--a fairly thick one. by listening closely i get the general drift of conversation--a confusing drift sometimes, mismeanings that generally go with eavesdropping. at times, however, the partition seems to be thinner, and there comes the feeling that if somebody would just come along and open a door between i should understand. it is truly a graceful speech--the french tongue. plain, homely things of life--so bald, and bare, and disheartening in the anglo-saxon--are less unlovely in the french. indeed, the french word for "rags" is so pretty that we have conferred "chiffon" on one of our daintiest fabrics. but in the grace of the language lies also its weakness. it does not rise to the supreme utterances. i have been reading the bible texts on the tombstones in the little cemetery of chardonne. "_l'éternel est mon berger_" can hardly rank in loftiness with "the lord is my shepherd," nor "_que votre coeur ne se trouble point_" with "let not your heart be troubled." or, at any rate, i can never bring myself to think so. any language is hard enough to learn--bristling with difficulties which seem needless, even offensively silly to the student. we complain of the genders and silent letters of the french, but when one's native tongue spells "cough" and calls it "cof," "rough" and calls it "ruff," "slough" and calls it "slu" or "sluff," by choice, and "plough" and is unable to indicate adequately without signs just how it should be pronounced, he is not in a position to make invidious comparisons. i wonder what a french student really thinks of those words. he has rules for his own sound variations, and carefully indicates them with little signs. we have sound signs, too, but an english page printed with all the necessary marks is a cause for anguish. i was once given a primary reader printed in that way, and at sight of it ran screaming to my mother. so we leave off all signs in english and trust in god for results. it is hard to be an american learning french, but i would rather be that than a frenchman learning american. chapter xxi we luge when winter comes in america, with a proper and sufficient thickness of ice, a number of persons--mainly young people--go out skating, or coasting, or sleighing, and have a very good time. but this interest is incidental--it does not exclude all other interests--it does not even provide the main topic of conversation. it is not like that in switzerland. winter sport is a religion in switzerland; the very words send a thrill through the dweller--native or foreign--among the swiss hills. when the season of white drift and congealed lake takes possession of the land, other interests and industries are put aside for the diversions of winter. everything is subserved to the winter sports. french, german, and english papers report each day the thickness of snow at the various resorts, the conditions of the various courses, the program of events. bills at the railway stations announce the names of points where the sports are in progress, with a schedule of the fares. hotels publish their winter attractions--their coasting (they call it "luging"--soft g), curling, skating, ski-ing accommodations, and incidentally mention their rooms. they also cover their hall carpetings with canvas to protect them from the lugers' ponderous hobnailed shoes. to be truly sporty one must wear those shoes; also certain other trimmings, such as leggings, breeches, properly cut coat, cap and scarf to match. one cannot really enjoy the winter sports without these decorations, or keep in good winter society. then there are the skis. one must carry a pair of skis to be complete. they must be as tall as the owner can reach, and when he puts them on his legs will branch out and act independently, each on its own account, and he will become a house divided against itself, with the usual results. so it is better to carry them, and look handsome and graceful, and to confine one's real activities to the more familiar things. our hotel was divided on winter sports. not all went in for it, but those who did went in considerably. we had a dutch family from sumatra, where they had been tobacco planting for a number of years, and in that tropic land had missed the white robust joys of the long frost. they were a young, superb couple, but their children, who had never known the cold, were slender products of an enervating land. they had never seen snow and they shared their parents' enthusiasm in the winter prospect. the white drifts on the mountaintops made them marvel; the first light fall we had made them wild. that dutch family went in for the winter sports. you never saw anything like it. their plans and their outfit became the chief interest of the hotel. they engaged far in advance their rooms at château d'oex, one of the best known resorts, and they daily accumulated new and startling articles of costume to make their experience more perfect. one day they would all have new shoes of wonderful thickness and astonishing nails. then it would be gorgeous new scarfs and caps, then sweaters, then skates, then snowshoes, then skis, and so on down the list. sometimes they would organize a drill in full uniform. but the children were less enthusiastic then. those slim-legged little folks could hardly walk, weighted with several pounds of heavy hobnailed shoes, and they complained bitterly at this requirement. their parents did not miss the humor of the situation, and i think enjoyed these preparations and incidental discomforts for the sake of pleasure as much as they could have enjoyed the sports themselves, when the time came. we gave them a hearty send-off, when reports arrived that the snow conditions at château d'oex were good, and if they had as good a time as we wished them, and as they gave us in their preparations, they had nothing to regret. as the winter deepened the winter sport sentiment grew in our midst, until finally in january we got a taste of it ourselves. we found that we could take a little mountain road to a point in the hills called les avants, then a funicular to a still higher point, and thus be in the white whirl for better or worse, without being distinctly of it, so to speak. we could not be of it, of course, without the costumes, and we did not see how we could afford these and also certain new adjuncts which the car would need in the spring. so we went primarily as spectators--that is, the older half of the family. the children had their own winter sports at school. [illustration: "you can see son loup from the hotel steps in vevey, but it takes hours to get to it"] we telephoned to the son loup hotel at the top of the last funicular, and got an early start. you can see son loup from the hotel steps in vevey, but it takes hours to get to it. the train goes up, and up, along gorges and abysses, where one looks down on the tops of christmas trees, gloriously mantled in snow. then by and by you are at les avants and in the midst of everything, except the ski-ing, which is still higher up, at son loup. we got off at les avants and picked our way across the main street among flying sleds of every pattern, from the single, sturdy little bulldog _luge_ to the great polly-straddle bob, and from the safe vantage of a café window observed the slide. it was divided into three parts--one track for bobsledders--the wild riders--a track for the more daring single riders, and a track for fat folks, old folks, and children. certainly they were having a good time. their ages ranged from five to seventy-five, and they were all children together. now and then there came gliding down among them a big native sled, loaded with hay or wood, from somewhere far up in the hills. it was a perfect day--no cold, no wind, no bright sun, for in reality we were up in the clouds--a soft white veil of vapor was everywhere. by and by we crossed the track, entered a wonderful snow garden belonging to a hotel, and came to a little pond where some old men and fat men were curling. curling is a game where you try to drive a sort of stone decoy duck from one end of the pond to the other and make it stop somewhere and count something. each man is armed with a big broom to keep the ice clean before and after his little duck. we watched them a good while and i cannot imagine anything more impressive than to see a fat old man with a broom padding and puffing along by the side of his little fat stone duck, feverishly sweeping the snow away in front of it, so that it will get somewhere and count. when i inadvertently laughed i could see that i was not popular. all were english there--all but a few americans who pretended to be english. beyond the curling pond was a skating pond, part of it given over to an international hockey match, but somehow these things did not excite us. we went back to our café corner to watch the luging and to have luncheon. then the lugers came stamping in for refreshments, and their costumes interested us. especially their shoes. even the dutch family had brought home no such wonders as some of these. they were of appalling size, and some of them had heavy iron claws or toes such as one might imagine would belong to some infernal race. these, of course, were to dig into the snow behind, to check or guide the flying sled. they were useful, no doubt, but when one saw them on the feet of a tall, slim girl the effect was peculiar. by the time we had finished luncheon we had grown brave. we said we would luge--modestly, but with proper spirit. there were sleds to let, by an old frenchman, at a little booth across the way, and we looked over his assortment and picked a small bob with a steering attachment, because to guide that would be like driving a car. then we hauled it up the fat folks' slide a little way and came down, hoo-hooing a warning to those ahead in the regulation way. we did this several times, liking it more and more. we got braver and tried the next slide, liking it still better. then we got reckless and crossed into the bobsled scoot and tried that. oh, fine! we did not go to the top--we did not know then how far the top was; but we went higher each time, liking it more and more, until we got up to a place where the sleds stood out at a perpendicular right angle as they swirled around a sudden circle against a constructed ice barrier. this looked dangerous, but getting more and more reckless, we decided to go even above that. we hauled our sled up and up, constantly meeting bobsleds coming down and hearing the warning hoo-hoo-hooing of still others descending from the opaque upper mist. still we climbed, dragging our sled, meeting bob after bob, also loads of hay and wood, and finally some walking girls who told us that the top of the slide was at son loup--that is, at the top of the funicular, some miles away. we understood then; all those bobsledders took their sleds up by funicular and coasted down. we stopped there and got on our sled. the grade was very gradual at first, and we moved slowly--so slowly that a nice old lady who happened along gave us a push. we kept moving after that. we crossed a road, rounded a turn, leaped a railway track and struck into the straightway, going like a streak. we had thought it a good distance to the sharp turn, with its right-angle wall of ice, but we were there with unbelievable suddenness. then in a second we were on the wall, standing straight out into space; then in another we had shot out of it; but our curve seemed to continue. there was a little barnyard just there and an empty hay sled--placed there on purpose, i think now. at any rate, the owner was there watching the performance. i think he had been expecting us. when all motion ceased he untelescoped us, and we limped about and discussed with him in native terms how much we ought to pay for the broken runner on his hay sled, and minor damages. it took five francs to cure the broken runner, which i believe had been broken all the time and was just set there handy to catch inadvertent persons like ourselves. we finished our slide then and handed in our sled, which the old frenchman looked at fondly and said: "_très bon--très vite._" he did not know how nearly its speed had come to landing us in the newspapers. we took the funicular to son loup, and at the top found ourselves in what seemed atmospheric milk. we stood at the hotel steps and watched the swift coasters pass. every other moment they flashed by, from a white mystery above--a vision of faces, a call of voices--to the inclosing mystery again. it was like life; but not entirely, for they did not pass to silence. the long, winding hill far below was full of their calls'--muffled by the mist--their hoo-hoo-hoos of warning to those ahead and to those who followed. but it was suggestive, too. it was as if the lost were down there in that cold whiteness. the fog grew thicker, more opaque, as the day waned. it was an impalpable wall. we followed the road from the hotel, still higher into its dense obscurity. when a tree grew near enough to the road for us to see it, we beheld an astonishing sight. the mist had gathered about the evergreen branches until they were draped, festooned, fairly clotted with pendulous frost embroidery. we had been told that there was ski-ing up there and we were anxious to see it, but for a time we found only blankness and dead silence. then at last--far and faint, but growing presently more distinct--we heard a light sound, a movement, a "swish-swish-swirl"--somewhere in the mist at our right, coming closer and closer, until it seemed right upon us, and strangely mysterious, there being no visible cause. we waited until a form appeared, no, grew, materialized from the intangible--so imperceptibly, so gradually, that at first we could not be sure of it. then the outlines became definite, then distinct; an athletic fellow on skis maneuvered across the road, angled down the opposite slope, "swish-swish-swirl"--checking himself every other stroke, for the descent was steep--faded into unknown deeps below--the whiteness had shut him in. we listened while the swish-swish grew fainter, and in the gathering evening we felt that he had disappeared from the world into ravines of dark forests and cold enchantments from which there could be no escape. we climbed higher and met dashing sleds now and then, but saw no other ski-ers that evening. next morning, however, we found them up there, gliding about in that region of vapors, appearing and dissolving like cinema figures, their voices coming to us muffled and unreal in tone. i left the road and followed down into a sort of basin which seemed to be a favorite place for ski practice. i felt exactly as if i were in a ghostly aquarium. i was not much taken with ski-ing, as a whole. i noticed that even the experts fell down a good many times and were not especially graceful getting up. but i approve of coasting under the new conditions--_i. e._ with funicular assistance. in my day coasting was work--you had to tug and sweat up a long slippery incline for a very brief pleasure. keats (i think it was keats, or was it carolyn wells?) in his, or her, well-known and justly celebrated poem wrote: it takes a long time to make the climb, and a minute or less to come down; but that poetry is out of date--in switzerland. it no longer takes a long time to make the climb, and you do it in luxury. you sit in a comfortable seat and your sled is loaded on an especially built car. switzerland is the most funiculated country in the world; its hills are full of these semi-perpendicular tracks. they make you shudder when you mount them for the first time, and i think i never should be able to discuss frivolous matters during an ascent, as i have seen some do. still, one gets hardened, i suppose. they are cheap. you get commutation tickets for very little, and all day long coasters are loading their sleds on the little shelved flatcar, piling themselves into the coach, then at the top snatching off their sleds to go whooping away down the long track to the lower station. coasters get killed now and then, and are always getting damaged in one way and another; for the track skirts deep declivities, and there are bound to be slips in steering, and collisions. we might have stayed longer and tried it again, but we were still limping from our first experiment. besides, we were not dressed for the real thing. dress may not make the man, but it makes the sportsman. part ii motoring through the golden age chapter i the new plan but with the breaking out of the primroses and the hint of a pale-green beading along certain branches in the hotel garden, the desire to be going, and seeing, and doing; to hear the long drowse of the motor and look out over the revolving distances; to drop down magically, as it were, on this environment and that--began to trickle and prickle a little in the blood, to light pale memories and color new plans. we could not go for a good while yet. for spring is really spring in switzerland--not advance installments of summer mixed with left-overs from winter, but a fairly steady condition of damp coolness--sunlight that is not hot, showers that are not cold--the snow on the mountainsides advancing and retreating--sometimes, in the night, getting as low down as chardonne, which is less than half an hour's walk above the hotel. there is something curiously unreal about this swiss springtime. we saw the trees break out into leaf, the fields grow vividly green and fresh, and then become gay with flowers, without at all feeling the reason for such a mood. in america such a change is wrought by hot days--cold ones, too, perhaps, but certainly hot ones; we have sweltered in april, though we have sometimes snowballed in may. the swiss spring was different. three months of gradual, almost unnoticeable, mellowing kept us from getting excited and gave us plenty of time to plan. that was good for us--the trip we had in mind now was no mere matter of a few days' journey, from a port to a destination; it was to be a wandering that would stretch over the hills and far away, through some thousands of kilometers and ten weeks of time. that was about all we had planned concerning it, except that we were going back into france, and at one point in those weeks we expected to touch cherbourg and pick up a missing member of the family who would be dropped there by a passing ship. we studied the maps a good deal, and at odd times i tinkered with the car and wondered how many things would happen to it before we completed the long circle, and if i would return only partially crippled or a hopeless heap of damage and explanations. never mind--the future holds sorrow enough for all of us. let us anticipate only its favors. so we planned. we sent for a road map of france divided into four sections, showing also western germany and switzerland. we spread it out on the table and traced a variety of routes to cherbourg; by germany, by paris direct, by a long loop down into southern france. we favored the last-named course. we had missed some things in the midi--nîmes, pont du gard, orange--and then there was still a quality in the air which made us feel that the south would furnish better motor weather in may. ah, me! there is no place quite like the provence. it is rather dusty, and the people are drowsy and sometimes noisy, and there are mosquitoes there, and maybe other unpleasant things; but in the light chill of a swiss spring day there comes a memory of rich mellowness and september roadsides, with gold and purple vintage ripening in the sun, that lights and warms the soul. we would start south, we said. we were not to reach cherbourg until june. plenty of time for the north, then, and later. we discussed matters of real importance--that is to say, expenses. we said we would give ourselves an object lesson, this time, in what could really be done in motor economies. on our former trip we had now and again lunched by the roadside, with pleasing results. this time we would always do it. before, we had stopped a few times at small inns in villages instead of seeking out hotels in the larger towns. those few experiments had been altogether satisfactory, both as to price and entertainment. perhaps this had been merely our good fortune, but we were willing to take further chances. from the fifty francs a day required for our party of four we might subtract a franc or so and still be nourished, body and soul. thus we planned. when it was pleasant we enjoyed shopping for our roadside outfit; a basket, square, and of no great size; some agate cups and saucers; some knives and forks; also an alcohol stove, the kind that compacts itself into very small compass, aluminum, and very light-- i hope they have them elsewhere than in switzerland, for their usefulness is above price. chapter ii the new start it was the first week in may when we started--the th, in fact. the car had been thoroughly overhauled, and i had spent a week personally on it, scraping and polishing, so that we might make a fine appearance as we stood in front of the hotel in the bright morning sunlight where our fellow guests would gather to see us glide away. i have had many such showy dreams as that, and they have turned out pretty much alike. we did not start in the bright morning. it was not bright. it was raining, and it continued to rain until after eleven o'clock. by that time our fellow guests were not on hand. they had got tired and gone to secluded corners, or to their rooms, or drabbling into the village. when the sun finally came out only a straggler or two appeared. it was too bad. we glided away, but not very far. i remembered, as we were passing through the town, that it might be well to take some funds along, so we drove around to the bank to see what we could raise in that line. we couldn't raise anything--not a centime. it was just past twelve o'clock and, according to swiss custom, the bank was closed for two hours. not a soul was there--the place was locked, curtained, barred. only dynamite would have opened it. we consulted. we had some supplies in our basket to eat by the roadside as soon as we were well into the country. very good; we would drive to some quiet back street in the suburbs and eat them now. we had two hours to wait--we need feel no sense of hurry. so we drove down into vevey la tour and, behind an old arch, where friends would not be likely to notice us, we sat in the car and ate our first luncheon, with a smocked boy for audience--a boy with a basket on his arm, probably delaying the machinery of his own household to study the working economies of ours. afterward we drove back to the bank, got our finances arranged, slipped down a side street to the lake-front, and fled away toward montreux without looking behind us. it was not at all the departure we had planned. it rained again at montreux, but the sun was shining at chillon, and the lake was blue. through openings in the trees we could see the picture towns of territet, montreux, clarens, and vevey, skirting the shore--the white steamers plying up and down; the high-perched hotels, half lost in cloudland, and we thought that our travels could hardly provide a more charming vision than that. then we were in villeneuve, then in the open flat fields of the rhone valley, where, for europe, the roads are poor; on through a jolty village to a bridge across the rhone, and so along the south shore by bouveret, to st. gingolph, where we exhibited our papers at the swiss _douane_, crossed a little brook, and were again in france. we were making the circuit of the lake, you see. all winter we had looked across to that shore, with its villages and snow-mantled hills. we would now see it at close range. we realized one thing immediately. swiss roads are not bad roads, by any means, but french roads are better. in fact, i have made up my mind that there is nothing more perfect in this world than a french road. i have touched upon this subject before, and i am likely to dwell upon it unduly, for it always excites me. those roads are a perfect network in france, and i can never cease marveling at the money and labor they must have cost. they are so hard and smooth, so carefully graded and curved, so beautifully shaded, so scrupulously repaired--it would seem that half the wealth and effort of france must be expended on her highways. the road from st. gingolph was wider than the one we had left behind. it was also a better road and in better repair. it was a floor. here and there we came to groups of men working at it, though it needed nothing, that we could see. it skirted the mountains and lake-front. we could look across to our own side now--to vevey and those other towns, and the cloud-climbing hotels, all bright in the sunshine. we passed a nameless village or two and were at evian, a watering-place which has grown in fame and wealth these later years--a resort of fine residences and handsome hotels--not our kind of hotels, but plenty good enough for persons whose tastes have not been refined down to our budget and daily program of economies. it was at thonon--quaint old thonon, once a residence of the counts and dukes of savoy--that we found a hostelry of our kind. it had begun raining again, and, besides, it was well toward evening. we pulled up in front of the hôtel d'europe, one of the least extravagant of the red-book hostelries, and i went in. the "_bureau_" as the french call the office, was not very inviting. it was rather dingy and somber, and nobody was there. i found a bell and rang it and a woman appeared--not a very attractive woman, but a kindly person who could understand my "_vous avez des chambres?_" which went a good ways. she had "_des chambres_" and certainly no fault could be found with those. they were of immense size, the beds were soft, smooth, and spotlessly clean. yes, there was a garage, free. i went back with my report. the dinner might be bad, we said, but it would only be for once--besides, it was raining harder. so we went in, and when the shower passed we took a walk along the lake-front, where there is an old château, once the home of royalty, now the storehouse of plaster or something, and we stopped to look at a public laundry--a square stone pool under a shed, where the women get down on their knees and place the garments on a board and scrub them with a brush, while the cold water from the mountains runs in and out and is never warmed at all. returning by another way, we found about the smallest church in the world, built at one corner of the old domain. a woman came with a key and let us into it and we sat in the little chairs and inspected the tiny altar and all the sacred things with especial interest, for one of the purposes of our pilgrimages was to see churches--the great cathedrals of france. across from the church stood a ruined tower, matted with vines, the remains of a tenth-century château--already old when the one on the lake-front was new. we speak lightly of a few centuries more or less, but, after all, there was a goodly period between the tenth and the fourteenth, a period long enough to cover american history from montezuma to date. these old towers, once filled with life and voices and movement, are fascinating things. we stood looking at this one while the dusk gathered. then it began sprinkling again and it was dinner time. so we returned to the hotel and i may as well say here, at once, that i do not believe there are any bad dinners in france. i have forgotten what we had, but i suppose it was fish and omelet, and meat and chicken, and salad and dessert, and i know it was all hot and delicious, and served daintily in courses, and we went to those soft beds happy and soothed, fell asleep to the sound of the rain pattering outside, and felt not a care in the world. chapter iii into the juras it was still drizzling next morning, so we were in no hurry to leave. we plodded about the gray streets, picking up some things for the lunch basket, and narcissa and the joy got a chance to try their nice new french on real french people and were gratified to find that it worked just the same as it did on swiss people. then the sky cleared and i backed the car out of the big stable where it had spent the night, and we packed on our bags and paid our bill--twenty-seven francs for all, or about one dollar and thirty-five cents each for dinner, lodging, and breakfast--tips, one franc each to waitress, chambermaid, and garageman. if they were dissatisfied they did not look it, and presently we were once more on the road, all the cylinders working and bankruptcy not yet in sight. it was glorious and fresh along the lake-front--also appetizing. we stopped by and by for a little mid-morning luncheon, and a passing motorist, who probably could not believe we would stop merely to eat at that hour, drew up to ask if anything was wrong with our car and if he could help. they are kindly people, these french and swiss. stop your car by the roadside and begin to hammer something, or to take off a tire, and you will have offers of assistance from four out of every five cars that pass. there is another little patch of switzerland again at the end of the lake, and presently you run into geneva, and trouble. geneva is certainly a curious place. the map of it looks as easy as nothing and you go gliding into it full of confidence, and presently find yourself in a perfect mess of streets that are not on the map at all, while all the streets that _are_ on the map certainly have changed their names, for you cannot find them where they should be, and no one has ever heard of them. besides, the wind is generally blowing--the _bise_--which does not simplify matters. narcissa inquired and i inquired, and then the joy, who, privately, i think, speaks the best french of any of us, also inquired; but the combined result was just a big coalyard which a very good-looking street led us straight into, making it necessary to back out and apologize and feel ashamed. then we heard somebody calling us, and, looking around, saw the man in gray who had last directed us, and who also felt ashamed, it seemed--of us, or himself, or something--and had run after us to get us out of the mess. so he directed us again and we started, but the labyrinth closed in once more--the dust and narrow streets and blind alleys--and once again we heard a voice, and there was the man in gray--he must have run a half a mile this time--waving and calling and pointing the path out of the maze. it seemed that they were fixing all the good streets and we must get through by circuitous bad ones to the side of the city toward france. i asked him why they didn't leave the good streets alone and fix the bad ones, but he only smiled and explained some more, and once more we went astray, and yet once more his voice came calling down the wind and he came up breathlessly, and this time followed with us, refusing even standing room on the running-board, until he got us out of the city proper and well headed for france. we had grown fond of that man and grieved to see him go. we had known him hardly ten minutes, i think, but friendships are not to be measured by time. on a pretty hill where a little stream of water trickled we ate our first real luncheon--that is to say, we used our new stove. we cooked eggs and made coffee, and when there came a sprinkle we stood under our umbrellas or sat in the car and felt that this was really a kind of gypsying, and worth while. there was a waving meadow just above the bank and i went up there to look about a little. no house was in sight, but this meadow was a part of some man's farm. it was familiar in every corner to him--he had known it always. perhaps he had played in it as a child--his children had played in it after him--it was inseparable from the life and happiness of a home. yet to us it was merely the field above our luncheon place--a locality hardly noticed or thought of--barely to be remembered at all. crossing another lonely but fertile land, we entered the hills. we skirted mountainsides--sometimes in sun, sometimes in shower--descended a steep road, and passed under a great arched battlement that was part of a frowning fortress guarding the frontier of france. not far beyond, at the foot of a long decline, lay a beautiful city, just where the mountains notched to form a passage for the rhone. it was bellegarde, and as we drew nearer some of the illusions of beauty disappeared. french cities generally show best from a distance. their streets are not very clean and they are seldom in repair. the french have the best roads and the poorest streets in the world. we drew up in front of the custom house, and exhibited our french _triptyque_. it was all right, and after it was indorsed i thought we were through. this was not true. a long, excited individual appeared from somewhere and began nervously to inspect our baggage. suddenly he came upon a small empty cigar box which i had put in, thinking it might be useful. cigars are forbidden, and at sight of the empty box our wild-eyed attenuation had a fit. he turned the box upside down and shook it; he turned it sidewise and looked into it; shook it again and knocked on it as if bound to make the cigars appear. he seemed to decide that i had hidden the cigars, for he made a raid on things in general. he looked into the gasoline tank, he went through the pockets of the catch-all and scattered our guidebooks and maps; then he had up the cushion of the back seat and went into the compartment where this time was our assortment of hats. you never saw millinery fly as it did in that man's hands, with the head of the family and narcissa and the joy grabbing at their flowers and feathers, and saying things in english that would have hurt that man if he could have understood them. as for him, he was repeating, steadily, "_pas dérange_"--"_pas dérange_," when all the time he was deranging ruthlessly and even permanently. he got through at last, smiled, bowed, and retired--pleased, evidently, with the thoroughness of his investigation. but for some reason he entirely overlooked our bags strapped on the footboard. we did not remind him. the pert of the rhone is at bellegarde. the pert is a place where in dry weather the rhone disappears entirely from sight for the space of seventy yards, to come boiling up again from some unknown mystery. articles have been thrown in on one side--even live animals, it is said--but they have never reappeared on the other. what becomes of them is a matter of speculation. perhaps some fearful underground maelstrom holds them. there was no pert when we were there--there had been too much rain. the rhone went tearing through a gorge where we judged the pert should be located in less watery seasons. during the rest of the afternoon we had rather a damp time--showery and sloppy, for many of the roads of these jura foothills were in the process of repair, and the rain had stopped the repairs halfway. it was getting toward dusk when we came to nantua--a lost and forgotten town among the jura cliffs. we stopped in front of the showier hotel there, everything looked so rain-beaten and discouraging, but the woman who ran it was even showier than her hotel and insisted on our taking a parlor suite at some fabulous price. so we drove away and drew up rather sadly at the hôtel du lac, which on that dull evening was far from fascinating. yet the rooms they showed us were good, and the dinner--a surprise of fresh trout just caught, served sizzling hot, fine baked potatoes and steak, with good red wine aplenty--was such as to make us forswear forevermore the showy hotels for the humbler inns of france. but i am moving too fast. before dinner we walked for a little in the gray evening and came to an old church--one of the oldest in france, it is said, built in the ninth century and called st. michels. it is over a thousand years old and looks it. it has not been much rebuilt, i think, for invasion and revolution appear seldom to have surmounted the natural ramparts of nantua, and only the stormbeat and the corrosion of the centuries have written the story of decay. very likely it is as little changed as any church of its time. the hand of restoration has troubled it little. we slipped in through the gathering dusk, and tiptoed about, for there were a few lights flickering near the altar and the outlines of bowed heads. presently a priest was silhouetted against the altar lights as he crossed and passed out by a side door. he was one of a long line that stretched back through more than half of the christian era and most of the history of france. when the first priest passed in front of that altar france was still under the carlovingian dynasty--under charles the fat, perhaps; and william of normandy would not conquer england for two hundred years. then nearly four hundred years more would creep by--dim mediæval years--before joan of arc should unfurl her banner of victory and martyrdom. you see how far back into the mists we are stepping here. and all those evenings the altar lights have been lit and the ministration of priests has not failed. there is a fine picture by eugene delacroix in the old church, and we came back next morning to look at it. it is a st. sebastian, and not the conventional, ridiculous st. sebastian of some of the old masters--a mere human pincushion--but a beautiful youth, prostrate and dying, pierced by two arrows, one of which a pitying male figure is drawing from his shoulder. it must be a priceless picture. how can they afford to keep it here? the weather seemed to have cleared, and the roads, though wet, were neither soft nor slippery. french roads, in fact, are seldom either--and the fresh going along the lake-front was delightful enough. but we were in the real juras now, and one does not go through that range on a water grade. we were presently among the hills, the road ahead of us rising to the sky. then it began to rain again, but the road was a good firm one and the car never pulled better. it was magnificent climbing. on the steepest grades and elbow turns we dropped back to second, but never to low, and there was no lagging. on the high levels we stopped to let the engine cool and to add water from the wayside hollows. we were in the clouds soon, and sometimes it was raining, sometimes not. it seemed for the most part an uninhabited land--no houses and few fields--the ground covered with a short bushy growth, grass and flowers. a good deal of it was rocky and barren. on the very highest point of the jura range, where we had stopped to cool the motor, a woman came along, leading three little children. she came up and said a few words in what sounded like an attempt at english. we tried our french on her, but it did not seem to get inside. i said she must speak some mountain patois, for we had used those same words lower down with good results. but then she began her english again--it was surely english this time, and, listening closely, we got the fringes and tag ends of a curious story. she was italian, and had been in new york city. there, it seemed, she had married a frenchman from the juras, who, in time, when his homeland had called him, had brought her back to the hills. there he had died, leaving her with six children. she had a little hut up the side lane, where they were trying to scratch a living from the stony soil. yes, she had chickens, and could let us have some eggs. she also brought a pail with water for the radiator. a little farther along we cooked the eggs and laid out all our nice lunch things on natural stone tables and looked far down the jura slope on an ancient village and an old castle, the beginning of the world across the range. it was not raining now, and the air was soft and pleasant and the spot as clean and sweet as could be. presently the water was boiling and the coffee made--instantaneous coffee, the george washington kind. and nothing could be fresher than those eggs, nothing unless it was the butter--unsalted butter, which with jam and rolls is about the best thing in the world to finish on. [illustration: descending the juras] we descended the jura grades on the engine brake--that is, i let in the clutch, cut off the gasoline supply and descended on first or second speed, according to the grade. that saves the wheel brake and does no damage to the motor. i suppose everybody knows the trick, but i did not learn it right away, and there may be others who know as little. it was a long way to the lower levels, and some of the grades were steep. then they became gradual, and we coasted--then the way flattened and we were looking across a level valley, threaded by perfectly ordered roads to a distant town whose roofs and spires gleamed in the sunlight of the may afternoon. it was bourg, and one of the spires belonged to the church of brou. chapter iv a poem in architecture the church of brou is like no other church in the world. in the first place, instead of dragging through centuries of building and never quite reaching completion, it was begun and finished in the space of twenty-five years--from to --and it was supervised and paid for by a single person, margaret of austria, who built it in fulfillment of a vow made by her mother-in-law, margaret of bourbon. the last margaret died before she could undertake her project, and her son, philibert ii, duke of savoy, called "the handsome," followed before he could carry out her wishes. so his duchess, the other margaret, undertook the work, and here on this plain, between the juras and the saône, she wrought a marvel in exquisite church building which still remains a marvel, almost untouched by any blight, after four hundred turbulent years. matthew arnold wrote a poem on the church of brou which may convey the wonder of its beauty. i shall read it some day, and if it is as beautiful as the church i shall commit it, and on days when things seem rather ugly and harsh and rasping i will find some quiet corner and shut my eyes and say the lines and picture a sunlit may afternoon and the church of brou. then, perhaps, i shall not remember any more the petty things of the moment but only the architectural shrine which one woman reared in honor of another, her mother-in-law. it is not a great cathedral, but it is by no means a little church. its lofty nave is bare of furnishings, which perhaps lends to its impression of bigness. but then you pass through the carved doors of a magnificent _juba_ screen, and the bareness disappears. the oaken choir seats are carved with the richness of embroidery, and beyond them are the tombs--those of the two margarets, and of philibert--husband and son. i suppose the world can show no more exquisitely wrought tombs than these. perhaps their very richness defeats their art value, but i would rather have them so, for it reveals, somehow, the thoroughness and sincerity of margaret's intent--her determination to fulfill to the final letter every imagined possibility in that other's vow. the mother's tomb is a sort of bower--a marble alcove of great splendor, within and without. philibert's tomb, which stands in the center of the church, between the other two, is a bier, supported by female figures and fluted columns and interwoven decorations, exquisitely chiseled. six cupids and a crouching lion guard the royal figure above; and the whole, in spite of its richness, is of great dignity. the tomb of the duchess margaret herself is a lofty canopy of marble incrustations, the elaborateness of which no words can tell. it is the superlative of gothic decoration at a period when gothic extravagance was supreme. like her husband margaret sleeps in double effigy, the sovereign in state above, the figure of mortality, compassed by the marble supports, below. the mortality of the queen is draped, but in the case of philibert, the naked figure, rather dim through the interspaces, has a curiously lifelike, even startling effect. [illustration: the tomb of margaret of austria, church of brou] if the duchess margaret made her own tomb more elaborate, it is at least not more beautiful than the others, while an altar to the virgin is still more elaborate--more beautiful, its grouped marble figures in such high relief that angels and cherubs float in the air, apparently unsupported. here, as elsewhere, is a wealth of ornamentation; and everywhere woven into its intricacies one may find the initials p and m--philibert and margaret--and the latter's motto, "_fortune, infortune, fort une._" it has been called a mysterious motto, and different meanings have been twisted out of it. but my french is new and fresh and takes things quite obviously. "fortune and misfortune strengthens or fortifies one" strikes me as a natural rendering. that last verb _fortifier_ may seem to be abbreviated without warrant, but margaret was a queen and could have done that for the sake of euphony and word-play. the unscarred condition and the purity of these precious marbles is almost as astonishing as their beauty, when one considers the centuries of invasion and revolution, with a vandalism that respected nothing sacred, least of all symbols of royalty. by careful search we could discover a broken detail here and there, but the general effect was completeness, and the white marble--or was it ivory tinted?--seen under the light of the illumined stained windows seemed to present the shapes and shades of things that, as they had never been new, neither would they ever be old. chapter v vienne in the rain it is about forty miles from bourg to lyons, a country of fair fields, often dyed deeply red at this season with crimson clover, a country rich and beautiful, the road a straight line, wide and smooth, the trees on either side vividly green with spring. but lyons is not beautiful--it is just a jangling, jarring city of cobbled crowded streets and mainly uninteresting houses and thronging humanity, especially soldiers. it is a place to remain unloved, unhonored, and unremembered. the weather now put aside other things and really got down to the business of raining. it was fair enough when we left lyons, but as we reached the top of a hill that overlooked the world i saw down the fields a spectral light and far deepening dusk which looked ominous. by the time we got our top up there was a steady downpour. we did not visit any wayside villages, though some of them looked interesting enough. french villages are none too clean at any time and rain does not seem to help them. attractive old castles on neighboring hilltops received hardly a glance; even one overhanging our very road barely caused us to check up. how old it looked in its wet desolation, the storm eating into its crumbling walls! we pulled up at last at vienne, at the end of the bridge facing the cathedral. history has been written about vienne, and there are monuments of the past which it is not good form to overlook. the head of the family said she was not very particular about form and that she was particular about being wet and discomforted on a chill spring day. france was full of monuments of the past, she said, and she had not started out to make her collection complete. she would study the cathedral from the car, and would the rest of us please remember to bring some fresh rolls for luncheon. so the rest of us went to the church of st. maurice, which begins to date with the twelfth century and looks even older. surrounded by comparatively modern buildings and soaked with rain it appeared, one of the most venerable relics i had ever seen. i do not think we found the inside very interesting. it was dead and dusky, and the seventh-century sarcophagus of st. leoninus was, in the french phrase, not gay. on the whole there seemed a good deal of mutilation and not much taste. we paddled through streets, asking directions to the roman temple. vienne was an important town under the romans, the capital of one of the provinces of gaul. of course the romans would leave landmarks--the kind that would last. when we found the temple of augustus and livia at last, it did not look so much older than the church, though it is more than as old again. it was so positively roman and so out of place among its modern french surroundings that it looked exactly like something that had been brought there and set up for exhibition. it took a heavy strain of imagination to see it as an integral part of the vanished roman capital. all about the temple lay fragments of that ancient city--exhibition pieces, like the temple. one felt that they should not be left out in the rain. we hunted farther and found an arch of triumph, which the romans generally built in conquered territory. it was hard to tell where the arch began and where it ended, such a variety of other things had grown up around and against it. still, there was at least a section standing, roman, and of noble proportions. it will still be roman, and an arch, when those later incrustations have crumbled away. roman work is not trivial stuff. we might have lingered a little in the winding streets and made further discoveries, but the joy had already sighted a place where the most attractive rolls and french cakes filled the window. the orders, she said, were very strict about the luncheon things. we must get them at once or we should not be able to locate the place again. curious things can happen in a brief absence. we returned to the car to find one of the back tires perfectly flat, the head of the family sitting serenely unconscious of her misfortune. we had picked up one of those flat-headed boot nails that europeans love so well, and the tire had slowly and softly settled. there are cleaner, pleasanter things than taking off a tire and putting it on again in the rain, but i utilized a deep doorway on the corner for the dry work, and narcissa held the umbrella while i pulled and pushed and grunted and pumped, during the more strenuous moments. down the river a way we drew up in a grassy place under some trees and sat in the car and ate the _gâteaux_ and other things, and under the green shelter i made coffee and eggs, the little cooker sitting cozily on the running-board. then all the afternoon along the hard, wet, shining road that follows the rhone to valence, where we spent two days, watching the steady beat from the hotel windows, reading, resting, and eating a good deal of the time; doing not much sight-seeing, for we had touched valence on our northward trip eight months before. chapter vi the chÂteau i did not rent in a former chapter i have mentioned the mighty natural portrait in stone which mark twain found, and later named the lost napoleon, because he could not remember its location, and how we rediscovered it from beauchastel on the rhone, not far below valence. we decided now that we would have at least another glimpse of the great stone face, it being so near. the skies had cleared this morning, though there was a good deal of wind and the sun was not especially warm. but we said we would go. we would be getting on toward the south, at any rate. we did not descend on the beauchastel side, there being a bridge shown on the map, at la voulte, where we would cross. the reader may also remember the mention of a château below beauchastel, with a sign on it which said that the property was to let, and my failure to negotiate for it. very well, here is the sequel: when we got to the end of the bridge opposite la voulte, we looked across to one of the closely packed mediæval villages of france with a great castle rising from its central height. it was one of the most picturesque things we had seen and i stopped to photograph it, declaring we must certainly visit it. so we crossed the bridge and at the end turned away toward beauchastel, deciding to visit la voulte later. we were back almost immediately. the day was not as clear as it looked and the lost napoleon was veiled, behind a white horizon. very likely it would be better by morning, we said, so we dropped our belongings at the tiny beauchastel inn and made an afternoon excursion to the château. imagine my feelings when, on looking up from the road, i suddenly discovered once more the big sign, "_château a louer._" it was our château--the one i had formerly been discouraged from taking. it was providence, i said, knocking a second time at our door. the others had another view. they said unless i would promise not to rent the premises i would not be permitted to examine them. i tried to make better terms, but finally submitted. we drove up into the narrow, ancient, cobbled streets a distance and left the car. then we climbed. it was a steep and tortuous way, winding around scary edges and through doubtful-looking passages where, in weird holes and crannies, old and crooked people lived and were doing what they had always done since time began. i don't remember exactly how we finally made our way through crumble and decay--such surroundings as i have often known in dreams--to a grassy court where there was a semblance of genuine life. an old caretaker was there and he agreed to show us through. it was called _la voulte sur rhone_, he said, and gave its name to the village. no one knew just when it had been begun, but some of it had been there in the eleventh century, when it had belonged to adon de clerieu. it had passed through many hands and had been more than once reconstructed. at one time guillaume de fay held it; also philippe iv and louis de bourbon condé, and the great family of de rohan. kings had been entertained there, among them louis xiii, an interesting fact, but i wished they had given better accommodations than the rambling, comfortless, and rather blind succession of boxes shown us as the royal suite. i also objected to the paper on the walls until our guide explained that it had been put there by an american tenant of the early andrew johnson period. he told us then that the château had been recently bought by a french author of two volumes of poetry, who was restoring portions of it and had reserved a row of rooms along the high terrace to let to other poets and kindred souls, so they might live side by side and look out over the fair land of france and interchange their fancies and dream long dreams. standing on that lofty green vantage and looking out across the river and the valley of the rhone, i was tempted to violate my treaty and live there forever after. the only portion really restored, so far, is a large assembly room, now used as a sort of museum. i hope the owner will reclaim, or at least clean, some of the other rooms, and that he will not carry the work to the point where atmosphere and romance seem to disappear. also, i truly hope he won't give up the notion of that row of poets along the terrace, even if i can't be one of them; and i should like to slip up there sometime and hear them all striking their harps in unison and lifting a memnonic voice to the sunrise. chapter vii an hour at orange our bill at beauchastel for the usual accommodation--dinner, lodging, and breakfast--was seventeen francs-twenty, including the tips to two girls and the stableman. this was the cheapest to date; that is to say, our expense account was one dollar each, nothing for the car. the beauchastel inn is not really a choice place, but it is by no means a poor place--not from the point of view of an american who has put up at his own little crossroad hotels. we had the dining room to ourselves, with a round table in the center, and the dinner was good and plentiful and well served. if the rooms were bare they were at least clean, and the landlady was not to blame that it turned cold in the night, which made getting up a matter to be considered. still, we did get up pretty promptly, for we wanted to see if our natural wonder was on view. it was, and we took time and sketched it and tried to photograph it, though that was hopeless, for the distance was too great and the apparition too actinic--too blue. but it was quite clear, and the peaceful face impressed us, i think, more than ever. the best view is from the railway embankment. we got another reward for stopping at beauchastel. we saw the old rhone stagecoach come in, daudet's coach, and saw descend from it daudet's characters, _le camarguais_, _le boulanger_, _le remouleur_, and the rest. at least they might have been those, for they belonged with the old diligence, and one could imagine the knife grinder saying to the hectoring baker, "_tais-toi, je t'en prie" si navrant et si doux_.[ ] but now we felt the breath of the south. it was no longer chilly. the sun began to glow warm, the wind died. sometime in the afternoon we arrived at orange. orange is not on the rhone and we had missed it in our northward journey in september. it was one of our special reasons for returning to the south of france. not the town of orange itself, which is of no particular importance, but for the remnants of the roman occupation--a triumphal arch and the chief wall of a roman theater, both of such fine construction and noble proportions that they are to be compared with nothing else of their kind in france. we came to the arch first--we had scarcely entered the town when we were directly facing it. it stands in a kind of circular grass plot a little below the present level, with short flights of steps leading down to it. at the moment of our arrival a boy of about fifteen was giving an exhibition by riding up and down these steps on a bicycle. i sincerely wished he would not do it. whatever its relation to its surroundings nineteen centuries ago, the arch of orange is magnificently out of place to-day. time-beaten and weather-stained--a visible manifest of a race that built not for the generations or the centuries, but for "the long, long time the world shall last"--supreme in its grandeur and antiquity, it stands in an environment quite modern, quite new, and wholly trivial. the arch is really three arches--the highest in the center, and the attic, as they call the part above, is lofty, with rich decorations, still well preserved. there are restored patches here and there, but they do little injury. from whatever direction you look the arch is beautiful, imposing, and certainly it seems eternal. when the present orange has crumbled and has been followed by successive cities, it will still be there, but i trust the boy with the bicycle will not survive. the theater is at the other end of town. it is not an amphitheater or an inclosure of any kind, but a huge flat wall, about as solid as the hills and one of the biggest things in france. strictly speaking, it was never part of any building at all. it was simply a stage property, a sort of permanent back scene for what i judge to have been an open-air theater. there is no doubt about its permanency. it is as high as an ordinary ten-or twelve-story building, longer than the average city block, and it is fifteen feet thick. that is the roman idea of scenery. they did not expect to shift it often. they set up some decorative masonry in front of it, with a few gods and heroes solidly placed, and let it go at that. their stage would be just in front of this, rather narrow, and about on a ground level. the whole was built facing a steep rocky hillside, which was carved into a semi-circle of stone seats, in the old fashion which rome borrowed from greece. this natural stonework did not stand the wash of centuries, or it may have been quarried for the château which the princes of orange built at the summit of the hill. the château is gone to-day, and the seats have been restored, i dare say, with some of the original material. every august now a temporary stage is erected in the ancient theater, and the comédie française gives performances there. the upper works of the hill, where the château was, are rather confusing. there are cave-like places and sudden drops and rudimentary passages, all dimly suggesting dungeons, once black and horrible, now happily open to the sun. and, by the way, i suppose that i am about the only person in the world who needed to be told that a line of kings originated at orange. i always supposed that william of orange took his name from an irish society whose colors, along with a shamrock, he wore in his hat. by some oversight the guidebook does not mention the jam that is sold at orange. it is put up in tin pails, and has in it all the good things in the world--lumps of them--price, one franc per pail. we did not stop at avignon, for we had been there before, but followed around outside the ancient wall and came at last to the rhone bridge, and to the island of our smoke adventure in the days of our inexperience, eight months earlier. this time we camped on the island in a pretty green nook by the water's edge, left the car under a tree, and made tea and had some of that excellent jam and some fresh rolls and butter, and ate them looking across to ancient villeneuve and the tower of philip le bel. oh, the automobile is the true flying carpet--swift, willing, always ready, obeying at a touch. only this morning we were at beauchastel; a little while ago we were under the ancient arch at orange and sat in the hoary theater. a twist of the crank, a little turning of the wheel, a brief flight across wood and meadow, and behold! the walls of avignon and a pleasant island in the river, where we alight for a little to make our tea in the greenery, knowing that we need only to rub the magic lamp to sail lightly away, resting where we will. our tea ended, the genii awoke and dropped us into villeneuve, where, in an open market, we realized that it was cherry season. i thought i had seen cherries before, but never in this larger sense. here there were basketfuls, boxfuls, bucketfuls, barrelfuls, wagonloads--the whole street was crowded with wagons, and every wagon heaped high with the crimson and yellow fruit. officials seemed to be weighing them and collecting something, a tax, no doubt. but what would be done with them later? could they ship all those cherries north and sell them? and remember this was only one evening and one town. the thought that every evening and every town in the midi was like this in cherry time was stupefying. we had to work our way among cherry wagons to get to the open road again, and our "flying carpet" came near getting damaged by one of them, because of my being impatient and trying to push ahead when an approaching cherry wagon had the right of way. as it was, i got a vigorous admonishment in french profanity, which is feathery stuff, practically harmless. i deserved something much more solid. consider for a moment this french profanity: about the most violent things a frenchman can say are "_sacre bleu_" and "_nom d'un chien!_" one means "sacred blue" and the other "name of a dog." if he doubles the last and says "name of a name of a dog," he has gone his limit. i fail to find anything personal or destructive or profane in these things. they don't seem to hit anything, not even the dog. and why a dog? furthermore, concerning the color chosen for profane use--why blue? why not some shade of nile green, or--or-- oh, well, let it go, but i do wish i could have changed places with that man a few minutes! we considered returning to avignon for the night, but we went to tarascon instead, and arrived after dark at a bright little inn, where we were comfortably lodged, and a relative of tartarin brought us a good supper and entertained us with his adventures while we ate. footnotes: [ ] "_la diligence de baucoire_" in _lettre de mon moulin_, alphonse daudet. chapter viii the road to pont du gard it is a wide, white road, bordered by the rich fields of may and the unbelievable poppies of france. oh, especially the poppies! i have not spoken of them before, i think. they had begun to show about as soon as we started south--a few here and there at first, splashes of blood amid the green, and sometimes mingling a little with the deep tones of the crimson clover, with curious color effect. they became presently more plentiful. there were fields where the scarlet and the vivid green of may were fighting for the mastery, and then came fields where the scarlet conquered, was supreme, and stretched away, a glowing, radiant sheen of such splendid color as one can hardly believe, even for the moment that he turns away. it was scarlet silk unrolled in the sun. it was a tide of blood. it was as if all the world at war had made this their battlefield. and it did not grow old to us. when we had seen a hundred of those fields they still fascinated us; we still exclaimed over them and could not tear our eyes away. we passed wagonloads of cherries now. in fact, we did not pass loads of anything else. cherry harvest was at its height. everybody was carrying baskets, or picking, or hauling to market. we stopped and asked an old man drowsing on a load to sell us some. he gave us about a half a peck for eight cents and kept piling on until i had to stop him. then he picked up a specially tied bunch of selected ones, very handsome, and laid them on top and pointed at narcissa--"for the demoiselle." we thanked him and waved back to him, but he had settled down into his seat and was probably asleep again. all drivers sleep in the provence. they are children of the south and the sun soothes them. they give their horses the rein and only waken to turn out when you blow or shout very loudly. you need an especially strong klaxonette in the provence. baedeker says: "the pont du gard is one of the grandest roman structures in existence." i am glad baedeker said that, for with my limited knowledge i should have been afraid to do it, but i should always have thought so. a long time ago i visited the natural bridge of virginia. i had been disappointed in natural wonders, and i expected no great things of the natural bridge. i scaled my imagination down by degrees as i followed a path to the viewpoint, until i was prepared to face a reality not so many times bigger than the picture which my school geography had made familiar. then all at once i turned a corner and stood speechless and stupefied. far up against the blue a majestic span of stone stretched between two mighty cliffs. i have seen the grand cañon since, and niagara falls, but nothing ever quite overwhelmed me as did that stupendous virginia stone arch--nothing until we rounded a bend in the road and stopped facing the pont du gard. those two are of the same class--bridges supreme--the one of nature, the other of art. neither, i think, was intended as a bridge originally. the romans intended these three colossal tiers of columns, one above the other, merely as supports for the aqueduct at the top, which conducted water to nîmes. i do not know what the almighty intended his for--possibly for decoration. to-day both are used as bridges--both are very beautiful, and about equally eternal, i should think, for the roman builders came nearer to the enduring methods of the original builder than any other architects save, possibly, the egyptians. they did not build walls of odds and ends of stone with mortar plastered between; they did not face their building stones to look pretty outside and fill in behind with chips and mortar, mostly mortar. they took the biggest blocks of stone they could find, squared them, faced them perfectly on all sides, and laid them one on top of the other in such height and in such thickness as they deemed necessary for a lasting job. work like that does not take an account of time. the mortar did not crumble from between them with the centuries. there was none to crumble. the perfectly level, perfectly matched stones required no cementing or plaster patching. you cannot to-day insert a thin knife blade between these matched stones. the pont du gard is yellow in tone and the long span against the blue sky is startlingly effective. a fine clear stream flows under it, the banks are wild with rock and shrub, the lower arches frame landscape bits near or more distant. i don't know why i am trying to describe it-- i feel that i am dwarfing it, somehow--making it commonplace. it is so immense--so overwhelming to gaze upon. henry james discovered in it a "certain stupidity, a vague brutality." i judge it seemed too positive, too absolute, too literal and everlasting for the author of the _golden bowl_. he adds, however, that "it would be a great injustice not to insist upon its beauty." one must be careful not to do injustice to the pont du gard. we made our luncheon camp a little way from the clear stream, and brought water from it and cooked eggs and made coffee (but we carry bottled water for that), and loafed in the may sun and shade, and looked at that unique world-wonder for an hour or more. the joy discovered a fine school of fish in the stream--trout, maybe. a hundred years ago and more the lower arches of the pont du gard were widened to make a bridge, and when at last we were packed and loaded again we drove across this bridge for the nearer view. it was quite impossible to believe in the age of the structure--its preservation was so perfect. we drove to the other end and, turning, drove slowly back. then lingeringly we left that supreme relic in the loneliness where, somehow, it seemed to belong, and followed the broad white road to nîmes. there is a roman arena at nîmes, and a temple and baths--the romans built many such things; but i think they could have built only one pont du gard. chapter ix the luxury of nÎmes when the romans captured a place and established themselves in it they generally built, first an arch of triumph in celebration of their victory; then an arena and a theater for pleasure; finally a temple for worship. sometimes, when they really favored the place and made it a resort, they constructed baths. i do not find that they built an arch of triumph at nîmes, but they built an arena, baths, and a temple, for they still stand. the temple is the smallest. it is called the "maison carrée," and it is much like the temple we saw at vienne that day in the rain, but in a finer state of preservation. indeed, it is said to be one of the best preserved roman temples in existence. it is graceful and exquisite, and must have suited henry james, who did not care for roman arenas because they are not graceful and exquisite, as if anything built for arena purposes would be likely to be anything less than solid and everlasting. we did not go into the maison carrée. it is a museum now, and the fact that it has also been used as a warehouse and stable somehow discouraged us. it would be too much done over. but the outside was fascinating. we thought the garden of the roman baths and fountain would be well to see in the evening. we drove along the quay by the side of the walled river which flows down the middle of the street, and came to the gates of the garden and, leaving the car, entered. at first it seemed quite impossible to believe that a modern city of no great size or importance should have anything so beautiful as this garden, or, having it, should preserve it in such serene beauty and harmony. but then one remembered that this was france, and of france it was the provence and not really a part of the sordid, scrambling world at all. it is a garden of terraces and of waterways and of dim, lucent pools to which stairways descend, and of cypresses, graying statuary, and marble bridges and fluted balustrades; and the water is green and mysterious, and there is a background of dark, wooded hills, with deep recesses and lost paths. we climbed part way up the hillside and found a place where we could look out on the scene below. in the fading light it seemed a place of enchantment. it is not easy to tell what part of this garden the romans built and what was added from time to time during the centuries. it seems to have been liberally reconstructed a hundred or so years ago, and the statuary is none of it of the roman period. but if there was ever any incongruity the blurring hand of time has left it invisible to our unpracticed eyes. we lingered in this magic garden, and spoke softly of the generations that for nineteen centuries have found their recreation there, and we turned often for a last look, reluctant to leave something that seemed likely to vanish the moment one turned away. our hotel was on the square in which stands the arena, so that it was but a step away at any time. we paid it one thorough visit, and sat in the seats, and scaled the upper heights, and looked down on the spot where tragedy and horror had been employed as means of pleasure for a good portion of the world's history. i am sorry the provence is still rather cruel minded, though i believe they do not always kill the bull now in the sunday-afternoon fights. it is only a few times in each season that they have a fight to the death. they had one the sunday before our arrival, according to the bills still posted at the entrance. in the regular sunday games anyone has the privilege of snatching a bow of red ribbon from the bull's forehead. i had a fever to try it, but, this being only tuesday, it did not seem worth while to wait. on the whole i think we did not find the arena at nîmes as interesting as the one at arles, perhaps because we had seen arles first. it is somewhat smaller than the arles circus, and possibly not so well preserved, but it is of majestic proportions, and the huge layers of stone, laid without cement in the roman fashion, have never moved except where vandal and saracen and the building bishops have laid despoiling hands. not all the interest of nîmes is ancient; alphonse daudet was born in nîmes, and the city has set up a statue and named a street in his honor. daudet's birthplace is not on the street that bears his name, but on the boulevard gambetta, one of the wide thoroughfares. daudet's house is a part of the bourse du commerce now, and i do not think it was ever the "_habitation commode, tout ombragée de plantanes_" of which he writes so fondly in le petit chose--the book which we have been told is, in part, at least, his own history. there is nothing now to indicate that it was ever the birthplace of anyone, except the plaque at the door, and as we sat reading this we realized that by a coincidence we had come at a fortunate time. the plaque said, "born may , ." now, seventy-four years later, the date was the same. it was the poet's birthday! chapter x through the cÉvennes the drowsy provence, with its vineyard slopes and poppied fields, warm lighted and still, is akin to paradise. but the same provence, on a windy day, with the chalk dust of its white roads enveloping one in opaque blinding clouds, suggests sherman's definition of war. we got a taste of this aspect leaving nîmes on our way north. the roads were about perfect, hard and smooth, but they were white with dust, and the wind did blow. i have forgotten whether it was the mistral or the tramontane, and i do not think it matters. it was just wind--such wind as i used to meet a long time ago in kansas. our first town was alais, but when we inquired about alai, according to the french rule of pronunciation, they corrected us and said alais--sounding the s. that is provençal, i take it, or an exception to the rule. alais itself was of no importance, but along the way there were villages perched on hilltops, with castles crowning the high central points, all as picturesque and mediæval as anything well could be. we were always tempted to go up to them, but the climb was likely to be steep; then those villages seen from the inside might not be as poetry-picturelike as when viewed from below, looking up an orchard slope to their weathered balconies and vine-hung walls. we were in the cévennes about as soon as we had passed alais. the cévennes are mountains--not mere hills, but towering heights, with roads that wind and writhe up them in a multiplicity of convolutions, though always on perfect grade, always beautiful, bringing to view deep vistas and wide expanses at every turn. there was little wind now--the hills took care of that--and we were warm and comfortable and happy in this fair, lonely land. there were few habitations of any kind; no automobiles; seldom even a cart. water was scarce, too; it was hard to find a place to replenish our bottles. but we came at last to a cabin in the woods--a sort of wayside café it proved--where a woman sold us half a liter of red wine for about five cents, and supplied us with spring water free. a little farther along, where the road widened a bit, we halted for luncheon. on one side a steep ascent, wooded, on the other a rather abrupt slope, grass-covered and shady with interspaced trees. by and by we noticed that all the trees were of one variety--chestnut. it was, in fact, a chestnut orchard, and proclaimed the industry of this remote land. we saw many such during the afternoon; probably the district is populous enough during the chestnut harvest. through the long afternoon we went winding upward among those unpeopled hills, meeting almost nothing in the way of human life, passing through but one village, grenolhac, too small even to be set down in the road book. in fact, the first place mentioned beyond alais was villefort, with a small population and one inn, a hostelry indicated in the book merely by a little wineglass, and not by one of the tiny houses which, in their varied sizes, picture the recommended hotels and the relative importance thereof. there was no mention of rooms in connection with the café marius balme; the outlook for accommodation overnight was not very cheerful. it was chilly, too, for evening was closing in and we were well up in the air. the prospect of camping by the roadside, or even of sitting up in a café until morning, did not attract a person of my years, though narcissa and the joy declared that to build a camp fire and roll up in the steamer rugs would be "lovely." as there were only three rugs, i could see that somebody was going to be overlooked in the arrangement; besides, a night in the mountains in may, let it begin ever so gayly, is pretty sure to develop doubtful features before morning. i have done some camping in my time, and i have never been able to get together enough steamer rugs to produce a really satisfactory warmth at, say, three or four o'clock in the morning, when the frost is embroidering the bushes and the stars have a glitter that drills into your very marrow. langogne, the first town marked with a hotel, was at least thirty-five miles farther along, and i could tell by the crinkly look of the road as it appeared on our map that it was no night excursion. presently we descended into a sort of gorge, and there was villefort, an isolated, ancient little hamlet forgotten among the cévennes hilltops. we came to an open space and there, sure enough, was the café balme, and by the side of it, happy vision, another little building with the sign "hôtel balme." it was balm indeed. to my faithful inquiry, "_vous avez des chambres?_" yes, they had chambers--they were across the open square, over the garage--that is to say, the stable--if the monsieur and his party would accept them. "_oui, certainement!_" they were not luxurious--they were just bare boxes, but they were clean, with comfortable beds, and, dear me! how inviting on this particularly chilly evening, when one has put in most of the day climbing narrow, circuitous mountain roads--one-sided--that is to say, one side a wall, the other falling off into unknown space. they were very quiet rooms, for we had the place to ourselves. the car would sleep just under us, and we had a feeling of being nomads, the kind that put up in barns and empty buildings. a better place could hardly have made us happier, and a better dinner than we had could not be produced anywhere. there was soup--french soup; hot fried trout, taken that day from the mountain streams; then there was omelet of the freshest eggs, served so hot that one must wait for it to cool; also a dish of veal of the same temperature and of such tenderness that you could cut it with a fork; and there was steak which we scarcely touched, and a salad, and fruit and cakes and camembert cheese, with unlimited wine throughout. how could they give a dinner like that, and a good bed, and coffee and rolls with jam next morning, all for four francs--that is, eighty cents, each? i will tell you: they did their own cooking, and were lost so far in the mountains that they had not yet heard of the "high cost of living." and if i have not mentioned it before, i wish to say here that all the red road-book hotels are good, however small or humble they appear. indeed, i am inclined to believe that _all french_ hotels are good--at least that they have good food and beds. with the french, to have good beds and good food is a religion. you notice i do not mention the coffee. that is because it is not real coffee. it is-- i don't quite know what it is. in the large hotels it merely looks like coffee. in these small inns it looks like a dark, ominous soup and tastes like that as much as anything. also, it is not served in cups, but bowls, porridge bowls, with spoons to match, and the natives break chunks of bread in it and thus entirely carry out the soup idea. this is the french conception of coffee in the remoter districts, but the bread and jam or honey that go with it are generally good and plentiful, and i suppose the fearful drink itself must be wholesome. one hears a good deal in america of delicious french coffee, but the only place to get it is in america, in new orleans, say, or new york. i have never found any really good coffee even in paris. i think not many travelers visit the cévennes. the road across the mountains from nîmes toward paris seemed totally untraversed, at least so far as tourists are concerned. no english is spoken anywhere--not a word. this was france--not the france that is paris, which is not france at all any more than new york city is america, but the france which is a blending of race and environment--of soil and sky and human struggle into a unified whole that is not much concerned with the world at large, and from generation to generation does not greatly change. one may suppose, for instance, that the market at villefort, which we saw next morning, was very much what it was a hundred years ago--that the same sturdy women in black dresses and curious hats had carried the same little bleating kids, one under each arm--that trout and strawberries and cheese and cherries and all the products of that mountain district were offered there, around the old stone fountain, in the same baskets under the shadow of the same walls, with so little difference in the general aspect that a photograph, if one could have been taken then, might be placed beside the ones we made and show no difference in the fashion of things at all. we bought some of the strawberries, great delicious dewy ones, and narcissa and the joy wanted to buy one or even a dozen of the poor little kids, offering to hold them in their laps constantly. but i knew that presently i should be holding one or more of those kids in my own lap and i was afraid i could not do that and drive with safety. i said that some day when we had time we would build a wooden cage on wheels to put behind the car and gradually collect a menagerie, but that i was afraid we didn't have time just now. we must be getting on. our landlady was a good soul. she invited us into the kitchen, neat, trim, and shining, and showed us some trout caught that morning, and offered to give us a mess to take along. the entire force of the hotel assembled to see us go. it consisted of herself and her daughter, our waitress of the night before. our bill was sixteen francs. the old life--the simple life--of france had not yet departed from villefort. chapter xi into the auvergne we had climbed two thousand feet from nîmes to reach villefort and thought we were about on the top of the ridge. but that was a mistake; we started up again almost as soon as we left, and climbed longer hills, higher and steeper hills, than ever. not that they were bad roads, for the grades were perfect, but they did seem endless and they were still one-sided roads, with a drop into space just a few feet away, not always with protecting walls. still there was little danger, if one did not get too much interested in the scenery, which was beyond anything for its limitless distances, its wide spaces and general grandeur. whenever we got to a level spot i stopped the car to look at it while the engine cooled. it is a good plan to stop the car when one wishes really to admire nature. the middle of the road ahead is thought to be the best place for the driver to look while skirting a mountainside. to return to roads just for a moment, there were miles of that winding lofty way, apparently cut out of the solid face of the mountain, through a country almost entirely uninhabited--a rocky, barren land that could never be populous. how can the french afford those roads--how can they pay for them and keep them in condition? i was always expecting to meet a car on the short high turns, and kept the horn going, but never a car, never a carriage--only now and then a cart, usually the stone-cart of some one mending the roads. the building and engineering of those roads seems to me even a greater marvel than the architecture of cathedrals and châteaux. they are as curly and crooked as a vine, but they ascend and descend with a precision of scale that makes climbing them a real diversion. we ascended those hills on high speed--all of them. we were about at the snow line now. we could see it but a little way higher up, and if the weather had not been so bright and still we should have been cold. once we saw what we took to be a snowbank just ahead by the roadside. but when we came nearer we saw it was narcissus, growing there wild; later we saw whole fields of it. it flourished up there as the poppies did lower down. the country was not all barren. there were stretches of fertile mountain-top, with pastures and meadows and occasional habitations. now and then on some high point we saw a village clustering about an ancient tower. once--it was at prévenchères, a tiny village of the auvergne--we stopped and bought eggs and bread. there were also a few picture postals to be had there, and they showed the bourrée, which is a native dance of the auvergne--a rather rough country café dance, i gathered, but picturesque, in the native costume. i wish we might have seen it. the mountains dwindled to hills, humanity became more plentiful. it was an open, wind-swept country now--rolling and fruitful enough, but barren of trees; also, as a rule, barren of houses. the people live in the villages and their industry would seem to be almost entirely pasturage--that is, cattle raising. i have never seen finer cattle than we saw in the auvergne, and i have never seen more uninviting, dirtier villages. barns and houses were one. there were no dooryards, and the cattle owned the streets. a village, in fact, was a mere cattle yard. i judge there are few more discouraging-looking communities, more sordid-looking people, than in just that section. but my guess is that they are a mighty prosperous lot and have money stuffed in the savings bank. it is a further guess that they are the people that zola wrote of in _la terre_. of course there was nothing that looked like a hotel or an inn in any of those places. one could not imagine a french hotel in the midst of such a nightmare. chapter xii le puy one of the finest things about a french city is the view of it from afar off. le puy is especially distinguished in this regard. you approach it from the altitudes and you see it lying in a basin formed by the hills, gleaming, picturesque, many spired--in fact, beautiful. the evening sun was upon it as we approached, which, i think, gave it an added charm. we were coasting slowly down into this sunset city when we noticed some old women in front of a cottage, making lace. we had reached the lacemaking district of the auvergne. we stopped and examined their work and eventually bought some of it and photographed them and went on down into the city. every little way other old women in front of humble cottages were weaving lace. how their fingers did make the little bobbins fly! i had never heard of a _puy_ (pronounced "pwee") before we went to the auvergne and i should never have guessed what it was from its name. a _puy_ is a natural spire, or cone, of volcanic stone, shooting straight up into the air for several hundred or several thousand feet, often slim and with perpendicular sides. perhaps we should call them "needles." i seem to remember that we have something of the kind in arizona known by that name. the auvergne has been a regular _puy_ factory in its time. it was in the quaternary era, and they were volcanic chimneys in the day of their first usefulness. later--a good deal later--probably several million years, when those flues from the lower regions had become filled up and solidified, pious persons began building churches on the tops of them, which would seem pretty hazardous, for if one of those chimneys ever took a notion to blow out, it would certainly lift the church sky high. here at le puy the chimney that gives it its name is a slender cone two hundred and eighty feet high, with what is said to be a curious tenth-century church on the very tip of it. we were willing to take it for granted. there are about five hundred steps to climb, and there is a good deal of climbing in le puy besides that item. we looked up to it, and across to it, and later--when we were leaving--down to it from another higher point. i don't know why churches should be put in such inconvenient places--to test piety, maybe. i am naturally a pious person, but when i think of the piety that has labored up and down those steps through rain and shine and cold and heat for a thousand years i suffer. we did climb the stair of the cathedral of notre dame de puy, which sweeps upward in broad majesty, like a ladder to heaven. there are over a hundred steps, and they were originally designed so the overflow congregation could occupy them and look into the church and see the officiating priest. an architectural change has made this impossible to-day, so perhaps the congregation no longer overflows. in fact, there was a time when great pilgrimages were made to notre dame du puy, and it was then that the steps were filled. there are little shops on each rise of this great flight--ascending with it--shops where religious charms and the like are sold. at the earlier period the merchants displayed their wares on small tables, and the street is called _rue des tables_ to this day. the church is built of black and white stone, and has a curiously turkish look. it all seems very foreign to france, and indeed the whole place was not unlike a mosque, though more somber, less inviting. it was built in the twelfth century, and under its porch are two of the original cedar doors, with latin inscriptions. i am sure le puy is a religious place. on every high point there is a church or a saint, or something inspiring. a statue of notre dame de france is on the highest point of all, four hundred and thirty-five feet above the town. this statue was cast from the metal of two hundred russian cannons taken at sebastopol. you can ascend to it by some six or seven hundred steps cut in the solid rock. we did not go up there, either. even the statement that we could ascend another flight of steps inside the statue and stand in its very head did not tempt us. americans have been spoiled for these things. the lift has made loafers of us all. what i think we enjoyed most in le puy was its lacemakers. at every turn, in every little winding street, one saw them--singly and in groups; they were at the front of every door. they were of all ages, but mainly, i think, they were old women. many of them wore the auvergne costume--quaint hats or caps, and little shawls, and wooden shoes. lacemaking is the industry of the haute-loire district, and is said to employ ninety thousand women. i think that is an underestimate. it seemed to me we saw as many as that ourselves in front of those mediæval doorways of le puy. chapter xiii the center of france it is grand driving from le puy northward toward clermont-ferrand and vichy. it is about the geographical center of france, an unspoiled, prosperous-looking land. many varieties of country are there--plain, fertile field, rich upland slopes. all the way it is picture country--such country as we have seen in the pictures and seldom believed in before. cultivated areas in great squares and strips, fields of flowers--red, blue, white--the french colors; low solid-looking hills, with little cities halfway to the summit, and always, or nearly always, a castle or two in their midst; winding, shining rivers with gray-stone bridges over them, the bright water appearing and reappearing at every high turn. our road made no special attempt to reach the towns. we viewed them from a distance, and there were narrower roads that turned in their direction, but our great national highway--it was no. now--was not intended for their special accommodation. when it did reach a town it was likely to be a military center, with enormous barracks--new, many of them--like those at issoire, a queer old place where we spent the night and where i had a real adventure. it was my custom to carry under the back seat a bottle of scotch whisky in event of severe illness, or in case of acute motor trouble. for reasons i do not at the moment recall--perhaps the cork had leaked--our supply seemed low at issoire, and i decided to see what i could find. i had little hope, for in france even the word "whisky" is seldom recognized. still, i would make diligent inquiry, our case being pretty desperate. there was not enough in the bottle to last till morning-- i mean, of course, in case anything serious should happen. i had the usual experience at the cafés. the attendants repeated the word "whisky" vaguely, and in various ways, and offered me all sorts of gayly tinted liquids which i did not think would cure anything i was likely to have. i tried a drug store, where a gentle pharmacist listened awhile to my french, then dug out from the back of a lower drawer a circular on esperanto. imagine! i was about ready to give it up when i happened to notice a low, dim shop the shelves of which seemed filled with fancy bottles. the place had an ancient, mellow look, but i could see at a glance that its liquids were too richly colored for my taste--needs, i mean. i could try, however. the little gray man who waited on me pronounced the word in several ways and scratched his head. "_wisky_," he said, "_visky-viskee!_" then he seemed to explode. a second later he was digging a dusty book out of a dusty pile, and in a moment was running his fingers down a yellow page. i dare say it was an old stock list, for suddenly he started up, ran to a dark, remote shelf, pulled away some bottles, and from the deeper back recesses dragged a bottle and held it up in triumph. "_voilà!_" he said, "_veeskee! veeskee eereesh!_" shades of st. patrick! it was old irish whisky--old, how old--perhaps laid in by his grandfather, for a possible tourist, a hundred years before. i tried to seem calm--indifferent. "_encore?_" i said. but no, there was no _encore_--just this one. the price, oh yes, it was four francs. imagine! issoire is a quaint place and interesting. i shall always remember it. to motorists clermont-ferrand is about the most important city in france. it is the home of tire manufacturers, and among them the great benevolent one that supplies the red road book, and any desired special information, free. we felt properly grateful to this factory and drove out to visit it. they were very good to us; they gave us a brand-new red-book and a green-book for germany and switzerland. the factory is a large one, and needs to be. about four-fifths of the cars of europe go rolling along on its products, while their owners, without exception, use its wonderfully authentic guides. each year the road books distributed free by this firm, piled one upon the other, would reach to a height of more than five miles. they cover about all the countries, and are simply priceless to the motorist. they are amusing, too. the funny fat motor man made of tires, shown in little marginal drawings and tailpieces in all the picturesque dilemmas of the road, becomes a wonderfully real personality on short acquaintance. we learned to love the merry michelin man, and never grew tired of sharing his joys and misfortunes. clermont-ferrand is also the home of a man with two wooden legs that need oiling. i know, for he conducted us to the cathedral, and his joints squeaked dismally at every step. i said i would go back to the car and get the oil can, but he paid no attention to the suggestion. he also objected to the tip i gave him, though i could not see why an incomplete guide like that, especially one not in good repair, should expect double rates. besides, his cathedral was not the best. it was not built of real stone, but of blocks of lava from the _puys_ of the neighborhood. we came near getting into trouble descending a hill to vichy. the scene there was very beautiful. vichy and the river and valley below present a wonderful picture. absorbed in it, i was only dimly conscious of an old woman trudging along at our left, and did not at all notice a single chicken quite on the opposite side. in any case i could not well know that it was her chicken, or that it was so valuable that she would risk her life to save it. she was a very old person--in the neighborhood of several hundred, i should think, wearing an improperly short skirt, her legs the size and shape of a tightly folded umbrella, terminating below in the largest pair of wooden shoes in the world. familiar with the habits of chickens, she probably thought her property would wait till we were opposite and then start to race across in front of the car. to prevent this she decided to do it herself! yet i suppose if i had damaged that prehistoric old lady, instead of missing her by the breadth of half a hair, her relatives would have made us pay for her at fancy rates. we did not tarry at vichy. it is a gay place--stylish and costly, and worth seeing a little, when one can drive leisurely through its clean, handsome streets. perhaps if we could have invented any maladies that would have made a "cure" necessary we might have lingered with those other sallow, sad-eyed, stylish-looking people who collect in the pavilions where the warm healing waters come bubbling up and are dispensed free for the asking. but we are a healthy lot, and not stylish. we drove about for a pleasant hour, then followed along evening roads to st. germain des fosses, where the hôtel du porc was a wayside inn of our kind, with clean, quiet rooms, good food--and prices, oh, very moderate indeed! but i do wonder why garages are always put in such inconvenient places. i have driven in and backed out of a good many in my time, and i cannot now recall more than one or two that were not tucked away in an alley or around some impossible corner, making it necessary to scrape and writhe and cringe to get in and out without damaging something. i nearly knocked a corner from an out-house in st. germain, backing out of its free and otherwise satisfactory garage. chapter xiv between billy and bessey to those tourists who are looking for out-of-the-way corners of europe i commend billy. it is not pronounced in our frivolous way, but "bee-yee," which you see gives it at once the french dignity. i call billy "out-of-the-way" because we saw no tourists in the neighborhood, and we had never before heard of the place, which has a bare three-line mention in baedeker. billy is on the allier, a beautiful river, and, seen from a distance, with its towering ruin, is truly picturesque. of course the old castle is the chief feature of billy--a ruin of great extent, and unrestored! the last item alone makes it worth seeing. a good many of the ruins of france have been restored under the direction of that great recreator of the architectural past, viollet le duc, who has done his work supremely well and thoroughly--oh, thoroughly, no name! i am glad he did it, for it means preservation for the ages, but i am so glad that there is now and then a ruin that monsieur v. le duc happened to overlook. i even drift into bad poetry when i think of it. the château de billy seems to have been built about by one of the sires of bourbon robert of clermont, son of st. louis, to control the river traffic. it was a massive edifice of towers and bastions, and walls of enormous thickness. a good portion of the walls and some of the towers still stand. and there is a dungeon into which no light or air could come, once used to convince refractory opposition. they put a man in there for an hour. when they took him out he was either convinced or dead, and so, in either case, no longer troublesome. the guardian of billy was a little old woman as picturesque as the ruins, and lived in a little house across the way, as picturesque as herself. when we had seen the castle she let us look into her house. it consisted of just one small room with a tiny stove in one corner and a bed in the other. but the stove, with its accessories of pans and other ware all so shining and neat, and her tiny, high-posted, canopied bed so spotless and pretty with its white counterpane and gay little curtains, set us to wondering why anybody in the world needed a home more ample or attractive than that. it seemed amusing to us that the name of the next place along that route should be bessey. we lunched between billy and bessey, on a green level roadside, under some big trees, where there was a little stream which furnished our cooking water. it is not always easy to select the luncheon place. a dry spot with water and shade is not everywhere to be had, and then we do not always instantly agree on the conveniences of a place, and while we are discussing it we are going right along at a fifteen or twenty-mile rate and that place has drifted a mile or two behind before the conference ends. but there always _is_ a place somewhere that has most of the things we want, and it lies around the next turn or over the next hill, and it is always so new and strange and foreign, so away and away from the world we have known, so intimately a part of a land and of lives we have never seen before and shall never see again. a gypsy of very poor class came along while we were at luncheon. his little wagon-house was quite bare of furnishings. the man walked outside beside the meager donkey--a young woman with a baby sat on the floor in the wagon. gypsies, by the way, are an institution in france. the french call them _nomades_, and provide them with special ordinances and road limitations. at first, when we saw signs "_limites de nomades_" in the outskirts of villages we wondered what was meant, and did not associate the notice with the comfortable and sometimes luxurious house-wagons that we met or overtook, or found solidly established by some pleasant waterside. then it dawned upon us that these gypsy folk were the _nomades_ and that the signs were provided for their instruction. we met them, presently, everywhere. france, with its level roads and liberal laws, is gypsy heaven. a house on wheels, a regular little flat, with parlor, bedroom and kitchen, big enough to hold a family and its belongings, can be drawn by a single horse over the hard, perfectly graded highways. they work north in the summer, no doubt, and in the autumn the midi calls them. every little way we saw them camped, working at their basketry or some kindred industry. not all the villages limit them, and often we found them located in the midst of a busy town. i do not think they do any harm, and i always envied them. some of their little houses are so cozy and neat, with tiny lace curtains and flower pots, and pictures on the walls. when we first saw such wagons we thought they belonged to artists. chapter xv the haute-loire the particular day of which i am now writing was sunday, and when we came to moulin, the ancient capital of the bourbonnais, there was a baptismal ceremony going on in the cathedral; the old sexton in the portico outside was pulling the rope that led up to the great booming bell. he could pull and talk too, and he told us that the bell was only rung for baptisms, at least that was what we thought he said as he flung himself aloft with the upward sweep, and alow with the downward sweep, until his chin nearly touched the stone floor. i got into the swing of it directly, and signified that i should like to ring the bell a little myself. i realize now that it was decidedly brazen to ask to assist at a sacred function like that, but he let me do it, and i took the rope and for a minute or two swayed up and down in a pride i can hardly express, ringing that five-hundred-year-old bell to notify the world of the latest baptism in france. we came upon an unexpected treat at moulin--the souvigny bible, an illuminated manuscript of , with one hundred and twenty-two marvelously executed pictorial designs. the bible was in a museum across from the cathedral, a splendid museum indeed for little moulin, being the reconstructed château of the bourbons, filled with beautiful things of the bourbon period. the bible is in a room by itself in a glass case, but the guardian opened it for us and turned the leaves. this bible, discovered at the old priory of the little town of souvigny, is in perfect condition and presents a gorgeous piece of hand illumination. the drawing itself is naturally primitive, but the coloring is rich beyond telling, the lettering marvelously perfect. j. pierpont morgan is said to have offered a million francs for the souvigny bible, a vast sum to little moulin. i am glad they did not sell it. it seems better in the quiet, choice museum which was once the castle of the bourbon dukes. it is curious how conventions establish themselves in the different districts and how absolutely they prevail in the limits of those districts. in certain sections, for instance, we found the furnishings in each hotel exactly alike. the same chairs, the same little table, the same bedsteads and wardrobes, the same tableware. we could tell by the change of furnishing when we had reached a new district. a good portion of the auvergne remains to us the "land of squatty pitchers," because in every bedroom the water pitcher was a very short, very corpulent and saucy-looking affair that amused us each evening with its absurd shape. then there were the big coffee bowls and spoons. they got larger and larger from nîmes northward until we reached issoire. there the bowls were really immense and the spoons had grown from dessert spoons to table spoons, from table spoons to soup spoons until at issoire they were like enormous vegetable spoons, such as cooks use to stir the pot with. from moulin northward we entered the "land of little ladders." all the houses outside the larger towns were story-and-a-half affairs, built facing the road, and the half-story was not reached by an inside stairway, but by a short outside ladder that led up to a central gable window, which was really a door. it was curious to see a string of these houses, all with the little ladders, and all just alike. our first thought was that the ladders were used because they were cheaper to build than a stairway, and saved inside room. but, reflecting later, i thought it more likely that they originated in the old need of defense. i think there was a time when the family retired to the loft at night and drew the ladder up after them, to avoid a surprise. it had been raining softly when we left moulin. somehow we had strayed from the main road, and through the misty mid-region of the haute-loire followed ways uncharted, but always good--always interesting, and somewhere in that lost borderland we came to dornes, and the daintiest inn, kept by the daintiest gray-haired woman, who showed us her kitchen and her flower garden and her tame pheasants, and made us love her dearly. next day at st. pierre le moutier we got back on our route, and when narcissa, out of the book she had been reading, reminded us that joan of arc had once fought a battle there the place became glorified. joan must have been at nevers, too, though we found no record of it. i think we should have stayed longer at nevers. there was an ancient look about portions of it that in a brighter day would have invited us. crossing the loire and entering the city, with its ancient bastioned walls, carried one back a good way into the centuries. but it was still dull and drizzly, and we had a feeling for the open road and a cozier lodgment. the rain ceased, the sun tried to break through the mist. the glistening world became strangely luminous, a world not of hard realities at all. the shining river winding away into mystery; far valley reaches fading into haze; blurred lines of ancient spires and towers--these things belonged only to a land of romance. long ago i saw a painting entitled a dream of italy. i did not believe then that any real land could be as beautiful-- i thought it only an artist's vision. i was mistaken. no painting was ever so beautiful--so full of richness and light and color as this haze-haunted valley of the loire. we rested at neuvy, at the little red-book inn, hôtel de la paix, clean and inviting like the rest. it is the best compliment we can pay these little hotels that we always want to remain in them longer, and plan some day to come back to them. chapter xvi nearing paris there are more fine-looking fishing places in france than in any country i ever saw. there are also more fishermen. in every river town the water-fronts are lined with them. they are a patient lot. they have been sitting there for years, i suppose, and if they have ever caught anything the fact has been concealed. i have talked with numbers of them, but when i came to the question of their catch they became vague, not to say taciturn. "_pas grande chose_" ("no great thing"), has been the reply, and there was no exhibit. i have never seen one of those fishermen get a nibble. but the water is certainly seductive. following the upper loire from neuvy to gien, i was convinced that with a good rod i could stop almost anywhere and fill the car. such attractive eddies, such fascinating, foam-flecked pools! probably it is just as well i did not have the rod. i like to persuade myself that the fish were there. gien on the loire is an old place, but not much that is old remains. joan of arc stopped there on her way to the king at chinon, and it was from gien, following the delivery of orléans and the battle of patay, that she set out with charles vii for the coronation at rheims. but there are no joan relics in gien to-day. there are, however, two interesting features here: the two-story wells and the hard-working dogs. the wells have a curb reaching to the second story, with an opening below for the downstairs tenants. it seems a good idea, and the result is picturesque. the dogs are hitched to little wagons and the giennese--most of whom seem to be large and fat--first load those wagons and then get in themselves and ride. we saw one great hulk of a man approaching in what at first seemed to be some sort of a go-cart. it was not until he got close up that we discovered the dog--a little sweltering dog, his eyes popping out, his tongue nearly dragging the ground. i think the people of gien are lazy and without shame. [illustration: "through hillside villages where never a stone had been moved, i think, in centuries"] we missed the road leaving gien and wandered off into narrow, solid little byways that led across fields and along hedges, through hillside villages where never a stone had been moved, i think, in centuries. once we turned into what seemed a beautiful wood road, but it led to a grand new château and a private drive which had a top dressing of deep soft sand. fortunately nobody was at home, for we stalled in the sand and the head of the family and narcissa and the joy were obliged to get out and push while i put on all backing power and made tracks in that new sand that would have horrified the owner. we are the right sort, however. we carefully repaired the scars, then made tracks of another kind, for remoter districts. miles away from anywhere, by a pool at the edge of a field of bushes, we established a luncheon place, and in a seclusion of vines and shrubbery the joy set up a kitchen and made coffee and boiled eggs and potatoes and "kept house" for an hour or so, to her heart's content. we did not know where we were, or particularly care. we knew that the road would lead somewhere, and that somewhere would be a wayside village with a little hotel that had been waiting for us ever so long, with inviting comforts and generous hospitality. often we said as we drove along, "what little hotel do you suppose is waiting for us to-night?" but we did not worry, for we always knew we should find it. the "little hotel" this time proved to be at souppes on the loing, and if i had to award a premium to any of the little hotels that thus far had sheltered us, i think i should give it to the hôtel du mouton, souppes. the name naturally amused us, and we tried to make jokes out of it, but the dainty rooms and the delicious dinner commanded only our approval. also the price; nineteen francs and forty centimes, or less than four dollars, for our party of four, dinner, lodging, and breakfast, garage free. souppes is a clean town, with a wide central street. most of the towns up this way were cleaner than those of the farther south. also, they had better buildings, as a rule. i mean the small towns. villages not large enough even to be set down on the map have churches that would do credit in size and luxury to new york city. take bonny, for instance. we halted there briefly to watch some quaintly dressed people who were buying and selling at a little butter and egg market, and then we noticed a big, gray, ancient-looking church somewhat farther along. so we went over there and wandered about in its dim coolness, and looked at its beautiful treasures--among them the fine marble statue of joan which one meets to-day in most of the churches in france. how could bonny, a mere village, ever have built a church like that--a church that to-day would cost a million dollars? another thing we noticed up this way was the "sign of the bush." here and there along the road and in the villages there would be a house with an upward-slanting hole in the outside wall, about halfway to the eaves, and in the hole a branch of a tree, usually evergreen. when we had seen a few of these we began to wonder as to their meaning. then we noticed that houses with those branches were all cafés, and some one suddenly remembered a proverb which says, "a good wine needs no bush," and how, in a former day, at least, the sign of the bush had indicated a wine shop. that it still does so in france became more and more evident as we went along. every wine shop had its branch of green. i do not think there was one along that road that considered its wine superior to the traditional announcement. just outside of souppes there is a great flinty rock upon which some prehistoric race used to sharpen knives. i suppose it was back before cæsar's time, but in that hard stone, so hard that my own knife would not scratch it, the sharpening grooves and surfaces are as fresh as if those old fellows had left there only yesterday. i wish i could know how they looked. we came to the woods of fontainebleau and ate our luncheon in its deep lucent shade. there is romance in the very name of fontainebleau, but we would return later to find it. we drove a little through the wide avenues of that splendid forest that for three centuries or more was a hunting ground and pleasure park for kings, then we headed away for juvisy on the seine, where we spent the night and ate on a terrace in the open air, in a company not altogether to our liking--it being rather noisy, rather flashy, rather unwholesome--in a word, parisian. we had left the region of simple customs and unpretentious people. it was not a pleasant change. also, we had left the region of good roads. all that i have said about the perfection of french roads i wish to retract, so far as those in the environs of paris are concerned. leaving juvisy, we were soon on what is called the "pave," a road paved with granite blocks, poorly laid to begin with, and left unrepaired for years. it is full of holes and humps and wallows, and is not really a road at all, but a stone quarry on a jamboree. we jiggled and jumped and bumped, and only by going at the slowest permissible speed could stand it. cars passed us going quite fast, but i could see that their occupants were not enjoying themselves. they were holding on to the backs of the seats, to the top supports, to one another. they were also tearing their cars to pieces, though the average frenchman does not mind that. i love france, and every frenchman is my friend, but i do not wish him to borrow my car. he drives helter-skelter, lickety-split, and never takes care of his car at all. when the average frenchman has owned a car a year it is a rusty, smoking, clattering box of tinware, ready for the can-heap. chapter xvii summing up the cost the informed motorist does not arrive at the gates of paris with a tankful of gasoline. we were not informed, and when the _octroi_ officials had measured our tank they charged us something like four dollars on its contents. the price of gasoline is higher inside, but not that much higher, i think. i did not inquire, for our tankful lasted us the week of our stay. to tell the truth, we did but little motoring in paris. for one thing, the streets are just a continuation of the pave, and then the traffic regulations are defective. i mean there are no regulations. it's just a go-as-you-please, each one for himself. push, crowd, get ahead of the fellow in front of you--that is the rule. here and there a _gendarme_ stands waving his arms and shouting, "_sacre bleu!_" but nobody pays the least attention to him. the well-trained american motorist finds his hair getting gray after an hour or two of that kind of thing. but we enjoyed paris, though i am not going to tell about it. no one attempts to tell of paris any more--it has all been told so often. but i may hint to the conservative motorist that below the seine, in the neighborhood of the luxembourg gardens, about where the rue de vaugirard crosses the boulevard st. michel, he will find choice little hotels, with rooms very moderate indeed. and perhaps here is a good place to speak of the cost of our travel. we had stinted ourselves in nothing except style. we had traveled leisurely, happily, enjoying everything to the full, and our average expense was a trifle less than forty francs a day--that is, eight dollars for four persons and the car. our bill each day at the little hotels for dinner, lodging, and _petit déjeuner_ (rolls, coffee, and jam) averaged about twenty-two francs, garage free.[ ] that, of course, is absurdly cheap. the matter of gasoline is different. "_essence_" or benzine, as they call it, is high in europe, and you would think it was some fine liqueur, the way they handle it. they put it up in sealed five-liter cans, and i have seen motorists, native motorists, buy one can--a trifle more than a gallon--probably fearing evaporation, or that somebody would rob the tank. one of those cans cost us about fifty cents, and, being of extra refined quality, it would carry us on french roads between eighteen and twenty miles. sixty miles a day was about our average, which is aplenty for sight-seeing, even for an american. our gasoline and oil expense came to about eight francs a day. the remainder of our eight dollars went for luncheon by the roadside and for tips. the picnic luncheon--bread and butter (delicious unsalted butter), jam, eggs, tinned meats, cheese, sausage, etc.--rarely cost to exceed four francs, and was usually cheaper. our hotel tips were about per cent of the bill, which is the correct amount, and was always satisfactory. when one gives more he gains nothing but servility, and makes it difficult for those who follow him. on the other hand an american cannot give less and keep his self-respect. there were usually but two servants at little inns, a waitress and a chambermaid. they were entitled to a franc each, and the boy at the garage to another. two or three francs a day was quite enough for incidental tips at churches, ruined castles, and the like, unless there should be a fee, which would naturally be reckoned outside the regular budget. in any case, such fees were small and infrequent. i think i will add a brief summary of the foregoing figures which i seem to have strung along in a rather loose, confusing way. summary average daily cost of motoring tor four persons, average daily cost of dinner, lodging, and breakfast francs ($ . ) average daily cost of gasoline and oil francs ( . ) average daily cost of roadside luncheon francs ( . ) average daily cost of tips at hotel francs ( . ) average daily cost for sight-seeing francs ( . ) ----------------- total francs ($ . ) that was reasonable motor travel, and our eight dollars bought as much daily happiness as any party of four is likely to find in this old world.[ ] another thing i wish to record in this chapter is the absolute squareness we found everywhere. at no hotel was there the slightest attempt to misrepresent, to ring in extras, to encourage side-adventures in the matter of wines or anything of the sort. we had been led to believe that the motorist was regarded as fair game for the continental innkeeper. possibly there were localities where this was true, but i am doubtful. neither did the attendants gather hungrily around at parting. more than once i was obliged to hunt up our waitress, or to leave her tip with the girl or man who brought the bags. the conclusion grew that if the motorist is robbed and crucified in europe, as in the beginning a friend had prophesied we should be, it is mainly because he robs and crucifies himself. footnotes: [ ] it was oftener from sixteen to eighteen francs, but the time when we stopped at larger towns, like le puy, lyons, and valence, brought up the average. these are antewar prices. i am told there is about a -per-cent increase (on the dollar basis) to-day. the value of the french franc is no longer a fixed quantity. [ ] the reader must continue to bear in mind that this was in a golden age. the cost would probably be nearer francs to-day ( ), or $ american money. even so, it would be cheaper than staying at home, in america. chapter xviii the road to cherbourg it is easy enough to get into almost any town or city, but it is different when you start to leave it. all roads lead to rome, but there is only here and there one that leads out of it. with the best map in the world you can go wrong. we worked our way out of paris by the bois de boulogne, but we had to call on all sorts of persons for information before we were really in the open fields once more. a handsome young officer riding in the bois gave us a good supply. he was one of the most polite persons i ever met; also, the most loquacious. the sum of what he told us was to take the first turn to the right, but he told it to us for fully five minutes, with all the variations and embroideries of a young and lively fancy that likes to hear itself in operation. he explained how the scenery would look when we had turned to the right; also how it would continue to look when there was no longer a necessity of turning in either direction and what the country would be in that open land beyond the bois. on the slightest provocation i think he would have ridden with us, even into cherbourg. he was a boon, nevertheless, and we were truly grateful. beyond the bois de boulogne lay the _pave_, miles of it, all as bad as it could be. sometimes we could not really tell when we were in the road. once i found myself on a sort of private terrace without knowing how i got there or how to get down. we went through st. germain, but we did not stop. we wished to get far from paris--back to the simple life and good roads. it was along the seine, at last, that we found them and the quiet villages. imagine the luxury of following a silent, tranquil road by that placid stream, through the sweetness of a may afternoon. imagine the peace of it after the jar and jolt and clatter and dazzle of detestable, adorable paris. i am sorry not to be able to recommend the hotel at rosny. for a time it looked as if it were going to be one of the best of our selections, but it did not turn out so. when we found a little toy garden at the back, our rooms a string of tiny one-story houses facing it, with roses blooming at every doorway, we were delighted. each of us had a toy house to himself, and there was another for the car at the back. it was a real play place, and we said how nice it was and wished we might stay a good while. then we went for a walk down to the river and in the sunset watched a curious ferryboat run back and forth on a wire, taking over homefaring teams, and some sheep and cattle, to the village on the farther bank of the little, but historic, river. in the early gloaming we walked back to our hotel. the dinner was very good--all dinners in france are that--but alas for our pretty playhouse rooms! when candles were brought in we saw what i had begun to suspect from the feeling, the walls were damp--worse, they were soaked--almost dripping. it seems they were built against a hill and the recent rains had soaked them through. we could not risk it--the landlady must give us something in the main house. she was a good soul--full of regrets, even grief. she had not known about those walls, she said, and, alas! she had no rooms in the main house. when we insisted that she _must_ find _something_, she admitted that there was, indeed, just one room, but so small, so humble--fine folk like us could never occupy it. she was right about its being small, but she was wrong in thinking we could not occupy it. she brought in cots and bedding, and when we were all in place at last we just about filled it from side to side. still, it was dry and ventilated; those other places had been neither. but it seemed to us amusing that our fine pretension of a house apiece opening on a garden had suddenly dwindled to one inconsiderable room for the four of us. we were in normandy, now, and enjoying it. everything was quite different from the things of the south. the picturesque thatched-roof houses; the women in dainty caps, riding on donkeys, with great brass milk jugs fore and aft; the very ancient cross-timber architecture; those, to us, were new things in france. the architecture and some of the costumes were not new to one who had visited england. william the norman must have carried his thatched-roof and cross-timber architecture across the channel; also, certain dresses and smocks and the pattern of the men's whiskers. in some of these towns one might almost believe himself in rural england. lisieux, especially, is of the type i mean. it has a street which might be in shrewsbury, though i think the shrewsbury houses would not be as old as those of lisieux, one of which--"the house of the salamander"--so called from the decoration on its carved façade--we were permitted to visit. something about it gave me more the feeling of the ancient life than i have found in most of the castles. perhaps because it is wood, and wood holds personality longer than stone. there is an old church at lisieux, and it has a chapel built by cauchon, bishop of beauvais, who hounded joan of arc to the stake. cauchon earned the beauvais appointment by convicting joan, but later, especially after joan had been rehabilitated, he became frightened of the entertainment which he suspected satan was preparing for him and built this chapel in expiation, hoping to escape the fire. it is a beautiful chapel, but i think cauchon wasted his money. if he didn't there is something wrong with justice. the normandy road to cherbourg is as wonderful as any in france. all the way it is lined with trees, and it goes straight on, mile after mile, up hill and down--long, long hills that on the approach look as if they reached to the sky, but that flatten out when you get to them, and offer a grade so gradual and a surface so smooth that you need never shift your speed levers. workmen are always raking and touching up those roads. we had something more than two days of them, and if the weather had not been rather windy and chilly out on that long peninsula the memory of that run would be about perfect. cherbourg is not the great city we had imagined it to be. it is simply a naval base, heavily fortified, and a steamer landing. coming in on the paris road you are in the center of activities almost as soon as you reach the suburbs and there is none of the crush of heavy traffic that one might expect. there is a pleasant beach, too, and if travelers were not always going somewhere else when they arrive at cherbourg, the little city might become a real resort. we were there a week before our ship came in, then sailed out one quiet june evening on the harbor tender to meet the missing member and happily welcome her to france. our hotel had a moving-picture show in the open air, and we could look down on it from our windows. the joy especially liked this, and we might have stayed there permanently, but the long roads and still unvisited glories of france were calling. chapter xix bayeux, caen, and rouen we had barely hesitated at bayeux on the way to cherbourg, but now we stopped there for the night. bayeux, which is about sixty miles from cherbourg, was intimately associated with the life of william the conqueror, and is to-day the home of the famous bayeux tapestry, a piece of linen two hundred and thirty feet long and eighteen inches wide, on which is embroidered in colored wools the story of william's conquest of england. william's queen, matilda, is supposed to have designed this marvelous pictorial document, and even executed it, though probably with the assistance of her ladies. completed in the eleventh century, it would seem to have been stored in the bayeux cathedral, where it lay scarcely remembered for a period of more than six hundred years. then attention was called to its artistic and historic value, and it became still more widely known when napoleon brought it to paris and exhibited it at the louvre to stir the french to another conquest of england. now it is back in bayeux, and has a special room in the museum there, and a special glass case, so arranged that you can walk around it and see each of its fifty-eight tableaux. it was the closing hour when we got to the bayeux museum, but the guardian gave us plenty of time to walk around and look at all the marvelous procession of horses and men whose outlines have remained firm and whose colors have stayed fresh for more than eight hundred years. matilda was ahead of her time in art. she was a futurist--anybody can see that who has been to one of the later exhibitions. but she was exactly abreast in the matter of history. it is likely that she embroidered the events as they were reported to her, and her records are above price to-day. i suppose she sat in a beautiful room with her maids about her, all engaged at the great work, and i hope she looked as handsome as she looks in the fine painting of her which hangs above the case containing her masterpiece. there is something fine and stirring about matilda's tapestry. no matter if harold does seem to be having an attack of pleurisy when he is only putting on his armor, or if the horses appear to have detachable legs. matilda's horses and men can get up plenty of swift action on occasion, and the events certainly do move. tradition has it that the untimely death of the queen left the tapestry unfinished, for which reason william's coronation does not appear. i am glad we stopped at bayeux. i would rather have seen matilda's faithfully embroidered conquest than a whole gallery full of old masters. next day at caen we visited her grave. it stands in a church which she herself founded in expiation of some fancied sin connected with her marriage. her remains have never been disturbed. we also visited the tomb of the conqueror, on the other side of the city at the church of st. Étienne. but the conqueror's bones are not there now; they were scattered by the huguenots in . we enjoyed caen. we wandered about among its ancient churches and still more ancient streets. at one church a wedding was going on, and narcissa and i lingered a little to assist. one does not get invited to a normandy wedding every day, especially in the old town where william i organized his rabble to invade england. no doubt this bride and groom were descendants of some of william's wild rascals, but they looked very mild and handsome and modern to us. narcissa and i attended quite a variety of ceremonials in the course of our travels: christenings, catechisms, song services, high mass, funerals--there was nearly always something going on in those big churches, and the chantings and intonings, and the candles, and the incense, and the processions and genuflections, and the robes of the priests and the costumes of the assemblages all interested us. caen became an important city under william the conqueror. edward iii of england captured and pillaged it about the middle of the fourteenth century, at which time it was larger than any city in england, except london. it was from caen that charlotte corday set out to assassinate marat. to-day caen has less than fifty thousand inhabitants and is mainly interesting for its art treasures and its memories. we left the paris-cherbourg road at caen. our program included rouen, amiens, and beauvais, cathedral cities lying more to the northward. that night we lay at the little norman village of bourg-achard, in an inn of the choicest sort, and next morning looked out of our windows on a busy cattle market, where men in clean blue smocks and women in neat black dresses and becoming headgear were tugging their beasts about, exhibiting them and discussing them--eating, meantime, large pieces of gingerbread and other convenient food. a near-by orchard was filled with these busy traders. at one place our street was lined with agricultural implements which on closer inspection proved to be of american manufacture. from bourg-achard to rouen the distance seemed all too short--the road was so beautiful. it was at rouen that we started to trace backward the sacred footprints of joan of arc, saint and savior of france. for it is at rouen that the pathway ends. when we had visited the great cathedral, whose fairy-like façade is one of the most beautiful in the world, we drove to a corner of the old market place, and stopped before a bronze tablet which tells that on this spot on a certain day in may, (it was the th), the only spotless soul in france, a young girl who had saved her country from an invading and conquering enemy, was burned at the stake. that was five hundred years ago, but time has not dulled the misery of the event, its memory of torture, its humiliation. all those centuries since, the nation that joan saved has been trying to atone for her death. streets have been named for her; statues have been set up for her in every church and in public squares, but as we read that sorrowful tablet i could not help thinking that all of those honors together are not worth a single instant of her fiendish torture when the flames had found her tender flesh. cauchon, later bishop of beauvais, her persecutor, taunted his victim to the last. if the chapel of expiation he built later at lisieux saved him, then chapels must indeed be held in high esteem by those who confer grace. nothing is there to-day that was there then, but one may imagine an open market place thronged with people, and the horrid structure of death on which stood joan while they preached to her of her sins. her sins! when she was the only one among them that was not pitch black, steeped to the hair in villainy. cauchon himself finished the sermon by excommunicating her, cutting off the church's promise of salvation. on her head she wore a cap on which was printed: heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolater. cauchon had spared nothing to make her anguish complete. it is curious that he allowed her to pray, but he did, and when she prayed--not for herself, but for the king who had deserted her--for his glory and triumph, cauchon himself summoned the executioners, and they bound her to the stake with chains and lighted the fire. there is little more to see of joan in rouen. the cathedral was there in her time, but she was never permitted to enter it. there is a wall which was a part of the chapel where she had her final hearing before her judges; there are some houses which she must have passed, and there is a tower which belonged to the castle in which she was confined, though it is not certain that it is joan's tower. there is a small museum in it, and among its treasures we saw the manuscript article _st. joan of arc_, by mark twain, who, in his _personal recollections_, has left to the world the loveliest picture of that lovely life. chapter xx we come to grief it was our purpose to leave rouen by the amiens road, but when we got to it and looked up a hill that about halfway to the zenith arrived at the sky, we decided to take a road that led off toward beauvais. we could have climbed that hill well enough, and i wished later we had done so. as it was, we ran along quite pleasantly during the afternoon, and attended evening services in an old church at grandvilliers, a place that we had never heard of before, but where we found an inn as good as any in normandy. it is curious with what exactness fate times its conclusions. if we had left grandvilliers a few seconds earlier or later it would have made all the difference, or if i had not pulled up a moment to look at a lovely bit of brookside planted with poplars, or if i had driven the least bit slower or the least bit faster, during the first five miles, or-- oh, never mind--what happened was this: we had just mounted a long steep hill on high speed and i had been bragging on the car, always a dangerous thing to do, when i saw ahead of us a big two-wheeled cart going in the same direction as ourselves, and beyond it a large car approaching. i could have speeded up and cut in ahead of the cart, but i was feeling well, and i thought i should do the courteous thing, the safe thing, so i fell in behind it. not far enough behind him, however, for as the big car came opposite, the sleepy driver of the cart pulled up his horse short, and we were not far enough behind for me to get the brakes down hard and suddenly enough to stop before we touched him. it was not a smash. it was just a push, but it pushed a big hole in our radiator, mashed up one of our lamps, and crinkled up our left mudguard. the radiator was the worst. the water poured out; our car looked as if it had burst into tears. we were really stupefied at the extent of our disaster. the big car pulled up to investigate and console us. the occupants were americans, too, from washington--kindly people who wanted to shoulder some of the blame. their chauffeur, a frenchman, bargained with the cart driver who had wrecked us to tow us to the next town, where there were garages. certainly pride goes before a fall. five minutes before we were sailing along in glory, exulting over the prowess of our vehicle. now all in the wink of an eye our precious conveyance, stricken and helpless, was being towed to the hospital, its owners trudging mournfully behind. the village was poix, and if one had to be wrecked anywhere, i cannot think of a lovelier spot for disaster than poix de la somme. it is just across in picardy, and the somme there is a little brook that ripples and winds through poplar-shaded pastures, sweet meadows, and deep groves. in every direction were the loveliest walks, with landscape pictures at every turn. the village itself was drowsy, kindly, simple-hearted. the landlady at our inn was a motherly soul that during the week of our stay the joy and i learned to love. for the others did not linger. paris was not far away and had a good deal in the way of shopping to recommend it. the new radiator ordered from london might be delayed. so early next morning they were off for paris by way of amiens and beauvais, and the joy and i settled down to such employments and amusements as we could find, while waiting for repairs. we got acquainted with the garageman's family, for one thing. they lived in the same little court with the shop, and we exchanged swiss french for their picardese, and were bosom friends in no time. we spruced up the car, too, and every day took long walks, and every afternoon took some luncheon and our little stove and followed down the somme to a tiny bridge, and there made our tea. then sometimes we read, and once when i was reading aloud from mark twain's _joan of arc_, and had finished the great battle of patay, we suddenly remembered that it had happened on the very day on which we were reading, the th of june. how little we guessed that in such a short time our peaceful little river would give its name to a battle a thousand times greater than any that joan ever fought! once when we were resting by the roadside a little old lady with a basket stopped and sat with us while she told us her history--how her husband had been a great physician and invented cures that to-day are used in all the hospitals of france. now she was poor, she said, and lived alone in a little house, but if we would visit her she would give us some good picardese cooking. i wish we might have gone. one day i hired a bicycle for the joy and entertained the village by pushing her around the public square until she learned to ride alone. then i hired one for myself and we went out on the road together. about the end of the third day we began to look for our radiator, and visited the express office with considerable regularity. presently the village knew us, why we were there and what we were expecting. they became as anxious about it as ourselves. chapter xxi the damage repaired--beauvais and compiÈgne one morning as we started toward the express office a man in a wagon passed and called out something. we did not catch it, but presently another met us and with a glad look told us that our goods had arrived and were now in the delivery wagon on the way to the garage. we did not recognize either of those good souls, but they were interested in our welfare. our box was at the garage when we arrived there, and in a little more it was opened and the new radiator in place. the other repairs had been made, and once more we were complete. we decided to start next morning to join the others in paris. morning comes early on the longest days of the year, and we had eaten our breakfast, had our belongings put into the car, and were ready to be off by seven o'clock. what a delicious morning it was! calm, glistening, the dew on everything. as long as i live i shall remember that golden morning when the joy, aged eleven, and i went gypsying together, following the winding roads and byways that led us through pleasant woods, under sparkling banks, and along the poplar-planted streams of picardy. we did not keep to highways at all. we were in no hurry and we took any lane that seemed to lead in the right direction, so that much of the time we appeared to be crossing fields--fields of flowers, many of them, scarlet poppies, often mingled with blue cornflowers and yellow mustard--fancy the vividness of that color. traveling in that wandering fashion, it was noon before we got down to beauvais, where we stopped for luncheon supplies and to see what is perhaps the most remarkable cathedral in the world. it is one of the most beautiful, and, though it consists only of choir and transepts, it is one of the largest. its inner height, from floor to vaulting, is one hundred and fifty-eight feet. the average ten-story building could sit inside of it. there was once a steeple that towered to the giddy heights of five hundred feet, but in , when it had been standing three hundred years, it fell down, from having insufficient support. the inner work is of white stone, marble, and the whole place seems filled with light. it was in this cool, heavenly sanctuary that cauchon, who hounded joan to the stake, officiated as bishop. i never saw a place so unsuited to a man. i should think that spire would have tumbled off then instead of waiting until he had been dead a hundred years. there is a clock in this church--a modern clock--that records everything, even the age of the world, which at the moment of our visit was , years. it is a very large affair, but we did not find it very exciting. in the public square of beauvais there is a bronze statue of jeanne laine, called "jeanne hachette," because, armed with a hatchet, she led others of her sex against charles the bold in and captured a banner with her own hands. beauvais has many interesting things, but the day had become very warm and we did not linger. we found some of the most satisfactory pastries i have ever seen in france, fresh and dripping with richness; also a few other delicacies, and, by and by, under a cool apple tree on the road to compiègne, the joy and i spread out our feast and ate it and listened to some little french birds singing, "_vite! vite! vite!_" meaning that we must be "quick! quick! quick!" so they could have the crumbs. it was at compiègne that joan of arc was captured by her enemies, just a year before that last fearful day at rouen. she had relieved orléans, she had fought patay, she had crowned the king at rheims; she would have had her army safely in paris if she had not been withheld by a weakling, influenced by his shuffling, time-serving counselors. she had delivered compiègne the year before, but now again it was in trouble, besieged by the duke of burgundy. joan had been kept in partial inactivity in the loire district below paris during the winter, but with the news from compiègne she could no longer be restrained. "i will go to my good friends of compiègne," she said, and, taking such force as she could muster, in number about six hundred cavalry, she went to their relief. from a green hill commanding the valley of the oise we looked down upon the bright river and pretty city which joan had seen on that long-ago afternoon of her final battle for france. somewhere on that plain the battle had taken place, and joan's little force for the first time had failed. there had been a panic; joan, still fighting and trying to rally her men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse, and made a prisoner. she had led her last charge. we crossed a bridge and entered the city and stopped in the big public square facing leroux's beautiful statue of joan, which the later "friends of compiègne" have raised to her memory. it is joan in semi-armor, holding aloft her banner, and on the base in old french is inscribed "_je yray voir mes bons amys de compiègne_" ("i will go to see my good friends of compiègne"). many things in compiègne are beautiful, but not many of them are very old. joan's statue looks toward the handsome and richly ornamented hôtel de ville, but joan could not have seen it in life, for it dates a hundred years after death. there are two handsome churches, in one or both of which she doubtless worshiped when she had first delivered the city; possibly a few houses of that ancient time still survive. we looked into the churches, but they seemed better on the outside. then i discovered that one of our back tires was down, and we drew up in a secluded nook at the rear of st. jacques for repairs. it was dusk by the time we had finished, the end of that long june day, and we had no time to hunt for a cozy inn. so we went to a hotel which stands opposite the great palace which the architect gabriel built for louis xv, and looked across to it while we ate our dinner, and talked of our day's wanderings, and of palaces in general and especially queens; also of joan, and of the beautiful roads and fields of flowers, and of the little birds that tried to hurry us along, and so were very happy and very tired indeed. next morning we visited the palace. it has been much occupied by royalty, for compiègne was always a favorite residence of the rulers of france. napoleon came there with the empress marie louise, and louis philippe and napoleon iii both found retirement there. i think it could not have been a very inviting or restful home. there are long halls and picture galleries, all with shiny floors and stiffly placed properties, and the royal suites are just a series of square, prettily decorated and upholstered boxes, strung together, with doors between. one might as well set up a series of screens in a long hall. even with the doors shut there could not have been much sense of privacy, certainly none of snugness. but then palaces were not meant to be cozy. we saw the bedrooms and dressing rooms and what not of the various queens, and we looked from an upper window down a long forest avenue that was finer than anything inside. then we went back to the car and drove into the big forest for ten miles or more, to an old feudal castle--such a magnificent old castle, all towers and turrets and battlements--the château of pierrefonds, one of the finest in france. it stands upon a rocky height overlooking a lake, and it does not seem so old, though it had been there forty years when joan of arc came, and it looks as if it might be there about as long as the hill it stands on. it was built by louis of orléans, brother of charles vi, and the storm of battle has raged often about its base. here and there it still shows the mark of bombardment, and two cannon balls stick fast in the wall of one of its solid towers. pierrefonds was in bad repair, had become well-nigh a ruin, in fact, when napoleon iii, at his own expense, engaged viollet le duc to restore it, in order that france might have a perfect type of the feudal castle in its original form. it stands to-day as complete in its structure and decoration as it was when louis of orléans moved in, more than five hundred years ago, and it conveys exactly the solid home surroundings of the mediæval lord. it is just a show place now, and its vast court, its chapel and its halls of state are all splendid enough, though nothing inside can be quite so magnificent as its mighty assemblage of towers and turrets rising above the trees and reflecting in the blue waters of a placid lake. it began raining before we got to paris, so we did not stop at crépy-en-valois, or senlis, or chantilly, or st. denis, though all that land has been famous for kings and castles and bloodshed from a time farther back than the days of cæsar. we were interested in all those things, but we agreed we could not see everything. some things we saw as we went by; great gray walls and crumbling church towers, and then we were at the gates of paris and presently threading our way through a tangle of streets, barred, many of them, because the top of the subway had been tumbling in a few days before and travel was dangerous. it was sunday, too, and the streets were especially full of automobiles and pedestrians. it was almost impossible to keep from injuring something. i do not care for paris, not from the driving seat of a car. chapter xxii from paris to chartres and chÂteaudun in fact, neither the joy nor i hungered for any more paris, while the others had seen their fill. so we were off, with only a day's delay, this time taking the road to versailles. there we put in an hour or two wandering through the vast magnificence of the palace where the great louis xiv lived, loved, and died, and would seem to have spent a good part of his time having himself painted in a variety of advantageous situations, such as riding at the head of victorious armies, or occupying a comfortable seat in paradise, giving orders to the gods. they were weak kings who followed him. the great louis reigned seventy-two years--prodigal years, but a period of military and artistic conquest--the golden age of french literature. his successor reigned long enough--fifty-nine years--but he achieved nothing worth while, and the next one lost his head. we saw the little balcony where the doomed louis xvi and marie antoinette showed themselves to the mob--the "deluge" which the greater louis had once predicted. the palace at versailles is like other royal palaces of france--a fine show place, an excellent museum, but never in its day of purest domesticity could it have been called "a happy little home." everything is on too extended a scale. its garden was a tract of marshy land sixty miles in circumference until louis xiv set thirty-six thousand men at it, turning it into fairyland. laborers died by the score during the work, and each night the dead were carted away. when this was mentioned to the king he was troubled, fearing his supply of men might not last. however, the garden was somehow completed. possibly louis went out and dug in it a little himself. it is still a garden of eden, with leafy avenues, and lakes, and marvelous fountains, and labyrinths of flowers. looking out over it from the palace windows we remembered how the king had given madame maintenon a summer sleigh-ride, causing long avenues to be spread with sugar and salt to gratify her idly-expressed whim. i am sorry, of course, that the later louis had to lose his head, but on the whole i think it is very well that france discouraged that line of kings. versailles is full of palaces. there is the grand trianon, which louis xiv built for madame maintenon when she had grown weary of the great palace, and the petit trianon, which louis xv gave to du barry and where marie antoinette built her swiss village and played at farm life. there is no reason i should dwell on these places. already volumes have been written of the tragic, gay, dissolute life they have seen, the gorgeous moving panoramas that might have been pictures passing in a looking-glass for all the substance they have left behind. somewhere below versailles, in the quietest spot we could find, by a still stream that ran between the meadow and the highroad, we made our luncheon and were glad we were not kings. being royalty was a gaudy occupation, but too doubtful, too open to criticism. one of those louis families, for instance, could never have stopped their motor by the roadside and prepared their luncheon in our modest, unostentatious way. they would have had all manner of attendants and guards watching them, and an audience would have collected, and some excited person might have thrown a brick and hit the jam. no, we would rather be just plain, unobtrusive people, without audience, and with no attendance but the car, waiting there in the shade to carry us deeper into this land of heart's desire. it was at rambouillet that we lodged, an ancient place with a château and a vast park; also an excellent inn--the croix blanche--one of those that you enter by driving through to an inner court. before dinner we took a walk into the park, along the lakeside and past the château, which is a curious architectural mixture and not very sightly. but it is mingled with history. francis i died there in , and as late as the last charles, the tenth of that name, signed his abdication there. it was too late for the place to be open, and in any case we did not care to go in. we had had enough of palaces for one day. we followed around the lake to an avenue of splendid louisiana cypresses which some old king had planted. beyond the avenue the way led into deeper wildernesses--a noble wood. we made a backward circuit at length, for it was evening and the light was fading. in the mysterious half-light there was something almost spectral in that sylvan place and we spoke in hushed voices. presently we came to a sort of bower, and then to an artificial grotto--old trysting places. ah, me! monsieur and mademoiselle, or madame, are no longer there; the powdered hair, the ruffled waist-coat and looped gown, the silken hose and dainty footgear, the subdued laugh and whispered word, all have vanished. how vacant those old places seemed! we did not linger--it was a time for ghosts. we were off next morning, halting for a little at maintenon on the road to chartres. the château attracted us and the beautiful river eure. the widow of the poet scarron, who married louis xiv and became marquise de maintenon, owned the château, and it belongs to the family to this day. an attendant permitted us to see the picture gallery and a portion of the grounds. all seemed as luxurious as versailles. it is thirty-five miles from maintenon to versailles, but louis started to build an aqueduct to carry the waters of the eure to his gardens. he kept thirty thousand soldiers working on it for four years, but they died faster than he could replace them, which was such a bother that he abandoned the undertaking. following the rich and lovely valley of the eure, we came to chartres, and made our way to the cathedral square. we had seen the towers from a long distance, and remembered the saying that "the choir of beauvais, the nave of amiens, the portal of rheims, and the towers of chartres would together make the finest church in the world." to confess the truth, i did not think the towers of chartres as handsome as those of either rouen or amiens. but then i am not a purist in cathedral architecture. certainly the cathedral itself is glorious. i shall not attempt to describe it. any number of men have written books, trying to do that, and most of them have failed. i only know that the wonder of its architecture--the marvel of its relief carving, "lace in stone," and the sublime glory of its windows--somehow possessed us, and we did not know when to go. i met a woman once who said she had spent a month at chartres and had put in most of it sitting in the cathedral looking at those windows. when she told me of it i had been inclined to be scornful. i was not so any more. those windows, made by some unknown artist, dead five hundred years, invite a lifetime of contemplation. it is about nine hundred years since the cathedral of chartres was begun, and it has known many changes. four hundred years ago one of its towers was rebuilt in an altogether different pattern from the other. i believe this variation is regarded as a special feature of their combined beauty. chapels have been added, wings extended; changes inside and out were always going on during the first five hundred years or so, but if the builders made any mistakes we failed to notice them. it remains a unity, so far as we could see--a supreme expression of the old faith, whose material labor was more than half spiritual, and for whom no sacrifice of money or endeavor was too great. we left chartres by one of the old city gates, and took the wrong road, and presently found ourselves in an open field, where our way dwindled out and stopped. imagine a road good enough to be mistaken for a highway, leading only to a farmer's grainfield. so we went back and got set right, and through a heavenly june afternoon followed the straight level way to châteaudun, an ancient town perched upon the high cliffs above the valley of the loir, which is a different river from the loire--much smaller and more picturesque. the château itself hangs on the very edge of the cliffs with startling effect and looks out over a picture valley as beautiful as any in france. this was the home of dunois, bastard of orléans, who left it to fight under joan of arc. he was a great soldier, one of her most loved and trusted generals. we spent an hour or more wandering through dunois's ancient seat, with an old guardian who clearly was in love with every stone of it, and who time and again reminded us that it was more interesting than many of the great châteaux of the loire, blois especially, in that it had been scarcely restored at all. about the latest addition to châteaudun was a beautiful open stairway of the sixteenth century, in perfect condition to-day. on the other side is another fine façade and stairway, which dunois himself added. in a niche there stands a fine statue of the famous soldier, probably made from life. if only some sculptor or painter might have preserved for us the features of joan! chapter xxiii we reach tours through that golden land which lies between the loir and the loire we drifted through a long summer afternoon and came at evening to a noble bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil river, beyond which rose the towers of ancient tours, capital of touraine. one can hardly cross the river loire for the first time without long reflections. henry james calls the touraine "a gallery of architectural specimens ... the heart of the old french monarchy," and adds, "as that monarchy was splendid and picturesque, a reflection of the splendor still glitters in the loire. some of the most striking events of french history have occurred on the banks of that river, and the soil it waters bloomed for a while with the flower of the renaissance." touraine was a favorite place for kings, and the early henrys and francises, especially, built their magnificent country palaces in all directions. there are more than fifty châteaux within easy driving distance of tours, and most of the great ones have been owned or occupied by francis i, or by henry ii, or by one of their particular favorites. we did not intend to visit all of the châteaux by any means, for château visiting, from a diversion may easily degenerate into labor. we intended especially to visit chinon, where joan of arc went to meet the king to ask for soldiers, and a few others, but we had no wish to put in long summer days mousing about old dungeons and dim corridors, or being led through stiffly set royal suites, garishly furnished and restored. it was better to glide restfully along the poppied way and see the landscape presentment of those stately piles crowning the hilltops or reflected in the bright waters of the loire. the outward semblance of the land of romance remains oftenest undisturbed; cross the threshold and the illusion is in danger. at the central hotel of tours, an excellent place of modest charges, we made our headquarters, and next morning, with little delay, set out for chinon and incidental châteaux. "half the charm of the loire," says james, "is that you can travel beside it." he was obliged to travel very leisurely beside it when that was written; the "flying carpet" had not then been invented, and james, with his deliberate locomotion, was sometimes unable to return to tours for the night. i imagine he enjoyed it none the less for that, lazily watching the smooth water of the wide shallow stream, with never a craft heavier than a flat-bottomed hay boat; the wide white road, gay with scarlet poppies, and some tall purple flower, a kind of foxglove. i do not remember that james makes mention of the cliff-dwellers along the loire. most of them live in houses that are older, i suspect, than the oldest château of touraine. in the beginning there must have been in these cliffs natural caves occupied by our earliest troglodyte ancestors. in time, as mentality developed and, with it, imagination, the original shelters were shaped and enlarged by excavation, also new ones built, until these perpendicular banks facing the loire became the dwelling place for hundreds, even thousands. they are still numerously inhabited. the rooms or houses--some of them may be flats--range one above the other in stories, all up the face of the cliff, and there are smoke-places and little chimneys in the fields at the top. such houses must have been here before the kings came to touraine. some of them look very ancient; some have crumbled in; some have been faced with stone or plaster. the cliff is honeycombed with them. do their occupants have traditional rights from some vague time without date? do they pay rent, and to whom? we might have found the answers to these questions had we cared to seek for them. it seemed better to content oneself with speculation. we did not visit the cliff-dwellers of the loire. neither did we visit the château of luynes or of langeais. luynes is a fine old feudal pile on a hilltop just below tours, splendid from the road, but it had no compelling history and we agreed that closer view could not improve it. besides, it was hot, sizzling, for a climb; so hot that one of our aging tubes popped presently, and narcissa and i had to make repairs in a place where there was a world of poppies, but no shade for a mile. that was one of the reasons we did not visit langeais. langeais was exactly on the road, but it had a hard, hot, forbidding look. furthermore, our book said that it had been restored and converted into a museum, and added that its chief claim on history lay in the fact that anne of brittany was here married to charles viii in . that fact was fine to realize from the outside, under the cool shadow of those gray walls. one could lose it among shiny restorations and stuffy museum tapestries. the others presently noticed a pastry shop opposite the château and spoke of getting something extra for luncheon. while they were gone i discovered a café below the château and, being pretty dry, i slipped down there for a little seltzer, or something. the door was open, but the place was empty. there was the usual display of bottles, but not a soul was in sight. i knocked, then called, but nobody came. i called and knocked louder, but nothing happened. then i noticed some pennies lying by an empty glass on the bar. the amount was small and i left them there. a side door was open and i looked out into a narrow passage opening into a court at the back. i went out there, still signaling my distress. the sun was blazing and i was getting dryer every minute. finally a stout, smiling woman appeared, wiping her hands--from the washtub, i judge. she went with me into the café, gathered up the loose change on the counter, and set out refreshments. then she explained that i could have helped myself and left the money. langeais is an honest community. following down the loire we came to a bridge, and, crossing to the other bank, presently found ourselves in a country where there were no visible houses at all. but there was shade, and we camped under it and i did some tire repairing while the others laid out the luncheon and set the little cooker going. later we drowsed in the shade for an hour or more, with desultory talk of joan, and of anne of brittany, and of the terrible catherine de medici, whose son the feeble francis ii had brought his young wife, marie stuart, the doomed queen of scots, to chenonceaux for their honeymoon. it was strange to think that this was the environment of those half-romantic figures of history. some of them, perhaps all, had passed this very spot. and so many others! the henrys, the charleses, the louises--the sovereigns and soldiers and court favorites for four hundred years. what a procession--the pageant of the renaissance! chapter xxiv chinon, where joan met the king, and azay chinon is not on the loire, but on a tributary a little south of it, the vienne, its ruined castle crowning the long hill or ridge above the town. sometime during the afternoon we came to the outskirts of the ancient place and looked up to the wreck of battlements and towers where occurred that meeting which meant the liberation of france. we left the car below and started to climb, then found there was a road, a great blessing, for the heat was intense. there is a village just above the castle, and we stopped there. the château of chinon to-day is the remains of what originally was three châteaux, built at different times, but so closely strung together that in ruin they are scarcely divided. the oldest, coudray, was built in the tenth century and still shows three towers standing, in one of which joan of arc lived during her stay at chinon. the middle château is not as old by a hundred years. it was built on the site of a roman fort, and it was in one of its rooms, a fragment of which still remains, that charles vii received the shepherd girl from domremy. the château of st. george was built in the twelfth century by henry ii of england, who died there in . though built two hundred years after coudray, nothing of it survives but some foundations. chinon is a much more extensive ruin than we had expected. even what remains to-day must be nearly a quarter of a mile in length, and its vast crumbling walls and towers make it strikingly picturesque. but its ruin is complete, none the less. once through the entrance tower and you are under nothing but the sky, with your feet on the grass; there is no longer a shelter there, even for a fugitive king. you wander about, viewing it scarcely more than as a ruin, at first, a place for painting, for seclusion, for dreaming in the sun. then all at once you are facing a wall in which, halfway up where once was the second story, there is a restored fireplace and a tablet which tells you that in this room charles vii received joan of arc. it is not a room now; it is just a wall, a fragment, with vines matting its ruined edges. you cross a stone footbridge to the tower where joan lived, and that, too, is open to the sky, and bare and desolate. once, beyond it, there was a little chapel where she prayed. there are other fragments and other towers, but they merely serve as a setting for those which the intimate presence of joan made sacred. the maid did not go immediately to the castle on her arrival in chinon. she put up at an inn down in the town and waited the king's pleasure. his paltering advisers kept him dallying, postponing his consent to see her, but through the favor of his mother-in-law, yolande, queen of sicily, joan and her suite were presently housed in the tower of coudray. one wonders if the walls were as bare as now. it was old even then; it had been built five hundred years. but queen yolande would have seen to it that there were comforts, no doubt; some tapestries, perhaps, on the walls; a table, chairs, some covering for the stone floor. perhaps it was even luxurious. the king was still unready to see joan. she was only a stone's throw away, but the whisperings of his advisers kept her there, while a commission of priests went to domremy to inquire as to her character. when there were no further excuses for delay they contrived a trick--a deception. they persuaded the king to put another on the throne, one like him and in his royal dress, so that joan might pay homage to this make-believe king, thus proving that she had no divine power or protection which would assist her in identifying the real one. in the space where now is only green grass and sky and a broken wall charles vii and his court gathered to receive the shepherd girl who had come to restore his kingdom. it was evening and the great hall was lighted, and at one end of it was the throne with its imitation king, and i suppose at the other the fireplace with a blazing fire. down the center of the room were the courtiers, formed in two ranks, facing so that joan might pass between them to the throne. the occasion was one of great ceremony--joan and her suite were welcomed with fine honors. banners waved, torches flared; trumpets blown at intervals marked the stages of her progress down the great hall; every show was made of paying her great honor--everything that would distract her and blind her to their trick. charles vii, dressed as a simple courtier, stood a little distance from the throne. joan, advancing to within a few steps of the pretended king, raised her eyes. then for a moment she stood silent, puzzled. they expected her to kneel and make obeisance, but a moment later she turned and, hurrying to the rightful charles, dropped on her knees and gave him heartfelt salutation. she had never seen him and was without knowledge of his features. her protectors, or her gifts, had not failed. it was perhaps the greatest moment in french history. we drove down into chinon, past the house where it is said that rabelais was born, and saw his statue, and one of joan which was not very pleasing. then we threaded some of the older streets and saw houses which i think cannot have changed much since joan was there. it was getting well toward evening now, and we set out for tours, by way of azay. the château of azay-le-rideau is all that chinon is not. perfect in condition, of rare beauty in design and ornamentation, fresh, almost new in appearance, azay presents about the choicest flowering of the renaissance. joan of arc had been dead a hundred years when azay was built; france was no longer in dread of blighting invasion; a residence no longer needed to be a fortress. the royal châteaux of the loire are the best remaining evidence of what joan had done for the security of her kings. whether they deserved it or not is another matter. possibly azay-le-rideau might not have looked so fresh under the glare of noonday, but in the mellow light of evening it could have been the home of one of our modern millionaires (a millionaire of perfect taste, i hasten to add), and located, let us say, in the vicinity of newport. it was difficult to believe that it had been standing for four centuries. francis i did not build azay-le-rideau. but he liked it so much when he saw it (he was probably on a visit to its owner, the french treasurer, at the time) that he promptly confiscated it and added it to the collection of other châteaux he had built, or confiscated, or had in mind. nothing very remarkable seems to have happened there--just the usual things--plots, and liaisons, and intrigues of a general sort, with now and then a chapter of real lovemaking, and certain marriages and deaths--the latter hurried a little sometimes to accommodate the impatient mourners. but how beautiful it is! its towers, its stately façades, its rich ornamentation reflected in the water of the wide stream that sweeps about its base, a natural moat, its background of rich foliage--these, in the gathering twilight, completed a picture such as hawthorne could have conceived, or edgar poe. i suppose it was too late to go inside, but we did not even apply. like langeais, it belongs to france now, and i believe is something of a museum, and rather modern. one could not risk carrying away anything less than a perfect memory of azay. chapter xxv tours in the quest for outlying châteaux one is likely to forget that tours itself is very much worth while. tours has been a city ever since france had a history, and it fought against cæsar as far back as b.c. it took its name from the gallic tribe of that section, the turoni, dwellers in those cliffs, i dare say, along the loire. following the invasion of the franks there came a line of counts who ruled touraine until the eleventh century. what the human aspect of this delectable land was under their dominion is not very clear. the oldest castle we have seen, coudray, was not begun until the end of that period. there are a thousand years behind it which seem filled mainly with shields and battle axes, roving knights and fair ladies, industrious dragons and the other properties of poetry. yet there may have been more prosaic things. seedtime and harvest probably did not fail. tours was beloved by french royalty. it was the capital of a province as rich as it was beautiful. among french provinces touraine was always the aristocrat. its language has been kept pure. to this day the purest french in the world is spoken at tours. the mechanic who made some repairs for me at the garage leaned on the mud guard, during a brief intermission of that hottest of days, and told me about the purity of the french at tours; and if there was anything wrong with his own locution my ear was not fine enough to detect it. to me it seemed as limpid as something distilled. imagine such a thing happening in--say new haven. tours is still proud, still the aristocrat, still royal. the germans held tours during the early months of , but there is no trace of their occupation now. it was a bad dream which tours does not care even to remember.[ ] tours contains a fine cathedral, also the remains of what must have been a still finer one--two noble towers, so widely separated by streets and buildings that it is hard to imagine them ever having belonged to one structure. they are a part of the business of tours, now. shops are under them, lodgings in them. if they should tumble down they would create havoc. i was so sure they would crumble that we did not go into them; besides, it was very warm. the great church which connected these towers was dedicated to st. martin, the same who divided his cloak with a beggar at amiens and became bishop of tours in the fourth century. it was destroyed once and magnificently rebuilt, but it will never be rebuilt now. one of these old relics is called the clock tower, the other the tower of charlemagne, because luitgard, his third queen, was buried beneath it. the cathedral at the other end of town appears not to have suffered much from the ravages of time and battle, though one of the towers was undergoing some kind of repairs that required intricate and lofty scaffolding. most of the cathedrals are undergoing repairs, which is not surprising when one remembers the dates of their beginnings. this one at tours was commenced in and the building continued during about four hundred years. joan of arc worshiped in it when she was on her way to chinon and again when she had set out to relieve orléans. the face of the cathedral is indeed beautiful--"a jewel," said henry iv, "of which only the casket is wanting." it does not seem to us as beautiful as rouen, or amiens, or chartres, but its fluted truncated towers are peculiarly its own and hardly less impressive. the cathedral itself forms a casket for the real jewel--the tomb of the two children of charles viii and anne of brittany, a little boy and girl, exquisitely cut, resting side by side on a slab of black marble, guarded at their head and feet by kneeling angels. except the slab, the tomb is in white marble carved with symbolic decorations. it is all so delicate and conveys such a feeling of purity and tenderness that even after four hundred years one cannot fail to feel something of the love and sorrow that placed it there. tours is full of landmarks and localities, but the intense heat of the end of june is not a good time for city sight-seeing. we went about a little and glanced at this old street--such as place plumeran--and that old château, like the tour de guise, now a barrack, and passed the théâtre municipal, and the house where balzac was born, and stood impressed and blinking before the great palace of justice, blazing in the sun and made more brilliant, more dazzling by the intensely red-legged soldiers that in couples and groups are always loitering before it. i am convinced that to touch those red-hot trousers would take the skin off one's fingers. we might have examined tours more carefully if we had been driving instead of walking. i have spoken of the car being in the garage. we cracked the leaf of a spring that day at chinon, and then our tires, old and worn after five thousand miles of loyal service, required reënforcement. they really required new ones, but our plan was to get home with these if we could. besides, one cannot buy new tires in american sizes without sending a special order to the factory--a matter of delay. the little man at the hotel, who had more energy than anyone should display in such hot weather, pumped one of our back tires until the shoe burst at the rim. this was serious. i got a heavy canvas lining, and the garageman patched and vulcanized and sold me a variety of appliances. but i could foresee trouble if the heat continued. footnotes: [ ] tours during the world war became a great training camp, familiar to thousands of american soldiers. chapter xxvi chenonceaux and amboise (from my notebook) this morning we got away from tours, but it was after a strenuous time. it was one of those sweltering mornings, and to forward matters at the garage i helped put on all those repaired tires and appliances, and by the time we were through i was a rag. narcissa photographed me, because she said she had never seen me look so interesting before. she made me stand in the sun, bareheaded and holding a tube in my hand, as if i had not enough to bear already. oh, but it was cool and delicious gliding along the smooth, shaded road toward chenonceaux! one can almost afford to get as hot and sweltering and cross and gasping as i was for the sake of sitting back and looking across the wheel down a leafy avenue facing the breeze of your own making, a delicious nectar that bathes you through and cools and rests and soothes--an anodyne of peace. by and by, being really cool in mind and body, we drew up abreast of a meadow which lay a little below the road, a place with a brook and overspreading shade, and with some men and women harvesting not far away. we thought they would not mind if we lunched there, and i think they must have been as kind-hearted as they were picturesque, for they did not offer to disturb us. it was a lovely spot, and did not seem to belong to the present-day world at all. how could it, with the home of diana of poitiers just over there beyond the trees, with nesting places of mary, queen of scots, all about, and with these haymakers, whose fashion in clothes has not much minded the centuries, to add the living human note of the past that makes imagination reality? chenonceaux, the real heart of the royal district, like chinon, is not on the loire itself, but on a small tributary, the cher. i do not remember that i noticed the river when we entered the grounds, but it is a very important part of the château, which indeed is really a bridge over it--a supremely beautiful bridge, to be sure, but a bridge none the less, entirely crossing the pretty river by means of a series of high foundation arches. upon these arches rises the rare edifice which thomas bohier, a receiver-general of taxes, began back in and catherine de' medici finished after she had turned out diana of poitiers and massacred the huguenots, and needed a quiet place for retirement and religious thought. bohier did not extend chenonceaux entirely across the river. the river to him merely served as a moat. the son who followed him did not have time to make additions. francis i came along, noticed that it was different from the other châteaux he had confiscated, and added it to his collection. our present-day collectors cut a poor figure by the side of francis i. think of getting together assortments of bugs and postage stamps and ginger jars when one could go out and pick up châteaux! it was francis's son, henry ii, that gave it to diana of poitiers. henry had his own kind of a collection and he used his papa's châteaux to keep it in. as he picked about the best one for diana, we may believe that he regarded her as his choicest specimen. unfortunately for diana, henry's queen, the terrible catherine, outlived him; and when, after the funeral, catherine drove around by chenonceaux and suggested to diana that perhaps she would like to exchange the place for a very excellent château farther up the road, chaumont, we may assume that diana moved with no unseemly delay. diana tactfully said she liked chaumont ever so much, for a change, that perhaps living on a hilltop was healthier than over the water, anyway. still, it must have made her sigh, i think, to know that her successor was carrying out the plan which diana herself had conceived of extending chenonceaux across the cher. we stopped a little to look at the beautiful façade of chenonceaux, then crossed the drawbridge, or what is now the substitute for it, and were welcomed at the door by just the proper person--a fine, dignified woman of gentle voice and perfect knowledge. she showed us through the beautiful home, for it is still a home, the property to-day of m. meunier of chocolate fame and fortune. i cannot say how glad i am that m. meunier owns chenonceaux. he has done nothing to the place to spoil it, and it is not a museum. the lower rooms which we saw have many of the original furnishings. the ornaments, the tapestries, the pictures are the same. i think diana must have regretted leaving her fine private room, with its chimney piece, supported by caryatids, and its rare flemish tapestry. we regretted leaving, too. we do not care for interiors that have been overhauled and refurbished and made into museums, but we were in no hurry to leave chenonceaux. there is hardly any place, i think, where one may come so nearly stepping back through the centuries. we went out into the long wing that is built on the arches above the river, and looked down at the water flowing below. our conductor told us that the supporting arches had been built on the foundations of an ancient mill. the beautiful gallery which the bridge supports must have known much gayety; much dancing and promenading up and down; much lovemaking and some heartache. jean jacques rousseau seems to have been everywhere. we could not run amiss of him in eastern france and in switzerland; now here again he turns up at chenonceaux. chenonceaux in the eighteenth century fell to m. claude dupin, farmer-general, who surrounded himself with the foremost artists and social leaders of his time. he engaged rousseau to superintend the education of his son. "we amused ourselves greatly at this fine place," writes rousseau; "the living was of the best, and i became as fat as a monk. we made a great deal of music and acted comedies." the period of m. dupin's ownership, one of the most brilliant, and certainly the most moral in the earlier history of chenonceaux, has left many memories. of the brief, insipid honeymoon of the puny francis ii and mary stuart no breath remains. * * * * * amboise is on the loire, and there is a good inn on the quay. it was evening when we got there, and we did nothing after dinner but sit on the high masonry embankment that buttresses the river, and watch the men who fished, while the light faded from the water; though we occasionally turned to look at the imposing profile of the great château on the high cliff above the loire. we drove up there next morning--that is, we drove as high as one may drive, and climbed stairs the remaining distance. amboise is a splendid structure from without, but, unlike chenonceaux, it is interesting within only for what it has been. it is occupied by the superannuated servants of the present owner, one of the orléans family, which is fine for them, and proper enough, but bad for the atmosphere. there are a bareness and a whitewashed feeling about the place that are death to romance. even the circular inclined plane by which one may ride or drive to the top of the great tower suggested some sort of temporary structure at an amusement park rather than a convenience for kings. i was more interested in a low doorway against the lintel of which charles viii knocked his head and died. but i wish i could have picked charles vii for that accident, to punish him for having abandoned joan of arc. though about a hundred years older, amboise, like chenonceaux, belongs mainly to the period of francis i, and was inhabited by the same society. the francises and the henrys enjoyed its hospitality, and catherine de' medici, and mary, queen of scots. also some twelve or fifteen hundred huguenots who were invited there, and, at catherine's suggestion, butchered on the terrace just in front of the castle windows. there is a balcony overlooking the terrace, and it is said that catherine and mary, also mary's husband and his two brothers, sat on the balcony better to observe the spectacle. tradition does not say whether they had ices served or not. some of the huguenots did not wait, and the soldiers had to drown what they could catch of them in the loire, likewise in view from the royal balcony. when the show was over there was suspended from the balcony a fringe of huguenot heads. those were frivolous times. there is a flower garden to-day on the terrace where the huguenots were murdered, and one may imagine, if he chooses, the scarlet posies to be brighter for that history. but then there are few enough places in france where blossoms have not been richened by the human stain. consider those vivid seas of poppies! mary stuart, by the way, seems entitled to all the pity that the centuries have accorded her. there were few influences in her early life that were not vile. on the ramparts at amboise we were shown a chapel, with the grave of leonardo da vinci, who was summoned to amboise by francis i, and died there in . there is a question about da vinci's ashes resting here, i believe, but it does not matter--it is his grave. if i were going back to amboise i would view it only from the outside. with its immense tower and its beautiful gothic and renaissance façade surmounting the heights above the loire, nothing--nothing in the world could be more beautiful. chapter xxvii chambord and clÉry francis i had a fine taste for collecting châteaux picturesquely located, but when he built one for himself he located it in the most unbeautiful situation in france. it requires patience and talent to find monotony of prospect in france, but our hero succeeded, and discovered a dead flat tract of thirteen thousand acres with an approach through as dreary a level of unprosperous-looking farm district as may be found on the continent of europe. it is not on the loire, but on a little stream called the cosson, and when we had left the loire and found the country getting flatter and poorer and less promising with every mile, we could not believe that we were on the right road. but when we inquired, our informants still pointed ahead, and by and by, in the midst of nowhere and surrounded by nothing, we came to a great inclosure of undersized trees, with an entrance. driving in, we looked down a long avenue to an expanse of architecture that seemed to be growing from a dead level of sandy park, and to have attained about two thirds its proper height. an old man was raking around the entrance and we asked him if one was allowed to lunch in the park. he said, "oh yes, anywhere," and gave a general wave that comprehended the whole tract. so we turned into a side road and found a place that was shady enough, but not cool, for there seemed to be no large overspreading trees in this park, but only small, close, bushy ones. it is said that francis built chambord for two reasons, one of them being the memory of an old sweetheart who used to live in the neighborhood, the other on account of the abundant game to be found there. i am inclined to the latter idea. there is nothing in the location to suggest romance; there is everything to suggest game. the twenty square miles of thicket that go with chambord could hardly be surpassed as a harbor for beast and bird. if chambord was built, so to speak, as a sort of hunting lodge, it is the largest one on record. francis kept eighteen hundred men busy at it for twelve years, and then did not get it done. he lived in it, more or less, for some seven years, however; then went to rambouillet to die, and left his son, henry ii, to carry on the work. henry did not care for chambord--the marshy place gave him fever, but he kept the building going until he was killed in a tourney, when the construction stopped. his widow, the bloody catherine de' medici, retired to chambord in her old age, and set the place in order. she was terribly superstitious and surrounded herself with astrologers and soothsayers. at night she used to go up to the great lantern tower to read her fortune in the stars. it is my opinion that she did not go up there alone, not with that record of hers. mansard, who laid a blight on architecture that lasted for two hundred years, once got hold of chambord and spoiled what he could, and had planned to do worse things, but something--death, perhaps--interfered. that was when louis xiv brought queen maria theresa to chambord, and held high and splendid court there, surrounding himself with brilliant men and women, among them molière and the widow of the poet scarron, françoise d'aubigné, the same that later became queen, under the title of madame de maintenon. that was the heyday of chambord's history. a large guardroom was gilded and converted into a theater. molière gave first presentations there and received public compliment from the king. diversion was the order of the day and night. "the court is very gay--the king hunts much," wrote maintenon; "one eats always with him; there is one day a ball, and the next a comedy." nothing very startling has happened at chambord since louis' time. its tenants have been numerous enough, and royal, or distinguished, but they could not maintain the pace set by louis xiv. stanislas leckzinski, the exiled polish king, occupied it during the early years of the eighteenth century, and succeeded in marrying his daughter to the dissolute louis xv. seventy years later the revolution came along. an order was issued to sell the contents of chambord, and a greedy rabble came and stripped it clean. there was a further decree to efface all signs of royalty, but when it was discovered that every bit of carving within and without the vast place expressed royalty in some manner, and that it would cost twenty thousand dollars to cut it away, this project was happily abandoned. chambord was left empty but intact. whatever has been done since has been in the way of restoration. there is not a particle of shade around chambord. it stands as bare and exposed to the blazing sky to-day as it did when those eighteen hundred workmen laid down their tools four hundred years ago. there is hardly a shrub. even the grass looks discouraged. a location, indeed, for a royal palace! we left the car under the shade of a wall and crossed a dazzling open space to the entrance of a court where we bought entrance tickets. then we crossed the blinding court and were in a cool place at last, the wide castle entrance. we were surprised a little, though, to find a ticket box and a registering turnstile. things are on a business basis at chambord. i suppose the money collected is used for repairs. the best advertised feature of chambord is the one you see first, the great spiral double stairway arranged one flight above the other, so that persons may be ascending without meeting others who are descending at the same moment. many persons would not visit chambord but for this special show feature. our conductor made us ascend and descend to prove that this unrivaled attraction would really work as advertised. it is designed on the principle of the double stripes on a barber pole. but there are other worth-while features at chambord. we wandered through the great cool rooms, not furnished, yet not empty, containing as they do some rare pictures, old statuary and historic furniture, despoiled by the revolutionists, now restored to their original setting. chambord is not a museum. it belongs to a duke of parma, a direct descendant from louis xiv. under louis xviii the estate was sold, but in three hundred thousand dollars was raised by public subscription to purchase the place for the remaining heir of the bourbon dynasty, the duke of bordeaux, who accepted with the gift the title of the count of chambord. but he was in exile and did not come to see his property for fifty years; even then only to write a letter renouncing his claim to the throne and to say once more good-by to france. he willed the property to the children of his sister, the duchess of parma, and it is to the next generation that it belongs to-day. our conductor told us that the present duke of parma comes now and then for the shooting, which is still of the best. we ascended to the roof, which is chambord's chief ornament. it is an architectural garden. such elaboration of turrets with carved leafwork and symbolism, such richness of incrustation and detail, did, in fact, suggest some fantastic and fabulous culture. if it had not been all fairly leaping with heat i should have wished to stay longer. but i would not care to go to chambord again. as we drove down the long drive, and turned a little for a last look at that enormous frontage, those immense low towers, that superb roof structure--all that magnificence dropped down there in a dreary level--i thought, "if ever a house was a white elephant that one is, and if one had to rename it it might well be called francis's folly." i suppose it was two hours later when we had been drifting drowsily up the valley of the loire that we stopped in a village for water. there was an old church across the way, and as usual we stepped inside, as much for the cool refreshment as for anything, expecting nothing else worth while. how easily we might have missed the wealth we found there. we did not know the name of the village. we did not recognize cléry, even when we heard it, and the guidebook gives it just four lines. but we had been inside only a moment when we realized that the church of our lady of cléry is an ancient and sacred shrine. a great tablet told us that since kings of france, sinners and saints have made pilgrimages there; charles iv, philippe vi, charles vii, st. françois xavier, and so down the centuries to marshal macmahon of our own time. but to us greater than all the rest are the names of dunois and joan of arc. joan had passed this way with her army, of course; for the moment we had forgotten that we were following her footsteps to orléans. the place was rich in relics. among these the tomb of louis xi and a column which inclosed the heart of charles viii. there could hardly have been a shrine in france more venerated in the past than this forgotten church by the roadside, in this forgotten village where, i suppose, tourists to-day never stop at all. it was hard to believe in the reality of our discovery, even when we stood there. but there were the tablets and inscriptions--they could not be denied. we wandered about, finding something new and precious at every turn, until the afternoon light faded. then we crossed a long bridge over the loire to the larger village of meung, where there was the hôtel st. jacques, one of the kind we like best and one of the best of the kind. chapter xxviii orlÉans there is some sight-seeing to be done in meung, but we were too anxious to get to orléans to stop for it. yet we did not hurry through our last summer morning along the loire. i do not know what could be more lovely than our leisurely hour--the distance was fifteen miles--under cool, outspreading branches, with glimpses of the bright river and vistas of happy fields. we did not even try to imagine, as we approached the outskirts, that the orléans of joan's time presented anything of its appearance to-day. orléans is a modern, or modernized, city, and, except the river, there could hardly be anything in the present prospect that joan saw. that it is the scene of her first military conquest and added its name to the title by which she belongs to history is, however, enough to make it one of the holy places of france. it has been always a military city, a place of battles. cæsar burned it, attila attacked it, clovis captured it--there was nearly always war of one sort or another going on there. the english and burgundians would have had it in but for the arrival of joan's army. since then war has visited orléans less frequently. its latest experience was with the germans who invested it in - . joan was misled by her generals, whose faith in her was not complete. orléans lies on the north bank of the loire; they brought her down on the south bank, fearing the prowess of the enemy's forces. discovering the deception, the maid promptly sent the main body of her troops back some thirty-five miles to a safe crossing, and, taking a thousand men, passed over the loire and entered the city by a gate still held by the french. that the city was not completely surrounded made it possible to attack the enemy simultaneously from within and without, while her presence among the orléanese would inspire them with new hope and valor. mark twain in his _recollections_ pictures the great moment of her entry. it was eight in the evening when she and her troops rode in at the burgundy gate.... she was riding a white horse, and she carried in her hand the sacred sword of fierbois. you should have seen orléans then. what a picture it was! such black seas of people, such a starry firmament of torches, such roaring whirlwinds of welcome, such booming of bells and thundering of cannon! it was as if the world was come to an end. everywhere in the glare of the torches one saw rank upon rank of upturned white faces, the mouths wide open, shouting, and the unchecked tears running down; joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, her mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a silver statue. the people about her struggled along, gazing up at her through their tears with the rapt look of men and women who believe they are seeing one who is divine; and always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk, and such as failed of that privilege touched her horse and then kissed their fingers. this was the th of april. nine days later, may , , after some fierce fighting during which joan was severely wounded, the besiegers were scattered, orléans was free. mark twain writes: no other girl in all history has ever reached such a summit of glory as joan of arc reached that day.... orléans will never forget the th of may, nor ever fail to celebrate it. it is joan of arc's day--and holy. two days, may th and th, are given each year to the celebration, and orléans in other ways has honored the memory of her deliverer. a wide street bears her name, and there are noble statues, and a museum, and holy church offerings. the boucher home which sheltered joan during her sojourn in orléans has been preserved; at least a house is still shown as the boucher house, though how much of the original structure remains no one at this day seems willing to decide. we drove there first, for it is the only spot in orléans that can claim even a possibility of having known joan's actual impress. it is a house of the old cross-timber and brick architecture, and if these are not the veritable walls that joan saw they must at least bear a close resemblance to those of the house of jacques boucher, treasurer of the duke of orléans, where joan was made welcome. the interior is less convincing. it is ecclesiastical, and there is an air of general newness and reconstruction about it that suggests nothing of that long-ago occupancy. it was rather painful to linger, and we were inclined now to hesitate at the thought of visiting the ancient home of agnes sorel, where the joan of arc museum is located. it would have been a mistake not to do so, however. it is only a few doors away on the same street, rue du tabour, and it is a fine old mansion, genuinely old, and fairly overflowing with objects of every conceivable sort relating to joan of arc. books, statuary, paintings, armor, banners, offerings, coins, medals, ornaments, engravings, letters--thousands upon thousands of articles gathered there in the maid's memory. i think there is not one of them that her hand ever touched, or that she ever saw, but in their entirety they convey, as nothing else could, the reverence that joan's memory has inspired during the centuries that have gone since her presence made this sacred ground. until the revolution orléans preserved joan's banner, some of her clothing, and other genuine relics; but then the mob burned them, probably because joan delivered france to royalty. one finds it rather easy to forgive the revolutionary mob almost anything--certainly anything more easily than such insane vandalism. we were shown an ancient copy of the banner, still borne, i believe, in the annual festivals. baedeker speaks of arms and armor worn at the siege of orléans, but the guardian of the place was not willing to guarantee their genuineness. i wish he had not thought it necessary to be so honest. he did show us a photograph of joan's signature, the original of which belongs to one of her collateral descendants. she wrote it "jehanne," and her pen must have been guided by her secretary, louis de conte, for joan could neither read nor write. we drove to the place martroi to see the large equestrienne statue of joan by foyatier, with reliefs by vital dubray. it is very imposing, and the reliefs showing the great moments in joan's career are really fine. we did not care to hunt for other memorials. it was enough to drive about the city trying to pick out a house here and there that looked as if it might have been standing five hundred years, but if there were any of that age--any that had looked upon the wild joy of joan's entrance and upon her triumphal departure, they were very few indeed. chapter xxix fontainebleau we turned north now, toward fontainebleau, which we had touched a month earlier on the way to paris. it is a grand straight road from orléans to fontainebleau, and it passes through pithiviers, which did not look especially interesting, though we discovered when it was too late that it is noted for its almond cakes and lark pies. i wanted to go back then, but the majority was against it. late in the afternoon we entered for the second time the majestic forest of fontainebleau and by and by came to the palace and the little town, and to a pretty hotel on a side street that was really a village inn for comfort and welcome. there was still plenty of daylight, mellow, waning daylight, and the palace was not far away. we would not wait for it until morning. i think we most enjoy seeing palaces about the closing hours. there are seldom any other visitors then, and the waning afternoon sunlight in the vacant rooms mellows their garish emptiness, and seems somehow to bring nearer the rich pageant of life and love and death that flowed by there so long and then one day came to an end, and now it is not passing any more. it was really closing time when we arrived at the palace, but the custodian was lenient and for an hour we wandered through gorgeous galleries, and salons, and suites of private apartments where queens and kings lived gladly, loved madly, died sadly, for about four hundred years. francis i built fontainebleau, on the site of a mediæval castle. he was a hunter, and the forests of fontainebleau, like those of chambord, were always famous hunting grounds. louis xiii, who was born in fontainebleau, built the grand entrance staircase, from which two hundred years later napoleon bonaparte would bid good-by to his generals before starting for elba. other kings have added to the place and embellished it; the last being napoleon iii, who built for eugénie the bijou theater across the court. it may have been our mood, it may have been the tranquil evening light, it may have been reality that fontainebleau was more friendly, more alive, more a place for living men and women to inhabit than any other palace we have seen. it was hard to imagine versailles as having ever been a home for anybody. at fontainebleau i felt that we were intruding--that madame de maintenon, marie antoinette, marie louise, or eugénie might enter at any moment and find us there. perhaps it was in the apartments of marie antoinette that one felt this most. there is a sort of personality in the gorgeousness of her bedchamber that has to do, likely enough, with the memory of her tragic end, but certainly it is there. the gilded ceiling sings of her; the satin hangings--a marriage gift from the city of lyons--breathe of her; even the iron window-fastenings are not without personal utterance, for they were wrought by the skillful hands of the king himself, out of his love for her. the apartments of the first napoleon and marie louise tell something, too, but the story seems less intimate. yet the table is there on which napoleon signed his abdication while an escort waited to take him to elba. for size and magnificence the library is the most impressive room in fontainebleau. it is lofty and splendid, and it is two hundred and sixty-four feet long. it is called the gallery of diana, after diana of poitiers, who for a lady of tenuous moral fiber seems to have inspired some pretty substantial memories. the ballroom, the finest in europe, also belongs to diana, by special dedication of henry ii, who decorated it magnificently to suit diana's charms. napoleon iii gave great hunting banquets there. since then it has been always empty, except for visitors. the custodian took us through a suite of rooms called the "apartments of the white queens," because once they were restored for the widows of french kings, who usually dressed in white. napoleon used the rooms for another purpose. he invited pope pius vii to fontainebleau to sanction his divorce from josephine, and when the pope declined, napoleon prolonged the pope's visit for eighteen months, secluding him in this luxurious place, to give him a chance to modify his views. they visited together a good deal, and their interviews were not always calm. napoleon also wanted the pope to sign away the states of the church, and once when they were discussing the matter rather earnestly the emperor boxed the pope's ears. he had a convincing way in those days. i wonder if later, standing on the st. helena headland, he ever recalled that incident. if he did, i dare say it made him smile. the light was getting dim by the time we reached the pretty theater which louis napoleon built for eugénie. it is a very choice place, and we were allowed to go on the stage and behind the scenes and up in the galleries, and there was something in the dusky vacancy of that little playhouse, built to amuse the last empress of france, that affected us almost more than any of the rest of the palace, though it was built not so long ago and its owner is still alive.[ ] it is not used, the custodian told us--has never been used since eugénie went away. from a terrace back of the palace we looked out on a pretty lake where eugénie's son used to sail a miniature full-rigged ship--large enough, if one could judge from a picture we saw, to have held the little prince himself. there was still sunlight on the treetops, and these and the prince's little pavilion reflecting in the tranquil water made the place beautiful. but the little vessel was not there. i wished, as we watched, that it might come sailing by. i wished that the prince had never been exiled and that he had not grown up and gone to his death in a south african jungle. i wished that he might be back to sail his ship again, and that eugénie might have her theater once more, and that louis napoleon's hunting parties might still assemble in diana's painted ballroom and fill the vacant palace with something besides mere curiosity and vain imaginings. footnotes: [ ] she lived six years longer, dying in . chapter xxx rheims we had meant to go to barbizon, but we got lost in the forest next morning, and when we found ourselves we were a good way in the direction of melun, so concluded to keep on, consoling ourselves with the thought that barbizon is not barbizon any more, and would probably be a disappointment, anyway. we kept on from melun, also, after buying some luncheon things, and all day traversed that beautiful rolling district which lies east of paris and below rheims, arriving toward evening at Épernay, the sparnacum of antiquity and the champagne center of to-day. Épernay was ancient once, but it is all new now, with wide streets and every indication of business progress. we had no need to linger there. we were anxious to get to rheims. there had been heavy rains in the champagne district, and next morning the gray sky and close air gave promise of more. the roads were not the best, being rather slippery and uneven from the heavy traffic of the wine carts. but the vine-covered hills between Épernay and rheims, with their dark-green matted leafage, seemed to us as richly productive as anything in france. we were still in the hills when we looked down on the valley of the vesle and saw a city outspread there, and in its center the architectural and ecclesiastical pride of the world, the cathedral of rheims. large as the city was, that great central ornament dwarfed and dominated its surroundings. thus joan of arc had seen it when at the head of her victorious army she conducted the king to rheims for his coronation. she was nearing the fulfillment of her assignment, the completion of the great labor laid upon her by the voices of her saints. mark twain tells of joan's approach to rheims, of the tide of cheers that swept her ranks at the vision of the distant towers: and as for joan of arc, there where she sat her horse, gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face a deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth; oh, she was not flesh, she was spiritual! her sublime mission was closing--closing in flawless triumph. to-morrow she could say, "it is finished--let me go free." it was the th of july that joan looked down upon rheims, and now, four hundred and eighty-five years later, it was again july, with the same summer glory on the woods, the same green and scarlet in the poppied fields, the same fair valley, the same stately towers rising to the sky. but no one can ever feel what joan felt, can ever put into words, ever so faintly, what that moment and that vision meant to the domremy shepherd girl. descending the plain, we entered the city, crossed a bridge, and made our way to the cathedral square. then presently we were at the doorway where joan and her king had entered--the portal which has been called the most beautiful this side of paradise. how little we dreamed that we were among the last to look upon it in its glory--that disfigurement and destruction lay only a few weeks ahead! it is not required any more that one should write descriptively of the church of rheims. it has been done so thoroughly, and so often, by those so highly qualified for the undertaking, that such supplementary remarks as i might offer would hardly rise even to the dignity of an impertinence. pergussen, who must have been an authority, for the guidebook quotes him, called it, "perhaps the most beautiful structure produced in the middle ages." nothing [he says] can exceed the majesty of its deeply recessed portals, the beauty of the rose window that surmounts them, or the elegance of the gallery that completes the façade and serves as a basement to the light and graceful towers that crown the composition. the cathedral was already two hundred years old when joan arrived in . but it must have looked quite fresh and new then, for, nearly five centuries later, it seemed to have suffered little. some of the five hundred and thirty statues of its entrance were weatherworn and scarred, but the general effect was not disturbed. many kings had preceded joan and her sovereign through the sacred entrance. long before the cathedral was built french sovereigns had come to rheims for their coronation, to be anointed with some drops of the inexhaustible oil which a white dove had miraculously brought from heaven for the baptism of clovis. that had been nearly a thousand years before, but in joan's day the sacred vessel and its holy contents were still preserved in the ancient abbey of st. remi, and would be used for the anointing of her king. the archbishop of rheims and his canons, with a deputy of nobles, had been sent for the awesome relic, after the nobles had sworn upon their lives to restore it to st. remi when the coronation was over. the abbot himself, attended by this splendid escort, brought the precious vessel, and the crowd fell prostrate and prayed while this holiest of objects, for it had been made in heaven, passed by. we are told that the abbot, attended by the archbishop and those others, entered the crowded church, followed by the five mounted knights, who rode down the great central aisle, clear to the choir, and then at a signal backed their prancing steeds all the distance to the great doors. it was a mighty assemblage that had gathered for the crowning of joan's king. france, overrun by an invader, had known no real king for years--had, indeed, well-nigh surrendered her nationality. now the saints themselves had taken up their cause, and in the person of a young girl from an obscure village had given victory to their arms and brought redemption to their throne. no wonder the vast church was packed and that crowds were massed outside. from all directions had come pilgrims to the great event--persons of every rank, among them two shepherds, joan's aged father and uncle, who had walked from domremy, one hundred and twenty miles, to verify with their own eyes what their ears could not credit. very likely the cathedral at rheims has never known such a throng since that day, nor heard such a mighty shout as went up when joan and the king, side by side, and followed by a splendid train, appeared at the great side entrance and moved slowly to the altar. i think there must have fallen a deep hush then--a petrified stillness that lasted through the long ceremonial, while every eye feasted itself upon the young girl standing there at the king's side, holding her victorious standard above him--the banner that "had borne the burden and had earned the victory," as she would one day testify at her trial. i am sure that vast throng would keep silence, scarcely breathing, until the final word was spoken and the dauphin had accepted the crown and placed it upon his head. but then we may hear borne faintly down the centuries the roar of renewed shouting that told to those waiting without that the great ceremony was ended, that charles vii of france had been anointed king. in the _recollections_ mark twain makes the sieur de conte say: what a crash there was! all about us cries and cheers, and the chanting of the choir and the groaning of the organ; and outside the clamoring of the bells and the booming of the cannon. the fantastic dream, the incredible dream, the impossible dream of the peasant child stood fulfilled. it had become reality--perhaps in that old day it even _seemed_ reality--but now, after five hundred years, it has become once more a dream--to-day _our_ dream--and in the filmy picture we see the shepherd girl on her knees, saying to the crowned king: "my work which was given me to do is finished; give me your peace and let me go back to my mother, who is poor and old and has need of me." but the king raises her up and praises her and confers upon her nobility and titles, and asks her to name a reward for her service, and in the old dream we hear her ask favor for her village--that domremy, "poor and hard pressed by reason of the war," may have its taxes remitted. nothing for herself--no more than that, and in the presence of all the great assemblage charles vii pronounces the decree that, by grace of joan of arc, domremy shall be free from taxes forever. here within these walls it was all reality five hundred years ago. we do not study this interior to discover special art values or to distinguish in what manner it differs from others we have seen. for us the light from its great rose window and upper arches is glorified because once it fell upon joan of arc in that supreme moment when she saw her labor finished and asked only that she might return to domremy and her flocks. the statuary in the niches are holy because they looked upon that scene, the altar paving is sanctified because it felt the pressure of her feet. we wandered about the great place, but we came back again and again to the altar, and, looking through the railing, dreamed once more of that great moment when a frail shepherd girl began anew the history of france. back of the altar was a statue of joan unlike any we have seen elsewhere, and to us more beautiful. it was not joan with her banner aloft, her eyes upward. it was joan with her eyes lowered, looking at no outward thing, her face passive--the saddest face and the saddest eyes in the world. it was joan the sacrifice--of her people and her king. chapter xxxi along the marne it may have been two miles out of rheims that we met the flood. there had been a heavy shower as we entered the city, but presently the sun broke out, bright and hot, too bright and too hot for permanence. now suddenly all was black again, there was a roar of thunder, and then such an opening of the water gates of the sky as would have disturbed noah. there was no thought of driving through such a torrent. i pulled over to the side of the road, but the tall high-trimmed trees afforded no protection. our top was a shelter, but not a complete one--the wind drove the water in, and in a moment our umbrellas were sticking out in every direction, and we had huddled together like chickens. the water seemed to fall solidly. the world was blotted out. i had the feeling at moments that we were being swept down some great submarine current. i don't know how long the inundation lasted. it may have been five minutes--it may have been thirty. then suddenly it stopped--it was over--the sun was out! there was then no mud in france--not in the high-roads--and a moment or two later we had revived, our engine was going, and we were gliding between fair fields--fresh shining fields where scarlet poppy patches were as pools of blood. there is no lovelier land than the marne district, from rheims to chalons and to vitry-le-françois. it had often been a war district--a battle ground, fought over time and again since the ancient allies defeated attila and his huns there, checking the purpose of the "scourge of god," as he styled himself, to found a new dynasty upon the wreck of rome. it could never be a battle ground again, we thought--the great nations were too advanced for war. ah me! within two months from that day men were lying dead across that very road, shells were tearing at the lovely fields, and another stain had mingled with the trampled poppies. chalons-sur-marne, like rheims and Épernay, is a champagne center and prosperous. there were some churches there, but they did not seem of great importance. we stopped for water at vitry-le-françois, a hot, uninteresting-looking place, though it had played a part in much history, and would presently play a part in much more. it was always an outpost against vandal incursions from the north, and francis i rebuilt and strengthened it. at vitry we left the marne and kept the wide road eastward, for we were bound now for the vosges, for domremy on the meuse, joan's starting place. the sun burned again, the road got hot, and suddenly during the afternoon one of our tires went off like a gun. one of our old shoes had blown out at the rim, and there was a doubtful look about the others. narcissa and i labored in the hot sun--for there was no shade from those slim roadside poplars--and with inside patches and outside patches managed to get in traveling order again, though personally we were pretty limp by the time we were ready to move, and a good deal disheartened. the prospect of reaching vevey, our base of supplies, without laying up somewhere to order new tires was not bright, and it became even less so that evening, when in front of the hotel at st. dizier another tire pushed out at the rim, and in the gathering dusk, surrounded by an audience, i had to make further repairs before i could get into the garage. early next morning i gave those tires all a pretty general overhauling. i put in blow-out patches wherever there seemed to be a weak place and doubled them at the broken spots. by the time i got done we were carrying in our tires all the extra rubber and leather and general aid-to-the-injured stuff that had formerly been under the back seat, and i was obliged to make a trip around to the supply garages for more. fortunately the weather had changed overnight, and it was cool. old tires and even new ones hold better on cool roads. it turned still cooler as we proceeded--it became chilly--for the fourth of july it was winterish. at chalons we had expended three whole francs for a bottle of champagne for celebration purposes, and when we made our luncheon camp in a sheltered cover of a pretty meadow where there was a clear, racing brook, we were too cold to sit down, and drank standing a toast to our national independence, and would have liked more of that delicious liquid warmth, regardless of cost. there could hardly have been a more beautiful spot than that, but i do not remember any place where we were less inclined to linger. yet how quickly weather can change. within an hour it was warm again--not hot, but mildly pleasant, even delightful. chapter xxxii domremy we were well down in the vosges now and beginning to inquire for domremy. how strange it seemed to be actually making inquiries for a place that always before had been just a part of an old legend--a half-mythical story of a little girl who, tending her sheep, had heard the voices of angels. one had the feeling that there could never really be such a place at all, that, even had it once existed, it must have vanished long ago; that to ask the way to it now would be like those who in some old fairy tale come back after ages of enchantment and inquire for places and people long forgotten. domremy! no, it was not possible. we should meet puzzled, blank looks, pitying smiles, in answer to our queries. we should never find one able to point a way and say, "that is the road to domremy." one could as easily say "the road to camelot." yet there came a time when we must ask. we had been passing through miles of wonderful forest, with regularly cut roads leading away at intervals, suggesting a vast preserved estate, when we came out to an open hill land, evidently a grazing country, with dividing roads and no definite markings. so we stopped a humble-looking old man and hesitatingly, rather falteringly, asked him the road to domremy. he regarded us a moment, then said very gently, pointing, "it is down there just a little way." so we were near--quite near--perhaps even now passing a spot where joan had tended her sheep. our informant turned to watch us pass. he knew why we were going to domremy. he could have been a descendant of those who had played with joan. even now it was hard to believe that domremy would be just an old village, such a village as joan had known, where humble folk led humble lives tending their flocks and small acres. very likely it had become a tourist resort--a mere locality, with a hotel. it was only when we were actually in the streets of a decaying, time-beaten little hamlet and were told that this was indeed domremy, the home of joan of arc, that we awoke to the actuality of the place and to the realization that in character at least it had not greatly changed. we drove to the church--an ancient, weatherworn little edifice. the invaders destroyed it the same year that joan set out on her march, but when joan had given safety to france the fragments were gathered and rebuilt, so if it is not in its entirety the identical chapel where joan worshiped, it contains, at least, portions of the original structure and stands upon the same ground. in front of the church is a bronze statue of the maid, and above the entrance a painting of joan listening to the voices. but these are modern. inside are more precious things. it is a plain, humble interior, rather too fresh and new looking for its antiquity, perhaps because of the whitened walls. but near the altar there is an object that does not disappoint. it is an ancient baptismal font--the original font of the little ruined chapel--the vessel in which joan of arc was baptized. i think there can be no question of its authenticity. it would be a holy object to the people of domremy; to them joan was already a saint at the time of her death, and any object that had served her was sacred. the relic dug from the ruined chapel would be faithfully guarded, and there would be many still alive to identify it when the church's restoration was complete and the ancient vessel set in place. it seems a marvelous thing to be able to look upon an object that may be regarded as the ceremonial starting point of a grace that was to redeem a nation. surely, if ever angels stood by to observe the rites of men they gathered with those humble shepherd folk about the little basin where a tiny soul was being consecrated to their special service. in the church also is the headstone from the grave of joan's godmother, with an ancient inscription which one may study out, and travel back a long way. near it is another object--one that ranks in honor with the baptismal font--the statuette of st. marguerite, before which joan prayed. like the font this would be a holy thing, even in joan's lifetime, and would be preserved and handed down. to me it seems almost too precious to remain in that ancient, perishing church. it is something that joan of arc not only saw and touched, but to which she gave spiritual adoration. to me it seems the most precious, the most sacred relic in france. the old church appears so poor a protection for it. yet i should be sorry to see it taken elsewhere. [illustration: birthplace of joan of arc] joan's house is only a step away--a remnant of a house, for, though it was not demolished like the church, it has suffered from alterations, and portions of it were destroyed. whatever remained at the time of louis xi would seem to have been preserved about as it was then, though of course restored; the royal arms of france, with those accorded by charles vii to joan and her family, were combined ornamentally above the door with the date, , and the inscription, in old french, "_vive labeur; vive le roy loys._" the son of joan's king must have felt that it was proper to preserve the birthplace of the girl who had saved his throne. doubtless the main walls of the old house of jacques d'arc are the same that joan knew. joan's mother lived there until , and it was less than fifty years later that louis xi gave orders for the restoration. the old walls were solidly built. it is not likely that they could have fallen to complete ruin in that time. the rest is mainly new. what the inside of the old house was in joan's time we can only imagine. the entrance room was the general room, i suppose, and it was here, we are told, that joan was born. mark twain has imagined a scene in the house of jacques d'arc where a hungry straggler comes one night and knocks at the door and is admitted to the firelit room. he tells us how joan gave the wanderer her porridge--against her father's argument, for those were times of sore stress--and how the stranger rewarded them all with the great song of roland. the general room would be the setting of that scene. behind it is a little dungeon-like apartment which is shown as joan's chamber. the walls and ceiling of this poor place are very old; possibly they are of joan's time--no one can really say. in one wall there is a recess, now protected by a heavy wire screen, which means that joan set up her shrine there, the st. marguerite and her other holy things. she would pray to them night and morning, but oftener i think she would leave this dim prison for the consolation of the little church across the way. the whole house is a kind of museum now, and the upper floor is especially fitted with cases for books and souvenirs. in the grounds there is a fine statue by mercié, and the whole place is leafy and beautiful. it is not easy, however, to imagine there the presence of joan. that is easier in the crooked streets of the village, and still easier along the river and the fields. the fairy tree--_l'arbre fée de bourlement_--where joan and her comrades played, and where later she heard the voices, is long since gone, and the spot is marked by a church which we cared to view only from a distance. it seems too bad that any church should be there, and especially that one. the spot itself, marked by a mere tablet, or another tree, would be enough. it was in january, , that joan and her uncle laxart left domremy for vaucouleurs to ask the governor to give her a military escort to the uncrowned king at chinon. she never came back. less than half a year later she had raised the siege at orléans, fought patay, and conducted the king to his coronation at rheims. she would have returned then, but the king was afraid to let her go. neither did he have the courage to follow or support her brilliant leadership. he was weak and paltry. when, as the result of his dalliance, she was captured at compiègne, he allowed her to suffer a year of wretched imprisonment, making no attempt at rescue or ransom, and in the end to be burned at rouen as a witch. i have read in an old french book an attempt to excuse the king, to show that he did not have armed force enough to go to joan's rescue, but i failed to find there any evidence that he even contemplated such an attempt. i do find that when joan had been dead thirteen years and france, strong and united, was safe for excursions, he made a trip to lorraine, accompanied by dunois, robert de baudricourt, and others of joan's favorite generals. they visited domremy, and baudricourt pointed out to the king that there seemed to be a sadness in the landscape. it is said that this visit caused charles to hasten the process of joan's rehabilitation--to reverse the verdict of heresy and idolatry and witchcraft under which she had died. but as the new hearing did not begin until eleven years after the king's visit to domremy, nearly twenty-five years after joan's martyrdom, the word "hasten" does not seem to apply. if charles vii finally bestirred himself in that process, it was rather to show before he died that he held his crown not by the favor of satan but of saints. the memory of joan of arc's fate must always be a bitter one to france, and the generations have never ceased to make atonement. her martyrdom has seemed so unnecessary--such a reproach upon the nation she saved. yet perhaps it was necessary. joan in half a year had accomplished what the french armies, without her, had been unable to do in three quarters of a century--she had crippled the english power in france. her work was not finished--though defeated, the enemy still remained on french soil, and unless relentlessly assailed would recover. after the coronation at rheims there would seem to have fallen, even upon joan's loyal followers, a reaction, a period of indifference and indolence. joan's fearful death at the stake awoke her people as nothing else could have done. by a lonely roadside far up in normandy we passed, one day, a small stone column which recorded how upon this spot was delivered the battle of formigny, april th, in the year , under the reign of charles vii, and how the french were victorious and the english armies forced to abandon norman soil. joan of arc had been dead nineteen years when that final battle was fought, but it was her spirit that gave the victory. chapter xxxiii strassburg and the black forest our tires were distressingly bad now. i had to do some quick repairing at domremy, also between domremy and vaucouleurs, where we spent the night. then next morning at vaucouleurs, in an unfrequented back street behind our ancient inn, i established a general overhauling plant, and patched and relined and trepanned during almost an entire forenoon, while the rest of the family scoured the town for the materials. we put in most of our time at vaucouleurs in this way. however, there was really little to see in the old town. our inn was as ancient as anything, and our landlord assured us that joan's knights probably stopped there, and even uncle laxart, but he could not produce his register to prove it. there are the remains of the château where joan is said to have met the governor, and a monument to the maid's memory has been begun, but remains unfinished through lack of funds. the real interest in vaucouleurs, to-day, is that it was the starting point of joan's great march. one could reflect upon that and repair tires simultaneously. we got away in time to have luncheon in the beautiful country below toul, and then kept on to nancy. at both places there seemed to be nothing but soldiers and barracks, and one did not have to get out of the car to see those. not that nancy is not a fine big town, but its cathedral and its arch of triumph are both of the eighteenth century. such things seemed rather raw and new, while museums did not interest us any more. lorraine itself is beautiful. it seemed especially fair where we crossed the line into germany, and we did not wonder that france could not forget her loss of that fertile land. there was no difficulty at the customs. we were politely o. k.'d by the french officials and courteously passed by the germans, with no examination beyond our _triptyques_. then another stretch of fine road and fair fields, and we were in a village of cobbled streets and soldiers--german soldiers--and were told that it was dieuze; also that there was an inn--a very good inn--a little way down the street. so there was--an inn where they spoke french and german and even a variety of english, and had plenty of good food and good beds for a very modest sum indeed. dieuze was soon to become a war town, but beyond a few soldiers--nothing unusual--we saw no signs of it that first week in july. [illustration: strassburg, showing the cathedral] strassburg was our next stopping place. we put in a day there wandering about its fine streets, looking at its picturesque old houses, its royal palace, and its cathedral. i do not think we cared for the cathedral as we did for those of france. it is very old and very wonderful, and exhibits every form of architecture that has been employed in church building for nearly a thousand years; but in spite of its great size, its imposing height, its rich façade, there was something repellant about it all, and particularly in its great bare interior. it seemed to lack a certain light of romance, of poetry, of spiritual sympathy that belongs to every french church of whatever size. and we were disappointed in the wonderful clock. it was very wonderful, no doubt, but we had expected too much. we waited for an hour for the great midday exhibition, and collected with a jam of other visitors in the little clock chapel, expecting all the things to happen that we had dreamed of since childhood. they all did happen, too, but they came so deliberately and with so little liveliness of demonstration that one had to watch pretty closely sometimes to know that anything was happening at all. i think i, for one, had expected that the saints and apostles, and the months and seasons, would all come out and do a grand walk around to lively music. as for the rooster that crows, he does not crow as well as narcissa, who has the gift of imitation and could have astonished that crowd if she had let me persuade her to try. there have been several of these strassburg clocks. there was one of them in the cathedral as far back as . it ran for about two centuries, when another, finished in , took its place. the mechanism of the new clock was worn out in another two centuries, but its framework forms a portion of the great clock of to-day, which dates from . it does a number of very wonderful things, but in this age of contrivance, when men have made mechanical marvels past all belief, the wonder of the strassburg clock is largely traditional. the rooster that crows and flaps his wings is really the chief feature, for it is the rooster of the original clock, and thus has daily amused the generations for five hundred years. gutenberg, the first printer, began his earliest experiments in a cloister outside the strassburg gates, and there is a small public square named for him, and in the center of it a fine statue with relief groups of the great printers of all nations. of course franklin was there and some other americans. it gave us a sort of proprietary interest in that neighborhood, and a kindly feeling for the city in general. it was afternoon when we left strassburg, and by nightfall we were in the black forest--farther in than we had intended to be, by a good deal. with our tires in a steady decline we had no intention of wandering off into dark depths inhabited by fairies and woodcutters and full of weird enchantments, with all of which grimm's tales had made us quite familiar. we had intended merely to go in a little way, by a main road that would presently take us to freiburg, where there would be a new supply of patches and linings, and even a possibility of tires, in case our need became very sore. but the black forest made good its reputation for enchantments. when we came to the spot where, by our map, the road should lead to freiburg, there were only a deserted mill, with a black depth of pine growing where the road should have been. following along, we found ourselves getting deeper and deeper into the thick forest, while the lonely road became steeper and narrower and more and more awesome in the gathering evening. there were no villages, no more houses of any kind. there had been rain and the steep hills grew harder to climb. but perhaps a good fairy was helping us, too, a little, for our crippled tires held. each time we mounted a perpendicular crest i listened for the back ones to go, but they remained firm. by and by we started down--down _where_ we had no notion--but certainly down. being under a spell, i forgot to put on the engine brake, and by the time we were halfway down the hill the brake bands were hot and smoking. by the time we were down the greasy linings were afire. there was a brook there, and we stopped and poured water on our hot-boxes and waited for them to cool. a woodcutter--he must have been one, for only woodcutters and fairies live in the black forest--came along and told us we must go to haslach--that there was no other road to freiburg, unless we turned around and went back nearly to strassburg. i would not have gone back up that hill and through those darkening woods for much money. so we went on and presently came out into a more open space, and some houses; then we came to haslach. by our map we were in the depths of the schwarzwald, and by observation we could see that we were in an old, beautiful village, of the right sort for that locality, and in front of a big inn, where frauleins came out to take our bags and show us up to big rooms--rooms that had great billowy beds, with other billowy beds for covering. after all, the enchantment was not so bad. and the supper that night of _wiener schnitzel_ and _pfannekuchen_ was certainly good, and hot, and plentiful beyond belief. but there was more trouble next morning. one of those old back tires was in a desperate condition, and trying to improve it i seemed to make matters worse. i took it off and put in a row of blow-out patches all the way around, after which the inner tubes popped as fast as i could put them in and blow them up. three times i yanked that tire off, and then it began to occur to me that all those inside patches took up too much room. it would have occurred to any other man sooner, but it takes a long and violent period of pumping exercise to get a brain like mine really loosened up once it is caked by a good night's sleep. so i yanked those patches out and put on our last hope--a spare tire in fairly decent condition, and patiently patched those bursted tubes--all of which work was done in a hot place under the eyes of a kindly but maddening audience. three times in the lovely land between haslach and freiburg narcissa and i had to take off a tire and change tubes, those new patches being not air-proof. still, we got on, and the scenery made up for a good deal. nothing could be more picturesque than the black forest houses, with their great overhanging thatched roofs--their rows and clusters of little windows, their galleries and ladders, and their clinging vines. and what kindly people they are. many of the roads are lined with cherry trees and this was cherry season. the trees were full of gatherers, and we had only to stop and offer to buy to have them load us with the delicious black fruit, the sweetest, juiciest cherries in the world. they accepted money, but reluctantly; they seemed to prefer to give them to us, and more than once a boy or a man ran along by the car and threw in a great loaded branch, and laughed, and waved and wished us _gute reise_. but this had happened to us in france, too, in the lorraine. chapter xxxiv a land where storks live we were at freiburg in the lower edge of the black forest some time during the afternoon, one of the cleanest cities i have ever seen, one of the richest in color scheme. large towns are not likely to be picturesque, but freiburg, in spite of its general freshness, has a look of solid antiquity--an antiquity that has not been allowed to go to seed. many of the houses, including the cathedral, are built of a rich red stone, and some of them have outer decorations, and nearly all of them have beautiful flowers in the windows and along the balconies. i should think a dweller in freiburg would love the place. freiburg has been, and still is, celebrated for many things; its universities, its cathedral, its ancient buildings, in recent years for its discovery of "twilight sleep," the latest boon which science has offered to sorrow-laden humanity. it is a curious road from freiburg to basle. sometimes it is a highway, sometimes it is merely a farm road across fields. more than once we felt sure we were lost and must presently bring up in a farmyard. then suddenly we would be between fine hedges or trees, on a wide road entering a village. we had seen no storks when we left freiburg. we had been told there were some in strassburg, but no one had been able to point them out. we were disappointed, for we had pictured in our minds that, once really in the black forest, there would be, in almost any direction, a tall chimney surmounted by a big brushy nest, with a stork sitting in it, and standing by, supported on one very slim, very long, very perpendicular leg, another stork, keeping guard. this is the picture we had seen many times in the books, and we were grieved, even rather resentful, that it was not to be found in reality. we decided that it probably belonged only in the books, fairy books, and that while there might have been storks once, just as there had once been fairies, they had disappeared from mortal vision about the same time--that nobody in late years had really seen storks--that-- but just then we really saw some ourselves--sure-enough storks on an old steeple, two of them, exactly as they always are in the pictures, one nice mother stork sitting in a brushy nest and one nice father stork standing on his stiff, perpendicular leg. we stopped the car to gaze. the church was in an old lost-looking village, which this stork seemed to own, for there were no others, and the few people we saw did not appear to have anything like the stork's proprietary interest. we could hardly take our eyes from that old picture, suddenly made reality. we concluded, however, that it was probably the only stork family in germany; but that, also, was a mistake. a little farther along, at another village, was another old stubby steeple, and another pair of storks, both standing this time, probably to see us go by. every village had them now, but i think in only one village did we see more than a single pair. that little corner of the schwarzwald will always remain to us a part separated from the rest of the world--a sort of back-water of fairyland. the german customs office is on one side of a road, the swiss on the other, and we stopped in a shady place and interviewed both. we did not dread these encounters any more. we had long since learned that if there was one class of persons abroad likely to be more courteous than others to travelers, that class is the customs officials. this particular frontier was in the edge of basle, and presently we had crossed a bridge and were in the city, a big, beautiful city, though not so handsome as freiburg, not so rich in color, not quite so clean and floral. we did not stop in basle. there are wonders to be seen, but, all things considered, we thought it better to go on. with good luck we might reach vevey next day, our european headquarters and base of supplies. we had been more than two months on the road already; it was important that we get to headquarters--more important than we knew. chapter xxxv back to vevey so we went wandering through a rather unpopulous, semi-mountainous land--a prosperous land, from the look of it, with big isolated factory plants here and there by strongly flowing streams. they seemed to be making almost everything along those streams. the swiss are an industrious people. toward evening we came to a place we had never heard of before, a town of size and of lofty buildings--a place of much manufacturing, completely lost up in the hills, by name moutier. it was better not to go farther that night, for i could see by our road map that there was going to be some steep climbing between moutier and the lake geneva slope. there are at least two divides between moutier and geneva, and swiss watersheds are something more than mere gentle slopes such as one might meet in ohio, for instance, or illinois. they are generally scrambles--they sometimes resemble ladders, though the road surface is usually pretty good, with a few notable exceptions. we met one of these exceptions next morning below moutier. there had been rains, and the slippery roads between those perpendicular skyscraping bluffs had not dried at all. our route followed a rushing stream a little way; then it turned into the hill, and at that point i saw ahead of me a road that was not a road at all, but a semi-perpendicular wallow of mud and stone that went writhing up and up until it was lost somewhere among the trees. i had expected a good deal, but nothing as bad as this. i gave one wild, hopeless thought to our poor crippled rear tires, threw the lever from third to second, from second back to first, and let in every ounce of gasoline the engine would take. it really never occurred to me that we were going to make it. i did not believe anything could hold in that mud, and i expected in another minute to be on the side of the road, with nothing to do but hunt up an ox-team. whir! slop! slosh! slide!--grind!--on one side and on the other--into a hole and out of it, bump! thump! bang!--why, certainly we are climbing, but we would never make the top, never in the world--it was hardly to be expected of any car; and with those old tires! never mind, we would go till we stalled, or skidded out of the road. we were at the turn! we had made the turn! we were going straight up the last rise! only a little more, now--ten feet--five feet, _six inches_! _hooray!_ we were on top of the hill, b'gosh! i got out and looked at the back tires. it was incredible, impossible, but they were as sound and solid as when we left moutier. practically our whole weight had been on those tires all the way up that fearful log-haul, for that is what it was, yet those old tubes and outer envelopes had not shown a sign. explain it if you can. there was really no trouble after that. there were hills, but the roads were good. our last day was a panorama of swiss scenery in every form; deep gorges where we stopped on bridges to look down at rushing torrents far below; lofty mountains with narrow, skirting roads; beautiful water-fronts and lake towns along the lakes of biel and neufchâtel, a final luncheon under a great spreading shade--a birthday luncheon, as it happened--and then, toward the end of the lovely july afternoon, a sudden vision, from high harvest meadows, of the snow-clad mountaintops beyond lake geneva--the peaks of the true alps. and presently one saw the lake itself, the water--hazy, dreamy, summery, with little steamers so gay and toylike, plying up and down--all far below us as yet, for we were still among the high hayfields, where harvesters were pitching and raking, while before and behind us our road was a procession of hay wagons. it was a continuous coast, now, down to lausanne--the lake, as it seemed, rising up to meet us, its colors and outlines becoming more vivid, the lofty mountains beyond it approaching a little nearer, while almost underneath us a beautiful city was gleaming in the late afternoon sunshine. we were by this time among the vineyards that terrace those south-facing steeps to the water's edge. then we were at the outskirts of the city itself, still descending, still coasting, for lausanne is built mainly on a mountainside. when we came to a comparative level at last, we were crossing a great bridge--one of those that tie the several slopes of the city together; then presently we were at st. frances's church, the chief center, and felt almost at home, for we had been here a good many times before. we did not stop. vevey was twelve miles down the lake--we had a feverish desire to arrive there without having to pump those tires again, if possible. leisurely, happily, we covered that final lap of our long tour. there is no more beautiful drive in europe than that along lake geneva, from lausanne to vevey on a summer evening, and there never was a calmer, sweeter summer evening than that of our return. oh, one must drive slowly on such an evening! we were anxious to arrive, but not to have the drive ended. far down the lake the little towns we knew so well began to appear--territet, montreux, clarens, vevey la tour--we could even make out the towers of chillon. then we passed below the ancient village hanging to the mountainside, and there was vevey, and there at its outskirts our pretty hotel with its big gay garden, the blue lake just in front, the driveway open. a moment more and the best landlady in europe was welcoming us in the most musical french and german in the world. our long round was ended--three thousand miles of the happiest travel to be found this side of paradise. by and by i went out to look at our faithful car in the little hotel garage. it had stood up to the last moment on those old tires. i suppose then the tension was too much. the left rear was quite flat. chapter xxxvi the great upheaval it was the th of july that we returned to vevey, and it was just three weeks later that the world--a world of peace and the social interchange of nations--came to an end. we had heard at tours of the assassination of the austrian archduke and his duchess, but no thought of the long-threatened european war entered our minds. neither did we discover later any indications of it. if there was any tension along the franco-german border we failed to notice it. arriving at vevey, there seemed not a ripple on the drowsy summer days. even when austria finally sent her ultimatum to serbia there was scarcely a suggestion of war talk. we had all the nations in our hotel, but they assembled harmoniously in the little reading room after dinner over the papers and innocuous games, and if the situation was discussed at all, the word "arbitration" was oftenest heard. neither did the news come to us gradually or gently. it came like a bomb, exploded one evening by billy baker, an american boy of sixteen and a bulletin of sorts. billy had been for his customary after-dinner walk uptown, and it was clear the instant he plunged in that he had gathered something unusual. "say, folks," he burst out, "did you know that austria has declared war against serbia and is bombarding belgrade, and now all the others are going to declare, and that us americans have got to beat it for home?" there was a general stir. billy's items were often delivered in this abrupt way, but his news facts were seldom questioned. he went on, adding a quick, crisp detail, while the varied nationalities assumed attitudes of attention. the little group around the green center table forgot what they were there for. i had just drawn a spade when i needed a heart, and did not mind the diversion. billy concluded his dispatches: "we've all got to beat it, you know, _now_, before all the ships and trains and things are used for mobilization and before the fighting begins. if we don't we'll have to stay here all winter." then, his mission finished, billy in his prompt way pulled a chair to the table. "let me in this, will you?" he said. "i feel awfully lucky to-night." americans laugh at most things. we laughed now at billy baker--at the dramatic manner of his news, with its picturesque even if stupendous possibilities--at the vision in everyone's mind of a horde of american tourists "beating it" out of europe at the first drum-roll of war. but not all in the room laughed. the "little countesses"--two russian girls--and their white-haired companion, talked rapidly and earnestly together in low voices. the retired french admiral--old and invalided--rose, his long cape flung back across his shoulder, and walked feebly up and down, stopping at each turn to speak to his aged wife, who sat with their son, himself an officer on leave. an english judge, with a son at home, fraternized with the americans and tried to be gay with them, but his mirth lacked freedom. a german family instinctively separated themselves from the others and presently were no longer in the room. even one of the americans--a southern girl--laughed rather hysterically: "all my baggage but one suit case is stored in frankfort," she said. "if germany goes to war i'll have a gay time getting it." morning brought confirmation of billy baker's news, at least so far as austria's action was concerned, and the imminence of what promised to be a concerted movement of other great nations toward war. it was said that russia was already mobilizing--that troops were in motion in germany and in france. that night, or it may have been the next, a telegram came for the young french officer, summoning him to his regiment. his little son of nine or ten raced about excitedly. "_l'allmagne a mobilisé--mon père va à la guerre!_" the old admiral, too feeble, almost, to be out of bed, seemed to take on a new bearing. "i thought i was done with war," he said. "i am an invalid, and they could not call on me. but if france is attacked i shall go and fight once more for my country." the german family--there were two grown sons in it--had already disappeared. it was about the third morning that i took a walk down to the american consulate. i had been there before, but had not found it exciting. it had been a place of silence and inactivity. there were generally a few flies drifting about, and a bored-looking man who spent an hour or two there morning and afternoon, killing time and glad of any little diversion in the way of company. the consulate was no longer a place of silence and buzzing flies. there was buzzing in plenty, but it was made by my fellow countrymen--country-women, most of them--who were indeed making things hum. i don't know whether the consul was bored or not. i know he was answering questions at the rate of one per second, and even so not keeping up with the demand for information. "is there going to be a war?" "is england going into it?" "has germany declared yet?" "will we be safe in switzerland?" "will all americans be ordered home?" "are the trains going to be stopped?" "will we have to have passports?" "i have got a sailing in september. will the ships be running then?" "how can i send a letter to my husband in germany?" "how about money? are the swiss banks going to stop payment on letters of credit?"--these, repeated in every varying form, and a hundred other inquiries that only a first-class registered clairvoyant could have answered with confidence. the consul was good-natured. he was also an optimist. his replies in general conveyed the suggestion to "keep cool," that everything was going to be all right. the swiss banks, however, did stop payment on letters of credit and various forms of checks forthwith. i had a very pretty-looking check myself, and a day or two before i had been haggling with the bank man over the rate of exchange, which had been gently declining. i said i would hold it for better terms. but on the day that germany declared war i decided to cash it, anyway, just to have a little extra money in case-- oh, well, never mind the details. i didn't cash it. the bank man looked at it, smiled feebly, and pointed to a notice on the wall. it was in french, but it was an "easy lesson." it said: no more checks or letters of credit cashed until further notice. by order of the association. i don't know yet what "association" it was that was heartless enough to give an order like that, but i hoped it would live to repent it. the bank man said that in view of my position as a depositor he might be induced to advance me per cent of the amount of the check. the next day he even refused to take it for collection. switzerland is prudent; she had mobilized her army about the second day and sent it to the frontier. we had been down to the big market place to see it go. i never saw anything more quiet--more orderly. she had mobilized her cash in the same prompt, orderly fashion and sent it into safe retirement. it was a sorrowful time, and it was not merely american--it was international. switzerland never saw such a "busted community" as her tourists presented during august, . every day was black friday. almost nobody had any real money. a russian nobleman in our hotel with a letter of credit and a roll of national currency could not pay for his afternoon tea. the little countesses had to stop buying chocolates. an american army officer, retired, was unable to meet his laundry bill. even swiss bank notes (there were none less than fifty francs in the beginning) were of small service, for there was no change. all the silver had disappeared as if it had suddenly dissolved. as for gold--lately so plentiful--one no longer even uttered the _word_ without emotion. getting away, "beating it," as billy had expressed it, was still a matter of prime importance, but it had taken second place. the immediate question was how and where to get money for the "beating" process. the whole talk was money. any little group collected on the street might begin by discussing the war, but, in whatever language, the discussion drifted presently to finance. the optimistic consul was still reassuring. to some he advanced funds--he was more liberal than the bank of switzerland. there was a percentage, of course--a lucky few--who had money, and these were getting away. there were enough of them along the simplon railway to crowd the trains. every train for paris went through with the seats and aisles full. all schedules were disordered. there was no telling when a train would come, or when it would arrive in paris. billy baker promptly mobilized his party and they left sometime in the night--or it may have been in the morning, after a night of waiting. it was the last regular train to go. we did not learn of its fortunes. no word came back from those who left us. they all went with promises to let us know, but a veil dropped behind them. they were as those who pass beyond the things of earth. we heard something of their belongings, however. sometimes on clear days a new range of mountains seemed to be growing in the west. it was thought to be the american baggage heaped on the french frontier. very likely our friends wrote to us, but there was no more mail. the last american, french, and english letters came august d. the last paris _herald_ hung on the hotel file and became dingy and tattered with rereading. no mails went out. one could amuse himself by writing letters and dropping them in the post office, but he would know, when he passed a week later, that they had remained there. you could still cable, if you wished to do so--in french--and there must have been a scramble in america for french dictionaries, and a brisk hunting for the english equivalents of whatever terse berlitz idiom was used to convey: "money in a hurry--dead broke." various economies began to be planned or practiced. guests began to do without afternoon tea, or to make it themselves in their rooms. few were paying their hotel bills, yet some went to cheaper places, frightened at the reckoning that was piling up against settling day. others, with a little store of money, took very modest apartments and did light housekeeping to stretch their dwindling substance. some, even among those at the hotels, in view of the general uncertainty, began to lay in tinned meats and other durable food against a time of scarcity. it was said that switzerland, surrounded by war, would presently be short of provisions. indeed, grocers, by order of the authorities, had already cut down the sale of staples, and no more than a pound or two of any one article was sold to a single purchaser. hotels were obliged to send their servants, one after another, and even their guests, to get enough sugar and coffee and salt to go around. hotel bills of fare--always lavish in switzerland--began to be cut down, by _request of the guests themselves_. it was a time to worry, or--to "beat it" for home. we fell into the habit of visiting the consulate each morning. when we had looked over the little local french paper and found what new nations had declared war against germany overnight, we strolled down to read the bulletins on the consulate windows, which generally told us what steamer lines had been discontinued, and how we couldn't get money on our checks and letters of credit. inside, an active commerce was in progress. no passport had been issued from that consulate for years. nobody in europe needed one. you could pass about as freely from switzerland to france or germany as you could from delaware to new jersey. things were different now. with all europe going to war, passports properly viséd were as necessary as train tickets. the consul, swamped with applications, had called for volunteers, and at several little tables young men were saying that they did not know most of the things those anxious people--women, mainly--were asking about, but that everything would surely be all right, soon. meantime, they were helping their questioners make out applications for passports. there were applications for special things--personal things. there was a woman who had a husband lost somewhere in germany and was convinced he would be shot as a spy. there was a man who had been appointed to a post office in america and was fearful of losing it if he did not get home immediately. there were anxious-faced little school-teachers who had saved for years to pay for a few weeks abroad, and were now with only some useless travelers' checks and a return ticket on a steamer which they could not reach, and which might not sail even if they reached it. and what of their positions in america? theirs were the sorrowful cases, and there were others. but the crowd was good-natured, as a whole--americans are generally that. the stranded ones saw humor in their situation, and confessed to one another--friends and strangers alike--their poverty and their predicaments, laughing a good deal, as americans will. but there were anxious faces, too, and everybody wanted to know a number of things, which he asked of everybody else, and of the consul--oh, especially of the consul--until that good-natured soul was obliged to take an annex office upstairs where he could attend to the manufacture of passports, while downstairs a brooklyn judge was appointed to supervise matters and deal out official information in judicial form. the judge was qualified for his appointment. every morning before ten o'clock--opening time--he got together all the matters--letters, telegrams, and the like--that would be apt to interest the crowd, and dealt this substance out in a speech, at the end of which he invited inquiries on any point he had failed to make clear. he got them, too--mainly questions that he had already answered, because there is a type of mind which does not consider information valid unless delivered to it individually and, in person. i remember, once, when among other wild rumors it had been reported that because of the food scarcity all foreigners would be ordered out of switzerland in five days, a woman who had listened attentively to the judge's positive and thrice-repeated denial of this canard promptly asked him if she could stay in switzerland if she wanted to. the judge's speech became the chief interest of the day. it was the regular american program to assemble in front of the consulate, exchanging experiences and reading the bulletins until opening time. the place was in a quiet side street of the quaint old swiss city, a step from the lake-front promenade, with a background of blue mountains and still bluer water. across the street stood a sixteenth-century château with its gardens of greenery. at ten the consulate doors opened and the little group pressed in for the speech. i am sure no one in our stranded assembly will easily forget those mornings. promising news began to come. the judge announced one morning that five hundred thousand francs had been placed to the consular credit in switzerland by america for the relief of her citizens. great happiness for the moment! hope lighted every face. then some mathematician figured that five hundred thousand francs amounted to a hundred thousand dollars, and that there were ten thousand americans in switzerland--hence, ten dollars apiece. the light of hope grew dim. there was not a soul in that crowd who needed less than two hundred dollars to pay his board and get him home. ten thousand times two hundred--it is a sizable sum. and what of the rest of europe? the mathematician figured that there were a quarter of a million americans in europe, all willing to go home, and that it would take fifty million dollars and a fleet of five hundred fair-sized ships to deliver them in new york. still, that five hundred thousand francs served a good purpose. an allotment of it found its way to our consul, to use at his discretion. it came to the right man. here and there were those who had neither money nor credit. to such he had already advanced money from his own limited supply. his allowance, now, would provide for those needy ones until more came. it was not sufficient, however, to provide one woman with three hundred francs to buy a set of furs she had selected, though she raged up and down the office and threatened to report him to washington, and eventually flung some papers in his face. it turned out later that she was not an american. i don't know what she was--mostly wildcat, i judge. further news came--still better. the government would send a battleship--the _tennessee_--with a large sum of gold. the deposit of this specie in the banks of europe would make checks and letters of credit good again. various monies from american banks, cabled for by individuals, would also arrive on this ship. things generally looked brighter. with the british fleet protecting the seas, english, french, and dutch liners were likely to keep their schedules; also, there were some italian boats, though these were reported to be overrun by "swell" americans who were paying as high as one thousand dollars for a single berth. perhaps the report was true--i don't know. none of our crowd cared to investigate. there were better plans nearer home--plans for "beating it" out of switzerland on a big scale. special trains were to be provided--and ships. a commission was coming on the _tennessee_ to arrange for these things. the vessel had already left new york. the crowd at the consulate grew larger and more feverishly interested. applications for passports multiplied. over and over, and in great detail, the brooklyn judge explained just what was necessary to insure free and safe departure from europe when the time came to go. over and over we questioned him concerning all those things, and concerning ever so many other things that had no particular bearing on the subject, and he bore it and beamed on us and was fully as patient as was moses in that other wilderness we wot of. trains began to run again through france; at least they started, and i suppose they arrived somewhere. four days, six days, eight days was said to be the time to paris, with only third-class coaches, day and night, all the aisles full--no food and no water except what was carried. it was not a pleasant prospect and few of our people risked it. the _tennessee_ was reported to have reached england and the special american trains were promised soon. in fact, one was presently announced. it went from lindau, through germany, and was too far east for most of our crowd. then there were trains from lucerne and elsewhere; also, special english trains. then, at last a simplon train was scheduled: territet, montreux, vevey, lausanne, geneva--all aboard for paris! great excitement at the consulate. the _tennessee_ money could arrive any day now; everybody could pay up and start. the brooklyn judge rehearsed each morning all the old details and presented all the news and requirements. the train, he said, would go through a nation that was at war. it would be under military surveillance. once on the train, one must stay on it until it arrived in paris. in paris passengers must go to the hotels selected, they must leave at the time arranged and by the train provided, and must accept without complaint the ship and berth assigned to each. it would be a big tourist party personally conducted by the united states for her exiled citizens. the united states was not ordering its citizens to leave switzerland; it was merely providing a means for those who must go at once and had not provided for themselves. the coaches would be comfortable, the price as usual, red cards insuring each holder a seat would be issued at the consulate. tickets through to new york would be provided for those without funds. the government could do no more. any questions, please? then a sharp-faced, black-haired, tightly hooked woman got up and wanted to know just what style the coaches would be--whether they would have aisles down the side; whether there would be room to lie down at will; whether meals would be served on the train; whether there would be time at dijon to get off and see some friends; whether she could take her dog; whether her ticket would be good on another train if she didn't like this one when she saw it. the judge will probably never go into the tourist-agency business, even if he retires from the law. well, that particular train did not go, after all. or, rather, it did go, but few of our people went on it. there was a misunderstanding somewhere. the germans were getting down pretty close to paris just then, and from the invisible "somewhere" an order came countermanding the train. the train didn't hear of it, however, and not all of the people. those who took it must have had plenty of room, and they must have gone through safely. if the germans got them we should have heard of it, i think. those who failed to take it were not entirely sorry. the _tennessee_ money had not been distributed yet, and it was badly needed. i don't know what delayed it. somewhere--always in that invisible "somewhere"--there was a hitch about that, too. it still had not arrived when the _next_ train was scheduled--at least, not much of it. it had not come on the last afternoon of the last day, when the train was to go early in the morning. it was too bad. there was a borrowing and an arranging and a negotiating at the banks that had become somewhat less obdurate these last days, with the _tennessee_ in the offing. but many went away pretty short, and, but for the consul, the shortness would have been shorter and more general. it was a fine, big, comfortable train that went next morning. a little group of us who were not yet ready to "beat it" went down to see our compatriots go. there seemed to be room enough, and at least some of the coaches had aisles down the sides. i do not know whether the sharp-faced, tightly hooked woman had her dog or not. there was a great waving, and calling back, and much laughter as the train rolled away. you could tell as easily as anything that the americans were "beating it" for home. heavy installments of the _tennessee_ money began to arrive at the consulate next day. i got some of it myself. a day or two later i dropped into the consulate. it had become a quiet place again, as in the days that already seemed very long ago. it was hard to believe in the reality of the eager crowd that used to gather there every morning to tell their troubles and laugh over them, and to collect the morning news. now, again, the place was quite empty, except for a few flies drowsing about and the rather tired, bored-looking man who came to spend an hour or two there every morning, killing time and glad of any little diversion in the way of company. chapter xxxvii the long trail ends it was not until near the end of october that we decided to go. we had planned to remain for another winter, but the aspect of things did not improve as the weeks passed. with nine tenths of europe at war and the other tenth drilling, there was a lack of repose beneath the outward calm, even of vevey. in the midst of so many nervous nations, to linger until spring might be to remain permanently. furthermore, our occupations were curtailed. automobiles were restricted, the gasoline supply cut off. the streets had a funereal look. i was told that i could get a special permit to use the car, but as our gasoline supply consisted of just about enough to take us over the simplon pass into italy, we decided to conserve it for that purpose. the pass closes with the first big snow, usually the th of october. the presence of many soldiers there would keep it open this year a little longer. it could not be risked, however, later than the end of the month. we debated the matter pretty constantly, for the days of opportunity were wasting. we wasted ten of them making a little rail and pedestrian trip around switzerland, though in truth those ten glorious days of october tramping along the lakes and through the hills are not likely to be remembered as really wasted by any of us. when we returned i got a military pass to take the car out of switzerland, but it was still another week before we packed our heavy baggage and shipped it to genoa. we were a fair example of any number of families, no longer enthralled by europe and not particularly needed at home. i think hesitation must have nearly killed some people. it was the th of october--a perfect morning--when for the last time i brought the car to the front of our hotel, and we strapped on our bags and with sad hearts bade good-by to the loveliest spot and the best people in europe. then presently we were working our way through the gay, crowded market place (though we did not feel gay) down through the narrow, familiar streets, with their pretty shops where we had bought things, and their little _pâtisseries_ where we had eaten things; down through la tour, and along the lake to clarens and montreux, and past chillon, and so up the valley of the rhone to brigue, the swiss entrance to the simplon pass. we had new tires now, and were not troubled about our going; but the world had grown old and sad in three months, and the leaves were blowing off of the trees, and the glory had gone out of life, because men were marching and killing one another along those happy fields that such a little while before had known only the poppy stain and the marching of the harvesters--along those shady roads where good souls had run with the car to hand us cherries and wish us "_gute reise._" we crossed the simplon in the dullness of a gray mist, and at the top, six hundred feet in the peaks, met the long-delayed snowstorm, and knew that we were crossing just in time. down on the italian slope the snow turned to rain and the roads were not good. the italians dump rock into their roads and let the traffic wear it down. we were delayed by a technicality on the swiss border, and it was dark by the time we were in italy--dark and rainy. along the road are overhanging galleries--really tunnels, and unlighted. our prestolite had given out and our oil lamps were too feeble. i have never known a more precarious drive than across that long stretch from gondo to domodossola, through the night and pouring rain. it seemed endless, and when the lights of the city first appeared i should have guessed the distance still to be traveled at forty miles. but we did arrive; and we laid up three days in a hotel where it was cold--oh, very cold--but where blessedly there was a small open fire in a little sitting room. also, the food was good. it had not quit raining even then, but we started, anyway. one can get a good deal of domodossola in three days, though it is a very good town, where few people stop, because they are always going somewhere else when they get there. our landlady gave us a huge bunch of flowers at parting, too huge for our limited car space. a little way down the road i had to get out and fix something; an old woman came and held an umbrella over me, and, having no italian change, i gave her the flowers, and a swiss nickel, and a german five-pfennig piece, and she thanked me just as if i had contributed something valuable. the italians are polite. we went to stresa on lake maggiore, and stopped for the night, and visited isola bella, of course, and i bought a big red umbrella which the others were ashamed of, and fell away from me when i opened it as if i had something contagious. they would rather get soaking wet, they said, than be seen walking under that thing. pride is an unfortunate asset. but i didn't have the nerve myself to carry that umbrella on the streets of milan. though stresa is not far away, its umbrellas are unknown in milan, and when i opened it my audience congested traffic. i didn't suppose anything could be too gay for an italian. we left the car at milan and made a rail trip to venice. it was still raining every little while and many roads were under water, so that venice really extended most of the way to milan, and automobile travel was thought to be poor in that direction. all the old towns over there we visited, for we were going home, and no one could say when europe might be comfortable for tourists again. a good deal of the time it rained, but a good deal of the time it didn't, and we slept in hotels that were once palaces, and saw much, including juliet's tomb at verona, and all the things at padua, and we bought violets at parma, and sausages at bologna. then we came back to milan and drove to genoa, stopping overnight at tortona, because we thought we would be sure to find there the ices by that name. but they were out of them, i suppose, for we could not find any. still we had no definite plans about america; but when at genoa we found we could ship the car on a pretty little italian vessel and join the same little ship ourselves at naples, all for a very reasonable sum. i took the shipping man to the hotel garage, turned the car over to him, and the thing was done. so we traveled by rail to pisa, to florence, to rome, to naples and pompeii, stopping as we chose; for, as i say, no one could tell when europe would be a visiting place again, and we must see what we could. so we saw italy, in spite of the rain that fell pretty regularly, and the rather sharp days between-time. we did not know that those rains were soaking down to the great central heat and would produce a terrible earthquake presently, or we might have been rather more anxious to go. as it was, we were glad to be there and really enjoyed all the things. yet, there was a different feeling now. the old care-freedom was gone; the future had become obscure. the talk everywhere was of the war; in every city soldiers were marching, fine, beautiful regiments, commanded by officers that were splendidly handsome in their new uniforms. we were told that italy would not go to war--at least not until spring, but it was in the air, it was an ominous cloud. nowhere in europe was anything the same. one day our little ship came down from genoa, and we went aboard and were off next morning. we lay a day at palermo, and then, after some days of calm sailing in the mediterranean, launched out into the atlantic gales and breasted the storms for nearly two weeks, pitching and rolling, but homeward bound. * * * * * a year and four months from a summer afternoon when we had stood on the upper deck of a little french steamer in brooklyn and looked down into the hold at a great box that held our car, i went over to hoboken and saw it taken from another box, and drove it to connecticut alone, for the weather was cold, the roads icy. it was evening when i arrived, christmas eve, and when i pushed back the wide door, drove into the barn, cut off the engine, and in the dim winter light saw our capable conveyance standing in its accustomed place, i had the curious feeling of never having been away at all, but only for a winter's drive, dreaming under dull skies of summertime and france. and the old car--that to us had always seemed to have a personality and sentience--had it been dreaming, too? it was cold there, and growing dark. i came out and locked the door. we had made the circuit--our great adventure was over. would i go again, under the same conditions? ah me! that wakens still another dream--for days ahead. i suppose one should not expect more than one real glimpse of heaven in this world, but at least one need not give up hoping. seeing europe with famous authors edited by francis w. halsey contents of volume vi germany, austria-hungary and switzerland part two vi. hungary--(_continued_) hungarian baths and resorts--by h. tornai de kövër the gipsies--by h. tornai de kövër vii. austria's adriatic ports trieste and pola--by edward a. freeman spalato--by edward a. freeman ragusa--by harry de windt cattaro--by edward a. freeman viii. other austrian scenes cracow--by mènie muriel dowie on the road to prague--by bayard taylor the cave of adelsberg--by george stillman hillard the monastery of mÖlk--by thomas frognall dibdin through the tyrol--by william cullen bryant in the dolomites--by archibald campbell knowles cortina--by amelia b. edwards ix. alpine resorts the call of the mountains--by frederick harrison interlaken and the jungfrau--by archibald campbell knowles the altdorf of william tell--by w.d. m'crackan lucerne--by victor tissot zurich--by w.d. m'crackan the rigi--by w.d. m'crackan chamouni--an avalanche--by percy bysshe shelley zermatt--by archibald campbell knowles pontresina and st. moritz--by victor tissot geneva--by francis h. gribble the castle of chillon--by harriet beecher stowe by rail up the gorner-grat--by archibald campbell knowles through the st. gothard into italy--by victor tissot x. alpine mountain climbing first attempts half a century ago--by edward whymper first to the top o the matterhorn--by edward whymper the lord francis douglas tragedy--by edward whymper an ascent of monte rosa ( )--by john tyndall mont blanc ascended, huxley going part way--by john tyndall the jungfrau-joch--by sir leslie stephen xi. other alpine topics the great st. bernard hospice--by archibald campbell knowles avalanches--by victor tissot hunting the chamois--by victor tissot the celebrities of geneva--by francis h. gribble list of illustrations volume vi frontispiece the matterhorn kursaal at marienbad marienbad, austria monastery of st. ulric and afra, augsburg monastery of mÖlk on the danube above vienna memorial tablet and road in the iron gate of the danube quay at fiume royal palace in budapest houses of parliament, budapest suspension bridge over the danube at budapest street in budapest cathedral of spalato regusa, dalmatia miramar geneva regatta day on lake geneva vitznau, the lake terminus of the rigi railroad rhine falls near schaffhausen pontresina in the engadine st. moritz in the engadine fribourg berne vivey, lake geneva the turnhalle, zurich interlaken lucerne viaducts on an alpine railway the wolfort viaduct balmat--saussure monument in chamonix roofed wooden bridge at lucerne the castle of chillon cloud effect above interlaken davos in winter [illustration: the kursal at marienbad] [illustration: marienbad, austria] [illustration: the monastery of st. ulric and afra, at augsburg in bavaria] [illustration: the monastery of mÖlk on the danube above vienna] [illustration: memorial tablet and road in the iron gate of the danube] [illustration: the quay of the fiume at the head of the adriatic] [illustration: the royal palace at budapest] [illustration: the houses of parliament at budapest] [illustration: the suspension bridge over the danube at budapest] [illustration: street in budapest] [illustration: the cathedral of spalato burial-place of the emperor diocletian] [illustration: regusa, dalmatia] [illustration: miramar long the home of the ex-empress carlotta of mexico] [illustration: geneva] [illustration: regatta day on lake geneva] [illustration: vitznau, the lake terminus of the rigi railroad] [illustration: the rhine falls near schaffhausen] vi hungary (_continued_) hungarian baths and resorts[ ] by h. tornai de kÖvËr in hungary there are great quantities of unearthed riches, and not only in the form of gold. these riches are the mineral waters that abound in the country and have been the natural medicine of the people for many years. water in itself was always worshiped by the hungarians in the earliest ages, and they have found out through experience for which ailment the different waters may be used. there are numbers of small watering-places in the most primitive state, which are visited by the peasants from far and wide, more especially those that are good for rheumatism. like all people that work much in the open, the hungarian in old age feels the aching of his limbs. the carpathians are full of such baths, some of them quite primitive; others are used more as summer resorts, where the well-to-do town people build their villas; others, again, like tátra füred, tátra lomnicz, csorba, and many others, have every accommodation and are visited by people from all over europe. in former times germans and poles were the chief visitors, but now people come from all parts to look at the wonderful ice-caves (where one can skate in the hottest summer), the waterfalls, and the great pine forests, and make walking, driving, and riding tours right up to the snow-capped mountains, preferring the comparative quiet of this alpine district to that of switzerland. almost every place has some special mineral water, and among the greatest wonders of hungary are the hot mud-baths of pöstyén. this place is situated at the foot of the lesser carpathians, and is easily reached from the main line of the railway. the scenery is lovely and the air healthy, but this is nothing compared to the wondrous waters and hot mire which oozes out of the earth in the vicinity of the river vág. hot sulfuric water, which contains radium, bubbles up in all parts of pöstyén, and even the bed of the cold river is full of steaming hot mud. as far back as we know of the existence of pöstyén as a natural cure, and sir spencer wells, the great english doctor, wrote about these waters in . they are chiefly good for rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, the strengthening of broken bones, strains, and also for scrofula. on the premises there is a quaint museum with crutches and all sort of sticks and invalid chairs left there by their former owners in grateful acknowledgment of the wonderful waters and mire that had healed them. of late there has been much comfort added; great new baths have been built, villas and new hotels added, so that there is accommodation for rich and poor alike. the natural heat of the mire is degrees fahrenheit. plenty of amusements are supplied for those who are not great sufferers--tennis, shooting, fishing, boating, and swimming being all obtainable. the bathing-place and all the adjoining land belongs to count erdödy. another place of the greatest importance is the little bath "parád," hardly three hours from budapest, situated in the heart of the mountains of the "mátra." it is the private property of count kárólyi. the place is primitive and has not even electric light. its waters are a wonderful combination of iron and alkaline, but this is not the most important feature. besides the baths there is a strong spring of arsenic water which, through a fortunate combination, is stronger and more digestible than roncegno and all the other first-rate waters of that kind in the world. not only in northern hungary does one find wondrous cures, it is the same in transylvania. there are healing and splendid mineral waters for common use all over the country lying idle and awaiting the days when its owners will be possest by the spirit of enterprise. borszek, szováta, and many others are all wonders in their way, waters that would bring in millions to their owners if only worked properly. szováta, boasts of a lake containing such an enormous proportion of salt that not even the human body can sink into its depths. in the south there is herkulesfürdö, renowned as much for the beauty of its scenery as for its waters. besides those mentioned there are all the summer pleasure resorts; the best of these are situated along lake balaton. the tepid water, long sandbanks, and splendid air from the forests make them specially healthy for delicate children. but not only have the bathing-places beautiful scenery from north to south and from east to west, in general the country abounds in alpine districts, waterfalls, caves, and other wonders of nature. the most beautiful tour is along the river vág, starting from the most northerly point in hungary near the beautiful old stronghold of Árva in the county of Árva. all those that care to see a country as it really is, and do not mind going out of the usual beaten track of the globe-trotter, should go down the river vág. it can not be done by steamer, or any other comfortable contrivance, one must do it on a raft, as the rapids of the river are not to be passed by any other means. the wood is transported in this way from the mountain regions to the south, and for two days one passes through the most beautiful scenery. fantastic castles loom at the top of mountain peaks, and to each castle is attached a page of the history of the middle ages, when the great noblemen were also the greatest robbers of the land, and the people were miserable serfs, who did all the work and were taxed and robbed by their masters. castles, wild mountain districts, rugged passes, villages, and ruins are passed like a beautiful panorama. the river rushes along, foaming and dashing over sharp rocks. the people are reliable and very clever in handling the raft, which requires great skill, especially when conducted over the falls at low water. sometimes there is only one little spot where the raft can pass, and to conduct it over those rapids requires absolute knowledge of every rock hidden under the shallow falls. if notice is given in time, a rude hut will be built on the raft to give shelter and make it possible to have meals cooked, altho in the simplest way (consisting of baked potatoes and stew), by the slavs who are in charge of the raft. if anything better is wanted it must be ordered by stopping at the larger towns; but to have it done in the simple way is entering into the true spirit of the voyage. the gipsies[ ] by h. tornai de kÖvËr gipsies! music! dancing! these are words of magic to the rich and poor, noblemen and peasant alike, if he be a true hungarian. there are two kinds of gipsies. the wandering thief, who can not be made to take up any occupation. these are a terribly lawless and immoral people, and there seems to be no way of altering their life and habits, altho much has been written on the subject to improve matters; but the government has shown itself to be helpless as yet. these people live here and there, in fact everywhere, leading a wandering life in carts, and camp wherever night overtakes them. after some special evil-doing they will wander into rumania or russia and come back after some years when the deed of crime has been forgotten. their movements are so quick and silent that they outwit the best detectives of the police force. they speak the gipsy language, but often a half-dozen other languages besides, in their peculiar chanting voice. their only occupation is stealing, drinking, smoking, and being a nuisance to the country in every way. the other sort of gipsies consist of those that have squatted down in the villages some hundreds of years ago. they live in a separate part of the village, usually at the end, are dirty and untidy and even an unruly people, but for the most part have taken up some honest occupation. they make the rough, unbaked earth bricks that the peasant cottages are mostly made of, are tinkers and blacksmiths, but they do the lowest kind of work too. besides these, however, there are the talented ones. the musical gipsy begins to handle his fiddle as soon as he can toddle. the hungarians brought their love of music with them from asia. old parchments have been found which denote that they had their songs and war-chants at the time of the "home-making," and church and folk-songs from their earliest christian period. peasant and nobleman are musical alike--it runs in the race. the gipsies that have settled among them caught up the love of music and are now the best interpreters of the hungarian songs. the people have got so used to their "blackies," as they call them, that no lesser or greater fête day can pass without the gipsy band having ample work to do in the form of playing for the people. their instruments are the fiddle, 'cello, viola, clarinet, tárogato (a hungarian specialty), and, above all, the cymbal. the tárogato looks like a grand piano with the top off. it stands on four legs like a table and has wires drawn across it; on these wires the player performs with two little sticks, that are padded at the ends with cotton-wool. the sound is wild and weird, but if well played very beautiful indeed. the gipsies seldom compose music. the songs come into life mostly on the spur of the moment. in the olden days war-songs and long ballads were the most usual form of music. the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were specially rich in the production of songs that live even now. at that time the greatest gipsy musician was a woman: her name was "czinka panna," and she was called the gipsy queen. with the change of times the songs are altered too, and now they are mostly lyric. csárdás is the quick form of music, and tho' of different melodies it must always be kept to the same rhythm. this is not much sung to, but is the music for the national dance. the peasants play on a little wooden flute which is called the "tilinko," or "furulya," and they know hundreds of sad folk-songs and lively csárdás. while living their isolated lives in the great plains they compose many a beautiful song. it is generally from the peasants and the musical country gentry that the gipsy gets his music. he learns the songs after a single hearing, and plays them exactly according to the singer's wish. the hungarian noble when singing with the gipsies is capable of giving the dark-faced boys every penny he has. in this manner many a young nobleman has been ruined, and the gipsies make nothing of it, because they are just like their masters and "spend easily earned money easily," as the saying goes. where there is much music there is much dancing. every sunday afternoon after church the villages are lively with the sound of the gipsy band, and the young peasant boys and girls dance. the slovaks of the north play a kind of bagpipe, which reminds one of the scotch ones; but the songs of the slovak have got very much mixed with the hungarian. the rumanian music is of a distinct type, but the dances all resemble the csárdás, with the difference that the quick figures in the slav and rumanian dances are much more grotesque and verging on acrobatism. vii austria's adriatic ports trieste and pola[ ] by edward a. freeman trieste stands forth as a rival of venice, which has, in a low practical view of things, outstript her. italian zeal naturally cries for the recovery of a great city, once part of the old italian kingdom, and whose speech is largely, perhaps chiefly, italian to this day. but, a cry of "italia irredenta," however far it may go, must not go so far as this. trieste, a cosmopolitan city on a slavonic shore, can not be called italian in the same sense as the lands and towns so near verona which yearn to be as verona is. let trieste be the rival, even the eyesore, of venice, still southern germany must have a mouth. we might, indeed, be better pleased to see trieste a free city, the southern fellow of lübeck, bremen and hamburg; but it must not be forgotten that the archduke of austria and lord of trieste reigns at trieste by a far better right than that by which he reigns at cattaro and spizza. the present people of trieste did not choose him, but the people of trieste five hundred years back did choose the forefather of his great-grandmother. compared with the grounds of which kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, are commonly held in that neighborhood, such a claim as this must be allowed to be respectable indeed. the great haven of trieste may almost at pleasure be quoted as either confirming or contradicting the rule that it is not in the great commercial cities of europe that we are to look for the choicest or the most plentiful remains of antiquity. sometimes the cities themselves are of modern foundation; in other cases the cities themselves, as habitations of men and seats of commerce, are of the hoariest antiquity, but the remains of their early days have perished through their very prosperity. massalia,[ ] with her long history, with her double wreath of freedom, the city which withstood cæsar and which withstood charles of anjou, is bare of monuments of her early days. she has been the victim of her abiding good fortune. we can look down from the height on the phôkaian harbor; but for actual memorials of the men who fled from the persian, of the men who defied the roman and the angevin, we might look as well at liverpool or at havre. genoa, venice herself, are hardly real exceptions; they were indeed commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. what are we to say to the modern rival of venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted to say, against the supremacy of the hadriatic queen? trieste, at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the other side of her inland sea, with her harbor full of the ships of every nation, her streets echoing with every tongue, is she to be reckoned as an example of the rule or an exception to it? no city at first sight seems more thoroughly modern; old town and new, wide streets and narrow, we search them in vain for any of those vestiges of past times which in some cities meet us at every step. compare trieste with ancona;[ ] we miss the arch of trajan on the haven; we miss the cupola of saint cyriacus soaring in triumph above the triumphal monument of the heathen. we pass through the stately streets of the newer town, we thread the steep ascents which lead us to the older town above, and we nowhere light on any of those little scraps of ornamental architecture, a window, a doorway, a column, which meet us at every step in so many of the cities of italy. yet the monumental wealth of trieste is all but equal to the monumental wealth of ancona. at ancona we have the cathedral church and the triumphal arch; so we have at trieste; tho' at trieste we have nothing to set against the grand front of the lower and smaller church of ancona. but at ancona arch and duomo both stand out before all eyes; at trieste both have to be looked for. the church of saint justus at trieste crowns the hill as well as the church of saint cyriacus at ancona; but it does not in the same way proclaim its presence. the castle, with its ugly modern fortifications, rises again above the church; and the duomo of trieste, with its shapeless outline and its low, heavy, unsightly campanile, does not catch the eyes like the greek cross and cupola of ancona. again at trieste the arch could never, in its best days, have been a rival to the arch at ancona; and now either we have to hunt it out by an effort, or else it comes upon us suddenly, standing, as it does, at the head of a mean street on the ascent to the upper town. of a truth it can not compete with ancona or with rimini, with orange[ ] or with aosta. but the duomo, utterly unsightly as it is in a general view, puts on quite a new character when we first see the remains of pagan times imprisoned in the lower stage of the heavy campanile, still more so when we take our first glance of its wonderful interior. at the first glimpse we see that here there is a mystery to be unraveled; and as we gradually find the clue to the marvelous changes which it has undergone, we feel that outside show is not everything, and that, in point both of antiquity and of interest, tho' not of actual beauty, the double basilica of trieste may claim no mean place among buildings of its own type. even after the glories of rome and ravenna, the tergestine church may be studied with no small pleasure and profit, as an example of a kind of transformation of which neither rome nor ravenna can supply another example.... the other ancient relic at trieste is the small triumphal arch. on one side it keeps its corinthian pilasters; on the other they are imbedded in a house. the arch is in a certain sense double; but the two are close together, and touch in the keystone. the roman date of this arch can not be doubted; but legends connect it both with charles the great and with richard of poitou and of england, a prince about whom tergestine fancy has been very busy. the popular name of the arch is arco riccardo. such, beside some fragments in the museum, are all the remains that the antiquary will find in trieste; not much in point of number, but, in the case of the duomo at least, of surpassing interest in their own way. but the true merit of trieste is not in anything that it has itself, its church, its arch, its noble site. placed there at the head of the gulf, on the borders of two great portions of the empire, it leads to the land which produced that line of famous illyrian emperors who for a while checked the advance of our own race in the world's history, and it leads specially to the chosen home of the greatest among them.[ ] the chief glory of trieste, after all, is that it is the way to spalato.... at pola the monuments of pietas julia claim the first place; the basilica, tho' not without a certain special interest, comes long after them. the character of the place is fixt by the first sight of it; we see the present and we see the more distant past; the austrian navy is to be seen, and the amphitheater is to be seen. but intermediate times have little to show; if the duomo strikes the eye at all, it strikes it only by the extreme ugliness of its outside, nor is there anything very taking, nothing like the picturesque castle of pirano, in the works which occupy the site of the colonial capitol. the duomo should not be forgotten; even the church of saint francis is worth a glance; but it is in the remains of the roman colony, in the amphitheater, the arches, the temples, the fragments preserved in that temple which serves, as at nîmes,[ ] for a museum, that the real antiquarian wealth of pola lies.... the known history of pola begins with the roman conquest of istria in b.c. the town became a roman colony and a flourishing seat of commerce. its action on the republican side in the civil war brought on it the vengeance of the second cæsar. but the destroyer became the restorer, and pietas julia, in the height of its greatness, far surpassed the extent either of the elder or the younger pola. like all cities of this region, pola kept up its importance down to the days of the carlovingian empire, the specially flourishing time of the whole district being that of gothic and byzantine dominion at ravenna. a barbarian king, the roxolan rasparasanus, is said to have withdrawn to pola after the submission of his nation to hadrian; and the panegyrists of the flavian house rank pola along with trier and autun among the cities which the princes of that house had adorned or strengthened. but in the history of their dynasty the name of the city chiefly stands out as the chosen place for the execution of princes whom it was convenient to put out of the way. here crispus died at the bidding of constantine, and gallus at the bidding of constantius. under theodoric, pola doubtless shared that general prosperity of the istrian land on which cassiodorus grows eloquent when writing to its inhabitants. in the next generation pola appears in somewhat of the same character which has come back to it in our own times; it was there that belisarius gathered the imperial fleet for his second and less prosperous expedition against the gothic lords of italy. but, after the break up of the frankish empire, the history of medieval pola is but a history of decline. it was, in the geography of dante, the furthest city of italy; but, like most of the other cities of its own neighborhood, its day of greatness had passed away when dante sang. tossed to and fro between the temporal and spiritual lords who claimed to be marquesses of istria, torn by the dissensions of aristocratic and popular parties among its own citizens, pola found rest, the rest of bondage, in submission to the dominion of saint mark in .[ ] since then, till its new birth in our own times, pola has been a failing city. like the other istrian and dalmatian towns, modern revolutions have handed it over from venice to austria, from austria to france, from france to austria again. it is under its newest masters that pola has at last begun to live a fresh life, and the haven whence belisarius[ ] sailed forth has again become a haven in more than name, the cradle of the rising navy of the united austrian and hungarian realm. that haven is indeed a noble one. few sights are more striking than to see the huge mass of the amphitheater at pola seeming to rise at once out of the land-locked sea. as pola is seen now, the amphitheater is the one monument of its older days, which strikes the eye in the general view, and which divides attention with signs that show how heartily the once forsaken city has entered on its new career. but in the old time pola could show all the buildings which befitted its rank as a colony of rome. the amphitheater, of course, stood without the walls; the city itself stood at the foot and on the slope of the hill which was crowned by the capitol of the colony, where the modern fortress rises above the franciscan church. parts of the roman wall still stand; one of its gates is left; another has left a neighbor and a memory.... travelers are sometimes apt to complain, and that not wholly without reason, that all amphitheaters are very like one another. at pola this remark is less true than elsewhere, as the amphitheater there has several marked peculiarities of its own. we do not pretend to expound all its details scientifically; but this we may say, that those who dispute--if the dispute still goes on--about various points as regards the coliseum at rome will do well to go and look for some further light in the amphitheater of pola. the outer range, which is wonderfully perfect, while the inner arrangements are fearfully ruined, consists, on the side toward the town, of two rows of arches, with a third story with square-headed openings above them. but the main peculiarity in the outside is to be found in four tower-like projections, not, as at arles and nîmes, signs of saracenic occupation, but clearly parts of the original design. many conjectures have been made about them; they look as if they were means of approach to the upper part of the building; but it is wisest not to be positive. but the main peculiarity of this amphitheater is that it lies on the slope of a hill, which thus supplied a natural basement for the seats on one side only. but this same position swallowed up the lower arcade on this side, and it hindered the usual works underneath the seats from being carried into this part of the building. spalato[ ] by edward a. freeman the main object and center of all historical and architectural inquiries on the dalmatian coast is, of course, the home of diocletian, the still abiding palace of spalato. from a local point of view, it is the spot which the greatest of the long line of renowned illyrian emperors chose as his resting-place from the toils of warfare and government, and where he reared the vastest and noblest dwelling that ever arose at the bidding of a single man. from an ecumenical point of view, spalato is yet more. if it does not rank with rome, old and new, with ravenna and with trier, it is because it never was, like them, an actual seat of empire. but it not the less marks a stage, and one of the greatest stages, in the history of the empire. on his own dalmatian soil, docles of salone, diocletian of rome, was the man who had won fame for his own land, and who, on the throne of the world, did not forget his provincial birthplace. in the sight of rome and of the world jovius augustus was more than this. alike in the history of politics and in the history of art, he has left his mark on all time that has come after him, and it is on his own spalato that his mark has been most deeply stamped. the polity of rome and the architecture of rome alike received a new life at his hands. in each alike he cast away shams and pretenses, and made the true construction of the fabric stand out before men's eyes. master of the rome world, if not king, yet more than king, he let the true nature of his power be seen, and, first among the cæsars, arrayed himself with the outward pomp of sovereignty. in a smaller man we might have deemed the change a mark of weakness, a sign of childish delight in gewgaws, titles, and trappings. such could hardly have been the motive in the man who, when he deemed that his work was done, could cast away both the form and the substance of power, and could so steadily withstand all temptations to take them up again. it was simply that the change was fully wrought; that the chief magistrate of the commonwealth had gradually changed into the sovereign of the empire; that imperator, cæsar, and augustus, once titles lowlier than that of king, had now become, as they have ever since remained, titles far loftier. the change was wrought, and all that diocletian did was to announce the fact of the change to the world. nor did the organizing hand of jovius confine its sphere to the polity of the empire only. he built himself a house, and, above all builders, he might boast himself of the house that he had builded. fast by his own birthplace--a meaner soul might have chosen some distant spot--diocletian reared the palace which marks a still greater epoch in roman art than his political changes mark in roman polity. on the inmost shore of one of the lake-like inlets of the hadriatic, an inlet guarded almost from sight by the great island of bua at its mouth, lay his own salona, now desolate, then one of the great cities of the roman world. but it was not in the city, it was not close under its walls, that diocletian fixt his home. an isthmus between the bay of salona and the outer sea cuts off a peninsula, which again throws out two horns into the water to form the harbor which has for ages supplanted salona. there, not on any hill-top, but on a level spot by the coast, with the sea in front, with a background of more distant mountains, and with one peaked hill rising between the two seas like a watch-tower, did diocletian build the house to which he withdrew when he deemed that his work of empire was over. and in building that house, he won for himself, or for the nameless genius whom he set at work, a place in the history of art worthy to rank alongside of iktinos of athens and anthemios of byzantium, of william of durham and of hugh of lincoln. and now the birthplace of jovius is forsaken, but his house still abides, and abides in a shape marvelously little shorn of its ancient greatness. the name which it still bears comes straight from the name of the elder home of the cæsars. the fates of the two spots have been in a strange way the converse of one another. by the banks of the tiber the city of romulus became the house of a single man: by the shores of the hadriatic the house of a single man became a city. the palatine hill became the palatium of the cæsars, and palatium was the name which was borne by the house of cæsar by the dalmatian shore. the house became a city; but its name still clave to it, and the house of jovius still, at least in the mouths of its own inhabitants, keeps its name in the slightly altered form of spalato.... we land with the moon lighting up the water, with the stars above us, the northern wain shining on the hadriatic, as if, while diocletian was seeking rest by salona, the star of constantine was rising over york and trier. dimly rising above us we see, disfigured indeed, but not destroyed, the pillared front of the palace, reminding us of the tabularium of rome's own capitol. we pass under gloomy arches, through dark passages and presently we find ourselves in the center of palace and city, between those two renowned rows of arches which mark the greatest of all epochs in the history of the building art. we think how the man who reorganized the empire of rome was also the man who first put harmony and consistency into the architecture of rome. we think that, if it was in truth the crown of diocletian which passed to every cæsar from the first constantius to the last francis, it was no less in the pile which rose into being at his word that the germ was planted which grew into pisa and durham, into westminster and saint ouen. there is light enough to mark the columns put for the first time to their true roman use, and to think how strange was the fate which called up on this spot the happy arrangement which had entered the brain of no earlier artist--the arrangement which, but a few years later, was to be applied to another use in the basilica of the lateran and in saint paul without the walls. yes, it is in the court of the persecutor, the man who boasted that he had wiped out the christian superstition from the world, that we see the noblest forestalling of the long arcades of the christian basilica. it is with thoughts like these, thoughts pressing all the more upon us where every outline is clear and every detail is visible, that we tread for the first time the court of jovius--the columns with their arches on either side of us, the vast bell-tower rising to the sky, as if to mock the art of those whose mightiest works might still seem only to grovel upon earth. nowhere within the compass of the roman world do we find ourselves more distinctly in the presence of one of the great minds of the world's history; we see that, alike in politics and in art, diocletian breathed a living soul into a lifeless body. in the bitter irony of the triumphant faith, his mausoleum has become a church, his temple has become a baptistery, the great bell-tower rises proudly over his own work; his immediate dwelling-place is broken down and crowded with paltry houses; but the sea-front and the golden gate are still there amid all disfigurements, and the great peristyle stands almost unhurt, to remind us of the greatest advance that a single mind ever made in the progress of the building art. at the present time the city into which the house of diocletian has grown is the largest and most growing town of the dalmatian coast. it has had to yield both spiritual and temporal precedence to zara, but, both in actual population and all that forms the life of a city, spalato greatly surpasses zara and all its other neighbors. the youngest dalmatian towns, which could boast neither of any mythical origin nor of any imperial foundation, the city which, as it were, became a city by mere chance, has outstript the colonies of epidauros, of corinth, and of rome. the palace of diocletian had but one occupant; after the founder no emperor had dwelled in it, unless we hold that this was the villa near salona where the deposed emperor nepos was slain, during the patriciate of odoacer. the forsaken palace seems, while still almost new, to have become a cloth factory, where women worked, and which therefore appears in the "notitia" as a gynæcium. but when salona was overthrown, the palace stood ready to afford shelter to those who were driven from their homes. the palace, in the widest sense of the word--for of course its vast circuit took in quarters for soldiers and officials of various kinds, as well as the rooms actually occupied by the emperor--stood ready to become a city. it was a chester ready made, with its four streets, its four gates, all but that toward the sea flanked with octagonal towers, and with four greater square towers at the corners. to this day the circuit of the walls is nearly perfect; and the space contained within them must be as large as that contained within some of the oldest chesters in our own island. the walls, the towers, the gates, are those of a city rather than of a house. two of the gates, tho' their towers are gone, are nearly perfect; the "porta aurea," with its graceful ornaments; the "porta ferrea" in its stern plainness, strangely crowned with its small campanile of later days perched on its top. within the walls, besides the splendid buildings which still remain, besides the broken-down walls and chambers which formed the immediate dwelling-place of the founder, the main streets were lined with massive arcades, large parts of which still remain. diocletian, in short, in building a house, had built a city. in the days of constantine porphyrogenitus it was a "káotpov"--greek and english had by his day alike borrowed the latin name; but it was a "káotpov" which diocletian had built as his own house, and within which was his hall and palace. in his day the city bore the name of aspalathon, which he explains to mean "little palace." when the palace had thus become a common habitation of men, it is not wonderful that all the more private buildings whose use had passed away were broken down, disfigured, and put to mean uses. the work of building over the site must have gone on from that day to this. the view in wheeler shows several parts of the enclosure occupied by ruins which are now covered with houses. the real wonder is that so much has been spared and has survived to our own days. and we are rather surprised to find constantine saying that in his time the greater part had been destroyed. for the parts which must always have been the stateliest remain still. the great open court, the peristyle, with its arcades, have become the public plaza of the town; the mausoleum on one side of it and the temple on the other were preserved and put to christian uses. we say the mausoleum, for we fully accept the suggestion made by professor glavinich, the curator of the museum of spalato, that the present duomo, traditionally called the temple of jupiter, was not a temple, but a mausoleum. these must have been the great public buildings of the palace, and, with the addition of the bell-tower, they remain the chief public buildings of the modern city. but, tho' the ancient square of the palace remains wonderfully perfect, the modern city, with its venetian defenses, its venetian and later buildings, has spread itself far beyond the walls of diocletian. but those walls have made the history of spalato, and it is the great buildings which stand within them that give spalato its special place in the history of architecture. ragusa[ ] by harry de windt viewed from the sea, and at first sight, the place somewhat resembles monte carlo with its white villas, palms, and background of rugged, gray hills. but this is the modern portion of the town, outside the fortifications, erected many centuries ago. within them lies the real ragusa--a wonderful old city which teems with interest, for its time-worn buildings and picturesque streets recall, at every turn, the faded glories of this "south slavonic athens." a bridge across the moat which protects the old city is the link between the present and past. in new ragusa you may sit on the crowded esplanade of a fashionable watering place; but pass through a frowning archway into the old town, and, save in the main street, which has modern shops and other up-to-date surroundings, you might be living in the dark ages. for as far back as in the ninth century ragusa was the capital of dalmatia and an independent republic, and since that period her literary and commercial triumphs, and the tragedies she has survived in the shape of sieges, earthquakes, and pestilence, render the records of this little-known state almost as engrossing as those of ancient rome. until i came here i had pictured a squalid eastern place, devoid of ancient or modern interest; most of my fellow-countrymen probably do likewise, notwithstanding the fact that when london was a small and obscure town ragusa was already an important center of commerce and civilization. the republic was always a peaceful one, and its people excelled in trade and the fine arts. thus, as early as the fourteenth century the ragusan fleet was the envy of the world; its vessels were then known as argusas to british mariners, and the english word "argosy" is probably derived from the name. these tiny ships went far afield--to the levant and northern europe, and even to the indies--a voyage frought, in those days, with much peril. at this epoch ragusa had achieved a mercantile prosperity unequalled throughout europe, but in later years the greater part of the fleet joined and perished with the spanish armada. and this catastrophe was the precursor of a series of national disasters. in the city was laid waste by an earthquake which killed over twenty thousand people, and this was followed by a terrible visitation of the plague, which further decimated the population. ragusa, however, was never a large city, and even at its zenith, in the sixteenth century, it numbered under forty thousand souls, and now contains only about a third of that number. in the vienna congress finally deprived the republic of its independence, and it became (with dalmatia) an austrian possession. trade has not increased here of recent years, as in herzegovina and bosnia. the harbor, at one time one of the most important ports in europe, is too small and shallow for modern shipping, and the oil industry, once the backbone of the place, has sadly dwindled of late years. ragusa itself now having no harbor worthy of the name, the traveler by sea must land at gravosa about a mile north of the old city. gravosa is merely a suburb of warehouses, shipping, and sailor-men, as unattractive as the london docks, and the hotel petko swarmed with mosquitoes and an animal which seems to thrive and flourish throughout the balkan states--the rat. the old custom house is perhaps the most beautiful building in ragusa, and is one of the few which survived the terrible earthquake of . the structure bears the letters "i.h.s." over the principal entrance in commemoration of this fact. its courtyard is a dream of beauty, and the stone galleries around it are surrounded with inscriptions of great age. ragusa is a slav town, but altho' the name of streets appear in slavonic characters, italian is also spoken on every side and the "stradone," with its arcades and narrow precipitous alleys at right angles, is not unlike a street in naples. the houses are built in small blocks, as a protection against earthquakes--the terror of every ragusan (only mention the word and he will cross himself)--and here on a fine sunday morning you may see dalmatians, albanians, and herzegovinians in their gaudiest finery, while here and there a wild-eyed montenegrin, armed to the teeth, surveys the gay scene with a scowl, of shyness rather than ill-humor. outside the café, on the square (where flocks of pigeons whirl around as at st. mark's in venice), every little table is occupied; but here the women are gowned in the latest vienna fashions, and austrian uniforms predominate. and the sun shines as warmly as in june (on this th day of march), and the cathedral bells chime a merry accompaniment to a military band; a sky of the brightest blue gladdens the eye, fragrant flowers the senses, and the traveler sips his bock or mazagran, and thanks his stars he is not spending the winter in cold, foggy england. refreshments are served by a white-aproned garçon, and street boys are selling the "daily mail" and "gil blas," just as they are on the far-away boulevards of paris. cattaro[ ] by edward a. freeman the end of a purely dalmatian pilgrimage will be cattaro. he who goes further along the coast will pass into lands that have a history, past and present, which is wholly distinct from that of the coast which he has hitherto traced from zara--we might say from capo d'istria--onward. we have not reached the end of the old venetian dominion--for that we must carry our voyage to crete and cyprus. but we have reached the end of the nearly continuous venetian dominion--the end of the coast which, save at two small points, was either venetian or regusan--the end of that territory of the two maritime commonwealths which they kept down to their fall in modern times, and in which they have been succeeded by the modern dalmatian kingdom.... the city stands at the end of an inlet of the sea fifteen or twenty miles long, and it has mountains around it so high that it is only in fair summer weather that the sun can be seen; in winter cattaro never enjoys his presence. there certainly is no place where it is harder to believe that the smooth waters of the narrow, lake-like inlet, with mountains on each side which it seems as if one could put out one's hand and touch, are really part of the same sea which dashes against the rocks of ragusa. they end in a meadow-like coast which makes one think of bourget or trasimenus rather than of hadria. the dalmatian voyage is well ended by the sail along the bocche, the loveliest piece of inland sea which can be conceived, and whose shores are as rich in curious bits of political history as they are in scenes of surpassing natural beauty. the general history of the district consists in the usual tossing to and fro between the various powers which have at different times been strong in the neighborhood. cattaro was in the reign of basil the macedonian besieged and taken by saracens, who presently went on unsuccessfully to besiege ragusa. and, as under byzantine rule it was taken by saracens, so under venetian rule it was more than once besieged by turks. in the intermediate stages we get the usual alternations of independence and of subjection to all the neighboring powers in turn, till in cattaro finally became venetian. at the fall of the republic it became part of the austrian share of the spoil. when the spoilers quarreled, it fell to france. when england, russia, and montenegro were allies, the city joined the land of which it naturally forms the head, and cattaro became the montenegrin haven and capital. when france was no longer dangerous, and the powers of europe came together to parcel out other men's goods, austria calmly asked for cattaro back again, and easily got it. in the city of cattaro the orthodox church is still in a minority, but it is a minority not far short of a majority. outside its walls, the orthodox outnumber the catholics. in short, when we reach cattaro, we have very little temptation to fancy ourselves in italy or in any part of western christendom. we not only know, but feel, that we are on the byzantine side of the hadriatic; that we have, in fact, made our way into eastern europe. and east and west, slav and italian, new rome and old, might well struggle for the possession of the land and of the water through which we pass from ragusa to our final goal at cattaro. the strait leads us into a gulf; another narrow strait leads us into an inner gulf; and on an inlet again branching out of that inner gulf lies the furthest of dalmatian cities. the lower city, cattaro itself, seems to lie so quietly, so peacefully, as if in a world of its own from which nothing beyond the shores of its own bocche could enter, that we are tempted to forget, not only that the spot has been the scene of so many revolutions through so many ages, but that it is even now a border city, a city on the marchland of contending powers, creeds, and races.... the city of cattaro itself is small, standing on a narrow ledge between the gulf and the base of the mountain. it carries the features of the dalmatian cities to what any one who has not seen traü will call their extreme point. but, tho' the streets of cattaro are narrow, yet they are civilized and airy-looking compared with those of traü, and the little paved squares, as so often along this coast, suggest the memory of the ruling city. the memory of venice is again called up by the graceful little scraps of its characteristic architecture which catch the eye ever and anon among the houses of cattaro. the landing-place, the marina, the space between the coast and the venetian wall, where we pass for the last time under the winged lion over the gate, has put on the air of a boulevard. but the forms and costume of bocchesi and montenegrins, the men of the gulf, with their arms in their girdles, no less than the men of the black mountain, banish all thought that we are anywhere but where we really are, at one of the border points of christian and civilized europe. if in the sons of the mountains we see the men who have in all ages held out against the invading turk, we see in their brethren of the coast the men who, but a few years back, brought imperial, royal, and apostolic majesty to its knees ... at cattaro the orthodox church is on its own ground, standing side by side on equal terms with its latin rival, pointing to lands where the filioque[ ] is unknown and where the bishop of the old rome has even been deemed an intruder. the building itself is a small byzantine church, less byzantine in fact in its outline than the small churches of the byzantine type at zara, spalato, and traü. the single dome rises, not from the intersection of a greek cross, but from the middle of a single body, and, resting as it does on pointed arches, it suggests the thought of périgueux and angoulême. but this arrangement, which is shared by a neighboring latin church, is well known throughout the east. the latin duomo, which has been minutely described by mr. neale,[ ] is of quite another type, and is by no means dalmatian in its general look. a modern west front with two western towers does not go for much; but it reminds us that a design of the same kind was begun at traü in better times. the inside is quite unlike anything of later italian work. the traveler whose objects are of a more general kind turns away from this border church of christendom as the last stage of a pilgrimage unsurpassed either for natural beauty or for historic interest. and, as he looks up at the mountain which rises almost close above the east end of the duomo of cattaro, and thinks of the land[ ] and the men to which the path over that mountain leads, he feels that, on this frontier at least, the spirit still lives which led english warriors to the side of manuel komnênos, and which steeled the heart of the last constantine to die in the breach for the roman name and the faith of christendom. viii other austrian scenes cracow[ ] by mÉnie muriel dowie cracow, old, tired and dispirited, speaks and thinks only of the ruinous past. when you drive into cracow from the station for the first time, you are breathless, smiling, and tearful all at once; in the great ring-platz--a mass of old buildings--cracow seems to hold out her arms to you--those long sides that open from the corner where the cab drives in. you do not have time to notice separately the row of small trees down on one side, beneath which bright-colored women-figures control their weekly market; you do not notice the sort of court-house in the middle with its red roof, cream-colored galleries and shops beneath; you do not notice the great tall church at one side of brick and stone most perfectly time-reconciled, or the houses, or the crazed paving, or the innocent little groups of cabs--you only see cracow holding out her arms to you, and you may lean down your head and weep from pure instinctive sympathy. suddenly a choir of trumpets breaks out into a chorale from the big church tower; the melancholy of it i shall never forget--the very melody seemed so old and tired, so worn and sweet and patient, like cracow. those trumpet notes have mourned in that tower for hundreds of years. it is the hymn of timeless sorrow that they play, and the key to which they are attuned in cracow's long despair. hush! that is her voice, the old town's voice, high and sad--she is speaking to you. dear cracow! never again it seems to me, shall i come so near to the deathless hidden sentiment of poland as in those first moments. it would be no use to tell her to take heart, that there may be brighter days coming, and so forth. lemberg may feel so, lemberg that has the feelings of any other big new town, the strength and the determination; but cracow's day was in the long ago, as a gay capital, a brilliant university town full of princes, of daring, of culture, of wit. she has outlived her day, and can only mourn over what has been and the times that she has seen; she may be always proud of her character, of the brave blood that has made scarlet her streets, but she can never be happy remodeled as an austrian garrison town, and in the new poland--the poland whose foundation stones are laid in the hearts of her people, and that may yet be built some day--in that new poland there will be no place for aristocratic, high-bred cracow. during my stay in the beautiful butter-colored palace that is now a hotel, i went round the museums, galleries, and universities, most if not all of which are free to the public. it would be unfair to give the idea that cracow has completely fallen to decay. this is not the case. austria has erected some very handsome buildings; and a town with such fine pictures, good museums, and two universities, can not be complained of as moribund. at the same time, i can only record faithfully my impression, and that was that everything new, everything modern, was hopelessly out of tone in cracow; progress, which, tho' desirable, may be a vulgar thing, would not suit her, and does not seem at home in her streets. about the florian's thor, with its round towers of old, sorrel-colored brick, and the czartoryski museum, there is nothing to say that the guide-book would not say better. in the museum, a tattered polish flag of red silk, with the white eagle, a cheerful bird with curled tail, opened mouth, chirping defiantly to the left, imprest me, and a portrait of szopen (chopin) in fine profile when laid out dead. for amusement, there was a paul potter bull beside a paul potter willow, delightfully unconscious of a coming paul potter thunderstorm, and a miniature of shakespeare which did not resemble any of the portraits of him that i am familiar with. any amount of turkish trappings and reminiscences of potocki and kosciuszko, of course. as i had no guide-book, i am quite prepared to learn that i overlooked the most important relics. in the cathedral, away up on the hill of wawel, above the river vistula (wisla) i prowled about among the crypts with a curious specimen of beadledom who ran off long unintelligible histories in atrocious viennese patois about every solemn tomb by which we stood. so far as i was concerned it might just as well have been the functionary who herds small droves of visitors in westminster abbey. i never listen to these people, because (i) i do not care to be informed; and (ii) since i should never remember what they said, it is useless my even letting it in at one ear. the kindly, cobwebby old person who piloted me among those wonderful kings' graves in cracow was personally not uninteresting, indeed a fine study, and his rigmaroles brought up infallibly upon three words which i could not fail to notice: these were "silberner sarg vergoldet" (silver coffin, gilded). it had an odd fascination for me this phrase, as i stood always waiting for it; why, i wondered, should anybody want to gild a good solid silver coffin? at the time of my first visit, the excavation necessary to form the crypt for the resting-place of mickiewicz[ ] was in progress, and i went in among the limey, dusty workmen, with their tallow candles, and looked round. in return for my gulden, the beadle gave me a few immortelles from sobieski's tomb, and some laurel leaves from kosciuszko's; and remembering friends at home of refinedly ghoulish tastes, i determined to preserve those poor moldering fragments for them. most of my days and evenings i spent wandering by the vistula and in and out of the hundred churches. my plan was to sight a spire, and then walk to the root of it, so to speak. in this manner i saw the town very well. the houses were of brick and plaster, the rich carmine-red brick that has made cracow so beautiful. on each was a beautiful façade, and pediments in renaissance, bas-relief work of cupids, and classic figures with ribands and roses tying among them, seeming to speak, somehow, of the dead princes and the mighty aristocracy which had cost cracow so dear. in the jews' quarter that loud lifelong market of theirs was going forward, which required seemingly only some small basinfuls of sour gurken and a few spoonfuls of beans of its stock-in-trade. mingling among the jews were the peasants, of course; the men in tightly fitting trousers of white blanket cloth, rich embroidered on the upper part and down the seams in blue and red; the women wearing pink printed muslin skirts, often with a pale blue muslin apron and a lemon-colored fine wool cloth, spotted in pink, upon the head. they manifested a great appreciation of color, but none of form, and after the free dress of the hucal women, these people, mummied in their red tartan shawls--all hybrid stewarts, they seemed to me--were merely bright bundles in the sunshine. in the shops in cracow, french was nearly always the language of attack, and a good deal was spoken in the hotel. i had occasion to buy a great many things, but, according to my custom, not a photograph was among them; therefore, when i go back, i shall receive perfectly new and fresh impressions of the place, and can cherish no vague memories, encouraged by an album at home, in which the nameless cathedrals of many countries confuse themselves, and only the coliseum at rome stands forth, not to be contradicted or misnamed. but it became necessary to put a period to my wandering, unless i wished to find myself stranded in vienna with "neither cross nor pile." the references to money-matters have been designedly slight throughout these pages. it is not my habit to keep accounts. i have never found that you get any money back by knowing just how you have spent it, and a conscience-pricking record of expenses is very ungrateful reading. so, when a certain beautiful evening came, i felt that i had to look upon it as my last. being too early for the train, i bid the man drive about in the early summer dark for three-quarters of an hour. to such as do not care for precise information and statistics in foreign places, but appreciate rather atmosphere and impression, i can recommend this course. in and out among the pretty garden woods, outside the town, we drove. buildings loomed majestically out of the night; sometimes it was the tower of an unknown church, sometimes it was the house of some forgotten family that sprang suggestively to the eye, and i was grateful that i was left to suppose the indefinite type of austrian bureau, which occupied, in all probability, the first floor. then we came to the river, and later, wawel stood massed out black upon the blue, the glorious gravestone of a fallen power. all the stars were shining, and little red-yellow lights in the castle windows were not much bigger. above the whisper of the willows on its bank came the deep, quiet murmur of the vistula, and every now and then, over the several towers of the solemn old palaces and the spires of the church where poland has laid her kings, and so recently the king of the poets, the stars were dropping from their places, like sudden spiders, letting themselves down into the vast by faint yellow threads that showed a moment after the star itself was gone. later, as i looked from the open gallery of the train that was taking me away, i could not help thinking that, just a hundred years ago, wawel's star was shining with a light bright enough for all europe to see; but even as the stars fell that night and left their places empty, so wawel's star has fallen and poland's star has fallen too. on the road to prague[ ] by bayard taylor i was pleasantly disappointed on entering bohemia. instead of a dull, uninteresting country, as i expected, it is a land full of the most lovely scenery. there is everything which can gratify the eye--high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins. the very name of bohemia is associated with wild and wonderful legends of the rude barbaric ages. even the chivalric tales of the feudal times of germany grow tame beside these earlier and darker histories. the fallen fortresses of the rhine or the robber-castles of the odenwald had not for me so exciting an interest as the shapeless ruins cumbering these lonely mountains. the civilized saxon race was left behind; i saw around me the features and heard the language of one of those rude slavonic tribes whose original home was on the vast steppes of central asia. i have rarely enjoyed traveling more than our first two days' journey toward prague. the range of the erzgebirge ran along on our right; the snow still lay in patches upon it, but the valleys between, with their little clusters of white cottages, were green and beautiful. about six miles before reaching teplitz we passed kulm, the great battlefield which in a measure decided the fate of napoleon. he sent vandamme with forty thousand men to attack the allies before they could unite their forces, and thus effect their complete destruction. only the almost despairing bravery of the russian guards under ostermann, who held him in check till the allied troops united, prevented napoleon's design. at the junction of the roads, where the fighting was hottest, the austrians have erected a monument to one of their generals. not far from it is that of prussia, simple and tasteful. a woody hill near, with the little village of kulm at its foot, was the station occupied by vandamme at the commencement of the battle. there is now a beautiful chapel on its summit which can be seen far and wide. a little distance farther the czar of russia has erected a third monument, to the memory of the russians who fell. four lions rest on the base of the pedestal, and on the top of the shaft, forty-five feet high, victory is represented as engraving the date, "aug. , ," on a shield. the dark pine-covered mountains on the right overlook the whole field and the valley of torlitz; napoleon rode along their crests several days after the battle to witness the scene of his defeat. teplitz lies in a lovely valley, several miles wide, bounded by the bohemian mountains on one side and the erzgebirge on the other. one straggling peak near is crowned with a picturesque ruin, at whose foot the spacious bath-buildings lie half hidden in foliage. as we went down the principal street i noticed nearly every house was a hotel; we learned afterward that in summer the usual average of visitors is five thousand.[ ] the waters resemble those of the celebrated carlsbad; they are warm and practically efficacious in rheumatism and diseases of like character. after leaving teplitz the road turned to the east, toward a lofty mountain which we had seen the morning before. the peasants, as they passed by, saluted us with "christ greet you!" we stopt for the night at the foot of the peak called the milleschauer, and must have ascended nearly two thousand feet, for we had a wide view the next morning, altho' the mists and clouds hid the half of it. the weather being so unfavorable, we concluded not to ascend, and descended through green fields and orchards snowy with blossoms to lobositz, on the elbe. here we reached the plains again, where everything wore the luxuriance of summer; it was a pleasant change from the dark and rough scenery we left. the road passed through theresienstadt, the fortress of northern bohemia. the little city is surrounded by a double wall and moat which can be filled with water, rendering it almost impossible to be taken. in the morning we were ferried over the moldau, and after journeying nearly all day across barren, elevated plains saw, late in the afternoon, the sixty-seven spires of prague below. i feel out of the world in this strange, fantastic, yet beautiful, old city. we have been rambling all morning through its winding streets, stopping sometimes at a church to see the dusty tombs and shrines or to hear the fine music which accompanies the morning mass. i have seen no city yet that so forcibly reminds one of the past and makes him forget everything but the associates connected with the scenes around him. the language adds to the illusion. three-fourths of the people in the streets speak bohemian and many of the signs are written in the same tongue. the palace of the bohemian kings still looks down on the city from the western heights, and their tombs stand in the cathedral of st. john. when one has climbed up the stone steps leading to the fortress, there is a glorious prospect before him. prague with its spires and towers lies in the valleys below, through which curves the moldau with its green islands, disappearing among the hills which enclose the city on every side. the fantastic byzantine architecture of many of the churches and towers gives the city a peculiar oriental appearance; it seems to have been transported from the hills of syria.... having found out first a few of the locations, we haunted our way with difficulty through its labyrinths, seeking out every place of note or interest. reaching the bridge at last, we concluded to cross over and ascend to the hradschin, the palace of the bohemian kings. the bridge was commenced in , and was one hundred and fifty years in building. that was the way the old germans did their work, and they made a structure which will last a thousand years longer. every pier is surmounted with groups of saints and martyrs, all so worn and timebeaten that there is little left of their beauty, if they ever had any. the most important of them--at least to bohemians--is that of st. john nepomuk, now considered as the patron-saint of the land. he was a priest many centuries ago [ - ] whom one of the kings threw from the bridge into the moldau because he refused to reveal to him what the queen confest. the legend says the body swam for some time on the river with five stars around its head. ascending the broad flight of steps to the hradschin, i paused a moment to look at the scene below. a slight blue haze hung over the clustering towers, and the city looked dim through it, like a city seen in a dream. it was well that it should so appear, for not less dim and misty are the memories that haunt its walls. there was no need of a magician's wand to bid that light cloud shadow forth the forms of other times. they came uncalled for even by fancy. far, far back in the past i saw the warrior-princess who founded the kingly city--the renowned libussa, whose prowess and talent inspired the women of bohemia to rise at her death and storm the land that their sex might rule where it obeyed before. on the mountain opposite once stood the palace of the bloody wlaska, who reigned with her amazon band for seven years over half bohemia. those streets below had echoed with the fiery words of huss, and the castle of his follower--the blind ziska, who met and defeated the armies of the german empire--molders on the mountains above. many a year of war and tempest has passed over the scene. the hills around have borne the armies of wallenstein and frederick the great; the war-cry of bavaria, sweden and poland has echoed in the valley, and the red glare of the midnight cannon or the flames of burning palaces have often gleamed along the "blood-dyed waters" of the moldau... on the way down again we stept into the st. nicholas church, which was built by the jesuits. the interior has a rich effect, being all of brown and gold. the massive pillars are made to resemble reddish-brown marble, with gilded capitals, and the statues at the base are profusely ornamented in the same style. the music chained me there a long time. there was a grand organ, assisted by a full orchestra and large choir of singers. it was placed above, and at every sound of the priest's bell the flourish of trumpets and deep roll of the drums filled the dome with a burst of quivering sound, while the giant pipes of the organ breathed out their full harmony and the very air shook under the peal. it was like a triumphal strain. the soul became filled with thoughts of power and glory; every sense was changed into one dim, indistinct emotion of rapture which held the spirit as if spellbound. not far from this place is the palace of wallenstein, in the same condition as when he inhabited it. it is a plain, large building having beautiful gardens attached to it, which are open to the public. we went through the courtyard, threaded a passage with a roof of rough stalactitic rock and entered the garden, where a revolving fountain was casting up its glittering arches. the cave of adelsberg[ ] by george stillman hillard the night had been passed at adelsberg, and the morning had been agreeably occupied in exploring the wonders of its celebrated cavern. the entrance is through an opening in the side of a hill. in a few moments, after walking down a gentle descent, a sound of flowing water is heard, and the light of the torches borne by the guides gleams faintly upon a river which runs through these sunless chasms, and revisits the glimpses of day at planina, some ten miles distant. the visitor now finds himself in a vast hall, walled and roofed by impenetrable darkness of the stream, which is crossed by a wooden bridge; and the ascent on the other side is made by a similar flight of steps. the bridge and steps are marked by a double row of lights, which present a most striking appearance as their tremulous luster struggles through the night that broods over them. such a scene recalls milton's sublime pictures of pandemonium, and shows directly to the eye what effects a great imaginative painter may produce with no other colors than light and darkness. here are the "stately height," the "ample spaces," the "arched roof," the rows of "starry lamps and blazing cressets" of satan's hall of council; and by the excited fancy the dim distance is easily peopled with gigantic forms and filled with the "rushing of congregated wings." after this, one is led through a variety of chambers, differing in size and form, but essentially similar in character, and the attention is invited to the innumerable multitude of striking and fantastic objects which have been formed in the lapse of ages, by the mere dropping of water. pendants hang from the roof, stalagmites grow from the floor like petrified stumps, and pillars and buttresses are disposed as oddly as in the architecture of a dream. here, we are told to admire a bell, and there, a throne; here, a pulpit, and there, a butcher's shop; here, "the two hearts," and there, a fountain frozen into alabaster; and in every case we assent to the resemblance in the unquestioning mood of polonius. one of the chambers, or halls, is used every year as a ball-room, for which purpose it has every requisite except an elastic floor, even to a natural dais for the orchestra. here, with the sort of pride with which a book collector shows a mazarin bible or a folio shakespeare, the guides point out a beautiful piece of limestone which hangs from the roof in folds as delicate as a cashmere shawl, to which the resemblance is made more exact by a well-defined border of deeper color than the web. through this translucent curtain the light shines as through a picture in porcelain, and one must be very unimpressible not to bestow the tribute of admiration which is claimed. these are the trivial details which may be remembered and described, but the general effect produced by the darkness, the silence, the vast spaces, the innumerable forms, the vaulted roofs, the pillars and galleries melting away in the gloom like the long-drawn aisles of a cathedral, may be recalled but not communicated. to see all these marvels requires much time, and i remained under ground long enough to have a new sense of the blessing of light. the first glimpse of returning day seen through the distant entrance brought with it an exhilarating sense of release, and the blue sky and cheerful sunshine were welcomed like the faces of long absent friends. a cave like that of adelsberg--for all limestone caves are, doubtless, essentially similar in character--ought by all means to be seen if it comes in one's way, because it leaves impressions upon the mind unlike those derived from any other object. nature stamps upon most of her operations a certain character of gravity and majesty. order and symmetry attend upon her steps, and unity in variety is the law by which her movements are guided. but, beneath the surface of the earth, she seems a frolicsome child, or a sportive undine, who wreaths the unmanageable stone into weird and quaint forms, seemingly from no other motive than pure delight in the exercise of overflowing power. everything is playful, airy, and fantastic; there is no spirit of soberness; no reference to any ulterior end; nothing from which food, fuel, or raiment can be extracted. these chasms have been scooped out, and these pillars have been reared, in the spirit in which the bird sings, or the kitten plays with the falling leaves. from such scenes we may safely infer that the plan of the creator comprehends something more than material utility, that beauty is its own vindictator and interpreter, that sawmills were not the ultimate cause of mountain streams, nor wine-bottles of cork-trees. the monastery of mÖlk[ ] by thomas frognall dibdin we had determined upon dining at mölk the next day. the early morning was somewhat inauspicious; but as the day advanced, it grew bright and cheerful. some delightful glimpses of the danube, to the left, from the more elevated parts of the road, accompanied us the whole way, till we caught the first view, beneath a bright blue sky, of the towering church and monastery of mölk. conceive what you please, and yet you shall not conceive the situation of this monastery. less elevated above the road than chremsminster, but of a more commanding style of architecture, and of considerably greater extent, it strikes you--as the danube winds round and washes its rocky base--as one of the noblest edifices in the world. the wooded heights of the opposite side of the danube crown the view of this magnificent edifice, in a manner hardly to be surpassed. there is also a beautiful play of architectural lines and ornament in the front of the building, indicative of a pure italian taste, and giving to the edifice, if not the air of towering grandeur, at least of dignified splendor.... as usual, i ordered a late dinner, intending to pay my respects to the principal, and obtain permission to inspect the library. my late monastic visits had inspired me with confidence; and i marched up the steep sides of the hill, upon which the monastery is built, quite assured of the success of the visit i was about to pay. you must now accompany the bibliographer to the monastery. in five minutes from entering the outer gate of the first quadrangle--looking toward vienna, and which is the more ancient part of the building--i was in conversation with the vice-principal and librarian, each of us speaking latin. i delivered the letter which i had received at salzburg, and proceeded to the library. the view from this library is really enchanting, and put everything seen from a similar situation at landshut and almost even at chremsminster, out of my recollection. you look down upon the danube, catching a fine sweep of the river, as it widens in its course toward vienna. a man might sit, read, and gaze--in such a situation--till he fancied he had scarcely one earthly want! i now descended a small staircase, which brought me directly into the large library--forming the right wing of the building, looking up the danube toward lintz. i had scarcely uttered three notes of admiration, when the abbé strattman entered; and to my surprise and satisfaction, addrest me by name. we immediately commenced an ardent unintermitting conversation in the french language, which the abbé speaks fluently and correctly. i now took a leisurely survey of the library; which is, beyond all doubt, the finest room of its kind which i have seen upon the continent--not for its size, but for its style of architecture, and the materials of which it is composed. i was told that it was "the imperial library in miniature,"--but with this difference, let me here add, in favor of mölk--that it looks over a magnificently wooded country, with the danube rolling its rapid course at its base. the wainscot and shelves are walnut tree, of different shades, inlaid, or dovetailed, surmounted by gilt ornaments. the pilasters have corinthian capitals of gilt; and the bolder or projecting parts of a gallery, which surrounds the room, are covered with the same metal. everything is in harmony. this library may be about a hundred feet in length, by forty in width. it is sufficiently well furnished with books, of the ordinary useful class, and was once, i suspect, much richer in the bibliographical lore of the fifteenth century. on reaching the last descending step, just before entering the church, the vice-principal bade me look upward and view the corkscrew staircase. i did so; and to view and admire was one and the same operation of the mind. it was the most perfect and extraordinary thing of the kind which i had ever seen--the consummation, as i was told, of that particular species of art. the church is the very perfection of ecclesiastical roman architecture; that of chremsminster, altho' fine, being much inferior to it in loftiness and richness of decoration. the windows are fixt so as to throw their concentrated light beneath a dome, of no ordinary height, and of no ordinary elegance of decoration; but this dome is suffering from damp, and the paintings upon the ceiling will, unless repaired, be effaced in the course of a few years. the church is in the shape of a cross; and at the end of each of the transepts, is a rich altar, with statuary, in the style of art usual about a century ago. the pews--made of dark mahogany or walnut tree, much after the english fashion, but lower and more tasteful--are placed on each side of the nave, or entering; with ample space between them. they are exclusively appropriated to the tenants of the monastery. at the end of the nave, you look to the left, opposite--and observe, placed in a recess--a pulpit, which, from top to bottom, is completely covered with gold. and yet, there is nothing gaudy or tasteless, or glaringly obtrusive, in this extraordinary clerical rostrum. the whole is in the most perfect taste; and perhaps more judgment was required to manage such an ornament, or appendage--consistently with the splendid style of decoration exacted by the founder, for it was expressly the prelate dietmayr's wish that it should be so adorned,--than may on first consideration be supposed. in fact, the whole church is in a blaze of gold; and i was told that the gilding alone cost upward of ninety thousand florins. upon the whole, i understood that the church of this monastery was considered as the most beautiful in austria; and i can easily believe it to be so. through the tyrol[ ] by william cullen bryant i left this most pleasing of the italian cities (venice), and took the road for the tyrol. we passed through a level fertile country, formerly the territory of venice, watered by the piave, which ran blood in one of bonaparte's battles. at evening we arrived at ceneda, where our italian poet da ponte[ ] was born, situated just at the base of the alps, the rocky peaks and irregular spires of which, beautifully green with the showery season, rose in the background. ceneda seems to have something of german cleanliness about it, and the floors of a very comfortable inn at which we stopt were of wood, the first we had seen in italy, tho' common throughout tyrol and the rest of germany. a troop of barelegged boys, just broke loose from school, whooping and swinging their books and slates in the air, passed under my window. on leaving ceneda, we entered a pass in the mountains, the gorge of which was occupied by the ancient town of serravalle, resting on arcades, the architecture of which denoted that it was built during the middle ages. near it i remarked an old castle, which formerly commanded the pass, one of the finest ruins of the kind i had ever seen. it had a considerable extent of battlemented wall in perfect preservation, and both that and its circular tower were so luxuriantly loaded with ivy that they seemed almost to have been cut out of the living verdure. as we proceeded we became aware how worthy this region was to be the birthplace of a poet. a rapid stream, a branch of the piave, tinged of a light and somewhat turbid blue by the soil of the mountains, came tumbling and roaring down the narrow valley; perpendicular precipices rose on each side; and beyond, the gigantic brotherhood of the alps, in two long files of steep pointed summits, divided by deep ravines, stretched away in the sunshine to the northeast. in the face of one of the precipices by the way-side, a marble slab is fixt, informing the traveler that the road was opened by the late emperor of germany in the year of . we followed this romantic valley for a considerable distance, passing several little blue lakes lying in their granite basins, one of which is called the "lago morto" or dead lake, from having no outlet for its waters. at length we began to ascend, by a winding road, the steep sides of the alps--the prospect enlarging as we went, the mountain summits rising to sight around us, one behind another, some of them white with snow, over which the wind blew with a wintry keenness--deep valleys opening below us, and gulfs yawning between rocks over which old bridges were thrown--and solemn fir forests clothing the broad declivities. the farm-houses placed on these heights, instead of being of brick or stone, as in the plains and valleys below, were principally built of wood; the second story, which served for a barn, being encircled by a long gallery, and covered with a projecting roof of plank held down with large stones. we stopt at venas, a wretched place with a wretched inn, the hostess of which showed us a chin swollen with the goitre, and ushered us into dirty comfortless rooms where we passed the night. when we awoke the rain was beating against the windows, and, on looking out, the forest and sides of the neighboring mountains, at a little height above us, appeared hoary with snow. we set out in the rain, but had not proceeded far before we heard the sleet striking against the windows of the carriage, and soon came to where the snow covered the ground to the depth of one or two inches. continuing to ascend, we passed out of italy and entered the tyrol. the storm had ceased before we went through the first tyrolese village, and we could not help being struck with the change in the appearance of the inhabitants--the different costume, the less erect figures, the awkward gait, the lighter complexions, the neatly-kept inhabitations, and the absence of beggars. as we advanced, the clouds began to roll off from the landscape, disclosing here and there, through openings in their broad skirts as they swept along, glimpses of the profound valleys below us, and of the white sides and summits of mountains in the mid-sky above. at length the sun appeared, and revealed a prospect of such wildness, grandeur, and splendor as i have never before seen. lofty peaks of the most fantastic shapes, with deep clefts between, sharp needles of rock, and overhanging crags, infinite in multitude, shot up everywhere around us, glistening in the new-fallen snow, with thin wreaths of mist creeping along their sides. at intervals, swollen torrents, looking at a distance like long trains of foam, came thundering down the mountains, and crossing the road, plunged into the verdant valleys which winded beneath. beside the highway were fields of young grain, prest to the ground with the snow; and in the meadows, ranunculuses of the size of roses, large yellow violets, and a thousand other alpine flowers of the most brilliant hues, were peeping through their white covering. we stopt to breakfast at a place called landro, a solitary inn, in the midst of this grand scenery, with a little chapel beside it. the water from the dissolving snow was dropping merrily from the roof in a bright june sun. we needed not to be told that we were in germany, for we saw it plainly enough in the nicely-washed floor of the apartment into which we were shown, in the neat cupboard with the old prayer-book lying upon it, and in the general appearance of housewifery; to say nothing of the evidence we had in the beer and tobacco-smoke of the travelers' room, and the guttural dialect and quiet tones of the guests. from landro we descended gradually into the beautiful valleys of the tyrol, leaving the snow behind, tho' the white peaks of the mountains were continually in sight. at bruneck, in an inn resplendent with neatness--we had the first specimen of a german bed. it is narrow and short, and made so high at the head, by a number of huge square bolsters and pillows, that you rather sit than lie. the principal covering is a bag of down, very properly denominated the upper bed, and between this and the feather-bed below, the traveler is expected to pass a night. an asthmatic patient on a cold winter night might perhaps find such a couch tolerably comfortable, if he could prevent the narrow covering from slipping off on one side or the other. the next day we were afforded an opportunity of observing more closely the inhabitants of this singular region, by a festival, or holiday of some sort, which brought them into the roads in great numbers, arrayed in their best dresses--the men in short jackets and small-clothes, with broad gay-colored suspenders over their waistcoats, and leathern belts ornamented with gold or silver leaf--the women in short petticoats composed of horizontal bands of different colors--and both sexes, for the most part, wearing broad-brimmed hats with hemispherical crowns, tho' there was a sugar-loaf variety much affected by the men, adorned with a band of lace and sometimes a knot of flowers. they are a robust, healthy-looking race, tho' they have an awkward stoop in the shoulders. but what struck me most forcibly was the devotional habits of the people. the tyrolese might be cited as an illustration of the remark, that mountaineers are more habitually and profoundly religious than others. persons of all sexes, young and old, whom we meet in the road, were repeating their prayers audibly. we passed a troop of old women, all in broad-brimmed hats and short gray petticoats, carrying long staves, one of whom held a bead-roll and gave out the prayers, to which the others made the responses in chorus. they looked at us so solemnly from under their broad brims, and marched along with so grave and deliberate a pace, that i could hardly help fancying that the wicked austrians had caught a dozen elders of the respectable society of friends, and put them in petticoats to punish them for their heresy. we afterward saw persons going to the labors of the day, or returning, telling their rosaries and saying their prayers as they went, as if their devotions had been their favorite amusement. at regular intervals of about half a mile, we saw wooden crucifixes erected by the way-side, covered from the weather with little sheds, bearing the image of the savior, crowned with thorns and frightfully dashed with streaks and drops of red paint, to represent the blood that flowed from his wounds. the outer walls of the better kind of houses were ornamented with paintings in fresco, and the subjects of these were mostly sacred, such as the virgin and child, the crucifixion, and the ascension. the number of houses of worship was surprising; i do not mean spacious or stately churches such as we meet with in italy, but most commonly little chapels dispersed so as best to accommodate the population. of these the smallest neighborhood has one for the morning devotions of its inhabitants, and even the solitary inn has its little consecrated building with its miniature spire, for the convenience of pious wayfarers. at sterzing, a little village beautifully situated at the base of the mountain called the brenner, and containing, as i should judge, not more than two or three thousand inhabitants, we counted seven churches and chapels within the compass of a square mile. the observances of the roman catholic church are nowhere more rigidly complied with than in the tyrol. when we stopt at bruneck on friday evening, i happened to drop a word about a little meat for dinner in a conversation with the spruce-looking landlady, who appeared so shocked that i gave up the point, on the promise of some excellent and remarkably well-flavored trout from the stream that flowed through the village--a promise that was literally fulfilled.... we descended the brenner on the th of june in a snow-storm, the wind whirling the light flakes in the air as it does with us in winter. it changed to rain, however, as we approached the beautiful and picturesque valley watered by the river inn, on the banks of which stands the fine old town of innsbruck, the capital of the tyrol. here we visited the church of the holy cross, in which is the bronze tomb of maxmilian i. and twenty or thirty bronze statues ranged on each side of the nave, representing fierce warrior-chiefs, and gowned prelates, and stately damsels of the middle ages. these are all curious for the costume; the warriors are cased in various kinds of ancient armor, and brandish various ancient weapons, and the robes of the females are flowing and by no means ungraceful. almost every one of the statues has its hands and fingers in some constrained and awkward position; as if the artist knew as little what to do with them as some awkward and bashful people know what to do with their own. such a crowd of figures in that ancient garb, occupying the floor in the midst of the living worshipers of the present day, has an effect which at first is startling. from innsbruck we climbed and crossed another mountain-ridge, scarcely less wild and majestic in its scenery than those we had left behind. on descending, we observed that the crucifixes had disappeared from the roads, and the broad-brimmed and sugar-loaf hats from the heads of the peasantry; the men wore hats contracted in the middle of the crown like an hour-glass, and the women caps edged with a broad band of black fur, the frescoes on the outside of the houses became less frequent; in short it was apparent that we had entered a different region, even if the custom-house and police officers on the frontier had not signified to us that we were now in the kingdom of bavaria. we passed through extensive forests of fir, here and there checkered with farms, and finally came to the broad elevated plain bathed by the isar, in which munich is situated. in the dolomites[ ] by archibald campbell knowles the dolomites are part of the southern tyrol. one portion is italian, one portion is austrian, and the rivalry of the two nations is keen. under a warm summer sun, the quaint little villages seem half asleep, and the inhabitants appear to drift dreamily through life. yet this is more apparent than real for, in many respects, the people here are busy in their own way. crossing this region are many mountain ranges of limestone structure, which by water, weather and other causes have been worn away into the most fantastic fissures and clefts and the most picturesque peaks and pinnacles. a very great charm is their curious coloring, often of great beauty. the region of the dolomites is a great contrast to the rest of the alps. its characteristics do not make the same appeal to all. this is largely not only a matter of individual taste and temperament but also of one's mental or spiritual constitution, for the picture with its setting depends as much upon what it suggests as upon its constituent parts. the dolomites suggest italy in the contour of the country, in the grace of the inhabitants and in the colors which make the scene one of rich magnificence. the great artist titian was born here[ ] and he probably learned much from his observation of his native place. many of the mountain ranges are of the usual gray but such is the atmospheric condition that they seem to reflect the rosy rays of the setting sun or the purplish haze that often is found. the peaks are not great peaks in the sense that we speak of mont blanc, the jungfrau, the matterhorn or monte rosa. they impress one more as pictures with wonderful lights and strange grouping.... if the reader intends some day to visit the dolomites he is advised to enter from the north. salzburg and the salzkammergut, so much frequented by the emperor francis joseph and the austrian nobility, make a good introduction. then by way of innsbruck, one of the gems of the tyrol, toblach is reached, where the driving tour may properly begin. toblach is a lovely place, if one stops long enough to see it and enjoy it! it is not very far to cortina, the center of this beautiful region. the way there is very lovely. and driving is in keeping with the spirit of the place. it almost seems profane to rush through in a motor, as some do, for not only is it impossible to appreciate the scenery, but also it is out of harmony with the peace and quiet which reign. for a while there is traversed a little valley quite embowered in green, but presently this abruptly leads into a wild gorge, with jagged peaks on every side. soon monte cristallo appears. this is the most striking of all the dolomite peaks. at a tiny village, called schluderbach, the road forks, that to the right going directly to cortina, the other to the left proceeding by way of lake misurina. lake misurina is a pretty stretch of water, pale green in color and at an altitude of about , feet. on its shores are two very attractive and well-kept hotels, with charming walks, from which one looks on a splendid panorama, picturesque in extreme. from misurina, the road again ascends, becoming very narrow and very steep. the top is called "passo tre croci," the pass of the three crosses. the outlook is very lovely, with the three serrated peaks monte cristallo, monte piano and monte tofana, standing as guardian sentinels over the little valley of ampezzo far below, where lies cortina sleeping in the sun, while in the distance shine the snow fields of the marmolata. just as steeply as it climbed up one side, the road descends on the other side, to cortina. this place is the capital of the valley and altogether lovely; beautiful in its woods and meadows, beautiful in its mountain views, beautiful in the town itself and beautiful in its people. cortina has much to boast of--an ancient church and some old houses; an industrial school in which the villagers are taught the most delicate and artistic (and withal comparatively cheap) filigree mosaic work; and a community of people, handsome in face and figure and possessing a carriage and refinement superior to any seen elsewhere among the mountaineers or peasantry. in the neighborhood of cortina are many excursions and also extended rock climbs, but those who go there in the summer will be more apt to linger lazily amid the cool shade of the trees than to brave the hot italian sun on the peaks! after a few days' stay at cortina, the drive is continued. there are many ways out. you can return by a new route to toblach and the upper tyrol. or you can go south to belluno and thence to northern italy. or a third way and perhaps the finest tour of all is that over a series of magnificent mountain passes to botzen. this last crosses the ampezzo valley and then begins the ascent of monte tofana, which here is beautifully wooded. steepness seems characteristic of this region! it is hard to imagine a carriage climbing a road any steeper than that one on the slopes of monte tofana! if narrow and steep is the way and hard and toilsome the climb this monte tofana route most certainly repays one when it reaches the falzarego pass ( , feet high) which is certainly an earthly paradise! one can not aptly describe a view like that! it is all a picture; as if every part was purposely what it is, here rocky, here green, here snowy, with summits, valleys, ravines and villages and even a partly ruined castle to form a whole such as an artist or poet would revel in. after a pause on the summit of the pass, again comes a steep descent, as the drive is resumed, which continues to andraz, where déjeuner is taken. one can not live on air or scenery and even the most indefatigable sightseer sometimes turns with longing to luncheon! then one returns with added zest to the feast of eye and soul. and at andraz, as one lingers awhile after luncheon on that high mountain terrace, a lovelier scene than that spread before the eye could scarcely be imagined. indeed it is a "dream-scene," and as seen in the sleepy stillness of the early afternoon, when the shadows are already playing with the lights and gradually overcoming them, it seems like fancy, not reality. again the carriage is taken and soon the road is climbing once more, this time giving fine views of the sella group of peaks and going through a series of picturesque valleys. at arabba ( , feet), a pretty little village, the final ascent to pordoi begins. the scenery undergoes a change. it becomes more wild and barren and the characteristics of the high alps appear. the hour begins to be late and it becomes cold, but the light still lingers as the carriage reaches the summit of the pass and stops at the new hôtel pordoi ( , feet high) facing the weird, fantastic shapes of the rosengarten and the langkofel, on the one side and on the other the snowy marmolata and the summits about cortina.... the following morning the start is made for botzen. the way steadily descends for hours, past the pretty hamlets of canazei, campitello and vigo di fassa, surrounded by an imposing array of dolomite peaks. after crossing the karer pass the scenery becomes much more soft and pastoral. below the pass, most beautifully situated is a little green lake called the karer-see.... at botzen the drive through the dolomites ends. at best it gives but a glimpse of this delightful region! that glimpse leaves a lasting impression, not of snowy summits and glistening glaciers, but of wonderful rocks and more wonderful coloring and of great peaks of fantastic form, set in a garden spot of green. and botzen is a fitting terminus. it dates far back to the middle ages. it boasts of churches, houses and public buildings of artistic merit and architectural beauty and over all there lingers an atmosphere of rest and refinement, refreshing to see, where there might have been the noisy bustle and hopeless vulgarity of so many places similarly situated. there is plenty going on, nevertheless, for botzen is quite a little commercial center in its own way, but with it there is this charm of dignified repose. one wanders through the town under the cool colonnades, strolls into some ancient cloisters, kneels for a moment in some finely carved church and then goes out again to the open, to see far above the little city that beautiful background of the dolomite peaks, dominated by the wonderfully impressive and fantastic rosengarten range, golden red in the western sun. with such a view experience may well lapse into memory, to linger on so long as the mind possesses the power of recalling the past. cortina[ ] by amelia b. edwards situate on the left bank of the boita, which here runs nearly due north and south, with the tre croci pass opening away behind the town to the east, and the tre sassi pass widening before it to the west, cortina lies in a comparatively open space between four great mountains, and is therefore less liable to danger from bergfalls than any other village not only in the val d'ampezo but in the whole adjacent district. for the same reason, it is cooler in summer than either caprile, agordo, primiero, or predazzo; all of which, tho' more central as stopping places, and in many respects more convenient, are yet somewhat too closely hemmed in by surrounding heights. the climate of cortina is temperate throughout the year. ball gives the village an elevation of , feet above the level of the sea; and one of the parish priests--an intelligent old man who has devoted many years of his life to collecting the flora of the ampezzo--assured me that he had never known the thermometer drop so low as fifteen degrees[ ] of frost in even the coldest winters. the soil, for all this, has a bleak and barren look; the maize (here called "grano turco") is cultivated, but does not flourish; and the vine is unknown. but then agriculture is not a specialty of the ampezzo thal, and the wealth of cortina is derived essentially from its pasture-lands and forests. these last, in consequence of the increased and increasing value of timber, have been lavishly cut down of late years by the commune--too probably at the expense of the future interests of cortina. for the present, however, every inn, homestead, and public building bespeaks prosperity. the inhabitants are well-fed and well-drest. their fairs and festivals are the most considerable in all the south eastern tyrol; their principal church is the largest this side of st. ulrich; and their new gothic campanile, feet high, might suitably adorn the piazza of such cities as bergamo or belluno. the village contains about souls, but the population of the commune numbers over , . of these, the greater part, old and young, rich and poor, men, women, and children, are engaged in the timber trade. some cut the wood; some transport it. the wealthy convey it on trucks drawn by fine horses which, however, are cruelly overworked. the poor harness themselves six or eight in a team, men, women, and boys together, and so, under the burning summer sun, drag loads that look as if they might be too much for an elephant.... to ascend the campanile and get the near view over the village, was obviously one of the first duties of a visitor; so, finding the door open and the old bellringer inside, we mounted laboriously to the top--nearly a hundred feet higher than the leaning tower of pisa. standing here upon the outer gallery above the level of the great bells, we had the village and valley at our feet. the panorama, tho' it included little which we had not seen already, was fine all around, and served to impress the mainland marks upon our memory. the ampezzo thal opened away to north and south, and the twin passes of the tre croci and tre sassi intersected it to east and west. when we had fixt in our minds the fact that landro and bruneck lay out to the north, and perarolo to the south; that auronzo was to be found somewhere on the other side of the tre croci; and that to arrive at caprile it was necessary to go over the tre sassi, we had gained something in the way of definite topography. the marmolata and civetta, as we knew by our maps, were on the side of caprile; and the marmarole on the side of auronzo. the pelmo, left behind yesterday, was peeping even now above the ridge of the rochetta; and a group of fantastic rocks, so like the towers and bastions of a ruined castle that we took them at first sight for the remains of some medieval stronghold, marked the summit of the tre sassi to the west. "but what mountain is that far away to the south?" we asked, pointing in the direction of perarolo. "which mountain, signora?" "that one yonder, like a cathedral front with two towers." the old bellringer shaded his eyes with one trembling hand, and peered down the valley. "eh," he said, "it is some mountain on the italian side." "but what is it called?" "eh," he repeated, with a puzzled look, "who knows? i don't know that i ever noticed it before." now it was a very singular mountain--one of the most singular and the most striking that we saw throughout the tour. it was exactly like the front of notre dame, with one slender aiguille, like a flagstaff, shooting up from the top of one of its battlemented towers. it was conspicuous from most points on the left bank of the boita; but the best view, as i soon after discovered, was from the rising ground behind cortina, going up through the fields in the direction of the begontina torrent. to this spot we returned again and again, fascinated as much, perhaps, by the mystery in which it was enveloped, as by the majestic outline of this unknown mountain, to which, for want of a better, we gave the name of notre dame. for the old bellringer was not alone in his ignorance. ask whom we would, we invariably received the same vague reply--it was a mountain "on the italian side." they knew no more; and some, like our friend of the campanile, had evidently "not noticed it before." ix alpine resorts the call of the mountains[ ] by frederic harrison once more--perhaps for the last time--i listen to the unnumbered tinkling of the cow-bells on the slopes--"the sweet bells of the sauntering herd"--to the music of the cicadas in the sunshine, and the shouts of the neat herdlads, echoing back from alp to alp. i hear the bubbling of the mountain rill, i watch the emerald moss of the pastures gleaming in the light, and now and then the soft white mist creeping along the glen, as our poet says, "puts forth an arm and creeps from pine to pine." and see, the wild flowers, even in this waning season of the year, the delicate lilac of the dear autumn crocus, which seems to start up elf-like out of the lush grass, the coral beads of the rowan, and the beech-trees just begun to wear their autumn jewelry of old gold. as i stroll about these hills, more leisurely, more thoughtfully than i used to do of old in my hot mountaineering days, i have tried to think out what it is that makes the alpine landscape so marvelous a tonic to the spirit--what is the special charm of it to those who have once felt all its inexhaustible magic. other lands have rare beauties, wonders of their own, sights to live in the memory for ever. in france, in italy, in spain, in greece and in turkey, i hold in memory many a superb landscape. from boyhood upward i thirsted for all kinds of nature's gifts, whether by sea, or by river, lake, mountain, or forest. for sixty years at least i have roved about the white cliffs, the moors, the riversides, lakes, and pastures of our own islands from penzance to cape wrath, from beachy head to the shetlands. i love them all. but they can not touch me, as do the alps, with the sense at once of inexhaustible loveliness and of a sort of conscious sympathy with every fiber of man's heart and brain. why then is this so? i find it in the immense range of the moods in which nature is seen in the alps, as least by those who have fully absorbed all the forms, sights, sounds, wonders, and adventures they offer. an hour's walk will show them all in profound contrast and yet in exquisite harmony. the alps form a book of nature as wide and as mysterious as life. earth has no scenes of placid fruitfulness more balmy than the banks of one of the larger lakes, crowded with vineyards, orchards, groves and pastures, down to the edge of its watery mirror, wherein, beside a semi-tropical vegetation, we see the image of some medieval castle, of some historic tower, and thence the eye strays up to sunless gorges, swept with avalanches, and steaming with feathery cascades; and higher yet one sees against the skyline ranges of terrific crags, girt with glaciers, and so often wreathed in storm clouds. all that earth has of most sweet, softest, easiest, most suggestive of langor and love, of fertility and abundance--here is seen in one vision beside all that nature has most hard, most cruel, most unkind to man--where life is one long weary battle with a frost bitten soil, and every peasant's hut has been built up stone by stone, and log by log, with sweat and groans, and wrecked hopes. in a few hours one may pass from an enchanted garden, where every sense is satiated, and every flower and leaf and gleam of light is intoxication, up into a wilderness of difficult crags and yawning glaciers, which men can reach only by hard-earned skill, tough muscle and iron nerves.... the alps are international, european, humanitarian. four written languages are spoken in their valleys, and ten times as many local dialects. the alps are not especially swiss--i used to think they were english--they belong equally to four nations of europe; they are the sanatorium and the diversorium of the civilized world, the refuge, the asylum, the second home of men and women famous throughout the centuries for arts, literature, thought, religion. the poet, the philosopher, the dreamer, the patriot, the exile, the bereaved, the reformer, the prophet, the hero--have all found in the alps a haven of rest, a new home where the wicked cease from troubling, where men need neither fear nor suffer. the happy and the thoughtless, the thinker and the sick--are alike at home here. the patriot exile inscribed on his house on lake leman--"every land is fatherland to the brave man." what he might have written is--"this land is fatherland to all men." to young and old, to strong and weak, to wise and foolish alike, the alps are a second fatherland. interlaken and the jungfrau[ ] b.t. archibald campbell knowles it is hard to find a prettier spot than interlaken. situated between two lovely lakes, surrounded by wooded heights, and lying but a few miles from the snowy jungfrau, it is like a jewel richly set. from lucerne over the brunig, from meiringen over the grimsel come the travelers, passing on their way the lake of brienz, with the waterfall of the giessbach, on its southern side. from berne over lake thun, from the rhône valley over the gemmi or through the simmenthal come the tourists, seeing as they come the white peaks of the oberland. and interlaken welcomes them all, and rests them for their closer relations with the high alps by trips to the region of the lauterbrunnen, grindelwald, and mürren, and the great mountain plateaux looking down upon them. interlaken is not a climbing center. consequently mountaineering is little in evidence, conversation about ascents is seldom heard, and ice-axes, ropes, and nailed boots are seen more often in shop windows than in the streets. interlaken is not like some other swiss towns. berne, geneva, zurich, and lucerne are places possessing notable churches, museums, and monuments of the past, having a social life of their own and being distinguished in some special way, as centers of culture and education. interlaken, however, has little life apart from that made by the throngs of visitors who gather here in the summer. there is little to see except a group of old monastic buildings, and in unterseen and elsewhere some fine old carved chalets, but none of these receives much attention. the attraction, on what one may call the natural side, centers in the softly beautiful panorama of woods and meadows, green hills and snow peaks which opens to the eye, and on the social side in the busy little promenade and park of the höheweg, bordered with hotels, shops, and gardens. here is ever a changing picture in the height of the season, in fact, quite kaleidoscopic as railways and steamboats at each end of interlaken send their passengers to mingle in the passing crowd. all "sorts and conditions of men" are here, and representatives of antagonistic nations meet in friendly intercourse. on the hotel terraces and in the little cafés and tea rooms, one hears a babel of voices, every nation of europe seeming to speak in its own native tongue. life goes easily. there is a gaiety in the little town that is infectious. it is a sort of busy idleness. "to trip or not to trip" is the question. if the affirmative, then a rush to the mountain trains and comfortable cabs. if the negative, then a turning to the shops, where pretty things worthy of paris or london are seen side by side with swiss carvings and swiss embroidery and many little superficial souvenirs. as the contents of the shops are exhibited in the windows, so the character of the visitors is shown by the crowds, and the life of the place is seen in the constant ebb and flow of the people on the höheweg. interlaken is undoubtedly a tourist center, for few trips to switzerland overlook or omit this delightful spot. thousands come here, who never go any nearer the high alps. they are quite content to sit on the benches of the höheweg, listening to the music and enjoying the view. there is a casino, most artistically planned, with plashing fountains, shady paths, and wonderful flowerbeds. here many persons pass the day, and, contrary to what one might expect, it is quiet and restful, lounging in that parklike garden. for, notwithstanding "the madding crowd," interlaken is a little gem of a mountain town, with an undertone of repose and nobility, as if the spirit of the alps asserted herself, reigning, as one might say, for all not ruling. and always smiling at the people, as it were, is the majestic jungfrau, ever seeming close at hand, altho' eight miles away.... the pleasures of this little swiss resort are exhaustless. the wooded hills of the rugen give innumerable walks amid beautiful forests, with all their wealth of pine and larch and hardwood, their moss-clad rocks and waving ferns. in that pleasant shade hours may be passed close to nature. the lakes not only offer delightful water trips, but also charming excursions along the wooded shores, sometimes high above the lakes, giving varying views of great beauty. while, ever as with beckoning fingers, the great peaks, snow-capped or rock-summitted, call one across the verdant meadows into the higher valleys of kienthal, lauterbrunnen, grindelwaid, and kandersteg, to the terraced heights above or up amid the great wild passes. interlaken is, above all, a garden of green. perhaps the unusual amount of rain which falls to the lot of this valley accounts for its verdure. in any event, park, woods, meadow, garden, even the mountain sides are green, a vari-colored green, and interspersed with an abundance of flowers. nowhere is the eye offended by anything inartistic or unpicturesque, but, on the contrary, the charm is so comprehensive that the visitor looks from place to place, from this bit to that bit, and ever sees new beauty. to complete all, to accentuate in the minds of some this impression of green, is the majestic jungfrau. other views may be grander and more magnificent, but no view of the jungfrau can compare in loveliness to that from interlaken. a great white glistening mass, far up above green meadows, green forests, and green mountains, rises this peak, a shining summit of white. fitly named the virgin, the jungfrau gives her benediction to interlaken, serenely smiling at the valley and at the town lying so quietly at her feet--the jungfrau crowned with snow, interlaken drest in green! in the golden glory of the sun, in the silver shimmer of the moon, the jungfrau beckons, the jungfrau calls! "come," she seems to say, "come nearer! come up to the heights! come close to the running waters! come." and that invitation falls on no unwilling ears, but in to the grindelwald and to the lauterbrunnen and up to mürren go those who love the majestic jungfrau! what a wonderful trip this is! it may shatter some ideals in being taken to such a height in a railway train, but even against one's convictions as to the proper way of seeing a mountain, when all has been said, the fact remains that this trip is wonderful beyond words. there is a strangeness in taking a train which leaves a garden of green in the early morning and in a few hours later, after valley and pass and tunnel, puts one out on snow fields over , feet above the sea, where are seen vast stretches of white, almost level with the summit of the jungfrau close at hand, and below, stretching for miles, on the one side the great aletsch glacier, and on the other side the green valleys enclosed by the everlasting hills! the route is by way of lauterbrunnen, wengen, and the scheidegg, and after skirting the eiger glacier going by tunnel into the very bowels of the mountain. at eigerwand, rotstock, and eismeer are stations, great galleries blasted out of the rock, with corridors leading to openings from which one has marvelous views.[ ] eismeer looks directly upon the huge sea of snow and ice, with immense masses of dazzling white so close as to make one reel with awe and astonishment. in fact, this view is really oppressive in its wild magnificence, so near and so grand is it. the jungfraujoch is different. one is out in the open, so to speak; one walks over that vast plateau of snow over , feet high in the glorious sunlight, above most of the nearer peaks and looking down at a beautiful panorama. on one side of this plateau is the jungfrau, on the other the mönch, either of which can be climbed from here in about three hours. yet the eye lingers longer in the direction of the aletsch glacier than anywhere else, this frozen river running for miles and turning to the right at the little green basin of water full of pieces of floating ice, called the marjelen lake, or see, at the foot of the eggishorn, which is unique and lovely. long ago it was formed in this corner of the glacier, and its blue waters are really melted snow, over which float icebergs shining in the sun. in such a position the lake underlaps the glacier for quite a distance, forming a low vaulted cavern in the ice. every now and then one of these little bergs overbalances itself and turns over, the upper side then being a deep blue, and the lower side, which was formerly above, being a pure white. again turning toward the green valleys, one with the eye of an artist, who can perceive and differentiate varying shades of color, can not but admit that the bernese oberland is "par excellence" first. even south of the alps the verdure does not excel or even equal that to be seen here. there is something incomparably lovely about the oberland valleys. it is indescribable, indefinable, for when one has exhausted the most extravagant terms of description, he feels that he has failed to picture the scene as he desired. yet if one word should be chosen to convey the impression which the oberland makes, the word would be "color." for whether one regards the snow summits as setting off the valleys, or the green meadows as setting off the peaks, it matters not, for the secret of their beauty lies in the richness and variety of the exquisite coloring wherein many wonderful shades of green predominate. the altdorf of william tell[ ] by w.d. m'crackan let it be said at once that, altho' the name of altdorf is indissolubly linked with that of william tell, the place arouses an interest which does not at all depend upon its associations with the famous archer. from the very first it gives one the impression of possessing a distinct personality, of ringing, as it were, to a note never heard before, and thus challenging attention to its peculiarities. as you approach altdorf from flüelen, on the lake of lucerne, by the long white road, the first houses you reach are large structures of the conventional village type, plain, but evidently the homes of well-to-do people, and some even adorned with family coats-of-arms. in fact, this street is dedicated to the aristocracy, and formerly went by the name of the herrengasse, the "lane of the lords." beyond these fashionable houses is an open square, upon which faces a cosy inn--named, of course, after william tell; and off on one side the large parish church, built in cheap baroco style, but containing a few objects of interest.... there is a good deal of sight-seeing to be done in altdorf, for so small a place. in the town hall are shown the tattered flags carried by the warriors of uri in the early battles of the confederation, the mace and sword of state which are borne by the beadles to the landsgemeinde. in a somewhat inaccessible corner, a few houses off, the beginnings of a museum have been made. here is another portrait of interest--that of the giant püntener, a mercenary whose valor made him the terror of the enemy in the battle of marignano, in ; so that when he was finally killed, they avenged themselves, according to a writing beneath the picture, by using his fat to smear their weapons, and by feeding their horses with oats from his carcass. just outside the village stands the arsenal, whence, they say, old armor was taken and turned into shovels, when the st. gothard railroad was building, so poor and ignorant were the people. if you are of the sterner sex, you can also penetrate into the capuchin monastery, and enter the gardens, where the terraces that rise behind the buildings are almost italian in appearance, festooned with vines and radiant with roses. not that the fame of this institution rests on such trivial matters, however. the brothers boast of two things: theirs is the oldest branch of the order in switzerland, dating from , and they carry on in it the somewhat unappetizing industry of cultivating snails for the gourmands of foreign countries. above the capuchins is the famous bannwald, mentioned by schiller--a tract of forest on the mountain-slope, in which no one is allowed to fell trees, because it protects the village from avalanches and rolling stones. nothing could be fairer than the outskirts of altdorf on a may morning. the valley of the reuss lies bathed from end to end in a flood of golden light, shining through an atmosphere of crystal purity. daisies, cowslips, and buttercups, the flowers of rural well-being, show through the rising grass of the fields; along the hedges and crumbling walls of the lanes peep timid primroses and violets, and in wilder spots the alpine gentian, intensely blue. high up, upon the mountains, glows the indescribable velvet of the slopes, while, higher still, ragged and vanishing patches of snow proclaim the rapid approach of summer. after all, the best part of altdorf, to make an irish bull, lies outside of the village. no adequate idea of this strange little community can be given without referring to the almend, or village common. indeed, as time goes on, one learns to regard this almend as the complete expression and final summing up of all that is best in altdorf, the reconciliation of all its inconsistencies. how fine that great pasture beside the river reus, with its short, juicy, alpine grass, in sight of the snow-capped bristenstock, at one end of the valley, and of the waters of lake lucerne at the other! in may, the full-grown cattle have already departed for the higher summer pastures, leaving only the feeble young behind, who are to follow as soon as they have grown strong enough to bear the fatigues of the journey. at this time, therefore, the almend becomes a sort of vision of youth--of calves, lambs, and foals, guarded by little boys, all gamboling in the exuberance of early life. lucerne[ ] by victor tissot a height crowned with embattled ramparts that bristle with loop-holed turrets; church towers mingling their graceful spires and peaceful crosses with those warlike edifices; dazzling white villas, planted like tents under curtains of verdure; tall houses with old red skylights on the roofs--this is our first glimpse of the catholic and warlike city of lucerne. we seem to be approaching some town of old feudal times that has been left solitary and forgotten on the mountain side, outside of the current of modern life. but when we pass through the station we find ourselves suddenly transported to the side of the lake, where whole flotillas of large and small boats lie moored on the blue waters of a large harbor. and along the banks of this wonderful lake is a whole town of hotels, gay with many colored flags, their terraces and balconies rising tier above tier, like the galleries of a grand theater whose scenery is the mighty alps.... in summer lucerne is the hyde park of switzerland. its quays are thronged by people of every nation. there you meet pale women from the lands of snow, and dark women from the lands of the sun; tall, six-foot english women, and lively, alert, trim parisian women, with the light and graceful carriage of a bird on the bough. at certain hours this promenade on the quays is like a charity fair or a rustic ball--bright colors and airy draperies everywhere. nowhere can the least calm and repose be found but in the old town. there the gabled houses, with wooden galleries hanging over the waters of the reuss, make a charming ancient picture, like a bit of venice set down amid the verdant landscape of the valley. i also discovered on the heights beyond the ramparts a pretty and peaceful convent of capuchins, the way to which winds among wild plants, starry with flowers. it is delicious to go right away, far from the town swarming and running over with londoners, germans, and americans, and to find yourself among fragrant hedges, peopled by warblers whom it has not yet occurred to the hotel-keepers to teach to sing in english. this sweet path leads without fatigue to the convent of the good fathers. in a garden flooded with sunshine and balmy with the fragrance of mignonette and vervain, where broad sunflowers erect their black discs fringed with gold, two brothers with fan-shaped beards, their brass-mounted spectacles astride on their flat noses, and arrayed in green gardening aprons, are plying enormous watering-cans; while, in the green and cool half-twilight under the shadowy trees, big, rubicund brothers walk up and down, reading their red-edged breviaries in black leather bindings. happy monks! not a fraction of a pessimist among them! how well they understand life! a beautiful convent, beautiful nature, good wine and good cheer, neither disturbance nor care; neither wife nor children; and when they leave the world, heaven specially created for them, seraphim waiting for them with harps of gold, and angels with urns of rose-water to wash their feet! lucerne began as a nest of monks, hidden in an orchard like a nest of sparrows. the first house of the town was a monastery, erected by the side of the lake. the nest grew, became a village, then a town, then a city. the monks of murbach, to whom the monastery of st. leger belonged, had got into debt; this sometimes does happen even to monks. they sold to king rudolf all the property they possest at lucerne and in unterwalden; and thus the town passed into the hands of the hapsburgs. when the first cantons, after expelling the austrian bailiffs, had declared their independence, lucerne was still one of austria's advanced posts. but its people were daily brought into contact with the shepherds of the forest cantons, who came into the town to supply themselves with provisions; and they were not long in beginning to ask themselves if there was any reason why they should not be, as well as their neighbors, absolutely free. the position of the partizans of austria soon became so precarious that they found it safe to leave the town.... the opening of the st. gothard railway has given a new impulse to this cosmopolitan city, which has a great future before it. already it has supplanted interlaken in the estimation of the furbelowed, fashionable world--the women who come to switzerland not to see but to be seen. lucerne is now the chief summer station of the twenty-two cantons. and yet it does not possess many objects of interest. there is the old bridge on the reuss, with its ancient paintings; the church of st. leger, with its lateral altars and its campo santo, reminding us of italian cemeteries; the museum at the town hall, with its fine collection of stained glass; the blood-stained standards from the burgundian wars, and the flag in which noble old gundolfingen, after charging his fellow-citizens never to elect their magistrates for more than a year, wrapt himself as in a shroud of glory to die in the fight; finally, there is the lion of lucerne; and that is all. the most wonderful thing of all is that you are allowed to see this lion for nothing; for close beside it you are charged a franc for permission to cast an indifferent glance on some uninteresting excavations, which date, it is said, from the glacial period. we do not care if they do.... the great quay of lucerne is delightful; as good as the seashore at dieppe or trouville. before you, limpid and blue, lies the lake, which from the character of its shores, at once stern and graceful, is the finest in switzerland. in front rises the snow-clad peaks of uri, to the left the rigi, to the right the austere pilatus, almost always wearing his high cap of clouds. this beautiful walk on the quay, long and shady like the avenue of a gentleman's park, is the daily resort, toward four o'clock, of all the foreigners who are crowded in the hotels or packed in the boarding-houses. here are russian and polish counts with long mustaches, and pins set with false brilliants; englishmen with fishes' or horses' heads; englishwomen with the figures of angels or of giraffes; parisian women, daintily attired, sprightly, and coquettish; american women, free in their bearing, and eccentric in their dress, and their men as stiff as the smoke-pipes of steamboats; german women, with languishing voices, drooping and pale like willow branches, fair-haired and blue-eyed, talking in the same breath of goethe and the price of sausages, of the moon and their glass of beer, of stars and black radishes. and here and there are a few little swiss girls, fresh and rosy as wood strawberries, smiling darlings like dresden shepherdesses, dreaming of scenes of platonic love in a great garden adorned with the statue of william tell or general dufour. zurich[ ] by w.d. m'crackan if you arrive in zurich after dark, and pass along the river-front, you will think yourself for a moment in venice. the street lamps glow responsively across the dark limmat, or trail their light from the bridges. in the uncertain darkness, the bare house walls of the farther side put on the dignity of palaces. there are unsuspected architectural glories in the wasserkirche and the rathhaus, as they stand partly in the water of the river. and if, at such times, one of the long, narrow barges of the place passes up stream, the illusion is complete; for, as the boat cuts at intervals through the glare of gaslight it looks for all the world like a gondola.... zurich need not rely upon any fancied resemblance of this sort for a distinct charm of its own. the situation of the city is essentially beautiful, reminding one, in a general way, of that of geneva, lucerne, or thun--at the outlet of a lake, and at the point of issue of a swift river. approaching from the lakeside, the twin towers of the grossmünster loom upon the right, capped by ugly rounded tops, like miters; upon the left, the simple spires of the fraumünster and st. peter's. a conglomeration of roofs denotes the city houses. on the water-front, extensive promenades stretch, crescent shaped, from end to end, cleverly laid out, tho' as yet too new to quite fulfil their mission of beauty. some large white buildings form the front line on the lake--notably the theater, and a few hotels and apartment houses. finally, there where the river limmat leaves the lake, a vista of bridges open into the heart of the city--a succession of arches and lines that invite inspection. like most progressive cities of europe, zurich has outgrown its feudal accouterments within the last fifty years. it has razed its walls, converted its bastions into playgrounds, and, pushing out on every side, has incorporated many neighboring villages, until to-day it contains more than ninety thousand inhabitants.[ ] the pride of modern zurich is the bahnhof-strasse, a long street which leads from the railroad station to the lake. it is planted with trees, and counts as the one and only boulevard of the city. unfortunately, a good view of the distant snow mountains is very rare from the lake promenade, altho' they appear with distinctness upon the photographs sold in the shops. early every saturday the peasant women come trooping in, with their vegetables, fruits, and flowers, to line the bahnhof-strasse with carts and baskets. the ladies and kitchen-maids of the city come to buy; but by noon the market is over. in a jiffy, the street is swept as clean as a kitchen floor, and the women have turned their backs on zurich. but the real center of attraction in zurich will be found by the traveler in that quarter where stands the grossmünster, the church of which zwingli was incumbent for twelve years. it may well be called the wittenberg church of switzerland. the present building dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries; but tradition has it that the first minster was founded by charlemagne. that ubiquitous emperor certainly manifested great interest in zurich. he has been represented no less than three times in various parts of the building. about midway up one of the towers, his statue appears in a niche, where pigeons strut and prink their feathers, undisturbed. charlemagne is sitting with a mighty two-edged sword upon his knees, and a gilded crown upon his head; but the figure is badly proportioned, and the statue is a good-natured, stumpy affair, that makes one smile rather than admire. the outside of the minster still shows traces of the image breakers of zwingli's time, and yet the crumbling north portal remains beautiful, even in decay. as for the interior, it has an exceedingly bare and stript appearance; for, altho' there is good, solid stonework in the walls, the whole has been washed a foolish, philistine white. the romanesque of the architectural is said to be of particular interest to connoisseurs, and the queer archaic capitals must certainly attract the notice even of ordinary tourists.... it is also worth while to go to the helmhaus, and examine the collection of lake-dwelling remains. in fact, there is a delightful little model of a lake-dwelling itself, and an appliance to show you how those primitive people could make holes in their stone implements, before they knew the use of metals. the ancient guild houses of zurich are worth a special study. take, for instance, that of the "zimmerleute," or carpenter with its supporting arches and little peaked tower; or the so-called "waag," with frescoed front; then the great wainscoated and paneled hall of the "schmieden" (smiths); and the rich renaissance stonework of the "maurer" (masons). these buildings, alas, with the decay of the system which produced them, have been obliged to put up big signs of café restaurant upon their historic façades, like so many vulgar, modern eating-houses. the rathhaus, or town hall, too, is charming. it stands, like the wasserkirche, with one side in the water and the other against the quay. the style is a sort of reposeful italian renaissance, that is florid only in the best artistic sense. nor must you miss the so-called "rüden," nearby, for its sloping roof and painted walls give it a very captivating look of alert picturesqueness, and it contains a large collection of pestalozzi souvenirs. zurich has more than one claim to the world's recognition; but no department of its active life, perhaps, merits such unstinted praise as its educational facilities. first and foremost, the university, with four faculties, modeled upon the german system, but retaining certain distinctive traits that are essentially swiss--for instance, the broad and liberal treatment accorded to women students, who are admitted as freely as men, and receive the same instruction. a great number of russian girls are always to be seen in zurich, as at other swiss universities, working unremittingly to acquire the degrees which they are denied at home. not a few american women also have availed themselves of these facilities, especially for the study of medicine.... zurich is, at the present time, undoubtedly the most important commercial city in switzerland, having distanced both basel and geneva in this direction. the manufacturing of silk, woolen, and linen fabrics has flourished here since the end of the thirteenth century. in modern times, however, cotton and machinery have been added as staple articles of manufacture. much of the actual weaving is still done in outlying parts of the canton, in the very cottages of the peasants, so that the click of the loom is heard from open windows in every village and hamlet. but modern industrial processes are tending continually to drive the weavers from their homes into great centralized factories, and every year this inevitable change becomes more apparent. it is certainly remarkable that zurich should succeed in turning out cheap and good machinery, when we remember that every ton of coal and iron has to be imported, since switzerland possesses not a single mine, either of the one or the other. the rigi[ ] by w.d. m'crackan if you really want to know how the swiss confederation came to be, you can not do better than take the train to the top of the rigi. you might stumble through many a volume, and not learn so thoroughly the essential causes of this national birth. of course, the eye rests first upon the phalanx of snow-crests to the south, then down upon the lake, lying outstretched like some wriggling monster, switching its tail, and finally off to the many places where early swiss history was made. in point of fact, you are looking at quite a large slice of switzerland. victor hugo seized the meaning of this view when he wrote: "it is a serious hour, and full of meditations, when one has switzerland thus under the eyes." ... the physical features of a country have their counterparts in its political institutions. in switzerland the great mountain ranges divide the territory into deep valleys, each of which naturally forms a political unit--the commune. here is a miniature world, concentrated into a small space, and representing the sum total of life to its inhabitants. self-government becomes second nature under these conditions. a sort of patriarchal democracy is evolved: that is, certain men and certain families are apt to maintain themselves at the head of public affairs, but with the consent and cooperation of the whole population. there is hardly a spot associated with the rise of the swiss confederation whose position can not be determined from the rigi. the two tell's chapels; the rütli; the villages of schwiz, altdorf, brunnen, beckenried, stans, and sarnen; the battlefields of morgarten and sempach; and on a clear day the ruined castle of hapsburg itself, lie within a mighty circle at one's feet. it was preordained that the three lands of uri, schwiz, and unterwalden should unite for protection of common interests against the encroachment of a common enemy--the ambitious house of hapsburg. the lake formed at once a bond and a highway between them. on the first day of august, , more than six hundred years ago, a group of unpretentious patriots, ignored by the great world, signed a document which formed these lands into a loose confederation. by this act they laid the foundation upon which the swiss state was afterward reared. in their naïve, but prophetic, faith, the contracting parties called this agreement a perpetual pact; and they set forth, in the latin, legal phraseology of the day, that, seeing the malice of the times, they found it necessary to take an oath to defend one another against outsiders, and to keep order within their boundaries; at the same time carefully stating that the object of the league was to maintain lawfully established conditions. from small beginnings, the confederation of uri, schwiz, and unterwalden grew, by the addition of other communities, until it reached its present proportions, of twenty-two cantons, in . lucerne was the first to join; then came zurich, glarus, zug, bern, etc. the early swiss did not set up a sovereign republic, in our acceptation of the word, either in internal or external policy. the class distinctions of the feudal age continued to exist; and they by no means disputed the supreme rule of the head of the german empire over them, but rather gloried in the protection which this direct dependence afforded them against a multitude of intermediate, preying nobles. chamouni--an avalanche[ ] by percy bysshe shelley from servoz three leagues remain to chamouni--mont blanc was before us--the alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around, closing in the complicated windings of the single vale--forests inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty--intermingled beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road, or receded, while lawns of such verdure as i have never seen before occupied these openings, and gradually became darker in their recesses. mont blanc was before us, but it was covered with cloud; its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above. pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with mont blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high. i never knew--i never imagined--what mountains were before. the immensity of these aerial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not unallied to madness. and, remember, this was all one scene, it all prest home to our regard and our imagination. tho' it embraced a vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our path; the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above--all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. nature was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of the divinest. as we entered the valley of the chamouni (which, in fact, may be considered as a continuation of those which we have followed from bonneville and cluses), clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of , feet from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal not only mont blanc, but the other "aiguilles," as they call them here, attached and subordinate to it. we were traveling along the valley, when suddenly we heard a sound as the burst of smothered thunder rolling above; yet there was something in the sound that told us it could not be thunder. our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the mountain opposite, from whence the sound came. it was an avalanche. we saw the smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at intervals the bursting of its fall. it fell on the bed of a torrent, which it displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-colored waters also spread themselves over the ravine, which was their couch. we did not, as we intended, visit the glacier des bossons to-day, altho it descends within a few minutes' walk of the road, wishing to survey it at least when unfatigued. we saw this glacier, which comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed. its surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable figures; conical and pyramidical crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendor, overhang the woods and meadows of the vale. this glacier winds upward from the valley, until it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt flung over the black region of pines. there is more in all these scenes than mere magnitude of proportion; there is a majesty of outline; there is an awful grace in the very colors which invest these wonderful shapes--a charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the reality of their unutterable greatness. zermatt[ ] by archibald campbell knowles those who would reach the very heart of the alps and look upon a scene of unparalleled grandeur must go into the valais to zermatt. [illustration: pontresina in the engadine] [illustration: st. moritz in the engadine] [illustration: fribourg] [illustration: berne] [illustration: vivey on lake geneva] [illustration: the turnhalle in zurich courtesy swiss federal railway] [illustration: interlaken] [illustration: lucerne] [illustration: viaducts on the new lötschberg route to the simplon tunnel] [illustration: wolfort viaduct on the pilatus railroad, switzerland] [illustration: the balmat-saussure monument in chamonix (mont blanc in the distance)] [illustration: roofed wooden bridge at lucerne] [illustration: the castle of chillon] [illustration: cloud effect above interlaken courtesy swiss federal railway] [illustration: davos in winter] the way up the valley is that which follows the river visp. it is a delightful journey. the little stream is never still. it will scarcely keep confined to the banks or within the stone walls which in many places protect the shores. the river dances along as if seeking to be free. for the most part it is a torrent, sweeping swiftly past the solid masonry and descending the steep bed in a series of wild leaps or artificial waterfalls, with wonderful effects of sunlight seen in the showers of spray. fed as it is by many mountain streams, the visp is always full, and the more so, when in summer the melting ice adds to its volume. then it is a sight long remembered, as roaring, rollicking, rushing along it is a brawling mass of waters, often working havoc with banks, road, village, and pastures. if one never saw a mountain, the sight of the visp would more than repay, but, as it is, one's attention is taxed to the uttermost not to miss anything of this little rushing river and at the same time get the charming views of the weisshorn, the breithorn, and the other snow summits which appear over the mountain spurs surrounding the head of the valley. the first impression on reaching the zermatt is one of disappointment. maps and pictures generally lead the traveler to think that from the village he will see the great semicircle of snow peaks which surround the valley, but upon arrival he finds that he must go further up to see them, for all of them are hidden from view except the matterhorn. this mountain, however, is seen in all its grandeur, fierce and frowning, and to an imaginative mind bending forward as if threatening and trying to shake off the little snow that appears here and there on its side. it dominates the whole scene and leaves an indelible impress on the mind, so that one can never picture zermatt without the matterhorn. zermatt as a place is a curious combination; a line of hotels in juxtaposition with a village of chalets, unsophisticated peasants shoulder to shoulder with people of fashion! there are funny little shops, here showing only such simple things as are needed by the dwellers in the valais, there exhibiting really beautiful articles in dress and jewelry to attract the summer visitors, while at convenient spots are the inevitable tea-rooms, where "thé, café, limonade, confiserie" minister to the coming crowds of an afternoon.... guides galore wait in front of all the large hotels; ice-axes, ropes, nailed boots, rucksacks, and all the paraphernalia of the mountains are seen on every side, and a walk along the one main thoroughfare introduces one into the life of a climbing center, interesting to a degree and often very amusing from the miscellaneous collection of people there. perhaps the first thing one cares to see at zermatt is the village church, with the adjoining churchyard. the church, dedicated to saint maurice, a favorite saint in the valais and rhône district, is plain but interesting and in parts is quite old. near it is a little mortuary chapel. in most parts of switzerland, it is the custom, after the bodies of the dead have been buried a certain length of time, to remove the remains to the "charnel house," allowing the graves to be used again and thus not encroaching upon the space reserved and consecrated in the churchyard, but we do not think this custom obtains at zermatt. in the churchyard is a monument to michel auguste croz, the guide, and near by are the graves of the reverend charles hudson and mr. hadow. these three, with lord francis douglas were killed in mr. whymper's first ascent of the matterhorn.[ ] the body of lord francis douglas has never been found. it is probably deep in some crevasse or under the snows which surround the base of the matterhorn.... for the more extended climbs or for excursions in the direction of the schwarzsee, the staffel alp or the trift, zermatt is the starting point. the place abounds in walks, most of them being the first part of the routes to the high mountains, so that those who are fond of tramping but not of climbing can reach high elevations with a little hard work, but no great difficulty. some of these "midway" places may be visited on muleback, and with the railway now up to the gorner-grat there are few persons who may not see this wonderful region of snow peaks. the trip to the schwarzsee is the first stage on the matterhorn route. it leads through the village, past the gorner gorges (which one may visit by a slight détour) and then enters some very pretty woods, from which one issues on to the bare green meadows which clothe the upper part of the steep slope of the mountain. as one mounts this zigzag path, it sometimes seems as if it would never end, and for all the magnificent views which it affords, one is always glad that it is over, as it exactly fulfils the conditions of a "grind." from the schwarzsee ( , feet, where there is an excellent hotel), there is a fine survey of the matterhorn, and also a splendid panorama, on three sides, one view up the glaciers toward the monte rosa, another over the valley to the dent blanche and other great peaks, and still another to the far distant bernese oberland. near the hotel is a little lake and a tiny chapel, where mass is sometimes said. the reflection in the still waters of the lake is very lovely. from the schwarzsee, trips are made to the hörnli (another stage on the way to the matterhorn), to the gandegg hut, across moraine and glacier and to the staffel alp, over the green meadows. the hörnli ( , feet high) is the ridge running out from the matterhorn. it is reached by a stiff climb over rocks and a huge heap of fallen stones and debris. from it the view is similar to that from the schwarzsee, but much finer, the théodule glacier being seen to great advantage. above the hörnli towers the matterhorn, huge, fierce, frowning, threatening. every few moments comes a heavy, muffled sound, as new showers of falling stones come down. this is one of the main dangers in climbing the peak itself, for from base to summit, the matterhorn is really a decaying mountain, the stones rolling away through the action of the storms, the frosts, and the sun. pontrÉsina and st. moritz[ ] by victor tissot the night was falling fine as dust, as a black sifted snow-shower, a snow made of shadow; and the melancholy of the landscape, the grand nocturnal solitude of these lofty, unknown regions, had a charm profound and disquieting. i do not know why i fancied myself no longer in switzerland, but in some country near the pole, in sweden or norway. at the foot of these bare mountains i looked for wild fjords, lit up by the moon. nothing can express the profound somberness of these landscapes at nightfall; the long desert road, gray from the reflections of the starry sky, unrolls in an interminable ribbon along the depth of the valley; the treeless mountains, hollowed out like ancient craters, lift their overhanging precipices; lakes sleeping in the midst of the pastures, behind curtains of pines and larches, glitter like drops of quicksilver; and on the horizon the immense glaciers crowd together and overflow like sheets of foam on a frozen sea. the road ascends. from the distance comes a dull noise, the roaring of a torrent. we cross a little cluster of trees, and on issuing from it the superb amphitheater of glaciers shows itself anew, overlooked by one white point glittering like an opal. on the hill a thousand little lights show me that i am at last at pontrésina. i thought i should never have arrived there; nowhere does night deceive more than in the mountains; in proportion as you advance toward a point, it seems to retreat from you. soon the black fantastic lines of the houses show through the darkness. i enter a narrow street, formed of great gloomy buildings, their fronts like a convent or prison. the hamlet is transformed into a little town of hotels, very comfortable, very elegant, very dear, but very stupid and very vulgar, with their laced porter in an admiral's hat, and their whiskered waiters, who have the air of anglican ministers. oh! how i detest them, and flee them, those hotels where the painter, or the tourist who arrives on foot, knapsack on his back and staff in hand, his trousers tucked into his leggings, his flask slung over his shoulder, and his hat awry, is received with less courtesy than a lackey. besides those hotels, some of which are veritable palaces, and where the ladies are almost bound to change their dress three times a day, there is a hotel of the second and third class; and there is the old inn; the comfortable, hospitable, patriarchal inn, with its gothic signboard.... on leaving the village i was again in the open mountain. in the distance the road penetrated into the valley, rising always. the moon had risen. she stood out sharply cut in a cloudless sky, and stars sparkling everywhere in profusion; not like nails of gold, but sown broadcast like a flying dust, a dust of carbuncles and diamonds. to the right, in the depths of the amphitheater of the mountains, an immense glacier looked like a frozen cascade; and above, a perfectly white peak rose draped in snow, like some legendary king in his mantle of silver. bending under my knapsack, and dragging my feet, i arrive at last at the hotel, where i am received, in the kindest manner in the world, by the two mistresses of the establishment, two sisters of open, benevolent countenance and of sweet expression. and the poor little traveler who arrives, his bag on his back and without bustle, who has sent neither letter nor telegram to announce his arrival, is the object of the kindest and most delicate attentions; his clothes are brushed, he gets water for his refreshment, and is then conducted to a table bountifully spread, in a dining-room fragrant with good cookery and bouquets of flowers.... beyond campfer, its houses surrounding a third little lake, we come suddenly on a scene of extraordinary animation. all the cosmopolitan society of st. moritz is there, sauntering, walking, running, in mountain parties, on afternoon excursions. the favorite one is the walk to the pretty lake of campfer, with its shady margin, its resting places hidden among the branches, its châlet-restaurant, from the terrace of which one overlooks the whole valley; and it would be difficult to find near st. moritz a more interesting spot. we meet at every step parties of english ladies, looking like plantations of umbrellas with their covers on and surmounted by immense straw hats; then there are german ladies, massive as citadels, but not impregnable, asking nothing better than to surrender to the young exquisites, with the figure of cuirassiers, who accompany them; further on, lively italian ladies parade themselves in dresses of the carnival, the colors outrageously striking and dazzling to the eyes; with up-turned skirts they cross the inn on great mossy stones, leaping with the grace of birds, and smiling, to show, into the bargain, the whiteness of their teeth. all this crowd passing in procession before us is composed of men and women of every age and condition; some with the grave face of a waxen saint, others beaming with the satisfied smile of rich people; there are also invalids, who go along hobbling and limping, or who are drawn, in little carriages. soon handsome façades, pierced with hundreds of windows, show themselves in the grand and severe setting of mountains and glaciers. it is st. moritz-les-bains. here every house is a hotel, and, as every hotel is a little palace, we do not alight from the diligence; we go a little farther and a little higher, to st. moritz-le-village, which has a much more beautiful situation. it is at the top of a little hill, whose sides slope down to a pretty lake, fresh and green as a lawn. the eye reaches beyond sils, the whole length of the valley, with its mountains like embattled ramparts, its lakes like a great row of pearls, and its glaciers showing their piles of snowy white against the azure depths of the horizon. st. moritz is the center of the valley of the upper engadine, which extends to the length of eighteen or nineteen leagues, and which scarcely possesses a thousand inhabitants. almost all the men emigrate to work for strangers, like their brothers, the mountaineers of savoy and auvergne, and do not return till they have amassed a sufficient fortune to allow them to build a little white house, with gilded window frames, and to die quietly in the spot where they were born.... historians tell us that the first inhabitants of the upper engadine were etruscans and latins chased from italy by the gauls and carthaginians, and taking refuge in these hidden altitudes. after the fall of the empire, the inhabitants of the engadine fell under the dominion of the franks and lombards, then the dukes of swabia; but the blood never mingled--the type remained italian; black hair, the quick eye, the mobile countenance, the expressive features, and the supple figure. geneva[ ] by francis h. gribble straddling the rhone, where it issues from the bluest lake in the world, looking out upon green meadows and wooded hills, backed by the dark ridge of the salève, with the "great white mountain" visible in the distance, geneva has the advantage of an incomparable site; and it is, from a town surveyor's point of view, well built. it has wide thoroughfares, quays, and bridges; gorgeous public monuments and well-kept public gardens; handsome theaters and museums; long rows of palatial hotels; flourishing suburbs; two railway-stations, and a casino. but all this is merely the façade--all of it quite modern; hardly any of it more than half a century old. the real historical geneva--the little of it that remains--is hidden away in the background, where not every tourist troubles to look for it. it is disappearing fast. italian stonemasons are constantly engaged in driving lines through it. they have rebuilt, for instance, the old corraterie, which is now the regent street of geneva, famous for its confectioners' and booksellers' shops; they have destroyed, and are still destroying, other ancient slums, setting up white buildings of uniform ugliness in place of the picturesque but insanitary dwellings of the past. it is, no doubt, a very necessary reform, tho' one may think that it is being executed in too utilitarian a spirit. the old geneva was malodorous, and its death-rate was high. they had more than one great plague there, and their great fires have always left some of the worst of their slums untouched. these could not be allowed to stand in an age which studies the science and practises the art of hygiene. yet the traveler who wants to know what the old geneva was really like must spend a morning or two rambling among them before they are pulled down. the old geneva, like jerusalem, was set upon a hill, and it is toward the top of the hill that the few buildings of historical interest are to be found. there is the cathedral--a striking object from a distance, tho' the interior is hideously bare. there is the town hall, in which, for the convenience of notables carried in litters, the upper stories were reached by an inclined plane instead of a staircase. there is calvin's old academy, bearing more than a slight resemblance to certain of the smaller colleges at oxford and cambridge. there, too, are to be seen a few mural tablets, indicating the residences of past celebrities. in such a house rousseau was born; in such another house or in an older house, now demolished, on the same site--calvin died. and toward these central points the steep and narrow, mean streets--in many cases streets of stairs--converge. as one plunges into these streets one seems to pass back from the twentieth century to the fifteenth, and need not exercise one's imagination very severely in order to picture the town as it appeared in the old days before the reformation. the present writer may claim permission to borrow his own description from the pages of "lake geneva and its literary landmarks:" "narrow streets predominated, tho' there were also a certain number of open spaces--notably at the markets, and in front of the cathedral, where there was a traffic in those relics and rosaries which geneva was presently to repudiate with virtuous indignation. one can form an idea of the appearance of the narrow streets by imagining the oldest houses that one has seen in switzerland all closely packed together--houses at the most three stories high, with gabled roofs, ground-floors a step or two below the level of the roadway, and huge arched doors studded with great iron nails, and looking strong enough to resist a battering-ram. above the doors, in the case of the better houses, were the painted escutcheons of the residents, and crests were also often blazoned on the window-panes. the shops, too, and more especially the inns, flaunted gaudy signboards with ingenious devices. the good vinegar, the hot knife, the crowned ox, were the names of some of these; their tariff is said to have been fivepence a day for man and beast.".... in the first half of the sixteenth century occurred the two events which shaped the future of geneva; reformation theology was accepted; political independence was achieved. geneva it should be explained, was the fief of the duchy of savoy; or so, at all events, the dukes of savoy maintained, tho' the citizens were of the contrary opinion. their view was that they owed allegiance only to their bishops, who were the viceroys of the holy roman emperor; and even that allegiance was limited by the terms of a charter granted in the holy roman emperor's name by bishop adhémar de fabri. all went fairly well until the bishops began to play into the hands of the dukes; but then there was friction, which rapidly became acute. a revolutionary party--the eidgenossen, or confederates--was formed. there was a declaration of independence and a civil war. so long as the genevans stood alone, the duke was too strong for them. he marched into the town in the style of a conqueror, and wreaked his vengeance on as many of his enemies as he could catch. he cut off the head of philibert berthelier, to whom there stands a memorial on the island in the rhone; he caused jean pecolat to be hung up in an absurd posture in his banqueting-hall, in order that he might mock at his discomfort while he dined; he executed, with or without preliminary torture, several less conspicuous patriots. happily, however, some of the patriots--notably besançon hugues--got safely away, and succeeded in concluding treaties of alliance between geneva and the cantons of berne and fribourg. the men of fribourg marched to geneva, and the duke retired. the citizens passed a resolution that he should never be allowed to enter the town again, seeing that he "never came there without playing the citizens some dirty trick or other;" and, the more effectually to prevent him from coming, they pulled down their suburbs and repaired their ramparts, one member of every household being required to lend a hand for the purpose. presently, owing to religious dissensions, fribourg withdrew from the alliance. berne, however, adhered to it, and, in due course, responded to the appeal for help by setting an army of seven thousand men in motion. the route of the seven thousand lay through the canton of vaud, then a portion of the duke's dominions, governed from the castle of chillon. meeting with no resistance save at yverdon, they annexed the territory, placing governors of their own in its various strongholds. the governor of chillon fled, leaving his garrison to surrender; and in its deepest dungeon was found the famous prisoner of chillon, françois de bonivard. from that time forward geneva was a free republic, owing allegiance to no higher power. the castle of chillon[ ] by harriet beecher stowe here i am, sitting at my window, overlooking lake leman. castle chillon, with its old conical towers, is silently pictured in the still waters. it has been a day of a thousand. we took a boat, with two oarsmen, and passed leisurely along the shores, under the cool, drooping branches of trees, to the castle, which is scarce a stone's throw from the hotel. we rowed along, close under the walls, to the ancient moat and drawbridge. there i picked a bunch of blue bells, "les clochettes," which were hanging their aerial pendants from every crevice--some blue, some white.... we rowed along, almost touching the castle rock, where the wall ascends perpendicularly, and the water is said to be a thousand feet deep. we passed the loopholes that illuminate the dungeon vaults, and an old arch, now walled up, where prisoners, after having been strangled, were thrown into the lake. last evening we walked through the castle. an interesting swiss woman, who has taught herself english for the benefit of her visitors, was our "cicerone." she seemed to have all the old swiss vivacity of attachment for "liberté et patrie." she took us first into the dungeon, with the seven pillars, described by byron. there was the pillar to which, for protecting the liberty of geneva, bonivard was chained. there the duke of savoy kept him for six years, confined by a chain four feet long. he could take only three steps, and the stone floor is deeply worn by the prints of those weary steps. six years is so easily said; but to live them, alone, helpless, a man burning with all the fires of manhood, chained to that pillar of stone, and those three unvarying steps! two thousand one hundred and ninety days rose and set the sun, while seed time and harvest, winter and summer, and the whole living world went on over his grave. for him no sun, no moon, no stars, no business, no friendship, no plans--nothing! the great millstone of life emptily grinding itself away! what a power of vitality was there in bonivard, that he did not sink in lethargy, and forget himself to stone! but he did not; it is said that when the victorious swiss army broke in to liberate him, they cried, "bonivard, you are free!" "and geneva?" "geneva is free also!" you ought to have heard the enthusiasm with which our guide told this story! near by are the relics of the cell of a companion of bonivard, who made an ineffectual attempt to liberate him. on the wall are still seen sketches of saints and inscriptions by his hand. this man one day overcame his jailer, locked him in his cell, ran into the hall above, and threw himself from a window into the lake, struck a rock, and was killed instantly. one of the pillars in this vault is covered with names. i think it is bonivard's pillar. there are the names of byron, hunt, schiller, and many other celebrities. after we left the dungeons we went up into the judgment hall, where prisoners were tried, and then into the torture chamber. here are the pulleys by which limbs are broken; the beam, all scorched with the irons by which feet were burned; the oven where the irons were heated; and there was the stone where they were sometimes laid to be strangled, after the torture. on that stone, our guide told us, two thousand jews, men, women, and children, had been put to death. there was also, high up, a strong beam across, where criminals were hung; and a door, now walled up, by which they were thrown into the lake. i shivered. "'twas cruel," she said; "'twas almost as cruel as your slavery in america."[ ] then she took us into a tower where was the "oubliette." here the unfortunate prisoner was made to kneel before an image of the virgin, while the treacherous floor, falling beneath him, precipitated him into a well forty feet deep, where he was left to die of broken limbs and starvation. below this well was still another pit, filled with knives, into which, when they were disposed to a merciful hastening of the torture, they let him fall. the woman has been herself to the bottom of the first dungeon, and found there bones of victims. the second pit is now walled up.... to-night, after sunset, we rowed to byron's "little isle," the only one in the lake. o, the unutterable beauty of these mountains--great, purple waves, as if they had been dashed up by a mighty tempest, crested with snow-like foam! this purple sky, and crescent moon, and the lake gleaming and shimmering, and twinkling stars, while far off up the sides of a snow-topped mountain a light shines like a star--some mountaineer's candle, i suppose. in the dark stillness we rode again over to chillon, and paused under its walls. the frogs were croaking in the moat, and we lay rocking on the wave, and watching the dusky outlines of the towers and turrets. then the spirit of the scene seemed to wrap me round like a cloak. back to geneva again. this lovely place will ever leave its image on my heart. mountains embrace it. by rail up the gorner-grat[ ] by archibald campbell knowles to see the splendid array of snow peaks and glaciers which makes the sky line above zermatt, one must leave the valley and walk or climb to a higher level. an ideal spot for this is the hôtel riffel alp. both the situation and the hôtel outrival and surpass any similar places in the alps. "far from the madding crowd," on a little plateau bounded by pines and pastures stands the hôtel, some two thousand feet above zermatt and at an altitude of over , feet. the outlook is superb, the air splendid, the quiet most restful. two little churches, the one for roman catholics, the other for members of the church of england minister to the spiritual needs of the visitors and stamp religion upon a situation grand and sublime. those who come here are lovers of the mountains who enjoy the open life. it is a place not so much for "les grands excursions" as for long walks, easy climbs and the beginnings of mountaineering. many persons spend the entire day out, preferring to eat their déjeuner "informally," perched above some safe precipice, or on a glacier-bordered rock or in the shade of the cool woods, but there are always some who linger both morning and afternoon on the terrace with its far expanse of view, with the bright sunshine streaming down upon them. one great charm of the riffel alp is the proximity to the snow. an hour will bring one either to the gorner glacier or to the findelen glacier, while a somewhat longer time will lead to other stretches of snow and ice, where the climber may sit and survey the séracs and crevasses or walk about on the great frozen rivers. this is said to be beneficial to the nervous system as many physicians maintain that the glaciers contain a large amount of radium. before essaying any of the longer or harder trips however, the traveler first of all generally goes to the gorner-grat, the rocky ridge that runs up from zermatt to a point , feet high. many people still walk up, but since the railroad was built, even those who feel it to be a matter of conscience to inveigh against any kind of progress which ministers to the pleasures of the masses, are found among those who prefer to ascend by electricity. the trip up is often made very amusing as among the crowds are always some, who knowing really nothing of the place, feel it incumbent upon themselves to point out all of the peaks, in a way quite discomposing to anybody familiar with the locality or versed in geography! quite a luxurious little hôtel now surmounts the top of the gorner-grat. in it, about it and above it, on the walled terrace assembles a motley crowd every clear day in summer, clad in every variety of costume, conventional and unconventional.... an ordinary scene would be ruined by such a crowd, but not so the gorner-grat. the very majesty and magnificence of the view make one forget the vaporings of mere man, and the glory of god, so overpoweringly revealed in those regions of perpetual snow, drives other impressions away. and if one wishes to be alone, it is easily possible by walking a little further along the ridge where some rock will shut out all sight of man and the wind will drive away the sound of voices. it is doubtful if there is any view comparable with that of the gorner-grat. there is what is called a "near view," and there is also what is known as a "distant view," for completely surrounded by snow peak and glacier, the eye passes from valley to summit, resting on that wonderful stretch of shining white which forms the skyline. to say that one can count dozens of glaciers, that he can see fifty summits, that monte rosa, the lyskamm, the twins, the breithorn, the matterhorn, the dent blanche, the weisshorn, with many other mountains of the valais and oberland form a complete circle of snow peaks, may establish the geography of the place but it does not convey any but the faintest picture of the sublime grandeur of the scene.... an exciting experience for novices is to go with a guide from the gorner-grat to the hohtäligrat and thence down to the findelen glacier. it looks dangerous but it is not really so, if the climber is careful, for altho there is a sheer descent on either side of the arête or ridge which leads from the one point to the other, the way is never narrow and only over easy rocks and snow. the hohtäligrat is almost , feet in altitude and has a splendid survey of the sky line. one looks up at snow, one looks down at snow, one looks around at snow! from the beautiful summits of monte rosa, the eye passes in a complete circle, up and down, seeing in succession the white snow peaks, with their great glistening glaciers below, showing in strong contrast the occasional rock pyramids like the matterhorn and the group around the rothhorn. through the st. gothard into italy[ ] by victor tissot this is geschenen, at the entrance of the great tunnel, the meeting place of the upper gorges of the reuss, the valley of urseren, of the oberalp, and of the furka. geschenen has now the calm tranquility of old age. but during the nine years that it took to bore the great tunnel, what juvenile activity there was here, what feverish eagerness in this village, crowded, inundated, overflowed by workmen from italy, from tessin, from germany and france! one would have thought that out of that dark hole, dug out in the mountain, they were bringing nuggets of gold. on all the roads nothing was to be seen but bands of workmen arriving, with miners' lamps hung to their old soldier's knapsacks. nobody could tell how they were all to be lodged. one double bed was occupied in succession by twenty-four men in twenty-four hours. some of the workmen set up their establishments in barns; in all directions movable canteens sprung up, built all awry and hardly holding together, and in mean sheds, doubtful, bad-looking places, the dishonest merchant hastened to sell his adulterated brandy.... the st. gothard tunnel is about one and two-third miles longer than that of mount cenis, and more than three miles longer than that of arlberg. while the train is passing with a dull rumbling sound under these gloomy vaults, let us explain how the great work of boring the alps was accomplished. the mechanical work of perforation was begun simultaneously on the north and south sides of the mountain, working toward the same point, so as to meet toward the middle of the boring. the waters of the reuss and the tessin supplied the necessary motive power for working the screws attached to machinery for compressing the air. the borers applied to the rock the piston of a cylinder made to rotate with great rapidity by the pressure of air reduced to one-twentieth of its ordinary volume; then when they had made holes sufficiently deep, they withdrew the machines and charged the mines with dynamite. immediately after the explosion, streams of wholesome air were liberated which dissipated the smoke; then the débris was cleared away, and the borers returned to their place. the same work was thus carried on day and night, for nine years. on the geschenen side all went well; but on the other side, on the italian slope, unforseen obstacles and difficulties had to be overcome. instead of having to encounter the solid rock, they found themselves among a moving soil formed by the deposit of glaciers and broken by streams of water. springs burst out, like the jet of a fountain, under the stroke of the pick, flooding and driving away the workmen. for twelve months they seemed to be in the midst of a lake. but nothing could damp the ardor of the contractor, favre. his troubles were greater still when the undertaking had almost been suspended for want of money, when the workmen struck in , and, when, two years later, the village of arola was destroyed by fire. and how many times, again and again, the mason-work of the vaulted roof gave way and fell! certain "bad places," as they were called, cost more than nine hundred pounds per yard. in the interior of the mountain the thermometer marked degrees (fahr.), but so long as the tunnel was still not completely bored, the workmen were sustained by a kind of fever, and made redoubled efforts. discouragement and desertion did not appear among them till the goal was almost reached. the great tunnel passed, we find ourselves fairly in italy. the mulberry trees, with silky white bark and delicate, transparent leaves; the chestnuts, with enormous trunks like cathedral columns; the vine, hanging to high trellises supported by granite pillars, its festoons as capricious as the feats of those who partake too freely of its fruits; the white tufty heads of the maize tossing in the breeze; all that strong and luxuriant vegetation through which waves of moist air are passing; those flowers of rare beauty, of a grace and brilliancy that belong only to privileged zones;--all this indicates a more robust and fertile soil, and a more fervid sky than those of the upper villages which we have just left. x alpine mountain climbing first attempts half a century ago[ ] by edward whymper on the d of july, , i started for my first tour of the alps. at zermatt i wandered in many directions, but the weather was bad and my work was much retarded. one day, after spending a long time in attempts to sketch near the hörnli, and in futile endeavors to seize the forms of the peaks as they for a few seconds peered out from above the dense banks of woolly clouds, i determined not to return to zermatt by the usual path, but to cross the görner glacier to the riffel hotel. after a rapid scramble over the polished rocks and snow-beds which skirt the base of the theodule glacier, and wading through some of the streams which flow from it, at that time much swollen by the late rains, the first difficulty was arrived at, in the shape of a precipice about three hundred feet high. it seemed that there would be no difficulty in crossing the glacier if the cliff could be descended, but higher up and lower down the ice appeared, to my inexperienced eyes, to be impassable for a single person. the general contour of the cliff was nearly perpendicular, but it was a good deal broken up, and there was little difficulty in descending by zigzagging from one mass to another. at length there was a long slab, nearly smooth, fixt at an angle of about forty degrees between two wall-sided pieces of rock; nothing, except the glacier, could be seen below. it was a very awkward place, but being doubtful if return were possible, as i had been dropping from one ledge to another, i passed at length by lying across the slab, putting the shoulder stiffly against one side and the feet against the other, and gradually wriggling down, by first moving the legs and then the back. when the bottom of the slab was gained a friendly crack was seen, into which the point of the bâton could be stuck, and i dropt down to the next piece. it took a long time coming down that little bit of cliff, and for a few seconds it was satisfactory to see the ice close at hand. in another moment a second difficulty presented itself. the glacier swept round an angle of the cliff, and as the ice was not of the nature of treacle or thin putty, it kept away from the little bay on the edge of which i stood. we were not widely separated, but the edge of the ice was higher than the opposite edge of rock; and worse, the rock was covered with loose earth and stones which had fallen from above. all along the side of the cliff, as far as could be seen in both directions, the ice did not touch it, but there was this marginal crevasse seven feet wide and of unknown depth. all this was seen at a glance, and almost at once i concluded that i could not jump the crevass and began to try along the cliff lower down, but without success, for the ice rose higher and higher until at last farther progress was stopt by the cliffs becoming perfectly smooth. with an ax it would have been possible to cut up the side of the ice--without one, i saw there was no alternative but to return and face the jump. it was getting toward evening, and the solemn stillness of the high alps was broken only by the sound of rushing water or of falling rocks. if the jump should be successful, well; if not, i fell into the horrible chasm, to be frozen in, or drowned in that gurgling, rushing water. everything depended on that jump. again i asked myself "can it be done?" it must be. so, finding my stick was useless, i threw it and the sketch-book to the ice, and first retreating as far as possible, ran forward with all my might, took the leap, barely reached the other side, and fell awkwardly on my knees. at the same moment a shower of stones fell on the spot from which i had jumped. the glacier was crossed without further trouble, but the riffel, which was then a very small building, was crammed with tourists, and could not take me in. as the way down was unknown to me, some of the people obligingly suggested getting a man at the chalets, otherwise the path would be certainly lost in the forest. on arriving at the chalets no man could be found, and the lights of zermatt, shining through the trees, seemed to say, "never mind a guide, but come along down; we'll show you the way"; so off i went through the forest, going straight toward them. the path was lost in a moment, and was never recovered. i was tript up by pine roots, i tumbled over rhododendron bushes, i fell over rocks. the night was pitch-dark, and after a time the lights of zermatt became obscure or went out altogether. by a series of slides or falls, or evolutions more or less disagreeable, the descent through the forest was at length accomplished, but torrents of a formidable character had still to be passed before one could arrive at zermatt. i felt my way about for hours, almost hopelessly, by an exhaustive process at last discovering a bridge, and about midnight, covered with dirt and scratches, reentered the inn which i had quitted in the morning.... i descended the valley, diverging from the path at randa to mount the slopes of the dom (the highest of the mischabelhörner), in order to see the weisshorn face to face. the latter mountain is the noblest in switzerland, and from this direction it looks especially magnificent. on its north there is a large snowy plateau that feeds the glacier of which a portion is seen from randa, and which on more than one occasion has destroyed that village. from the direction of the dom--that is, immediately opposite--this bies glacier seems to descend nearly vertically; it does not do so, altho it is very steep. its size is much less than formerly and the lower portion, now divided into three tails, clings in a strange, weird-like manner to the cliffs, to which it seems scarcely possible that it can remain attached. unwillingly i parted from the sight of this glorious mountain, and went down to visp. arriving once more in the rhone valley, i proceeded to viesch, and from thence ascended the aeggischhorn, on which unpleasant eminence i lost my way in a fog, and my temper shortly afterward. then, after crossing the grimsel in a severe thunderstorm, i passed on to brienz, interlachen and berne, and thence to fribourg and morat, neuchâtel, martigny and the st. bernard. the massive walls of the convent were a welcome sight as i waded through the snow-beds near the summit of the pass, and pleasant also was the courteous salutation of the brother who bade me enter. instead of descending to aosta, i turned into the val pelline, in order to obtain views of the dent d'erin. the night had come on before biona was gained, and i had to knock long and loud upon the door of the curé's house before it was opened. an old woman with querulous voice and with a large goître answered the summons, and demanded rather sharply what was wanted, but became pacific, almost good-natured, when a five-franc piece was held in her face and she heard that lodging and supper were required in exchange. my directions asserted that a passage existed from prerayen, at the head of this valley, to breuil, in the val tournanche, and the old woman, now convinced of my respectability, busied herself to find a guide. presently she introduced a native picturesquely attired in high-peaked hat, braided jacket, scarlet waistcoat and indigo pantaloons, who agreed to take me to the village of val tournanche. we set off early on the next morning, and got to the summit of the pass without difficulty. it gave me my first experience of considerable slopes of hard, steep snow, and, like all beginners, i endeavored to prop myself up with my stick, and kept it outside, instead of holding it between myself and the slope, and leaning upon it, as should have been done. the man enlightened me, but he had, properly, a very small opinion of his employer, and it is probably on that account that, a few minutes after we had passed the summit, he said he would not go any farther and would return to biona. all argument was useless; he stood still, and to everything that was said answered nothing but that he would go back. being rather nervous about descending some long snow-slopes which still intervened between us and the head of the valley, i offered more pay, and he went on a little way. presently there were some cliffs, down which we had to scramble. he called to me to stop, then shouted that he would go back, and beckoned to me to come up. on the contrary, i waited for him to come down, but instead of doing so, in a second or two he turned round, clambered deliberately up the cliff and vanished. i supposed it was only a ruse to extort offers of more money, and waited for half an hour, but he did not appear again. this was rather embarrassing, for he carried off my knapsack. the choice of action lay between chasing him and going on to breuil, risking the loss of my knapsack. i chose the latter course, and got to breuil the same evening. the landlord of the inn, suspicious of a person entirely innocent of luggage, was doubtful if he could admit me, and eventually thrust me into a kind of loft, which was already occupied by guides and by hay. in later years we became good friends, and he did not hesitate to give credit and even to advance considerable sums. my sketches from breuil were made under difficulties; my materials had been carried off, nothing better than fine sugar-paper could be obtained, and the pencils seemed to contain more silica than plumbago. however, they were made, and the pass was again crossed, this time alone. by the following evening the old woman of biona again produced the faithless guide. the knapsack was recovered after the lapse of several hours, and then i poured forth all the terms of abuse and reproach of which i was master. the man smiled when i called him a liar, and shrugged his shoulders when referred to as a thief, but drew his knife when spoken of as a pig. the following night was spent at cormayeur, and the day after i crossed the col ferrex to orsières, and on the next the tête noir to chamounix. the emperor napoleon arrived the same day, and access to the mer de glace was refused to tourists; but, by scrambling along the plan des aiguilles, i managed to outwit the guards, and to arrive at the montanvert as the imperial party was leaving, failing to get to the jardin the same afternoon, but very nearly succeeding in breaking a leg by dislodging great rocks on the moraine of the glacier. from chamounix i went to geneva, and thence by the mont cenis to turin and to the vaudois valleys. a long and weary day had ended when paesana was reached. the next morning i passed the little lakes which are the sources of the po, on my way into france. the weather was stormy, and misinterpreting the dialect of some natives--who in reality pointed out the right way--i missed the track, and found myself under the cliffs of monte viso. a gap that was occasionally seen in the ridge connecting it with the mountains to the east tempted me up, and after a battle with a snow-slope of excessive steepness, i reached the summit. the scene was extraordinary, and, in my experience, unique. to the north there was not a particle of mist, and the violent wind coming from that direction blew one back staggering. but on the side of italy the valleys were completely filled with dense masses of cloud to a certain level; and here--where they felt the influence of the wind--they were cut off as level as the top of a table, the ridges appearing above them. i raced down to abries, and went on through the gorge of the guil to mont dauphin. the next day found me at la bessée, at the junction of the val louise with the valley of the durance, in full view of mont pelvoux. the same night i slept at briançon, intending to take the courier on the following day to grenoble, but all places had been secured several days beforehand, so i set out at two p.m. on the next day for a seventy-mile walk. the weather was again bad, and on the summit of the col de lautaret i was forced to seek shelter in the wretched little hospice. it was filled with workmen who were employed on the road, and with noxious vapors which proceeded from them. the inclemency of the weather was preferable to the inhospitality of the interior. outside, it was disagreeable, but grand--inside, it was disagreeable and mean. the walk was continued under a deluge of rain, and i felt the way down, so intense was the darkness, to the village of la grave, where the people of the inn detained me forcibly. it was perhaps fortunate that they did so, for during that night blocks of rock fell at several places from the cliffs on to the road with such force that they made large holes in the macadam, which looked as if there had been explosions of gunpowder. i resumed the walk at half-past five next morning, and proceeded, under steady rain, through bourg d'oysans to grenoble, arriving at the latter place soon after seven p.m., having accomplished the entire distance from briançon in about eighteen hours of actual walking. this was the end of the alpine portion of my tour of , on which i was introduced to the great peaks, and acquired the passion for mountain-scrambling. first to the top of the matterhorn[ ] by edward whymper we started from zermatt on the th of july at half-past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless morning. we were eight in number--croz, old peter and his two sons, lord francis douglas, hadow, hudson and i. to ensure steady motion, one tourist and one native walked together. the youngest taugwalder fell to my share, and the lad marched well, proud to be on the expedition and happy to show his powers. the wine-bags also fell to my lot to carry, and throughout the day, after each drink, i replenished them secretly with water, so that at the next halt they were found fuller than before! this was considered a good omen, and little short of miraculous. on the first day we did not intend to ascend to any great height, and we mounted, accordingly, very leisurely, picked up the things which were left in the chapel at the schwarzsee at : , and proceeded thence along the ridge connecting the hörnli with the matterhorn. at half-past eleven we arrived at the base of the actual peak, then quitted the ridge and clambered round some ledges on to the eastern face. we were now fairly upon the mountain, and were astonished to find that places which from the riffel, or even from the furggengletscher, looked entirely impracticable, were so easy that we could run about. before twelve o'clock we had found a good position for the tent, at a height of eleven thousand feet. croz and young peter went on to see what was above, in order to save time on the following morning. they cut across the heads of the snow-slopes which descended toward the furggengletscher, and disappeared round a corner, but shortly afterward we saw them high up on the face, moving quickly. we others made a solid platform for the tent in a well-protected spot, and then watched eagerly for the return of the men. the stones which they upset told that they were very high, and we supposed that the way must be easy. at length, just before p.m., we saw them coming down, evidently much excited. "what are they saying, peter?" "gentlemen, they say it is no good." but when they came near we heard a different story: "nothing but what was good--not a difficulty, not a single difficulty! we could have gone to the summit and returned to-day easily!" we passed the remaining hours of daylight--some basking in the sunshine, some sketching or collecting--and when the sun went down, giving, as it departed, a glorious promise for the morrow, we returned to the tent to arrange for the night. hudson made tea, i coffee, and we then retired each one to his blanket-bag, the taugwalders, lord francis douglas and myself occupying the tent, the others remaining, by preference, outside. long after dusk the cliffs above echoed with our laughter and with the songs of the guides, for we were happy that night in camp, and feared no evil. we assembled together outside the tent before dawn on the morning of the th, and started directly it was light enough to move. young peter came on with us as a guide, and his brother returned to zermatt. we followed the route which had been taken on the previous day, and in a few minutes turned the rib which had intercepted the view of the eastern face from our tent platform. the whole of this great slope was now revealed, rising for three thousand feet like a huge natural staircase. some parts were more and others were less easy, but we were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment, for when an obstruction was met in front it could always be turned to the right or to the left. for the greater part of the way there was indeed no occasion for the rope, and sometimes hudson led, sometimes myself. at : we had attained a height of twelve thousand eight hundred feet, and halted for half an hour; we then continued the ascent without a break until : , when we stopt for fifty minutes at a height of fourteen thousand feet. twice we struck the northeastern ridge, and followed it for some little distance--to no advantage, for it was usually more rotten and steep, and always more difficult, than the face. still, we kept near to it, lest stones perchance might fall. we had now arrived at the foot of that part which, from the riffelberg or from zermatt, seems perpendicular or overhanging, and could no longer continue upon the eastern side. for a little distance we ascended by snow upon the arête--that is, the ridge--descending toward zermatt, and then by common consent turned over to the right, or to the northern side. before doing so we made a change in the order of ascent. croz went first, i followed, hudson came third; hadow and old peter were last. "now," said croz as he led off--"now for something altogether different." the work became difficult, and required caution. in some places there was little to hold, and it was desirable that those should be in front who were least likely to slip. the general slope of the mountain at this part was less than forty degrees, and snow had accumulated in, and had filled up, the interstices of the rock-face, leaving only occasional fragments projecting here and there. these were at times covered with a thin film of ice, produced from the melting and refreezing of the snow. it was the counterpart, on a small scale, of the upper seven hundred feet of the pointe des Écrins; only there was this material difference--the face of the Écrins was about, or exceeded, an angle of fifty degrees, and the matterhorn face was less than forty degrees. it was a place over which any fair mountaineers might pass in safety, and mr. hudson ascended this part, and, as far as i know, the entire mountain, without having the slightest assistance rendered to him upon any occasion. sometimes, after i had taken a hand from croz or received a pull, i turned to offer the same to hudson, but he invariably declined, saying it was not necessary. mr. hadow, however, was not accustomed to this kind of work, and required continual assistance. it is only fair to say that the difficulty which he found at this part arose simply and entirely from want of experience. this solitary difficult part was of no great extent. we bore away over it at first nearly horizontally, for a distance of about four hundred feet, then ascended directly toward the summit for about sixty feet, and then doubled back to the ridge which descends toward zermatt. a long stride round a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more. the last doubt vanished! the matterhorn was ours! nothing but two hundred feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted!.... the summit of the matterhorn was formed of a rudely level ridge, about three hundred and fifty feet long. the day was one of those superlatively calm and clear ones which usually precede bad weather. the atmosphere was perfectly still and free from clouds or vapors. mountains fifty--nay, a hundred--miles off looked sharp and near. all their details--ridge and crag, snow and glacier--stood out with faultless definition. pleasant thoughts of happy days in bygone years came up unbidden as we recognized the old, familiar forms. all were revealed--not one of the principal peaks of the alps was hidden. i see them clearly now--the great inner circles of giants, backed by the ranges, chains and "massifs." first came the dent blanche, hoary and grand; the gabelhorn and pointed rothborn, and then the peerless weisshorn; the towering mischabelhörner flanked by the allaleinhorn, strahlhorn and rimpfischhorn; then monte rosa--with its many spitzen--the lyskamm and the breithorn. behind were the bernese oberland, governed by the finsteraarhorn, the simplon and st. gothard groups, the disgrazia and the orteler. toward the south we looked down to chivasso on the plain of piedmont, and far beyond. the viso--one hundred miles away--seemed close upon us; the maritime alps--one hundred and thirty miles distant--were free from haze. then came into view my first love--the pelvoux; the Écrins and the meije; the clusters of the graians; and lastly, in the west, gorgeous in the full sunlight, rose the monarch of all--mont blanc. ten thousand feet beneath us were the green fields of zermatt, dotted with chalets, from which blue smoke rose lazily. eight thousand feet below, on the other side, were the pastures of breuil. there were forests black and gloomy, and meadows bright and lively; bounding waterfalls and tranquil lakes; fertile lands and savage wastes: sunny plains and frigid plateaux. there were the most rugged forms and the most graceful outlines--bold, perpendicular cliffs and gentle, undulating slopes; rocky mountains and snowy mountains, somber and solemn or glittering and white, with walls, turrets, pinnacles, pyramids, domes, cones and spires! there was every combination that the world can give, and every contrast that the heart could desire. we remained on the summit for one hour-- one crowded hour of glorious life. the lord francis douglas tragedy[ ] by edward whymper we began to prepare for the descent. hudson and i again consulted as to the best and safest arrangement of the party. we agreed that it would be best for croz to go first, and hadow second; hudson, who was almost equal to a guide in sureness of foot, wished to be third; lord francis douglas was placed next, and old peter, the strongest of the remainder, after him. i suggested to hudson that we should attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival at the difficult bit, and hold it as we descended, as an additional protection. he approved the idea, but it was not definitely settled that it should be done. the party was being arranged in the above order while i was sketching the summit, and they had finished, and were waiting for me to be tied in line, when some one remembered that our names had not been left in a bottle. they requested me to write them down, and moved off while it was being done. a few minutes afterward i tied myself to young peter, ran down after the others, and caught them just as they were commencing the descent of the difficult part. great care was being taken. only one man was moving at a time; when he was firmly planted, the next advanced, and so on. they had not, however, attached the additional rope to rocks, and nothing was said about it. the suggestion was not made for my own sake, and i am not sure that it even occurred to me again. for some little distance we followed the others, detached from them, and should have continued so had not lord francis douglas asked me, about p.m., to tie on to old peter, as he feared, he said, that taugwalder would not be able to hold his ground if a slip occurred. a few minutes later a sharp-eyed lad ran into the monte rosa hotel to seiler,[ ] saying that he had seen an avalanche fall from the summit of the matterhorn on to the matterhorngletscher. the boy was reproved for telling such idle stories; he was right, nevertheless, and this was what he saw. michael croz had laid aside his ax, and in order to give mr. hadow greater security was absolutely taking hold of his legs and putting his feet, one by one, into their proper positions. as far as i know, no one was actually descending. i can not speak with certainty, because the two leading men were partially hidden from my sight by an intervening mass of rock, but it is my belief, from the movements of their shoulders, that croz, having done as i have said, was in the act of turning round to go down a step or two himself; at the moment mr. hadow slipt, fell against him and knocked him over. i heard one startled exclamation from croz, then saw him and mr. hadow flying downward; in another moment hudson was dragged from his steps, and lord francis douglas immediately after him. all this was the work of a moment. immediately we heard croz's exclamation, old peter and i planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks would permit; the rope was taut between us, and the jerk came on us both as one man. we held, but the rope broke midway between taugwalder and lord francis douglas. for a few seconds we saw our unfortunate companions sliding downward on their backs, and spreading out their hands, endeavoring to save themselves. they passed from our sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from precipice to precipice on to the matterhorngletscher below, a distance of nearly four thousand feet in height. from the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them. so perished our comrades! for the space of half an hour we remained on the spot without moving a single step. the two men, paralyzed by terror, cried like infants, and trembled in such a manner as to threaten us with the fate of the others. old peter rent the air with exclamations of "chamounix!--oh, what will chamounix say?" he meant, who would believe that croz could fall? the young man did nothing but scream or sob, "we are lost! we are lost!" fixt between the two, i could move neither up nor down. i begged young peter to descend, but he dared not. unless he did, we could not advance. old peter became alive to the danger, and swelled the cry, "we are lost! we are lost!" the father's fear was natural--he trembled for his son; the young man's fear was cowardly--he thought of self alone. at last old peter summoned up courage, and changed his position to a rock to which he could fix the rope; the young man then descended, and we all stood together. immediately we did so, i asked for the rope which had given way, and found, to my surprise--indeed, to my horror--that it was the weakest of the three ropes. it was not brought, and should not have been employed, for the purpose for which it was used. it was old rope, and, compared with the others, was feeble. it was intended as a reserve, in case we had to leave much rope behind attached to rocks. i saw at once that a serious question was involved, and made them give me the end. it had broken in mid-air, and it did not appear to have sustained previous injury. for more than two hours afterward i thought almost every moment that the next would be my last, for the taugwalders, utterly unnerved, were not only incapable of giving assistance, but were in such a state that a slip might have been expected from them at any moment. after a time we were able to do that which should have been done at first, and fixt rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together. these ropes were cut from time to time, and were left behind. even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed, and several times old peter turned with ashy face and faltering limbs, and said with terrible emphasis, "i can not!" about p.m. we arrived at the snow upon, the ridge descending toward zermatt, and all peril was over. we frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried to them, but no sound returned. convinced at last that they were within neither sight nor hearing, we ceased from our useless efforts, and, too cast down for speech, silently gathered up our things, preparatory to continuing the descent. when lo! a mighty arch appeared, rising above the lyskamm high into the sky. pale, colorless and noiseless, but perfectly sharp and defined, except where it was lost in the clouds, this unearthly apparition seemed like a vision from another world, and almost appalled we watched with amazement the gradual development of two vast crosses, one on either side. if the taugwalders had not been the first to perceive it, i should have doubted my senses. they thought it had some connection with the accident, and i, after a while, that it might bear some relations to ourselves. but our movements had no effect upon it. the spectral forms remained motionless. it was a fearful and wonderful sight, unique in my experience, and impressive beyond description, at such a moment.... night fell, and for an hour the descent was continued in the darkness. at half-past nine a resting-place was found, and upon a wretched slab, barely large enough to hold three, we passed six miserable hours. at daybreak the descent was resumed, and from the hornli ridge we ran down to the chalets of buhl and on to zermatt. seiler met me at his door, and followed in silence to my room: "what is the matter?" "the taugwalders and i have returned." he did not need more, and burst into tears, but lost no time in lamentations, and set to work to arouse the village. ere long a score of men had started to ascend the hohlicht heights, above kalbermatt and z'mutt, which commanded the plateau of the matterhorngletscher. they returned after six hours, and reported that they had seen the bodies lying motionless on the snow. this was on saturday, and they proposed that we should leave on sunday evening, so as to arrive upon the plateau at daybreak on monday. we started at a.m. on sunday, the th, and followed the route that we had taken on the previous thursday as far as the hornli. from thence we went down to the right of the ridge, and mounted through the "séracs" of the matterhorngletscher. by : we had got to the plateau at the top of the glacier, and within sight of the corner in which we knew my companions must be. as we saw one weather-beaten man after another raise the telescope, turn deadly pale and pass it on without a word to the next, we knew that all hope was gone. we approached. they had fallen below as they had fallen above--croz a little in advance, hadow near him, and hudson behind, but of lord francis douglas we could see nothing.[ ] we left them where they fell, buried in snow at the base of the grandest cliff of the most majestic mountain of the alps. an ascent of monte rosa[ ] by john tyndall on monday, the th of august, we reached the riffel, and, by good fortune on the evening of the same day, my guide's brother, the well-known ulrich lauener, also arrived at the hotel on his return from monte rosa. from him we obtained all the information possible respecting the ascent, and he kindly agreed to accompany us a little way the next morning, to put us on the right track. at three a.m. the door of my bedroom opened, and christian lauener announced to me that the weather was sufficiently good to justify an attempt. the stars were shining overhead; but ulrich afterward drew our attention to some heavy clouds which clung to the mountains on the other side of the valley of the visp; remarking that the weather might continue fair throughout the day, but that these clouds were ominous. at four o'clock we were on our way, by which time a gray stratus cloud had drawn itself across the neck of the matterhorn, and soon afterward another of the same nature encircled his waist. we proceeded past the riffelhorn to the ridge above the görner glacier, from which monte rosa was visible from top to bottom, and where an animated conversation in swiss dialect commenced. ulrich described the slopes, passes, and precipices, which were to guide us; and christian demanded explanations, until he was finally able to declare to me that his knowledge was sufficient. we then bade ulrich good-by, and went forward. all was clear about monte rosa, and the yellow morning light shone brightly upon its uppermost snows. beside the queen of the alps was the huge mass of the lyskamm, with a saddle stretching from the one to the other; next to the lyskamm came two white, rounded mounds, smooth and pure, the twins castor and pollux, and further to the right again the broad, brown flank of the breithorn. behind us mont cervin[ ] gathered the clouds more thickly round him, until finally his grand obelisk was totally hidden. we went along the mountain side for a time, and then descended to the glacier. the surface was hard frozen, and the ice crunched loudly under our feet. there was a hollowness and volume in the sound which require explanation; and this, i think, is furnished by the remarks of sir john herschel on those hollow sounds at the solfaterra, near naples, from which travelers have inferred the existence of cavities within the mountain. at the place where these sounds are heard the earth is friable, and, when struck, the concussion is reinforced and lengthened by the partial echoes from the surfaces of the fragments. the conditions for a similar effect exist upon the glacier, for the ice is disintegrated to a certain depth, and from the innumerable places of rupture little reverberations are sent, which give a length and hollowness to the sound produced by the crushing of the fragments on the surface. we looked to the sky at intervals, and once a meteor slid across it, leaving a train of sparks behind. the blue firmament, from which the stars shone down so brightly when we rose, was more and more invaded by clouds, which advanced upon us from our rear, while before us the solemn heights of monte rosa were bathed in rich yellow sunlight. as the day advanced the radiance crept down toward the valleys; but still those stealthy clouds advanced like a besieging army, taking deliberate possession of the summits, one after another, while gray skirmishers moved through the air above us. the play of light and shadow upon monte rosa was at times beautiful, bars of gloom and zones of glory shifting and alternating from top to bottom of the mountain. at five o'clock a gray cloud alighted on the shoulder of the lyskamm, which had hitherto been warmed by the lovely yellow light. soon afterward we reached the foot of monte rosa, and passed from the glacier to a slope of rocks, whose rounded forms and furrowed surfaces showed that the ice of former ages had moved over them; the granite was now coated with lichens, and between the bosses where mold could rest were patches of tender moss. as we ascended a peal to the right announced the descent of an avalanche from the twins; it came heralded by clouds of ice-dust, which resembled the sphered masses of condensed vapor which issue from a locomotive. a gentle snow-slope brought us to the base of a precipice of brown rocks, round which we wound; the snow was in excellent order, and the chasms were so firmly bridged by the frozen mass that no caution was necessary in crossing them. surmounting a weathered cliff to our left, we paused upon the summit to look upon the scene around us. the snow gliding insensibly from the mountains, or discharged in avalanches from the precipices which it overhung, filled the higher valleys with pure white glaciers, which were rifted and broken here and there, exposing chasms and precipices from which gleamed the delicate blue of the half-formed ice. sometimes, however, the "névés" spread over wide spaces without a rupture or wrinkle to break the smoothness of the superficial snow. the sky was now, for the most part, overcast, but through the residual blue spaces the sun at intervals poured light over the rounded bosses of the mountain. at half-past seven o'clock we reached another precipice of rock, to the left of which our route lay, and here lauener proposed to have some refreshment; after which we went on again. the clouds spread more and more, leaving at length mere specks and patches of blue between them. passing some high peaks, formed by the dislocation of the ice, we came to a place where the "névé" was rent by crevasses, on the walls of which the stratification, due to successive snowfalls, was thrown with great beauty and definition. between two of these fissures our way now lay; the wall of one of them was hollowed out longitudinally midway down, thus forming a roof above and a ledge below, and from roof to ledge stretched a railing of cylindrical icicles, as if intended to bolt them together. a cloud now for the first time touched the summit of monte rosa, and sought to cling to it, but in a minute it dispersed in shattered fragments, as if dashed to pieces for its presumption. the mountain remained for a time clear and triumphant, but the triumph was shortlived; like suitors that will not be repelled, the dusky vapors came; repulse after repulse took place, and the sunlight gushed down upon the heights, but it was manifest that the clouds gained ground in the conflict. until about a quarter-past nine o'clock our work was mere child's play, a pleasant morning stroll along the flanks of the mountain; but steeper slopes now rose above us, which called for more energy, and more care in the fixing of the feet. looked at from below, some of these slopes appeared precipitous; but we were too well acquainted with the effect of fore-shortening to let this daunt us. at each step we dug our batons into the deep snow. when first driven in, the batons [ ] "dipt" from us, but were brought, as we walked forward, to the vertical, and finally beyond it at the other side. the snow was thus forced aside, a rubbing of the staff against it, and of the snow-particles against each other, being the consequence. we had thus perpetual rupture and regelation; while the little sounds consequent upon rupture reinforced by the partial echoes from the surfaces of the granules, were blended together to a note resembling the lowing of cows. hitherto i had paused at intervals to make notes, or to take an angle; but these operations now ceased, not from want of time, but from pure dislike; for when the eye has to act the part of a sentinel who feels that at any moment the enemy may be upon him; when the body must be balanced with precision, and legs and arms, besides performing actual labor, must be kept in readiness for possible contingencies; above all, when you feel that your safety depends upon yourself alone, and that, if your footing gives way, there is no strong arm behind ready to be thrown between you and destruction; under such circumstances the relish for writing ceases, and you are willing to hand over your impressions to the safekeeping of memory. prom the vast boss which constitutes the lower portion of monte rosa cliffy edges run upward to the summit. were the snow removed from these we should, i doubt not, see them as toothed or serrated crags, justifying the term "kamm," or "comb," applied to such edges by the germans. our way now lay along such a "kamm," the cliffs of which had, however, caught the snow, and been completely covered by it, forming an edge like the ridge of a house-roof, which sloped steeply upward. on the lyskamm side of the edge there was no footing, and if a human body fell over here, it would probably pass through a vertical space of some thousands of feet, falling or rolling, before coming to rest. on the other side the snow-slope was less steep, but excessively perilous-looking, and intersected by precipices of ice. dense clouds now enveloped us, and made our position far uglier than if it had been fairly illuminated. the valley below us was one vast cauldron, filled with precipitated vapor, which came seething at times up the sides of the mountain. sometimes this fog would clear away, and the light would gleam from the dislocated glaciers. my guide continually admonished me to make my footing sure, and to fix at each step my staff firmly in the consolidated snow. at one place, for a short steep ascent, the slope became hard ice, and our position a very ticklish one. we hewed our steps as we moved upward, but were soon glad to deviate from the ice to a position scarcely less awkward. the wind had so acted upon the snow as to fold it over the edge of the kamm, thus causing it to form a kind of cornice, which overhung the precipice on the lyskamm side of the mountain. this cornice now bore our weight; its snow had become somewhat firm, but it was yielding enough to permit the feet to sink in it a little way, and thus secure us at least against the danger of slipping. here, also, at each step we drove our batons firmly into the snow, availing ourselves of whatever help they could render. once, while thus securing my anchorage, the handle of my hatchet went right through the cornice on which we stood, and, on withdrawing it, i could see through the aperture into the cloud-crammed gulf below. we continued ascending until we reached a rock protruding from the snow, and here we halted for a few minutes. lauener looked upward through the fog. "according to all description," he observed, "this ought to be the last kamm of the mountain; but in this obscurity we can see nothing." snow began to fall, and we recommenced our journey, quitting the rocks and climbing again along the edge. another hour brought us to a crest of cliffs, at which, to our comfort, the kamm appeared to cease, and other climbing qualities were demanded of us. on the lyskamm side, as i have said, rescue would be out of the question, should the climber go over the edge. on the other side of the edge rescue seemed possible, tho' the slope, as stated already, was most dangerously steep. i now asked lauener what he would have done, supposing my footing to have failed on the latter slope. he did not seem to like the question, but said that he should have considered well for a moment and then have sprung after me; but he exhorted me to drive all such thoughts away. i laughed at him, and this did more to set his mind at rest than any formal profession of courage could have done. we were now among rocks; we climbed cliffs and descended them, and advanced sometimes with our feet on narrow ledges, holding tightly on to other ledges by our fingers; sometimes, cautiously balanced, we moved along edges of rock with precipices on both sides. once, in getting round a crag, lauener shook a book from his pocket; it was arrested by a rock about sixty or eighty feet below us. he wished to regain it, but i offered to supply its place, if he thought the descent too dangerous. he said he would make the trial, and parted from me. i thought it useless to remain idle. a cleft was before me, through which i must pass; so pressing my knees and back against its opposite sides, i gradually worked myself to the top. i descended the other face of the rock, and then, through a second ragged fissure, to the summit of another pinnacle. the highest point of the mountain was now at hand, separated from me merely by a short saddle, carved by weathering out the crest of the mountain. i could hear lauener clattering after me, through the rocks behind. i dropt down upon the saddle, crossed it, climbed the opposite cliff, and "die höchste spitze" of monte rosa was won. lauener joined me immediately, and we mutually congratulated each other on the success of the ascent. the residue of the bread and meat was produced, and a bottle of tea was also appealed to. mixed with a little cognac, lauener declared that he had never tasted anything like it. snow fell thickly at intervals, and the obscurity was very great; occasionally this would lighten and permit the sun to shed a ghastly dilute light upon us through the gleaming vapor. i put my boiling-water apparatus in order, and fixt it in a corner behind a ledge; the shelter was, however, insufficient, so i placed my hat above the vessel. the boiling-point was . deg. fahr., the ledge on which the instrument stood being five feet below the highest point of the mountain. the ascent from the riffel hotel occupied us about seven hours, nearly two of which were spent upon the kämm and crest. neither of us felt in the least degree fatigued; i, indeed, felt so fresh, that had another monte rosa been planted on the first, i should have continued the climb without hesitation, and with strong hopes of reaching the top. i experienced no trace of mountain sickness, lassitude, shortness of breath, heart-beat, or headache; nevertheless the summit of monte rosa is , feet high, being less than feet lower than mont blanc. it is, i think, perfectly certain, that the rarefaction of the air at this height is not sufficient of itself to produce the symptoms referred to; physical exertion must be superadded. mont blanc ascended, huxley going part way[ ] by john tyndall the way for a time was excessively rough,[ ] our route being overspread with the fragments of peaks which had once reared themselves to our left, but which frost and lightning had shaken to pieces, and poured in granite avalanches down the mountain. we were sometimes among huge, angular boulders, and sometimes amid lighter shingle, which gave way at every step, thus forcing us to shift our footing incessantly. escaping from these we crossed the succession of secondary glaciers which lie at the feet of the aiguilles, and, having secured firewood, found ourselves, after some hours of hard work, at the pierre l'echelle. here we were furnished with leggings of coarse woolen cloth to keep out the snow; they were tied under the knees and quite tightly again over the insteps, so that the legs were effectually protected. we had some refreshment, possest ourselves of the ladder, and entered upon the glacier. the ice was excessively fissured; we crossed crevasses and crept round slippery ridges, cutting steps in the ice wherever climbing was necessary. this rendered our progress very slow. once, with the intention of lending a helping hand, i stept forward upon a block of granite which happened to be poised like a rocking stone upon the ice, tho' i did not know it; it treacherously turned under me; i fell, but my hands were in instant requisition, and i escaped with a bruise, from which, however, the blood oozed angrily. we found the ladder necessary in crossing some of the chasms, the iron spikes at its end being firmly driven into the ice at one side, while the other end rested on the opposite side of the fissure. the middle portion of the glacier was not difficult. mounds of ice rose beside us right and left, which were sometimes split into high towers and gaunt-looking pyramids, while the space between was unbroken. twenty minutes' walking brought us again to a fissured portion of the glacier, and here our porter left the ladder on the ice behind him. for some time i was not aware of this, but we were soon fronted by a chasm to pass which we were in consequence compelled to make a long and dangerous circuit amid crests of crumbling ice. this accomplished, we hoped that no repetition of the process would occur, but we speedily came to a second fissure, where it was necessary to step from a projecting end of ice to a mass of soft snow which overhung the opposite side. simond could reach this snow with his long-handled ax; he beat it down to give it rigidity, but it was exceedingly tender, and as he worked at it he continued to express his fears that it would not bear us. i was the lightest of the party, and therefore tested the passage first; being partially lifted by simond on the end of his ax, i crossed the fissure, obtained some anchorage at the other side, and helped the others over. we afterward ascended until another chasm, deeper and wider than any we had hitherto encountered, arrested us. we walked alongside of it in search of a snow-bridge, which we at length found, but the keystone of the arch had, unfortunately, given way, leaving projecting eaves of snow at both sides, between which we could look into the gulf, till the gloom of its deeper portions cut the vision short. both sides of the crevasse were sounded, but no sure footing was obtained; the snow was beaten and carefully trodden down as near to the edge as possible, but it finally broke away from the foot and fell into the chasm. one of our porters was short-legged and a bad iceman; the other was a daring fellow, and he now threw the knapsack from his shoulders, came to the edge of the crevasse, looked into it, but drew back again. after a pause he repeated the act, testing the snow with his feet and staff. i looked at the man as he stood beside the chasm manifestly undecided as to whether he should take the step upon which his life would hang, and thought it advisable to put a stop to such perilous play. i accordingly interposed, the man withdrew from the crevasse, and he and simond descended to fetch the ladder. while they were away huxley sat down upon the ice, with an expression of fatigue stamped upon his countenance; the spirit and the muscles were evidently at war, and the resolute will mixed itself strangely with the sense of peril and feeling of exhaustion. he had been only two days with us, and, tho' his strength is great, he had had no opportunity of hardening himself by previous exercise upon the ice for the task which he had undertaken. the ladder now arrived, and we crossed the crevasse. i was intentionally the last of the party, huxley being immediately in front of me. the determination of the man disguised his real condition from everybody but himself, but i saw that the exhausting journey over the boulders and débris had been too much for his london limbs. converting my waterproof haversack into a cushion, i made him sit down upon it at intervals, and by thus breaking the steep ascent into short stages we reached the cabin of the grands mulets together. here i spread a rug on the boards, and, placing my bag for a pillow, he lay down, and after an hour's profound sleep he rose refreshed and well; but still he thought it wise not to attempt the ascent farther. our porters left us; a baton was stretched across the room over the stove, and our wet socks and leggings were thrown across it to dry; our boots were placed around the fire, and we set about preparing our evening meal. a pan was placed upon the fire, and filled with snow, which in due time melted and boiled; i ground some chocolate and placed it in the pan, and afterward ladled the beverage into the vessels we possest, which consisted of two earthen dishes and the metal cases of our brandy flasks. after supper simond went out to inspect the glacier, and was observed by huxley, as twilight fell, in a state of deep contemplation beside a crevasse. gradually the stars appeared, but as yet no moon. before lying down we went out to look at the firmament, and noticed, what i supposed has been observed to some extent by everybody, that the stars near the horizon twinkled busily, while those near the zenith shone with a steady light. one large star, in particular, excited our admiration; it flashed intensely, and changed color incessantly, sometimes blushing like a ruby, and again gleaming like an emerald. a determinate color would sometimes remain constant for a sensible time, but usually the flashes followed each other in very quick succession. three planks were now placed across the room near the stove, and upon these, with their rugs folded round them, huxley and hirst stretched themselves, while i nestled on the boards at the most distant end of the room. we rose at eleven o'clock, renewed the fire and warmed ourselves, after which we lay down again. i, at length, observed a patch of pale light upon the wooden wall of the cabin, which had entered through a hole in the end of the edifice, and rising found that it was past one o'clock. the cloudless moon was shining over the wastes of snow, and the scene outside was at once wild, grand, and beautiful. breakfast was soon prepared, tho' not without difficulty; we had no candles, they had been forgotten; but i fortunately possest a box of wax matches, of which huxley took charge, patiently igniting them in succession, and thus giving us a tolerably continuous light. we had some tea, which had been made at the montanvert,[ ] and carried to the grands mulets in a bottle. my memory of that tea is not pleasant; it had been left a whole night in contact with its leaves, and smacked strongly of tannin. the snow-water, moreover, with which we diluted it was not pure, but left a black residuum at the bottom of the dishes in which the beverage was served. the few provisions deemed necessary being placed in simond's knapsack, at twenty minutes past two o'clock we scrambled down the rocks, leaving huxley behind us. the snow was hardened by the night's frost, and we were cheered by the hope of being able to accomplish the ascent with comparatively little labor. we were environed by an atmosphere of perfect purity; the larger stars hung like gems above us, and the moon, about half full, shone with wondrous radiance in the dark firmament. one star in particular, which lay eastward from the moon, suddenly made its appearance above one of the aiguilles, and burned there with unspeakable splendor. we turned once toward the mulets, and saw huxley's form projected against the sky as he stood upon a pinnacle of rock; he gave us a last wave of the hand and descended, while we receded from him into the solitudes. the evening previous our guide had examined the glacier for some distance, his progress having been arrested by a crevasse. beside this we soon halted: it was spanned at one place by a bridge of snow, which was of too light a structure to permit of simond's testing it alone; we therefore paused while our guide uncoiled a rope and tied us all together. the moment was to me a peculiarly solemn one. our little party seemed so lonely and so small amid the silence and the vastness of the surrounding scene. we were about to try our strength under unknown conditions, and as the various possibilities of the enterprise crowded on the imagination, a sense of responsibility for a moment opprest me. but as i looked aloft and saw the glory of the heavens, my heart lightened, and i remarked cheerily to hirst that nature seemed to smile upon our work. "yes," he replied, in a calm and earnest voice, "and, god willing, we shall accomplish it." a pale light now overspread the eastern sky, which increased, as we ascended, to a daffodil tinge; this afterward heightened to orange, deepening at one extremity into red, and fading at the other into a pure, ethereal hue to which it would be difficult to assign a special name. higher up the sky was violet, and this changed by insensible degrees into the darkling blue of the zenith, which had to thank the light of moon and stars alone for its existence. we wound steadily for a time through valleys of ice, climbed white and slippery slopes, crossed a number of crevasses, and after some time found ourselves beside a chasm of great depth and width, which extended right and left as far as we could see. we turned to the left, and marched along its edge in search of a "pont"; but matters became gradually worse; other crevasses joined on to the first one, and the further we proceeded the more riven and dislocated the ice became. at length we reached a place where further advance was impossible. simond, in his difficulty complained of the want of light, and wished us to wait for the advancing day; i, on the contrary, thought that we had light enough and ought to make use of it. here the thought occurred to me that simond, having been only once before to the top of the mountain, might not be quite clear about the route; the glacier, however, changes within certain limits from year to year, so that a general knowledge was all that could be expected, and we trusted to our own muscles to make good any mistake in the way of guidance. we now turned and retraced our steps along the edges of chasms where the ice was disintegrated and insecure, and succeeded at length in finding a bridge which bore us across the crevasse. this error caused us the loss of an hour, and after walking for this time we could cast a stone from the point we had attained to the place whence we had been compelled to return. our way now lay along the face of a steep incline of snow, which was cut by the fissure we had just passed, in a direction parallel to our route. on the heights to our right, loose ice-crags seemed to totter, and we passed two tracks over which the frozen blocks had rushed some short time previously. we were glad to get out of the range of these terrible projectiles, and still more so to escape the vicinity of that ugly crevasse. to be killed in the open air would be a luxury, compared with having the life squeezed out of one in the horrible gloom of these chasms. the blush of the coming day became more and more intense; still the sun himself did not appear, being hidden from us by the peaks of the aiguille du midi, which were drawn clear and sharp against the brightening sky. right under this aiguille were heaps of snow smoothly rounded and constituting a portion of the sources whence the glacier du géant is fed; these, as the day advanced, bloomed with a rosy light. we reached the petit plateau, which we found covered with the remains of ice avalanches; above us upon the crest of the mountain rose three mighty bastions, divided from each other by deep, vertical rents, with clean smooth walls, across which the lines of annual bedding were drawn like courses of masonry. from these, which incessantly renew themselves, and from the loose and broken ice-crags near them, the boulders amid which we now threaded our way had been discharged. when they fall their descent must be sublime. the snow had been gradually getting deeper, and the ascent more wearisome, but superadded to this at the petit plateau was the uncertainty of the footing between the blocks of ice. in many places the space was merely covered by a thin crust, which, when trod upon, instantly yielded and we sank with a shock sometimes to the hips. our way next lay up a steep incline to the grand plateau, the depth and tenderness of the snow augmenting as we ascended. we had not yet seen the sun, but as we attained the brow which forms the entrance to the grand plateau, he hung his disk upon a spike of rock to our left, and, surrounded by a glory of interference spectra of the most gorgeous colors, blazed down upon us. on the grand plateau we halted and had our frugal refreshment. at some distance to our left was the crevasse into which dr. hamel's three guides were precipitated by an avalanche in ; they are still entombed in the ice, and some future explorer may, perhaps, see them disgorged lower down, fresh and undecayed. they can hardly reach the surface until they pass the snow-line of the glacier, for above this line the quantity of snow that annually falls being in excess of the quantity melted, the tendency would be to make the ice-covering above them thicker. but it is also possible that the waste of the ice underneath may have brought the bodies to the bed of the glacier, where their very bones may have been ground to mud by an agency which the hardest rocks can not withstand. as the sun poured his light upon the plateau the little snow-facets sparkled brilliantly, sometimes with a pure white light, and at others with prismatic colors. contrasted with the white spaces above and around us were the dark mountains on the opposite side of the valley of chamouni, around which fantastic masses of cloud were beginning to build themselves. mont buet, with its cone of snow, looked small, and the brevent altogether mean; the limestone bastions of the fys, however, still presented a front of gloom and grandeur. we traversed the grand plateau, and at length reached the base of an extremely steep incline which stretched upward toward the corridor. here, as if produced by a fault, consequent upon the sinking of the ice in front, rose a vertical precipice, from the coping of which vast stalactites of ice depended. previous to reaching this place i had noticed a haggard expression upon the countenance of our guide, which was now intensified by the prospect of the ascent before him. hitherto he had always been in front, which was certainly the most fatiguing position. i felt that i must now take the lead, so i spoke cheerily to the man and placed him behind me. marking a number of points upon the slope as resting places, i went swiftly from one to the other. the surface of the snow had been partially melted by the sun and then refrozen, thus forming a superficial crust, which bore the weight up to a certain point, and then suddenly gave way, permitting the leg to sink to above the knee. the shock consequent on this, and the subsequent effort necessary to extricate the leg, were extremely fatiguing. my motion was complained of as too quick, and my tracks as imperfect; i moderated the former, and to render my footholes broad and sure, i stamped upon the frozen crust, and twisted my legs in the soft mass underneath,--a terribly exhausting process. i thus led the way to the base of the rochers bouges, up to which the fault already referred to had prolonged itself as a crevasse, which was roofed at one place by a most dangerous-looking snow-bridge. simond came to the front; i drew his attention to the state of the snow, and proposed climbing the rochers rouges; but, with a promptness unusual with him, he replied that this was impossible; the bridge was our only means of passing, and we must try it. we grasped our ropes, and dug our feet firmly into the snow to check the man's descent if the "pont" gave way, but to our astonishment it bore him, and bore us safely after him. the slope which we had now to ascend had the snow swept from its surface, and was therefore firm ice. it was most dangerously steep, and, its termination being the fretted coping of the precipice to which i have referred, if we slid downward we should shoot over this and be dashed to pieces upon the ice below.[ ] simond, who had come to the front to cross the crevasse, was now engaged in cutting steps, which he made deep and large, so that they might serve us on our return. but the listless strokes of his ax proclaimed his exhaustion; so i took the implement out of his hands, and changed places with him. step after step was hewn, but the top of the corridor appeared ever to recede from us. hirst was behind, unoccupied, and could thus turn his thoughts to the peril of our position; he "felt" the angle on which we hung, and saw the edge of the precipice, to which less than a quarter of a minute's slide would carry us, and for the first time during the journey he grew giddy. a cigar which he lighted for the purpose tranquilized him. i hewed sixty steps upon this slope, and each step had cost a minute, by hirst's watch. the mur de la côte was still before us, and on this the guide-books informed us two or three hundred steps were sometimes found necessary. if sixty steps cost an hour, what would be the cost of two hundred? the question was disheartening in the extreme, for the time at which we had calculated on reaching the summit was already passed, while the chief difficulties remained unconquered. having hewn our way along the harder ice we reached snow. i again resorted to stamping to secure a footing, and while thus engaged became, for the first time, aware of the drain of force to which i was subjecting myself. the thought of being absolutely exhausted had never occurred to me, and from first to last i had taken no care to husband my strength. i always calculated that the "will" would serve me even should the muscles fail, but i now found that mechanical laws rule man in the long run; that no effort of will, no power of spirit, can draw beyond a certain limit upon muscular force. the soul, it is true, can stir the body to action, but its function is to excite and apply force, and not to create it. while stamping forward through the frozen crust i was compelled to pause at short intervals; then would set out again apparently fresh, to find, however, in a few minutes, that my strength was gone, and that i required to rest once more. in this way i gained the summit of the corridor, when hirst came to the front, and i felt some relief in stepping slowly after him, making use of the holes into which his feet had sunk. he thus led the way to the base of the mur de la côte, the thought of which had so long cast a gloom upon us; here we left our rope behind us, and while pausing i asked simond whether he did not feel a desire to go to the summit. "surely," was his reply, "but!--" our guide's mind was so constituted that the "but" seemed essential to its peace. i stretched my hands toward him, and said: "simond, we must do it." one thing alone i felt could defeat us: the usual time of the ascent had been more than doubled, the day was already far spent, and if the ascent would throw our subsequent descent into night it could not be contemplated. we now faced the mur, which was by no means so bad as we had expected. driving the iron claws of our boots into the scars made by the ax, and the spikes of our batons into the slope above our feet, we ascended steadily until the summit was attained, and the top of the mountain rose clearly above us. we congratulated ourselves upon this; but simond, probably fearing that our joy might become too full, remarked: "but the summit is still far off!" it was, alas! too true. the snow became soft again, and our weary limbs sank in it as before. our guide went on in front, audibly muttering his doubts as to our ability to reach the top, and at length he threw himself upon the snow, and exclaimed, "i give up!" hirst now undertook the task of rekindling the guide's enthusiasm, after which simond rose, exclaiming: "oh, but this makes my knees ache!" and went forward. two rocks break through the snow between the summit of the mur and the top of the mountain; the first is called the petits mulets, and the highest the derniers rochers. at the former of these we paused to rest, and finished our scanty store of wine and provisions. we had not a bit of bread nor a drop of wine left; our brandy flasks were also nearly exhausted, and thus we had to contemplate the journey to the summit, and the subsequent descent to the grands mulets, with out the slightest prospect of physical refreshment. the almost total loss of two nights' sleep, with two days' toil superadded, made me long for a few minutes' doze, so i stretched myself upon a composite couch of snow and granite, and immediately fell asleep. my friend, however, soon aroused me. "you quite frighten me," he said; "i have listened for some minutes, and have not heard you breathe once." i had, in reality, been taking deep draughts of the mountain air, but so silently as not to be heard. i now filled our empty wine-bottle with snow and placed it in the sunshine, that we might have a little water on our return. we then rose; it was half-past two o'clock; we had been upward of twelve hours climbing, and i calculated that, whether we reached the summit or not, we could at all events work "toward" it for another hour. to the sense of fatigue previously experienced, a new phenomenon was now added--the beating of the heart. we were incessantly pulled up by this, which sometimes became so intense as to suggest danger. i counted the number of paces which we were able to accomplish without resting, and found that at the end of every twenty, sometimes at the end of fifteen, we were compelled to pause. at each pause my heart throbbed audibly, as i leaned upon my staff, and the subsidence of this action was always the signal for further advance. my breathing was quick, but light and unimpeded. i endeavored to ascertain whether the hip-joint, on account of the diminished atmospheric pressure, became loosened, so as to throw the weight of the leg upon the surrounding ligaments, but could not be certain about it. i also sought a little aid and encouragement from philosophy, endeavoring to remember what great things had been done by the accumulation of small quantities, and i urged upon myself that the present was a case in point, and that the summation of distances twenty paces each must finally place us at the top. still the question of time left the matter long in doubt, and until we had passed the derniers rochers we worked on with the stern indifference of men who were doing their duty, and did not look to consequences. here, however, a gleam of hope began to brighten our souls: the summit became visible nearer, simond showed more alacrity; at length success became certain, and at half-past three p.m. my friend and i clasped hands upon the top. the summit of the mountain is an elongated ridge, which has been compared to the back of an ass. it was perfectly manifest that we were dominant over all other mountains; as far as the eye could range mont blanc had no competitor. the summits which had looked down upon us in the morning were now far beneath us. the dôme du goûté, which had held its threatening "séracs" above us so long, was now at our feet. the aiguille du midi, mont blanc du tacul, and the monts maudits, the talèfre, with its surrounding peaks, the grand jorasse, mont mallet, and the aiguille du géant, with our own familiar glaciers, were all below us. and as our eye ranged over the broad shoulders of the mountain, over ice hills and valleys, plateaux and far-stretching slopes of snow, the conception of its magnitude grew upon us, and imprest us more and more. the clouds were very grand--grander, indeed, than anything i had ever before seen. some of them seemed to hold thunder in their breasts, they were so dense and dark; others, with their faces turned sunward, shone with the dazzling whiteness of the mountain snow; while others again built themselves into forms resembling gigantic elm trees, loaded with foliage. toward the horizon the luxury of color added itself to the magnificent alternation of light and shade. clear spaces of amber and ethereal green embraced the red and purple cumuli, and seemed to form the cradle in which they swung. closer at hand squally mists, suddenly engendered, were driven hither and thither by local winds; while the clouds at a distance lay "like angels sleeping on the wing," with scarcely visibly motion. mingling with the clouds, and sometimes rising above them, were the highest mountain heads, and as our eyes wandered from peak to peak, onward to the remote horizon, space itself seemed more vast from the manner in which the objects which it held were distributed.... the day was waning, and, urged by the warnings of our ever-prudent guide, we at length began the descent. gravity was in our favor, but gravity could not entirely spare our wearied limbs, and where we sank in the snow we found our downward progress very trying. i suffered from thirst, but after we had divided the liquefied snow at the petits mulets among us we had nothing to drink. i crammed the clean snow into my mouth, but the process of melting was slow and tantalizing to a parched throat, while the chill was painful to the teeth. the jungfrau-joch[ ] by sir leslie stephen i was once more standing upon the wengern alp, and gazing longingly at the jungfrau-joch. surely the wengern alp must be precisely the loveliest place in this world. to hurry past it, and listen to the roar of the avalanches, is a very unsatisfactory mode of enjoyment; it reminds one too much of letting off crackers in a cathedral. the mountains seem to be accomplices of the people who charge fifty centimes for an echo. but it does one's moral nature good to linger there at sunset or in the early morning, when tourists have ceased from traveling; and the jaded cockney may enjoy a kind of spiritual bath in the soothing calmness of scenery.... we, that is a little party of six englishmen with six oberland guides, who left the inn at a.m. on july , , were not, perhaps, in a specially poetical mood. yet as the sun rose while we were climbing the huge buttress of the mönch, the dullest of us--i refer, of course, to myself--felt something of the spirit of the scenery. the day was cloudless, and a vast inverted cone of dazzling rays suddenly struck upward into the sky through the gap between the mönch and the eiger, which, as some effect of perspective shifted its apparent position, looked like a glory streaming from the very summit of the eiger. it was a good omen, if not in any more remote sense, yet as promising a fine day. after a short climb we descended upon the gugg, glacier, most lamentably unpoetical of names, and mounted by it to the great plateau which lies below the cliffs immediately under the col. we reached this at about seven, and, after a short meal, carefully examined the route above us. half way between us and the col lay a small and apparently level plateau of snow. once upon it we felt confident that we could get to the top.... we plunged at once into the maze of crevasses, finding our passage much facilitated by the previous efforts of our guides. we were constantly walking over ground strewed with crumbling blocks of ice, the recent fall of which was proved by their sharp white fractures, and with a thing like an infirm toad stool twenty feet high, towering above our heads. once we passed under a natural arch of ice, built in evident disregard of all principles of architectural stability. hurrying judiciously at such critical points, and creeping slowly round those where the footing was difficult, we manage to thread the labyrinth safely, whilst rubi appeared to think it rather pleasant than otherwise in such places to have his head fixt in a kind of pillory between two rungs of a ladder, with twelve feet of it sticking out behind and twelve feet before him. we reached the gigantic crevasse at . . we passed along it to a point where its two lips nearly joined, and the side furthest from us was considerably higher than that upon which we stood. fixing the foot of the ladder upon this ledge, we swung the top over, and found that it rested satisfactorily against the opposite bank. almer crept up it, and made the top firmer by driving his ax into the snow underneath the highest step. the rest of us followed, carefully roped, and with the caution to rest our knees on the sides of the ladder, as several of the steps were extremely weak--a remark which was equally applicable to one, at least, of the sides. we crept up the rickety old machine, however, looking down between our legs into the blue depths of the crevasse, and at . the whole party found itself satisfactorily perched on the edge of the nearly level snow plateau, looking up at the long slopes of broken névé that led to the col.... when the man behind was also engaged in hauling himself up by the rope attached to your waist, when the two portions of the rope formed an acute angle, when your footing was confined to the insecure grip of one toe on a slippery bit of ice, and when a great hummock of hard sérac was pressing against the pit of your stomach and reducing you to a position of neutral equilibrium, the result was a feeling of qualified acquiescence in michel or almer's lively suggestion of "vorwärts! vorwärts!" somehow or other we did ascend. the excitement made the time seem short; and after what seemed to me to be half an hour, which was in fact nearly two hours, we had crept, crawled, climbed and wormed our way through various obstacles, till we found ourselves brought up by a huge overhanging wall of blue ice. this wall was no doubt the upper side of a crevasse, the lower part of which had been filled by snow-drift. its face was honeycombed by the usual hemispherical chippings, which somehow always reminds me of the fretted walls of the alhambra; and it was actually hollowed out so that its upper edge overhung our heads at a height of some twenty or thirty feet; the long fringe of icicles which adorned it had made a slippery pathway of ice at two or three feet distance from the foot of the wall by the freezing water which dripped from them; and along this we crept, in hopes that none of the icicles would come down bodily. the wall seemed to thin out and become much lower toward our left, and we moved cautiously toward its lowest point. the edge upon which we walked was itself very narrow, and ran down at a steep angle to the top of a lower icefall which repeated the form of the upper. it almost thinned out at the point where the upper wall was lowest. upon this inclined ledge, however, we fixt the foot of our ladder. the difficulty of doing so conveniently was increased by a transverse crevasse which here intersected the other system. the foot, however, was fixt and rendered tolerably safe by driving in firmly several of our alpenstocks and axes under the lowest step. almer, then, amidst great excitement, went forward to mount it. should we still find an impassable system of crevasses above us, or were we close to the top? a gentle breeze which had been playing along the last ledge gave me hope that we were really not far off. as almer reached the top about twelve o'clock, a loud yodel gave notice to all the party that our prospects were good. i soon followed, and saw, to my great delight, a stretch of smooth, white snow, without a single crevasse, rising in a gentle curve from our feet to the top of the col. the people who had been watching us from the wengern alp had been firing salutes all day, whenever the idea struck them, and whenever we surmounted a difficulty, such as the first great crevasse. we heard the faint sound of two or three guns as we reached the final plateau. we should, properly speaking, have been uproariously triumphant over our victory. to say the truth, our party of that summer was only too apt to break out into undignified explosions of animal spirits, bordering at times upon horseplay.... the top of the jungfrau-joch comes rather like a bathos in poetry. it rises so gently above the steep ice wall, and it is so difficult to determine the precise culminating point, that our enthusiasm oozed out gradually instead of producing a sudden explosion; and that instead of giving three cheers, singing "god save the queen," or observing any of the traditional ceremonial of a simpler generation of travelers, we calmly walked forward as tho' we had been crossing westminster bridge, and on catching sight of a small patch of rocks near the foot of the mönch, rushed precipitately down to it and partook of our third breakfast. which things, like most others, might easily be made into an allegory. the great dramatic moments of life are very apt to fall singularly flat. we manage to discount all their interest beforehand; and are amazed to find that the day to which we have looked forward so long--the day, it may be, of our marriage, or ordination, or election to be lord mayor--finds us curiously unconscious of any sudden transformation and as strongly inclined to prosaic eating and drinking as usual. at a later period we may become conscious of its true significance, and perhaps the satisfactory conquest of this new pass has given us more pleasure in later years than it did at the moment. however that may be, we got under way again after a meal and a chat, our friends messrs. george and moore descending the aletsch glacier to the aeggischhorn, whose summit was already in sight, and deceptively near in appearance. the remainder of the party soon turned off to the left, and ascended the snow slopes to the gap between the mönch and trugberg. as we passed these huge masses, rising in solitary grandeur from the center of one of the noblest snowy wastes of the alps, morgan reluctantly confest for the first time that he knew nothing exactly like it in wales. xi other alpine topics the great st. bernard hospice[ ] by archibald campbell knowles the pass of the great st. bernard was a well-known one long before the hospice was built. before the christian era, the romans used it as a highway across the alps, constantly improving the road as travel over it increased. many lives were lost, however, as no material safeguards could obviate the danger from the elements, and no one will ever know the number of souls who met their end in the blinding snows and chilling blasts of those alpine heights. to bernard de menthon is due the credit of the mountain hospice. he was the originator of the idea and the founder of the institution. he has since been canonized as a saint and he well deserved the honor, if it be a virtue to sacrifice oneself, as we believe, and to try and save the lives of one's fellows! it is no easy existence which st. bernard chose for himself and followers. the very aspect of the pass is grand but gloomy. none of the softness of nature is seen. there is no verdure, no beauty of coloring, nothing but bleak, bare rock, great piles of stones, and occasional patches of fallen snow. it is thoroughly exposed, the winds always moaning mournfully around the buildings.... the trip begins at martigny. first there is a level stretch, then a long, steady climb, after which begins the real road to the pass. the views are very lovely, and while quite different in some ways excel all passes except the famous simplon. the scenery is very varied, the mountains are far enough off to give a good perspective, and the villages are most picturesque. the absence of snow peaks in any great number will be felt by some, but even a lover of such soon forgets the lack in the exceeding beauty and loveliness of the valleys. toward the top of the pass there is quite a transformation. both the road and the scenery change, the first becoming more and more steep and stony, the latter showing more and more of savage grandeur, as the green, smiling valleys are no longer seen, but in their place appear barren and rugged rocks and slopes, with the marks of the ravages wrought by storm, landslide and avalanche. the wind has fuller play and seems to moan in a mournful, dirge-like manner, accentuating the characteristics of bleakness and desolation which obtain at the top of the pass, all the more noticeable if the traveler arrives at dusk, just as the sun has disappeared behind the mountains. in this dreary place stands the hospice. the present buildings are not very old, the hospice only dating from the sixteenth century and the church from the seventeenth century, while the other structures, which have been built for the accommodation of strangers are comparatively new. twelve monks of the augustinian order are regularly in residence here. they come when about twenty years of age; but so severe is the climate, so hard the life and so stern the rule that, after a service of about fifteen years, they generally have to seek a lower altitude, often ruined in health, with their powers completely sapped by the rigors and privations which they have endured. altho the hospice and the adjoining hostelry for the travelers are cheerless in the extreme, there is always a warm welcome from the monks. no one, however poor, is refused bed and board for the night, and there is no "distinction of persons." the hospitality is extended to all, free of charge, this being the invariable rule of the institution, but it is expected, and rightly so, that those who can do so will deposit a liberal offering in the box provided for the purpose. the small receipts, however, show what a great abuse there is of this hospitality, for a large number of those who come in the summer could well afford to give and to give largely. we hear much of the courage and perseverance of hannibal and cæsar in leading their armies over the alps! we see pictures of napoleon and his soldiers as they toiled up the pass, dragging along their frozen guns, and perhaps falling into a fatal sleep about their dying camp fires at night! and we rightly admire such bravery, and thrill with admiration at the tale. yet those armies which crossed the alps failed to equal the heroic self-sacrifice of those soldiers of the cross, the monks of the grand st. bernard, who remain for years at their post, unknown and unsung by the wide, wide world, simply to save and shelter the humble travelers who come to grief in their winter journey across the pass, in search of work. avalanches[ ] by victor tissot beside this dazzling, magnificent snow, covering the chain of lofty peaks like an immaculate altar cloth, what a gloomy, dull look there is in the snow of the plains! one might think it was made of sugar or confectionery, that it was false like all the rest. to know what snow really is--to get quit of this feeling of artificial snow that we have when we see the stunted shrubs in our parisian gardens wrapt, as it were, in silk paper like bits of christmas trees--it must be seen here in these far-off, high valleys of the engandine, that lie for eight months dead under their shroud of snow, and often, even in the height of summer, have to shiver anew under some wintry flakes. it is here that snow is truly beautiful! it shines in the sun with a dazzling whiteness; it sparkles with a thousand fires like diamond dust; it shows gleams like the plumage of a white dove, and it is as firm under the foot as a marble pavement. it is so fine-grained, so compact, that it clings like dust to every crevice and bend, to every projecting edge and point, and follows every outline of the mountain, the form of which it leaves as clearly defined as if it were a covering of thin gauze. it sports in the most charming decorations, carves alabaster facings and cornices on the cliffs, wreathes them in delicate lace, covers them with vast canopies of white satin spangled with stars and fringed with silver. and yet this dry, hard snow is extremely susceptible to the slightest shock, and may be set in motion by a very trifling disturbance of the air. the flight of a bird, the cracking of a whip, the tinkling of bells, even the conversation of persons going along sometimes suffices to shake and loosen it from the vertical face of the cliffs to which it is clinging; and it runs down like grains of sand, growing as it falls, by drawing down with it other beds of snow. it is like a torrent, a snowy waterfall, bursting out suddenly from the side of the mountain; it rushes down with a terrible noise, swollen with the snows that it carries down in its furious course; it breaks against the rocks, divides and joins again like an overflowing stream, and with a wild tempest blast resumes its desolating course, filling the echoes with the deafening thunder of battle. you think for a moment that a storm has begun, but looking at the sky you see it serenely blue, smiling, cloudless. the rush becomes more and more violent; it comes nearer, the ground trembles, the trees bend and break with a sharp crack; enormous stones and blocks of ice are carried away like gravel; and the mighty avalanche, with a crash like a train running off the rails over a precipice, drops to the foot of the mountain, destroying, crushing down everything before it, and covering the ground with a bed of snow from thirty to fifty feet deep. when a stream of water wears a passage for itself under this compact mass, it is sometimes hollowed out into an arched way, and the snow becomes so solid that carriages and horses can go through without danger, even in the middle of summer. but often the water does not find a course by which to flow away; and then, when the snow begins to melt, the water seeps into the fissures, loosens the mass that chokes up the valley, and carries it down, rending its banks as it goes, carrying away bridges, mills, and trees, and overthrowing houses. the avalanche has become an inundation. the mountaineers make a distinction between summer and winter avalanches. the former are solid avalanches, formed of old snow that has almost acquired the consistency of ice. the warm breath of spring softens it, loosens it from the rocks on which it hangs, and it slides down into the valleys. these are called "melting avalanches." they regularly follow certain tracks, and these are embanked, like the course of a river, with wood or bundles of branches. it is in order to protect the alpine roads from these avalanches that those long open galleries have been built on the face of the precipice. the most dreaded and most terrible avalanches, those of dry, powdery snow, occur only in winter, when sudden squalls and hurricanes of snow throw the whole atmosphere into chaos. they come down in sudden whirlwinds, with the violence of a waterspout, and in a few minutes whole villages are buried.... here, in the grisons, the whole village of selva was buried under an avalanche. nothing remained visible but the top of the church steeple, looking like a pole planted in the snow. baron munchausen might have tied his horse there without inventing any lie about it. the val verzasca was covered for several months by an avalanche of nearly , feet in length and in depth. all communication through the valley was stopt; it was impossible to organize help; and the alarm-bell was incessantly sounding over the immense white desolation like a knell for the dead. in the narrow defile in which we now are, there are many remains of avalanches that neither the water of the torrent nor the heat of the sun has had power to melt. the bed of the river is strewn with displaced and broken rocks, and great stones bound together by the snow as if with cement; the surges dash against these rocky obstacles, foaming angrily, with the blind fury of a wild beast. and the moan of the powerless water flows on into the depth of the valley, and is lost far off in a hollow murmur. hunting the chamois[ ] by victor tissot schmidt swept with his cap the snow which covered the stones on which we were to seat ourselves for breakfast, then unpacked the provisions; slices of veal and ham, hard-boiled eggs, wine of the valtelline. his knapsack, covered with a napkin, served for our table. while we sat, we devoured the landscape, the twelve glaciers spreading around us their carpet of swansdown and ermine, sinking into crevasses of a magical transparency, and raising their blocks, shaped into needles, or into gothic steeples with pierced arches. the architecture of the glacier is marvelous. its decorations are the decorations of fairyland. quite near us marks of animals in the snow attracted our attention. schmidt said to us: "chamois have been here this morning; the traces are quite fresh. they must have seen us and made off; the chamois are as distrustful, you see, as the marmots, and as wary. at this season they keep on the glaciers by preference. they live on so little! a few herbs, a few mosses, such as grow on isolated rocks like this. i assure you it is very amusing to see a herd of twenty or thirty chamois cross at a headlong pace a vast field of snow, or glacier, where they bound over the crevasses in play. "one would say they were reindeers in a lapland scene. it is only at night that they come down into the valleys. in the moonlight they come out of the moraines, and go to pasture on the grassy slopes or in the forest adjoining the glaciers. during the day they go up again into the snow, for which they have an extraordinary love, and in which they skip and play, amusing themselves like a band of scholars in play hours. they tease one another, butt with their horns in fun, run off, return, pretend new attacks and new flights with charming agility and frolicsomeness. "while the young ones give themselves up to their sports, an old female, posted as sentinel at some yards distance, watches the valley and scents the air. at the slightest indication of danger, she utters a sharp cry; the games cease instantly, and the whole anxious troop assembles round the guardian, then the whole herd sets off at a gallop and disappears in the twinkling of an eye.... "hunting on the névés and the glaciers is very dangerous. when the snow is fresh it is with difficulty one can advance. the hunters use wooden snowshoes, like those of the esquimaux. "one of my comrades, in hunting on the roseg, disappeared in the bottom of a crevasse. it was over thirty feet deep. imagine two perfectly smooth sides; two walls of crystal. to reascend was impossible. it was certain death, either from cold or hunger; for it was known that when he went chamois-hunting he was often absent for several days. he could not therefore count on help being sent; he must resign himself to death. "one thing, however, astonished him; it was to find so little water in the bottom of the crevasse. could there be then an opening at the bottom of the funnel into which he had fallen? he stooped, examined this grave in which he had been buried alive, discovered that the heat of the sun had caused the base of the glacier to melt. a canal drainage had been formed. laying himself flat, he slid into this dark passage, and after a thousand efforts he arrived at the end of the glacier in the moraine, safe and sound." we had finished breakfast. we wanted something warm, a little coffee. schmidt set up our spirit-lamp behind two great stones that protected it from the wind. and while we waited for the water to boil, he related to us the story of colani, the legendary hunter of the upper engandine. "colani, in forty years, killed two thousand seven hundred chamois. this strange man had carved out for himself a little kingdom in the mountain. he claimed to reign there alone, to be absolute master. when a stranger penetrated into his residence, within the domain of 'his reserved hunting-ground,' as he called the regions of the bernina, he treated him as a poacher, and chased him with a gun.... "colani was feared and dreaded as a diabolical and supernatural being; and indeed he took no pains to undeceive the public, for the superstitious terrors inspired by his person served to keep away all the chamois-hunters from his chamois, which he cared for and managed as a great lord cares for the deer in his forests. round the little house which he had built for himself on the col de bernina, and where he passed the summer and autumn, two hundred chamois, almost tame, might be seen wandering about and browsing. every year he killed about fifty old males." the celebrities of geneva[ ] by francis h. gribble it has been remarked as curious that the age of revolution at geneva was also the golden age--if not of genevan literature, which has never really had any golden age, at least of genevan science, which was of world-wide renown. the period is one in which notable names meet us at every turn. there were exiled genevans, like de lolme, holding their own in foreign political and intellectual circles; there were emigrant genevan pastors holding aloft the lamps of culture and piety in many cities of england, france, russia, germany, and denmark; there were genevans, like françois lefort, holding the highest offices in the service of foreign rulers; and there were numbers of genevans at geneva of whom the cultivated grand tourist wrote in the tone of a disciple writing of his master. one can not glance at the history of the period without lighting upon names of note in almost all departments of endeavor. the period is that of de saussure, bourrit, the de lucs, the two hubers, great authorities respectively on bees and birds; le sage, who was one of gibbon's rivals for the heart of mademoiselle suzanne curchod; senebier, the librarian who wrote the first literary history of geneva; st. ours and arlaud, the painters; charles bonnet, the entomologist; bérenger and picot, the historians; tronchin, the physician; trembley and jallabert, the mathematicians; dentan, minister and alpine explorer; pictet, the editor of the "bibliothèque universelle," still the leading swiss literary review; and odier, who taught geneva the virtue of vaccination. it is obviously impossible to dwell at length upon the careers of all these eminent men. as well might one attempt, in a survey on the same scale of english literature, to discuss in detail the careers of all the celebrities of the age of anne. one can do little more than remark that the list is marvelously strong for a town of some , inhabitants, and that many of the names included in it are not only eminent, but interesting. jean andré de luc, for example, has a double claim upon our attention as the inventor of the hygrometer and as the pioneer of the snow-peaks. he climbed the buet as early as , and wrote an account of his adventures on its summit and its slopes which has the true charm of arcadian simplicity. he came to england, was appointed reader to queen charlotte, and lived in the enjoyment of that office, and in the gratifying knowledge that her majesty kept his presentation hygrometer in her private apartments, to the venerable age of ninety. bourrit is another interesting character--being, in fact, the spiritual ancestor of the modern alpine clubman. by profession he was precentor of the cathedral; but his heart was in the mountains. in the summer he climbed them, and in the winter he wrote books about them. one of his books was translated into english; and the list of subscribers, published with the translation, shows that the public which bourrit addrest included edmund burke, sir joseph banks, bartolozzi, fanny burney, angelica kauffman, david garrick, sir joshua reynolds, george augustus selwyn, jonas hanway and dr. johnson. his writings earned him the honorable title of historian (or historiographer) of the alps. men of science wrote him letters; princes engaged upon the grand tour called to see him; princesses sent him presents as tokens of their admiration and regard for the man who had taught them how the contemplation of mountain scenery might exalt the sentiments of the human mind. tronchin, too, is interesting; he was the first physician who recognized the therapeutic use of fresh air and exercise, hygienic boots, and open windows. so is charle bonnet, who was not afraid to stand up for orthodoxy against voltaire; so is mallet, who traveled as far as lapland; and so is that man of whom his contemporaries always spoke, with the reverence of hero-worshipers, as "the illustrious de saussure."... the name of which the genevans are proudest is probably that of rousseau, who has sometimes been spoken of as "the austere citizen of geneva." but "austere" is a strange epithet to apply to the philosopher who endowed the foundling hospital with five illegitimate children; and geneva can not claim a great share in a citizen who ran away from the town of his boyhood to avoid being thrashed for stealing apples. it was, indeed, at geneva that jean jacques received from his aunt the disciplinary chastisement of which he gives such an exciting account in his "confessions"; and he once returned to the city and received the holy communion there in later life. but that is all. jean jacques was not educated at geneva, but in savoy--at annecy, at turin, and at chambéry; his books were not printed at geneva, tho' one of them was publicly burned there, but in paris and amsterdam; it is not to genevan but to french literature that he belongs. we must visit voltaire at ferney, and madame de staël at coppet. let the patriarch come first. voltaire was sixty years of age when he settled on the shores of the lake, where he was to remain for another four-and-twenty years; and he did not go there for his pleasure. he would have preferred to live in paris, but was afraid of being locked up in the bastille. as the great majority of the men of letters of the reign of louis xv. were, at one time or another, locked up in the bastille, his fears were probably well founded. moreover, notes of warning had reached his ears. "i dare not ask you to dine," a relative said to him, "because you are in bad odor at court." so he betook himself to geneva, as so many frenchmen, illustrious and otherwise, had done before, and acquired various properties--at prangins, at lausanne, at saint-jean (near geneva), at ferney, at tournay, and elsewhere. he was welcomed cordially. dr. tronchin, the eminent physician, cooperated in the legal fictions necessary to enable him to become a landowner in the republic. cramer, the publisher, made a proposal for the issue of a complete and authorized edition of his works. all the best people called. "it is very pleasant," he was able to write, "to live in a country where rulers borrow your carriage to come to dinner with you." voltaire corresponded regularly with at least four reigning sovereigns, to say nothing of men of letters, cardinals, and marshals of france; and he kept open house for travelers of mark from every country in the world. those of the travelers who wrote books never failed to devote a chapter to an account of a visit to ferney; and from the mass of such descriptions we may select for quotation that written, in the stately style of the period, by dr. john moore, author of "zeluco," then making the grand tour as tutor to the duke of hamilton. "the most piercing eyes i ever beheld," the doctor writes, "are those of voltaire, now in his eightieth year. his whole countenance is expressive of genius, observation, and extreme sensibility. in the morning he has a look of anxiety and discontent; but this gradually wears off, and after dinner he seems cheerful; yet an air of irony never entirely forsakes his face, but may always be observed lurking in his features whether he frowns or smiles. composition is his principal amusement. no author who writes for daily bread, no young poet ardent for distinction, is more assiduous with his pen, or more anxious for fresh fame, than the wealthy and applauded seigneur of ferney. he lives in a very hospitable manner, and takes care always to have a good cook. he generally has two or three visitors from paris, who stay with him a month or six weeks at a time. when they go, their places are soon supplied, so that there is a constant rotation of society at ferney. these, with voltaire's own family and his visitors from geneva, compose a company of twelve or fourteen people, who dine daily at his table, whether he appears or not. all who bring recommendations from his friends may depend upon being received, if he be not really indisposed. he often presents himself to the strangers who assemble every afternoon in his ante-chamber, altho they bring no particular recommendation." it might have been added that when an interesting stranger who carried no introduction was passing through the town, voltaire sometimes sent for him; but this experiment was not always a success, and failed most ludicrously in the case of claude gay, the philadelphian quaker, author of some theological works now forgotten, but then of note. the meeting was only arranged with difficulty on the philosopher's undertaking to put a bridle on his tongue, and say nothing flippant about holy things. he tried to keep his promise, but the temptation was too strong for him. after a while he entangled his guest in a controversy concerning the proceedings of the patriarchs and the evidences of christianity, and lost his temper on finding that his sarcasms failed to make their usual impression. the member of the society of friends, however, was not disconcerted. he rose from his place at the dinner-table, and replied: "friend voltaire! perhaps thou mayst come to understand these matters rightly; in the meantime, finding i can do thee no good, i leave thee, and so fare thee well." and so saying, he walked out and walked back to geneva, while voltaire retired in dudgeon to his room, and the company sat expecting something terrible to happen. a word, in conclusion, about coppet! necker[ ] bought the property from his old banking partner, thelusson, for , livres in french money, and retired to live there when the french revolution drove him out of politics. his daughter, madame de staël, inherited it from him, and made it famous. not that she loved switzerland; it would be more true to say that she detested switzerland. swiss scenery meant nothing to her. when she was taken for an excursion to the glaciers, she asked what the crime was that she had to expiate by such a punishment; and she could look out on the blue waters of lake leman, and sigh for "the gutter of the rue du bac." even to this day, the swiss have hardly forgiven her for that, or for speaking of the canton of vaud as the country in which she had been "so intensely bored for such a number of years." what she wanted was to live in paris, to be a leader--or, rather, to be "the" leader--of parisian society, to sit in a salon, the admired of all admirers, and to pull the wires of politics to the advantage of her friends. for a while she succeeded in doing this. it was she who persuaded barras to give talleyrand his political start in life. but whereas barras was willing to act on her advice, napoleon was by no means equally amenable to her influence. almost from the first he regarded her as a mischief-maker; and when a spy brought him an intercepted letter in which madame de staël exprest her hope that none of the old aristocracy of france would condescend to accept appointments in the household of "the bourgeois of corsica," he became her personal enemy, and, refusing her permission to live either in the capital or near it, practically compelled her to take refuge in her country seat. her pleasance in that way became her gilded cage. perhaps she was not quite so unhappy there as she sometimes represented. if she could not go to paris, many distinguished and brilliant parisians came to coppet, and met there many brilliant and distinguished germans, genevans, italians, and danes. the parisian salon, reconstituted, flourished on swiss soil. there visited there, at one time or another, madame récamier and madame krüdner; benjamin constant, who was so long madame de staël's lover; bonstetten, the voltairean philosopher; frederika brun, the danish artist; sismondi, the historian; werner, the german poet; karl ritter, the german geographer; baron de voght; monti, the italian poet: madame vigée le brun; cuvier; and oelenschlaeger. from almost every one of them we have some pen-and-ink sketch of the life there. this, for instance, is the scene as it appeared to madame le brun, who came to paint the hostess's portrait: "i paint her in antique costume. she is not beautiful, but the animation of her visage takes the place of beauty. to aid the expression i wished to give her, i entreated her to recite tragic verses while i painted. she declaimed passages from corneille and racine. i find many persons established at coppet: the beautiful madame récamier, the comte de sabran, a young english woman, benjamin constant, etc. its society is continually renewed. they come to visit the illustrious exile who is pursued by the rancor of the emperor. her two sons are now with her, under the instruction of the german scholar schlegel; her daughter is very beautiful, and has a passionate love of study; she leaves her company free all the morning, but they unite in the evening. it is only after dinner that they can converse with her. she then walks in her salon, holding in her hand a little green branch; and her words have an ardor quite peculiar to her; it is impossible to interrupt her. at these times she produces on one the effect of an improvisation." and here is a still more graphic description, taken from a letter written to madame récamier by baron de voght: "it is to you that i owe my most amiable reception at coppet. it is no doubt to the favorable expectations aroused by your friendship that i owe my intimate acquaintance with this remarkable woman. i might have met her without your assistance--some casual acquaintance would no doubt have introduced me--but i should never have penetrated to the intimacy of this sublime and beautiful soul, and should never have known how much better she is than her reputation. she is an angel sent from heaven to reveal the divine goodness upon earth. to make her irresistible, a pure ray of celestial light embellishes her spirit and makes her amiable from every point of view. "at once profound and light, whether she is discovering a mysterious secret of the soul or grasping the lightest shadow of a sentiment, her genius shines without dazzling, and when the orb of light has disappeared, it leaves a pleasant twilight to follow it.... no doubt a few faults, a few weaknesses, occasionally veil this celestial apparition; even the initiated must sometimes be troubled by these eclipses, which the genevan astronomers in vain endeavor to predict. "my travels so far have been limited to journeys to lausanne and coppet, where i often stay three or four days. the life there suits me perfectly; the company is even more to my taste. i like constant's wit, schlegel's learning, sabran's amiability, sismondi's talent and character, the simple truthful disposition and just intellectual perceptions of auguste,[ ] the wit and sweetness of albertine[ ]--i was forgetting bonstetten, an excellent fellow, full of knowledge of all sorts, ready in wit, adaptable in character--in every way inspiring one's respect and confidence. "your sublime friend looks and gives life to everything. she imparts intelligence to those around her. in every corner of the house some one is engaged in composing a great work.... corinne is writing her delightful letters about germany, which will, no doubt, prove to be the best thing she has ever done. "the 'shunamitish widow,' an oriental melodrama which she has just finished, will be played in october; it is charming. coppet will be flooded with tears. constant and auguste are both composing tragedies; sabran is writing a comic opera, and sismondi a history; schlegel is translating something; bonstetten is busy with philosophy, and i am busy with my letter to juliette." then, a month later: "since my last letter, madame de staël has read us several chapters of her work. everywhere it bears the marks of her talent. i wish i could persuade her to cut out everything in it connected with politics, and all the metaphors which interfere with its clarity, simplicity, and accuracy. what she needs to demonstrate is not her republicanism, but her wisdom. mlle. jenner played in one of werner's tragedies which was given, last friday, before an audience of twenty. she, werner, and schlegel played perfectly.... "the arrival in switzerland of m. cuvier has been a happy distraction for madame de staël; they spent two days together at geneva, and were well pleased with each other. on her return to coppet she found middleton there, and in receiving his confidences forgot her troubles. yesterday she resumed her work. "the poet whose mystical and somber genius has caused us such profound emotions starts, in a few days' time, for italy. "i accompanied corinne to massot's. to alleviate the tedium of the sitting, a mlle. romilly played pleasantly on the harp, and the studio was a veritable temple of the muses.... "bonstetten gave us two readings of a memoir on the northern alps. it began very well, but afterward it bored us. madame de staël resumed her reading, and there was no longer any question of being bored. it is marvelous how much she must have read and thought over to be able to find the opportunity of saying so many good things. one may differ from her, but one can not help delighting in her talent.... "and now here we are at geneva, trying to reproduce coppet at the hôtel des balances. i am delightfully situated with a wide view over the valley of savoy, between the alps and the jura. "yesterday evening the illusion of coppet was complete. i had been with madame de staël to call on madame rilliet, who is so charming at her own fireside. on my return i played chess with sismondi. madame de staël, mlle. randall, and mlle. jenner sat on the sofa chatting with bonstetten and young barante. we were as we had always been--as we were in the days that i shall never cease regretting." other descriptions exist in great abundance, but these suffice to serve our purpose. they show us the coppet salon as it was pleasant, brilliant, unconventional; something like holland house, but more bohemian; something like harley street, but more select; something like gad's hill--which it resembled in the fact that the members of the house-parties were expected to spend their mornings at their desks--but on a higher social plane; a center at once of high thinking and frivolous behavior; of hard work and desperate love-making, which sometimes paved the way to trouble. footnotes: [footnote : from "hungary." published by the macmillan co.] [footnote : from "hungary." published by the macmillan co.] [footnote : from "sketches from the subject and neighbour lands of venice." published by the macmillan co.] [footnote : the modern marseilles.] [footnote : an ancient italian town on the adriatic, founded by syracusans about b.c. and still an important seaport.] [footnote : the city in provence where have survived a beautiful roman arch and a stupendous roman theater in which classical plays are still given each year by actors from the theatre français.] [footnote : diocletian.] [footnote : a reference to the exquisite maison carrée of nîmes.] [footnote : that is, of venice.] [footnote : the famous general of the emperor justinian, reputed to have become blind and been neglected in his old age.] [footnote : from "sketches from the subject and neighbour lands of venice." published by the macmillan co.] [footnote : from "through savage europe." published by j.b. lippincott co.] [footnote : from "sketches from the subject and neighbour lands of venice." published by the macmillan co.] [footnote : that is, lands where the greek church prevails.] [footnote : john mason neale, author of "an introduction to the history of the holy eastern church."] [footnote : montenegro.] [footnote : from "a girl in the karpathians." after publishing this book. miss dowie became the wife of henry norman, the author and traveler.] [footnote : one of poland's greatest poets.] [footnote : from "views afoot." published by g.p. putnam's sons.] [footnote : the population now ( ) is , .] [footnote : from "six months in italy." published by houghton, mifflin co.] [footnote : from "a bibliographical, antiquarian and picturesque tour," published in .] [footnote : from "letters of a traveller." the tyrol and the dolomites being mainly austrian territory, are here included under "other austrian scenes." resorts in the swiss alps, including chamouni (which, however, is in france), will be found further on in this volume.] [footnote : an italian poet ( - ), who, banished from venice, settled in new york and became professor of italian at columbia college.] [footnote : from "adventures in the alps." published by george w. jacobs & co.] [footnote : in the village of cadore--hence the name, titian da cadore.] [footnote : from "untrodden peaks and unfrequented valleys: a midsummer ramble in the dolomites." published by e.p. dutton & co.] [footnote : reaumur.--author's note.] [footnote : from "my alpine jubilee." published in .] [footnote : from "adventures in the alps." published by george w. jacobs company, philadelphia.] [footnote : since the above was written, the railway has been extended up the jungfrau itself.] [footnote : from "teutonic switzerland." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, l.c. page & co. copyright, .] [footnote : from "unknown switzerland." published by james pott & co.] [footnote : from "teutonic switzerland." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, l.c. page & co. copyright, .] [footnote : the population in had risen to , .] [footnote : from "teutonic switzerland." by special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, l.c. page & co. copyright, .] [footnote : from "the letters of percy bysshe shelley." politically, chamouni is in france, but the aim here has been to bring into one volume all the more popular alpine resorts. articles on the tyrol and the dolomites will also be found in this volume--under "other austrian scenes."] [footnote : from "adventures in the alps." published by george w. jacobs & co.] [footnote : for mr. whymper's own account of this famous ascent, see page of this volume.] [footnote : from "unknown switzerland." published by james pott & co.] [footnote : from "geneva."] [footnote : from "sunny memories of foreign lands."] [footnote : mrs. stowe's "uncle tom's cabin" had been published about a year when this remark was made to her.] [footnote : from "adventures in the alps." published by george w. jacobs & co.] [footnote : from "unknown switzerland." published by james pott & co.] [footnote : from "scrambles amongst the alps." mr. whymper's later achievements in the alps are now integral parts of the written history of notable mountain climbing feats the world over.] [footnote : from "scrambles amongst the alps." mr. whymper's ascent of the matterhorn was made in . it was the first ascent ever made so far as known. whymper died at chamouni in .] [footnote : from "scrambles amongst the alps." the loss of douglas and three other men, as here described, occurred during the descent of the matterhorn following the ascent described by mr. whymper in the preceding article.] [footnote : that is, down in the village of zermatt. seiler was a well-known innkeeper of that time. other seilers still keep inns at zermatt.] [footnote : the body of douglas has never been recovered. it is believed to lie buried deep in some crevasse in one of the great glaciers that emerge from the base of the matterhorn.] [footnote : from "the glaciers of the alps." prof. tyndall made this ascent in . monte rosa stands quite near the matterhorn. each is reached from zermatt by the gorner-grat.] [footnote : another name for the matterhorn.] [footnote : my staff was always the handle of an ax an inch or two longer than an ordinary walking-stick.--author's note.] [footnote : from "the glaciers of the alps."] [footnote : that is, after having ascended the mountain to a point some distance beyond the mer de glace, to which the party had ascended from chamouni, huxley and tyndall were both engaged in a study of the causes of the movement of glaciers, but tyndall gave it most attention. one of tyndall's feats in the alps was to make the first recorded ascent of the weisshorn. it is said that "traces of his influence remain in switzerland to this day."] [footnote : a hotel overlooking the mer de glace and a headquarters for mountaineers now as then.] [footnote : those acquainted with the mountain will at once recognize the grave error here committed. in fact, on starting from the grands mulets we had crossed the glacier too far, and throughout were much too close to the dôme du goûté.--author's note.] [footnote : from "the playground of europe." published by longmans, green & co.] [footnote : from "adventures in the alps." published by the george w. jacob co.] [footnote : from "unknown switzerland." published by james pott & co.] [footnote : from "unknown switzerland." published by james pott & co.] [footnote : from "geneva."] [footnote : the french financier and minister of louis xvi., father of madame de staël.] [footnote : madame de staël's son, who afterward edited the works of madame de staël and madame necker.--author's note.] [footnote : madame de staël's daughter, afterward duchesse de broglie.] proofreading team. this file was produced from images generously made available by the bibliothèque nationale de france (bnf/gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr collection of ancient and modern british authors vol. cxliv. a residence in france; with an excursion up the rhine, and a second visit to switzerland. by j. fenimore cooper esq. author of "the pilot," "the spy," &c. paris, baudry's european library, rue du coq. near the louvre; sold also by amyot, rue de la paix; truchy, boulevard des italiens; theophile barrois, jun., rue richelieu; librairie des etrangers, rue neuve-saint-augustin; and heideloff and campe, rue vivienne. . preface. the introduction to part i. of the "sketches of switzerland," leaves very little for the author to say in addition. the reader will be prepared to meet with a long digression, that touches on the situation and interests of another country, and it is probable he will understand the author's motive for thus embracing matter that is not strictly connected with the principal subject of the work. the first visit of the writer to switzerland was paid in ; that which is related in these two volumes, in . while four years had made no changes in the sublime nature of the region, they had seriously affected the political condition of all europe. they had also produced a variance of feeling and taste in the author, that is the unavoidable consequences of time and experience. four years in europe are an age to the american, as are four years in america to the european. jefferson has somewhere said, that no american ought to be more than five years, at a time, out of his own country, lest he get _behind_ it. this may be true, as to its _facts_; but the author is convinced that there is more danger of his getting _before_ it, as to _opinion_. it is not improbable that this book may furnish evidence of both these truths. some one, in criticising the first part of switzerland, has intimated that the writer has a purpose to serve with the "trades' unions," by the purport of some of his remarks. as this is a country in which the avowal of a tolerably sordid and base motive seems to be indispensable, even to safety, the writer desires to express his sense of the critic's liberality, as it may save him from a much graver imputation. there is really a painful humiliation in the reflection, that a citizen of mature years, with as good natural and accidental means for preferment as have fallen to the share of most others, may pass his life without a _fact_ of any sort to impeach his disinterestedness, and yet not be able to express a generous or just sentiment in behalf of his fellow-creatures, without laying himself open to suspicions that are as degrading to those who entertain them, as they are injurious to all independence of thought, and manliness of character. contents. letter i. influence of the late revolution in france.--general lafayette.--sketch of his private life.--my visits to him.--his opinion of louis xvi.--mr. morris and mr. crawford.--duplicity of louis xviii.--charles x.--marie antoinette.--legitimacy of the duc de bordeaux.--discovery of the plot of .--lafayette's conduct on that occasion.--a negro spy.--general knyphausen.--louis-philippe and lafayette.--my visit to court.--the king, the queen, madame adelaide, and the princesses.--marshal jourdan.--the duke of orleans.--interview with the king.--"_adieu l'amérique!_"--conversation with lafayette.--the _juste milieu._--monarchy not inconsistent with republican institutions.--party in favour of the duc de bordeaux. letter ii. the cholera in paris.--its frightful ravages.--desertion of the city--my determination to remain.--deaths in the higher classes.--unexpected arrival and retreat.--praiseworthy conduct of the authorities.--the cholera caricatured!--invitation from an english general.--atmospherical appearance denoting the arrival of the cholera.--lord robert fitzgerald.--dinner at the house of madame de b---- letter iii. insecurity of the government--louis-philippe and the pear.--caricatures.--ugliness of the public men of france.--the duke de valmy.--care-worn aspect of society under the new regime.--controversy in france respecting the cost of government in america.--conduct of american agents in europe letter iv. gradual disappearance of the cholera.--death of m. casimir perier.--his funeral.--funeral of general lamarque.--magnificent military escort.--the duc de fitzjames.--an alarm.--first symptoms of popular revolt.--scene on the pont royal.--charge on the people by a body of cavalry.--the _sommations_.--general lafayette and the _bonnet rouge_.--popular prejudices in france, england, and america.--contest in the quartier montmartre.--the place louis xvi.--a frightened sentinel.--picturesque bivouac of troops in the carrousel.--critical situation.--night-view from the pont des arts.--appearance of the streets on the following morning.--england an enemy to liberty.--affair at the porte st. denis.--procession of louis-philippe through the streets.--contest in the rue st. méry.--sudden panic.--terror of a national guard and a young conscript.--dinner with a courtier.--suppression of the revolt letter v. national guards in the court of the palace.--unclaimed dead in the morgue.--view of the scene of action.--a blundering artillerist.--singular spectacle.--the machinations of the government.--martial law.--violations of the charter.--laughable scene in the carrousel.--a refractory private of the national guard. letter vi. aspect of paris.--visit to lafayette.--his demeanour.--his account of the commencement of the revolt.--machinations of the police.--character of lafayette.--his remarkable expression to general ----.--conversation on the revolution of july.--the _doctrinaires_.--popular sympathy in england and on the rhine.--lafayette's dismissal from the command of the national guards.--the duke of orleans and his friends.--military tribunals in paris.--the citizen king in the streets.--obliteration of the _fleur-de-lis._--the royal equipage.--the duke of brunswick in paris.--his forcible removal from france.--his reception in switzerland.--a ludicrous mistake. letter vii. public dinner.--inconsiderate impulses of americans.--rambles in paris.--the churches of paris.--view from the leads of notre dame.--the place royale.--the bridges.--progress of the public works.--the palaces of the louvre and the tuileries.--royal enclosures in the gardens of the tuileries.--public edifices.--private hotels and gardens.--my apartments in the house of the montmorencies.--our other residences.--noble abodes in paris.--comparative expense of living in paris and new york.--american shopkeepers, and those of europe. letter viii. preparations for leaving paris.--travelling arrangements.--our route.--the chateau of ecouen.--the _croisée_.--senlis.--peronne.--cambray.--arrival at the frontier.--change in the national character.--mons.--brussels.--a fête.--the picture gallery.--probable partition of belgium. letter ix. malines.--its collection of pictures.--antwerp.--the cathedral.--a flemish quack.--flemish names.--the picture gallery at antwerp.--mr. wapper's carvings in wood.--mr. van lankeren's pictures.--the boulevards at brussels.--royal abodes.--palace of the prince of orange.--prince auguste d'ahremberg's gallery of pictures.--english ridicule of america. letter x. school system in america.--american maps.--leave brussels.--louvain.--quarantine.--liége.--the soleil d'or.--king leopold and brother.--royal intermarriages.--environs of liége.--the cathedral and the church of st. jacques.--ceremonies of catholic worship.--churches of europe.--taverns of america.--prayer in the fields.--scott's error as regards the language spoken in liége.--women of liége.--illumination in honour of the king letter xi. leave liége.--banks of the meuse.--spa.--beautiful promenades.--robinson crusoe.--the duke of saxe-cobourg.--former magnificence of spa.--excursions in the vicinity.--departure from spa.--aix-la-chapelle.--the cathedral.--the postmaster's compliments.--berghem.--german enthusiasm.--arrival at cologne. letter xii. the cathedral of cologne.--the eleven thousand virgins.--the skulls of the magi--house in which rubens was born.--want of cleanliness in cologne.--journey resumed.--the drachenfels.--romantic legend.--a convent converted into an inn.--its solitude.--a night in it.--a storm.--a nocturnal adventure.--grim figures.--an apparition.--the mystery dissolved.--palace of the kings of austrasia.--banks of the rhine.--coblentz.--floating bridges.--departure from coblentz.--castle of the ritterstein.--visit to it.--its furniture.--the ritter saal.--tower of the castle.--anachronisms. letter xiii. ferry across the rhine.--village of rudesheim.--the _hinter-hausen_ wine.--drunkenness.--neapolitan curiosity respecting america.--the rhenish wines enumerated.--ingelheim.--johannisberg.--conventual wine.--unseasonable praise.--house and grounds of johannisberg.--state of nassau.--palace at biberich.--the gardens.--wiesbaden.--its public promenade.--frankfort on the maine. letter xiv. boulevards of frankfort.--political disturbances in the town.--_le petit savoyard_.--distant glimpse of homberg.--darmstadt.--the bergestrasse.--heidelberg.--noisy market-place.--the ruins and gardens.--an old campaigner.--valley of the neckar.--heilbronn.--ludwigsberg.--its palace.--the late queen of wurtemberg.--the birthplace of schiller.--comparative claims of schiller and goethe.--stuttgart.--its royal residences.--the princess of hechingen.--german kingdoms.--the king and queen of wurtemberg.--sir walter scott.--tubingen.--ruin of a castle of the middle ages.--hechingen.--village of bahlingen.--the danube.--the black forest.--view from a mountain on the frontier of baden.--enter switzerland. letter xv. a swiss inn.--cataract of the rhine.--canton of zurich.--town of zurich.--singular concurrence.--formidable ascent.--exquisite view.--einsiedeln.--the convent.--"_par exemple_."--shores of the lake of zug.--the _chemin creux_.--water excursion to alpnach.--lake of lungern.--lovely landscape.--effects of mists on the prospect.--natural barometer.--view from the brunig.--enter the great canton of berne.--an englishman's politics.--our french companion.--the giesbach.--mountain music.--lauterbrunnen.--grindewald.--rising of the waters in .--anecdote.--excursion on the lake to thoun. letter xvi. conspiracy discovered.--the austrian government and the french carlists.--walk to la lorraine.--our old friend "turc."--conversation with m. w----.--view of the upper alps.--jerome bonaparte at la lorraine.--the bears of berne.--scene on the plateforme. letter xvii. our voiturier and his horses.--a swiss diligence.--morat.--inconstancy of feeling.--our route to vévey.--lake leman.--difficulty in hiring a house.--"mon repos" engaged for a month.--vévey.--the great square.--the town-house.--environs of vévey.--summer church and winter church.--clergy of the canton.--population of vaud.--elective qualifications of vaud. letter xviii. neglect of the vine in america.--drunkenness in france.--cholera especially fatal to drunkards.--the soldier's and the sailor's vice.--sparkling champagne and still champagne.--excessive price of these wines in america.--burgundy.--proper soil for the vine.--anecdote.--vines of vévey.--the american fox-grape. letter xix. the leman lake.--excursions on it.--the coast of savoy.--grandeur and beauty of the rocks.--sunset.--evening scene.--american families residing on the banks of the lake.--conversation with a vévaisan on the subject of america.--the nullification question.--america misrepresented in europe--rowland stephenson in the united states.--unworthy arts to bring america into disrepute.--blunders of europe in respect of america.--the kentuckians.--foreign associations in the states.--illiberal opinions of many americans.--prejudices. letter xx. the equinox.--storm on the lake.--chase of a little boat--chateau of blonay.--drive to lausanne.--mont benon.--trip to geneva in the winkelried.--improvements in geneva.--russian travellers.--m. pozzo di borgo.--table d'hôte.--extravagant affirmations of a frenchman.--conversation with a scotchman.--american duels.--visit at a swiss country-house.--english customs affected in america.--social intercourse in the united states.--difference between a european and an american foot and hand.--violent gale.--sheltered position of vévey.--promenade.--picturesque view.--the great square.--invitation.--mountain excursion.--an american lieutenant.--anecdote.--extensive prospect.--chateau of glayrole. letter xxi. embark in the winkelried.--discussion with an englishman.--the valais.--free trade.--the drance.--terrible inundation.--liddes.--mountain scenery.--a mountain basin.--dead-houses.--melancholy spectacle.--approach of night.--desolate region.--convent of the great st. bernard.--our reception there.--unhealthiness of the situation.--the superior.--conversation during supper.--coal-mine on the mountain.--night in the convent. letter xxii. sublime desolation.--a morning walk.--the col.--a lake.--site of a roman temple.--enter italy.--dreary monotony.--return to the convent.--tasteless character of the building.--its origin and purposes.--the dead-house.--dogs of st. bernard.--the chapel.--desaix interred here.--fare of st. bernard, and deportment of the monks.--leave the convent.--our guide's notion of the americans.--passage of napoleon across the great st. bernard.--similar passages in former times.--transport of artillery up the precipices.--napoleon's perilous accident.--return to vévey. letter xxiii. democracy in america and in switzerland.--european prejudices.--influence of property.--nationality of the swiss.--want of local attachments in americans.--swiss republicanism.--political crusade against america.--affinities between america and russia.--feeling of the european powers towards switzerland. letter xxiv. the swiss mountain passes.--excursion in the neighbourhood of vévey.--castle of blonay.--view from the terrace.--memory and hope.--great antiquity of blonay.--the knight's hall.--prospect from the balcony.--departure from blonay.--a modern chateau.--travelling on horseback.--news from america.--dissolution of the union predicted.--the prussian polity.--despotism in prussia. letter xxv. controversy respecting america.--conduct of american diplomatists.--_attachés_ to american legations.--unworthy state of public opinion in america. letter xxvi. approach of winter.--the _livret_.--regulations respecting servants.--servants in america.--governments of the different cantons of switzerland.--engagement of mercenaries.--population of switzerland.--physical peculiarities of the swiss.--women of switzerland.--mrs. trollope and the american ladies.--affected manner of speaking in american women.--patois in america.--peculiar manner of speaking at vévey.--swiss cupidity. letter xxvii. departure from vévey.--passage down the lake.--arrival at geneva.--purchase of jewellery.--leave geneva.--ascent of the jura.--alpine views.--rudeness at the custom-house.--smuggling.--a smuggler detected.--the second custom-house.--final view of mont blanc.--re-enter france.--our luck at the post-house in dôle.--a scotch traveller.--nationality of the scotch.--road towards troyes.--source of the seine. letter xxviii. miserable inn.--a french bed.--free trade.--french relics.--cross roads.--arrival at lagrange.--reception by general lafayette.--the nullification strife.--conversation with lafayette.--his opinion as to a separation of the union in america.--the slave question.--stability of the union.--style of living at la grange.--pap.--french manners, and the french cuisine.--departure from la grange.--return to paris. residence in france. letter i. influence of the late revolution in france.--general lafayette--sketch of his private life.--my visits to him.--his opinion of louis xvi.--mr. morris and mr. crawford.--duplicity of louis xviii.--charles x.--marie antoinette.--legitimacy of the duc de bordeaux.--discovery of the plot of .--lafayette's conduct on that occasion.--a negro spy.--general knyphausen.--louis-philippe and lafayette.--my visit to court.--the king, the queen, madame adelaide, and the princesses.--marshal jourdan.--the duke of orleans.--interview with the king.--"_adieu l'amérique!_"--conversation with lafayette.--the _juste milieu_.--monarchy not inconsistent with republican institutions.--party in favour of the duc de bordeaux. paris, february, . dear ----, your speculations concerning the influence of the late revolution, on the social habits of the french, are more ingenious than true. while the mass of this nation has obtained less than they had a right to expect by the severe political convulsions they have endured, during the last forty years, they have, notwithstanding, gained something in their rights; and, what is of far more importance, they have gained in a better appreciation of those rights, as well as in the knowledge of the means to turn them to a profitable and practical account. the end will show essential improvements in their condition, or rather the present time shows it already. the change in polite society has been less favourable, although even this is slowly gaining in morals, and in a healthier tone of thought. no error can be greater, than that of believing france has endured so much, without a beneficial return. in making up my opinions of the old regime, i have had constant recourse to general lafayette for information. the conversations and anecdotes already sent you, will have prepared you for the fine tone, and perfect candour, with which he speaks even of his bitterest enemies; nor can i remember, in the many confidential and frank communications with which i have been favoured, a single instance where, there has been the smallest reason to suspect he has viewed men through the medium of personal antipathies and prejudices. the candour and simplicity of his opinions form beautiful features in his character; and the _bienséance_ of his mind (if one may use such an expression) throws a polish over his harshest strictures, that is singularly adapted to obtain credit for his judgment. your desire to know more of the private life of this extraordinary man, is quite natural; but he has been so long before the public, that it is not easy to say anything new. i may, however, give you a trait or two, to amuse you. i have seen more of him this winter than the last, owing to the circumstance of a committee of americans, that have been appointed to administer succour to the exiled poles, meeting weekly at my house, and it is rare indeed that he is not present on these benevolent occasions. he has discontinued his own soirées, too; and, having fewer demands on his time, through official avocations, i gain admittance to him during his simple and quiet dinners, whenever it is asked. these dinners, indeed, are our usual hours of meeting, for the occupations of the general, in the chamber, usually keep him engaged in the morning; nor am i commonly at leisure, myself, until about this hour of the day. in paris, every one dines, nominally, at six; but the deputies being often detained a little later, whenever i wish to see him, i hurry from my own table, and generally reach the rue d'anjou in sufficient season to find him still at his. on quitting the hôtel de l'etat major, after being dismissed so unceremoniously from the command of the national guard, lafayette returned to his own neat but simple lodgings in the rue d'anjou. the hotel, itself, is one of some pretensions, but his apartments, though quite sufficient for a single person, are not among the best it contains, lying on the street, which is rarely or never the case with the principal rooms. the passage to them communicates with the great staircase, and the door is one of those simple, retired entrances that, in paris, so frequently open on the abodes of some of the most illustrious men of the age. here have i seen princes, marshals, and dignitaries of all degrees, ringing for admission, no one appearing to think of aught but the great man within. these things are permitted here, where the mind gets accustomed to weigh in the balance all the different claims to distinction; but it would scarcely do in a country, in which the pursuit of money is the sole and engrossing concern of life; a show of expenditure becoming necessary to maintain it. the apartments of lafayette consist of a large ante-chamber, two salons, and an inner room, where he usually sits and writes, and in which, of late, he has had his bed. these rooms are _en suite_, and communicate, laterally, with one or two more, and the offices. his sole attendants in town, are the german valet, named bastien, who accompanied him in his last visit to america, the footman who attends him with the carriage, and the coachman (there may be a cook, but i never saw a female in the apartments). neither wears a livery, although all his appointments, carriages, horses, and furniture, are those of a gentleman. one thing has struck me as a little singular. notwithstanding his strong attachment to america and to her usages, lafayette, while the practice is getting to be common in paris, has not adopted the use of carpets. i do not remember to have seen one, at la grange, or in town. when i show myself at the door, bastien, who usually acts as porter, and who has become quite a diplomatist in these matters, makes a sign of assent, and intimates that the general is at dinner. of late, he commonly dispenses with the ceremony of letting it be known who has come, but i am at once ushered into the bed-room. here i find lafayette seated at a table, just large enough to contain one cover and a single dish; or a table, in other words, so small as to be covered with a napkin. his little white lap-dog is his only companion. as it is always understood that i have dined, no ceremony is used, but i take a seat at the chimney corner, while he goes on with his dinner. his meals are quite frugal, though good; a _poulet rôti_ invariably making one dish. there are two or three removes, a dish at a time, and the dinner usually concludes with some preserves or dried fruits, especially dates, of which he is extremely fond. i generally come in for one or two of the latter. all this time, the conversation is on what has transpired in the chambers during the day, the politics of europe, nullification in america, or the gossip of the chateau, of which he is singularly well informed, though he has ceased to go there. the last of these informal interviews with general lafayette, was one of peculiar interest. i generally sit but half an hour, leaving him to go to his evening engagements, which, by the way, are not frequent; but, on this occasion, he told me to remain, and i passed nearly two hours with him. we chatted a good deal of the state of society under the old regime. curious to know his opinions of their private characters, i asked a good many questions concerning the royal family. louis xvi. he described as a-well-meaning man, addicted a little too much to the pleasures of the table, but who would have done well enough had he not been surrounded by bad advisers. i was greatly surprised by one of his remarks. "louis xvi," observed lafayette, "owed his death as much to the bad advice of gouverneur morris, as to any one other thing." you may be certain i did not let this opinion go unquestioned; for, on all other occasions, in speaking of mr. morris, his language had been kind and even grateful. he explained himself, by adding, that mr. morris, coming from a country like america, was listened to with great respect, and that on all occasions he gave his opinions against democracy, advising resistance, when resistance was not only too late but dangerous. he did not call in question the motives of mr. morris, to which he did full justice, but merely affirmed that he was a bad adviser. he gave me to understand that the representatives of america had not always been faithful to the popular principle, and even went into details that it would be improper for me to repeat. i have mentioned this opinion of mr. morris, because his aristocratical sentiments were no secret, because they were mingled with no expressions of personal severity, and because i have heard them from other quarters. he pronounced a strong eulogium on the conduct of mr. crawford, which he said was uniformly such as became an american minister. there is nothing, however, novel in these instances, of our representatives proving untrue to the prominent feeling of the country, on the subject of popular rights. it is the subject of very frequent comment in europe, and sometimes of complaint on the part of those who are struggling for what they conceive to be their just privileges; many of them having told me, personally, that our agents frequently stand materially in their way. louis xviii, lafayette pronounced to be the _falsest_ man he had ever met with; to use his own expression, "_l'homme le plus faux_." he gave him credit for a great deal of talent, but added that his duplicity was innate, and not the result of his position, for it was known to his young associates, in early youth, and that they used to say among themselves, as young men, and in their ordinary gaieties, that it would be unsafe to confide in the comte de provence. of charles x he spoke kindly, giving him exactly a different character. he thought him the most honest of the three brothers, though quite unequal to the crisis in which he had been called to reign. he believed him sincere in his religious professions, and thought the charge of his being a professed jesuit by no means improbable. marie antoinette he thought an injured woman. on the subject of her reputed gallantries he spoke cautiously, premising that, as an american, i ought to make many allowances for a state of society, that was altogether unknown in our country. treating this matter with the discrimination of a man of the world, and the delicacy of a gentleman, he added that he entirely exonerated her from all of the coarse charges that had proceeded from vulgar clamour, while he admitted that she had betrayed a partiality for a young swede[ ] that was, at least, indiscreet for one in her situation, though he had no reason to believe her attachment had led her to the length of criminality. [footnote : a count koningsmarke.] i asked his opinion concerning the legitimacy of the duc de bordeaux, but he treated the rumour to the contrary, as one of those miserable devices to which men resort to effect the ends of party, and as altogether unworthy of serious attention. i was amused with the simplicity with which he spoke of his own efforts to produce a change of government, during the last reign. on this subject he had been equally frank even before the recent revolution, though there would have been a manifest impropriety in my repeating what had then passed between us. this objection is now removed in part, and i may recount one of his anecdotes, though i can never impart to it the cool and quiet humour with which it was related. we were speaking of the attempt of , or the plot which existed in the army. in reply to a question of mine, he said--"well, i was to have commanded in that revolution, and when the time came, i got into my carriage, without a passport, and drove across the country to ----, where i obtained post-horses, and proceeded as fast as possible towards ----. at ----, a courier met me, with the unhappy intelligence that our plot was discovered, and that several of our principal agents were arrested. i was advised to push for the frontier, as fast as i could. but we turned round in the road, and i went to paris, and took my seat in the chamber of deputies. they looked very queer, and a good deal surprised when they saw me, and i believe they were in great hopes that i had run away. the party of the ministers were loud in their accusations against the opposition for encouraging treason, and perier and constant, and the rest of them, made indignant appeals against such unjust accusations. i took a different course. i went into the tribune, and invited the ministers to come and give a history of my political life; of my changes and treasons, as they called them; and said that when they had got through, i would give the character and history of theirs. this settled the matter, for i heard no more from them." i inquired if he had not felt afraid of being arrested and tried. "not much," was his answer. "they knew i denied the right of foreigners to impose a government on france, and they also knew they had not kept faith with france under the charter. i made no secret of my principles, and frequently put letters unsealed into the post office, in which i had used the plainest language about the government. on the whole, i believe they were more afraid of me than i was of them." it is impossible to give an idea, in writing, of the pleasant manner he has of relating these things--a manner that receives additional piquancy from his english, which, though good, is necessarily broken. he usually prefers the english in such conversations. "by the way," he suddenly asked me, "where was the idea of harvey birch, in the spy, found?" i told him that the thought had been obtained from an anecdote of the revolution, related to me by governor jay, some years before the book was written. he laughingly remarked that he could have supplied the hero of a romance, in the person of a negro named harry (i believe, though the name has escaped me), who acted as a spy, both for him and lord cornwallis, during the time he commanded against that officer in virginia. this negro he represented as being true to the american cause, and as properly belonging to his service, though permitted occasionally to act for lord cornwallis, for the sake of gaining intelligence. after the surrender of the latter, he called on general lafayette, to return a visit. harry was in an anteroom cleaning his master's boots, as lord cornwallis entered. "ha! master harry," exclaimed the latter, "you are here, are you?" "oh, yes, masser cornwallis--muss try to do little for de country," was the answer. this negro, he said, was singularly clever and bold, and of sterling patriotism! he made me laugh with a story, that he said the english officers had told him of general knyphausen, who commanded the hessian mercenaries, in . this officer, a rigid martinet, knew nothing of the sea, and not much more of geography. on the voyage between england and america, he was in the ship of lord howe, where he passed several uncomfortable weeks, the fleet having an unusually long passage, on account of the bad sailing of some of the transports. at length knyphausen could contain himself no longer, but marching stiffly up to the admiral one day, he commenced with--"my lord, i know it is the duty of a soldier to be submissive at sea, but, being entrusted with the care of the troops of his serene highness, my master, i feel it my duty just to inquire, if it be not possible, that during some of the dark nights, we have lately had, _we may have sailed past america_?" i asked him if he had been at the chateau lately. his reply was very brief and expressive. "the king denies my account of the programme of the hôtel de ville, and we stand in the position of two gentlemen, who, in substance, have given each other the lie. circumstances prevent our going to the bois de boulogne to exchange shots," he added, smiling, "but they also prevent our exchanging visits." i then ventured to say that i had long foreseen what would be the result of the friendship of louis-philippe, and, for the first time, in the course of our conversations, i adverted to my own visit to the palace in his company, an account of which i will extract, for your benefit, from my note-book.[ ] [footnote : the period referred to was in .] * * * * * in the morning i received a note from general lafayette, in which he informed me that mr. m'lane, who is here on a visit from london, was desirous of being presented; that there was a reception in the evening, at which he intended to introduce the minister to england, mr. rives not having yet received his new credentials, and, of course, not appearing in matters of ceremony. general lafayette pressed me so strongly to be of the party, in compliment to mr. m'lane, that, though but an indifferent courtier, and though such a visit was contrary to my quiet habits, i could do nothing but comply. at the proper hour, general lafayette had the good nature to call and take me up, and we proceeded, at once, for mr. m'lane. with this gentleman we drove to the palais royal, my old brother officer, mr. t----, who was included in the arrangement, following in his own carriage. we found the inner court crowded, and a throng about the entrance to the great staircase; but the appearance of lafayette cleared the way, and there was a movement in the crowd which denoted his great personal popularity. i heard the words "_des américains_" passing from one to another, showing how completely he was identified with us and our principles, in the public mind. one or two of the younger officers of the court were at the foot of the stairs to receive him, though whether their presence was accidental or designed, i cannot say; but i suspect the latter. at all events the general was received with the profoundest respect, and the most smiling assiduity. the ante-chamber was already crowded, but following our leader, his presence cleared the way for us, until he got up quite near to the doors, where some of the most distinguished men of france were collected. i saw many in the throng whom i knew, and the first minute or two were passed in nods of recognition. my attention was, however, soon attracted to a dialogue between marshal soult and lafayette, that was carried on with the most perfect _bonhomie_ and simplicity. i did not hear the commencement, but found they were speaking of their legs, which both seemed to think the worse for wear. "but you have been wounded in the leg, monsieur?" observed lafayette. "this limb was a little _mal traité_ at genoa," returned the marshal, looking down at a leg that had a very game look: "but you, general, you too, were hurt in america?" "oh! that was nothing; it happened more than fifty years ago, and _then it was in a good cause_--it was the fall and the fracture that made me limp." just at this moment, the great doors flew open, and this _quasi_ republican court standing arrayed before us, the two old soldiers limped forward. the king stood near the door, dressed as a general of the national guards, entirely without decorations, and pretty well tricoloured. the queen, madame adelaide, the princesses, and several of the children, were a little farther removed, the two former standing in front, and the latter being grouped behind them. but one or two ladies were present, nor did i see anything at the commencement of the evening of the ducs d'orléans and de nemours. lafayette was one of the first that entered, and of course we kept near him. the king advanced to meet him with an expression of pleasure--i thought it studied--but they shook hands quite cordially. we were then presented by name, and each of us had the honour of shaking hands, if that can be considered an honour, which fell to the share of quite half of those who entered. the press was so great that there was no opportunity to say anything. i believe we all met with the usual expressions of welcome, and there the matter ended. soon after we approached the queen, with whom our reception had a more measured manner. most of those who entered did little more than make a distant bow to this group, but the queen manifesting a desire to say something to our party, mr. m'lane and myself approached them. she first addressed my companion in french, a language he did not speak, and i was obliged to act as interpreter. but the queen instantly said she understood english, though she spoke it badly, and begged he would address her in his own tongue. madame adelaide seemed more familiar with our language. but the conversation was necessarily short, and not worth repeating. queen amélie is a woman of a kind, and, i think, intelligent countenance. she has the bourbon rather than the austrian outline of face. she seemed anxious to please, and in her general air and carriage has some resemblance to the duchess of st. leu.[ ] she has the reputation of being an excellent wife and mother, and, really, not to fall too precipitately into the vice of a courtier, she appears as if she may well deserve it. she is thin, but graceful, and i can well imagine that she has been more than pretty in her youth. [footnote : hortense.] i do not remember a more frank, intelligent, and winning countenance than that of madame adelaide, who is the king's sister. she has little beauty left, except that of expression; but this must have made her handsome once, as it renders her singularly attractive now. her manner was less nervous than that of the queen, and i should think her mind had more influence over her exterior. the princess louise (the queen of belgium) and the princess marie are pretty, with the quiet subdued manner of well-bred young persons. the first is pale, has a strikingly bourbon face, resembling the profiles on the french coins; while the latter has an italian and classical outline of features, with a fine colour. they were all dressed with great simplicity; scarcely in high dinner dress; the queen and madame adelaide wearing evening hats. the princesses, as is uniformly the case with unmarried french girls of rank, were without any ornaments, wearing their hair in the usual manner. after the ceremonies of being presented were gone through, i amused myself with examining the company. this was a levee, not a drawing-room, and there were no women among the visitors. the men, who did not appear in uniform, were in common evening dress, which has degenerated of late into black stocks and trousers. accident brought me next to an old man, who had exactly that revolutionary air which has become so familiar to us by the engravings of bonaparte and his generals that were made shortly after the italian campaign. the face was nearly buried in neckcloth, the hair was long and wild, and the coat was glittering, but ill-fitting and stiff. it was, however, the coat of a _maréchal_; and, what rendered it still more singular, it was entirely without orders. i was curious to know who this relic of might be; for, apart from his rank, which was betrayed by his coat, he was so singularly ugly as scarcely to appear human. on inquiry it proved to be marshal jourdan. there was some amusement in watching the different individuals who came to pay their court to the new dynasty. many were personally and familiarly known to me as very loyal subjects of the last reign; soldiers who would not have hesitated to put louis-philippe _au fil de l'épée_, three months before, at the command of charles x. but times were changed. they now came to show themselves to the new sovereign; most of them to manifest their disposition to be put in the way of preferment, some to reconnoitre, others to conceal their disaffection, and all to subserve their own interests. it was laughably easy to discern who were confident of their reception by being of the ruling party, who distrusted, and who were indifferent. the last class was small. a general officer, whom i personally knew, looked like one who had found his way into a wrong house by mistake. he was a bonapartist by his antecedents, and in his true way of thinking; but accident had thrown him into the hands of the bourbons, and he had now come to see what might be gleaned from the house of orleans. his reception was not flattering, and i could only compare the indecision and wavering of his manner to that of a regiment that falters before an unexpected volley. after amusing ourselves some time in the great throng, which was densest near the king, we went towards a secondary circle that had formed in another part of the room, where the duke of orleans had appeared. he was conversing with lafayette, who immediately presented us all in succession. the prince is a genteel, handsome young man, with a face much more austrian than that of any of his family, so far as one can judge of what his younger brothers are likely to be hereafter. in form, stature, and movements, he singularly resembles w----, and there is also a good deal of likeness in the face, though in this particular the latter has the advantage. he was often taken for the duc de chartres during our former residence at paris. our reception was gracious, the heir to the throne appearing anxious to please every one. the amusing part of the scene is to follow. fatigued with standing, we had got chairs in a corner of the room, behind the throng, where the discourtesy of being seated might escape notice. the king soon after withdrew, and the company immediately began to go away. three-fourths, perhaps, were gone, when an aide-de-camp came up to us and inquired if we were not the three americans who had been presented by general lafayette? being answered in the affirmative, he begged us to accompany him. he led us near a door at the other end of the _salle_, a room of great dimensions, where we found general lafayette in waiting. the aide, or officer of the court, whichever might be his station, passed through the door, out of which the king immediately came. it appeared to me as if the general was not satisfied with our first reception, and wished to have it done over again. the king looked grave, not to say discontented, and i saw, at a glance, that he could have dispensed with this extra attention. mr. m'lane standing next the door, he addressed a few words to him in english, which he speaks quite readily, and without much accent: indeed he said little to any one else, and the few words that he did utter were exceedingly general and unmeaning. once he got as far as t----, whom he asked if he came from new york, and he looked hard at me, who stood farther from the door, mumbled something, bowed to us all, and withdrew. i was struck with his manner, which seemed vexed and unwilling, and the whole thing appeared to me to be awkward and uncomfortable. i thought it a bad omen for the influence of the general. by this time the great _salle_ was nearly empty, and we moved off together to find our carriages. general lafayette preceded us, of course, and as he walked slowly, and occasionally stopped to converse, we were among the last in the ante-chamber. in passing into the last or outer ante-chamber, the general stopped nearly in the door to speak to some one. mr. m'lane and mr. t---- being at his side, they so nearly stopped the way that i remained some distance in the rear, in order not to close it entirely. my position would give an ordinary observer reason to suppose that i did not belong to the party. a young officer of the court (i call them aides, though, i believe, they were merely substitutes for chamberlains, dignitaries to which this republican reign has not yet given birth), was waiting in the outer room to pass, but appeared unwilling to press too closely on a group of which general lafayette formed the principal person. he fidgeted and chafed evidently, but still kept politely at a distance. after two or three minutes the party moved on, but i remained stationary, watching the result. room was no sooner made than the officer brushed past, and gave vent to his feelings by saying, quite loudly and distinctly, "_adieu, l'amérique_!" it is a pretty safe rule to believe that in the tone of courtiers is reflected the feeling of the monarch. the attention to general lafayette had appeared to me as singularly affected and forced, and the manner of the king anything but natural; and several little occurrences during the evening had tended to produce the impression that the real influence of the former, at the palace, might be set down as next to nothing. i never had any faith in a republican king from the commencement, but this near view of the personal intercourse between the parties served to persuade me that general lafayette had been the dupe of his own good faith and kind feelings. in descending the great stairs i mentioned the occurrence just related to mr. m'lane, adding, that i thought the days of our friend were numbered, and that a few months would produce a schism between him and louis-philippe. everything, at the moment, however, looked so smiling, and so much outward respect was lavished on general lafayette, that this opinion did not find favour with my listener, though, i believe, he saw reason to think differently, after another visit to court. we all got invitations to dine at the palace in a day or two. * * * * * i did not, however, touch upon the "_adieu l'amérique_," with general lafayette, which i have always deemed a subject too delicate to be mentioned. he startled me by suddenly putting the question, whether i thought an executive, in which there should be but one agent, as in the united states, or an executive, in which there should be three, or five, would best suit the condition of france? though so well acquainted with the boldness and steadiness of his views, i was not prepared to find his mind dwelling on such a subject, at the present moment. the state of france, however, is certainly extremely critical, and we ought not to be surprised at the rising of the people at any moment. i told general lafayette, that, in my poor judgment, the question admitted of a good deal of controversy. names did not signify much, but every administration should receive its main impulses, subject to the common wishes and interests, from a close conformity of views, whether there were one incumbent or a dozen. the english system certainly made a near approach to a divided executive, but the power was so distributed as to prevent much clashing; and when things went wrong, the ministers resigned; parliament, in effect, holding the control of the executive as well as of the legislative branches of the government. now i did not think france was prepared for such a polity, the french being accustomed to see a real as well as a nominal monarch, and the disposition to intrigue would, for a long time to come, render their administrations fluctuating and insecure. a directory would either control the chambers, or be controlled by them. in the former case it would be apt to be divided in itself; in the latter, to agitate the chambers by factions that would not have the ordinary outlet of majorities to restore the equilibrium. he was of opinion himself that the expedient of a directory had not suited the state of france. he asked me what i thought of universal suffrage for this country. i told him, i thought it altogether unsuited to the present condition of france. i did not attach much faith to the old theory of the necessary connexion between virtue and democracy, as a cause; though it might, with the necessary limitations, follow as an effect. a certain degree of knowledge of its uses, _action_, and objects, was indispensable to a due exercise of the suffrage; not that it was required every elector should be learned in the theory of governments, but that he should know enough to understand the general connexion between his vote and his interests, and especially his rights. this knowledge was not at all difficult of attainment, in ordinary cases, when one had the means of coming at facts. in cases that admit of argument, as in all the questions on political economy, i did not see that any reasonable degree of knowledge made the matter much better, the cleverest men usually ranging themselves on the two extremes of all mooted questions. concerning the right of every man, who was qualified to use the power, to have his interests directly represented in a government, it was unnecessary to speak, the only question being who had and who had not the means to make a safe use of the right in practice. it followed from these views, that the great desiderata were to ascertain what these means were. in the present state of the world, i thought it absolutely necessary that a man should be able to read, in order to exercise the right to vote with a prudent discretion. in countries where everybody reads, other qualifications might be trusted to, provided they were low and within reasonable reach of the mass; but, in a country like france, i would allow no man to vote until he knew how to read, if he were as rich as croesus. i felt convinced the present system could not continue long in france. it might do for a few years, as a reaction; but when things were restored to their natural course, it would be found that there is an unnatural union between facts that are peculiar to despotism, and facts that are peculiarly the adjuncts of liberty; as in the provisions of the code napoleon, and in the liberty of the press, without naming a multitude of other discrepancies. the _juste milieu_ that he had so admirably described[ ] could not last long, but the government would soon find itself driven into strong measures, or into liberal measures, in order to sustain itself. men could no more serve "god and mammon" in politics than in religion. i then related to him an anecdote that had occurred to myself the evening of the first anniversary of the present reign. [footnote : when the term _juste milieu_ was first used by the king, and adopted by his followers, lafayette said in the chamber, that "he very well understood what a _juste milieu_ meant, in any particular case; it meant neither more nor less than the truth, in that particular case: but as to a political party's always taking a middle course, under the pretence of being in a _juste milieu_, he should liken it to a discreet man's laying down the proposition that four and four make eight, and a fool's crying out, 'sir, you are wrong, for four and four make ten;' whereupon the advocate for the _juste milieu_ on system, would be obliged to say, 'gentlemen, you are equally in extremes, _four and four make nine_.'" it is the fashion to say lafayette wanted _esprit_. this was much the cleverest thing the writer ever heard in the french chambers, and, generally, he knew few men who said more witty things in a neat and unpretending manner than general lafayette. indeed this was the bias of his mind, which was little given to profound reflections, though distinguished for a _fort bon sens_.] on the night in question, i was in the tuileries, with a view to see the fireworks. taking a station a little apart from the crowd, i found myself under a tree alone with a frenchman of some sixty years of age. after a short parley, my companion, as usual, mistook me for an englishman. on being told his error, he immediately opened a conversation on the state of things in france. he asked me if i thought they would continue. i told him, no; that i thought two or three years would suffice to bring the present system to a close. "monsieur," said my companion, "you are mistaken. it will require ten years to dispossess those who have seized upon the government, since the last revolution. all the young men are growing up with the new notions, and in ten years they will be strong enough to overturn the present order of things. remember that i prophesy the year will see a change of government in france." lafayette laughed at this prediction, which, he said, did not quite equal his impatience. he then alluded to the ridicule which had been thrown upon his own idea of "a monarchy with republican institutions," and asked me what i thought of the system. as my answer to this, as well as to his other questions, will serve to lay before you my own opinions, which you have a right to expect from me, as a traveller rendering an account of what he has seen, i shall give you its substance, at length. so far from finding anything as absurd as is commonly pretended in the plan of a "throne surrounded by republican institutions," it appears to me to be exactly the system best suited to the actual condition of france. by a monarchy, however, a real monarchical government, or one in which the power of the sovereign is to predominate, is not to be understood, in this instance, but such a semblance of a monarchy as exists to-day, in england, and formerly existed in venice and genoa under their doges. la england the aristocracy notoriously rules, through the king, and i see no reason why in france, a constituency with a base sufficiently broad to entitle it to assume the name of a republic, might not rule, in its turn, in the same manner. in both cases the sovereign would merely represent an abstraction; the sovereign power would be wielded in his name, but at the will of the constituency; he would be a parliamentary echo, to pronounce the sentiment of the legislative bodies, whenever a change of men or a change of measures became necessary it is very true that, under such a system, there would be no real separation, in principle, between the legislative and the executive branches of government; but such is to-day, and such has long been the actual condition of england, and her statesmen are fond of saving, the plan "works well." now, although the plan does not work half as well in england as is pretended, except for those who more especially reap its benefits, simply because the legislature is not established on a sufficiently popular basis, still it works better, on the whole, for the public, than if the system were reversed, as was formerly the case, and the king ruled through the parliament, instead of the parliament ruling through the king. in france the facts are ripe for an extension of this principle, in its safest and most salutary manner. the french of the present generation are prepared to dispense with a hereditary and political aristocracy, in the first place, nothing being more odious to them than privileged orders, and no nation, not even america, having more healthful practices or wiser notions on this point than themselves. the experience of the last fifteen years has shown the difficulty of creating an independent peerage in france, notwithstanding the efforts of the government, sustained by the example and wishes of england, have been steadily directed to that object. still they have the traditions and _prestige_ of a monarchy. under such circumstances, i see no difficulty in carrying out the idea of lafayette. indeed some such polity is indispensable, unless liberty is to be wholly sacrificed. all experience has shown that a king, who is a king in fact as well as name, is too strong for law, and the idea of restraining such a power by _principles_, is purely chimerical. he may be curtailed in his authority, by the force of opinion, and by extreme constructions of these principles; but if this be desirable, it would be better to avoid the struggle, and begin, at once, by laying the foundation of the system in such a way as will prevent the necessity of any change. as respects france, a peerage, in my opinion, is neither desirable nor practicable. it is certainly possible for the king to maintain a chosen political corps, as long as he can maintain himself, which shall act in his interests and do his bidding; but it is folly to ascribe the attributes that belong to a peerage to such a body of mercenaries. they resemble the famous mandamus counsellors, who had so great an agency in precipitating our own revolution, and are more likely to achieve a similar disservice to their master than any thing else. could they become really independent, to a point to render them a masculine feature in the state, they would soon, by their combinations, become too strong for the other branches of the government, as has been the case in england, and france would have a "throne surrounded by aristocratic institutions." the popular notion that an aristocracy is necessary to a monarchy, i take it, is a gross error. a titular aristocracy, in some shape or other, is always the _consequence_ of monarchy, merely because it is the reflection of the sovereign's favour, policy, or caprice; but _political_ aristocracies like the peerage, have, nine times in ten, proved too strong for the monarch. france would form no exception to the rule; but, as men are apt to run into the delusion of believing it liberty to strip one of power, although his mantle is to fall on the few, i think it more than probable the popular error would be quite likely to aid the aristocrats in effecting their object, after habit had a little accustomed the nation to the presence of such a body. this is said, however, under the supposition that the elements of an independent peerage could be found in france, a fact that i doubt, as has just been mentioned.. if england can have a throne, then, surrounded by aristocratical institutions, what is there to prevent france from having a throne "surrounded by republican institutions?" the word "republic," though it does not exclude, does not necessarily include the idea of a democracy. it merely means a polity, in which the predominant idea is the "public things," or common weal, instead of the hereditary and inalienable rights of one. it would be quite practicable, therefore, to establish in france such an efficient constituency as would meet the latter conditions, and yet to maintain the throne, as the machinery necessary, in certain cases, to promulgate the will of this very constituency. this is all that the throne does in england, and why need it do more in france? by substituting then a more enlarged constituency, for the borough system of england, the idea of lafayette would be completely fulfilled. the reform in england, itself, is quite likely to demonstrate that his scheme was not as monstrous as has been affirmed. the throne of france should be occupied as corsica is occupied, not for the affirmative good it does the nation, so much as to prevent harm from its being occasionally vacant. in the course of the conversation, i gave to general lafayette the following outline of the form of government i could wish to give to france, were i a frenchman, and had i a voice in the matter. i give it to you on the principle already avowed, or as a traveller furnishing his notions of the things he has seen, and because it may aid in giving you a better insight into my views of the state of this country. i would establish a monarchy, and henry v. should be the monarch. i would select him on account of his youth, which will admit of his being educated in the notions necessary to his duty; and on account of his birth, which would strengthen his nominal government, and, by necessary connexion, the actual government: for i believe, that, in their hearts, and notwithstanding the professions to the contrary, nearly half of france would greatly prefer the legitimate line of their ancient kings to the actual dynasty. this point settled, i would extend the suffrage as much as facts would justify; certainly so as to include a million or a million and a half of electors. all idea of the _représentation_ of property should be relinquished, as the most corrupt, narrow, and vicious form of polity that has ever been devised, invariably tending to array one portion of the community against another, and endangering the very property it is supposed to protect. a moderate property _qualification_ might be adopted, in connexion with that of intelligence. the present scheme in france unites, in my view of the case, precisely the two worst features of admission to the suffrage that could be devised. the qualification of an elector is a given amount of direct contribution. this _qualification_ is so high as to amount to _représentation_, and france is already so taxed as to make a diminution of the burdens one of the first objects at which a good government would aim; it follows, that as the ends of liberty are attained, its foundations would be narrowed, and the _représentation_ of property would be more and more assured. a simple property qualification would, therefore, i think, be a better scheme than the present. each department should send an allotted number of deputies, the polls being distributed on the american plan. respecting the term of service, there might arise various considerations, but it should not exceed five years, and i would prefer three. the present house of peers should be converted into a senate, its members to sit as long as the deputies. i see no use in making the term of one body longer than the other, and i think it very easy to show that great injury has arisen from the practice among ourselves. neither do i see the advantage of having a part go out periodically; but, on the contrary, a disadvantage, as it leaves a representation of old, and, perhaps, rejected opinions, to struggle with the opinions of the day. such collisions have invariably impeded the action and disturbed the harmony of our own government. i would have every french elector vote for each senator; thus the local interests would be protected by the deputies, while the senate would strictly represent france. this united action would control all things, and the ministry would be an emanation of their will, of which the king should merely be the organ. i have no doubt the action of our own system would be better, could we devise some plan by which a ministry should supersede the present executive. the project of mr. hillhouse, that of making the senators draw lots annually for the office of president, is, in my opinion, better than the elective system; but it would be, in a manner, liable to the old objection, of a want of harmony between the different branches of the government. france has all the machinery of royalty, in her palaces, her parks, and the other appliances of the condition; and she has, moreover, the necessary habits and opinions, while we have neither. there is, therefore, just as much reason why france should not reject this simple expedient for naming a ministry, as there is for our not adopting it. here, then, would be, at once, a "throne surrounded by republican institutions," and, although it would not be a throne as powerful as that which france has at present, it would, i think, be more permanent than one surrounded by bayonets, and leave france, herself, more powerful, in the end. the capital mistake made in , was that of establishing the _throne_ before establishing the _republic_; in trusting to _men_ instead of trusting to _institutions_. i do not tell you that lafayette assented to all that i said. he had reason for the impracticability of getting aside the personal interests which would be active in defeating such a reform, that involved details and a knowledge of character to which i had nothing to say; and, as respects the duc de bordeaux, he affirmed that the reign of the bourbons was over in france. the country was tired of them. it may appear presumptuous in a foreigner to give an opinion against such high authority; but, "what can we reason but from what we know?" and truth compels me to say, i cannot subscribe to this opinion. my own observation, imperfect though it be, has led to a different conclusion. i believe there are thousands, even among those who throng the tuileries, who would hasten to throw off the mask at the first serious misfortune that should befall the present dynasty, and who would range themselves on the side of what is called legitimacy. in respect to parties, i think the republicans the boldest, in possession of the most talents compared to numbers, and the least numerous; the friends of the king (active and passive) the least decided, and the least connected by principle, though strongly connected by a desire to prosecute their temporal interests, and more numerous than the republicans; the carlists or _henriquinquists_ the most numerous, and the most generally, but secretly, sustained by the rural population, particularly in the west and south. lafayette frankly admitted, what all now seem disposed to admit, that it was a fault not to have made sure of the institutions before the king was put upon the throne. he affirmed, however, it was much easier to assert the wisdom of taking this precaution, than to have adopted it in fact. the world, i believe, is in error about most of the political events that succeeded the three days. letter ii. the cholera in paris.--its frightful ravages.--desertion of the city--my determination to remain.--deaths in the higher classes.--unexpected arrival and retreat.--praiseworthy conduct of the authorities.--the cholera caricatured!--invitation from an english general.--atmospherical appearance denoting the arrival of the cholera.--lord robert fitzgerald.--dinner at the house of madame de b----. dear ----, we have had little to occupy us since my last letter, but the cholera, which alighted in the heart of this great and crowded metropolis like a bomb. since the excursion on the frontiers last year, and our success in escaping the quarantine, i had thought little of this scourge, until the subject was introduced at my own table by a medical man who was among the guests. he cautiously informed us that there were unpleasant conjectures among the faculty on the subject, and that he was fearful paris was not to go unscathed. when apart, he privately added, that he had actually seen a case, which he could impute to no other disease but that of asiatic cholera. the next day a few dark hints were given in the journals, and, with frightful rapidity, reports followed that raised the daily deaths to near a thousand. the change in the appearance of the town was magical, for the strangers generally fled, while most of the _habitués_ of the streets in our immediate vicinity were soon numbered with the dead. there was a succession of apple-women seated at the corners, between the rue st. dominique and the pont royal, with whose faces i had become intimate in the course of p----'s traffic, as we passed to and fro, between the hotel and the tuileries. every one of these disappeared; the last, i was told, dropping from her chair, and dying before those who came to her aid had reached the nearest hospital. one case, among multitudes, will serve to give you a faint idea of the situation of paris, at this moment of severe affliction. returning from a walk through the deserted streets one morning, i saw a small collection of people around the _porte-cochère_ of our hotel. a matchseller had been seized with the disease, at the gate, and was then sustained on one of the stone seats, which are commonly used by the servants. i had her carried info the court, and made such applications as had been recommended by the faculty. the patient was a robust woman of middle age, accompanied by her mother, both having come in from a distant village, to raise a few sous by selling matches. in making the applications, i had occasion to observe the means by which these poor people sustain life. their food consisted of fragments of hard dried bread, that had been begged, or bought, in the course of their progress. while two or three of us were busied about the daughter, the mother knelt on the pavement, and, with streaming eyes, prayed for her child, for us, and for herself. there was something indescribably touching in this display of strong natural ties, between those who were plunged so deep in misery. a piece of five francs was put into the hands of the old woman, but, though she blessed the donor, her look was not averted an instant from the agony depicted in her daughter's face, nor did she appear conscious of what she possessed, a moment after. the carriers from the hospital bore the sick woman away, and the mother promised to return, in a day or two, to let me know the result. not appearing, an inquiry was made at the hospital, and the answer was, that they were both dead! in this manner some ten or fifteen thousand were swept away in a few weeks. not only hotels, but, in some instances, nearly whole streets were depopulated. as every one fled, who could with convenience or propriety quit the town, you may feel surprised that we chose to remain. when the deaths increased to eight or nine hundred a day, and our own quarter began to be visited, i felt it to be a duty to those under my charge, to retire to some of the places without the limits of the disease. the trunks were packed, the carriage was in the court, and my passports were signed, when a---- was suddenly taken ill. although the disease was not the cholera, i began to calculate the chances of any one of us being seized, myself for instance, in one of the villages of the environs, and the helpless condition of a family of females in a foreign country, under such circumstances. the result was a determination to remain, and to trust to providence. we have consequently staid in our apartments through it all, although two slight cases have occurred in the hotel, and hundreds around it. the manner in which individuals known to us have vanished, as it were, from before our eyes, has been shockingly sudden. to-day the report may be that the milkman is gone; yesterday it was the butcher's boy; the day before the poulterer, and presently a new servant appears with a message from a friend, and on inquiring for his predecessor, we learn that he is dead. ten or fifteen cases of this sort have occurred among those with whom we are in constant and immediate connexion. the deaths in the higher classes, at first, were comparatively few, but of late several of the most distinguished men of france have been seized. among them are m. perier, the prime minister, and the general lamarque. prince castelcicala, too, the neapolitan ambassador, is dead, in our neighbourhood; as, indeed, are very many others. there is one short street quite near us, out of which, it is said, between seventy and eighty dead have been carried. the situation of all this faubourg is low, and that of the street particularly so. dr. s----, of north carolina, who, with several other young physicians, has done credit to himself by his self-devotion and application, brought in the report of the appearance of things, once or twice a week, judging of the state of the disease more from the aspect of the hospitals, than from the published returns, which are necessarily and, perhaps, designedly, imperfect. he thinks of the first hundred that were admitted at the hotel dieu, all but one died, and that one he does not think was a case of asiatic cholera at all. all this time, the more frequented streets of paris presented, in the height of the usual season too, the most deserted aspect. i have frequently walked on the terrace of the tuileries when there were not a dozen others in the whole garden, and driven from my own hotel in the rue st. dominique to the place vendôme without meeting half a dozen vehicles, including _fiacres_ and _cabriolets de place_. i was returning one day from the rue de la paix, on foot, during the height of the disease, at the time when this gay and magnificent part of the town looked peculiarly deserted. there was scarcely a soul in the street but the _laquais de place_, the _garçons_, and the chambermaids of the public hotels, that abound in this quarter. these were at the gateways, with folded arms, a picture in themselves of the altered condition of the town. two travelling carriages drove in from the rue de rivoli, and there was at once a stir among those who are so completely dependent on travellers for their bread. "_on part_" was, at first, the common and mournful call from one group to another, until the mud on the carriage-wheels caught the attention of some one, who cried out "_on arrive_!" the appearance of the strangers under such circumstances, seemed to act like a charm. i felt no little surprise at seeing them, and more, when a hand beckoned to me from a carriage window. it was mr. h----, of new york, an old schoolfellow, and a friend of whom we had seen a good deal during our travels in europe. he had just come from england, with his family, and appeared astonished to find paris so deserted. he told me that mr. van buren was in the other carriage. he had chosen an unfortunate moment for his visit. i went to see the h----s next morning, and it was arranged that they should come and pass the succeeding day in the rue st. dominique; but they disappointed us. the day following i got a letter from h----, dated amiens, written on his way to england! they had been imprudent in coming, and wise in hurrying away from the frightful scene. i believe that mr. van buren remained but a day or two. although most of our acquaintances quitted the town, a few thought it safer to remain in their own comfortable apartments, than to run the hazards of travelling; for, in a short time, most of the north of france was suffering under the same grievous affliction. the authorities conducted themselves well, and there have been very many instances of noble self-devotion, on the part of private individuals, the french character never appearing to better advantage. in this respect, notwithstanding the general impression to the contrary, i am inclined to believe, after a good deal of inquiry, that paris has acquitted itself better than london. the french, certainly, are less disposed, as a rule, to "hide their light under a bushel," than most other people; but, on the spot and a looker-on, my respect for their feelings and philanthropy has been greatly raised by their conduct during this terrible calamity. notwithstanding the horror of the disease, some of the more prominent traits of national character have shown themselves lately. among other things, the artists have taken to caricaturing the cholera! one gets to be so hardened by exposure, as to be able to laugh at even these proofs of moral obtuseness. odd enough traits of character are developed by seeing men under such trying circumstances. during one of the worst periods of the disease, i met a countryman in the street, who, though otherwise a clever man, has the weakness to think the democracy of america its greatest blot. i asked him why he remained in paris, having no family, nor any sufficient inducement? "oh," said he, "it is a disease that only kills the rabble: i feel no concern--do you?" i told him that, under my peculiar circumstances, i felt a great deal of uneasiness, though not enough to make an unreflecting flight. a few days afterwards i missed him, and, on inquiry, learned that he had fled. some _nobleman_ had died in our faubourg, when he and one of a fellow feeling, finding a taint "between the wind and their nobility," forthwith beat a retreat! during the height of the malady, an old english general officer, who had served in india, and who was now residing near us, sent me an invitation to dinner. tired of seeing no one, i went. here everything was as tranquil as if we were living in the purest atmosphere in europe. sir ----, my host, observed that he had got seasoned in india, and that he believed _good living_ one of the best preventives against the disease. the count de ---- came in just before dinner was announced, and whispered to me that some twelve or fifteen hundred had been buried the previous day, although less than a thousand had been reported. this gentleman told a queer anecdote, which he said came from very respectable authority, and which he gave as he had heard it. about ten days before the cholera appeared, a friend of his had accompanied one of the polish generals, who are now in paris, a short distance into the country to dine. on quitting the house, the pole stopped to gaze intently at the horizon. his companion inquired what he saw, when, pointing to a hazy appearance in the atmosphere, of rather an unusual kind, the other said, "you will have the cholera here in less than ten days; such appearances always preceded it in the north." as m. de ---- observed, "i tell it as i heard it." sir ---- did me the favour, on that occasion, to introduce me to a mild gentleman-like old man, who greatly resembled one of the quiet old school of our own, which is so fast disappearing before the bustling, fussy, money-getting race of the day. it was lord robert fitzgerald, a brother of the unfortunate lord edward, and the brother of whom he so pleasantly speaks in his natural and amiable letters, as "plenipo bob." this gentleman is since dead, having, as i hear, fallen a victim to the cholera. i went to one other dinner, during this scene of destruction, given by madame de b----, a woman who has so much vogue, as to assemble, in her house, people of the most conflicting opinions and opposite characters. on this occasion, i was surprised to hear from marshal ----, one of the guests, that many believe the cholera to be contagious. that such an opinion should prevail among the mass, was natural enough, but i was not prepared to hear it from so high a quarter. a gentleman mentioned, at this dinner, that the destruction among the porters had been fearful. a friend of his was the proprietor of five hotels, and the porters of all are dead! letter iii. insecurity of the government.--louis-philippe and the pear.--caricatures.--ugliness of the public men of france.--the duke de valmy.--care-worn aspect of society under the new regime.--controversy in france respecting the cost of government in america.--conduct of american agents in europe. dear ----, the government is becoming every day less secure, and while it holds language directly to the contrary, it very well knows it cannot depend on the attachment of the nation. it has kept faith with no one, and the mass looks coldly on, at the political agitation that is excited, in all quarters, by the carlists and the republicans. the bold movement of the duchess of berri, although it has been unwise and unreflecting, has occasioned a good deal of alarm, and causes great uneasiness in this cabinet.[ ] [footnote : louis-philippe has been more singularly favoured by purely fortuitous events than, probably, ever fell to the fortune of one in his situation. the death of the duke of reichstadt, the arrest and peculiar position of the duchess of berri, the failure of the different attempts to assassinate and seize him, and the sudden death of the young napoleon bonaparte, in italy (the son of louis), are among the number.] in a country where the cholera could not escape being caricatured, you will readily imagine that the king has fared no better. the lower part of the face of louis-philippe is massive, while his forehead, without being mean, narrows in a way to give the outline a shape not unlike that of a pear. an editor of one of the publications of caricatures being on trial for a libel, in his defence, produced a large pear, in order to illustrate his argument, which ran as follows:--people fancied they saw a resemblance in some one feature of a caricature to a particular thing; this thing, again, might resemble another thing; that thing a third; and thus from one to another, until the face of some distinguished individual might be reached. he put it to the jury whether such forced constructions were safe. "this, gentlemen," he continued, "is a common pear, a fruit well known to all of you. by culling here, and here," using his knife as he spoke, "something like a resemblance to a human face is obtained: by clipping here, again, and shaping there, one gets a face that some may fancy they know; and should i, hereafter, publish an engraving of a pear, why everybody will call it a caricature of a man!" you will understand that, by a dexterous use of the knife, such a general resemblance to the countenance of the king was obtained, that it was instantly recognised. the man was rewarded for his cleverness by an acquittal, and, since that time, by an implied convention, a rude sketch of a pear is understood to allude to the king. the fruit abounds in a manner altogether unusual for the season, and, at this moment, i make little doubt, that some thousands of pears are drawn in chalk, coal, or other substances, on the walls of the capital. during the carnival, masquers appeared as pears, with pears for caps, and carrying pears, and all this with a boldness and point that must go far to convince the king that the extreme license he has affected hitherto to allow, cannot very well accord with his secret intentions to bring france back to a government of coercion. the discrepancies that necessarily exist in the present system will, sooner or later, destroy it. little can be said in favour of caricatures. they address themselves to a faculty of the mind that is the farthest removed from reason, and, by consequence, from the right; and it is a prostitution of the term to suppose that they are either cause or effect, as connected with liberty. such things may certainly have their effect, as means, but every good cause is so much the purer for abstaining from the use of questionable agencies. _au reste_, there is really a fatality of feature and expression common to the public men of this country that is a strong provocative to caricature. the revolution and empire appear to have given rise to a state of feeling that has broken out with marked sympathy, in the countenance. the french, as a nation, are far from handsome, though brilliant exceptions exist; and it strikes me that they who appear in public life are just among the ugliest of the whole people. not long since i dined at the table of mr. de ----, in company with mr. b. of new york. the company consisted of some twenty men, all of whom had played conspicuous parts in the course of the last thirty years. i pointed out the peculiarity just mentioned to my companion, and asked him if there was a single face at table which had the placid, dignified, and contented look which denotes the consciousness of right motives, a frank independence, and a mind at peace with itself. we could not discover one! i have little doubt that national physiognomy is affected by national character. you may form some idea, on the other hand, of the perfect simplicity and good taste that prevails in french society, by a little occurrence on the day just mentioned. a gentleman, of singularly forbidding countenance, sat next us; and, in the course of the conversation, he mentioned the fact that he had once passed a year in new york, of which place he conversed with interest and vivacity. b---- was anxious to know who this gentleman might be. i could only say that he was a man of great acuteness and knowledge, whom i had often met in society, but, as to his name, i did not remember ever to have heard it. he had always conducted himself in the simple manner that he witnessed, and it was my impression that he was the private secretary of the master of the house, who was a dignitary of the state, for i had often met him at the same table. here the matter rested for a few days. the following week we removed into the rue st. dominique. directly opposite to the _porte-cochère_ of our hotel was the _porte-cochère_ of an hotel that had once belonged to the princes of conti. a day or two after the removal, i saw the unknown gentleman coming out of the gateway opposite, as i was about to enter our own. he bowed, saluted me by name, and passed on. believing this a good occasion to ascertain who he was, i crossed the street, and asked the porter for the name of the gentleman who had just gone out. "mais, c'est monsieur le duc!" "duke!--what duke?" "why, monsieur le duc de valmy, the proprietor of this hotel!" it was the younger kellerman, the hero of marengo![ ] [footnote : he is since dead.] but i could fill volumes with anecdotes of a similar nature; for, in these countries, in which men of illustrious deeds abound, one is never disturbed in society by the fussy pretension and swagger that is apt to mark the presence of a lucky speculator in the stocks. battles, unlike bargains, are rarely discussed in society. i have already told you how little sensation is produced in paris by the presence of a celebrity, though in no part of the world is more delicate respect paid to those who have earned renown, whether in letters, arts, or arms. like causes, however, notoriously produce like effects; and, i think, under the new regime, which is purely a money-power system, directed by a mind whose ambition is wealth, that one really meets here more of that swagger of stocks and lucky speculations, in the world, than was formerly the case. society is decidedly less graceful, more care-worn, and of a worse tone to-day, than it was previously to the revolution of . i presume the elements are unchanged, but the ebullition of the times is throwing the scum to the surface; a natural but temporary consequence of the present state of things. while writing to you in this desultory manner, i shall seize the occasion to give the outline of a little occurrence of quite recent date, and which is, in some measure, of personal interest to myself. a controversy concerning the cost of government, was commenced some time in november last, under the following circumstances, and has but just been concluded. as early as the july preceding, a writer in the employment of the french government produced a laboured article, in which he attempted to show that, head for head, the americans paid more for the benefits of government than the french. having the field all to himself, both as to premises and conclusions, this gentleman did not fail to make out a strong case against us; and, as a corollary to this proposition, which was held to be proved, he, and others of his party, even went so far as to affirm that a republic, in the nature of things, must be a more expensive polity than a monarchy. this extravagant assertion had been considered as established, by a great many perfectly well-meaning people, for some months, before i even knew that it had ever been made. a very intelligent and a perfectly candid frenchman mentioned it one day, in my presence, admitting that he had been staggered by the boldness of the proposition, as well as by the plausibility of the arguments by which it had been maintained. it was so contrary to all previous accounts of the matter, and was, especially, so much opposed to all i had told him, in our frequent disquisitions on america, that he wished me to read the statements, and to refute them, should it seem desirable. about the same time, general lafayette made a similar request, sending me the number of the periodical that contained the communication, and suggesting the expediency of answering it. i never, for an instant, doubted the perfect right of an american, or any one else, to expose the errors that abounded in this pretended statistical account, but i had little disposition for the task. having, however, good reason to think it was aimed covertly at general lafayette, with the intention to prove his ignorance of the america he so much applauded, i yielded to his repeated requests, and wrote a hasty letter to him, dissecting, as well as my knowledge and limited access to authorities permitted, the mistakes of the other side. this letter produced replies, and the controversy was conducted through different channels, and by divers agents, up to a time when the varying and conflicting facts of our opponents appeared to be pretty well exhausted. it was then announced that instructions had been sent to america to obtain more authentic information; and we were promised a farther exposure of the weakness of the american system, when the other side should receive this re-enforcement to their logic.[ ] [footnote : no such exposure has ever been made; and the writer understood, some time before he quitted france, that the information received from america proved to be so unsatisfactory, that the attempt was abandoned. the writer, in managing his part of the discussion, confined himself principally to the state of new york, being in possession of more documents in reference to his own state, than to any other. official accounts, since published, have confirmed the accuracy of his calculations; the actual returns varying but a few sous a head from his own estimates, which were in so much too liberal, or against his own side of the question.] i have no intention of going over this profitless controversy with you, and have adverted to it here, solely with a view to make you acquainted with a state of feeling in a portion of our people, that it may be useful not only to expose, but correct.[ ] [footnote : see my _letter to general lafayette_, published by baudry, paris.] letter iv. gradual disappearance of the cholera.--death of m. casimir perier.--his funeral.--funeral of general lamarque.--magnificent military escort.--the duc de fitzjames.--an alarm.--first symptoms of popular revolt.--scene on the pont royal.--charge on the people by a body of cavalry.--the _sommations_.--general lafayette and _the bonnet rouge_.--popular prejudices in france. england, and america.--contest in the quartier montmartre.--the place louis xvi.--a frightened sentinel.--picturesque bivouac of troops in the carousel.--critical situation.--night-view from the pont des arts.--appearance of the streets on the following morning.--england an enemy to liberty.--affair at the porte st. denis.--procession of louis-philippe through the streets.--contest in the st. mary.--sudden panic.--terror of a national guard and a young conscript.--dinner with a courtier.--suppression of the revolt. dear ----, events have thickened since my last letter. the cholera gradually disappeared, until it ceased to be the subject of conversation. as soon as the deaths diminished to two or three hundred a day, most people became easy; and when they got below a hundred, the disease might be said to be forgotten. but though the malady virtually disappeared, the public was constantly reminded of its passage by the deaths of those who, by force of extraordinary care, had been lingering under its fatal influence. m. casimir perier was of the number, and his death has been seized on as a good occasion to pass a public judgment on the measures of the government of the _juste milieu_, of which he has been popularly supposed to be the inventor, as well as the chief promoter. this opinion, i believe, however, to be erroneous. the system of the _juste milieu_ means little more than to profess one thing and to do another; it is a stupendous fraud, and sooner or later will be so viewed and appropriately rewarded. it is a profession of liberty, with a secret intention to return to a government of force, availing itself of such means as offer, of which the most obvious, at present, are the stagnation of trade and the pressing necessities of all who depend on industry, in a country that is taxed nearly beyond endurance. neither m. perier, nor any other man, is the prime mover of such a system; for it depends on the father of lies, who usually employs the most willing agents he can discover. the inventor of the policy, _sub diabolo_, is now in london. m. perier had the merits of decision, courage, and business talents; and, so far from being the founder of the present system, he had a natural frankness, the usual concomitant of courage, that, under other circumstances, i think, would have indisposed him to its deceptions. but he was a manufacturer, and his spinning-jennies were very closely connected with his political faith. another state of the market would, most probably, have brought him again into the liberal ranks. the funeral obsequies of m. perier having been loudly announced as a test of public opinion, i walked out, the morning they took place, to view the pomp. it amounted to little more than the effect which the patronage of the ministry can at any time produce. there was a display of troops and of the _employés_ of the government, but little apparent sympathy on the part of the mass of the population. as the deceased was a man of many good qualities, this indifference was rather studied, proceeding from the discipline and collision of party politics. as an attempt to prove that the _juste milieu_ met with popular approbations i think the experiment was a failure. very different was the result, in a similar attempt made by the opposition, at the funeral of general lamarque. this distinguished officer fell also a victim to the cholera, and his interment took place on the th of june. the journals of the opposition had called upon its adherents to appear on this occasion, in order to convince the king and his ministers that they were pursuing a dangerous course, and one in which they were not sustained by the sentiment of the nation. the preparations wore a very different appearance from those made on the previous occasion. then everything clearly emanated from authority; now, the government was visible in little besides its arrangements to maintain its own ascendency. the military rank of the deceased entitled him to a military escort, and this was freely accorded to his friends; perhaps the more freely, from the fact that it sanctioned the presence of so many more bayonets than were believed to be at the command of the ministers. it was said there were twenty thousand of the national guards present in uniform, wearing, however, only their side-arms. this number may have been exaggerated, but there certainly were a great many. the whole procession, including the troops, has been estimated at a hundred thousand men. the route was by the boulevards to the jardin des plantes, where the body was to be delivered to the family of the deceased, in order to be transported to the south of france for interment. having other engagements, i merely viewed the preparations, and the commencement of the ceremonies, when i returned to our own quiet quarter of the town to pursue my own quiet occupations. the day passed quietly enough with us, for the faubourg st. germain has so many large hotels, and so few shops, that crowds are never common; and, on this occasion, all the floating population appeared to have completely deserted us, to follow the procession of poor lamarque. i do not remember to have alluded to the change produced in this particular, by the cholera, in the streets of paris. it is supposed that at least ten thousand of those who have no other abodes, except the holes into which they crept at night, were swept out of them by this fell disease. about five o'clock, i had occasion to go to the rue de rivoli, and i found the streets and the garden with much fewer people in them than was usual at that hour. there i heard a rumour that a slight disturbance had taken place on the boulevard des italiens, in consequence of a refusal of the duc de fitzjames, a leading carlist, to take off his hat to the body of lamarque, as he stood at a balcony. i had often met m. de fitzjames in society, and, although a decided friend of the old regime, i knew his tone of feeling and manners to be too good, to credit a tale so idle. by a singular coincidence, the only time i had met with general lamarque in private was at a little dinner given by madame de m----, at which monsieur de fitzjames was also a guest. we were but five or six at table, and nothing could be more amicable, or in better taste, than the spirit of conciliation and moderation that prevailed between men so widely separated by opinion. this was not long before gen. lamarque was attacked by his final disease, and as there appeared to me to be improbability in the rumour of the affair of the boulevards, i quite rightly set it down as one of the exaggerations that daily besiege our ears. it being near six, i consequently returned home to dinner, supposing that the day would end as so many had ended before. we were at table, or it was about half-past six o'clock, when the drum beat the _rappel_. at one period, scarcely a day passed that we did not hear this summons; indeed, so frequent did it become, that i make little doubt the government resorted to it as an expedient to strengthen itself, by disgusting the national guards with the frequency of the calls; but of late, the regular weekly parades excepted, we had heard nothing of it. a few minutes later, françois, who had been sent to the _porte-cochère_, returned with the intelligence that a soldier of the national guard had just passed it, bleeding at a wound in the head. on receiving this information, i left the hotel and proceeded towards the river. in the rue du bac, the great thoroughfare of the faubourg, i found a few men, and most of the women, at their shop-doors, and _portes-cochères_, but no one could say what was going on in the more distant quarters of the town. there were a few people on the quays and bridges, and, here and there, a solitary national guard was going to his place of rendezvous. i walked rapidly through the garden, which, at that hour, was nearly empty, as a matter of course, and passing under the arch of the palace, crossed the court and the carrousel to la rue de richelieu. a profound calm reigned in and about the chateau; the sentinels and loungers of the guards seeming as tranquil as usual. there was no appearance of any coming and going with intelligence, and i inferred that the royal family was either at st. cloud, or at neuilly. very few people were in the place, or in the streets; but those who were, paused occasionally, looking about them with curiosity, and almost uniformly in a bewildered and inquiring manner. i had reached the colonnade of the théâtre français, when a strong party of _gendarmes à cheval_ went scouring up the street, at a full gallop. their passage was so swift and sudden, that i cannot say in which direction they came, or whither they went, with the exception that they took the road to the boulevards. a _gendarme à pied_ was the only person near me, and i asked him, if he could explain the reason of the movement. "_je n'en sais rien_," in the _brusque_ manner that the french soldiers are a little apt to assume, when it suits their humours, was all the reply i got. i walked leisurely into the galleries of the palais royal, which i had never before seen so empty. there was but a single individual in the garden, and he was crossing it swiftly, in the direction of the theatre. a head was, now and then, thrust out of a shop-door, but i never before witnessed such a calm in this place, which is usually alive with people. passing part of the way through one of the glazed galleries, i was started by a general clatter that sprung up all around me in every direction, and which extended itself entirely around the whole of the long galleries. the interruption to the previous profound quiet, was as sudden as the report of a gun, and it became general, as it were, in an instant. i can liken the effect, after allowing for the difference in the noises, to that of letting fly sheets, tacks, and halyards, on board a vessel of war, in a squall, and to a sudden call to shorten sail. the place was immediately filled with men, women, and children, and the clatter proceeded from the window-shutters that were going up all over the vast edifice, at the same moment. in less than five minutes there was not a shop-window exposed. still there was no apparent approach of danger. the drums had almost ceased beating, and as i reached the carrousel, on my way back to the rue st. dominique, i saw nothing in the streets to justify all this alarm, which was either the result of a panic, or was calculated for political effect; artifice acting on apprehension. a few people were beginning to collect on the bridges and quays, and there was evidently a greater movement towards the pont neuf, than in the lower parts of the town. as i crossed the pont royal, a brigade of light artillery came up the quays from the ecole militaire, the horses on the jump, and the men seated on the carriages, or mounted, as belongs to this arm. the noise and hurry of their passage was very exciting, and it gave an impulse to the shopkeepers of the rue du bac, most of whom now began to close their windows. the guns whirled across the bridge, and dashed into the carrousel, on a gallop, by the _guichet_ of the louvre. continuing down the rue du bac, the street was full of people, chiefly females, who were anxiously looking towards the bridge. one _garçon_, as he aided his master in closing the shop-window, was edifying him with anathemas against "_ces messieurs les républicains_," who were believed to be at the bottom of the disturbance, and for whom he evidently thought that the artillery augured badly. the next day he would be ready to shout _vive la république_ under a new impulse; but, at present, it is "_vive le commerce_!" on reaching the hotel, i gave my account of what was going on, pacified the apprehensions that had naturally been awakened, and sallied forth a second time, to watch the course of events. by this time some forty or fifty national guards were collected on the quay, by the pont royal, a point where there ought to have been several hundreds. this was a sinister omen for the government, nor was the appearance of the crowd much more favourable. tens of thousands now lined the quays, and loaded the bridges; nor were these people rabble, or _sans culottes_, but decent citizens, most of whom observed a grave, and, as i thought, a portentous silence. i make no manner of doubt that had a thousand determined men appeared among them at that moment, headed by a few leaders of known character, the government of louis-philippe would have dissolved like melting snow. neither the national guard, the army, nor the people were with it. every one evidently waited the issue of events, without manifesting much concern for the fate of the present regime. indeed it is not easy to imagine greater apathy, or indifference to the result, than was nearly everywhere visible. a few shopkeepers alone seemed troubled. on the pont royal a little crowd was collected around one or two men of the labouring classes, who were discussing the causes of the disturbance. first questioning a respectable-looking by-stander as to the rumours, i mingled with the throng, in order to get an idea of the manner in which the _people_ regarded the matter. it would seem that a collision had taken place between the troops and a portion of the citizens, and that a charge had been made by a body of cavalry on some of the latter, without having observed the formalities required by the law. some of the people had raised the cry "_aux arms_;" several _corps de garde_ had been disarmed, and many thousands were rallying in defence of their liberties. in short everything wore the appearance of the commencement of another revolution. the point discussed by the crowd, was the right of the dragoons to charge a body of citizens without reading the riot act, or making what the french call, the "_sommations_." i was struck with the plain common sense of one or two of the speakers, who were of the class of artisans, and who uttered more good reason, and displayed more right feeling, in the five minutes i listened, than one is apt to meet with, on the same subjects, in a year, in the salons of paris. i was the more struck by this circumstance, in consequence of the manner in which the same topic had been broached, quite lately, in the chamber of deputies. in one of the recent affairs in the east of france, the troops had fired on a crowd, without the previous _sommations_, in consequence, as was alleged, of some stones being hurled from the crowd against themselves. every one, who has the smallest knowledge of a government of laws, understands its action in an affair of this sort. ten thousand people are in a street, in their own right, and half a dozen of them commit an outrage. military force becomes necessary, but before it is applied certain forms are required, to notify the citizen that his ordinary rights are suspended, in the interests of public order, and to warn him to go away. this is a provision that the commonest intellect can understand; and yet some of the leading administration men, _lawyers too_, maintained that soldiers had the rights of other men, and if stones were hurled at them from a crowd, they were perfectly justifiable in using their arms against that crowd! it is only necessary, you will perceive, to employ an agent, or two, to cast a few stones from a crowd, to place every collection of citizens at the mercy of an armed force, on this doctrine. a soldier has the right of a citizen to defend himself beyond dispute, against the man who assails him; but a citizen who is assailed from a crowd has no right to discharge a pistol into that crowd, by way of defending himself. but this is of a piece with most of the logic of the friends of exclusion. their cause is bad, and their reasoning is necessarily bad also. from the pont royal i proceeded to the pont neuf, where the collection of people was still more numerous, every eye being fastened on the quays in the direction of the place de la bastille, near which the disturbance had commenced. nothing, however, was visible, though, once or twice, we heard a scattering fire of musketry. i waited here an hour, but nothing farther was heard, and, according to promise, i returned to the hotel, to repeat the little i had seen and gathered. in passing, i observed that the number of national guards at the pont royal had increased to about a hundred. after quieting the apprehensions of my family, i proceeded to quiet those of a lady of my acquaintance, who was nearly alone in her lodgings. i found her filled with apprehensions, and firmly believing that the present government was to be overturned. among other things, she told me that the populace had drawn general lafayette, in triumph, to his own house, and that, previously to the commencement of the conflict, he had been presented with a _bonnet rouge_, which he had put upon his head. the _bonnet rouge_, you will understand, with all frenchmen is a symbol of extreme jacobinism, and of the reign of terror. i laughed at her fears, and endeavoured to convince her that the idle tale about general lafayette could not be true. so far from wishing to rule by terror, it was his misfortune not to resort to the measures of caution that were absolutely necessary to maintain his own legal ascendancy, whenever he got into power. he was an enthusiast for liberty, and acted on the principle that others were as well disposed and as honest as himself. but to all this she turned a deaf ear, for, though an amiable and a sensible woman, she had been educated in the prejudices of a caste, being the daughter and sister of peers of france. i found the tale about general lafayette quite rife, on going again into the streets. the disposition to give credit to vulgar reports of this nature, is not confined to those whose condition in life naturally dispose them to believe the worst of all above them, for the vulgar-minded form a class more numerous than one might be induced to think, on glancing a look around him. liberality and generosity of feeling is the surest test of a gentleman; but, in addition to those of training and of a favourable association, except in very peculiar cases, they are apt to require some strong natural advantages, to help out the tendencies of breeding and education. every one who has seen much of the world, must have remarked the disposition, on the part of those who have not had the same opportunities, to cavil at opinions and usages that they cannot understand, merely because they do not come within the circle of their own every-day and familiar usages. our own country abounds with these rustic critics; and i can remember the time when there was a species of moral impropriety attached to practices that did not enter into every man's habits. it was almost deemed immoral to breakfast or dine at an hour later than one's neighbour. now, just this sort of feeling, one quite as vulgar, and much more malignant, prevails in europe against those who may see fit to entertain more liberal notions in politics than others of their class. in england, i have already told you, the system is so factitious, and has been so artfully constructed, by blending church and state, that it must be an uncommonly clever man who, in politics, can act vigorously on the golden rule of christ, that of doing "unto others, as you would have others do unto you," and escape the imputation of infidelity! a desire to advance the interests of his fellow-creatures, by raising them in the social scale, is almost certain to cause a man to be set down as destitute of morals and honesty. by imputations of this nature, the efforts and influence of some of the best men england has ever produced, have been nearly neutralized, and there is scarcely a distinguished liberal in the kingdom, at this moment, whom even the well-meaning of the church-and-state party do not regard with a secret distrust of his intentions and character. in the practice of imitation this feeling has even extended (though in a mitigated form) to america, a country in which, were the truth felt and understood, a man could not possibly fulfil all the obligations of education and superior training, without being of the party of the people. many gentlemen in america, beyond dispute, are not of the popular side, but i am of opinion that they make a fundamental mistake as _gentlemen_. they have permitted the vulgar feelings generated by contracted associations and the insignificant evils of a neighbourhood, to still within them the high feelings and generous tendencies that only truly belong to the caste. in france, the english feeling, modified by circumstances, is very apparent, although it is not quite so much the fashion to lay stress on mere morality. the struggle of selfishness and interests is less veiled and mystified in france than on the other side of the channel. but the selfish principle, if anything, is more active; and few struggle hard for others, without being suspected of base motives. by looking back at the publications of the time, you will learn the manner in which washington was vituperated by his enemies, at the commencement of the revolution. graydon, in his "memoirs of a life spent in pennsylvania," mentions a discourse he held with a young english officer, who evidently was well disposed, and wished to know the truth. this gentleman had been taught to believe washington an adventurer, who had squandered the property of a young widow whom he had married, by gambling and dissipation, and who was now ready to embark in any desperate enterprise to redeem his fortune! this, then, was probably the honest opinion the british army, in , entertained of the man, whom subsequent events have shown to have been uniformly actuated by the noblest sentiments, and who, instead of being the adventurer represented, is known to have put in jeopardy a large estate, through disinterested devotion to the country, and the prevailing predominant trait of whose character was an inflexible integrity of purpose. now, lafayette is obnoxious to a great deal of similar vulgar feeling, without being permitted, by circumstances, to render the purity of his motives as manifest, as was the better fortune of his great model, washington. the unhandsome and abrupt manner in which he was dismissed from the command of the national guards, though probably a peace-offering to the allies, was also intended to rob him of the credit of a voluntary resignation.[ ]--but, all this time, we are losing sight of what is passing in the streets of paris. [footnote : general lafayette took the republican professions of the king too literally, at first, and he did not always observe the _ménagement_, perhaps, that one seated on a throne, even though it be a popular one, is apt to expect. in he told the writer the king had, that morning, said, that some about him called the general a "maire du palais." on being asked if the king appeared to entertain the same notion, his answer was, "well, he professes not to do so; but then i think he has _tant soit peu_ of the same feeling." this was ticklish ground to stand on with a sovereign, and, perhaps, a case without a parallel in france, since the days of hugues capet. a few weeks later, general lafayette related another conversation held with louis-philippe, on the subject of his own unceremonious dismissal from office. "you shall be named _honorary_ commander-in-chief of the national guards, for life," said the king. "sire, how would you like to be an honorary king?" it is quite apparent that such a friendship could not last for ever.] troops of the line began to appear in large bodies as the evening closed, and the reports now came so direct as to leave no doubt that there was a sharp contest going on in the more narrow streets of the quartier montmartre. all this time the feelings of the crowd on the bridges and quays appeared to be singularly calm. there was little or no interest manifested in favour of either side, and, indeed, it would not be easy to say what the side opposed to the government was. the carlists looked distrustful, the republicans bold, and the _juste milieu_ alarmed. i went back to the hotel to make my report, again, about nine, and then proceeded by the quay and the pont louis xvi. to the carrousel. by the way, i believe i have forgotten to say, in any of my letters, that in crossing the place louis xvi, with a french friend, a month or two since, he informed me he had lately conversed with count--, who had witnessed the execution of louis xvi, and that he was told there was a general error prevalent as regarded the spot where the guillotine was erected on that occasion. according to this account, which it is difficult to believe is not correct, it was placed on the side of the place near the spot where the carriages for versailles usually stand, and just within the _borgnes_ that line the road that here diverges towards the quay. while correcting popular errors of this sort, i will add that m. guillotine, the inventor of that instrument that bears his name, is, i believe, still living; the story of his having been executed on his own machine, being pure poetry. passing by the rue de rivoli, i went to see an english lady of our acquaintance, who resided in this quarter of the town. i found her alone, uneasy, and firmly persuaded that another revolution had commenced. she was an aristocrat by position, and though reasonably liberal, anxious to maintain the present order of things, like all the liberal aristocrats, who believe it to be the last stand against popular sway. she has also friends and connexions about the person of the king, and probably considered their fortunes as, in some measure, involved in those of the court. we condoled with each other, as a matter of course; she, because there was a revolution, and i, because the want of faith, and the stupendous frauds, practised under the present system, rendered it necessary. it was near eleven o'clock before i quitted this part of the town. the streets were nearly deserted, a patrol occasionally passing; but the strangers were few, scarcely any having yet returned after their flight from the cholera. the gates of the garden were closed, and i found sentinels at the _guichets_ of the carrousel, who prevented my return by the usual route. unwilling to make the _détour_ by the way i had come, i proceeded by the rue de rivoli. as i was walking quite near to the palace, in order to avoid some mud, i came suddenly on a _garde national_ who was placed behind a sentry-box _en faction_. i cannot describe to you the furious scream with which this man cried "_allez au large_." if he took me for a body of bloody-minded republicans, rushing forward to disarm him, i certainly thought he was some wild beast. the man was evidently frightened, and just in a condition to take every bush for an enemy. it is true the other party was rather actively employed in disarming the different guards, but this fellow was within a hundred feet of the etat major, and in no sort of danger. notwithstanding the presented bayonet, i am not quite certain he would not have dropped his arms had i lifted my walking-stick, though one runs more hazard from a robber, or a sentinel, who is frightened, than from one who is cool. there was, however, no blood shed. finding the carrousel closed to me, i passed into the rue st. honoré, which was also pretty well garnished with troops. a few truculent youths were shouting a short distance ahead of me, but, on the appearance of a patrol, they ran off. at length i got as far as the rue du coq st. honoré, and seeing no one in the street, i turned short round its corner, thinking to get into the court of the louvre, and to the other side of the river by the pont des arts. instead of effecting this clever movement, i ran plump on a body of troops, who were drawn up directly across the street, in a triple line. this was a good position, for the men were quite protected from a fire, up or down the great thoroughfare, while by wheeling on either flank they were ready to act, in a moment, in either direction. my reception was not flattering, but the officer in command was too cool, to mistake a solitary individual for a band of rebels, and i was suffered to continue up the rue st. honoré. i got into the rear of this guard by turning through the next opening. the court of the louvre was unguarded and empty, and passing through it, i got a glimpse of a picturesque bivouac of troops in the carrousel. seeing no obstruction, i went in that direction, and penetrated to the very rear of a squadron of cuirassiers, who were dismounted, forming the outer line of the whole body. there may have been three or four thousand men of all arms assembled in this spot, chiefly, if not all, regular troops. i stayed among them unobserved, or at least, unmolested, near half an hour, watching the effect of the different groups, by the light of the camp fires. strong patrols, principally cavalry, went and came constantly, and scarcely five minutes passed without the arrival and departure of mounted expresses, the head-quarters of the national guards being in the palace. it was drawing towards midnight, and i bethought me of the uneasiness of those i had left in the rue st. dominique. i was retiring by the upper _guichet_, the only one unguarded, and had nearly reached it, when a loud shout was heard on the quay. this sounded like service, and it was so considered by the troops, for the order "_aux armes_" was given in a moment. the cuirassiers mounted, wheeled into platoons, and trotted briskly towards the enemy with singular expedition. unluckily, they directed their advance to the very _guichet_ which i was also approaching. the idea of being caught between two fires, and that in a quarrel which did not concern me, was not agreeable. the state of things called for decision, and knowing the condition of affairs in the carrousel, i preferred siding with _the juste milieu_, for once in my life. the cuirassiers were too much in a hurry to get through the _guichet_, which was a defile, and too steady to cut me down in passing; and, first giving them a few minutes to take the edge off the affair, if there was to be any fighting, i followed them to the quay. this alarm was real, i understood next day; but the revolters made their retreat by the pont des arts, which is impracticable for cavalry, attacking and carrying a _corps de garde_, in the quartier st. jacques. the cuirassiers were trotting briskly towards the pont neuf, in order to get at them, when i came out on the quay, and, profiting by the occasion, i got across the river, by the pont des arts. it was strange to find myself alone on this bridge at midnight, in the heart of a great capital, at a moment when its streets were filled with troops, while contending factions were struggling for the mastery, and perhaps the fate of not only france, but of all europe, was hanging on the issue! excited by these reflections, i paused to contemplate the scene. i have often told you how picturesque and beautiful paris appears viewed from her bridges. the finest position is that of the pont royal; but the pont des arts, at night, perhaps affords even more striking glimpses of those ancient, tall, angular buildings along the river, that, but for their forms and windows, would resemble low rocky cliffs. in the centre of this mass of dwellings, among its damp and narrow streets, into which the sun rarely penetrates, lay bodies of men, sleeping on their arms, or merely waiting for the dawn, to decide the fate of the country. it was carrying one back to the time of the "league" and the "fronde," and i involuntarily cast my eyes to that balconied window in the louvre, where charles ix. is said to have stood when he fired upon the flying protestants. the brooding calm that reigned around was both characteristic and strange. here was an empire in jeopardy, and yet the population had quietly withdrawn into their own abodes, awaiting the issue with as much apparent tranquillity, as if the morrow was to be like another day. use, and a want of sympathy between the governed and their governors, had begotten this indifference. when i reached the quai voltaire, not a man was visible, except a picket on the pont royal. not knowing but some follower of the house of orleans, more loyal than usual, might choose to detain me, because i came from america, i passed down one of the first streets, entering the rue du bac, at some distance from the bridge. i met but half a dozen people between the quays and the hotel de ----, and all the shops were hermetically sealed. as soon as i entered, the porter shut and barred the gate of our own hotel, and we retired, to rise and see what a "night might bring forth." "_les canons grondent dans les rues, monsieur_" was the remark of the porter, as i passed out into the street next morning. the population was circulating freely in our part of the town; the shops, too, were re-opened, and it appeared to be pretty generally understood that no fighting was to take place in that vicinity. passing up the rue du bac, i met three _gardes nationaux_, who, by their conversation, were fresh from the field, having passed the night in what may be called the enemy's country. they were full of marvels, and, in their own opinion, full of glory. the streets were now alive with people, the quays and bridges being still resorted to, on account of their affording an unobstructed avenue to the sounds that came from the quarter where the conflict was going on. occasionally, a discharge of musketry reached these spots, and once or twice i heard the report of a gun; but the firing was desultory, far from heavy, and irregular. in the carrousel i met an english acquaintance, and we agreed to go towards the scene of action together, in order to learn what was going on. my companion was loud in his complaints against the revolters, who, he said, would retard the progress of liberty half a century by their rashness. the government would put them down, and profit by its victory to use strong measures. i have learned to distrust the liberalism of some of the english, who are too apt to consult their own national interests, in regarding the rights of their neighbours. this, you will say, is no more than human nature, which renders all men selfish. true; but the concerns of few nations being as extensive, varied, and artificial, as those of england, the people of other countries are not liable to be influenced by so many appeals to divert them from a sound and healthful state of feeling. england, as a nation, has never been a friend of liberty in other nations, as witness her long and bitter hostility to ourselves, to france and holland, and her close alliance with turkey, persia, etc., etc. just at this moment, apprehension of russia causes her to dilate a little more than usual on the encouragement of liberty; but it is a mystification that can deceive no one of the least observation. of whatever sins england is to be accused, as a nation, she cannot be accused of that of political propagandism. even her own recent progress in liberty has been the result of foreign and external example. i now speak of the state, which extends its influence very far into society; but there are many individuals who carry their principles as far as any men on earth. this latter class, moreover, is largely and rapidly on the increase, has always effected, and will still effect, far more than the slate itself in favour of freedom. we went by the palais royal, the passages vivienne, and du panorama, to the boulevards. the streets were filled with people, as on a fête, and there appeared still to be a good deal of anxiety as to the result. there were plenty of troops, report saying that sixty thousand men were under arms on the side of the government. half that number would suffice to assure its success unless there should prove to be disaffection. had a single regiment of the line declared against the king the previous day, or even on the th of june, louis-philippe, in my opinion, would have been dethroned. but, so far as i can learn, none of the principal persons of the opposition appeared against him on this occasion, or seemed to have any connexion with the affair. my companion left me on the boulevards, and i proceeded towards the porte st. denis where there was evidently something like a contest. there was a little firing, and i met one or two wounded men, who were retiring to their _casernes._ one was shot through the body. but the affair at the porte st. denis proved to be nothing serious, and was soon over. the revolters had retired into the rue st. méry, where they were closely encircled by large bodies of troops, and whither i did not deem it prudent to follow them. the struggle, in that direction, was much sharper, and we occasionally heard cannon. you will probably be curious to know if one did not feel uneasy, in walking about the streets of a town, while so many men were contending in its streets. a moment's reflection will show you that there was little or no danger. one could find a cover in a moment. the streets were thronged, and it was little probable that either party would wantonly fire on the mass. the contest was confined to a particular part of the town, and then a man of ordinary discretion would hardly be so silly as to expose himself unnecessarily, in a quarrel with which he had no concern. women and children were certainly killed on this occasion, but it was probably under circumstances that did not, in the least, affect the great body of the inhabitants. the cafés were frequented as usual, and a little distance from the scene of action, everything wore the air of an ordinary sunday, on which the troops were to be reviewed. the morning passed in this manner, when, about four o'clock, i again found myself at the pont royal, after paying a visit to the hotel. here i met two american friends, and we walked by the quay of the palace, towards the pont neuf. the people were in a dense crowd, and it was even difficult to penetrate the mass. just before we reached the bridge, we heard shouts and cries of _vive le roi_, and presently i saw m. de chabot-rohan, the first honorary aide-de-camp, a gentleman whom i personally knew, and who usually led the cortege of the king. it would seem that louis-philippe had arrived from the country, and had passed by the boulevards to the place de la bastille, whence he was now returning to the tuileries, by the quays. his appearance in the streets, during such a scene, has been much lauded, and the firmness necessary to the occasion, much dwelt on in the papers. a very timid man might certainly have been afraid to expose his person in this manner, but the risk was by no means as great as has been supposed. the cortege was nowhere under fire, nor, but for, a few minutes, near the scene of action; and it was not easy to assassinate a man moving through streets that were filled with troops. _au reste_, there is no reason whatever to suppose the king would not have behaved personally well, in far more critical circumstances.[ ] the royal party passed into the carrousel by the court of the louvre, while we turned upon the bridge. [footnote : i once asked general lafayette his opinion of the nerve of the duc d'orleans (_egalité_). he laughed, and said the king had made an appeal to him quite lately, on the same subject. "and the answer?" "i told his majesty that i believed his father was a _brave_ man; but, you may be sure, i was glad be did not ask me if i thought he was an _honest_ one, too."] the pont neuf was crowded with troops, who occupied the _trottoirs_, and with men, women, and children. there had been some skirmishing at the place de grève, and the scene of the principal contest, the rue st. méry, was near by. we were slowly threading the crowd with our faces towards the island, when a discharge of musketry (four or five pieces at most), directly behind us, and quite near, set everybody in motion. a flock of sheep would not have scattered in greater confusion, at the sudden appearance of a strange dog among them, than the throng on the bridge began to scamper. fear is the most contagious of all diseases, and, for a moment, we found ourselves running with the rest. a jump or two sufficed, however, and we stopped. two soldiers, one a national guard, and the other a young conscript, belonging to the line, caught my eye, and knowing there was no danger, we had time to stop and laugh at them. the national guard was a little mayeux-looking fellow, with an abdomen like a pumpkin, and he had caught hold of his throat, as if it were actually to prevent his heart from jumping out of his mouth. a caricature of fright could scarcely be more absurd. the young conscript, a fair red-haired youth, was as white as a sheet, and he stood with his eyes and mouth open, like one who thought he saw a ghost, immoveable as a statue. he was sadly frightened, too. the boy would probably have come to, and proved a good soldier in the end; but as for mr. mayeux, although scarcely five feet high, he appeared as if he could never make himself short enough. he had evidently fancied the whole affair a good joke, up to that precise moment, when, for the first time, the realities of a campaign burst upon his disordered faculties. the troops in general, while they pricked up their ears, disdained even to shoulder their arms. for those on the bridge, there was, in truth, no danger, although the nearness of the volley, and the suddenness of the alarm, were well adapted to set a crowd in motion. the papers next day, said one or two had been slain by this discharge, which actually came from the revolters. you will probably be surprised, when i tell you that i had an engagement to dine to-day, with a gentleman who fills a high situation near the person of the king. he had sent me no notice of a postponement, and as i had seen him pass in the cortège, i was reminded that the hour to dress was near. accordingly, i returned home, in order to prove to him that i was as indifferent as any frenchman could be, to the events we had all just witnessed. i found a dozen people assembled in the drawing-room of madame ----, at six o'clock precisely, the same as if paris were quite tranquil. the general had not yet returned, but i was enabled to report that he had entered the palace in safety. a moment before the dinner was announced, he returned, and brought the information that the revolt was virtually suppressed, a few desperate individuals, who had thrown themselves into a church, alone holding out. he was in high spirits, and evidently considered the affair a triumph to louis-philippe. letter v. national guards in the court of the palace.--unclaimed dead in the morgue.--view of the scene of action.--a blundering artillerist.--singular spectacle.--the machinations of the government--martial law.--violations of the charter.--laughable scene in the carrousel.--a refractory private of the national guard. dear ----, the day after the contest was closed, i went to the louvre, where i usually met mr. m----, who was busy copying. he was almost alone, in the long and gorgeous galleries, as in the days of the cholera; but we got a view of the national guards that had been concerned in the affair of the previous day, who were drawn up in the court of the palace to receive the thanks of the king. there could not have been five thousand of them, but all might not have been present. from the louvre i went to took at the principal scene of action. a collection of some of the unclaimed dead was in the morgue, and every one was allowed to enter. there were fifty or sixty bodies in this place, and among them were a few women and children, who had probably been killed by accident. nearly all had fallen by gun-shot wounds, principally musket-balls; but a few had been killed by grape. as the disaffected had fought under cover most of the time, i fancy the cavalry did little in this affair. it was whispered that agents of the police were present to watch the countenances and actions of the spectators, with a view to detect the disaffected. as we had several of napoleon's soldiers at dinner yesterday, and they had united to praise the military character of the position taken by the revellers, i was curious to examine it. the rue st. méry is narrow, and the houses are high. the tower of the church is a little advanced, so as to enfilade it, in a manner, and the paving-stones had been used to make barricades, as in . these stones are much larger than our own, are angular, and of a size that works very well into a wall; and the materials being plenty, a breastwork, that is proof against everything but artillery, is soon formed by a crowd. two streets entered the rue st. méry near each other, but not in a right line, so that the approach along each is commanded by the house that stands across its end. one of these houses appears to have been a citadel of the disaffected, and most of the fighting was at and near this spot. artillery had been brought up against the house in question, which was completely riddled, though less injured by round-shot than one could have thought possible. the windows were broken, and the ceilings of the upper rooms were absolutely torn to pieces by musket-balls, that had entered on the rise. some twenty or thirty dead were found in this dwelling. i had met col.--, in the course of the morning, and we visited this spot together. he told me that curiosity had led him to penetrate as far as this street, which faces the citadel of the revolters, the previous day, and he showed me a _porte-cochère_, under which he had taken shelter, during a part of the attack. the troops engaged were a little in advance of him, and he described them as repeatedly recoiling from the fire of the house, which, at times, was rather sharp. the troops, however, were completely exposed, and fought to great disadvantage. several hundreds must have been killed and wounded at and near this spot. there existed plain proof of the importance of nerve in battle, in a shot that just appeared sticking in the wall of one of the lateral buildings, nearly opposite the _porte-cochère_, where col.--had taken shelter. the artillerist who pointed the gun from which it had been discharged, had the two sides of the street to assist his range, and yet his shot had hit one of the lateral buildings, at no great distance from the gun, and at a height that would have sent it far above the chimneys of the house at which it was fired! but any one in the least acquainted with life, knows that great allowances must be made for the poetry, when he reads of "charges," "free use of the bayonet," and "braving murderous discharges of grape." old and steady troops do sometimes display extraordinary fortitude, but i am inclined to think that the most brilliant things are performed by those who have been drilled just long enough to obey orders and act together, but who are still so young as not to know exactly the amount of the risk they run. extraordinary acts of intrepidity are related of the revolters on this occasion, which are most probably true, as this desperate self-devotion, under a state of high excitement, enters fully into the composition of the character of the french, who are more distinguished for their dashing than for their enduring qualities. the rue st. méry exhibited proofs of the late contest, for some distance, but nowhere had the struggle been so fierce as at the house just mentioned. the church had been yielded the last, but it did not strike me that there had been as sharp fighting near it, as at the other place. it was a strange spectacle to witness the population of a large town crowding through its streets, curious to witness the scene of a combat that so nearly touched their own interests, and yet apparently regarding the whole with entire indifference to everything but the physical results. i thought the sympathies of the throng were with the conquered rather than with their conquerors, and this more from admiration of their prowess, than from any feeling of a political character, for no one appeared to know who the revolters were. in the course of the morning i met--in the street. he is one of the justest-minded men of my acquaintance, and i have never known him attempt to exaggerate the ill conduct of his political opponents, or to extenuate the errors of those to whom he belongs. speaking of this affair, he was of opinion that the government had endeavoured to bring it on, with the certainly that success would strengthen them, but, at the same time, he thought it useless to deny that there was a plot to overturn the present dynasty. according to his impressions, the spontaneous movements of the disaffected were so blended with those that proceeded from the machinations of the government to provoke a premature explosion, that it was not easy to say which predominated, or where the line of separation was to be drawn. i presume this is the true state of the case, for it is too much to say that france is ever free from political plots. the public had been alarmed this morning, by rumours of an intention on the part of government to declare paris in a state of siege, which is tantamount to bringing us all under martial law. this savours more of the regime napoleon, than of the promised liberty that was to emanate from the three days. the opposition are beginning to examine the charter, in order to ascertain what their rights are on paper: but what avails a written compact, or indeed any other compact, against the wants and wishes of those who have the power? the cour de cassation, however, is said to be composed of a majority of carlists, and, by way of commentary on the wants of the last two years, the friends of liberty have some hopes yet from these nominees of the bourbons! we live in a droll world, dear ----, and one scarcely knows on which side he is to look for protection, among the political weathercocks of the period. in order to comprehend the point, you will understand that a clause of the charter expressly stipulates that no one shall be condemned by any "but his natural judges," which clearly means that no extraordinary or unusual courts shall be established for the punishment of ordinary crimes. now, while it is admitted that martial law brings with it military tribunals and military punishments, it is contended that there is no pretext for declaring martial law in the capital, at a moment when the power of the present government is better assured than it has been at any time since its organization. but the charter solemnly stipulates that the conscription shall be abolished, while conscripts are and have been regularly drafted yearly, ever since the signature of louis xviii. was affixed to the instrument. the shops were all open to-day, and business and pleasure are resuming their regular rounds. the national guards of the _banlieue_, who were actively engaged yesterday, are befêted and be-praised, while the lookers-on affirm that some of them believe they have just been fighting against the carlists, and that some think they have crushed the jacobins. all believe they have done a good turn to liberty. i was returning through the carrousel, when chance made me the spectator of a laughable scene. a body of these troops, honest, well-intentioned countrymen, with very equivocal equipments, were still in the court of the palace. it would seem that one warrior had strayed outside the railing, where he was enjoying a famous gossip with some neighbours, whom he was paying, for their cheer, by a narrative of the late campaign. a sergeant was summoning him back to his colours, but the love of good wine and a good gossip were too strong for discipline. the more dignified the sergeant became, the more refractory was his neighbour, until, at last, the affair ended in a summons as formal as that which would be made to a place besieged. the answer was truly heroic, being rendered into the vernacular, "i won't." an old woman advanced from the crowd to reason with the sergeant, but she could get no farther than "_ecoutez, mons. le sergeant_"--for, like all in authority, he was unreasonable and impatient when his power was called in question. he returned to the battalion, and tried to get a party to arrest the delinquent, but this was easier said than done. the troops evidently had no mind to disturb a neighbour who had just done the state good service, and who was now merely enjoying himself. the officer returned alone, and once more summoned the truant, if possible, more solemnly than ever. by this time the mouth of the delinquent was too full to answer, and he just turned his back on the dignitary, by way of letting him see that, his mind was made up. in the end, the soldier got the best of it, compelling the other to abandon the point. the country people, of whom there were a good many present, looked on the matter seriously, but the parisians laughed outright. i mention this little incident, for it shows that men are the same everywhere, and because this was an instance of military insubordination directly under the windows of the palace of the king of france, at the precise moment when his friends were boasting that the royal authority was triumphant, which, had it occurred in the interior of america, would have been quoted as proof of the lawlessness of democracy! i apprehend that militia, taken from their daily occupations, and embodied, and this, too, under the orders of their friends and neighbours, are pretty much alike, in their leading characteristics, all over the world. letter vi. aspect of paris.--visit to lafayette.--his demeanour.--his account of the commencement of the revolt.--machinations of the police.--character of lafayette.--his remarkable expression to general--.--conversation on the revolution of july.--the _doctrinaires_.--popular sympathy in england and on the rhine.--lafayette's dismissal from the command of the national guards.--the duke of orleans and his friends.--military tribunals in paris.--the citizen king in the streets.--obliteration of the _fleur-de-lis_.--the royal equipage.--the duke of brunswick in paris.--his forcible removal from france.--his reception in switzerland.--a ludicrous mistake. dear ----, during the excitement of the last three days, i had not bethought me of paying a visit to the rue d'anjou: indeed i was under the impression that general lafayette was at la grange, for i had understood that he only remained at paris to attend the funeral of lamarque. there were rumours of his having been arrested, but these i set down to the marvel-mongers, who are always busy when extraordinary events occur. just at dusk, i heard, by accident, there was still a chance of finding him in his apartment, and i walked across the river, in order to ascertain the fact for myself. what a difference between the appearance of the streets this evening, and that which they had made on the night of the th! now the bridges were deserted, the garden was empty, and the part of the population that was visible, seemed uneasy and suspicious. the rumour that the government intended to declare paris in a state of siege, and to substitute military for the ordinary civil tribunals, was confirmed, though the measure was not yet officially announced. this act was in direct opposition to a clause in the charter, as i have told you, and the pretence, in a town in which fifty thousand troops had just quelled a rising of a few hundred men, was as frivolous as the measure itself is illegal. it has, however, the merit of throwing aside the mask, and of showing the world in what manner the present authorities understand a government of the people. a dead calm reigned in the rue d'anjou. apart from the line of _cabriolets de place_, of which there were but three, not a carriage nor a human being was visible in the street. nothing stood before the _porte-cochère_ of no. , a thing so unusual, more especially in critical moments, that i suspected i had been misled, and that i should have a bootless walk. the gate was open, and entering without knocking, i was just turning off the great staircase, to ascend the humbler flight that leads to the well-known door, that door through which i had so lately seen so many dignitaries pressing to enter, when the porter called to me to give an account of myself. he recognised me, however, by the light of the lamp, and nodded an assent. i waited a minute or more, after ringing, before the door was opened by bastien. the honest fellow let me in on the instant, and, without proceeding to announce me, led the way through the salons to the bed-room of his master. the general was alone with the husband of his grand-daughter, françois de corcelles. the former was seated with his back to the door as i entered; the latter was leaning against the mantel-piece. the "_bonsoir, mon ami_," of the first was frank and kind as usual, but i was immediately struck with a change in his manner. he was calm, and he held out his hand, as bastien mentioned my name; but, although not seated at his table, he did not rise. glancing my eyes at him, as i passed on to salute monsieur de corcelles, i thought i had never before seen lafayette wearing so fine an air of majesty. his large, noble form was erect and swelling, and that eye, whose fire age had not quenched, was serenely proud. he seemed prepared to meet important events with the dignity and sternness that marked his principles. a perfect knowledge of these principles, and the intimacy that he had so kindly encouraged, emboldened me to speak frankly. after a few minutes' conversation, i laughingly inquired what he had done with the _bonnet rouge_. the question was perfectly understood, and i was surprised to learn that, in the present instance, there was more foundation for the report than is usually the case with vulgar rumour. he gave the following account of what occurred at la place de la bastille. when the procession halted, and the funeral discourses were being delivered, the tumult commenced; in what manner, he was unable to say. in the midst of the commotion, a man appeared on horseback wearing the dreaded _bonnet rouge_. some one approached him, and invited him to repair to the hôtel de ville, in short, to put himself again at the head of the revolt, and offered him a _bonnet rouge_. he took the cap, and threw it into the mud. after this, he entered his carriage to return home, when a portion of the populace took out the horses and drew him to the rue d'anjou. on reaching the hotel, the people peaceably withdrew. you will readily suppose i was curious to learn the opinion of general lafayette concerning the events of the week. the journals of the opposition had not hesitated to ascribe the affair to the machinations of the police, which, justly or not, is openly accused of having recourse to expedients of this nature, with a view to alarm the timid, and to drive them to depend for the security of their persons, and the maintenance of order, on the arm of a strong government. in the recent case it had also been said, that aware of the existence of plots, the ministry had thought it a favourable occasion to precipitate their explosion, taking the precaution to be in readiness with a force sufficient to secure the victory. i have often alluded to that beautiful and gentleman-like feature in the character of lafayette, which appears to render him incapable of entertaining a low prejudice against those to whom he is opposed in politics. this is a trait that i conceive to be inseparable from the lofty feelings which are the attendant of high moral qualities, and it is one that i have, a hundred times, had occasion to admire in lafayette. i do not, now, allude to that perfect _bon ton_, which so admirably regulates all his words and deportment, but to a discriminating judgment that does not allow interest or passion to disarm his sense of right. it certainly is a weakness in him not to distinguish sufficiently between the virtuous and the vicious,--those who are actuated like himself by philanthropy and a desire to do good, and those who seek their own personal ends; but this is a sacrifice, perhaps, that all must make who aim at influencing men by the weight of personal popularity. jefferson has accused lafayette of a too great desire to live in the esteem of others,[ ] and perhaps the accusation is not altogether false; but the peculiar situation in which this extraordinary man has been placed, must be kept in view, while we decide on the merits of his system. his principles forbid his having recourse to the agencies usually employed by those who loose sight of the means in the object, and his opponents are the great of the earth. a man who is merely sustained by truth and the purity of his motives, whatever visionaries may say, would be certain to fail. popularity is indispensable to the success of lafayette, for thousands now support him, who, in despite of his principles, would become his enemies, were he to fall back sternly on the truth, and turn his back on all whose acts and motives would not, perhaps, stand the test of investigation. the very beings he wished to serve would desert him, were he to let them see he drew a stern but just distinction between the meritorious and the unworthy. then the power of his adversaries must be remembered. there is nothing generous or noble in the hostility of modern aristocrats, who are mere graspers after gain, the most debasing of all worldly objects, and he who would resist them successfully must win golden opinions of his fellows, or they will prove too much for him. [footnote : was mr. jefferson himself free from a similar charge?] but i am speculating on principles, when you most probably wish for facts, or, if you must have opinions, for those of lafayette in preference to my own. when i ventured to ask him if he thought the government had had any agency in producing the late struggle, his answer was given with the integrity and fearlessness that so eminently characterize the man. he was of opinion that there was a plot, but he also thought it probable that the agents of the government were, more or less, mixed up with it. he suspected at the moment, that the man who offered him the _bonnet rouge_ was one of these agents, though he freely admitted that the suspicion was founded more on past experience than on any knowledge of present facts. the individual himself was an utter stranger to him. it had been his intention to quit town immediately after the funeral obsequies were completed, but, added the old man, proudly, "they had spread a rumour of an intention to cause me to be arrested, and i wish to save them the trouble of going to la grange to seek me." he then went on to tell me what he and his political friends had expected from the demonstration of public opinion, that they had prepared for this important occasion. "things were approaching a crisis, and we wished to show the government that it must change its system, and that france had not made a revolution to continue the principles of the holy alliance. the attempt to obtain signs of popular support at the funeral of casimir perier was a failure, while, so great was our success at this procession in honour of lamarque, that there must have been a new ministry and new measures, had not this unfortunate event occurred. as it is, the government will profit by events. i do not wish to wake any unjust accusations, but, with my knowledge of men and things, it is impossible not to feel distrust."[ ] [footnote : it appeared subsequently, by means of a public prosecution, that vidocq, with a party of his followers, were among the revolters, disguised as countrymen. a government that has an intimation of the existence of a plot to effect its own overthrow, has an unquestionable right to employ spies to counteract the scheme; but if it proceed so far as to use incentives to revolt, it exceeds its legitimate powers.] while we were conversing, general ----, whom i had not seen since the dinner of the previous day, was announced and admitted. he stayed but a few minutes, for, though his reception was kind, the events of the last week had evidently cast a restraint about the manners of both parties. the visit appeared to me, to be one of respect and delicacy on the part of the guest, but recent occurrences, and his close connexion with the king, rendered it constrained; and, though there appeared no evident want of good feeling on either side, little was said, during this visit, touching the "two days," as the th and th of june are now termed, but that little served to draw from lafayette a stronger expression of political hostility, than i had ever yet heard from his lips. in allusion to the possibility of the liberal party connecting itself with the government of louis-philippe, he said--"_à présent, un ruisseau de sang nous sépare_."[ ] i thought general--considered this speech as a strong and a decisive one, for he soon after rose and took his leave. [footnote : "we are now separated by a rivulet of blood."] lafayette spoke favourably of the personal qualities and probity of his visitor, when he had withdrawn, but said that he was too closely incorporated with the _juste milieu_ to be any longer classed among his political friends. i asked him if he had ever known a true liberal in politics, who had been educated in the school of napoleon? the general laughingly admitted that he was certainly a bad master to study under, and then added it had been intended to offer general ---- a portfolio, that of the public works i understood him to say, had they succeeded in overturning the ministry. this conversation insensibly led to one on the subject of the revolution of july, and on his own connexion with the events of that important moment. i despair of doing justice to the language of general lafayette on this occasion, and still less so to his manner, which, though cool and dignified, had a roman sternness about it that commanded the deepest respect. indeed, i do not remember ever to have seen him with so much of the externals of a great man as on this evening, for no one, in common, is less an actor with his friends, or of simpler demeanour. but he now felt strongly, and his expressions were forcible, while his countenance indicated a portion of that which was evidently working within. you must be satisfied, however, with receiving a mere outline of what fell from his lips in an uninterrupted explanation that lasted fully half an hour. he accused his opponents, in general terms, of distorting his words, and of misrepresenting his acts. the celebrated saying of "_voici la meilleure des républiques_" in particular, had been falsely rendered, while the circumstances under which he spoke and acted at all, had been studiously kept out of view. it was apropos of this saying, that he entered into the explanations of the causes of the change of dynasty. the crisis which drove the cabinet of charles x. to the extreme measures that overturned the throne, had been produced by a legislative combination. to effect their end, nearly every opinion, and all the shades of opposition, had united; many, even of those who were personally attached to the bourbons, resisting their project of re-establishing the _ancien régime_. most of the capitalists, in particular, and more especially those who were engaged in pursuits that were likely to be deranged by political convulsions, were secretly disposed to support the dynasty, while they were the most zealously endeavouring to reduce its power. the object of these men was to maintain peace, to protect commerce and industry, more especially their own, and, at the same time, to secure to property the control, of affairs. in short, england and her liberty were their models, though some among them had too much good sense to wish to retrograde, as is the case with a party in america, in order to make the imitation more perfect. those who were for swallowing the english system whole, were called the _doctrinaires_, from their faith in a theory, while the different shades of dissenting opinions were distributed among all those who looked more to facts, and less to reasoning, than their credulous coadjutors. but all were zealous in opposing government under its present system, and with its palpable views. you know that the result was the celebrated ordinances, and a rising of the people. so little was either of these events foreseen, that the first probably astonished and alarmed the friends of the bourbons, quite as much as it did their enemies. the second was owing chiefly to the courage and zeal of the young men connected with the press, sustained by the pride and daring of the working classes of paris. the emergency was exactly suited to the _élan_ of the french character, which produced the sympathy necessary to the occasion among the different degrees of actors. with the movements that followed, those who had brought about the state of things which existed, by their parliamentary opposition, had little or nothing to do. lafayette, himself, was at la grange, nor did he reach paris until the morning of the second day. so far from participating in the course of events, most of the deputies were seriously alarmed, and their first efforts were directed to an accommodation. but events were stronger than calculations, and the bourbons were virtually dethroned, before any event or plan could be brought to bear upon the issue, in either the offensive or defensive. you are now to imagine the throne vacant, the actors in the late events passive spectators of what was to follow, and opportunity for a recurrence to parliamentary tactics. men had leisure to weigh consequences. another political crusade menaced france, and it is probable that nothing prevented its taking place, but the manifestations of popular sympathy in england, and on the rhine. then there was danger, too, that the bankers and manufacturers, and great landed proprietors, would lose the stake for which they had been playing, by permitting a real ascendancy of the majority. up to that moment, the mass had looked to the opposition in the deputies as to their friends. in order to entice all parties, or, at least, as many as possible, the cry had been "_la charte_;" and the opposition had become identified with its preservation. the new chambers had been convened, and, after the struggle was over, the population naturally turned to those who had hitherto appeared in their ranks as leaders. this fragment of the representation became of necessity the repository of all power. lafayette had, thus far, been supported by the different sections of the opposition; for his influence with the mass to suppress violence, was looked to as of the last importance, by even his enemies. the very men who accused him of jacobinical principles, and a desire to unsettle society, felt a security under his protection, that they would not have felt without him. louis-philippe, you will remember, made use of him, until the trial of the ministers was ended, when he was unceremoniously dismissed from the command of the national guards, by the suppression of the office.[ ] "it would have been in my power to declare a republic," he continued, in the course of his explanations, "and sustained by the populace of paris, backed by the national guards, i might have placed myself at its head. but six weeks would have closed my career, and that of the republic. the governments of europe would have united to put us down, and the bourbons had, to a great degree, disarmed france. we were not in a state to resist. the two successful invasions had diminished the confidence of the nation, which, moreover, would have been nearly equally divided in itself. but, allowing that we might have overcome our foreign enemies, a result i admit to have been possible, by the aid of the propaganda and the general disaffection, there would have been a foe at home, that certainly would have prevailed against us. those gentlemen of the chambers to whom a large portion of the people looked up with confidence, would have thwarted every important measure i attempted, and were there no other means to prevent a republic, _they would have thrown me into the river_." [footnote : the writer has had a hundred occasions to learn, since his return to america, how much truth is perverted in crossing the atlantic, and how little is really known of even prominent european facts, on this side of the water. it has suited some one to say, that lafayette _resigned_ the office of commander-in-chief of the national guards, and the fact is thus stated in most of our publications. the office was suppressed without consulting him, and, it was his impression, at the instigation of the allied powers. something like an awkward explanation and a permission to resign was subsequently attempted.] this last expression is literal, and was twice uttered in the course of the evening. he then went on to add, that seeing the impossibility of doing as he could wish, he had been compelled to acquiesce in the proposal that came nearest to his own views. the friends of the duke of orleans were active, particularly m. lafitte, who enjoyed a great deal of his own confidence, and the duke himself was free in the expression of the most liberal sentiments. under these circumstances, he thought it possible to establish a government that should be monarchical in form, and republican in fact. such, or nearly such, is the case in england, and he did not see why such might not be the case in france. it is true the english republic is aristocratical, but this is a feature that depends entirely on the breadth and independence of the constituency. there was no sufficient reason why france should imitate england in that essential point, and by erecting a different constituency, she would virtually create another polity in fact, adhering always to the same general form. as respects the expression so often cited, he said his words were "_voici la meilleure des républics pour nous_;" distinctly alluding to the difficulties and embarrassments under which he acted. all this time he made no pretension to not having been deceived in the king, who had led him to think he entertained very different principles from those which events have shown to be his real sentiments. something was then said of the _état de siége_, and of the intentions of the government. "i shall go to la grange in a few days," observed the general, smiling, "unless they arrest me; there to remain until the th of july, when we shall have our usual dinner, i hope." i told him that the long fever under which a---- had suffered rendered a change of air necessary, and that i was making my preparations to quit france temporarily, on another tour. he pressed me to remain until the th, and when i told him that we might all be shot for sedition under the present state of things, if we drunk liberal toasts, he laughed and answered, that "their bark was worse than their bite." it was near tea when i took my leave, and returned to the rue st. dominique. the streets were gloomy and deserted, and i scarcely met a single individual, in walking the mile between the two hotels. there was a wild pleasure in viewing a town in such an extraordinary state, and i could not help comparing its present moody silence, to the scenes we had witnessed when the government was still so young and dependent as to feel the necessity of courting the people. i have already mentioned to you many of the events of that period, but some of them have been omitted, and some, too, which quite naturally suggest themselves, at this moment, when the king has established military tribunals in his very capital. on one occasion, in particular, i was walking in the tuileries, when a noise attracted me towards a crowd. it was louis-philippe taking a walk! this you will understand was intended for effect--republican effect--and to show the lieges that he had the outward conformation of another man. he wore a white hat, carried an umbrella (i am not sure that it was red), and walked in as negligent a manner as a man could walk, who was working as hard as possible to get through with an unpleasant task. in short, he was condescending with all his might. a gentleman or two, in attendance, could barely keep up with him; and as for the rabble, it was fairly obliged to trot to gratify its curiosity. this was about the time the king of england electrified london, after a reign of exclusion, by suddenly appearing in its streets, walking about like another man. whether there was any concert in this coincidence or not i do not know. on another occasion, a---- and myself drove out at night to view a bivouac in the carrousel. we got ourselves entangled in a dense crowd in the rue st. honoré, and were obliged to come to a stand. while stationary, the crowd set up a tremendous cry of _vive le roi!_ and a body of dismounted cavalry of the national guard passed the carriage windows, flourishing their sabres, and yelling like madmen. looking out, i saw the king in their midst, patrolling the streets of his good city of paris, on foot! now he has declared us all under martial law, and is about to shoot those he dislikes. the _fleur-de-lis_, as you know, is the distinctive symbol of the family of france. so much stress is laid on trifles of this nature here, that napoleon, with his grinding military despotism, never presumed to adopt one for himself. during the whole of his reign, the coins of the country were decorated on one side with no more than an inscription and a simple wreath, though the gradual progress of his power, and the slow degress by which he brought forward the public, on these points, may yet be traced on these very coins. the first that were struck bore his head, as first consul, with "_république française_" on the reverse. after a time it was "_empereur_," with "_république française_." at length he was emboldened to put "_empire français_" on the reverse, feeling a true royal antipathy to the word republic. during the existing events that first succeeded the last revolution, no one thought of the _fleur-de-lis_ with which the bourbons had sprinkled everything in and about the capital, not to say france. this omission attracted the attention of some demagogue, and there was a little _émeute_, before the arch of the carrousel, with threats of destroying these ornaments. soon after, workmen were employed to deface everything like a _fleur-de-lis_ in paris. the hotel of the treasury had many hundreds of them in large stone rosettes, every one of which disappeared before the chisel! the king actually laid down his family arms, causing the brush to be put to all his carriages. speaking to lafayette on this subject, he remarked, pithily--"well, i told his majesty i would have done this before there was a mob, and i would not have done it afterwards." the bourbons usually drove with eight horses, but this king rarely appears with even six; though that number is not offensive, the other being the regal style. some time since, before the approach of the late crisis, i saw the coachman of the palace, quite early, or before the public was stirring, exercising with eight. it is to be presumed that the aspect of things, the pears, and the duchess of berri, compelled the leaders to be taken off. a day or two after this event, i dined in company with a deputy, who is also a distinguished advocate, who made me laugh with an account of a recent freak of another sovereign, that has caused some mirth here. this advocate was employed in the affair, professionally, and his account may be depended on. you know that shortly after the revolution of , the people of brunswick rose and deposed their duke, bestowing the throne, or arm-chair, for i know not the official term, on his brother. this duke of brunswick is the grandson of him who figured in the wars of the _old_ revolution, and the son of him who was killed at quatre bras. his grandmother was a sister of george iii, and his aunt was the wife of george iv; the latter being his cousin, his uncle, and his guardian. the deposed prince retired to paris, if it can be called retirement to come from brunswick here. after some time, the police was informed that he was busy in enrolling men to make a counter-revolution in his own states. he was warned of the consequences, and commanded to desist. the admonition was disregarded, and after exhausting its patience, the government proceeded so far as to order him to quit paris. it was not obeyed. i must now tell you, that a few years previously the duke of brunswick had visited paris, and apprehending assassination, for some cause that was not explained, he had obtained from the police one of its agents to look out for the care of his person. the man had been several weeks in this employment, and knowing the person of the contumacious prince, when it was determined to resort to force, he was sent with the gendarmes, expressly that he might be identified. a party, accordingly, presented themselves, one fine morning, at the hotel which had the honour to contain his serene highness, demanding access to his person, in the name of the police. no one was hardy enough to deny such an application, and the officers were introduced. they found the indomitable prince, in his morning gown and slippers, as composed as if he were still reigning in brunswick, or even more so. he was made acquainted with their errand, which was, neither more nor less than to accompany him to the frontier. the great-nephew of george iii, the cousin and nephew of george iv, the cousin of william iv, and the ex-duke of brunswick, received this intelligence with a calm entirely worthy of his descent and his collaterals, treating the commissary of police, _de haut en bas_. in plain english, he gave them to understand he should not budge. reverence for royal blood was at last overcome by discipline, and seeing no alternative, the gendarmes laid their sacrilegious hands on the person of the prince, and fairly carried him down stairs, and put him, dressing-gown, slippers, and all, into a _fiacre_. it was a piteous sight to see a youth of such high expectations, of a lineage so ancient, of a duchy so remote, treated in this rude and inhospitable manner! like cæsar, who bore up against his enemies until he felt the dagger of brutus, he veiled his face with his handkerchief, and submitted with dignity, when he ascertained how far it was the intention of the minister of the interior to push matters. m. ---- did not tell us whether or not he exclaimed, "_et tu, montalivet!_" the people of the hotel manifested a proper sympathy at the cruel scene, the _filles de chambre_ weeping in the corridors, as _filles de chambre_, who witnessed such an indecent outrage, naturally would do. the duke was no sooner in the _fiacre_ than he was carried out of town, to a post-house on the road to switzerland. here he was put in a caleche, and transported forthwith to the nearest frontier. on reaching the end of the journey, the duke of brunswick was abandoned to his fate, with the indifference that marked the whole outrage; or, as might have been expected from the servants of a prince, who had so lately shown his respect for rank by sending his own relatives out of his kingdom, very much in the same fashion. happily, the unfortunate duke fell into the hands of republicans, who, as a matter of course, hastened to pay their homage to him. the mayor of the commune appeared and offered his civilities; all the functionaries went forth with alacrity; and the better to show their sympathy, a young german traveller was produced, that he might console the injured prince by enabling him to pour out his griefs in the vernacular of his country. this bit of delicate attention, however, was defeated by an officious valet, who declared that ever since his dethronement, his master had taken such an aversion to the german language, that it threw him into fits even to hear it! of course the traveller had the politeness to withdraw. while these things were in progress, the duke suddenly disappeared, no one knew whither. the public journals soon announced the fact, and the common conjecture was, that he had returned to paris. after several weeks, m. ---- was employed to negotiate an amnesty, promising, on the part of his principal, that no further movements against the duchy should be attempted in france. the minister was so far prevailed on as to say, he could forgive all, had not the duke re-entered the kingdom, after having been transported to switzerland, by the order of the government, in the manner you have heard. m. ---- assured the minister, _parole d'honneur_, that this was altogether a mistake. "well, then, convince me of this, and his serene highness shall have permission to remain here as long as he pleases." "his serene highness, _having never left france, cannot have re-entered it_." "not left france!--was he not carried into switzerland?" "not at all: liking paris better, he chose to remain here. the person you deported, was a young associate, of the same stature of the duke, a frenchman, who cannot speak a word of german!" a compromise was made on the spot, for this was a matter to be hushed up, ridicule being far more potent, in paris, than reason. this is what you may have heard alluded to, in some of the journals of the day, as the _escapade_ of the duke of brunswick. letter vii. public dinner.--inconsiderate impulses of americans.--rambles in paris.--the churches of paris.--view from the leads or notre dame.--the place royale.--the bridges.--progress of the public works.--the palaces of the louvre and the tuileries.--royal enclosures in the gardens of the tuileries.--public edifices.--private hotels and gardens. my apartments in the house of the montmorencies.--our other residences.--noble abodes in paris.--comparative expense of living in paris and new york.--american shopkeepers, and those of europe. dear ---- the time between the revolt of the two days, and the th july, passed in the usual manner. the court-martial had made considerable progress in condemning men to be shot, but appeals were made to the carlist court of cassation, which finally adjudged the whole proceedings to be illegal. in the mean time we got up the dinner for the th, lafayette coming from la grange expressly to make one among us. as for this dinner, i have only to say that one of its incidents went to prove how completely a body of americans are subject to common and inconsiderate impulses, let the motive be right or wrong,--of how low estimate character is getting to be among us, and to determine me never to be present at another. it is a painful confession, but truth compels me to say, that, i believe, for the want of a condensed class, that are accustomed to sustain each other in a high tone of feeling and thinking, and perhaps from ignorance of the world, no other people, above the illiterate and downright debased, are so easily practised on and cajoled, as the great mass of our own. i hope i have never been addicted to the vice of winning golden opinions by a sacrifice of sentiments or principles; but this dinner has given me a surfeit of what is called "popularity," among a people who, while affecting to reduce everything to a standard of their own creating, do not give themselves time or opportunity to ascertain facts, or weigh consequences. the weather was pleasant and warm for several weeks, about the close of june and the commencement of july, and, although a slight shade has been cast over our enjoyments by the re-appearance of the cholera, in a greatly diminished degree however, i do not remember to have passed the same period of time in paris with so much satisfaction to myself. the town has been empty, in the usual signification of the term, and the world has left us entirely to ourselves. after completing the morning's task, i have strolled in the gardens, visited the churches, loitered on the quays, rummaged the shops of the dealers in old furniture and other similar objects. the number of these shops is great, and their stores of curious things incredible. it appears to me that all france has poured her relics of the old system into the warehouses of the capital. the plunder of the chateaux and hotels has enriched them to a degree that must be witnessed to be understood, and to me it is matter of surprise that some of our wealthy travellers do not transfer many of these treasures to the other side of the atlantic. i usually spend an our or two with m----, in the gallery of the louvre, from two to four: he returns home with me to dinner; and at seven, which, at this season in this latitude, is still broad day, we issue forth for a promenade. paris, i have often told you, is a picturesque town, and offers endless sources of satisfaction, beyond its living throngs, its society, its theatres, and its boulevards. the public displays at the academy, and its meetings of science, taste, and philanthropy are little to my taste, being too artificial and affected, and i have found most enjoyment in parts of this little world that i believe travellers usually overlook. the churches of paris want the odour, the genial and ecclesiastical atmosphere and the devout superstition that rendered those of italy so strikingly soothing and pleasant; but they are huge piles, and can always be visited with pleasure. notre dame de paris is a noble monument, and now that the place of the archbishop is destroyed, one is likely to get better views of it, than is apt to be the case with these venerable edifices. a few evenings since m----, and myself ascended the towers, and seating ourselves on the leads, looked down, for near an hour, on the extraordinary picture beneath. the maze of roofs, out-topped, here and there, by black lacquered-looking towers, domes, pavilions of palaces, and, as is the case with the tuileries and louvre, literally by a mile of continuous structures; the fissures of streets, resembling gaping crevices in rocks; the river meandering through the centre of all, and spanned by bridges thronged by mites of men and pigmy carriages; the crowds of images of the past; the historical eminences that surround the valley of the capital; the knowledge of its interior; our acquaintance with the past and the present, together with conjectures for the future, contributed to render this a most impressive evening. the distant landscape was lost, and even quarters of the town itself were getting to be obscure before we descended, helping singularly to increase the effect produced by our speculations on those ages in which paris had been the scene of so many momentous events. we have also wandered among the other relics of antiquity, for the present structure of notre dame is said to have already stood seven centuries. the place royale is one of the most singular quarters of the town, and although often visited before, we have again examined it, for we are beginning to regard objects with the interest that one is apt to feel on leaving a favourite spot, perhaps for ever. this square, unique in its kind, occupies the site of the ancient residences of the kings of france, who abandoned it in consequence of the death of henri ii, in a tournament. henri iv caused the present area to be enclosed by hotels, which are all of brick, a novelty in paris, and built in the style of his reign. fashion has, however, been stronger than the royal will; and noble ranges of rooms are to be hired here at a fourth of the prices that are paid for small and crowded apartments near the tuileries. the celebrated arsenal, where sully so often received his royal master, is near this place, and the bastile stood at no great distance. in short, the world has moved, within the last two centuries, directly across the town. i can never tire of speaking of the bridges of paris. by day and by night have i paused on them to gaze at their views; the word not being too comprehensive for the crowds and groupings of objects that are visible from their arches. they are less stupendous and magnificent, as public works, than the bridges of london, florence, dresden, bordeaux, and many other european towns, the stream they have to span being inconsiderable; but their number, the variety of their models, even the very quaintness of some among them, render them, as a whole, i think, more interesting than any others that i know. the pont de jena is as near perfection in all respects, perhaps, as a bridge well can be. i greatly prefer it to the celebrated ponte della trinità, at florence. some enormous statues are about to be placed on the pont louis xvi, which, if they do not escape criticism, will, at least, i think, help the picturesque. i have now known paris a sufficient time to watch, with interest, the progress of the public works. the arch at the barrière de neuilly has, within my observation, risen several feet, and approaches its completion. the wing, a counterpart of the gallery, that is to enclose the carrousel, and finally to convert the louvre and the tuileries into a single edifice, has advanced a long distance, and preparations are making to clear the area of the few buildings that still remain. when this design shall be executed, the palace of the kings of france will contain considerably more than a mile of continuous buildings, which will be erected around a large vacant area. the single room of the picture-gallery is of itself a quarter of a mile in length! during the heat of the late finance discussion, all sorts of unpleasant things were said of america, for the money-power acts here as it does everywhere else, proving too strong even for french _bon ton_, and, failing of facts and logic, some of the government writers had recourse to the old weapon of the trader, abuse and vituperation. among other bold assertions, one of them affirmed, with a view to disparage the vaunted enterprise of the americans, that while they attempted so much in the way of public works, nothing was ever finished. he cited the capitol, a building commenced in , and which had been once destroyed by fire in the interval, as an example. as one of the controversionalists, on this occasion, i certainly had no disposition to debase my mind, or to descend from the level of a gentleman who was compelled to bow before no political master, in order to retort in kind; but as is apt to be the case under provocations of this sort, the charge induced me to look about, in order to see what advantages the subjects of a monarchy possess over us in this particular. the result has made several of my french friends laugh, and acknowledge that they who "live in glass houses should not throw stones." the new palace of the louvre was erected more than two centuries since. it is a magnificent pile, surrounding a court of more than a quarter of a mile in circumference, possessing many good statues, fine bas-reliefs, and a noble colonnade. in some respects, it is one of the finest palaces in europe. the interior is, however, unfinished, though in the course of slow embellishment. now a principal and very conspicuous window, in the pavilion that caps the entrance to the carrousel, is unglazed, the weather being actually excluded by the use of _coarse unplaned boards_, precisely in the manner in which one is apt to see a shingle palace embellished at home. one hundred francs would conceal this deformity. the palace of the tuileries was built by catherine di medici, who was dead before the present united states were first peopled. it is a lantern-like, tasteless edifice, composed of different pavilions, connected by _corps de bâtimens_ of different sizes, but of pretty uniform ugliness. the stone of this vicinity is so easily wrought, that it is usual to set it up, in blocks, and to work out the capitals and other ornaments in the wall. on a principal portion of this palace, _these unwrought blocks still remain_, just enough being finished to tell the observer that the design has never been completed. i shall not go beyond the palaces to make out our case, though all europe abounds with these discrepancies in taste, and with similar neglect. as a rule, i believe we more uniformly push through our public undertakings than any other people, though they are not always executed with the same taste, on the same scale, or as permanently, perhaps, as the public works that are undertaken here. when they yield profit, however, we need turn our backs on no nation. it is a curious commentary on the change in the times, that louis-philippe has dared to do that which napoleon, with all his power, did not deem it expedient to undertake, though it is known that he chafed under the inconvenience, which it was desirable to both to be rid of. until quite lately, the public could approach as near the palace windows, as one usually gets to those of any considerable dwelling that stands on a common street. the emperor complained that he could not look out of a window, into his own gardens, without attracting a crowd: under this evil, however, he reigned, as consul and emperor, fourteen years, for there was no obvious way of remedying it, but by taking possession of a part of that garden, which so long had been thrown open to the public, that it now considered it as its own. sustained by the congregated wealth of france, and secretly by those nations with whom his predecessor had to contend, louis-philippe has boldly broken ground, by forming two little gardens beneath the palace windows, which he has separated from the public promenade by ditches and low railings, but which serves effectually to take possession, to keep the tiger at a distance, and to open the way for farther improvement. in the end there will probably be a wing of the palace thrown forward into the garden, unless, indeed, the whole of the present structure should be destroyed, to make place for one more convenient and of purer architecture. paris enjoys a high reputation for the style of its public edifices, and, while there is a very great deal to condemn, compared with other capitals, i think it is entitled to a distinguished place in this particular. the church of the magdalen (napoleon's temple de la gloire, on which the names of distinguished frenchmen were to be embossed in letters of bronze), is one of the finest modern edifices of europe. it is steadily advancing to completion, having been raised from beneath the cornices during my visit. it is now roofed, and they are chiseling the bas-reliefs on the pediment. the gardes-meubles, two buildings, which line one entire side of the place louis seize, or de la concorde, as it is now termed, and which are separated by the rue royale, are among the best structures of the town. some of their ornaments are a little meretricious, but the prevalent french features of their architecture are more happy than common. only one of these edifices belongs to the public, and is now the hotel of the admiralty, the other having been erected for symmetry, though occupied as private dwellings, and actually private property. the bourse, or exchange, is another modern building that has an admirable general effect. of the private hotels and private gardens of paris, a stranger can scarcely give a just account. although it is now six years since i have been acquainted with the place, they occasion surprise daily, by their number, beauty, and magnificence. relatively, rome, and florence, and venice, and genoa, may surpass it, in the richness and vastness of some of their private residences; but, rome excepted, none of them enjoy such gardens, nor does rome even, in absolute connection with the town abodes of her nobles. the roman villas[ ] are almost always detached from the palaces, and half of them are without the walls, as i have already described to you. the private gardens of paris certainly cannot compare with these villas, nor, indeed, can those which belong to the public; but then there is a luxury, and a quiet, and a beauty, about the five or six acres that are so often enclosed and planted in the rear of the hotels here, that i do not think any other christian city can show in equal affluence. the mode of living, which places the house between court and garden, as it is termed here, is justly esteemed the perfection of a town residence; for while it offers security, by means of the gate, and withdraws the building from the street--a desideratum with all above the vulgar--it gives space and room for exercise and beauty, by means of the verdure, shrubbery, trees, and walks. it is no unusual thing for the french to take their repasts, in summer, within the retirement of their gardens, and this in the heart of one of the most populous and crowded towns of europe. the miserable and minute subdivisions of our own towns preclude the possibility of our ever enjoying a luxury as great, and yet as reasonable as this; and if, by chance, some lucky individual should find the means to embellish his own abode and his neighbourhood, in this way, some speculation, half a league off, would compel him to admit an avenue through his laurels and roses, in order to fill the pockets of a club of projectors. in america, everybody sympathises with him who makes money, for it is a common pursuit, and touches a chord that vibrates through the whole community; but few, indeed, are they who can enter into the pleasures of him who would spend it elegantly, rationally, and with good taste. if this were the result of simplicity, it would, at least, be respectable; but every one knows that the passion at home is for display--finery, at the expense of comfort and fitness, being a prevalent evil. [footnote : this word has a very different signification in italian, from that which we have given it, in english. it means a _garden_ in the country; the _house_ not being necessarily any part of it, although there is usually a _casino_ or pavilion.] the private hotels are even more numerous than the private gardens, land not always having been attainable. of course these buildings vary in size and magnificence, according to the rank and fortune of those who caused them to be constructed, but the very smallest are usually of greater dimensions than our largest town-houses, and infinitely better disposed; though we have a finish in many of the minor articles, such as the hinges, locks, and the wood-work in general, and latterly, in marbles, that is somewhat uncommon, even in the best houses of france; when the question, however, is of magnificence, we can lay no claim to it, for want of arrangement, magnitude, and space. many american travellers will render you a different account of these things, but few of our people stay long enough to get accurate notions of what they see, and fewer still have free access to the sort of dwellings of which i now speak. these hotels bear the names of their several owners. in the instances of the high nobility, it was usual to build a smaller hotel, near the principal structure, which was inhabited by the inferior branches of the family, and sometimes by favoured dependants (for the french, unlike ourselves, are fond of maintaining the domestic relations to the last, several generations frequently dwelling under the same roof), and which it is the fashion to call the _petit hôtel_. our first apartments were in one of these _petits hôtels_, which had once belonged to the family of montmorency.[ ] the great hotel, which joined it, was inhabited, and i believe owned, by an american, who had reversed the usual order of things by coming to europe to seek his fortune. our next abode was the hôtel jumilliac, in a small garden of a remote part of the faubourg st. germain. this was a hotel of the smaller size, and our apartments were chiefly on the second floor, or in what is called the third story in america, where we had six rooms besides the offices. our saloon, dining-room, &c. had formerly been the bed-chamber, dressing-room, and ante-chamber of madame la marquise, and gave one a very respectful opinion of the state of a woman of quality, of a secondary class, though i believe that this family too was highly allied. from the rue st. maur, we went into a small country-house on the bank of the seine, about a league from the gates of paris, which, a century since, was inhabited by a prince de soubise, as _grand veneur_ of louis xv, who used to go there occasionally, and eat his dinner, in a very good apartment, that served us for a drawing-room. here we were well lodged, having some two or three-and-twenty well-furnished rooms, offices included. from this place we went into the rue des champs-elysées, where we had a few rooms in a hotel of some size. oddly enough, our predecessor in a portion of these rooms was the prince polignac, and our successor marshal marmont, two men who are now proscribed in france. we have been in one or two apartments in nameless edifices since our return from germany, and we are now in a small hotel in the rue st. dominique, where in some respects we are better lodged than ever, though compelled to occupy three floors. here the salon is near thirty feet in length, and seventeen high. it is panelled in wood, and above all the doors, of which, real and false, there are six, are allegories painted on canvass, and enclosed in wrought gilded frames. four large mirrors are fixtures, and the windows are vast and descend to the floor. the dining-room, which opens on a garden, is of the same size, but even loftier. this hotel formerly had much interior gilding, but it has chiefly been painted over. it was built by the physician of the duc d'orléans, who married madame de montesson, and from this fact you may form some idea of the style maintained by the nobles of the period; a physician, at that time, being but a very inferior personage in europe. [footnote : this ancient family still exists, though much shorn of its splendour, by the alienation of its estates, in consequence of the marriage of charlotte de montmorency, heiress of the eldest line, with a prince of condé, two centuries since. by this union, the estates and chateaux of chantilly, ecouen, etc., ancient possessions of the house, passed into a junior branch of the royal family. in this manner enghien, a _seigneurie_ of the montmorencies, came to be the title of a prince of the blood, in the person of the unfortunate descendant of charlotte of that name. at the present time, besides the duc de montmorency, the duc de laval-montmorency, the duc de luxembourg, the prince de bauffremont, the prince de tancarville, and one or two more, are members of this family, and most of them are, or were before the late revolution, peers of france. the writer knew, at paris, a colonel de montmorency, an irishman by birth, who claimed to be the head of this celebrated family, as a descendant of a cadet who followed the conqueror into england. there are two irish peers, who have also pretensions of the same sort, though the french branches of the family look coolly on the claim. the title of "first christian baron," is not derived from antiquity, ancient as the house unquestionably is, but from the circumstance that the barony of montmorency, from its local position, in sight of paris, aided by the great power of the family, rendered the barons the first in importance to their sovereign. the family of talleyrand-perigord is so ancient, that, in the middle ages, when a king demanded of its head, "who made you count de perigord?" he was asked, by way of reply, "who made you king of france?"--god! i think i should have hesitated on the score of taste about establishing myself in a house of the montmorencies, but jonathan has usually no such scruples. our own residence was but temporary, the hotel being public.] in describing these residences, which have necessarily been suited to very moderate means, i have thought you might form some idea of the greater habitations. first and last, i may have been in a hundred, and, while the italian towns do certainly possess a few private dwellings of greater size and magnificence, i believe paris contains, in proportion, more noble abodes than any other place in europe. london, in this particular, will not compare with it. i have been in some of the best houses in the british capital, but very few of them rise to the level of these hotels in magnificence and state, though nearly all surpass them in comfort. i was at a ball given by the count ----, when thirteen rooms _en suite_ were opened. the duke of devonshire can hardly exceed this. prince borghese used, on great occasions, to open twenty, if i remember right, at florence, one of which was as large as six or eight of our ordinary drawing-rooms. although, as a whole, nothing can be more inconvenient or irrational than an ordinary town-house in new york, even we excel the inhabitants of these stately abodes, in many of the minor points of domestic economy, particularly in the offices, and in the sleeping-rooms of the second class. your question, as to the comparative expense of living at home and of living in europe, is too comprehensive to be easily answered, for the prices vary so materially, that it is difficult to make intelligent comparisons. as between paris and new york, so long as one keeps within the usual limits of american life, or is disposed to dispense with a multitude of little elegancies, the advantage is essentially with the latter. while no money will lodge a family in anything like style, or with suites of rooms, ante-chambers, &c. in new york, for the simple reason, that buildings which possess these elegancies, or indeed with fine apartments at all, have never yet been erected in the country; a family can be better lodged in a genteel part of the town for less money, than it can be lodged, with equal room and equal comforts, in a genteel quarter of paris; always excepting the inferior distribution of the rooms, and other little advantages, such as the convenience of a porter, &c. all of which are in favour of the latter place.[ ] food of all kinds is much the cheapest with us, bread alone excepted. wines can be had, as a whole, better and cheaper in new york, if obtained from the wine-merchant, than in any european town we have yet inhabited. even french wines can be had as cheap as they can be bought here, for the entrance-duty into the country is actually much less than the charges at the gates of paris. the transportation from bordeaux or champagne, or burgundy, is not, as a whole, essentially less than that to new york, if indeed it be any less. all the minor articles of table luxuries, unless they happen to be of french growth, or french fabrications, are immeasurably cheaper in america than here. clothes are nominally much cheaper here than with us; but neither the french nor the english use habitually as good clothes as we; nor are the clothes generally as well made. you are not, however, to suppose from this that the americans are a well-dressed people; on the contrary, we are greatly behind the english in this particular, nor are our men, usually, as well attired as those of paris. this is a consequence of a want of servants, negligent habits, greediness of gain, which monopolizes so much of our time as to leave little for relaxation, and the high prices of articles, which prevent our making as frequent calls on the tailor, as is the practice here. my clothes have cost me more in europe, however, than they did at home, for i am compelled to have a greater variety, and to change them oftener. [footnote : in new york, the writer has a house with two drawing-rooms, a dining-room, eight bed-rooms, dressing-rooms, four good servants' rooms, with excellent cellars, cisterns, wells, baths, water-closets, etc. for the same money that he had an apartment in paris, of one drawing-room, a cabinet, four small and inferior bed-rooms, dining-room, and ante-chamber; the kitchens, offices, cellars, etc. being altogether in favour of the new york residence. in paris, water was bought in addition, and a tax of forty dollars a year was paid for inhabiting an apartment or a certain amount of rent; a tax that was quite independent of the taxes on the house, doors, and windows, which in both cases were paid by the landlord.] our women do not know what high dress is, and consequently they escape many demands on the purse, to which those of paris are compelled to submit. it would not do, moreover, for a french belle to appear every other night for a whole season in the same robe, and that too looking bedraggled, and as jaded as its pretty wearer. silks and the commoner articles of female attire are perhaps as cheap in our own shops, as in those of paris: but when it comes to the multitude of little elegances that ornament the person, the salon, or the boudoir, in this country, they are either wholly unknown in america, or are only to be obtained by paying treble and quadruple the prices at which they may be had here. we absolutely want the caste of shopkeepers as it exists in europe. by shopkeepers, i mean that humble class of traders who are content with moderate profits, looking forward to little more than a respectable livelihood, and the means of placing their children in situations as comfortable as their own. this is a consequence of the upward tendency of things in a young and vigorous community, in which society has no artificial restrictions, or as few as will at all comport with civilization, and the buoyancy of hope that is its concomitant. the want of the class, notwithstanding, deprives the americans of many elegancies and some comforts, which would be offered to them at as low rates as they are sold in the countries in which they are made, were it not for the principle of speculative value, which enters into nearly all of our transactions. in paris the man or woman who sells a duchess an elegant bauble, is half the time content to eat his humble dinner in a small room adjoining his shop, to sleep in an _entresol_ over it, and to limit his profits by his wants. the pressure of society reduces him to this level. with us the thing is reversed, and the consumer is highly taxed, as a necessary result. as we become more familiar with the habits of european life, the demand will gradually reduce the value of these minor articles, and we shall obtain them at the same relative prices, as ordinary silks and shawls are now to be had. at present it must be confessed that our shops make but indifferent figures compared with those of london and paris. i question if the best of them would pass for more than fourth-rate in london, or for more than third-rate here; though the silk-mercers at home might possibly be an exception to the rule. the amount of all my experience, on this point, is to convince me, that so long as one is willing to be satisfied with the habits of american life, which include a great abundance, many comforts, and even some few elegancies, that are not known here, such as the general use of carpets, and that of many foreign articles which are excluded from the european markets by the different protective systems, but which, also, do not know a great many embellishments of living that are common all over europe, he can get along with a good deal less money in new york, than in paris; certainly, with less, if he mix much with the world. excursion up the rhine, &c. letter viii. preparations for leaving-paris.--travelling arrangements.--our route.--the chateau of ecouen.--the _croisée_.--senlis.--peronne.--cambray.--arrival at the frontier.--change in the national character.--mons.--brussels.--a fête.--the picture gallery.--probable partition of belgium. dear ----, we had been preparing for our summer excursion some time, but were unable to get away from paris before the th of july. our destination was undetermined, health and pleasure being the objects, though, a portion of our party having never seen belgium, it was settled to visit that country in the commencement of the journey, let it end where it might the old caleche was repaired for the purpose, fitted with a new rumble to contain francois and jetty (the saxon _femme de chambre_, hired in germany), the _vache_ was crammed, sacks stowed, passport signed, and orders were sent for horses. we are a little apt to boast of the facilities for travelling in america, and, certainly, so long as one can keep in the steam-boats or on the rail-roads, and be satisfied with mere velocity, no part of the world can probably compete with us, the distances considered; but we absolutely want the highest order of motion, which, i think, beyond all question, is the mode of travelling post. by this method, your privacy is sacred, you are master of your own hours, going where you please, and stopping when you please; and, as for speed, you can commonly get along at the rate of ten miles in the hour, by paying a trifle in addition, or you can go at half that rate should it better suit your humour. a good servant and a good carriage are indispensable, and both are to be had at very reasonable rates, in this part of the world. i never felt the advantage of this mode of travelling, and i believe we have now tried nearly all the others, or the advantages of the parisian plan of living, so strongly as on the present occasion. up to the last moment, i was undecided by what route to travel. the furniture of the apartment was my own, and it was our intention to return to paris, to pass the winter. the luggage had been stowed early in the morning, the carriage was in the court ready to hook on, and at ten we sat down quietly to breakfast, as usual, with scarcely a sign of movement about us. like old campaigners, the baggage had been knowingly reduced to the very minimum admissible, no part of the furniture was deranged, but everything was in order, and you may form some idea of the facilities, when you remember that this was the condition of a family of strangers, that in half an hour was to start on a journey of several months' duration, to go--they knew not whither. a few minutes before ten, click-clack, click-clack, gave notice of the approach of the post-horses. the _porte-cochère_ opened, and two votaries of the old-fashioned boot enter, each riding one and leading another horse. all this is done quietly, and as a matter of course; the cattle are put before the carriage without a question being asked, and the two liveried roadsters place themselves by the sides of their respective beasts. in the mean time, we had entered the caleche, said adieu to the cook, who was left in charge of the apartment, a trust that might, however, equally well have been confided to the porter, kissed our hands to the family of m. de v----, and the other inmates of the hotel, who crowded the windows to see us off. up to this moment, i had not decided even by what road to travel! the passport had been taken out for brussels, and last year, you may recollect, we went to that place by dieppe, abbeville, douay, and arras. the "par quelle route, monsieur?" of the postilion that rode the wheel-horse, who stood with a foot in the stirrup, ready to get up, brought me to a conclusion. "a st. denis!" the question compelling a decision, and all my doubts terminating, as doubts are apt to terminate, by taking the most beaten path. the day was cool and excessively windy, while the thermometer had stood the previous afternoon but one, at °, in the shade. we were compelled to travel with the carriage-windows closed, the weather being almost wintry. as we drove through the streets, the common women cried after us, "they are running away from the cholera;" an accusation that we felt we did not merit, after having stood our ground during the terrible months of april and may. but popular impulses are usually just as undiscriminating as the favouritism of the great: the mistake is in supposing that one is any better than the other. when we had reached the city where the kings of france are buried, it was determined to sleep at senlis, which was only four posts further, the little town that we visited with so much satisfaction in . this deviation from the more direct road led us by gonesse, and through a district of grain country, that is less monotonous than most of the great roads that lead from paris. we got a good view of the chateau of ecouen, looking vast and stately, seated on the side of a distant hill. i do not know into whose hands this princely pile has fallen since the unhappy death of the last of the condés, but it is to be hoped into those of the young duc d'aumale, for i believe he boasts the blood of the montmorencies, through some intermarriage or other; and if not, he comes, at least, of a line accustomed to dwell in palaces. i do not like to see these historical edifices converted into manufactories, nor am i so much of a modern utilitarian as to believe the poetry of life is without its correcting and useful influences. your cold, naked utilitarian, holds a sword that bruises as well as cuts; and your sneaking, trading aristocrat, like the pickpocket who runs against you in the crowd before he commits his theft, one that cuts as well as bruises. we were at ecouen not long before the death of its last possessor, and visited its wide but untenanted halls with strong interest. the house was first erected by some montmorency, or other, at or near the time of the crusades, i believe; though it has been much altered since. still it contains many curious vestiges of the taste of that remote age. the old domestic who showed us through the building was as quaint a relic as anything about the place. he had accompanied the family into exile, and passed many years with them in england. in courtesy, respect, and delicate attention, he would have done credit to the court of louis xiv; nor was his intelligence unworthy of his breeding. this man, by the way, was the only frenchman whom i ever knew address an englishman (or, as in my case, one whom he mistook for an englishman), by the old appelation of _milord_. the practice is gone out, so far as my experience extends. i remember to have learned from this courteous old servant, the origin of the common term _croisée_, which is as often used in large houses as that of _fenêtre_. at the period when every man's heart and wishes were bound up in the excitement and enterprise of the crusades, and it was thought that heaven was to be entered sword in hand, the cross was a symbol used as a universal ornament. thus the aperture for a window was left in the wall, and a stone cross erected in the centre. the several compartments in the casements came from the shape of the cross, and the term _croisée_ from _croix_. all this is plain enough, and perhaps there are few who do not know it; but gazing at the ornaments of ecouen, my eyes fell on the doors, where i detected crosses in the most familiar objects. there is scarcely a panelled door, twenty years old, in all america, that does not bear this evidence of the zeal, and, if you will, the superstition of those distant ages! the form of the door is made by the exterior stile; a cross is then built within it, and the open spaces are filled with panels, as, in the case of the window, it is filled with the sash. the exactitude of the form, the antiquity of the practice, its obvious connexion with the common feeling, and the inability to account for the usage in any other way, leave no doubt, in my mind, of its origin, though i do not remember to have ever met with such an account of it, in any author. if this conjecture be true, we protestants, while fastidiously, not to say foolishly, abstaining from the use of a symbol that prejudice has led us to think peculiarly unsuited to our faith, have been unconsciously living with it constantly before our eyes. but the days of puritan folly and puritan vice (there is nothing more vicious than self-righteousness, and the want of charity it engenders) are numbered, and men are beginning to distinguish between the exaggerations of fanaticism and the meek toleration of pure christianity. i can safely say that the lowest, the most degraded, and the most vulgar wickedness, both as to tone and deed, and the most disordered imaginations, that it has ever been my evil fortune to witness, or to associate with, was met with at school, among the sons of those pious forefathers, who fancied they were not only saints themselves, but that they also were to be the progenitors of long lines of saints. it is a melancholy truth, that a gentleman-like training does more for the suppression of those abominations than all the dogmas that the pilgrims have imported into the country. we reached senlis in time for dinner, and while the repast was getting ready, we strolled through the place, in order to revive the sensations with which we had visited it five years before. but, alas! these are joys, which, like those of youth are not renewable at pleasure. i could hardly persuade myself it was the same town. the walls, that i had then fancied lined with the men-at-arms of the charleses of france, and the english henries and edwards, had now lost all their peculiarities, appearing mean and common-place; and as to the gate, from which we had almost heard the trumpets of the heralds, and the haughty answer to a bold summons of surrender, we absolutely had difficulty in persuading ourselves that we had found it at all. half europe had been roamed over since the time when, fresh from america, we made the former visit, predisposed to gaze with enthusiasm at every relic of a former age and a different state of society. if we were disagreeably disappointed in the antiquities of the town, we were as agreeably disappointed in the inn. it was clean, gave us a good dinner, and, as almost invariably proves to be the case in france, also gave us good beds. i do not remember ever to have been more fatigued than by the five posts between paris and this place. the uneven _pavés_, the random and careless driving of the postillions, with whom it is a point of honour to gallop over the broken streets of the villages, besides having a strong fellow-feeling for the smiths, always makes the eight or ten posts nearest to paris, much the most disagreeable part of a journey to or from the french capital. we dined at six, exhausted the curiosities of senlis, and went to bed by daylight! the next morning was fresh and bland, and i walked ahead of the carriage. a wood-cutter was going to the forests to make faggots, and we fell into discourse. this man assured me that he should get only ten sous for his day's work! the view of the principal church-tower of senlis as beautiful, and, in a slight degree, it carried the mind back to the fifteenth century. you have travelled to and from paris with me so often, that i can only add we found the same fatiguing monotony, on this occasion, as on all the others. we reached peronne early, and ordered beds. before dinner we strolled around the ramparts, which are pleasant of themselves though the place stands in a marsh, which renders its position not only strong, but strongly disagreeable. we endeavoured in vain to find some features to revive the pictures of "quentin durward." there was no sign of a soldier in the place, though barracks were building. the french are evidently less jealous of this frontier, than of that on the east, or the one next the austrians. the next morning we breakfasted at cambray. here we found a garrison, and considerable activity. the citadel is well placed, and the esplanade is a pretty walk. we visited the cathedral, which contains a monument to fenelon, by our friend david. we were much gratified by this work, which ranks among his best. near valenciennes we broke a tire, and were detained two hours. here the garrison was still stronger, the place in better condition, and the troops mounted guard with their marching accoutrements about them; all of which, i presume, was owing to the fact, that this is the last fortified town on the road. we did not get to the frontier until seven, and the french postilions broke another bolt before we got fairly rid of them, compelling us to wait an hour to have it mended. we were now in a low wet country, or one perfectly congenial to cholera; it was just the hour when the little demons of miasma are said to be the most active, and to complete the matter, we learned that the disease was in the village. the carriage-windows were closed, while i walked about, from door to door, to pacify uneasiness by curiosity. use, however, had made us all tolerably indifferent, and little p---- settled the matter by remarking it was nothing after all, for here only two or three died daily, while at paris there had been a thousand! older heads than his, often take material facts more in a lump than this. the change in the national character is so evident, immediately on crossing into belgium, as to occasion surprise. the region was, at no remote period, all flanders. the same language is still spoken, the same religion professed in both countries, and yet a certain secret moral influence appears to have extended itself from the capital of each country, until they have met on the frontier, where both have been arrested within their proper geographical limits. we had come into this village on a gallop, driven with the lighthearted _étourderie_ of french vanity, and we left it gravely, under the guidance of postilions who philosophically smoked, as their cattle trotted along like elephants. it was quite late when we reached mons, where we found a good house, of unexceptionable neatness: of course we were in no haste to quit it the next day. the distance to brussels was so short that we took it leisurely, reaching the hôtel de l'europe at three. it was a fête, on account of the anniversary of the arrival of leopold, who had now reigned just a twelvemonth. he passed our window, while we were still at table, on his way to the theatre. the royal cortege was not very brilliant, consisting of four carriages, each drawn by two horses, which, by the way, are quite enough for any coachman to manage, in descending the formidable hill that leads from the great square. you have now been with me three times, in brussels, and i shall not go over the old ground again. we revisited some of the more prominent places of interest, and went to a few others that were neglected on former occasions. among the rest we took a look at the public picture-gallery, which greatly disappointed us. the flemish school naturally awakened our expectations, but a fine gerard douw and a few other old paintings were all that struck us, and as a whole, we gave a preference to the paintings of the present day. the king appears to be personally popular, even those who have no faith in the duration of the present order of things, and who politically are his opponents, speaking well of him. the town has but few strangers, though the presence of a court renders it a little more gay than it was last year. the aspect of everything is gloomy, for the country may be again engaged in a war of existence, in a week. many still think the affair will end in a partition; france, prussia, and holland getting the principal shares. i make no doubt that everybody will profit more by the change than they who brought it about. letter ix. malines.--its collection of pictures.--antwerp.--the cathedral.--a flemish quack.--flemish names.--the picture gallery at antwerp.--mr. wapper's carvings in wood.--mr. van lankeren's pictures.--the boulevards at brussels.--royal abodes.--palace of the prince of orange.--prince auguste d'ahremberg's gallery of pictures.--english ridicule of america. dear ----, after a consultation with françois, i sent the carriage to get a set of entirely new wheels, brussels being a coach-making town, and taking a _voiture de remise_, we drove down to antwerp. while the horses rested, we looked at the pictures in malines. the "miraculous draught of fishes" is thought by many to be the chef-d'oeuvre of rubens, but, after conceding it a hardy conception and magnificent colouring, i think one finds too much of the coarse mannerism of the artist, even for such a subject. the most curious part of the study of the different schools is to observe how much all have been influenced by external objects, and how completely conventional, after all, the _beau idéal_ of an artist necessarily becomes. it would be impossible, for one who knew the several countries, to mistake the works of murillo, rubens, or raphael, for the works of artists of different schools, and this without reference to their peculiar manners, but simply as flemings, spaniards, and italians. rubens, however, is, i think, a little apt to out-dutch the dutch. he appears to me to have delighted in the coarse, while raphael revelled in the pretty. but raphael could and often did step out of himself and rise to the grand; and then he was perfect, because his grandeur was chastened. we reached antwerp some time before dinner. the situation of the town was singular, the dutch holding the citadel; the place, which was peopled by their enemies, as a matter of course, lying quite at their mercy. the road from brussels is partly commanded by them, and we saw their flag rising out of the low mounds--for in flanders the art of fortifying consists in burrowing as deep as possible--as we approached the town. several dutch gun-boats were in the river, off the town, and, in the reaches of the scheldt below, we got glimpses of divers frigates and corvettes, riding at anchor. as an offset to the works of their enemies, the belgians had made a sort of entrenched camp, by enclosing the docks with temporary ramparts, the defences of the town aiding them, in part, in effecting their object. one of our first visits was to the cathedral. this beautiful edifice had escaped without material damage from the recent conflicts, though the garrison of the citadel have thrown a few shots at its tower, most probably with a view to drive curious eyes out of it, the great height enabling one to get a complete bird's-eye view of what is going on within their walls. the celebrated rubenses were cased in massive timber to render them bomb-proof, and, of course, were invisible. processions of peasants were passing from church to church, the whole day, to implore succour against the cholera, which, by the way, and contrary to all rule for a low and moist country, is said to be very light here. the flemings have the reputation of being among the most bigoted catholics, and the most ignorant population of europe. this accounts, in some measure, for the existence of the latter quality among the first inhabitants of new york, most of whom were from flanders, rather than from holland. i have found many of our names in antwerp, but scarcely one in holland. the language at home, too, is much nearer the flemish than the dutch; though it is to be presumed that there must have been some colonists from holland, in a province belonging to that nation. i listened to-day to a fellow vending quack medicines and vilely printed legends, to a song which, tune and all, i am quite sure to have heard in albany, when a schoolboy. the undeviating character and habits of the people, too, appear to be very much like those which existed among ourselves, before the influx of eastern emigration swallowed up everything even to the _suppan_. i remember to have heard this same quack singing this same song, in the very same place in june, , when we first visited antwerp. the effect was exceedingly ludicrous, for it seemed to me, that the fellow had been occupying the same spot, employed in the same pursuits, for the last five years, although the country had been revolutionized. this is also a little characteristic, for some of our own communipaws are said to believe we are still the property of the united provinces. the flemish language has many words that are french in the spelling, but which have entirely different meanings, representing totally different things or ideas. _de_ is one. in french this word, pronounced _der_, without dwelling on the last letter, is a preposition generally meaning "of." before a name, without being incorporated with it, it is an invariable sign of nobility, being even frequently affixed, like the german _von_, to the family name, on attaining that rank. in flemish it is an article, and is pronounced precisely as a dutchman is apt to pronounced _the_, meaning the same. thus de witt, means _the_ white, or white; the flemings using the article to express things or qualities in the abstract, like the french. myn heer de witt is just the same as monsieur le blanc, or monsieur du bois, in french; one of which means monsieur white, and the other monsieur wood. so nearly does this language resemble the english, that i have repeatedly comprehended whole sentences, in passing through the streets. now in new york, we used to think the dutch had become corrupted by the english, but i fancy that the corruption has been just the other way. we had made the acquaintance of a flemish artist of extraordinary merit, at paris; and this gentleman (mr. wappers) kindly called this morning to take us to see the gallery. the collection is not particularly large, nor is it rich in cabinet pictures, being chiefly composed of altar-pieces taken from churches. the works are principally those of rubens, vandyke, and a few of the older masters. the vandykes, i think, are the best. on the whole, it struck me there were more curious than pleasing pictures in this gallery, although they are all valuable as belonging to a school. the study of the "descent from the cross" is among them, and it gave me more pleasure than anything else. vandyke certainly rose in our estimation, after this close comparison with his great rival: he is altogether more human than rubens, who is a sort of dutch giant in the art; out of the natural proportions, and always a giant. mr. wappers permitted us to see his own painting-room. he is of the school of the great flemish masters, and, i think, quite at the head of his profession, in many of its leading points. it was curious to trace in the works of this young artist the effects of having rubens and vandyke constantly before him, corrected by the suggestions of his own genius. his style is something between the two; broader and bolder than vandyke, and less robust than rubens. we went the round of the churches, for, if italy be the land of marbles, belgium is, or rather has been, the very paradise of those who carved in wood. i have seen more delicate and highly-finished works of this sort, in a small way, in other countries; as in the high reliefs of santa maria della salute, at venice; but nowhere else is so much attempted, or, indeed, so much achieved in this branch of art, as here. many of the churches are quite surrounded by oak confessionals that are highly and allegorically ornamented; though, in general, the pulpits contain the most elaborate designs, and the greatest efforts of this curious work. one at brussels has the conversion of st. paul, horse, rider and all, larger than life. the whole is well wrought, even to the expression. but the best specimens of carving in wood that i remember, were a few figures over the door of an hospital that we saw in , though i now forget whether it was at gorcum or at breda. one often sees statuary of great pretension and a wide-spread reputation, that is wanting in the nature, simplicity, and repose of these figures. we went to see a collection of pictures owned by mr. van lankeren. it is a very fine gallery, but there are few paintings by very great artists. a van der heyden (an old new york name, by the way), surpassed anything i know, in its atmosphere. poussin, and our own artist cole, excel in this high merit, but this picture of van der heyden has a cold, gray transparency that seems actually to have transferred a dutch atmosphere to the canvass. we returned to brussels in time to dine. at malines i stood with admiration beneath the great tower, which possesses a rare majesty. had it been completed according to the original plan, i believe it would have been the highest church-tower in europe. in the evening we had a call from mr. and mrs. ----, and made an appointment to visit the palace of the prince of orange in the morning. i was up betimes next day, and took a walk round the park, and on the upper boulevards. the injuries done in the fight have been, in some measure, repaired, but the place was deserted and melancholy. the houses line one side of the boulevards, the other being open to the fields, which are highly cultivated and unenclosed. this practice of cutting off a town like a cheese-paring is very common on the continent of europe, and the effect is odd to those who are accustomed to straggling suburbs, as in america and england. at ten we went to the palace, according to appointment. the royal abodes at brussels are very plain edifices, being nothing more than long unbroken buildings, with very few external ornaments. this of the prince of orange stands in the park, near that of the king, and is a simple parallelogram with two gates. the principal apartments are in the same form, being an entire suite that are entered on one side and left on the other. there is great good taste and elegance in the disposition of the rooms. a few are rich, especially the _salle de bal_, which is really magnificent. the place was kept just as it had been left by its last occupants, leopold, with good taste, not to say good feeling, religiously respecting their rights. a pair of gloves belonging to the princess were shown us, precisely on the spot where she had left them; and her shawls and toys were lying carelessly about, as if her return were momentarily expected. this is true royal courtesy, which takes thrones without remorse, while it respects the baubles. this palace had many good pictures, and among others a raphael. there was a paul potter or two, and a couple of pictures, in the same stile, as pendants, by a living artist of the name of verboeckhoven, whose works sustained the comparison wonderfully well. we were shown the window at which the robber entered who stole the jewels of the princess; an event that has given room to the enemies of the house of nassau to torture into an accusation of low guilt against her husband.[ ] i have never met a gentleman here, who appeared to think the accusation worthy of any credit, or who treated it as more than the gossip of underlings, exaggerated by the agents of the press. [footnote : this affair of the jewels of the princess of orange is one proof, among many others, of the influence of the vilest portion of mankind over their fellow-creatures. it suited the convenience and views of some miscreant who pandered for the press (and the world is full of them), to throw out a hint that the prince of orange had been guilty of purloining the jewels to pay his gambling debts, and the ignorant, the credulous, and the wonder-mongers, believed a charge of this nature, against a frank and generous soldier! it was a charge, that, in the nature of things, could only be disproved by detecting the robber, and one that a prince and a gentleman would scarcely stoop to deny. accident favoured the truth. the jewels have, oddly enough, been discovered in new york, and the robber punished. now, the wretch who first started this groundless calumny against the prince of orange, belongs exactly to that school whose members impart to america more than half her notions of the distinguished men of europe.] from the palace of the prince of orange we went to the house of prince auguste d'ahremberg, to see his collection. this is one of the best private galleries in europe, though not particularly large. it is rich in the works of teniers,[ ] woovermans, both, cuyp, potter, rembrandt, and the other masters of the country. among others is a first-rate gerard douw (another new york name). [footnote : one hears of occasionally discovering good pictures in the streets, an event that actually once occurred to the writer. shortly after the revolution of , in passing through the carrousel, he bought a female portrait, that was covered with dirt, but not materially injured. finding it beautifully painted, curiosity led him to question the man who had sold it. this person affirmed that it was a portrait of the wife of david teniers painted by himself. he was not believed, of course, and the thing was forgotten, until two picture-dealers, who accidentally saw it, at different times, affirmed that it was by teniers, though neither knew the original of the likeness. on examining the catalogues, the writer found that such a picture had existed in paris, before the revolution, and that it was now lost. but this picture was square, while that was oval and much larger. the dealer was questioned again, on the appearance of the picture, without giving him any clue to the object, and he explained the matter at once, by saying that it had once been oval, but the canvass getting an injury, he had reduced it to its present form. since then, an engraving has been discovered that scarce leaves a doubt as to the originality of the portrait.] i passed the evening at the house of an english gentleman, where the master of the last-named gallery was one of the company. a guest, a sir ----, amused me by the peculiarly _british_ manner in which he conveyed a few remarks on america. speaking of a countrywoman of ours, who had lately been at brussels, he said that she called standing up to dance, "taking the floor," and he was curious to know if it were a usual form of expression with us. i had to tell him, we said a horse "took the track," in racing, and as this lady came from a racing region, she might have used it, _con amore_, especially in the gallopade. capt. ----, of the navy, once called out to the ladies of a quadrille to "shove off," when he thought the music had got the start of them; and it is lucky that this sir ---- did not hear him, or he would have set it down at once as an americanism. these people are constantly on the hunt for something peculiar and ridiculous in americans, and make no allowance for difference in station, provincialisms, or traits of character. heaven knows that we are not so very original as to be thus ruthlessly robbed of any little individuality we may happen to possess. letter x. school system in america.--american maps.--leave brussels.--louvain.--quarantine.--liége.--the soleil d'or.--king leopold and brother.--royal intermarriages.--environs of liége.--the cathedral and the church of st. jacques.--ceremonies of catholic worship.--churches of europe.--taverns of america.--prayer in the fields.--scott's error as regards the language spoken in liége.--women of liége.--illumination in honour of the king. dear ----, in the morning the director-general of public instruction called to obtain some information on the subject of the common school system in america. i was a little surprised at this application, the finance controversy having quite thrown me into the shade at the tuileries, and this court being just now so dependent on that of france. you will smile at this opinion, but even facts are subject to such circumstances, and great men submit to very little influences occasionally.[ ] the old ground of explaining the power of the states had to be gone over, and the affair was disposed of by agreeing that written querries should be sent to paris. i had a similar application from a french functionary not long since. a digest of the facts, as they are connected with the state of new york, was accordingly prepared, and handed to the minister of public instruction. this gentleman rose in debate with the document in his hand, and got on well enough until he came to the number of children in the schools (near half a million), which appeared to him to be so much out of proportion to whole numbers (a little exceeding two millions) that, without hesitation, he reduced them on his own responsibility one half! as a proof that no more was meant than to keep within reasonable bounds, he immediately added, "or all there are." now this is a fair specimen of the manner in which america is judged, her system explained, and her facts curtailed. in europe everything must be reduced to a european standard, to be even received. had we been calmucks or kurds, any marvel might go down; but being deemed merely deteriorated europeans, tanned to ebony, our facts are kept closely within the current notions. such a disproportion between adults and minors being unknown in this hemisphere, it was at once set down as an american exaggeration, to pretend to have them in the other. what were our official returns to a european prejudice! [footnote : a few months before this, a friend, not a frenchman, called on the writer at paris. he began to make inquiries on the subject of american parliamentary law, that were entirely out of the track of his usual conversations, and finally submitted a series of written questions to be answered. when the subject was disposed of, the writer asked his friend the object of these unusual investigations, and was told that they were for the use of a leading deputy, who was thoroughly _juste milieu_. surprised at the name, the writer expressed his wonder that the application had not been made to a certain agent of the american government, whose name had already figured before the public, as authority for statistical and political facts against him. the answer was, in substance, that those facts were intended for _effect_!] not long since an artist of reputation came to me, in paris, with a view to get a few hints for a map of the hudson, that had been ordered as an illustration of one of our books. he was shown all the maps in my possession, some of which were recent and sufficiently minute. i observed some distrust in his manner, and in the end, he suggested that an old french map of the canadas, that he had in his pocket, might possibly be more accurate than those which had just been received from america. the map was produced, and, as might have been expected, was utterly worthless; but an intimation to that effect was not well received, as the artist had not been accustomed to consider the americans as map-makers. at length i was compelled to show him poughkeepsie laid down on his map directly opposite to albany, and to assure him gravely that i had myself travelled many a time in a north and south direction, from sunrise to sunset, in order to go from one of these places to the other, and that they were eighty miles asunder! we left brussels at noon, and reached louvain at three. though not taken so completely by surprise as we were last year, the town-house still gave us great pleasure. they were at work repairing it, and the fresh stones gave it a mottled look, but, on the whole, it is one of the most extraordinary edifices i know. it is a sort of condensation of quaintness, that is quite without a rival even in this land of laboured and curious architecture. the little pavilion of the prince of orange, that lies on the road, was still deserted and respected. i dare say his fishing-rods and fowling-pieces are intact, while his inheritance is shorn of half its glory. there was a quarantine before entering the prussian states on account of the cholera, and having understood that we should gain in time after quitting brussels, beyond which the malady has not yet extended, we went no farther than thirlemont, where we passed the night. the place is insignificant, and the great square was chiefly occupied by "awkward squads" of the new levies, who were drilling as fast as they could, in readiness for the dutch. the belgians have reached protocol no. , and they begin to think it is most time now to have something more substantial. they will find king william of the true "hard-kopping" breed. the next morning we posted down to liége in time to take a late breakfast. the road from brussels to this place has run through a fertile and well-cultivated country, but the scene changed like magic, as soon as we got a glimpse of the valley of the meuse. liége has beautiful environs, and the town is now the seat of industry. coal-pits abound in the immediate vicinity, and iron is wrought in a hundred places. as we drove through the antique and striking court of the venerable episcopal palace, and emerged on the great square, we found the place alive with people, and our arrival at the soleil d'or produced a sensation that seemed inexplicable. landlord, laquais, populace and all, ran to greet us, and people were hurrying to the spot in every direction. there was nothing to be done but to wait the result patiently, and i soon saw by the cold looks of the servants, and the shrug of françois, who had jumped down to order rooms, that there was mutual disappointment. everybody turned their backs upon us, and there we sat in the shadow of neglect, after having momentarily shone in the sunshine of universal observation. it had been merely ascertained that we were not the king of the belgians and his brother the grand duke of saxe-cobourg-gotha. the soleil d'or, which like other suns, is most apt to shine on the great, veiled its face from us, and we were compelled to quit the great square, and to seek more humble lodgings. these were soon obtained at the black eagle, a clean and good house. i went to the police immediately with my passport, and found that one of our five days of quarantine had been comfortably gotten rid of at thirlemont. these quarantines are foolish things, and quite easily evaded. you have been told the manner in which, last year, instead of spending five times twenty-four hours in a hut, shut up with a russian princess, i drove into the court of our own hotel in paris on the evening of the fifth day, and m----, you will remember, merely turned the flanks of a sentinel or two, by walking a mile in the fields. we were advised, on this occasion, to have our passport _viséd_ at brussels, the moment we arrived, and the intermediate time would have counted on the frontier, but being in no haste, we preferred proceeding regularly. the next day the town filled rapidly, and about noon the cannon announced the entrance of the king. a worse salute was never fired; but his majesty is greeted with smiling faces, which is, probably more to his liking. he is certainly a prudent and respectable man, if not a great one; and just now very popular. i met him and his brother in the streets, the day after their arrival: they were in an open carriage and pair, with two boys, the sons of the duke, on the front seat. leopold has a grave and thoughtful face, and is far from being as well-looking as his brother, who is a large comely man; not unlike the duke bernard of saxe-weimar, so well known in america. all the princes of the saxon duchies that i have seen, are large, well-formed men, while those of saxe royal, as the kingdom is called, are the reverse. a diplomatic man, here, once remarked to me, that this rule held good as to most of the protestant and catholic princes, throughout europe, the close intermarriages of the latter in his opinion, affecting the stock. the imagination has had something to do with this notion, for there are certainly many exceptions on both sides, if, indeed, it be a rule at all. i think, there is little doubt that the habits of the mind, mode of living, and climate, contribute essentially to vary the physiognomy; but i cannot subscribe fully to the influence of these intermarriages, which, by the way, are nearly, if not quite, as circumscribed among the protestants as among the catholics. the portion of europe that is governed by princes, is divided among forty-four different states,[ ] of whom twenty-eight are protestant, one a greek, one a mahomedan, and the rest are catholics. these forty-four sovereigns claim to be descended from nineteen different roots: thus, the direct _male_ descendants of hugh capet occupy the thrones of france, spain, naples, lucca, and portugal; the latter being derived from an illegitimate son of a duke of burgundy, before the accession of the bourbon branch. the houses of austria, baden, tuscany, and modena, are derived from a duke of alsace, who flourished in the seventh century. i was mistaken in a former letter, in saying that the family of lorraine is different from that of habsbourg, for it is said to be derived in the male line equally from this prince of alsace. the hohenzollerns are on the throne of prussia, and possess the two little principalities of that name; while the emperor of russia is merely a prince of holstein. these families have been intermarrying for a thousand years, and it is not possible that they should have entirely escaped some personal peculiarities; still, as a whole, they are quite as fine physical specimens of humanity, as the average of their subjects. the princes of russia are singularly fine men; the house of denmark well-looking; the saxons, the royal branch excepted, more than usually so; the house of wurtemburg very like the english family; the bourbons, as a family, are a fine race; the austrians peculiar, and less comely, though the women are often quite handsome; don miguel is a little beauty, _very mild and gentleman-like in his appearance_, though lady ----, who sat next him at dinner, on a certain occasion, assured me she saw nothing but blood and rapine in his countenance! her father, lord ----, one of the ablest men of his time, and one familiar with high political events, gravely assured me he gave implicit credence to the tales we have heard of the outrages committed by this prince, and which, if true, render him a fit subject for the gallows. but i have seen so much of the exaggeration of factions, that incredulity, perhaps, has got to be a fault with me. i longed to tell lord ---- what i had heard, in england, under his very nose, of himself! among other absurdities, i had, shortly before this very conversation, heard a respectable englishman affirm that such was the _morgue aristocratique_ of this nobleman, that he compelled his wife and daughters to walk backwards, in quitting his presence, as is done at court! this was said of a man, whom i found to be of more simple, off-hand, unpretending, gentleman-like deportment, whose demeanour had more of the nice tact which neither offends by superciliousness, nor wounds by condescension, than that of any other man of rank in england. to return to our subject;--the austrian face is, certainly, getting to be prevalent among the southern catholic families, for all of them are closely allied to the house of habsbourg by blood, but i do not see any more in the _physique_ of the saxon dukes than the good old saxon stamina, nor aught in the peculiar appearance of the royal branch but an accident. [footnote : this excludes lichtenstein, monaco, and greece.] three or four days of leisure have enabled us to look very thoroughly at the exterior of liége, which is certainly an interesting town, with lovely environs. there are some very good old houses along the banks of the river, and a few of the churches are noble edifices. the cathedral and the church of st. jaques, in particular, are venerable and interesting structures; and i stood beneath their lofty arches, listening to the chants of the choir, and inhaling the odours of the incense, with a satisfaction that never tires. i sometimes wish i had been educated a catholic, in order to unite the poetry of religion with its higher principles. are they necessarily inseparable? is man really so much of a philosopher, that he can conceive of truth in its abstract purity, and divest life and the affections of all the aids of the imagination? if they who strip the worship of god of its factious grace, earnestly presented themselves in the garb of moral humility, rendering their familiar professions conformable to their general tenets, and stood before us as destitute of self-esteem as they are of ornament, one might not so much feel the nakedness of their rites; but, as a rule, the less graceful the forms and the more intense the spirituality of the minister of the altar become, the higher is his tone of denunciation and the more palpable his self-righteousness. in point of fact, when the proper spirit prevails, forms, of themselves, become of little account; and when men begin to deem them otherwise, it is proof rather of the want, than of the excess, of the humility and charity which are the inseparable companions of faith. i do not say that i would imitate all the unmeaning and irreverent practices of the romish church; and least of all could one wish to see the devout and solemn manner of the protestant ministering at the altar supplanted by the unintelligible mumblings of the latin breviaries: but why have we denounced the holy symbol of the cross, the ornaments of the temple, the graceful attire, and the aid of music? it is impossible, i think, for the american, who has visited europe, not to feel the want of edifices reared in honour of god, which everywhere exists in his own country. i do not mean churches, in which the comfort and convenience of the pew-holders have been mainly consulted, for these pious speculations abound; but _temples_ to mark a sense of the superiority of the deity, and which have been reared in his honour. it may be easy enough to account for the absence of such buildings, in a country so peopled and still so young, but this does not make the deficiency the less obvious. in this hemisphere, scarcely a village is approached, that the high roof and towers of a church do not form its nucleus, the temple appearing to spread its protection over the humbler abodes of men. the domes, the pointed and lofty arches, and the gothic tracery of cathedrals, soar above the walls of cities, and everywhere man is congregated, he appears to seek shelter under the wide-spreading wings of the church. it is no argument to say that true religion may exist without these edifices, for infidelity may also exist without them, and if it be right or useful to honour god at all, in this manner, it is a right and a usefulness to which we have not yet attained. the loftiest roofs of an american town are, invariably, its taverns; and, let metaphysics get over the matter as it may, i shall contend that such a thing is, at least, unseemly to the eye. with us it is not gog and magog, but grog or no grog; we are either a tame plane of roofs, or a _pyramid_ in honour of brandy and mint-juleps. when it comes to the worship of god, each man appears to wish a nut-shell to contain himself and his own shades of opinion; but when there is question of eating and drinking, the tent of pari banou would not be large enough to hold us. i prefer large churches and small taverns. there are one or two usages, especially, of the romish church, that are not only beautiful, but which must be useful and salutary. one is the practice of leaving the church open at all hours, for the purposes of prayer. i have seldom entered one of these vaulted, vast, and appropriate houses of god, without finding fewer or more devotees kneeling at the different altars. another usage is that of periodical prayer, in the fields, or wherever the peasants may happen to be employed, as in the _angelus_, &c. i remember, with pleasure, the effect produced by the bell of the village church, as it sent its warning voice, on such occasions, across the plains, and over the hills, while we were dwellers in french or italian hamlets. of all these touching embellishments of life, america, and i had almost said, protestantism, is naked; and in most cases, i think it will be found, on inquiry, naked without sufficient reason. the population of liége is still chiefly catholic, i believe, although the reign of the ecclesiastics has ceased. they speak an impure french, which is the language of the whole region along this frontier. scott, whose vivid pictures carried with them an impress of truth that misled his readers, being by no means a man of either general or accurate attainment, out of the immediate circle of his peculiar knowledge, which was scottish traditions, has represented the people of liége, in quentin durward, as speaking flemish; an error of which they make loud complaints, it being a point on which they are a little sensitive. a poet may take great licences, and it is hypercriticism to lay stress on these minor points when truth is not the aim; but this is a blunder that might, as well as not, have been spared, and probably would have been, had the author given himself the trouble to inquire into the fact. but for the complaints of the liégeois, the error would not have been very generally known, however; certainly, not by me, had i not visited the place. the women of liége appear to labour even more than usual for this part of europe. they are employed in field-labour, everywhere; but in the towns, more attention is paid to the great distinctions between the employments of the sexes. here, however, i saw them toiling in the coal-yards, and performing the offices of the common porters. they were much employed in unloading the market-boats, and yet they are far from being either coarse or ugly. the men are short, but sturdy. the average stature appears to be about five feet five and a half inches, but even this, i think, exceeds the average stature of the french. the town has been illuminated two nights in succession, in honour of the king. every one is occupied with his approaching marriage with the princess louisa of france, or as it is now the fashion to say, the princess louisa of orleans--for since the revolution of , there is no longer a king, nor any children of france. it would have been better had more essential points been attended to and the old names retained. in england matters are differently managed, for there the government is always one of king, lords, and commons, though it is constantly fluctuating, and two of the parties are usually cyphers. letter xi. leave liége.--banks of the mense.--spa.--beautiful promenades.--robinson crusoe.--the duke of saxe-cobourg.--former magnificence of spa.--excursions in the vicinity.--departure from spa.--aix-la-chapelle.--the cathedral.--the postmaster's compliments.--berghem.--german enthusiasm.--arrival at cologne. dear ----, on the fourth day of our quarantine, we left liége, if not with clean bills of health, with passport bearing proof about it that would enable us to enter prussia the next morning. the king and his brother having laid all the horses in requisition, we did not get away before two; but once on the road, our postilions drove like men who had reaped a double harvest. the route lay for some distance along the banks of the meuse, and the whole region was one of exquisite landscape beauties. an intensely dark verdure--a road that meandered through the valley, occasionally shifting from bank to bank--hill-sides covered with fruit-trees and fragrant with flowers--country-houses--hamlets--cottages--with every appearance of abundance and comfort, and back-grounds of swelling land, that promised equal beauty and equal affluence, were the principal features of the scene. the day was as fine as possible, and, everything bearing a leaf having just been refreshed with a recent shower, we glided through this fairy region with something like enthusiasm with which we had formerly journeyed in switzerland and italy. the meuse, however, was soon abandoned for a tributary, and, after proceeding a few leagues, the character of the country gradually changed, although it still continued peculiar and beautiful. the intensity of the verdure disappeared in a pale, but still a decided green--the forest thickened--the habitations no longer crowded the way-side, and we appeared to be entering a district, that was altogether less populous and affluent than the one we had left, but which was always neat, picturesque, and having an air of comfort. we were gradually, but almost imperceptibly ascending. this lasted for four hours, when, reaching a country-house, the road turned suddenly at a right angle, and ran for near a mile through an avenue of trees, bounded by open meadows. at the termination of this avenue we dashed into the streets of a small, well-built, neat, and compact village, that contained about one hundred and fifty dwellings, besides three or four edifices of rather more than usual pretensions. this was the celebrated spa, a watering-place whose reputation was once co-extensive with civilization. we drove to an inn, where we dined, but finding it crowded and uncomfortable. i went out and hired a furnished house by the day, putting our own servants, with an assistant, in possession of the kitchen. next morning, perceiving that i had been too hasty, and that our lodgings were too confined, i discharged them and took a better. we got a dining-room, two drawing-rooms, several bed-rooms, with offices, etc., all neat and well-furnished, for a napoleon a day. i mention these things as they serve to show you the facilities a traveller enjoys in this part of the world. nearly every house in spa is to be had in this manner, fitted for the reception of guests, the proprietor occupying a small building adjoining, and usually keeping a shop, where wine and groceries may be had. servants can be engaged at any moment, and one is thus enabled to set up his own _ménage_ at an hour's notice. this mode is more economical for a large family, than living at an hotel, vastly more comfortable, and more respectable. dinners can be had from the taverns, if desired. françois being something of a cook, with the aid of the spa assistant, we lived entirely within ourselves. you will remember that in hiring the house by the day, i reserved the right to quit it at any moment. spa, like most other places that possess chalybeate waters, stands in the centre of a country that can boast but little of its fertility. still, time and cultivation have left it the character of pale verdure of which i have just spoken, and which serves for a time to please by its novelty. the hue looked neither withered nor sickly, but it was rather that of young grasses. it was a ghostly green. the eye wanders over a considerable extent of naked fields, when one is on the steep wooded hills, under whose very brows the village is built, and i scarcely can recall a spot where a stronger impression of interminable vastness is left, than i felt while gazing at the illimitable swells of land that stretch away towards france. the country is said to be in the mountains of the ardennes, and once there was the forest through which the "boar of ardennes" was wont to roam; but of forest there is now none; and if there be a mountain, spa must stand on its boundless summit. high and broken hills do certainly appear, but, as a whole, it is merely an upland region. the glory of spa has departed! time was when the idle, the gay and the dissolute crowded to this retired village to intrigue and play, under the pretence of drinking the waters; when its halls were thronged with princes and nobles, and even monarchs frequented its fêtes and partook of its festivities. the industrious inhabitants even now spare no pains to render the abode pleasant, but the capricious taste of the age lures the traveller to other springs, where still pleasanter haunts invite their presence. germany abounds with watering-places, which are usually rendered agreeable by a judicious disposition of walks, and by other similar temptations. in nothing are the money-grasping and shiftless habits of america rendered more apparent, than in the inferiority of her places of public resort. in all these particulars nature has done a good deal for some of them, but nowhere has man done anything worth naming. a trifling expenditure has rendered the rude hill which, covered chiefly with evergreens, overlooks spa, a succession of beautiful promenades. serpentine walks are led through its thickets, agreeable surprises are prepared for the stranger, and all the better points of view are ornamented by seats and summer-houses. one of these places was covered by a permanent protection against the weather that had a name which amused us, though it was appropriate enough, so far as the shape went. it was called a "mushroom," it being, in fact, a sort of wooden umbrella, not unlike those which the french market-women spread over their heads in the streets of paris, and which, more sentimental and imaginative, they term a "_robinson_" in honour of robinson crusoe.[ ] this mushroom was the scene of a remarkable occurrence, that it will scarcely do to relate, but which, taking all together, furnishes a ludicrous sample of national manners, to say nothing of miracles. [footnote : pronounced ro-ban-_sown_. the writer once went to return the call of mr. robinson, at paris. the porter denied that such a person lived in the hotel. "but here is his card; mr. robinson, n----, rue ----." "bah," looking at the card, "ceci est monsieur ro-ban-_sown_; c'est autre chose. sans doute, monsieur a entendu parler du célèbre ro-ban-_sown?_"] the waters and the air together proved to be so much a tonic, that we determined to pass a week at spa, a----, who was so weak on leaving paris, as scarcely to be able to enter the carriage, gaining strength in a way to delight us all. the cholera and the quarantine together induce a good many people to come this way, and though few remain as long as ourselves, the constant arrivals serve to keep attention alive. among others, the duke of saxe-cobourg passed a night here, on his way home. he appeared in the public room, for a few minutes; but so few were assembled, that he retired, it was said, disappointed. there is still some playing in public, and occasionally the inhabitants of verviers, an affluent manufacturing town, near the prussian frontier, come over in sufficient numbers to make a tolerably brilliant evening. these meetings take place in the redoute, a building of moderate dimensions, erected in the heart of the place according to a very general german custom; wauxhall, the ancient scene of revelry, standing aloof in the fields, deserted and desolate, as does a rival edifice of more recent existence. the dimensions and style of these structures give one an idea of the former gaiety and magnificence of spa, though the only use that either is now put to, is to furnish a room for a protestant clergyman to preach in, sundays. as health, after all, is the greatest boon of life, we loitered at spa a fortnight, endeavouring to while away the time in the best way we could. short as was our stay, and transient as were the visits, we remained long enough to see that it was an epitome of life. some intrigued, some played, and some passed the time at prayer. i witnessed trouble in one _ménage_, saw a parson drunk, and heard much pious discourse from a captain in the navy! we got little ardennes horses, which were constantly parading the streets, led by countrymen in _blouses_, to tempt us to mount, and took short excursions in the vicinity. sometimes we made what is called the tour of the springs; of which there are several, each differing from the others in its medicinal properties, and only one of which is in the village itself, the rest being a mile or more distant. at other times, we lounged in the shops, admiring and purchasing the beautiful boxes and ornaments that are known as spa work, and which are merely the wood of the hills, coloured by being deposited for a time in the spring, and then painted and varnished highly. similar work is made in other places, but nowhere else as beautifully as here. at length _ennui_ got the better of the good air and the invigorating water, and i sent for my passport and the horses. françois, by this time, was tired of cooking, and he carried the orders for both right joyfully, while my _bourgeois_ received his napoleons with many handsome expressions of regret, that i dare say were truer than common. in the mean time we hurried about with our cards of p.p.c.; bidding adieu to some, without the slightest expectation of ever meeting them again, and promising others to renew the acquaintance on the rhine, or among the alps, as events might decide. at half-past eleven all was ready, and shaking hands with two countrymen who came to see us off, we took our places, and dashed away from our _ménage_ of a fortnight's duration, as unceremoniously as we had stepped into it. the dog-star raged with all its fury, as we drove through the close and pent-up valleys that lie between spa and verviers. at the latter place we began to ascend, until finally we reached a broad and naked height, that overlooked a wide reach of country towards the east. this was the region that lies around the ancient capital of charlemagne, and is now a part of what m. de pradt has described "as a façade thrown before europe," or the modern and disjointed kingdom of prussia. we reached the frontier on the height of land, where, everything proving to be _en règle_, we met with no obstruction or delay. while crossing the swell of land just mentioned, the wind changed with a suddenness that we are apt to think american, but which occurs more frequently in this hemisphere, or rather in this part of it, than in our own. the peculiarity of the american climate is its exaggeration rather than its fickleness; its passages from extreme heat to extreme cold, more than the frequency of its lesser transitions. one never thinks of an umbrella in america, with a cloudless sky; whereas, during the spring months in particular, there is no security against rain an hour at a time, near the western coast of europe, more especially north of the bay of biscay. on the present occasion, we passed in a few minutes from the oven to the ice-house, and were travelling with cloaks about us, and closed windows, long before we reached aix-la-chapelle, at which ancient town we arrived about six. unlike spa, where we had the choice among a hundred furnished houses, aix was so crowded that we got narrow lodgings, with great difficulty, in a second-rate hotel. as a matter of course, although it was going over old ground with most of us, we could do no less than look at the sights. the environs of aix, though exceedingly pretty, and well ornamented by country-houses, are less beautiful than those of liege. although charlemagne has been buried near a thousand years, and there is no longer an emperor of germany, or a king of the romans, aix-la-chapelle is still a town of more than , inhabitants. it is a crowded and not a particularly neat place, though material improvements are making, and we have been more pleased with it this year than we were last. the town-house is a very ancient structure, one of its towers being supposed to have been built by the romans, and it is celebrated as having been the place of meeting of two european congresses; that of , and that of our own times. it has a gallery of portraits of the different ambassadors, a big-wigged if a not big-witted set. the cathedral, though imperfect, is a noble and a curious monument: the choir is modern, that is to say, of gothic workmanship, and only five hundred years old, while the main body is an antique rotunda, that dates more than twice as far back, or as remotely as the reign of charlemagne himself. there is a circular gallery in it, around which the thrones of the emperor and electors were formerly placed, at the ceremonies of coronations. each of these thrones was flanked by small antique columns, brought from rome, but which during the reign of napoleon, in the spirit of monopoly and desecration[ ] that marked the era, had been transferred to paris, where some of them are still seen standing in the gallery of the tuileries. a chair that was found in charlemagne's tomb stands in this gallery, and was long used as a throne for the emperors. [footnote : extract from the unpublished manuscript of these letters: "you have lately been at richmond hill," said mr. ----; "did you admire the view, as much as is the fashion?" "to be frank with you, i did not. the park struck me as being an indifferent specimen of your parks; and the view, though containing an exquisite bit in the fore-ground, i think, as a whole, is both tame and confused." "you are not alone in your opinion, though i think otherwise. canova walked with me on the terrace, without seeming to be conscious there was anything unusual to be seen. he scarcely regarded the celebrated view a second time. did you know him?" "he was dead before i came to europe." "poor canova!--i met him in paris, in , in a ludicrous dilemma. it rained, and i was crossing the carrousel in a _fiacre_, when i saw canova stealing along near the walls, covered in a cloak, and apparently uncertain how to proceed. _i drove_ near him, and offered him a seat. he was agitated, and appeared like a man who had stolen goods about him. the amount of it was, that they were distributing the pictures to their former owners, and having an order to receive "la madonna della seggiola," he had laid hands on the prize, and, in his eagerness to make sure of it, was carrying it off, under his cloak. he was afraid of being discovered and mobbed, and so i drove home with him to his hotel." i think mr. ---- named this particular picture, though i have somewhere heard it was never brought to paris, having been sent to sicily for security: it might, therefore, have been another painting.] the cathedral is said to be rich in relics, and, among other things, it has some of the manna from the desert, and a bit of aaron's rod! it has a window or two, in a retired chapel, which have a few panes of exquisitely painted glass that are much more precious than either. at noon i sent my passport to the post-house for horses, and, in return, i had a visit from the postmaster in compliment to the republic of letters. we said a few flattering things to each other, much to the amusement of a----, when we took our departure. the country, after quitting the valley of aix,[ ] became flat and monotonous, and it was in the midst of a vast level district that we found the town of juliers, the capital of the ancient duchy, buried behind grassy ramparts, that were scarcely visible until we were actually passing them. it is a tame and insignificant place, at present. at berghem, a post or two further, i had another visit from the postmaster and his clerk, who made no scruple in asking me if i was the man who wrote books! we talk a great deal of our national intelligence in america, and certainly with truth, when we compare ourselves with these people in many important particulars; but blocks are not colder, or can have less real reverence for letters, arts, or indeed cultivation of any kind, than the great bulk of the american people. there are a few among us who pretend to work themselves up into enthusiasm as respects the first, more especially if they can get a foreign name to idolize; but it is apparent, at a glance, that it is not enthusiasm of the pure water. for this, germany is the land of sensations, whether music, poetry, arms, or the more material arts be their object. as for myself, i can boast of little in this way, beyond the homage of my two postmasters, which perhaps was more than properly fell to my share; but i shall never forget the feeling displayed by a young german, at dresden, whom chance threw in my way. we had lodgings in a house directly opposite the one inhabited by tieck, the celebrated novelist and dramatist. having no proper means of introduction to this gentleman, and unwilling to obtrude myself anywhere, i never made his acquaintance, but it was impossible not to know, in so small a town, where so great a celebrity lived. next door to us was a swiss confectioner, with whom i occasionally took an ice. one day a young man entered for a similar purpose, and left the room with myself. at the door he inquired if i could tell him in which of the neighbouring hotels m. tieck resided, i showed him the house and paused a moment to watch his manner, which was entirely free from pretension, but which preserved an indescribable expression of reverence. "was it possible to get a glimpse of the person of m. tieck?" "i feared not; some one had told me that he was gone to a watering-place." "could i tell him which was the window of his room?" this i was able to do, as he had been pointed out to me at it a few days before. i left him gazing at the window, and it was near an hour before this quiet exhibition of heartfelt homage ceased by the departure of the young man. in my own case, i half suspect that my two postmasters expected to see a man of less european countenance than the one i happen to travel with. [footnote : _aachen_, in german. in french it is pronounced ais-la-chapelle.] it was near sunset when we reached the margin of the upper terrace, where we began to descend to the level of the borders of the rhine. here we had a view of the towers of cologne, and of the broad plain that environs its walls. it was getting to be dark as we drove through the winding entrance, among bastions and half-moons, and across bridges, up to the gates of the place, which we reached just in season to be admitted without the extra formalities. letter xii. the cathedral of cologne.--the eleven thousand virgins.--the skulls of the magi--house in which rubens was born.--want of cleanliness in cologne.--journey resumed.--the drachenfels.--romantic legend.--a convent converted into an inn.--its solitude.--a night in it.--a storm.--a nocturnal adventure.--grim figures.--an apparition.--the mystery dissolved.--palace of the kings of australia.--banks of the rhine.--coblentz.--floating bridges.--departure from coblentz.--castle of the ritterstein.--visit to it.--its furniture,--the ritter saal--tower of the castle.--anachronisms. dear ----, i do not know by what dignitary of the ancient electorate the hotel in which we lodged was erected, but it was a spacious building, with fine lofty rooms and a respectable garden. as the language of a country is influenced by its habits, and in america everything is so much reduced to the standard of the useful that little of the graceful has yet been produced, it may be well to remind you that this word "garden," signifies pleasure-grounds in europe. it way even be questioned if the garden of eden was merely a _potager_. after breakfasting we began to deliberate as to our future movements. here we were at cologne, in prussia, with the wide world before us, uncertain whither to proceed. it was soon decided, however, that a first duty was to look again at the unfinished cathedral, that wonder of gothic architecture; to make a pilgrimage to the house in which rubens was born; to pay a visit to the eleven thousand virgins, and to buy some cologne water: after which it would be time enough to determine where we should sleep. the first visit was to the bones. these relics are let into the walls of the church that contains them, and are visible through a sort of pigeon-holes which are glazed. there is one chapel in particular, that is altogether decorated with the bones arranged in this manner, the effect being very much like that of an apothecary's shop. some of the virgins are honoured with hollow wooden or silver busts, lids in the tops of which being opened, the true skull is seen within. these relics are not as formidable, therefore, as one would be apt to infer the bones of eleven thousand virgins might be, the grinning portion of the skulls being uniformly veiled for propriety's sake. i thought it a miracle in itself to behold the bones of all these virgins, but, as if they were insufficient, the cicerone very coolly pointed out to us the jar that had held the water which was converted into wine by the saviour at the marriage of cana! it was asiatic in form, and may have held both water and wine in its day. the cathedral is an extraordinary structure. five hundred years have gone by, and there it is less than half finished. one of the towers is not forty feet high, while the other may be two hundred. the crane, which is renewed from time to time, though a stone has not been raised in years, is on the latter. the choir, or rather the end chapel that usually stands in rear of the choir, is perfect, and a most beautiful thing it is. the long narrow windows, that are near a hundred feet in height, are exquisitely painted, creating the peculiar cathedral atmosphere, that ingenious invention of some poet to render solemn architecture imaginative and glorious. we could not dispense with looking at the skulls of the magi, which are kept in an exceedingly rich reliquary or shrine. they are all three crowned, as well as being masked like the virgins. there is much jewellery, though the crowns had a strong glow of tinsel about them, instead of the mild lustre of the true things. rubens, as you know, was of gentle birth, and the house in which he was born is just such a habitation as you would suppose might have been inhabited by a better sort of burgher. it is said that mary of medicis, the wife of henry iv, died in this building, and tradition, which is usually a little ambitious of effect, has it that she died in the very room in which rubens was born. the building is now a public-house. i do not know that there is a necessary connection between foul smells and cologne water, but this place is the dirtiest and most offensive we have yet seen, or rather smelt, in europe. it would really seem that people wish to drive their visitors into the purchase of their great antidote. disagreeable as it was, we continued to _flaner_ through the streets until near noon, visiting, among other things, the floating bridge, where we once more enjoyed the sight of the blue waters of the rhine glancing beneath our feet. like true _flaneurs_, we permitted chance to direct our steps, and at twelve, tired with foul smells and heat, we entered the carriage, threaded the half-moons, abbatis and grassy mounds again, and issued into the pure air of the unfenced fields, on the broad plain that stretches for miles towards the east, or in the direction of bonn. the day was sultry, and we fully enjoyed the transition. in this part of germany the postilions are no laggards, and we trotted merrily across the wide plain, reaching bonn long before it was time to refresh ourselves. the horses were changed, and we proceeded immediately. as we left the town i thought the students, who were gasping at the windows of their lodgings, envied us the pleasure of motion having so lately accompanied me over this road; i shall merely touch upon such points as were omitted before, and keep you acquainted with our movements. the afternoon was lovely, when, passing the conical and castle-crowned steep of godisberg, we approached the hills, where the road for the first time runs on the immediate borders of the stream. opposite to us were the seven mountains, topped by the ruins of the drachenfels, crag and masonry wearing the appearance of having mouldered together under the slow action of centuries; and, a little in advance, the castle of rolandseck peered above the wooded rocks on our own side of the river. two low islands divided the stream, and on one of them stood the capacious buildings of a convent. every one at all familiar with the traditions of the rhine, has heard the story of the crusader, who, returning from the wars, found his betrothed a nun in this asylum. it would seem that lies were as rife before the art of printing had been pressed into their service, or newspapers known, as they are to-day, for she had been taught to think him dead or inconstant; it was much the same to her. the castle which overlooked the island was built for his abode, and here the legend is prudently silent. although one is not bound to believe all he hears; we are all charmed with the images which such tales create, especially when, as in this case, they are aided by visible and tangible objects in the shape of good stone walls. as we trotted along under the brow of the mountain that upholds the ruins of the castle of charlemagne's nephew, my eye rested musingly on the silent pile of the convent. "that convent," i called out to the postilion, "is still inhabited?" "_ja, mein herr, es ist ein gasthaus_." an inn!--the thing was soon explained. the convent, a community of benedictines, had been suppressed some fifteen or twenty years, and the buildings had been converted into one of your sentimental taverns. with the closest scrutiny i could not detect a soul near the spot, for junketing in a ruin is my special aversion. a hamlet stood on the bank at no great distance above the island; the postilion grinned when i asked if it would be possible to get horses to this place in the morning, for it saved him a trot all the way to oberwinter. he promised to send word in the course of the night to the relay above, and the whole affair was arranged in live minutes. the carriage was housed and left under the care of françois on the main land, a night sack thrown into a skiff, and in ten minutes we were afloat on the rhine. our little bark whirled about in the eddies, and soon touched the upper point of the island. we found convent, _gasthaus_, and sentiment, without any pre-occupants. there was not a soul on the island, but the innkeeper, his wife, a child, a cook, a crone who did all sorts of work, and three prussian soldiers, who were billeted on the house, part of a detachment that we had seen scattered along the road, all the way from bonn. i do not know which were the most gladdened by the meeting, ourselves or the good people of the place; we at finding anything like retirement in europe, and they at seeing anything like guests. the man regretted that we had come so late, for a large party had just left him; and we felicitated ourselves that we had not come any sooner, for precisely the same reason. as soon as he comprehended our tastes, he very frankly admitted that every room in the convent was empty. "there is no one, but these, on the island. not a living being, _herr graf_" for these people have made a count of me, whether or not. here then were near two hundred acres, environed by the rhine, prettily disposed in wood and meadow, absolutely at our mercy. you can readily imagine, with what avidity a party of young parisiennes profited by their liberty, while i proceeded forthwith to inspect the ladder, and then to inspect the cloisters. sooth to say, sentiment had a good deal to do with two of the courses of a dinner at nonnenswerth, for so is the island called. the buildings were spacious, and far from mean; and it was a pleasant thing to promenade in cloisters that had so lately been trodden by holy nuns, and see your dinner preparing in a convent kitchen. i could do no less than open a bottle of "liebfraumilch" in such a place, but it proved to be a near neighbour to bonny-clabber. as the evening closed we took possession of our rooms. our parlour had been that of the lady abbess, and a---- had her bed-chamber. these were spacious rooms and well furnished. the girls were put into the cells, where girls ought never to be put. jetty had another near them, and, these dispositions made, i sallied forth alone, in quest of a sensation. the intense heat of the day had engendered a gust. the thunder was muttering among the "seven mountains," and occasionally a flash of lightning illumined the pitchy darkness of the night. i walked out into the grounds, where the wind was fiercely howling through the trees. a new flash illumined the hills, and i distinctly saw the naked rock of the drachenfels, with the broken tower tottering on the half-ruined crag, looked fearful and supernatural. by watching a minute, another flash exposed rolandseck, looking down upon me with melancholy solicitude. big drops began to patter on the leaves, and, still bent on sensations, i entered the buildings. the cloisters were gloomy, but i looked into the vast, smoked, and cavern-like kitchen, where the household were consuming the fragments of our dinner. a light shone from the door of a low cell, in a remote corner of the cloisters, and i stole silently to it, secretly hoping it would prove to be a supernatural glimmering above some grave. the three prussians were eating their cheese-parings and bread, by the light of a tallow candle, seated on a stone floor. it was short work to squeeze all the poetry out of this group. the storm thickened, and i mounted to the gallery, or the corridor above the cloisters, which communicated with our own rooms. here i paced back and forth, a moment, in obscurity, until, by means of a flash, i discovered a door, at one extremity of the passage. bent on adventure, i pushed and it opened. as there were only moments when anything could be seen, i proceeded in utter darkness, using great caution not to fall through a trap. had it been my happy fortune to be a foundling, who had got his reading and writing "by nature," i should have expected to return from the adventure a herzog,[ ] at least, if not an erz-herzog[ ] perhaps, by some inexplicable miracle of romance, i might have come forth the lawful issue of roland and the nun! [footnote : duke.] [footnote : arch-duke.] as it was, i looked for no more than sensations, of which the hour promised to be fruitful. i had not been a minute in the unknown region, before i found that, if it were not the abode of troubled spirits, it at least was worthy to be so. you will remember that i am not now dealing in fiction, but truth, and that, unlike those who "read when they sing, and sing when they read," i endeavour to be imaginative in poetry and literal in my facts. i am now dealing strictly with the latter, which i expect will greatly enhance the interest of this adventure. after taking half-a-dozen steps with extreme caution, i paused a moment, for the whole air appeared to be filled by a clatter, as if ten thousand bats' wings were striking against glass. this was evidently within the convent, while, without, the wind howled even louder than ever. my hand rested on something, i knew not what. at first i did not even know whether i was in the open air, or not, for i felt the wind, saw large spaces of dim light, and yet could distinguish that something like a vault impended over my head. presently a vivid flash of lightning removed all doubt. it flickered, seemed extinguished, and flared up again, in a way to let me get some distinct ideas of the _locus in quo_. i had clearly blundered into the convent chapel; not upon its pavement, which was on a level with the cloisters below, but into an open gallery, that communicated with the apartments of the nuns, and my hand was on the chair of the lady abbess, the only one that remained. the dim light came from the high arched windows, and the bats' wings were small broken panes rattling in the gale. but i was not alone. by the transient light i saw several grim figures, some kneeling, others with outstretched arms, bloody and seared, and one appeared to be in the confessional. at the sight of these infernal spectres, for they came and went with the successive flashes of the lightning, by a droll chain of ideas, i caught myself shouting, rather than singing--"ship ahoy! ship ahoy!--what cheer, what cheer?" in a voice loud as the winds. at last, here was a sensation! half-a-dozen flashes rendered me familiar with the diabolical-looking forms, and as i now knew where to look for them, even their grim countenances were getting to be familiar. at this moment, when i was about to address them in prose, the door by which i had entered the gallery opened slowly, and the withered face of an old woman appeared in a flash. the thunder came next, and the face vanished--"ship ahoy! ship ahoy!--what cheer, what cheer?" there was another pause--the door once more opened, and the face re-appeared. i gave a deep and loud groan; if you ask me why, i can only say, because it seemed to be wanting to the general effect of the scene and place. the door slammed, the face vanished, and i was alone again with the demons. by this time the gust was over i groped my way out of the gallery, stole through the corridor into my own room, and went to bed. i ought to have had exciting dreams, especially after the _liebfraumilch_, but, contrary to all rule, i slept like a postilion in a cock-loft, or a midshipman in the middle watch. the next morning at breakfast, a---- had a melancholy tale to relate; how the poor old crone, who has already been mentioned, had been frightened by the gust--how she stole to the chapel to mutter a prayer--how she opened the door of the gallery--how she heard strange sounds, and particularly certain groans--how she had dropped the candle--how the door had blown to, and she, miserable woman, had stolen to the bed of her (a----'s) maid, whom she had implored to give her shelter and protection for the night! we went in a body to look at the chapel, after breakfast, and it was admitted all round, that it was well suited to produce a sensation, in a thunder-storm, of a dark night, and that it was no wonder jetty's bed-fellow had been frightened. but now everything was calm and peaceful. the glass hung in fragments about the leaden sashes; the chair and _prière-dieu_ of the lady abbess had altogether an innocent and comfortable air, and the images, of which there were several, as horrible as a bungling workman and a bloody imagination could produce, though of a suffering appearance, were really insensible to pain. while we were making this reconnoissance a bugle sounded on the main, and looking out, we saw the oberwinter postilion coming round the nearest bend in the river. on this hint, we took our leave of the island, not forgetting to apply a little of the universal salve to the bruised spirit of the old woman whose dread of thunder had caused her to pass so comfortless a night. the day was before us, and we went leisurely up the stream, determined to profit by events. the old castles crowned every height, as you know, and as we had the carriage filled with maps and books, we enjoyed every foot of this remarkable road. at andernach we stopped to examine the ruins of the palace of the kings of austrasia, of whom you have heard before. the remains are considerable, and some parts of the walls would still admit of being restored. the palace has outlasted not only the kingdom, but almost its history. this edifice was partly built of a reddish freestone, very like that which is so much used in new york, a material that abounds on the rhine. between andernach and coblentz the road passes over a broad plain, at some little distance from the river, though the latter is usually in sight. it may give you some idea of its breadth, if i tell you that as we approached neuwied, it became a disputed point in the carriage, whether the stream flowed between us and the town, or not. still the rhine is a mighty river, and even imposing, when one contemplates its steady flow, and remembers its great length. it is particularly low at present, and is less beautiful than last year, the colours of the water being more common-place than usual. it was still early, though we had loitered a good deal by the way, to study views and examine ruins, when we drew near the fort-environed town of coblentz. the bridge across the moselle was soon passed, and we again found ourselves in this important station. the territory opposite the city belongs to the duchy of nassau, but enough has been ceded to the king of prussia to enable him to erect the celebrated ehrenbreitstein, which is one of the strongest forts in the world, occupying the summit of a rocky height, whose base is washed by the rhine, and whose outworks are pushed to all the neighbouring eminences. the position of coblentz, at the junction of the rhine and the moselle, the latter of which penetrates into the ancient electorate of treves, now belonging to prussia, may render it an important station to that power, but it does not strike me as military. the enemy that can seize any one of its numerous outworks, or forts, must essentially command the place. as at genoa, it seems to me that too much has been attempted to succeed. last night we had a convent that was a parallelogram of six hundred feet by three hundred, all to ourselves; while this night we were crowded into a small and uncomfortable inn that was overflowing with people. the house was noisy and echoish, and not inappropriately called the "three swiss." we crossed the river by the bridge of boats, and ascended the opposite hill to enjoy the view. there was another island up the stream, with a ruined convent, but unhappily it was not an inn. the rhine is a frontier for much of its course, washing the shores of france, darmstadt, bavaria, baden, nassau, prussia, &c., &c., for a long distance, and permanent bridges are avoided in most places. the floating bridges, being constructed of platforms laid on boats, that are united by clamps, can be taken apart, and withdrawn, to either shore, in an hour or two. we quitted coblentz at ten, and now began in truth to enter the fine scenery of the rhine. the mountains, or rather hills, for they scarcely deserve the former name, close upon the river, a short distance below the town, and from that moment, with very immaterial exceptions, the road follows the windings of the stream, keeping generally within a few yards of the water. the departures from this rule are not more than sufficient to break the monotony of a perfectly uniform scene. i have nothing new to tell you of the ruined castles--the villages and towns that crowd the narrow strand--the even and well-kept roads--the vine-covered hills--and the beautiful sinuosities of this great artery of europe. to write any thing new or interesting of this well-beaten path, one must linger days among the ruins, explore the valleys, and dive into the local traditions. we enjoyed the passage, as a matter of course, but it was little varied, until we drew near the frontier of prussia, when a castle, that stood beetling on a crag, immediately above the road, caught my eye. the building, unlike most of its sister edifices, appeared to be in good order; smoke actually arose from a beacon-grate that thrust itself out from an advanced tower, which was nearly in a perpendicular line above us, and the glazed windows and other appliances denoted a perfect and actual residence. as usual, the postilion was questioned. i understood him to say that the place was called the ritterstein, but the name is of little moment. it was a castle of the middle ages, a real hold of the rhine, which had been purchased by a brother of the king of prussia, who is now the governor of the rhenish provinces. this prince had caused the building to be restored, rigidly adhering to the ancient style of architecture, and to be furnished according to the usages of the middle ages, and baronial comfort; what was more, if the prince were not in his hold, as probably would prove not to be the case, strangers were permitted to visit it! here was an unexpected pleasure, and we hastened to alight, admiring the governor of rhenish provinces, his taste, and his liberality, with all our hearts. if you remember the satisfaction with which we visited the little hunting-tower of the poor prince de condé in , a building whose chief merit was its outward form and the fact that it had been built by the queen blanche, you can form some notion of the zeal with which we toiled up the steep ascent, on the present occasion. the path was good, tasteful, and sinuous; but the buildings stood on crags that were almost perpendicular on three of their sides, and at an elevation of near, or perhaps quite, two hundred feet above the road. we were greeted, on reaching the gate, not by a warder, but by the growl and bark of a ferocious mastiff, who would have been more in keeping at his post near a henroost, than at the portal of a princely castle. one "half-groom, half-seneschal," and who was withal a little drunk, however, soon came forth to receive us, and, after an exhortation to the dog in a dutch that was not quite as sonorous as the growl of the animal, he very civilly offered to do the honours of the place. we entered by a small drawbridge, but the buildings stand so near the brow of an impending rock, as to induce me to think this bridge has been made for effect, rather than to renew the original design. a good deal of the old wall remains, especially in the towers, which are mostly round, and all that has been done with the exterior, has been to fill the gaps, and to re-attach the balconies and the external staircases, which are of iron. i can no more give you a clear idea of the irregular form of this edifice with the pen, than you would obtain of the intricate tracery of gothic architecture, having never seen a gothic edifice, or studied a treatise on the style, by the same means. you will understand the difficulty when you are told that this castle is built on crags, whose broken summits are its foundations, and give it its form. the court is narrow and inconvenient, carriages never approaching it, but several pretty little terraces in front answer most of the purposes of courts, and command lovely glimpses of the rhine, in both directions. these terraces, like the towers and walls, were placed just where there was room, and the total absence of regularity forms one of the charms of the place. in the interior, the ancient arrangement has been studiously respected. the furniture is more than imitation, for we were told that much of it had been taken from the royal collections of berlin. by royal, you are not to suppose, however, that there are any attempts at royal state, but merely that the old castles of the barons and counts, whose diminutive territories have contributed to rear the modern state of prussia, have been ransacked for this end. the ritter saal, or knight's hall, though not large, is a curious room; indeed it is the only one in the entire edifice that can be called a good room, at all. the fire-place is huge,--so much so, that i walked into it with ease, and altogether in the ancient style. there is a good deal of curious armour hung up in this room, and it has many other quaint and rare objects. the chandelier was a circle formed by uniting buck's horns, which were fitted with lamps. there was almost too much good taste about this for feudal times, and i suspect it of being one of our modern embellishments; a material picture of the past, like a poem by scott. there may have been some anachronisms in the furniture, but we all use furniture of different ages, when we are not reduced to the fidgety condition of mere gentility. in one corner of the bitter saal there stood an ancient vessel to hold water, and beneath it was a porcelain trough to catch the drippings. the water was obtained by turning a cock. the chairs, tables, settees, &c. were all of oak. the coverings of the chairs, _i. e_. backs and bottoms, were richly embroidered in golden thread, the work of different royal personages. the designs were armorial bearings. all the stairs were quaint and remarkable, and, in one instance, we encircled the exterior of a tower, by one of them, at a giddy elevation of near three hundred feet above the river, the tower itself being placed on the uttermost verge of the precipice. from this tower the grate of the beacon thrust itself forward, and as it still smoked, i inquired the reason. we were told that the wad of a small piece of artillery, that had been fired as a signal to the steam-boat, had lodged in the grate, where it was still burning. the signal had been given to enable the prince and his family to embark, for they had not left the place an hour when we arrived. _tempora mutantur_ since the inhabitants of such a hold can go from bingen to coblentz to dine in a steamer. we saw the bed-rooms. the prince slept on an inner camp bedstead, but the ladies occupied bunks let into the walls, as in the olden time. the rooms were small, the bitter saal excepted, and low, though there were a good many of them. one or two were a little too much modernized, perhaps, though, on the whole, the keeping was surprisingly good. a severe critic might possibly have objected to a few anachronisms in this _romaunt_, but this in a fault that prince frederic shares in common with shakspeare and sir walter scott. i cannot recall a more delightful hour than that we passed in examining this curiosity, which was like handling and feeding, and playing with a living cameleopard, after having seen a dozen that were stuffed. * * * * * in reference to the controversy touching the expenses of the american government alluded to in page , of this volume, the following particulars may not be uninteresting. early in the day, the party who conducted the controversy for the other side began to make frequent allusions to certain americans--"_plusieurs honorables américains_" was the favourite expression--who, he alleged, had furnished him with information that went to corroborate the truth of his positions, and, as a matter of course, to invalidate the truth of ours. secret information reached me, also, that a part, at least, of our own legation was busy for the other side. at one period, m. perier, the premier of france, publicly cited the name of the minister, himself, at the tribune, as having given an opinion against those who conducted the controversy on the side of the american system, and in favour of our opponents. i understand mr. rives declares that m. perier had no authority either for using his name, or for attributing such sentiments to him; although the statement, as yet, stands uncontradicted before the world. you will probably be startled, when i tell you, that this is the third instance, within a few months, in which the public agents of america have been openly quoted as giving evidence against the action of the american system. the two other cases occurred in the british parliament, and, in one of them, as in this of mr. rives, the agent was quoted by name! it is not in my power to say whether these gentlemen have or have not been wrongfully quoted; but all cannot be right, when they are quoted at all. figure to yourself, for a moment, what would be the effect of a member of congress quoting the minister of a foreign government, at washington, as giving an opinion against a material feature of the polity he represented, and the disclaimers and discussions, not to say quarrels, that would succeed. how is it, that the representatives of exclusion are so much more faithful to the interests of their principals, than the representatives of liberal institutions? some will tell you that the condition of europe is critical; that our own relations with certain countries are delicate, and that it is expedient to temporize. in the first place, judging from my own observations, i do not believe there is any of the much-talked-of temporizing spirit about all this compliance, but that in most of the cases in which the agents of the government disown the distinguishing principles of the institutions (and these cases have got to be so numerous as to attract general attention, and to become the subject of sneering newspaper comments) it is "out of the fulness of the heart that the mouth speaketh." but, allowing that the first position is true, and that these gentlemen actually acquiesce for the sake of quiet, and with a view to advance what they conceive to be the interests of america, i shall maintain that the course is to the last degree impolitic and unworthy. our motto is to "ask nothing but what is right, and to submit to nothing that is wrong." apart from the sound morality of this sentiment, the wisdom of solomon could not better express the true policy of a nation situated like our own. it can hardly be pretended, that the "right" for which we ask ought to be purchased at the disgraceful price of abandoning the truth. this would be truly bargaining away a better right for another of less value. these gentlemen of expedients may beat their brains as much as they please, they will never invent any means so simple, and so sure of attaining the great ends included in the political maxim just quoted, as by adhering to the plain, direct dictates of common honesty. each trifling temporary advantage they may gain, will certainly and speedily be met by some contingent disadvantage, that will render them losers by the exchange.[ ] [footnote : as respects france, the result has shown the impolicy of the temporizing system. the french government, finding such a disposition to compliance in the agents that were placed near it, by america, has quite reasonably inferred that the mass at home acted on the same temporizing and selfish policy, and has treated a solemn compact, that contains a tardy and very insufficient reparation, for some of the greatest outrages that were ever committed by one civilized nation on the rights of another, as a matter quite within its own control. this consequence was foreseen by the writer, and foretold, in a letter that was written in , and published as far back as the year . it was only necessary to be on the spot, and to witness the contempt and indifference engendered by this miserable policy, to predict the events which have since occurred. the accidental situation of europe has favoured us, and we owe the tardy reparation that has been received more to russia than to ourselves.] to return to france and the controversy on finance, our opponents had at length the indiscretion to publish a document that they said had been furnished them by some of their "_honorables américains_" and by which they attempted to prove some one of their various positions; for by this time they had taken a great many, scarcely any two of which agreed. i have no doubt that this document, in the present instance, did come from "americans," though it originally came from captain basil hall. this gentleman had appended to his travels, a table, which purported to contain an arranged statement of the cost of the state governments. you will form some idea of the value of this table, as a political and statistical document, by an exposure of one or two of its more prominent errors. taking, for instance, our own state; the receipts from the _property_ of the state, such as its canal, common school, literature, and other funds, necessarily passing through the treasury, the sum total is made to figure against us, as the annual charge of government; which, by these means, is swelled to five times the real amount. every one knows that the receipts of the canals alone, the moment that the conditions of the loans effected to construct them shall admit of their application, will be more than sufficient to meet the entire charges of the state government twice over; but, by this mystified statement, we are made to appear the poorer for every dollar of properly we possess! and yet this is the nature of the evidence that some of our people furnished to the writers on the french side of this question; a side that, by their own showing, was the side of monarchy? but this is not all. a citizen has been found willing, under his own name, to espouse the argument of the french writers. of the validity of the statements presented by this gentleman (mr. leavitt harris, of new jersey), or of the force of his reasoning, i shall say nothing here, for his letter and our answers will sufficiently speak for themselves. the administration party, however, have thought the statements of mr. harris of sufficient importance to be published in a separate number of their literary organ, _la revue britannique_, and to dwell upon it in all their political organs, as the production of an american who has been intrusted by his government with high diplomatic missions, and who, consequently, is better authority than an unhonoured citizen like myself, who have no claims to attention beyond those i can assemble in my argument.[ ] the odds, as you will perceive, are greatly against me; for, in these countries, the public know little of the details of government, and it gives a high sanction to testimony of this nature to be able to say it comes from one, who is, or has been, connected with an administration. standing as i do, therefore, contradicted by the alleged opinion (true or false) of mr. rives, and by this statement of mr. harris, you will readily conceive that my situation here is not of the most pleasant nature. unsalaried and untrusted by my own government, opposed, in appearance at least, by its agents, i am thrown, for the vindication of truth, completely on my own resources, so far as any american succour has been furnished; and am reduced to the narrow consolation of making this simple record of the facts, which, possibly, at some future day, may answer the purpose of an humble protest in favour of the right. [footnote : the french writers, to make the most of their witness, exaggerated a little; for, at that time, mr. harris had never filled any higher diplomatic station than that of one left _chargé des affaires_ of the legation at st. petersburg, during the absence of mr. adams at ghent. shortly after the publication of this letter, however, he was appointed by the president and the senate of the united states of america to represent it at the king of the french, as if _expressly to give value to his testimony_.] this controversy has, at least, served to remove the mask from this government, on the subject of its disposition towards america and her institutions. to that pretended feeling i have never been even momentarily a dupe; but, failing of arguments--for no talents or ingenuity, after all, can make the wrong the right--most of the writers on the other side of the question have endeavoured to enliven their logic with abuse. i do not remember anything, in the palmy days of the quarterly review, that more completely descended to low and childish vituperation than some of the recent attacks on america. much of what has been written is unmitigated fraud, that has been meant to produce an impression on the public mind, careless of any other object than the end; but much also, i think, has really been imagined to be true, while it is, in fact, the offspring of the prejudices that studied misrepresentation has so deeply implanted in the opinions of europe. as we are not immaculate, of course, a greater portion of their charges is true than one could wish. some of the allegations are so absurd, that it may amuse you to hear them. the french consider the sabbath as a day of recreation, and after going to mass (a duty, by the way, that few besides women discharge in paris), the rest of the time is devoted to dancing and other amusements. with a view to act on the rooted opinions of the nation, on this subject, the american practice of running a chain across the street in front of the churches, to prevent the rattling of the carriages from disturbing the worship (a practice, by the way, that is quite as much european as it is american, and which has never even been very general among us), has been so represented as to induce the french to believe that our streets are in chains, and that even walking, or using a horse, or any vehicle of a sunday, is a prohibited thing. in addition to a variety of similar absurdities, we are boldly charged with most of the grosser vices, and, in some instances, intimations have been given that our moral condition is the natural consequence of our descent from convicted felons! to the american, who is a little prone to pride himself on being derived from a stock of peculiar moral purity, this imputation on his origin sounds extraordinary, and is apt to excite indignation. i dare say you are not prepared to learn, that it was a common, perhaps the prevalent opinion of europe, that our states were settled by convicts. that this, until very lately, was the prevalent opinion of europe, i entertain no doubt, though i think the few last years have produced some change in this respect; more of the popular attention most probably having been attracted to us, within this period, than during the two centuries that preceded it. you will smile to hear, that the common works of fiction have been the material agents in producing the change; information that has been introduced through the medium of amusement, making its way where the graver labours of the historian have never been able to penetrate. courier, the cleverest political writer france has produced, perhaps in any age, and a staunch republican, says, it would be quite as unjust to reproach the modern romans with being descended from ravishers and robbers, as it is to reproach the americans with being descended from convicts. he wishes to remove the stigma from his political brethren, but the idea of denying the imputation does not appear to have entered his mind. jefferson, also, alludes to the subject in some of his letters, apparently, in answer to a philosophical inquiry from one of his friends. he estimates the whole number of persons transported to the american colonies, under sentence from the courts, at about two thousand; and, taking into consideration their habits, he was of opinion, half a century ago, that their descendants did not probably exceed the original stock. i do not know where mr. jefferson obtained his data for this estimate, but he did not show his ordinary acuteness in ascribing the reason why the convicts left few or no issue. women were by far too much in request in america, during the first century or two of its political existence, to admit of the probability of men so openly stamped with infamy from obtaining wives, and i think there existed a physical inability for the propagation of the stock, since very few women were transported at any time. within the last few months, two instances have occurred in the chamber of deputies, of members quoting the example of america, in enforcing their arguments in favour of the possibility of forming respectable communities by the transportation of criminals! i had no intention of quoting any part of the controversy on finance, but, on reflection, it may serve a good purpose to give one or two extracts from the letter of mr. harris. in order that this may be done fairly, both as it respects the point at issue and the parties concerned, it will be necessary to make a brief preliminary explanation. m. sauliner, the principal writer of the other side, had made it a charge against our system, that nearly all the public money was derived from the customs, which he assumed was a bad mode of obtaining revenue. let this be as it might, my answer, was, that, as between france and america, there was no essential variance of system, the only difference lying in the fact that the one got _all_ the revenue it _could_ in this manner, and that the other got all it _wanted_. i added, a tax on exports excepted, that all the usual means of raising revenue known to other nations were available, at need, to the government of the united-states. to this latter opinion mr. harris took exceptions, saying, in effect, that the administration of mr. adams, the father, had been broken down by resorting to excises, stamp-acts, and direct taxation; and that since his unfortunate experiment, no administration in america had dreamed, even in time of war, of resorting to a mode of obtaining revenue which was so offensive as to produce the revolution of ! of course mr. harris was reminded, that the stamp-act, of which the colonists complained, was repealed many years before the epoch of ; that the revolution proceeded from a denial of the right in parliament to tax the colonies at all, and not from any particular imposition; and that excises and a stamp-act had all been resorted to, in the war of , without overturning the administration of mr. madison, or weakening that of his successor. but of what avail was a statement of this kind, in opposition to the allegations of one who appeared before europe in the character of an american diplomate? mr. harris enjoyed the double advantage of giving his testimony as one in the confidence of both the french and the american governments--an advantage that a quotation from the statute-books themselves could not overcome. mr. harris disposed of one knotty point in this controversy with so much ingenuity, that it deserves to be more generally known. our adversaries had brought the accusation of luxury against the american government, inasmuch as it was said to furnish both a town and a country palace for the president--a degree of magnificence little suspected in france. this point was not treated as a matter of any importance by us, though general lafayette had slightly and playfully alluded to it, once or twice. the words of mr. harris shall speak for themselves: "le général lafayette paraît surtout avoir été frappé de l'erreur dans laquelle est tombé l'auteur de la revue, à l'égard de la belle maison de campagne dont il a doté la présidence; et c'est peut-être là ce qui l'a porté à faire appel à m. le général bernard et à m. cooper." "l'erreur de l'auteur de la revue, au sujet de la maison de campagne du président, est de très peu d'importance. personne ne sait mieux que le général lafayette que la résidence affectée par la nation à son president, dans le district de columbia, est située de manière à jouir des avantages de la ville et de la campagne." here you perceive the intellectual _finesse_ with which we have had to contend. we are charged with the undue luxury of supporting a town and country house for a public functionary; and, disproving the fact, our opponents turn upon us, with a pernicious subtlety, and show, to such a condensing point has the effeminate spirit reached among us, that we have compressed the essence of two such establishments into one! mr. harris might have carried out his argument, and shown also that to such a pass of self-indulgence have we reached, that washington itself is so "situated as to enjoy the advantages of both town and country!" i have reason to think mr. harris gained a great advantage over us by this _tour de logique_. i had, however, a little better luck with another paragraph of his letter. in pages and of this important document, is the following; the state alluded to being pennsylvania, and the money mentioned the cost of the canals; which mr. harris includes in the cost of government, charging, by the way, not only the interest on the loans as an annual burden, but the loans themselves. i translate the text, the letter having appeared in french:--"the greater part of this sum, about twenty-two millions of dollars, has been expended during the last twelve years--that is to say, while the population _was half or two-thirds less than it is to-day_, offering an _average of not more than_ , _souls_, (the present population of pennsylvania being , , :) it follows, that each inhabitant has been _taxed_ about two and a half dollars, annually, for internal improvements during this period." i think, under ordinary circumstances, and as against a logician who did not appear supported by the confidence and favour of the government of the united states of america, i might have got along with this quotation, by showing, that , is neither the _half of_, nor _two-thirds less_ than , , ; that pennsylvania, so far from trebling, or even doubling her population in twelve years, had not doubled it in twenty; that pennsylvania, at the commencement of the twelve years named, had actually a population more than twenty-five per cent. greater than that which mr. harris gives as the average of a period, during which he affirms that this population has, at least, doubled; and by also showing that money borrowed and invested in public works, which are expected to return an ample revenue, cannot be presented as an annual charge against the citizen until he is called on to pay it. having said so much about the part that mr. harris has had in this controversy, i owe it to truth to add, that his course has, at least, the merit of frankness, and that he is just so much the more to be commended than that portion of our ex-agents and actual agents who have taken the same side of the question, covertly. i have dwelt on this subject at some length, because i think it is connected, not only with the truth, but with the character, of america. i have already told you the startling manner in which i was addressed by one of the first men in england, on the subject of the tone of our foreign agents; and since that time, occasions have multiplied, to learn the mortifying extent to which this unfavourable opinion of their sincerity has spread. if the united states has neither sufficient force nor sufficient dignity to maintain its interests abroad, without making these sacrifices of opinion and principle, we are in a worse condition than i had believed; but you will require no logic from me, to understand the effect that must be, and is produced, by this contradiction between the language that is studiously used--used to nauseous affectation--at home, and so much of the language that is used by too many of the agents abroad. i very well know that the government of the union guarantees neither the civil nor religious liberty of the citizen, except as against its own action; that any state may create an establishment, or a close hereditary aristocracy, to-morrow, if it please, the general provision that its polity must be that of a republic, meaning no more than that there should not be an hereditary monarchy; and that is quite within the limits of constitutional possibilities, that the base of the national representation should be either purely aristocratical, purely democratical, or a mixture of both. but in leaving this option to the states, the constitution has, in no manner, impaired the force of facts. the states have made their election, and, apart from the anomaly of a slave population, the fundamental feature of the general government is democratic. now, it is indisputably the privilege of the citizen to express the opinions of government that he may happen to entertain. the system supposes consultation and choice, and it would be mockery to maintain that either can exist without entire freedom of thought and speech. if any man prefer a monarchy to the present polity of the nation, it is his indefeasible right to declare his opinion, and to be exempt from persecution and reproach. he who meets such a declaration in any other manner than by a free admission of the right, does not _feel_ the nature of the institutions under which he lives, for the constitution, in its spirit, everywhere recognises the principle. but one, greater than the constitution of america, in divine ordinances, everywhere denies the right of a man to profess one thing and to mean another. there is an implied pledge given by every public agent that he will not misrepresent what he knows to be the popular sentiment at home, and which popular sentiment, directly or indirectly, has clothed his language with the authority it carries in foreign countries; and there is every obligation of faith, fidelity, delicacy, and discretion, that he should do no discredit to that which he knows to be a distinguishing and vital principle with his constituents. as respects our agents in europe, i believe little is hazarded in saying, that too many have done injury to the cause of liberty. i have heard this so often from various quarters of the highest respectability,[ ] it has been so frequently affirmed in public here, and i have witnessed so much myself, that, perhaps, the subject presents itself with more force to me, on the spot, than it will to you, who can only look at it through the medium of distance and testimony. i make no objection to a rigid neutrality in the strife of opinions that is going on here, but i call for the self-denial of concealing all predilections in favour of the government of one or of the few; and should any minister of despotism, or political exclusion, presume to cite an american agent as being of his way of thinking, all motives of forbearance would seem to disappear, and, if really an american in more than pretension, it appears to me the time would be come to vindicate the truth with the frankness and energy of a freeman. [footnote : in , the writer was in discourse with a person who had filled one of the highest political situations in europe, and he was asked who represented the united states at the court of ----. on being told, this person paused, and then resumed, "i am surprised that your government should employ that man. he has always endeavoured to ingratiate himself in my favour, by depreciating everything in his own country." but why name a solitary instance? deputies, members of parliament, peers of france and of england, and public men of half the nations of europe, have substantially expressed to the writer the same opinion, under one circumstance or another, in, perhaps, fifty different instances.] letter xiii. ferry across the rhine.--village of rudesheim.--the _hinter-hausen_ wine,--drunkenness.--neapolitan curiosity respecting america.--the rhenish wines enumerated.--ingelheim.--johannisberg.--conventual wine.--unseasonable praise.--house and grounds of johannisberg.--state of nassau.--palace at biberich.--the gardens.--wiesbaden.--its public promenade.--frankfort on the maine. dear ----, within an hour after we left the ritterstein, we were crossing the bridge that leads into bingen. like true _flaneurs_, we had not decided where to sleep, and, unlike _flaneurs_, we now began to look wistfully towards the other side of the rhine into the duchy of nassau. there was no bridge, but then there might be a ferry. beckoning to the postmaster, who came to the side of the carriage, i put the question. "certainly, as good a ferry as there is in germany."--"and can we cross with your horses?"--"ja--ja--we do it often." the affair was arranged in a minute. the leaders were led back to the stable, and with two horses we drove down to the water-side. a skiff was in readiness, and spreading a sprit-sail, we were in the middle of the stream before there was time for thought. in ten minutes we landed in the celebrated rheingau, and at the foot of a hill that was teeming with the vines of rudesheim. "charlemagne observing, from the window of his palace at ingelheim," says an old legend, "that the snow disappeared from the bluff above rudesheim earlier than from any of the neighbouring hills, caused the same to be planted with vines." what has become of charlemagne and his descendants, no one knows; but here are the progeny of his vines to the present hour. françois followed us in a few minutes with the carriage and horses, and we were soon comfortably housed in an inn, in the village of rudesheim. here, then, we were in the heart of the richest wine region in europe, perhaps in the world. i looked curiously at mine host, to see what effect this fact might have had on him, but he did nor appear to have abused the advantage. he told me there had just been a sale, at which i should have been most welcome; complained that much sour liquor was palmed off on the incredulous as being the pure beverage; and said that others might prefer johannisberger, but for his part, good _hinter-hausen_[ ] was good enough for him. "would i try a bottle?" the proposition was not to be declined, and with my dinner i did try a bottle of his oldest and best; and henceforth i declare myself a convert to _rudesheimer hinter-hausen._ one cannot drink a gallon of it with impunity, as is the case with some of the french wines; but i feel persuaded it is the very article for our _market_, to use the vernacular of a true manhattanese. it has body to bear the voyage, without being the fiery compound that we drink under the names of madeira and sherry. [footnote : _behind the houses_; so termed, from the vines standing on lower land than the hill, behind the village.] it is a singular fact, that in none but wine growing countries are the true uses of the precious gift understood. in them, wine is not a luxury, but a necessary; its use is not often abused, and its beneficial effect can scarcely be appreciated without being witnessed. i do not mean that there is no drunkenness in these countries, for there is probably as much of the vice in france, germany, italy, and switzerland, as there is with us; but they who drink hard generally drink some of the vile compounds which exist everywhere under the names of brandy, _agua diente_, or something else. i was one day crossing the bay of naples in my hired craft, la divina providenza, rowed by a crew of twenty-one men who cost me just the price of a carriage and horses for the same time, when the _padrone_, who had then been boating about with us several weeks, began to be inquisitive concerning america, and our manner of living, more especially among the labouring classes. the answers produced a strong sensation in the boat; and when they heard that labourers received a ducat a-day for their toil, half of the honest fellows declared themselves ready to emigrate. "_et, il vino, signore; quale è il prezzo del vino?_" demanded the _padrone_. i told him wine was a luxury with us, and beyond the reach of the labourer, the general sneer that followed immediately satisfied me that no emigrants would go from la divina providenza. it is scarcely necessary to tell one of your habits, that the wines we call hock are rhenish, and that each properly bears the name of its own vintage. this rule prevails everywhere, the names of claret, burgundy, and sherry, being unknown in france and spain. it is true the french have their burgundy wines, and the spaniards their xeres wines; but _vin de bourgogne_ includes liquors of different colours and very different qualities. the same is true of other places. what we call claret the french term bordeaux wines; though _clairet_ is an old french word, still occasionally used, signifying a thin weak potation. the rheingau, or the part of the nassau in which we now are, produces the best wines of the rhine. the principal vineyards are those of johannisberg, hochheim, (whence the name of hock,) geissenheim, steinberg, and rudesheim johannisberg is now the property of prince metternich; geissenheim belongs to the count of ingelheim; and hochheim and rudesheim are villages, the vines having different proprietors. i do not know the situation of steinberg. the best wine of johannisberg has the highest reputation; that of geissenheim is also delicious, and is fast growing in value; hochheimer _dom_, (or houses growing near the village,) is also in great request; and of the _hinter-hausen_ of rudesheim you have already heard. dr. somerville once told me he had analysed the pure johannisberger, and that it contained less acidity than any other wine he knew. the steinberger is coming into favour; it is the highest flavoured of all the german wines, its perfume or _bouquet_, being really too strong. rudesheim was a roman station, and it is probable that its wines date from their government. there is still a considerable ruin, belonging, i believe to the count of ingelheim, that is supposed to have been built by the romans, and which has been partially fitted up by its proprietor, as a place of retreat, during the vintage. this is truly a classical _villagiatura_. it was curious to examine these remains, which are extensive, so soon after going over the feudal castle, and it must be confessed that the sons of the south maintained their long established superiority here, as elsewhere. ingelheim, where charlemagne had a palace, and where some pretend he was born, is in plain view on the other side of the river, but no traces of the palace are visible from this spot. such is the difference between the false and the true roman. there is also a ruin, a small high circular tower, that is connected with our inn, forming even one of our own rooms, and which is very ancient, probably as ancient as the great frank. we left rudesheim after breakfast, driving quite near to the hill of geissenheim, and quitting the main road, for the purpose of visiting johannisberg, which lies back a mile from the great route. we wound our way around the hill, which on three sides is shaped like a cone, and on the other is an irregular ridge, and approached the house by the rear. if you happen to have a bottle of the wine of this vineyard (real or reputed, for in this respect the false simon pure is quite as likely to be true as the real,) you will find a sufficiently good resemblance of this building on its label. i can give you no other reason why this wine was formerly so little known, while that of hochheim had so great a reputation, than the fact that the mountain, house, and vines were all the property of a religious community, previously to the french revolution, and that the monks probably chose to drink their own liquors. in this particular they were unlike the people of brie; for walking one day with lafayette, over his estate at la grange, i expressed surprise at seeing some labourers making wine. "oh, yes, my dear friend," returned the general, "we do _make_ wine here, but then we take very good care not to _drink_ it." the monks of johannisberg most likely both made wine and drank it. johannisberg has changed owners several times. shortly after our return from the journey on the rhine of last year, chance placed me, at paris, at table between the _chargé d'affaires_ of nassau and the duc de valmy. the former observed that i had lately been in nassau, and asked how i liked the country. under such circumstances one would wish to praise, and as i could honestly do so, i expressed my admiration of what i had seen. among other things, i spoke of its rich vineyards, and, as a matter of course, began to extol that of johannisberg. the more i praised, the graver the _diplomate_ looked, until thinking i had not come up to his own feelings, i began to be warmer still in my expressions. a touch under the table silenced me. the _chargé_ soon after gave me to understand that johannisberg produced only sour grapes for my neighbour, as napoleon had given the estate to the first duke, and the allies had taken it away from his son. this was not the first time i have had occasion to see the necessity of being guarded how one speaks, lest he offend some political sensibility or other in this quarter of the world. the present owner of johannisberg has fitted up the house, which is quite spacious, very handsomely, though without gorgeousness, and there is really a suite of large and commodious rooms. i saw few or no signs of the monastery about the building. the vines grow all around the conical part of the hill quite up to the windows. the best wine is made from those near the house, on the south-eastern exposure. the view was beautiful and very extensive, and all that the place wants to make it a desirable residence is shade; an advantage, however, that cannot be enjoyed on the same spot in common with good wine. the nakedness of the ground impaired the effect of the dwelling. the owner is seldom here, as is apparent by the furniture, which, though fresh and suitable, does not extend to the thousand little elegancies that accumulate in a regular abode. the books say that this celebrated vineyard contains sixty-three acres, and this is near the extent i should give it, from the eye. the produce is stated at twenty-five hogsheads, of thirteen hundred bottles each. some of the wines of the best vintages sell as high as four and even five dollars a bottle. i observed that the soil was mixed with stone much decomposed, of a shelly appearance, and whitish colour. the land would be pronounced unsuited to ordinary agriculture, i suspect, by a majority of farmers. i bought a bottle of wine from a servant who professed to have permission to sell it. the price was two florins and a half, or a dollar, and the quality greatly inferior to the bottle that, for the same money, issued from the cellar of the host at rudesheim. it is probable the whole thing was a deception, though the inferior wines of johannisberg are no better than a vast deal of the other common wine of the neighbourhood. from johannisberg we descended to the plain and took the road to biberich. this is a small town on the banks of the rhine, and is the residence of the duke. nassau figures in the tables of the germanic confederation as the fourteenth state, having three hundred and thirty-eight thousand inhabitants, and furnishing three thousand troops as its contingent. the population is probably a little greater. the reigning family is of the ancient line of nassau, from a junior branch of which i believe the king of holland is derived; the duchess is a princess of wurtemberg, and a sister of the grand-duchess helena, of whom i have already spoken so often. this little state is one of the fabricated sovereignties of , being composed of divers fragments, besides the ancient possessions of the family. in short, it would seem to be intended for the government and better management of a few capital vineyards. nassau has been much agitated of late with liberal opinions, though the government is already what it is the fashion to term representative, on this side of the atlantic. it is the old theory, that small states can better support a popular form of government than a large state. this is a theory in which i have no faith, and one, in my opinion, that has been fabricated to suit the accidental situation of europe. the danger of popular governments are popular excesses, such as those truculent errors that men fall into by a misconception of truth, misstatements, ignorance of their interests, and the sort of village-like gossip which causes every man to think he is a judge of character, when he is not even a judge of facts. the abuses of absolutism are straightforward, dogged tyranny, in which the rights of the mass are sacrificed to the interests and policy of a prince and his favourites. now, in a large country, popular excesses in one part are checked and repressed by the power and interests of the other parts. it is not an easy matter to make a popular error, that leads to popular excesses, extend simultaneously over a very extended surface; and they who are tranquil, control, and finally influence, those who are excited. in a small state, absolutism is held under the checks of neighbourhood and familiarity. men disregard accidents and crime in a capital, while they reason on them and act on them in the country. just so will the sovereign of a small state feel and submit to the authority of an active public opinion. if i must have liberty, let it come in large draughts like learning, and form an atmosphere of its own; and if i must be the subject of despotic power, heaven send that my sovereign be a small prince. the latter is on the supposition that i am an honest man, for he who would rise by servility and a sacrifice of his principles, had better at once choose the greatest monarch he can find for a master. small states are usually an evil in themselves, but i think they are least so when the authority is absolute. the people of nassau had better be moderate in their progress, while they of france should press on to their purpose; and yet the people of nassau will probably be the most urgent, simply because the power with which they have to contend is so feeble, for men rarely take the "just medium," though they are always talking about it. we entered the palace at biberich, which, without being larger than usual, is an edifice well worth viewing. we could not but compare this abode with the president's house, and certainly, so far as taste and elegance are concerned, the comparison is entirely to the disadvantage of us americans. it is easy to write unmeaning anathemas against prodigal expenditures, and extorting the hard earnings of the poor, on such occasions, but i do not know that the castle of biberich was erected by any means so foul. the general denunciation of everything that does not happen to enter into our own system, has no more connexion with true republicanism than cant has to do with religion. abuses of this nature have existed beyond dispute, and the public money, even among ourselves, is not always honestly or prudently expended; but these are the errors inseparable from human nature, and it is silly to quarrel with all the blandishments of life until we can find faultless substitutes. the simple fact that a nation like our own has suffered an entire generation to go by with its chief magistrate living in a house surrounded by grounds almost as naked as a cornfield, while it proves nothing in favour of its economy, goes to show either that we want the taste and habits necessary to appreciate the privation, (as is probably the case), or the generosity to do a liberal act, since it is notorious that we possess the means. the gardens of biberich are extensive and beautiful. we are proofs ourselves that they are not reserved, in a niggardly spirit, for the exclusive uses of a few, nor in truth are those of any other prince in europe where we have been. the interior of the house is much ornamented by a very peculiar marble that is found in the duchy, and which produces a good effect. a circular hall in the centre of the building, surmounted by a dome, is rather striking, from having a colonnade of this material. the family was here, and the preparations were making for dinner in one of the rooms; the whole style of the domestic economy being that of a nobleman of liberal means. the house was very quiet, and we saw but few menials, though we met two of the children, accompanied by a governess, in the grounds. biberich and the castle, or palace, stand immediately on the banks of the river, which, between bingen and mayence, is straggling and well covered with islands, having an entire breadth of near half a mile. the effect, when seen from the neighbouring heights, is not unlike that of a lake. from biberich we diverged directly into the interior of the rheingau, taking the road to wiesbaden, which is a watering-place of some note, and the seat of government of the duchy. we reached it early, for it is no great matter to pass from the frontiers of one of these small states into its centre, ordered dinner, and went out to see the lions. wiesbaden has little to recommend it by nature, its waters excepted. it stands in a funnel rather than a valley, and it is said to be excessively hot in summer, though a pleasant winter residence. i do not remember a place that so triumphantly proves how much may be made out of a little, as the public promenade of wiesbaden. the springs are nearly, or perhaps quite a mile from the town, the intervening land being a gentle inclination. from the springs, a rivulet, scarce large enough to turn a village mill, winds its way down to the town. the banks of this little stream have been planted, artificial obstructions and cascades formed, paths cut, bridges thrown across the rivulet, rocks piled, etc., and by these simple means, one walks a mile in a belt of wood a few rods wide, and may fancy himself in a park of two thousand acres. ten years would suffice to bring such a promenade to perfection, and yet nothing like it exists in all america! one can surely smoke cigars, drink congress water, discuss party politics, and fancy himself a statesman, whittle, clean his nails in company and never out of it, swear things are good enough for him without having known any other state of society, squander dollars on discomfort, and refuse cents to elegance and convenience, because he knows no better, and call the obliquity of taste patriotism, without enjoying a walk in a wood by the side of a murmuring rill! he may, beyond dispute, if such be his sovereign pleasure, do all this, and so may an esquimaux maintain that whale's blubber is preferable to beefsteaks. i wonder that these dogged and philosophical patriots do not go back to warlocks, scalps, and paint! the town of wiesbaden, like all german towns of any consequence i have ever been in, cologne excepted, is neat and clean. it is also well-built, and evidently improving. you may have heard a good deal of the boulevards and similar places of resort, in the vicinity of french towns, but as a whole, they are tasteless and barren-looking spots. even the champs elysées, at paris, have little beauty of themselves, for landscape gardening is but just introduced into france; whereas, to me, it would seem that the germans make more use of it, in and near their towns, than the english. we left wiesbaden next morning, after enjoying its baths, and went slowly up to frankfort on the maine, a distance of about twenty miles. here we took up our old quarters at the white swan, a house of a second-rate reputation, but of first-rate civility, into which chance first threw me; and, as usual, we got a capital dinner and good wine. the innkeeper, in honour of germany, caused a dish, that he said was national and of great repute, to be served to us pilgrims. it was what the french call a _jardinière_, or a partridge garnished with cabbage, carrots, turnips, etc. i seized the opportunity to put myself _au courant_ of the affairs of the world, by going to one of the reading-rooms, that are to be found all over germany, under the names of _redoutes, casinos_, or something of that sort. pipes appear to be proscribed in the _casino_ of frankfort, which is altogether a genteel and respectable establishment. as usual, a stranger must be introduced. letter xiv. boulevards of frankfort.--political disturbances in the town.--_le petit savoyard_.--distant glimpse of homberg.--darmstadt.--the bergestrasse.--heidelberg.--noisy market-place.--the ruins and gardens.--an old campaigner.--valley of the neckar.--heilbronn.--ludwigsberg.--its palace.--the late queen of wurtemberg.--the birthplace of schiller.--comparative claims of schiller and goethe.--stuttgart.--its royal residences.--the princess of hechingen.--german kingdoms.--the king and queen of wurtemberg.--sir walter scott.--tubingen.--ruin of a castle of the middle ages.--hechingen.--village of bahlingen.--the danube.--the black forest.--view from a mountain on the frontier of baden.--enter switzerland. dear ----, i have little new to tell you of frankfort. it appeared to be the same busy, clean, pretty, well-built town, on this visit, as it did at the two others. we examined the boulevards a little more closely than before, and were even more pleased with them than formerly. i have already explained to you that the secret of these tasteful and beautiful walks, so near, and sometimes in the very heart (as at dresden) of the large german towns, is in the circumstance of the old fortifications being destroyed, and the space thus obtained having been wisely appropriated to health and air. leipsig, in particular, enjoys a picturesque garden, where formerly there stood nothing but grim guns, and frowning ramparts. frankfort has been the subject of recent political disturbances, and, i heard this morning from a banker, that there existed serious discontents all along the rhine. as far as i can learn, the movement proceeds from a desire in the trading, banking, and manufacturing classes, the _nouveaux riches_, in short, to reduce the power and influence of the old feudal and territorial nobility. the kingly authority, in our time, is not much of itself, and the principal question has become, how many or how few, or, in short, _who_ are to share in its immunities. in this simple fact lies the germ of the revolution in france, and of reform in england. money is changing hands, and power must go with it. this is, has been, and ever will be the case, except in those instances in which the great political trust is thrown confidingly into the hands of all; and even then, in half the practical results, money will cheat them out of the advantages. where the pressure is so great as to produce a recoil, it is the poor against the rich; and where the poor have rights to stand on, the rich are hard at work to get the better of the poor. such is the curse of adam, and man himself must be changed before the disease can be cured. all we can do, under the best constructed system, is to mitigate the evil. we left frankfort at eleven, declining the services of a celebrated _voiturier_, called _le petit savoyard_, whom françois introduced, with a warm recommendation of fidelity and zeal. these men are extensively known, and carry their _soubriquets_, as ships do their names. the little savoyard had just discharged a cargo of _miladies_, bound to england, after having had them on his charter-party eighteen months, and was now on the look-out for a return freight. as his whole equipments were four horses, the harness, and a long whip, he was very desirous of the honour of dragging my carriage a hundred leagues or so, towards any part of the earth whither it might suit my pleasure to proceed. but it is to be presumed that _miladies_ were of full weight, for even françois, who comes of a family of _voituriers_, and has a fellow-feeling for the craft, is obliged to admit that the cattle of _le petit_ appear to have been overworked. this negotiation occupied an hour, and it ended by sending the passport to the post. we were soon beyond the tower that marks the limits of the territory of frankfort, on the road to darmstadt. while mounting an ascent, we had a distant glimpse of the town of homberg, the capital and almost the whole territory of the principality of hesse homberg; a state whose last sovereign had the honour of possessing an english princess for a wife. truly there must be something in blood, after all; for this potentate has but twenty-three thousand subjects to recommend him! darmstadt is one of those towns which are laid out on so large a scale as to appear mean. this is a common fault, both in germany and america; for the effect of throwing open wide avenues, that one can walk through in five minutes, is to bring the intention into ludicrous contrast with the result. mannheim is another of these abortions. the disadvantage, however, ends with the appearance, for darmstadt is spacious, airy, and neat; it is also well-built. the ancient landgraves of hesse darmstadt have become grand dukes, with a material accession of territory, the present sovereign ruling over some , subjects. the old castle is still standing in the heart of the place, if a town which is all artery can be said to have any heart, and we walked into its gloomy old courts, with the intention of examining it; but the keeper of the keys was not to be found. there is a modern palace of very good architecture near it, and, as usual, extensive gardens, laid out, so far as we could perceive from the outside, in the english taste. a short distance from darmstadt, the bergestrasse (mountain road) commences. it is a perfect level, but got its name from skirting the foot of the mountain, at an elevation to overlook the vast plain of the palatinate; for we were now on the verge of this ancient territory, which has been merged in the grand duchy of baden by the events of the last half century. i may as well add, that baden is a respectable state, having nearly , , subjects. the bergestrasse has many ruins on the heights that overlook it, though the river is never within a league or two of the road. here we found postilions worthy of their fine track, and, to say the truth, of great skill. in germany you get but one postilion with four horses, and, as the leaders are always at a great distance from those on the pole, it is an exploit of some delicacy to drive eight miles an hour, riding the near wheel-horse, and governing the team very much by the use of the whip. the cattle are taught to travel without blinkers, and, like men to whom political power is trusted, they are the less dangerous for it. it is your well-trained animal, that is checked up and blinded, who runs away with the carriage of state, as well as the travelling carriage, and breaks the neck of him who rides. it was quite dark when we crossed the bridge of the neckar, and plunged into the crowded streets of heidelberg. notwithstanding the obscurity, we got a glimpse of the proud old ruin overhanging the place, looking grand and sombre in the gloom of night. the view from the windows next morning was one of life in the extreme. the principal market-place was directly before the inn, and it appeared as if half the peasants of the grand duchy had assembled there to display their fruits and vegetables. a market is always a garrulous and noisy place; but when the advantage of speaking german is added to it, the perfection of confusion is obtained. in all _good_ society, both men and women speak in subdued voices, and there is no need to allude to them; but when one descends a little below the _élite_, strength of lungs is rather a german failing.[ ] we went to the ruins while the fogs were still floating around the hill-tops. i was less pleased with this visit than with that of last year, for the surprise was gone, and there was leisure to be critical. on the whole, these ruins are vast rather than fine, though the parts of the edifice that were built in the elizabethan taste have the charm of quaintness. there is also one picturesque tower; but the finest thing certainly is the view from the garden-terrace above. an american, who remembers the genial soil and climate of his country, must mourn over the want of taste that has left, and still leaves, a great nation (numerically great, at least) ignorant of the enjoyment of those delicious retreats! as nelson once said, "want of frigates" would be found written on his heart were he to die, i think "want of gardens" would be found written on mine. our cicerone, on this occasion, was a man who had served in america, during the last war, as one of the corps of de watteville. he was born in baden, and says that a large portion of the corps were germans. he was in most of the battles of the niagara, and shook his head gravely when i hinted at the attack on fort erie. according to his account, the corps suffered exceedingly in the campaign of , losing the greater portion of its men. i asked him how he came to fight us, who had never done him any harm; and he answered that napoleon had made all europe soldiers or robbers, and that he had not stopped to examine the question of right. [footnote : until the revolution of , the writer never met but one noisy woman in paris. since that period, however, one hears a little more of the _tintamarre_ of the _comptoir_.] we drove up the valley of the neckar, after a late breakfast, by an excellent road, and through a beautiful country, for the first post or two. we then diverged from the stream, ascended into a higher portion of undulating country, that gradually became less and less interesting, until, in the end, we all pronounced it the tamest and least inviting region we had yet seen in europe. i do not say that the country was particularly sterile, but it was common-place, and offered fewer objects of interest than any other we had yet visited. until now, our destination was not settled, though i had almost decided to go to nuremberg, and thence, by ratisbonne and the danube, to vienna; but we all came to the opinion that the appearance of things towards the east was too dreary for endurance. we had already journeyed through bavaria, from its southern to its northern end, and we wished to vary the scene. a member of its royal family had once told me that wurtemberg offered but little for the traveller, at the same time saying a good word for its capital. when one gets information from so high authority it is not to be questioned, and towards stuttgart it was determined to turn our faces. at heilbronn, therefore, we changed direction from east to south. this heilbronn was a quaint old german town, and it had a few of its houses painted on the exterior, like those already described to you in switzerland. weinsberg, so celebrated for its wives, who saved their husbands at a capitulation, by carrying them out of the place on their backs, is near this town. as there are no walled towns in america, and the example could do no good, we did not make a pilgrimage to the spot. that night we slept at a little town called bessingheim, with the neckar, which we had again met at heilbronn, murmuring beneath our windows. the next morning we were off betimes to avoid the heat, and reached ludwigsberg to breakfast. here the scene began to change. troops were at drill in a meadow, as we approached the town, and the postilion pointed out to us a portly officer at the duke of wurtemberg, a cadet of the royal family, who was present with his staff. drilling troops, from time immemorial, has been a royal occupation in germany. it is, like a manhattanese talking of dollars, a source of endless enjoyment. ludwigsberg is the windsor, the st. denis, of the princes of wurtemberg. there an extensive palace, the place of sepulture, and a town of five or six thousand inhabitants. we went through the former, which is large and imposing, with fine courts and some pretty views, but it is low and teutonic--in plain english, squat--like some of the old statues in armour that one sees in the squares of the german towns. there is a gallery and a few good pictures, particularly a rembrandt or two. one of the latter is in the same style as the "tribute-money" that i possess, and greatly encourages me as to the authenticity of that picture. the late queen of wurtemberg was the princess royal of england, and she inhabited this palace. being mistaken for english, we were shown her apartments, in which she died lately, and which were exactly in the condition in which she left them. she must have had strong family attachments, for her rooms were covered with portraits of her relatives. the king of england was omnipresent; and as for her own husband, of whom, by the way, one picture would have been quite sufficient for any reasonable woman, there were no less than six portraits of him in a single room! as one goes north, the style of ornamenting rooms is less graceful, and the german and english palaces all have the same formal and antiquated air. ludwigsberg does not change the rule, though there was an unusual appearance of comfort in the apartments of the late queen, which had evidently been anglicised. while we were standing at a balcony, that overlooks a very pretty tract of wooded country and garden, the guide pointed to a hamlet, whose church tower was peering above a bit of forest, in a distant valley, or rather swell. "does mein herr see it?" "i do--it is no more than a sequestered hamlet, that is prettily enough placed."--it was marbach, the birth-place of schiller! few men can feel less of the interest that so commonly attaches to the habits, habitations, and personal appearance of celebrated men, than myself. the mere sight of a celebrity never creates any sensation. yet i do not remember a stronger conviction of the superiority enjoyed by true over factitious greatness, than that which flashed on my mind, when i was told this fact. that sequestered hamlet rose in a moment to an importance that all the appliances and souvenirs of royalty could not give to the palace of ludwigsberg. poor schiller! in my eyes he is the german genius of the age. goethe has got around him one of those factitious reputations that depend as much on gossip and tea-drinking as on a high order of genius, and he is fortunate in possessing a _coddled celebrity_--for you must know there is a fashion in this thing, that is quite independent of merit--while schiller's fame rests solely on its naked merits. my life for it, that it lasts the longest, and will burn brightest in the end. the schools, and a prevalent taste and the caprice of fashion, can make goethes in dozens, at any time; but god only creates such men as schiller. the germans say, _we_ cannot feel goethe; but after all, a translation is perhaps one of the best tests of genius, for though bad translations abound, if there is stuff in the original, it will find its way even into one of these. from ludwigsberg to stuttgart it is but a single post, and we arrived there at twelve. the appearance of this place was altogether different from what we had expected. although it contains near , inhabitants, it has more the air of a thriving swiss town, than that of a german capital, the abodes and gardens of the royal family excepted. by a swiss town, i do not mean either such places as geneva, and berne, and zurich, but such towns as herisau and lucerne, without including the walls of the latter. it stands at the termination of an irregular valley, at the base of some mountains, and, altogether, its aspect, rustic exterior, and position, took us by surprise. the town, however, is evidently becoming more european, as they say on this side the atlantic, every day; or, in other words, it is becoming less peculiar. at and around the palaces there is something already imposing. the old feudal castle, which i presume is the cradle of the house of wurtemberg, stands as a nucleus for the rest of the town. it is a strong prison-like looking pile, composed of huge round towers and narrow courts, and still serves the purposes of the state, though not as a prison, i trust. another hotel, or royal residence, is quite near it on one side, while the new palace is close at hand on another. the latter is a handsome edifice of italian architecture, in some respects not unlike the luxembourg at paris, and i should think, out of all comparison the best royal residence to be found in the inferior states of germany, if not in all germany, those of prussia and austria excepted. we took a carriage, and drove through the grounds to a new classical little palace, that crowns an eminence at their other extremity, a distance of a mile or two. we went through this building, which is a little in the style of the trianons, at versailles; smaller than le grand trianon, and larger than le petit trianon. this display of royal houses, after all, struck us as a little dis portioned to the diminutive size and poverty of the country. the last is nothing but a _maison de plaisance_, and is well enough if it did not bring taxation with it; nor do i know that it did. most of the sovereigns have large private fortunes, which they are entitled to use the same as others, and which are well used in fostering elegant tastes in their subjects. there is a watering-place near the latter house, and preparations were making for the king to dine there, with a party of his own choosing. this reminded us of our own dinner, which had been ordered at six, and we returned to eat it. while sitting at a window, waiting the service, a carriage that drove up attracted my attention. it was a large and rather elegant post chariot, as much ornamented as comported with the road, and having a rich blazonry. a single female was in it, with a maid and valet in the rumble. the lady was in a cap, and, as her equipage drove up, appeared to be netting. i have frequently met german families travelling along the highway in this sociable manner, apparently as much at home as when they were under the domestic roof. this lady, however, had so little luggage, that i was induced to enquire who it might be. she was a princess of hechingen, a neighbouring state, that had just trotted over probably to take tea with some of her cousins of wurtemberg. these _quasi_ kingdoms are so diminutive that this sort of intercourse is very practicable, and (a pure conjecture) it may be that german etiquette, so notoriously stiff and absurd, has been invented to prevent the intercourse from becoming too familiar. the mediatising system, however, has greatly augmented the distances between the capitals, though, owing to some accidental influence, there is still here and there a prince, that might be spared, whose territories have been encircled, without having been absolutely absorbed, by those who have been gainers by the change. bavaria has risen to be a kingdom of four millions of souls, in this manner; and the dukes of wurtemberg have become kings, though on a more humble scale, through the liberality or policy of napoleon. the kingdom of the latter contains the two independent principalities of hohenzollern (spared on account of some family alliances, i believe) in its bosom. one of the princes of the latter family is married to a mademoiselle murat, a niece of joachim. after dinner we went again to the garden, where we accidentally were witnesses of the return of the royal party from their pic-nic. the king drove the queen in a pony phaeton, at the usual pace of monarchs, or just as fast as the little animals could put foot to the ground. he was a large and well-whiskered man, with a strong family likeness to the english princes. the attendants were two mounted grooms, in scarlet liveries. a cadet, a dark, italian-looking personage, came soon after in full uniform, driving himself, also, in a sort of barouche. after a short time we were benefited by the appearance of the cooks and scullions, who passed in a _fourgon_, that contained the remnants and the utensils. soon after we got a glimpse of the queen and three or four of the daughters, at a balcony of the palace, the lady of the net-work being among them. they all appeared to be fine women. at the inn i heard with regret that sir walter scott, had passed but two days before. he was represented as being extremely ill; so much so, indeed, as to refuse to quit his carriage, where he kept himself as much as possible out of view. we left stuttgart early the following morning, and as the carriage wound up the mountain that overlooks the town, i thought the place one of singular incongruities. the hill-sides are in vineyards; the palace, in excellent keeping, was warm and sunny; while the old feudal-looking towers of the castle, rudely recalled the mind to ancient germany, and the swissish habitations summoned up the images of winter, snows, and shivering february. still i question, if a place so sheltered ever endures much cold. the town appears to have been built in the nook it occupies, expressly to save fuel. we met the neckar again, after crossing a range of wooded mountain, and at tubingen we once more found a city, a university, the remains of feodality, redoutes, pipes, and other german appliances. here we breakfasted, and received a visit from a young countryman, whose parents, germans, i believe, had sent him hither to be educated. he will, probably return with a good knowledge of greek, perfect master of metaphysics and the pipe, extravagant in his political opinions, a sceptic in religion, and with some such ideas of the poetry of thought, as a new england dancing-master has of the poetry of motion, or a teacher of psalmody, of the art of music. after all, this is better than sending a boy to england, whence he would come back with the notions of sir william blackstone to help to overturn or pervert his own institutions, and his memory crammed with second-hand anecdotes of lords and ladies. we labour under great embarrassments on this point of education, for it is not easy to obtain it, suited equally to the right, and to our own peculiar circumstances, either at home or abroad. at home we want science, research, labour, tone, manners, and time; abroad we get the accumulated prejudices that have arisen from a factitious state of things; or, what is perhaps worse, their reaction, the servility of castes, or the truculence of revolution. about a post beyond tubingen, a noble ruin of a castle of the middle ages appeared in the distance, crowning the summit of a high conical eminence. these were the finest remains we had seen in a long time, and viewed from the road, they were a beautiful object, for half an hour. this was the castle of hohenzollern, erected about the year , and the cradle of the house of brandenburg. this family, some pretend, was derived from the ancient dukes of alsace, which, if true would give it the same origin as those of austria and baden; but it is usual, and probably much safer, to say that the counts of hohenzollern were its founders. we must all stop somewhere short of adam. i was musing on the chances that have raised a cadet, or a younger branch, of the old feudal counts who had once occupied this hold, to the fifth throne in europe, when we entered an irregular and straggling village of some souls, that was not, by any means, as well built as one of our own towns of the same size. a sign over a door, such as would be occupied by a thriving trader with us, with "department of war" on it, induced me to open my eyes, and look about me. we were in hechingen, the capital of hohenzollern-hechingen, an independent state, with a prince of its own; who is the head of his family, in one sense, and its tail in another; there being, besides the king of prussia, a prince of hohenzollern-sigmaringen adjoining, who is his junior in rank, and his better in power; having some or , subjects, while he of hechingen has but , . on ascending a hill in the place itself, we passed an unfinished house, all front, that stood on the street, with no grounds of any beauty near it, and which certainly was not as large, nor nearly as well constructed, as one of our own principal country-houses. this building, we were told, was intended for the town residence of the heir-apparent, who is married to a daughter of eugene beauharnois, and of course to a niece of the king of bavaria. all this was an epitome of royalty i had never before witnessed. the saxon duchies, and bayreuth and anspach, now merged in bavaria, had been the subjects of curious contemplation to us, but they were all the possessions of potentates compared to this principality. i inquired for the abode of the prince, which could not well be far off, without being out of his own dominions. it lay behind a wood a mile distant, and was not visible from the inn where we stopped. here was a capital mistake; had the old castle, which was but half a mile from the village, been kept up, and it seemed to be in good condition for a ruin, with the title of count of hohenzollern and the war and state departments been put in one of the towers, no one could have laughed at the pretension, let him try as hard as he pleased; but-- we had a strong desire to visit the ruin, which puts that of habsburg altogether in the shade, but were prevented by a thunder-shower which shook the principality to its centre. the knight's hall, the chapel and the clock-tower are said to have been restored, and to be now in good condition. we could do no more, however, than cast longing eyes upward as we drove under the hill, the ground being still too wet for female accoutrements to venture. we had a hechingen postilion in a hechingen livery, and, although the man was sensible of his dignity and moved with due deliberation, we were just one hour in crossing his master's dominions. re-entering wurtemberg, we slept that night at the village of bahlingen. the country next morning was particularly tame, though uneven, until near noon, when it gradually took more interesting forms and spread itself in pretty valleys and wooded hills. the day was pleasant; and, as we trotted merrily through one of the vales, a---- pointed to a little rivulet that meandered through the meadows on our right, and praised its beauty. "i dare say it has a name; inquire of the postilion." "wie ist diesen fluschen?" "mein herr, der donau." the danube! there was something startling in so unexpectedly meeting this mighty stream, which we had seen rolling its dark flow through cities and kingdoms, a rivulet that i could almost leap across. it was to us like meeting one we had known a monarch, reduced to the condition of a private man. i was musing on the particles of water that were gliding past us on their way to the black sea, when we drove up to the door of the inn at tuttlingen. this was in the black forest, and what is more, there were some trees in it. the wood was chiefly larches, whence i presume the name. our host discovered from the servants that we were americans, and he immediately introduced the subject of emigration. he told us that many people went from wurtemberg to america, and gave us to understand that we ought to be glad of it--they were all so well educated! this was a new idea, certainly, and yet i will not take it on myself to say that the fact is otherwise. while we were at breakfast, the innkeeper, who was also the postmaster, inquired where we meant to sleep, and i told him at schaffhausen, on the rhine. he then gave me to understand that there was a long, but not a steep mountain to ascend, which separated the waters of the danube from those of the rhine, and that two extra horses would add greatly to the facility of getting along. taking a look at the road, i assented, so that we left the inn with the honours of a coach and six. the effect was evident from the start, and after entering wurtemberg and travelling through it complaining of the dullness of the teams, we left it with _éclat_, and at the rate of ten miles the hour. the frontier of baden met us again on the summit of the mountain. here we got a line and extensive view, that included the lake of constance in its sweep. the water looked dark and wild, and the whole scene had a tint that strongly reminded me of the character of germanic mysteriousness. we must have been at a great elevation, though the mountains were not prominent objects; on the contrary, the eye ranged until it found the horizon, as at sea, in the curvature of the earth. the rills near us flowed into the rhine, and, traversing half europe, emptied themselves into the north sea; while the stream that wound its way through the valley below, took a south-easterly direction towards the confines of asia. one gets grand and pleasing images in the associations that are connected with the contemplation of these objects. from this point we began to descend, shorn of our honours in the way of quadrupeds, for it was with a good deal of difficulty we got three horses at the next relay. thus is it with life, in which at one moment we are revelling in abundance, and at the next suffering with want. we got along, however, as in life, in the best manner we could, and after driving through a pretty and uneven country, that gradually descended, we suddenly plunged down to the banks of the rhine, and found ourselves once more before an inn-door, in switzerland! second visit to switzerland. letter xv. a swiss inn.--cataract of the rhine.--canton of zurich.--town of zurich.--singular concurrence.--formidable ascent.--exquisite view.--einsiedeln--the convent.--"_par exemple_."--shores of the lake of zug.--the _chemin creux_.--water excursion to alpnach.--lake of lungern.--lovely landscape.--effects of mists on the prospect.--natural barometer.--view from the brunig.--enter the great canton of berne.--an englishman's politics.--our french companion.--the giesbach.--mountain music.--lauterbrunnen.--grindewald.--rising of the waters in .--anecdote.--excursion on the lake to thoun. dear ----, we had sought refuge on the rhine, from the tameness and monotony of wurtemberg! i dare say the latter country has many beautiful districts, that it contains much to admire and much to awaken useful reflection, but to the mere passer-by it is not a land of interest. like a boat that has unexpectedly got into a strong adverse current, we had put our helm down and steered out of it, to the nearest shore. here we were then, and it became necessary to say where we should be next. my own eyes were turned wistfully towards the east, following the road by the lake of constance, inspruck, and saltzbourg, to vienna; but several of our party were so young when we were in switzerland, in , that it seemed ungracious to refuse them this favourable opportunity to carry away lasting impressions of a region that has no parallel. it was, therefore, settled before we slept, again to penetrate the cantons next morning. i heard the drum-like sound of the inn once more with great satisfaction; for although the house, judging from the coronets and armorial bearings about it, had once been the abode of a count, it was not free from the peculiar echoes of a true swiss tenement, any more than it was free from its neatness. the drum, however, did not prevent us all from sleeping soundly, and after an early breakfast we went forth on this new pilgrimage to the mountains. there was an end to posting, no relays existing in this part of switzerland, and i had been compelled to confide in the honesty of an unknown _voiturier_; a class of men who are pre-eminently subject to the long-established frailty of all who _deal_ in horses, wines, lamp-oil, and religion. leaving this functionary to follow with the carriage, we walked along the banks of the river, by a common-place and dirty road, among forges and mills, to the cataract of the rhine. what accessories to a cataract! how long will it be before the imagination of a people who are so fast getting to measure all greatness, whether in nature or art, by the yard-stick, will think of those embellishments for niagara? fortunately the powers of men are not equal to their wishes and a mill by the side of this wonder of the world will be a mill still; whereas these falls of the rhine are nearly reduced to the level of a raceway, by the spirit of industry. we were less struck with them than ever, and left the place with the conviction that, aided by a few _suitable_ embellishments, they would have been among the prettiest of the pretty cascades that we know, but that, as matters go, they are in danger of soon losing the best part of their charms. we saw no reason, in this instance, to change the impressions made at the former visit, but think, the volume of water excepted, that switzerland has cascades that outdo this cataract. after following the course of the river, for a few miles, we met the stream, buried low in the earth, at one of its sudden bends, and, descending a sharp declivity, crossed to its left bank, and into the canton of zurich. we were taken by surprise, by this sudden rencontre, and could hardly believe it was the mighty rhine, whose dark waters were hurrying beneath us, as we passed a covered bridge of merely a hundred or two feet in length. one meets with a hundred streams equal to this in width, while travelling in america, though it is rare to find one anywhere with the same majesty of motion, and of its fine cerulean tint. we had travelled an hour or two towards zurich, before our eyes were greeted with the sight of peaks capped with snow. they looked like the faces of old acquaintances, and, distance depriving them of their severity, they now shone in a mild sublimity. we were all walking ahead, while the horses were eating, when these noble objects came into the view, and, preceding the rest a little, i involuntarily shouted with exultation, as, turning a knoll, they stood ranged along the horizon. the rest of the party hurried on, and it was like a meeting of dear friends, to see those godlike piles encircling the visible earth. the country through which we travelled, was the low land of which i have so often spoken, nor was it particularly beautiful or well cultivated until we drew near the capital, when it assumed the polished look of the environs of a large town; and the approach to zurich, on this side, though less romantic perhaps, wanting the lake and mountains, we thought, if anything, was more beautiful than that by which we had come in . we were much gratified with the appearance of zurich; more even than in our former visit, and not the less so at finding it unusually empty. the agitated state of europe, particularly of england, has kept the usual class of travellers at home, though the cantons are said to be pretty well sprinkled with carlists, who are accused of assembling here lo plot. m. de châteaubriand is in the same hotel as ourselves, but it has never been my fortune to see this distinguished writer to know him, even accidentally; although i afterwards learned that, on one occasion, i had sat for two hours on a bench immediately before him, at a meeting of the french academy. my luck was no better now, for he went away unseen, an hour after we arrived. some imagine themselves privileged to intrude on a celebrity, thinking that those men will pardon the inconvenience for the flattery, but i do not subscribe to this opinion: i believe that nothing palls sooner than notoriety, and that nothing is more grateful to those who have suffered under it, than retirement. by a singular concurrence, we were at zurich the second time on sunday, and almost on the same day of the year. in , we drove along the lake-shore, august th, and we now left zurich, for the same purpose, august th, after an interval of four years. the same objects were assembled, under precisely the same circumstances: the lake was covered with boats, whose tall sails drooped in pure laziness; the solemn bells startled the melancholy echoes, and the population was abroad, now as then, in holiday guise, or crowding the churches. the only perceptible changes in the scene were produced by the change in our own direction. then we looked towards the foot of the lake, and had its village-lined shores before us, and the country that melts away towards the rhine for a back-ground; while now, after passing the objects in the near view, the sight rested on the confused and mysterious mountains of glaris. we took our _goûter_ at the _paon_, and, unwilling to cross the bridge in the carriage, we all preceded it through the crowded streets of rapperschwyl, leaving the _voiturier_ to follow at his leisure. we were just half an hour on this bridge, which appeared as ticklish as ever, though not so much as to stifle the desire of p---- to see how near its edge he could walk. when we entered schweitz, the carriage overtook us, and we drove to the foot of the mountain which it is necessary to ascend to reach einsiedeln. here we took _chevaux de renfort_, and a reinforcement they proved indeed; for i do not remember two nobler animals than the _voiturier_ obtained for the occasion. they appeared to be moulded on the same scale as the mountains. we were much amused by the fellow's management, for he contrived to check his own cattle in such a way as to throw all the work on the recruits. this was not effected without suspicion; but he contrived to allay it, by giving his own beasts sundry punches in the sides, so adroitly bestowed as to render them too restive to work. by way of triumph, each poke was accompanied by a knowing leer at françois, all whose sympathies, a tribute to his extraction, i have had frequent opportunities of observing, to my cost, were invariably on the side of the _voituriers_. so evident, indeed, was this feeling in the gentleman, that had i been accustomed to travel much by this mode, i should not have kept him a month. it was a mild evening as we travelled our way up this formidable ascent, which is one of the severest in switzerland, and we had loitered so much along the shores of the lake, as to bring us materially behind our time. still it was too late to return, and we made the best of things as they were. it is always more pleasant to ascend than to descend, for the purposes of scenery; and, as picture after picture broke upon us, the old touzy-mouzy was awakened, until we once more felt ourselves in a perfect fever of mountain excitement. in consequence of diverging by a foot-path, towards the east, in descending this mountain, in , i had missed one of the finest reaches of its different views, but which we now enjoyed under the most favourable circumstances. the entire converging crescent of the north shore of the lake, studded with white churches, hamlets, and cottages, was visible, and as the evening sun cast its mild light athwart the crowded and affluent landscape, we involuntarily exclaimed, "that this even equalled the neapolitan coast in the twilight." the manner in which the obscurity settled on this picture, slowly swallowing up tower after tower, hamlet, cottage, and field, until the blue expanse of the lake alone reflected the light from the clouds, was indescribably beautiful, and was one of those fine effects that can only be produced amid a nature as grand as that of the alps. it was dark when we reached the inn at the summit; but it was not possible to remain there, for it had room for little more than kirschwasser. the night came on dark and menacing, and for near two hours we crawled up and down the sharp ascents and descents, and, to make the matter worse, it began to rain. this was a suitable approach to the abodes of monastic votaries, and i had just made the remark, when the carriage stopped before the door of my old inn, the ox, at einsiedeln. it was near ten, and we ordered a cup of tea and beds immediately. the next morning we visited the church and the convent. the first presented a tame picture, compared to that i had witnessed in the former visit, for there was not a pilgrim present; the past year it had been crowded. there were, however, a few groups of the villagers kneeling at the shrine, or at the different altars, to aid the picturesque. we ascended into the upper part of the edifice, and walked in those narrow galleries through which i had formerly seen the benedictines stalking in stealthy watchfulness, looking down at the devotees beneath. i was admitted to the cloisters, cells, library, &c., but my companions were excluded as a matter of course. it is merely a spacious german convent, very neat, and a little _barnish_. a recent publication caused me to smile involuntarily once or twice, as the good father turned over the curiosities of the library, and expatiated on the history and objects of his community; but the book in question had evidently not yet, if indeed it will ever reach this remote spot. we had a little difficulty here in getting along with the french; and our german (in which, by the way, some of the party are rather expert) had been acquired in saxony, and was taken for base coin here. the innkeeper was an attentive host, and wished to express every thing that was kind and attentive; all of which he succeeded in doing wonderfully well, by a constant use of the two words, "_par exemple_." as a specimen of his skill, i asked him if an extra horse could be had at einsiedeln, and his answer was, "_par exemple, monsieur; par exemple, oui; c'est-à-dire, par exemple_." so we took the other horse, _par exemple_, and proceeded. our road carried us directly across the meadows that had been formed in the lake of lowertz, by the fall of the rossberg. when on them, they appeared even larger than when seen from the adjacent mountain; they are quite uneven, and bear a coarse wiry grass, though there are a few rocks on their surface. crossing the ruin of goldau, we passed on a trot from the desolation around it, into the beautiful scenery of arth. here we dined and witnessed another monastic flirtation. after dinner we drove along the shores of the lake of zug, winding directly round the base of the cone of the righi, or immediately beneath the point where the traveller gets the sublime view of which you have already heard. this was one of the pleasantest bits of road we had then seen in switzerland. the water was quite near us on the right, and we were absolutely shut in on the left by the precipitous mountain, until having doubled it, we came out upon an arm of the lake of lucerne, at küsnacht, to which place we descended by the _chemin creux_. night overtook us again while crossing the beautiful ridge of land that separates the bay of küsnacht from the foot of the lake, but the road being excellent, we trotted on in security until we alighted, at nine o'clock, in the city of lucerne. the weather appearing unusually fine the next day, françois was ordered round to berne with the carriage and luggage, and we engaged a guide and took a boat for alpnach. at eleven we embarked and pulled up under lovely verdant banks, which are occupied by villas, till we reached the arm of the lake that stretches towards the south-west. here a fair breeze struck us, and making sail, away we went, skimming before it, at the rate of eight miles an hour. once or twice the wind came with a power that showed how necessary it is to be cautious on a water that is bounded by so many precipitous rocks. we passed the solitary tower of stanztad on the wing, and reached alpnach in less than two hours after embarking. here we took two of the little vehicles of the country and went on. the road carried us through sarnen, where my companions, who had never before visited the unterwaldens, stopped to see the lions. i shall not go over these details with you again, but press on towards our resting-place for the night. on reaching the foot of the rocks which form the natural dam that upholds the lake of lungern, p---- and myself alighted and walked ahead. the ascent being short, we made so much progress as to reach the upper end of the little sheet, a distance of near a league, before we were overtaken by the others; and when we did meet, it was amid general exclamations of delight at the ravishing beauties of the place. i cannot recall sensations of purer pleasure produced by any scenery, than those i felt myself on this occasion, and in which all around me appeared to participate. our pleasures, tastes, and even our judgments are so much affected by the circumstances under which they are called into action, that one has need of diffidence on the subject of their infallibility, if it be only to protect himself from the imputation of inconsistency. i was pleased with the lake of lungern in , but the term is not strong enough for the gratification it gave me on this return to it. perhaps the day, the peculiar play of light and shade, a buoyancy of spirits, or some auxiliary causes, may have contributed to produce this state of mind; or it is possible that the views were really improved by changing the direction of the route; as all connoisseurs in scenery know that the hudson is much finer when descending than when ascending its stream; but let the cause be what it might, had i then been asked what particular spot in europe had given me most delight, by the perfection of its natural beauties, taken in connexion with its artificial accessories, i should have answered that it was the shores of the lake of lungern. nor, as i have told you, was i alone in this feeling, for one and all, big and little,--in short, the whole party joined in pronouncing the entire landscape absolutely exquisite. any insignificant change, a trifle more or less of humidity in the atmosphere, the absence or the intervention of a few clouds, a different hour or a different frame of mind, may have diminished our pleasure, for these are enjoyments which, like the flavour of delicate wines, or the melody of sweet music, are deranged by the condition of the nerves, or a want of harmony, in the chords. after this explanation you will feel how difficult it will be to describe the causes of our delight. the leading features of the landscape, however, were a road that ran along the shore beneath a forest, within ten feet of the water, winding, losing itself, and re-appearing with the sinuosities of the bank; water, limpid as air and blue as the void of the heavens, unruffled and even holy in its aspect, as if it reflected the pure space above; a mountain-side, on the opposite shore, that was high enough to require study to draw objects from its bosom, on the distant heights, and yet near enough below, to seem to be within an arrow's flight; meadows shorn like lawns, scattered over its broad breast; woods of larches, to cast their gloom athwart the glades and to deepen the shadows; brown chalets that seemed to rise out of the sward, at the bidding of the eye; and here and there a cottage poised on a giddy height, with a chapel or two to throw a religious calm over all! there was nothing ambitious in this view, which was rural in every feature, but it was the very _bean idéal_ of rustic beauty, and without a single visible blemish to weaken its effect. it was some such picture of natural objects as is formed of love by a confiding and ingenuous youth of fifteen. we passed the night in the _drum_ of lungern, and found it raining hard when we rose the following morning. the water soon ceased to fall in torrents, however, changing to a drizzle, at which time the valley, clouded in mists in constant motion, was even more beautiful than ever. so perfect, were the accessories, so minute was everything rendered by the mighty scale, so even was the grass and so pure the verdure that bits of the mountain pasturages, or alps, coming into view through the openings in the vapour, appeared like highly-finished flemish paintings; and this the more so, because all the grouping of objects, the chalets, cottages, &c. were exactly those that the artist would seize upon to embellish his own work. indeed, we have daily, hourly, occasions to observe how largely the dealers in the picturesque have drawn upon the resources of this extraordinary country, whether the pallet, or poetry in some other form, has been the medium of conveying pleasure. the _garçon_ of the inn pointed to some mist that was rolling along a particular mountain, and said it was the infallible barometer of lungern. we might be certain of getting fair weather within an hour. a real barometer corroborated the testimony of the mist, but the change was slower than had been predicted; and we began to tire of so glorious a picture, under an impatience to proceed, for one does not like to swallow pleasure even, perforce. at ten we were able to quit the inn, one half of the party taking the bridle-path, attended by two horse-keepers, while the rest of us, choosing to use our own limbs, were led by the guide up the mountains by a shorter cut, on foot. the view from the brunig was not as fine as i had round it in , perhaps because i was then taken completely by surprise, and perhaps because ignorance of the distant objects had then thrown the charm of mystery over its back-ground. we now saw the scene in detail, too, while mounting; for, though it is better to ascend than descend, the finest effects are produced by obtaining the whole at once. we joined the equestrians on the summit, where the horses were discharged, and we proceeded the remainder of the distance on foot. we soon met the bear of berne, and entered the great canton. the view of the valley of meyringen, and of the cataracts, greeted us like an old friend; and the walk, by a path which wound its way through the bushes, and impended over this beautiful panorama, was of course delightful. at length we caught a glimpse of the lake of brientz, and hurrying on, reached the village before two. here we ordered a _goûter_, and, while taking it, the first english party we had yet seen, entered the inn, as we were all seated at the same table. the company consisted of this english party, ourselves, and a solitary frenchman, who eyed us keenly, but said nothing. it soon appeared that some great political crisis was at hand, for the englishman began to cry out against the growing democracy of the cantons. i did not understand all his allusions, nor do i think he had very clear notions about them himself, for he wound up one of his denunciatory appeals, by the old cant, of "instead of one tyrant they will now have many;" which is a sort of reasoning that is not particularly applicable to the overturning of aristocracy anywhere. it is really melancholy to perceive how few men are capable of reasoning or feeling on political subjects, in any other way than that which is thought most to subserve their own particular interests and selfishness. did we not know that the real object of human institutions is to restrain human tendencies, one would be almost disposed to give up the point in despair; for i do affirm, that in all my associations in different countries, i do not recollect more than a dozen men who have appeared to me to entertain right notions on this subject, or who have seemed capable of appreciating the importance of any changes that were not likely materially to affect their own pockets. the frenchman heard us speaking in his own language, which we did with a view of drawing john bull out, and he asked a passage in the boat i had ordered, as far as interlachen. conditioning that he should make the _détour_ to the giesbach, his application was admitted, and we proceeded forthwith. this was the fourth time i had crossed the lake of brientz, but the first in which i visited the justly celebrated falls, towards which we now steered on quitting the shore. our companion proved to be a merry fellow, and well disposed to work his passage by his wit. i have long been cured of the notion "that the name of an american is a passport all over europe," and have learned to understand in its place, that, on the contrary, it is thought to be _prima facie_ evidence of vulgarity, ignorance, and conceit; nor do i think that the french, as a nation, have any particular regard for us; but knowing the inherent dislike of a frenchman for an englishman, and that the new-fangled fraternity, arising out of the trading-principle government, only renders, to a disinterested looker on, the old antipathies more apparent, i made an occasion, indirectly, to let our new associate understand that we came from the other side of the atlantic. this produced an instantaneous change in his manner, and it was now that he began to favour us with specimens of his humour. notwithstanding all this facetiousness, i soon felt suspicion that the man was an _employé_ of the carlists, and that his business in switzerland was connected with political plots. he betrayed himself, at the very moment when he was most anxious to make us think him a mere amateur of scenery: i cannot tell you how, but still so clearly, as to strike all of us, precisely in the same way. the giesbach is a succession of falls, whose water comes from a glacier, and which are produced by the sinuosities of the leaps and inclined planes of a mountain side, aided by rocks and precipices. it is very beautiful, and may well rank as the third or fourth cascade of switzerland, for variety, volume of water, and general effect. a family has established itself among the rocks, to pick up a penny by making boxes of larch, and singing the different _ranz des raches_. your mountain music does not do so well, when it has an air so seriously premeditated, and one soon gels to be a little _blasé_ on the subject of entertainments of this sort, which can only succeed once, and then with the novice. alas! i have actually stood before the entrance of the cathedral at rouen, and the strongest feeling of the moment was that of surprise at the manner in which my nerves had thrilled, when it was first seen. i do not believe that childhood, with its unsophistication and freshness, affords the greatest pleasures, for every hour tells me how much reason and cultivation enhance our enjoyments; but there are certainly gratifications that can be felt but once; and if an opera of rossini or meyerbeer grows on us at each representation, or a fine poem improves on acquaintance, the singing of your swiss nightingales is sweeter in its first notes than in its second. after spending an hour at the giesbach, we rowed along the eastern, or rather the southern, shore of the lake to interlachen. the sight of the blue aar revived old recollections, and we landed on its banks with infinite pleasure. here a few civil speeches passed between the merry frenchman and myself, when we separated, he disappearing altogether, and we taking the way to the great lodging-house, which, like most of the other places of resort in switzerland, was then nearly empty. the grand-duchess anna, however, had come down from ulfnau, her residence on the aar, for a tour in the oberland, and was among the guests. we got a glimpse of her coming in from a drive, and she appeared to resemble her brother the duke, more than her brother the king. in the morning we drove up to lauterbrunnen, and i am compelled to say that so completely fickle had we become, that i believe all who had seen this valley before, pronounced it less beautiful than that of lungern. by the way of proving to you how capricious a thing is taste, i liked the staubbach better than in the former visit. we did not attempt the mountains this time, but drove round in our _chars_ to grindewald, where we dined and slept. either a new approach, or improved tastes, or some other cause, wrought another change here; for we now preferred grindewald to lauterbrunnen, as a valley. the vulgar astonishment was gone, and our eyes sought details with critical nicety. we went to the lower glacier, whose form had not materially changed in four years, and we had fine views of both of them from the windows of the inn. there was a young moon, and i walked out to watch the effect on the high glaciers, which were rendered even more than usually unearthly in appearance, under its clear bland light. these changes of circumstances strangely increase the glories of the mountains! we left grindewald quite early next morning, and proceeded towards neuhaus. the road led us through a scene of desolation that had been caused by a rising of the waters in , and we examined the devastation with the more interest, as some of our acquaintances had nearly perished in the torrent. the family in question were residing temporarily at interlachen, when two of the ladies with a child, attended by a black servant, drove up the gorge of lauterbrunnen for an airing. they were overtaken by a tempest of rain, and by the torrent, which rose so rapidly as to cut off all retreat, except by ascending the precipice, which to the eye is nearly perpendicular. there is, however, a hamlet on one of the terraces of the mountain, and thither the servant was despatched for succour. the honest peasants at first believed he was a demon, on account of his colour, and it was not without difficulty they were persuaded to follow him. the ladies eventually escaped up the rocks; but our coachman, who had acted as the coachman on that occasion, assured us it was with the utmost difficulty he saved his horse. this accident, which was neither a _sac d'eau_ nor an avalanche, gives one a good idea of the sudden dangers to which the traveller is liable, in the midst of a nature so stupendous. a large part of the beautiful meadows of interlachen was laid desolate, and the calamity was so sudden that it overtook two young and delicate females in their morning drive! we drove directly to the little port at neuhaus, and took a boat for thoun, pulling cut into the lake, with a fresh breeze directly in our teeth. the picturesque little chateau of spietz stood on its green promontory, and all the various objects that we had formerly gazed at with so much pleasure, were there, fresh, peculiar, and attractive as ever. at length, after a heavy pull, we were swept within the current of the aar, which soon bore us to the landing. at thoun we breakfasted, and, taking a return carriage, trotted up to berne, by the valley of which you have already heard so much. françois was in waiting for us, and we got comfortable rooms at the crown. our tastes are certainly altering, whether there be any improvement or not. we are beginning to feel it is vulgar to be astonished, and even in scenery, i think we rather look for the features that fill up the keeping, and make the finish, than those which excite wonder. we have seen too much to be any longer taken in, by your natural clap-traps; a step in advance, that i attribute to a long residence in italy, a country in which the sublime is so exquisitely blended with the soft, as to create a taste which tells us they ought to be inseparable. in this little excursion to the oberland, while many, perhaps most, of our old impressions are confirmed, its relative beauties have not appeared to be entitled to as high praises as we should have given them, had they not been seen a second time. we had fine weather, were all in good spirits and happy, and the impression being so general, i am inclined to think, it is no more than the natural effect which is produced by more experience and greater knowledge. i now speak of the valleys, however, for the high alps are as superior to the caprices of taste, as their magnificent dimensions and faultless outline are beyond change. letter xvi. conspiracy discovered.--the austrian government and the french carlists.--walk to la lorraine.--our old friend "turc."--conversation with m. w----.--view of the upper alps.--jerome bonaparte at la lorraine.--the bears of berne.--scene on the plateforme. dear ----, soon after we reached berne, françois came to me in a mysterious manner, to inquire if i had heard any news of importance. i had heard nothing; and he then told me that many arrests had just taken place, and that a conspiracy of the old aristocracy had been discovered, which had a counter-revolution for its object. i say a counter-revolution, for you ought to have heard that great political changes have occurred in switzerland since , france always giving an impulse to the cantons. democracy is in the ascendant, and divers old opinions, laws, and institutions have been the sacrifice. this, in the land of the burgerschaft, has necessarily involved great changes, and the threatened plot is supposed to be an effort of the old privileged party to regain their power. as françois, notwithstanding he has seen divers charges of cavalry against the people, and has witnessed two or three revolutions, is not very clear-headed in such matters, i walked out immediately to seek information from rather better authority. the result of my inquiries was briefly as follows:--neufchâtel, whose prince is the king of prussia, has receded from the confederation, on account of the recent changes, and the leaders of the aristocratic party were accused of combining a plan, under the protection and with the knowledge of the authorities of this state, to produce a counter-revolution in berne, well knowing the influence of this canton in the confederation. this very day is said to be the one selected for the effort, and rumour adds, that a large body of the peasants of the oberland were to have crossed the brunig yesterday, with a view to co-operate in other sections of the country. a merry company we should have been, had it been our luck to have fallen in with this escort! now, rightfully or not, the austrian government and the french carlists are openly accused of being concerned in this conspiracy, and probably not without some cause. the suspicions excited concerning our fellow-traveller, through his own acts, recurred to me, and i now think it probable he was in waiting for the aforesaid peasants, most probably to give them a military direction, for he had the air and _franchise_ of an old french soldier. the plot had been betrayed; some were already arrested, and some had taken refuge in flight. the town was tranquil, but the guards were strengthened, and the popular party was actively on the alert. the next morning we went forth to look once more at picturesque, cloistered, verdant berne. nothing appeared to be changed, though the strangers were but few, and there was, perhaps, less movement than formerly. we crossed the aar, and walked to la lorraine. as we were going through the fields, several dogs rushed out against us; but when p---- called out "_turc_" the noble animal appeared to know him, and we were permitted to proceed, escorted, rather than troubled, by the whole pack. this was a good omen, and it was grateful to be remembered, by even a dog, after an absence of four years. we found the same family in possession of the farm, though on the point of removing to another place. our reception in the house was still more cordial than that given by turk, and our gratitude in proportion. the old abode was empty, and we walked over it with feelings in which pain and pleasure were mingled; for poor w----, who was with us, full of youth and spirits, when we resided here, is now a tenant of père lachaise. when we went away, all the dogs, with turk at their head, escorted us to the ferry, where they stood looking wistfully at us from the bank, until we landed in berne. soon after, i met m. w---- in the streets, and, as he had not been at home, i greeted him, inviting him to dine with us at the crown. the present aspect of things was of course touched upon during the dinner, when the worthy member of the burgerschaft lamented the changes, in a manner becoming his own opinions, while i rejoiced in them, in a manner becoming mine. he asked me if i really thought that men who were totally inexperienced in the affairs of government could conduct matters properly,--an old and favourite appeal with the disciples of political exclusion. i endeavoured to persuade him that the art of administering was no great art; that there was more danger of rulers knowing _too much_ than of their knowing _too little_, old soldiers proverbially taking better care of themselves than young soldiers; that he must not expect too much, for they that know the practices of free governments, well know it is hopeless to think of keeping pure and disinterested men long in office, even as men go, there being a corrupting influence about the very exercise of power that forbids the hope; and that all which shrewd observers look for in popular institutions is a greater check than common on the selfishness of those to whom authority is confided. i told him the man who courts popular favour in a republic, would court a prince in a monarchy, the elements of a demagogue and a courtier being exactly the same; and that, under either system, except in extraordinary instances, it was useless to attempt excluding such men from authority, since their selfishness was more active than the feelings of the disinterested; that, in our own case, so long as the impetus of the revolution and the influence of great events lasted, we had great men in the ascendant, but, now that matters were jogging on regularly, and under their common-place aspects, we were obliged to take up with merely clever managers; that one of the wisest men that had ever lived (bacon) had said, that "few men rise to power in a state, without a union of _great_ and _mean_ qualities," and that this was probably as true at berne as it is at washington, and as true at paris as at either; that the old system in his country savoured too much of the policy of giving the milk of two cows to one calf, and that he must remember it was a system that made very bad as well as very good veal, whereas for ordinary purposes it was better to have the same quantity of merely good veal; and, in short, that he himself would soon be surprised at discovering how soon the new rulers would acquire all the useful habits of their predecessors, and i advised him to look out that they did not acquire some of their bad ones too. i never flattered myself with producing a change of opinion in the captain, who always listened politely, but with just such an air of credulity as you might suppose one born to the benefits of the burgerschaft, and who had got to be fifty, would listen to a dead attack on all his most cherished prejudices. the next day was sunday, and we still lingered in our comfortable quarters at the crown. i walked on the plateforme before breakfast, and got another of those admirable views of the upper alps, which, notwithstanding the great beauty of its position and immediate environs, form the principal attraction of berne. the peaks were draped rather than veiled in clouds, and it was not easy to say which was the most brilliant, the snow-white vapour that adorned their sides, or the icy glaciers themselves. still they were distinct from each other, forming some such contrast as that which exists between the raised and sunken parts on the faces of new coin. we went to church and listened to some excellent german, after which we paid our last visit to la lorraine. this house had been hired by king jerome for a short time, after his exile in , his brother joseph occupying a neighbouring residence. the w----s told me that jerome arrived, accompanied by his amiable wife, like a king, with horses, chamberlains, pages, and all the other appliances of royalty, and that it was curious, as well as painful, to witness how fast these followers dropped off, as the fate of the family appeared to be settled. few besides the horses remained at the end of ten days! on our return from this visit we went in a body to pay our respect to our old friends, the bears. i believe you have already been told that the city of berne maintains four bears in certain deep pens, where it is the practice to feed them with nuts, cakes, apples, etc., according to the liberality and humour of the visitor. the usage is very ancient, and has some connexion with a tradition that has given its name to the canton. a bear is also the arms of the state. one of these animals is a model of grace, waddling about on his hind legs like an alderman in a ball-room. you may imagine that p---- was excessively delighted at the sight of these old friends. the bernese have an engraving of the graceful bear in his upright attitude; and the stove of our salon at the crown, which is of painted tile, among a goodly assemblage of gods and goddesses, includes bruin as one of its ornaments. françois made his appearance after dinner, accompanied by his friend, _le petit savoyard_, who had arrived from frankfort, and came once more to offer his services to conduct us to lapland, should it be our pleasure to travel in that direction. it would have been ungracious to refuse so constant a suitor, and he was ordered to be in attendance next morning, to proceed towards the lake of geneva. in the evening we went on the plateforme to witness the sunset, but the mountains were concealed by clouds. the place was crowded, and refreshments were selling in little pavilions erected for the purpose. we are the only protestants who are such rigid observers of the sabbath, the scotch perhaps excepted. in england there is much less restraint than in america, and on the continent the protestants, though less gay than the catholics, very generally consider it a day of recreation, after the services of the church are ended. i have heard some of them maintain that we have misinterpreted the meaning of the word holy, which obtains its true signification in the term holiday. i have never heard any one go so far, however, as hannah moore says was the case with horace walpole, who contended that the ten commandments were not meant for people of quality. no one whose mind and habits have got extricated from the fogs of provincial prejudices, will deny that we have many odious moral deformities in america, that appear in the garb of religious discipline and even religious doctrine, but which are no more than the offspring of sectarian fanaticism, and which, in fact, by annihilating charity, are so many blows given to the essential feature of christianity; but, apart from these, i still lean to the opinion that we are quite as near the great truths as any other people extant. mr. ----, the english _chargé d'affaires_, whom i had known slightly at paris, and mr. ----, who had once belonged to the english legation in washington, were on the plateforme. the latter told me that carroll of carrolton was dead; that he had been dead a year, and that he had written letters of condolence on the occasion. i assured him that the old gentleman was alive on the th july last, for i had seen one of his letters in the public journals. here was a capital windfall for a regular _diplomate_, who now, clearly, had nothing to do but to hurry home and write letters of felicitation! the late changes in england have produced more than the usual mutations in her diplomatic corps, which, under ordinary circumstances, important trusts excepted, has hitherto been considered at the disposal of any minister. in america we make it matter of reproach that men are dismissed from office on account of their political opinions, and it is usual to cite england as an example of greater liberality. all this is singularly unjust, because in its spirit, like nine-tenths of our popular notions of england, it is singularly untrue. the changes of ministry, which merely involve the changes incident on taking power from one clique of the aristocracy to give it to another, have not hitherto involved questions of sufficient importance to render it matter of moment to purge all the lists of the disaffected; but since the recent serious struggles we have seen changes that do not occur even in america. every tory, for instance, is ousted from the legations, if we except nameless subordinates. the same purification is going on elsewhere, though the english system does not so much insist on the changes of _employés_, as that the _employés_ themselves should change their opinions. how long would an english tide-waiter, for instance, keep his place should he vote against the ministerial candidate? i apprehend these things depend on a common principle (_i. e_. self-interest) everywhere, and that it makes little difference, in substance, what the form of government may happen to be. but of all the charges that have been brought against us, the comparative instability of the public favour, supposed to be a consequence of fluctuations in the popular will, is the most audacious, for it is contradicted by the example of every royal government in christendom. since the formation of the present american constitution, there have been but two changes of administration, that have involved changes of principles, or changes in popular will;--that which placed mr. jefferson in the seat of mr. adams, senior, and that which placed mr. jackson in the seat of mr. adams, junior: whereas, during the short period of my visit to europe, i have witnessed six or seven absolute changes of the english ministry, and more than twenty in france, besides one revolution. liberty has been, hitherto, in the situation of the lion whose picture was drawn by a man, but which there was reason to think would receive more favourable touches, when the lion himself should take up the pallet. letter xvii. our voiturier and his horses.--a swiss diligence.--morat.--inconstancy of feeling.--our route to vévey.--lake leman.--difficulty in hiring a house.--"mon repos" engaged for a mouth.--vévey.--tne great square--the town-house.--environs of vévey.--summer church and winter church.--clergy of the canton.--population of vaud.--elective qualifications of vaud. dear ----, le petit savoyard was punctual, and after breakfasting, away we rolled, along the even and beaten road towards morat. this man and his team were epitomes of the _voiturier_ caste and their fixtures. he himself was a firm, sun-burned, compact little fellow, just suited to ride a wheeler, while the horses were sinewy, and so lean, that there was no mistaking their vocation. every bone in their bodies spoke of the weight of _miladi_, and her heavy english travelling chariot, and i really thought they seemed to be glad to get a whole american family in place of an englishwoman and her maid. the morning was fine, and our last look at the oberland peaks was sunny and pleasant. there they stood ranged along the horizon, like sentinels (not lighthouses) of the skies, severe, chiseled, brilliant, and grand. another travelling equipage of the gregarious kind, or in which the carriage as well as the horses was the property of the _voiturier_, and the passengers mere _pic-nics_, was before us in ascending a long hill, affording an excellent opportunity to dissect the whole party. as it is a specimen of the groups one constantly meets on the road, i will give you some idea of the component parts. the _voiturier_ was merely a larger brother of _le petit savoyard_, and his horses, three in number, were walking bundles of chopped straw. the carriage was spacious, and i dare say convenient, though anything but beautiful. on the top there was a rail, within which effects were stowed beneath an apron, leaving an outline not unlike the ridges of the alps. the merry rogues within had chosen to take room to themselves, and not a package of any sort encumbered their movements. and here i will remark, that america, free and independent, is the only country in which i have ever journeyed, where the comfort and convenience in the vehicle is the first thing considered, that of the baggage the next, and that of the passengers the last.[ ] fortunately for the horses, there were but four passengers, though the vehicle could have carried eight. one, by his little green cap, with a misshapen shade for the eyes; light, shaggy, uncombed hair; square high shoulders; a coat that appeared to be half-male half-female; pipe and pouch--was undeniably a german student, who was travelling south to finish his metaphysics with a few practical notions of men and things. a second was a jew, who had trade in every lineament, and who belonged so much to _the_ nation, that i could not give him to any other nation in particular. he was older, more wary, less joyous, and probably much more experienced, than either of his companions. when they laughed, he only smiled; when they sang, he hummed; and when they seemed thoughtful, he grew sad. i could make nothing out of him, except that he ran a thorough bass to the higher pitches of his companions' humours. the third was italian "for a ducat." a thick, bushy, glossy, curling head of hair was covered by a little scarlet cap, tossed negligently on one side, as if lodged there by chance; his eye was large, mellow, black as jet, and full of fun and feeling; his teeth white as ivory; and the sun, the glorious sun, and the thoughts of italy, towards which he was travelling, had set all his animal spirits in motion. i caught a few words in bad french, which satisfied me that he and the german were jeering each other on their respective national peculiarities. such is man; his egotism and vanity first centre in himself, and he is ready to defend himself against the reproofs of even his own mother; then his wife, his child, his brother, his friend is admitted, in succession, within the pale of his self-love, according to their affinities with the great centre of the system; and finally he can so far expand his affections as to embrace his country, when that of another presents its pretensions in hostility. when the question arises, as between humanity and the beasts of the field, he gets to be a philanthropist! [footnote : the americans are a singularly good-natured people, and probably submit to more impositions, that are presented as appeals to the spirit of accommodation, than any other people on earth. the writer has frequently ridden miles in torture to _accommodate_ a trunk, and the steam-boats manage matters so to _accommodate everybody_, that everybody is put to inconvenience. all this is done, with the most indomitable kindness and good nature, on all sides, the people daily, nay hourly exhibiting, in all their public relations, the truth of the axiom, "that what is everybody's business, is nobody's business."] morat, with its walls of jericho, soon received us, and we drove to an inn, where chopped straw was ordered for the horses, and a more substantial _goûter_ for ourselves. leaving the former to discuss their meal, after finishing our own, we walked ahead, and waited the appearance of the little savoyard, on the scene of the great battle between the swiss and the burgundians. the country has undergone vast changes since the fifteenth century, and cultivation has long since caused the marsh, in which so many of the latter perished, to disappear, though it is easy to see where it must have formerly been. i have nothing new to say concerning avenche, whose roman ruins, after rome itself, scarce caused us to cast a glance at them, and we drove up to the door of the _ours_ at payerne, without alighting. when we are children, we fancy that sweets can never cloy, and indignantly repel the idea that tarts and sugar-plums will become matters of indifference to us; a little later we swear eternal constancy to a first love, and form everlasting friendships: as time slips away, we marry three or four wives, shoot a bosom-friend or two, and forget the looks of those whose images were to be graven on our hearts for ever. you will wonder at this digression, which has been excited by the simple fact that i actually caught myself gaping, when something was said about queen bertha and her saddle. the state of apathy to which one finally arrives is really frightful! we left payerne early, and breakfasted at the "inevitable inn" of moudon. here it was necessary to decide in what direction to steer, for i had left the charter-party with _le petit savoyard_, open, on this essential point. the weather was so fine, the season of the year so nearly the same, and most of the other circumstances so very much like those under which we had made the enchanting passage along the head of the leman four years before, that we yielded to the desire to renew the pleasures of such a transit, and turned our faces towards vévey. at the point where the roads separate, therefore, we diverged from the main route, which properly leads to lausanne, inclining southward. we soon were rolling along the margin of the little blue lake that lies on the summit of the hills, so famous for its prawns. we knew that a few minutes would bring us to the brow of the great declivity, and all eyes were busy, and all heads eagerly in motion. as for myself, i took my station on the dickey, determined to let nothing escape me in a scene that i remembered with so much enduring delight. contrary to the standing rule in such cases, the reality surpassed expectation. notwithstanding our long sojourn in italy, and the great variety and magnificence of the scenery we had beheld, i believe there was not a feeling of disappointment among us all. there lay the leman, broad, blue, and tranquil; with its surface dotted by sails, or shadowed by grand mountains; its shores varying from the impending precipice, to the sloping and verdant lawn; the solemn, mysterious, and glen-like valley of the rhone; the castles, towns, villages, hamlets, and towers, with all the smiling acclivities loaded with vines, villas, and churches; the remoter pastures, out of which the brown chalets rose like subdued bas-reliefs, and the back-ground of _dents_, peaks, and glaciers. taking it altogether, it is one of the most ravishing views of an earth that is only too lovely for its evil-minded tenants; a world that bears about it, in every lineament, the impression of its divine creator! one of our friends used to tell an anecdote of the black servant of a visitor at niagara, who could express his delight, on seeing the falls, in no other way than by peals of laughter; and perhaps i ought to hesitate to confess it, but i actually imitated the negro, as this glorious view broke suddenly upon me. mine, however, was a laugh of triumph, for i instantly discovered that my feelings were not quite worn out, and that it was still possible to awaken enthusiasm within me, by the sight of an admirable nature. our first resolution was to pass a month in this beautiful region. pointing to a building that stood a thousand feet below us, on a little grassy knoll that was washed by the lake, and which had the quaint appearance of a tiny chateau of the middle ages, we claimed it, at once, as the very spot suited for the temporary residence of your scenery-hunters. we all agreed that nothing could possibly suit us better, and we went down the descent, among vineyards and cottages, not building "castles in the air," but peopling one in a valley. it was determined to dwell in that house, if it could be had for love or money, or the thing was at all practicable. it was still early when we reached the inn in vévey, and i was scarcely on the ground, before i commenced the necessary inquiries about the little chateauish house. as is usual in some parts of europe, i was immediately referred to a female commissionnaire, a sort of domestic broker of all-work. this woman supplies travelling families with linen, and, at need, with plate; and she could greatly facilitate matters, by knowing where and to whom to apply for all that was required; an improvement in the division of labour that may cause you to smile, but which is extremely useful, and, on the whole, like all division of labour, economical. the commissionnaire informed us that there were an unusual number of furnished houses to be let, in the neighbourhood, the recent political movements having driven away their ordinary occupants, the english and russians. some of the proprietors, however, might object to the shortness of the time that we could propose for (a month), as it was customary to let the residences by the year. there was nothing like trying, however, and, ordering dinner to be ready against our return, we took a carriage and drove along the lake-shore as far as clarens, so renowned in the pages of rousseau. i ought, however, to premise that i would not budge a foot, until the woman assured me, over and over, that the little antiquated edifice, under the mountain, which had actually been a sort of chateau, was not at all habitable for a genteel family, but had degenerated to a mere coarse farm-house, which, in this country, like "love in a cottage," does better in idea than in the reality. we gave up our "castle under the hill" with reluctance, and proceeded to clarens, where a spacious, unshaded building, without a spark of poetry about it, was first shown us. this was refused, incontinently. we then tried one or two more, until the shades of night overtook us. at one place the proprietor was chasing a cow through an orchard, and, probably a little heated with his exercise, he rudely repelled the application of the commissionnaire, by telling her, when he understood the house was wanted for only a month, that he did not keep a _maison garnie_. i could not affirm to the contrary, and we returned to the inn discomfited, for the night. early next morning the search was renewed with zeal. we climbed the mountain-side, in the rear of the town, among vines, orchards, hamlets, terraces castles, and villas, to see one of the latter, which was refused on account of its remoteness from the lake. we then went to see a spot that was the very _beau idéal_ of an abode for people like ourselves, who were out in quest of the picturesque. it is called the chateau of piel, a small hamlet, immediately on the shore of the lake, and quite near vévey, while it is perfectly retired. the house is spacious, reasonably comfortable, and had some fine old towers built into the modern parts, a detached ruin, and a long narrow terrace, under the windows, that overhung the blue leman, and which faced the glorious rocks of savoy. our application for their residence was also refused, on account of the shortness of the time we intended to remain.[ ] [footnote : it is not easy for the writer to speak of many personal incidents, lest the motive might be mistaken, in a country where there are so many always disposed to attach a base one if they can; but, it is so creditable to the advanced state of european civilization and intelligence, that, at any hazard, he will here say, that even his small pretensions to literary reputation frequently were of great service to him, and, in no instance, even in those countries whose prejudices be had openly opposed, had he any reason to believe it was of any personal disadvantage. this feeling prevailed at the english custom-houses, at the bureaux all over the continent, and frequently even at the inns. in one instance, in italy, an apartment that had been denied, was subsequently offered to him on his own terms, on this account; and, on the present occasion, the proprietor of the chateau de piel, who resided at geneva, sent a handsome expression of his regret that his agent should have thought it necessary to deny the application of a gentleman of his pursuits. even the cow-chaser paid a similar homage to letters. in short, let the truth be said, the only country in which the writer has found his pursuits a disadvantage, _is his own_.] we had in reserve, all this time, two or three regular _maisons meublées_ in the town itself, and finally took refuge in one called "mon repos," which stands quite near the lake, and in a retired corner of the place. a cook was engaged forthwith, and in less than twenty-four hours after entering vévey, we had set up our household gods, and were to be reckoned among them who boiled our pot in the commune. this was not quite as prompt as the proceedings had been at spa; but here we had been bothered by the picturesque, while at spa we consulted nothing but comfort. our house was sufficiently large, perfectly clean, and, though without carpets or mats, things but little used in switzerland, quite as comfortable as was necessary for a travelling bivouac. the price was sixty dollars a month, including plate and linen. of course it might have been got at a much lower rate, had we taken it by the year. one of the first measures, after getting possession of mon repos, was to secure a boat. this was soon done, as there are several in constant attendance, at what is called the port. harbour, strictly speaking, vévey has none, though there is a commencement of a mole, which scarcely serves to afford shelter to a skiff. the crafts in use on the lake are large two-masted boats, having decks much broader than their true beam, and which carry most of their freight above board. the sails are strictly neither latine nor lug, but sufficiently like the former to be picturesque, especially in the distance. these vessels are not required to make good weather, as they invariably run for the land when it blows, unless the wind happen to be fair, and sometimes even then. nothing can be more primitive than the outfit of one of these barks, and yet they appear to meet the wants of the lake. luckily switzerland has no custom-houses, and the king of sardinia appears to be wise enough to let the savoyards enjoy nearly as much commercial liberty as their neighbours. three cantons, geneva, which embraces its foot; vaud, which bounds nearly the whole of the northern shore; valais, which encircles the head; together with savoy, which lies along the cavity of the crescent, are bounded by the lake. there are also many towns and villages on the lake, among which geneva, lausanne, and vévey are the principal. this place lies immediately at the foot of the chardonne, a high retiring section of the mountains called the jorat, and is completely sheltered from the north winds. this advantage it possesses in common with the whole district between lausanne and villeneuve, a distance of some fifteen miles, and, the mountains acting as great natural walls, the fruits of milder latitudes are successfully cultivated, notwithstanding the general elevation of the lake above the sea is near thirteen hundred feet. although a good deal frequented by strangers, vévey is less a place of fashionable resort than lausanne, and is consequently much simpler in its habits, and i suppose cheaper, as a residence. it may have four or five thousand inhabitants, and possessing one or two considerable squares, it covers rather more ground than places of that population usually do, in europe. it has no edifice of much pretension, and yet it is not badly built. we passed the first three or four days in looking about us, and, on the whole, we have been rather pleased with the place. our house is but a stone's throw from the water, at a point where there is what in the manhattanese dialect would be called a battery.[ ] this _battery_ leads to the mole and the great square. at the first corner of the latter stands a small semi-castellated edifice, with the colours of the canton on the window-shutters, which is now in some way occupied for public purposes, and which formerly was the residence of the _bailli_, or the local governor that berne formerly sent to rule them in the name of the burgerschaft. the square is quite large, and usually contains certain piles of boards, &c. that are destined for the foot of the lake, lumber being a material article in the commerce of the place. on this square, also, is the ordinary market and several inns. the town-house is an ancient building in a more crowded quarter, and at the northern gate are the remains of another structure that has an air of antiquity, which i believe also belongs to the public. beyond these and its glorious views, vévey, in itself, has but little to attract attention. but its environs contain its sources of pride. besides the lake-shore, which varies in its form and beauties, it is not easy to imagine a more charming acclivity than that which lies behind the town. the inclination is by no means as great, just at this spot, at it is both farther east and farther west, but it admits of cultivation, of sites for hamlets, and is much broken by inequalities and spacious natural terraces. i cannot speak with certainty of the extent of this acclivity, but, taking the eye for a guide, i should think there is quite a league of the inclined plane in view from the town. it is covered with hamlets, chateaux, country-houses, churches and cottages, and besides its vines, of which there are many near the town, it is highly beautiful from the verdure of its slopes, its orchards, and its groves of nut-trees. [footnote : the manner in which the english language is becoming corrupted in america, as well as in england, is a matter of serious regret. some accidental circumstance induced the manhattanese to call a certain enclosure the park. this name, probably, at first was appropriate enough, as there might have been an intention really to form a park, though the enclosure is now scarcely large enough to be termed a paddock. this name, however, has extended to the enclosures in other areas, and we have already, in vulgar parlance, st. john's park, washington park, and _least_ though not _last_, duane-street _park_, an enclosure of the shape of, and not much larger than, a cocked-hat. the site of an ancient fort on the water has been converted into a promenade, and has well enough been called _the battery_. but other similar promenades are projected, and the name is extended to them! thus in the manhattanese dialect, any enclosure in a town, _off the water_, that is a _park_, and any similar enclosure, on _the water_, a _battery!_ the worthy aldermen may call this english, but it will not be easy to persuade any but their constituents to believe them.] among other objects that crowd this back-ground, is a church which stands on a sharp acclivity, about a quarter of a mile on the rear of the town. it is a stone building of some size, and has a convenient artificial terrace that commands, as a matter of course, a most lovely view. we attended service in it the first sunday after our arrival, and found the rites homely and naked, very much like those of our own presbyterians. there was a luxury about this building that you would hardly expect to meet among a people so simple, which quite puts the coquetry of our own carpeted, cushioned, closet-like places of worship to shame. this is the summer church of vévey, another being used for winter. this surpasses the refinement of the roman ladies, who had their summer and their winter rings, but were satisfied to use the same temples all the year round. after all there is something reasonable in this indulgence: one may love to go up to a high place to worship, whence he can look abroad on the glories of a magnificent nature, which always disposes the mind to venerate omnipotence, and, unable to enjoy the advantage the year round, there is good sense in seizing such occasions as offer for the indulgence. i have frequently met with churches in switzerland perched on the most romantic sites, though this is the first whose distinctive uses i have ascertained. there is a monument to the memory of ludlow, one of charles' judges, in this church, and an inscription which attributes to him civic and moral merits of a high order. the clergy in this canton, as in most, if not all the others, are supported by the state. there is religious toleration, much as it formerly existed in new england, each citizen being master of his religious professions, but being compelled to support religion itself. here, however, the salaries are regulated by a common scale, without reference to particular congregations or parishes. the pastors at first receive rather less than three hundred dollars a year. this allowance is increased about fifty dollars at the end of six years, and by the same sum at each successive period of six years, until the whole amounts to two thousand swiss, or three thousand french francs, which is something less than six hundred dollars. there is also a house and a garden, and pensions are bestowed on the widows and children. on the whole, the state has too much connexion with this great interest, but the system has the all-important advantage of preventing men from profaning the altar as a pecuniary speculation. the population of vaud is about , souls, and there are one hundred and fifty-eight protestant pastors, besides four catholics, or about one clergyman to each thousand souls, which is just about the proportion that exists in new york. in conversing with an intelligent vaudois on returning from the church, i found that a great deal of interest is excited in this canton by the late conspiracy in berne. the vaudois have got that attachment to liberty which is ever the result of a long political dependence, and which so naturally disposes the inferior to resist the superior. it is not pretended, however, that the domination of berne was particularly oppressive, though as a matter of course, whenever the interests of vaud happened to conflict with those of the great canton, the former had to succumb. still the reaction of a political dependency, which lasted more than two centuries and a half, had brought about, even previously to the late changes, a much more popular form of government than was usual in switzerland, and the people here really manifest some concern on the subject of this effort of aristocracy. as you may like to compare the elective qualifications of one of the more liberal cantons of the confederation with some of our own, i will give you an outline of those of vaud, copied, in the substance, from picot. the voter must have had a legal domicile in the canton one year, be a citizen, twenty-five years old, and be of the number of _the three-fourths of the citizens who pay the highest land-tax_, or have three sons enrolled and serving in the militia. domestics, persons receiving succour from the parishes, bankrupts, outlaws, and convicted criminals, are perpetually excluded from the elective franchise. this system, though far better than that of france, which establishes a certain _amount_ of direct taxation, is radically vicious, as it makes property, and that of a particular species, the test of power. it is, in truth, the old english plan a little modified; and the recent revolution that has lately taken place in england under the name of reform, goes to prove that it is a system which contains in itself the seeds of vital changes. as every political question is strictly one of practice, _changes_ become necessary everywhere with the changes of circumstances, and these are truly reforms; but when they become so serious as to overturn principles, they produce the effects of revolutions, though possibly in a mitigated form. every system, therefore, should be so framed as to allow of all the alterations which are necessary to convenience, with a strict regard to its own permanency as connected with its own governing principle. in america, in consequence of having attended to this necessity from the commencement, we have undergone no revolution in principle in half a century, though constantly admitting of minor changes, while nearly all europe has, either in theory or in practice, or in both, been effectually revolutionized. nor does the short period from which our independent existence dates furnish any argument against us, as it is not so much _time_, as the _changes_ of which time is the parent, that tries political systems; and america has undergone the ordinary changes, such as growth, extension of interests, and the other governing circumstances of society, that properly belong to two centuries, within the last fifty years. america to-day, in all but government, is less like the america of , than the france of to-day is like the france of . while it is the fashion to scout our example as merely that of an untried experiment, ours is fast getting to be the oldest political system in christendom, as applied to one and the same people. _nations_ are not easily destroyed,--they exist under a variety of mutations, and names last longer than things; but i now speak in reference to distinguishing and prominent facts, without regard to the various mystifications under which personal interests disguise themselves. letter xviii. neglect of the vine in america.--drunkenness in france.--cholera especially fatal to drunkards.--the soldier's and the sailor's vice.--sparkling champagne and still champagne.--excessive price of these wines in america.--burgundy.--proper soil for the vine.--anecdote.--vines of vévey.--the american fox-grape. dear ----, a little incident has lately impressed me with the great wealth of this quarter of the world in wines, as compared with our own poverty. by poverty, i do not mean ignorance of the beverage, or a want of good liquors; for i believe few nations have so many varieties, or varieties so excellent, as ourselves. certainly it is not common to meet as good bordeaux wines in paris as in new york. the other good liquors of france are not so common; and yet the best burgundy i ever drank was in america.[ ] this is said without reference to the different qualities of the vineyards--but, by poverty, i mean the want of the vines. [footnote : since his return, the author can say the same of rhenish wines; though the tavern wines of germany are usually much better than the tavern wines of france.] vineyards abound all over the american continent, within the proper latitudes, except in the portions of it peopled by the colonists who have an english origin. to this fact, then, it is fair to infer, that we owe the general neglect of this generous plant among ourselves. the swiss, german, and french emigrants are already thinking of the vine, while we have been in possession of the country two centuries without making a cask of wine. if this be not literally true it is so nearly true, as to render it not less a leading fact. i do not attach exactly the same moral consequences to the want of the vine as is usually attributed to the circumstances by political economists; though i am of opinion that serious physical evils may be traced to this cause. men will seek some stimulus or other, if it be attainable, place them in what situations you will, although wine is forbidden by the koran, the mahomedan is often intoxicated; and my own eyes have shown me how much drunkenness exists in the vine-growing countries of europe. on this subject it may be well to say a word _en passant_. i came to europe under the impression that there was more drunkenness among us than in any other country, england, perhaps, excepted. a residence of six months in paris changed my views entirely. you will judge of my surprise when first i saw a platoon of the royal guard,--literally a whole platoon, so far as numbers and the order of their promenade was concerned,--staggering drunk, within plain view of the palace of their master. from this time i became more observant, and not a day passed that i did not see men, and even women, in the same situation in the open streets. usually, when the fact was mentioned to americans, they expressed surprise, declaring they had never seen such a thing! they were too much amused with other sights to regard this; and then they had come abroad with different notions, and it is easier to float in the current of popular opinion than to stem it. in two or three instances i have taken the unbelievers with me into the streets, where i have never failed to convince them of their mistake in the course of an hour. these experiments, too, were usually made in the better quarters of the town, or near our own residence, where one is much less apt to meet with drunkenness than in the other quarters. on one occasion, a party of four of us went out with this object, and we passed thirteen drunken men, during a walk of an hour. many of them were so far gone as to be totally unable to walk. i once saw, on the occasion of a festival, three men literally wallowing in the gutter before my window; a degree of beastly degradation i never witnessed in any other country. the usual reply of a frenchman, when the subject has been introduced, was that the army of occupation introduced the habit into the capital. but i have spoken to you of m----, a man whose candour is only equalled by his information. he laughed at this account of the matter, saying that he had now known france nearly sixty years; it is his native country; and he says that he cannot see any difference, in this particular, in his time. it is probable that, during the wars of napoleon, when there was so great a demand for men of the lower classes, it was less usual to encounter this vice in the open streets, than now, for want of subjects; but, by all i can learn, there never was a time when drunkards did not abound in france. i do assure you that, in the course of passing between paris and london, i have been more struck by drunkenness in the streets of the former, than in those of the latter. not long since, i asked a labourer if he ever got _grisé_, and he laughingly told me--"yes, whenever he could." he moreover added, that a good portion of his associates did the same thing. now i take it, this word _grisé_ contains the essence of the superiority of wine over whiskey. it means fuddled, a condition from which one recovers more readily, than from downright drunkenness, and of which the physical effects are not so injurious. i believe the consequences of even total inebriety from wine, are not as bad as those which follow inebriety from whiskey and rum. but your real amateur here is no more content with wine than he is with us; he drinks a white brandy that is pretty near the pure alcohol. the cholera has laid bare the secrets of drunkenness, all over europe. at first we were astonished when the disease got among the upper classes; but, with all my experience, i confess i was astonished at hearing it whispered of a gentleman, as i certainly did in a dozen instances--"_mais il avait l'habitude de boire trop_." cholera, beyond a question, killed many a sober man, but it also laid bare the fault of many a devotee of the bottle. drunkenness, almost as a matter of course, abounds in nearly all, if not in all, the armies of europe. it is peculiarly the soldier's and the sailor's vice, and some queer scenes have occurred directly under my own eyes here, which go to prove it. take among others, the fact, that a whole guard, not long since, got drunk in the faubourg st. germain, and actually arrested people in the streets and confined them in the guard-house. the invalids are notorious for staggering back to their quarters; and i presume i have seen a thousand of these worthies, first and last, as happy as if they had all their eyes, and arms, and legs about them. the official reports show ten thousand cases of females arrested for drunkenness, in paris, during the last year.--but to return to our vineyards. although i am quite certain drunkenness is not prevented by the fact that wine is within the reach of the mass, it is easy to see that its use is less injurious, physically, than that of the stronger compounds and distillations, to which the people of the non-vine-growing regions have recourse as substitutes. nature is a better brewer than man, and the pure juice of the grape is less injurious than the mixed and fiery beverages that are used in america. in reasonable quantities, it is not injurious at all. five-and-twenty years since, when i first visited europe, i was astonished to see wine drunk in tumblers. i did not at first understand that half of what i had up to that time been drinking was brandy, under the name of wine. while our imported wines are, as a whole, so good, we do not always show the same discrimination in choosing. there is very little good champagne, for instance, drunk in america. a vast deal is consumed, and we are beginning to understand that it is properly a table-wine, or one that is to be taken with the meats; but sparkling champagne is, _ex necessitate_, a wine of inferior quality. no wine _mousses_, as the french term it, that has body enough to pass a certain period without fermentation. my friend de v---- is a proprietor of vines at aï, and he tells me that the english take most of their good wines, which are the "still champagnes," and the russians and the americans the poor, or the sparkling. a great deal of the sparkling, however, is consumed in france, the price better suiting french economy. but the wine-growers of champagne themselves speak of us as consumers of their second-class liquors. i drunk at paris, as good "sparkling champagne" as anybody i knew, de v---- having the good nature to let me have it, from his cellar, for the price at which it is sold to the dealer and exporter, or at three francs the bottle. the _octroi_ and the transportation bring the price up to about three francs and a half. this then is the cost to the restaurateur and the innkeeper. these sell it again to their customers, at six francs the bottle. now a bottle of wine ought not, and i presume does not, cost the american dealer any more; the difference in favour of the duty more than equalling the difference against them, in the transportation. this wine is sold in our eating-houses and taverns at two dollars, and even at two dollars and a half, the bottle! in other words, the consumer pays three times the amount of the first cost and charges. now, it happens, that there is something very like free trade in this article, (to use the vernacular), and here are its fruits; you also see in this fact, the truth of what i have told you of our paying for the want of a class of men who wilt be content to be shopkeepers and innkeepers, and who do not look forward to becoming anything more. i do not say that we are the less respectable for this circumstance, but we are, certainly, as a people, less comfortable. champagne, rhenish, and bordeaux wines ought to be sold in new york, quite as cheap as they are sold in the great towns of the countries in which they are made. they can be bought of the wine-merchants nearly as low, even as things are. if the innkeepers and steam-boat stewards, of america, would buy and sell low-priced burgundy wines, that, as the french call it, _carry water well_, as well as some other wines that might be named, the custom of drinking this innocent and useful beverage at table would become general, attention would then be paid to the vine, and in twenty years we should be consumers of the products of our own vineyards. the idea that our winters are too severe can hardly be just. there may be mountainous districts where such is the fact, but, in a country that extends from the th to the th degrees of latitude, it is scarcely possible to suppose the vine cannot flourish. i have told you that wine is made on the elbe, and it is made in more than half the swiss cantons. proper exposures and proper soil are necessary for good wines, anywhere, but nothing is easier than to have both. in america, i fear, we have hitherto sought land that was too rich; or rather, land that is wanting in the proper and peculiar richness that is congenial to the vine. all the great vineyards i have seen, and all of which i can obtain authentic accounts, are on thin gravelly soils; frequently, as is the case in the rheingau, on decomposed granite, quartz, and sienite. slate mixed with quartz on a clayish bottom, and with basalt, is esteemed a good soil, as is also marl and gravel. the germans use rich manures, but i do not think this is the case in france. the grape that makes good wine is rarely fit to eat. much care is had to reject the defective fruit, when a delicate wine is expected, just as we cull apples to make fine cider. a really good vineyard is a fortune at once, and a tolerable one is as good a disposition as can be made of land. all the fine wines of hockheim are said to be the produce of only eight or ten acres. there is certainly more land than this, in the vine, south of the village, but the rest is not esteemed to be hockheimer. time is indispensable to fine wines, and time is a thing that an american lives too fast to spare. the grapes become better by time, although periodically renewed, and the wine improves in the same way. i have told you in these letters, that i passed a vineyard on the lake of zurich of which there are records to show it has borne the vine five hundred years. five centuries since, if historians are to be believed, the winters on this lake must have been as severe as they are usually on champlain; they are almost as severe, even now. extraordinary characters are given to some of the vines here. thus some of the moselle wines, it is said, will not make good vinegar! if this be true, judging by my own experience, vinegar is converted into wines of the moselle. i know no story of this sort, after all, that is more marvellous than one i have heard of the grandfather of a----, and which i believe to be perfectly true, as it is handed down on authority that can scarcely be called in question. a pipe of madeira was sent to him, about the year , which proved to be so bad that, giving it up as a gone case, he ordered it to be put in the sun, with a bottle in its bung-hole, in order that it might, at least, make good vinegar. bis official station compelled him to entertain a great deal, and his factotum, on these occasions, was a negro, whose name i have forgotten. this fellow, a capital servant when sober, occasionally did as he saw his betters do, and got drunk. of course this greatly deranged the economy of the government dinners. on one occasion, particular care was taken to keep him in his right senses, and yet at the critical moment he appeared behind his master's chair, as happy as the best of them. this matter was seriously inquired into next day, when it was discovered that a miracle had been going on out of doors, and that the vinegar had been transformed into wine. the tradition is, that this wine was remarkable for its excellence, and that it was long known by the name of the negro, as the best wine of a colony, where more good wine of the sort was drunk, probably, than was ever known by the same number of people, in the same time, anywhere else. now should one experimenting on a vineyard, in america, find vinegar come from his press, he would never have patience to let it ferment itself back into good liquor. patience, i conceive, is the only obstacle to our becoming a great wine-growing and a great silk-growing country. i have been led into these remarks by observing the vineyards here. the _qualities_ of wines, of course, are affected by the positions of the vineyards, for all who can make wine do not make good wine, but the vines of vévey, owing most probably to their exposure, are said to be the best of switzerland. the best liquor comes from st. saphorin, a hamlet that is quite near the town, which lies at the foot of the acclivity, described to you in our approach to this place. the little chateau-looking house that so much struck our fancies, on that occasion, is, in fact, in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot. all these circumstances show how much depends on minor circumstances in the cultivation of the vine, and how much may be expected from the plant, when care is had to respect them. the heat may be too great for the vineyard as well as the cold. in italy there is a practice of causing the vines to run on trees, in order to diminish the effect of the heat, by means of the shade they create. but the good wines are nearly everywhere, if not positively everywhere, produced from the short, clipped standards. this fact has induced me to think that we may succeed better with the vine in the middle, and even in the eastern, than in the southern and western states. i take it, the cold is of no importance, provided it be not so intense as to kill the plant, and the season is long enough to permit the fruit to ripen. it would be absurd in me, who have but a very superficial knowledge of the subject, to pretend to be very skillful in this matter, but i cannot help thinking that, if one had patience to try the experiment, it would be found the common the american fox-grape would in time bring a fine wine. it greatly resembles the grapes of some of the best vineyards here, and the fact of its not being a good eating grape is altogether in its favour. in short, i throw it out as a conjecture more than as an ascertained fact, it is true, but from all i have seen in europe, i am induced to think that, in making our experiments on the vine, we have been too ambitious to obtain a fat soil, and too warp of the higher latitudes of the country. a gravelly hill-side, in the interior, that has been well stirred, and which has the proper exposure, i cannot but thing would bring good wine, in all the low countries of the middle states. letter xix. the leman lake.--excursions on it.--the coast of savoy.--grandeur and beauty of the rocks.--sunset.--evening scene.--american families residing on the banks of the lake.--conversation with a vévaisan on the subject of america.--the nullification question.--america misrepresented in europe.--rowland stephenson in the united states.--unworthy arts to bring america into disrepute.--blunders of europe in respect of america.--the kentuckians.--foreign associations in the states.--illiberal opinions of many americans.--prejudices. dear ----, our residence at vévey, thus far, has been fruitful of pleasure. the lake, with its changeful aspects and movement, wears better even than the oberland alps, and we have now become thoroughly convinced of our mistake in establishing ourselves at berne, beautiful as is that place, in . the motive was a desire to be central, but switzerland is so small that the distances are of no great moment, and i would advise all our friends who intend to pass a summer in the cantons, and who have need of a house, to choose their station somewhere on the shores of the leman. two steam-boats ply daily in different directions, and it is of little consequence at which end one may happen to be. taking everything into consideration "_mon lac est le premier_" is true; though it may be questioned if m. de voltaire ever saw, or had occasion to see, half of its advantages. we never tire of the leman, but spend two or three hours every day in the boat. sometimes we row in front of the town, which literally stands in the water, in some places, musing on the quaint old walls, and listening to the lore of honest john, who moves two crooked oars as leisurely as a lady of the tropic utters, but who has seen great events in his time. sometimes even this lazy action is too much for the humour of the moment, and we are satisfied with drifting along the shore, for there is generally current enough to carry us the whole length of vévey in half an hour. occasionally we are tossed about like an egg-shell, the winds at a distance soon throwing this part of the sheet into commotion. on the whole, however, we have, as yet, had little besides calms, and, what is unusual in switzerland, not a drop of rain. we have no reason to suspect the lake to be unhealthy, for we are often out until after sunset, without experiencing any ill effects. the shores are everywhere bold about vévey, though the meadows and the waters meet near the entrance of the rhone, some eight or ten miles from this place, in a way to raise the thoughts of rushes and lilies, and a suspicion of fevers. the pure air and excellent food of the mountains, however, have done us all good thus far, and we are looking eagerly forward to the season of grapes, which is drawing near, and which every body says make those who are perfectly well, infinitely better. i have not yet spoken to you of the greatest charm in the scenery of vévey, and the one which perhaps has given us the highest degree of satisfaction. the coast of savoy, immediately opposite the town, is a range of magnificent rocks, that rises some four or five thousand feet above the surface of the water. in general these precipices are nearly perpendicular, though their surfaces are broken by huge ravines, that may well be termed valleys. this is the region that impends over meillerie, st. gingoulph, and evian, towns or hamlets that cling to the bases of the mountains, and form, of themselves, beautiful objects, from this side of the lake. the distance from vévey to the opposite shore, agreeably to the authority of old john, our boatman, is about five miles, though the great purity of the atmosphere and the height of the land make it appear less. the summit of the rocks of savoy are broken into the most fantastical forms, so beautifully and evenly drawn, though they are quite irregular and without design, that i have termed them natural arabesques. no description can give you an accurate idea of their beauty, for i know nothing else in nature to compare them to. as they lie nearly south of us, i cannot account for the unusual glow of the atmosphere behind them, at every clear sunset, except from the reflection of the glaciers; mont blanc lying in that direction, at the distance of about fifty miles, though invisible. now the effect of the outline of these rocks, at, or after sunset, relieved by a soft, golden sky, is not only one of the finest sights of switzerland, but, in its way, is just the most perfect spectacle i have ever beheld. it is not so apt to extort sudden admiration, as the rosy tints and spectral hues of the high alps, at the same hour; but it wins on you, in the way the lonely shadows of the apennines grow on the affections, and, so far from tiring or becoming satisfied with their view, each successive evening brings greater delight than the last. you may get some idea of what i mean, by imagining vast arabesques, rounded and drawn in a way that no art can equal, standing out huge, and dark, and grand, in high relief, blending sublimity with a bewitching softness, against a sky. whose light is slowly passing from the glow of fiery gold, to the mildest tints of evening. i scarcely know when this scene is most to be admired; when the rocks appear distinct and brown, showing their material, and the sky is burnished; or when the first are nearly black masses, on whose surfaces nothing is visible, and the void beyond is just pregnant with sufficient light to expose their exquisite forms. perhaps this is the perfection of the scene, for the gloom of the hour throws a noble mystery over all. these are the sights that form the grandest features in swiss scenery. that of the high peaks cut off from the earth by the clouds, is perhaps the most extraordinary of them all; but i think this of the rocks of savoy the one that wins the most on the affections, although this opinion is formed from a knowledge of the general fact that objects which astonish so greatly at first, do not, as a rule, continue the longest to afford pleasure, for i never saw the former spectacle but twice and on one of those occasions, imperfectly. no _dilettanti_ were ever more punctual at the opening of the orchestra, than we are at this evening exhibition, which, very much like a line and expressive harmony, grows upon us at each repetition. all this end of the lake, as we float lazily before the town, with the water like a mirror, the acclivity behind the town gradually darkening upward under the retiring light, the remote alpine pastures just throwing out their chalets, the rocks of savoy and the sublime glen of the rhone, with the glacier of mont velan in its depths, raising its white peak into the broad day long after evening has shadowed everything below, forms the most perfect natural picture i have ever seen. you can easily fancy how much we enjoy all this. john and his boat have been in requisition nearly every evening since our arrival; and the old fellow has dropped so readily into our humours, that his oars rise and fall in a way to produce a melancholy ripple, and little else. the sympathy between us is perfect, and i have almost fancied that his oars daily grow more crooked and picturesque. we are not alone, however, in the possession of so much natural beauty. no less than seven american families, including ourselves, are either temporarily established on or quite near this lake, or are leisurely moving around its banks. the fame of the beauty of the women has already reached our ears, though, sooth to say, a reputation of that sort is not very difficult of attainment in this part of the world. with one of these families we were intimate in italy, the tie of country being a little increased by the fact that some of their connexions were also ours. they hurried from lausanne to meet us, the moment they were apprized of our arrival, and the old relations have been re-established between us. since this meeting excursions have been planned, and it is probable that i may have something to communicate, in reference to them. a day or two since i met a vévaisan on the public promenade, with whom business had led to a slight acquaintance. we saluted, and pursued our walk together. the conversation soon turned on the news from america, where nullification is, just now, menacing disunion. the swiss are the only people, in europe, who appear to me to feel any concern in what has been generally considered to be a crisis in our affairs. i do not wish to be understood as saying that individuals of other nations do not feel the same friendly interest in our prosperity, for perhaps a million such might be enumerated in the different nations of europe, the extreme liberals everywhere looking to our example as so much authority in favour of their doctrines; but, after excluding the mass, who have too much to do to live, to trouble themselves with concerns so remote, so far as my knowledge extends, the great majority on this side the atlantic, without much distinction of country, switzerland excepted, are waiting with confidence and impatience for the knell of the union. i might repeat to you many mawkish and unmeaning declarations to the contrary of all this, but i deem them to be mere phrases of society to which no one, in the least acquainted with the world, can attach any importance; and which, as they have never deceived me, i cannot wish should be made the means of deceiving you. men generally hesitate to avow in terms, the selfishness and illiberality that regulate all their acts and wishes, and he who is credulous enough to mistake words for deeds, or even thoughts, in this quarter of the world, will soon become the dupe of more than half of those he meets. i believe i never mentioned to you an anecdote of sir james mackintosh, which bears directly on this subject. it was at a dinner given by sir ----, that some one inquired if he (sir james mackintosh) had ever discovered the author of a certain libellous attack on himself. "not absolutely, though i have no doubt that ---- was the person. i suspected him at once; but meeting him in pall mall, soon after the article appeared, he turned round and walked the whole length of the street with me, covering me with protestations of admiration and esteem, and then i felt quite sure of my man!" my vévaisan made many inquiries as to the probable result of the present struggle, and appeared greatly gratified when i told him that i apprehended no serious danger to the republic. i made him laugh by mentioning the opinion of the witty abbé correa, who said, "the americans are great talkers on political subjects; you would think they were about to fly to their arms, and just as you expect a revolution, _they go home and drink tea_." my acquaintance was anxious to know if our government had sufficient strength to put down nullification by force, for he had learned there was but a single sloop of war, and less than a battalion of troops, in the disaffected part of the country. i told him we possessed all the means that are possessed in other countries to suppress rebellion, although we had not thought it necessary to resort to the same system of organization. our government was mild in principle, and did not wish to oppress even minorities; but i made no doubt of the attachment of a vast majority to the union, and, when matters really came to a crisis, if rational compromise could not effect the object, i thought nine men in ten would rally in its defence. i did not believe that even civil war was to produce results in america different from what it produced elsewhere. men would fight in a republic as they fought in monarchies, until they were tired, and an arrangement would follow. it was not common for a people of the same origin, of similar habits, and contiguous territory, to dismember an empire by civil war, unless violence had been used in bringing them together, or conquest had first opened the way to disunion. i did not know that we were always to escape the evils of humanity any more than others, or why they were to fall heavier on us, when they proceeded from the same causes, than on our neighbours. as respects the small force in carolina, i thought it argued our comparative strength, rather than our comparative weakness. here were loud threats of resistance, organized and even legal means to effect it, and yet the laws were respected, when sustained by only a sloop of war and two companies of artillery. if france were to recall her battalions from la vendée, austria her divisions from italy, russia her armies from poland, or england her troops from india or ireland, we all know that those several countries would be lost, in six months, to their present possessors. as we had our force in reserve, it really appeared to me that either our disaffection was very different from the disaffection of europe, or that our institutions contained some conservative principle that did not usually exist in this hemisphere. my vévaisan was curious to know to which of these circumstances i ascribed the present quiet in carolina. i told him to both. the opposition in that state, as a whole, were honest in their views; and, though some probably meant disunion, the greater part did not. it was a governing principle of our system to seek redress by appeals to the source of power, and the majority were probable looking still, to that quarter, of relief. under other systems, rebellion, nine times in ten, having a different object, would not be checked by this expectation. the swiss listened to all this attentively, and remarked that america had been much misrepresented in europe, and that the opinion was then getting to be general in his country, from improper motives. he told me that a great deal had been said about the proceedings in the case of rowland stephenson, and he frankly asked me to explain them; for, being a commercial man, he admitted that injurious impressions had been made even on himself in relation to that affair. this was the third swiss who had alluded to this subject, the other two instances occurring at rome. in the latter cases, i understood pretty distinctly that there were reports current that the americans were so desirous of obtaining rich emigrants, that they had rescued a criminal in order to reap the benefit of his gold! of course i explained the matter, by simply stating the facts, adding, that the case was an admirable illustration of the treatment america had received from europe, ever since . an englishman, _a member of parliament, by the way_, had absconded from his own country, taking shelter in ours, by the mere accident of meeting at sea a swedish brig bound thither. a reward was offered for his arrest, and certain individuals had taken on themselves, instigated by whom i know not, to arrest him on a retired road, in georgia, and to bring him covertly within the jurisdiction of new york, with the intention to send him clandestinely on board a packet bound to europe. now a grosser abuse than an act like this could not well be committed. no form of law was observed, and the whole proceeding was a violation of justice, and of the sovereignty of the two states interested. it is true the man arrested was said to be guilty of gross fraud; but where such practices obtain, guilt will soon cease to be necessary in order to commit violence. the innocent may be arrested wrongfully, too. as soon as the circumstances became known, an application was made to the proper authorities for relief, which was granted on a principle that obtained in all civilized countries, where right is stronger than might. had any one been transferred from canada to england, under similar circumstances, he would have been entitled to the same relief, and there is not a jurist in england who does not know the fact; and yet this transaction, which, if it redound to the discredit of either nation at all, (an exaggerated opinion, i admit,) must redound to the discredit of that which produced the delinquent, and actually preferred him to one of its highest legislative stations, has been so tortured all over europe, as to leave an impression unfavourable to america! now i tell you, dear ----, as i told my vévaisan, that this case is a very fair example of the manner in which, for seven years, i have now been an attentive observer of the unworthy arts used to bring us into disrepute. the power to injure, in order to serve their own selfish views, which old-established and great nations possess over one like our own, is not fully appreciated in america, nor do we attach sufficient importance to the consequences. i am not conscious of a disposition to shut my eyes to our own peculiar national defects, more especially since the means of comparison have rendered me more sensible of their nature and existence; but nothing can be more apparent to any man of ordinary capacity, who has enjoyed the opportunities necessary to form a correct judgment, than the fact, that the defects usually imputed to us here, such as the want of morals, honesty, order, decency, liberality, and religion, are, in truth, _as the world goes_, the strong points of american character; while some of those on which we are a little too apt to pride ourselves,--intelligence, taste, manners, and education, for instance, as applied to all beyond the base of society,--are, in truth, those on which it would most become us to be silent. others may tell you differently, especially those who are under the influence of the "trading humanities," a class that is singularly addicted to philanthropy or vituperation, as the balance-sheet happens to show variations of profit and loss. i told my swiss that one of the reasons why europe made so many blunders in her predictions about america, was owing to the fact that she sought her information in sources ill qualified, and, perhaps, ill disposed to impart it. most of the information of this nature that either entered or left america, came, like her goods, through two or three great channels, or sea-ports, and these were thronged with the natives of half the countries of europe; commercial adventurers, of whom not one in five ever got to feel or think like americans. these men, in some places, possess even a direct influence over a portion of the press, and by these means, as well as by their extended correspondence, they disseminate erroneous notions of the country abroad. the cities themselves, as a rule, or rather the prominent actors in the towns, do not represent the tone of the nation, as is proved on nearly every distinctive political question that arises, by the towns almost uniformly being found in the minority, simply because they are purely trading communities, follow the instinct of their varying interests, and are ready to shout in the rear of any leader who may espouse them. now these foreign merchants, as a class, are always found on the side which is the most estranged from the regular action of the institutions of the country. in america, intelligence is not confined to the towns; but, as a rule, there is less of it there than among the rural population. as a proof of the errors which obtain on the subject of america in europe, i instanced the opinion which betrayed itself in england, the nation which ought to know us best, during the war of . feeling a commercial jealousy itself, its government naturally supposed her enemies were among the merchants, and that her friends were to be found in the interior. the fact would have exactly reversed this opinion, an opinion whose existence is betrayed in a hundred ways, and especially in the publications of the day. it was under this notion that our invaders made an appeal to the kentuckians for support! now, there was not, probably, a portion of the earth where less sympathy was to be found for england than in kentucky, or, in short, along the whole western frontier of america, where, right or wrong, the people attribute most of their indian wars to the instigation of that power. few foreigners took sufficient interest in the country to probe such a feeling; and england, being left to her crude conjectures, and to theories of her own, had probably been thus led into one of the most absurd of all the blunders of this nature that she could possibly have committed. i believe that a large proportion of the erroneous notions which exist in europe, concerning american facts, proceed from the prejudices of this class of the inhabitants.[ ] [footnote : this was the opinion of the writer, while in europe. since his return, he has seen much reason to confirm it. last year, in a free conversation with a foreign diplomatic agent on the state of public feeling in regard to certain political measures, the _diplomate_ affirmed that, according to his experience, the talent, property, and respectability of the country were all against the government. this is the worn-out cant of england; and yet, when reform has been brought to the touchstone, its greatest opponents have been found among the _parvenus_. on being requested to mention individuals, the diplomatic man in question named three new york merchants, all of whom are foreigners by birth, neither of whom can speak good english, neither of whom could influence a vote--neither of whom had, probably, ever read the constitution or could understand it if he had read it, and neither of whom was, in principle, any more than an every-day common-place reflection of the antiquated notions of the class to which he belonged in other nations, and in which he had been, educated, and under the influence of which he had arrived here.] in order to appreciate the influence of such a class of men, it is necessary to recollect their numbers, wealth, and union, it has often been a source of mortification to me to see the columns of the leading journals of the largest town of the republic, teeming with reports of the celebrations of english, irish, german, french, and scotch societies; and in which the sentiments promulgated, half of the time, are foreign rather than american. charitable associations, _as charities_, may be well enough, but the institutions of the country, so generous and liberal in themselves, are outraged by every factitious attempt to overshadow them by these appeals to the prejudices and recollections of another state of society. at least, we might be spared the parade in the journals, and the offensive appearance of monopolizing the land, which these accounts assume. intelligent travellers observe and comment on these things, and one of them quaintly asked me, not long since, "if really there were no americans in america?" can it be matter of surprise that when the stranger sees these men so prominent in print and in society, (in many instances quite deservedly), he should mistake their influence, and attach an importance to their opinions which they do not deserve? that europe has been receiving false notions of america from some source, during the present century, is proved by the results so completely discrediting her open predictions; and, while i know that many americans have innocently aided in the deception, i have little doubt that the foreign merchants established in the country have been one of the principal causes of the errors. it is only necessary to look back within our own time, to note the progress of opinion, and to appreciate the value of those notions that some still cherish, as containing all that is sound and true in human policy. thirty years ago, the opinion that it was unsafe to teach the inferior classes to read, "_as it only enabled then to read bad books_," was a common and favourite sentiment of the upper classes in england. to-day, it is a part of the established system of austria to instruct her people! i confess that i now feel mortified and grieved when i meet with an american gentleman who professes anything but liberal opinions, as respects the rights of his fellow-creatures. although never illiberal, i trust, i do not pretend that my own notions have not undergone changes, since, by being removed from the pressure of the society in which i was born, my position, perhaps, enables me to look around, less influenced by personal considerations than is usual; but one of the strongest feelings created by an absence of so many years from he me, is the conviction that no american can justly lay claim to be, what might be and ought to be the most exalted of human beings, the milder graces of the christian character excepted, an american gentleman, without this liberality entering thoroughly into the whole composition of his mind. by liberal sentiments, however, i do not mean any of the fraudulent cant that is used, in order to delude the credulous; but the generous, manly determination to let all enjoy equal political rights, and to bring those to whom authority is necessarily confided, as far as practicable, under the control of the community they serve. opinions like these have little in common with the miserable devices of demagogues, who teach the doctrine that the people are infallible; or that the aggregation of fallible parts, acting, too, with diminished responsibilities, form an infallible whole; which is a doctrine almost as absurd as that which teaches us to believe "the people are their own worst enemies;" a doctrine, which, if true, ought to induce those who profess it, to forbid any man from managing his own affairs, but compel him to confide them to the management of others; since the elementary principle is the same in communities and individuals, and, as regards interests, neither would go wrong unless deceived. i shall not conceal from you the mortification and regret i have felt at discovering, from this distance, and it is more easily discovered from a distance than when near by, how far, how very far, the educated classes of america are, in opinion, (in my poor judgment, at least), behind the fortunes of the country. notions are certainly still entertained at home, among this class, that are frankly abandoned here, by men of any capacity, let their political sect be what it may; and i have frequently seen assertions and arguments used, in congress, that, i think, the dullest tory would now hesitate about using in parliament. i do not say that certain great prejudices are not yet prevalent in england, that are exploded with us; but my remark applies to some of the old and cherished theories of government, which have been kept alive as theories in england, long after they have ceased to be recognised in practice, and some of which, indeed, like that of the doctrine of a balance between different powers in the state, never had any other than a theoretical existence, at all. the absurd doctrine just mentioned has many devout believers, at this moment, in america, when a moment's examination must show its fallacy. the democracy of a country, in the nature of things, will possess its physical force. now give to the physical force of a community an equal political power, and the moment it finds itself gravely interested in supporting or defeating any measure, it will fall back on its strength, set the other estates at defiance, and blow your boasted balance of power to the winds! there never has been an active democratical feature in the government of england; nor have the commons, since they have enjoyed anything like independence, been aught but an auxiliary to the aristocracy, in a modified form. while the king was strong, the two bodies united to put him down, and, as he got to be weak, they gradually became identified, to reap the advantages. what is to come remains to be seen. letter xx. the equinox.--storm on the lake.--chase of a little boat.--chateau of blonay.--drive to lausanne.--mont benon.--trip to geneva in the winkelried.--improvements in geneva.--russian travellers.--m. pozzo di borgo.--table d'hôte.--extravagant affirmations of a frenchman.--conversation with a scotchman.--american duels.--visit at a swiss country-house.--english customs affected in america.--social intercourse in the united states.--difference between a european and an american foot and hand.--violent gale.--sheltered position of vévey.--promenade.--picturesque view.--the great square.--invitation.--mountain excursion.--an american lieutenant.--anecdote.--extensive prospect.--chateau of glayrole. dear ----, we have had a touch of the equinox, and the leman has been in a foam, but its miniature anger, though terrible enough at times, to those who are embarked on its waters, can never rise to the dignity of a surf and a rolling sea. the rain kept me housed, and old john and i seized the occasion to convert a block of pine into a leman bark, for p----. the next day proving fair, our vessel, fitted with two latine sails, and carrying a weather helm, was committed to the waves, and away she went, on a wind, toward the opposite shore. p----, of course, was delighted, and clapped his hands, until, perceiving that it was getting off the land, he compelled us to enter the boat and give chase. a chase it was, truly; for the little thing went skipping from wave, to wave, in such a business-like manner, that i once thought it would go all the way to savoy. luckily a flaw caused it to tack, when it soon became our prize. we were a long distance off when the boat was overtaken, and i thought the views behind the town finer, at that position, than when nearer in. i was particularly struck with the appearance of the little chateau of blonay, which is still the residence of a family of the same name, that has been seated, for more than seven centuries, on the same rocky terrace. i was delighted to hear that its present owner is a liberal, as every ancient gentleman should be. such a man ought to be cautious how he tarnishes his lineage with unjust or ungenerous sentiments. the equinoctial blow returned the next day, and the lake became really fine, in a new point of view; for, aided by the mountains, it succeeded in getting up a very respectable appearance of fury. the sail-boats vanished, and even the steamers went through it with a good deal of struggling and reluctance. as soon as the weather became better, we went to lausanne, preferring the road, with a view to see the country. it is not easy to fancy anything prettier than this drive, which ran, nearly the whole distance, along the foot of hills, that would be mountains anywhere else, and quite near the water. the day was beautiful, and we had the lake, with its varying scenery and movement, the whole time in sight; while the road, an excellent solid wheel-track, wound between the walls of vineyards, and was so narrow as scarcely to admit the passage of two carriages at a time. at a short distance from lausanne, we left the margin of the lake, and ascended to the level of the town, through a wooded and beautifully ornamented country. we found our friends established in one of the numberless villas that dot the broken land around the place, with their windows commanding most of that glorious view that i have already described to you. mont benon, a beautiful promenade, was close at hand, and, in the near view, the eye ranged over fields, verdant and smooth lawns, irregular in their surfaces, and broken by woods and country-houses. a long attenuated reach of the lake stretched away towards geneva, while the upper end terminated in its noble mountains, and the mysterious, glen-like gorge of valais. we returned from this excursion in the evening, delighted with the exterior of lausanne, and more and more convinced that, all things considered, the shores of this lake unite greater beauties, with better advantages as a residence, than any other part of switzerland. after remaining at vévey a day or two longer, i went to geneva, in the winkelried, which had got a new commander; one as unaffected as his predecessor had been fantastical. our progress was slow, and, although we reached the port early enough to prevent being locked out, with the exception of a passage across lake george, in which the motion seemed expressly intended for the lovers of the picturesque, i think this the most deliberate run, or rather _walk_, i ever made by steam. i found geneva much changed, for the better, in the last four years. most of the hideous sheds had been pulled down from the fronts of the houses, and a stone pier is building, that puts the mighty port of new york, with her commercial _energies_, to shame. in other respects, i saw no material alterations in the place. the town was crowded, more of the travellers being french, and fewer english, than common. as for the russians, they appear to have vanished from the earth, to my regret; for in addition to being among the most polished people one meets, (i speak of those who travel), your russian uniformly treats the american kindly. i have met with more personal civilities, conveyed in a delicate manner, from these people, and especially from the diplomatic agents of russia, than from any others in europe, and, on the whole, i have cause, personally, to complain of none; or, in other words, i do not think that personal feeling warps my judgment, in this matter. m. pozzo di borgo, when he gave large entertainments, sent a number of tickets to mr. brown to be distributed among his countrymen, and i have heard this gentleman say, no other foreign minister paid him this attention. all this may be the result of policy, but it is something to obtain civil treatment in this world, on any terms. you must be here, to understand how completely we are overlooked. late as we were, we were in time for dinner, which i took at a _table d'hôte_ that was well crowded with french. i passed as an englishman, as a matter of course, and had reason to be much amused with some of the conversation. one young frenchman very coolly affirmed that two members had lately fought with pistols in the hall of congress, during the session, and his intelligence was received with many very proper exclamations of horror. the young man referred to the rencontre which took place on the terrace of the capitol, in which the party assailed _was_ a member of congress; but i have no doubt he believed all he said, for such is the desire to blacken the american name just now, that every unfavourable incident is seized upon and exaggerated, without shame or remorse. i had a strong desire to tell this young man that the affair to which he alluded, did not differ essentially from that of m. calémard de lafayette[ ], with the exception that no one was slain at washington; but i thought it wiser to preserve my _incognito_. [footnote : this unfortunate gentleman was no relation of the family of lafayette, his proper appellation being that of m. calémard. _fayette_, so far as i can discover, is an old french word, or perhaps a provincial word, that signifies a sort of _hedge_, and has been frequently used as a territorial appellation, like _de la haie_.] the next day our french party was replaced by another, and the master of the house promoted me to the upper end of his table, as an old boarder. here i found myself, once more, in company with an englishman, an irishman, and a scotchman. the two former sat opposite to me, and the last at my side. the civilities of the table passed between us, especially between the scotchman and myself, with whom i fell into discourse. after a little while, my neighbour, a sensible shrewd fellow enough, by the way of illustrating his opinion, and to get the better of me, cited some english practice, in connexion with "you in england." i told him i was no englishman. "no englishman! you are not a scotchman?" "certainly not." "still less an irishman!" "no." my companion now looked at me as hard as a well-bred man might, and said earnestly, "where did you learn to speak english so well?" "at home, as you did--i am an american." "umph!" and a silence of a minute; followed by abruptly putting the question of--"what is the reason that your duels in america are so bloody?--i allude particularly to some fought in the mediterranean by your naval officers. we get along, with less vindicative fighting." as this was rather a sharp and sudden shot, i thought it best to fire back, and i told him, "that as to the mediterranean, our officers were of opinion they were ill-treated, till they began to shoot those who inflicted the injuries; since which time all had gone on more smoothly. according to their experience, their own mode of fighting was much the most efficacious, in that instance at least." as he bore this good-naturedly, thinking perhaps his abrupt question merited a saucy answer, we soon became good friends. he made a remark or two, in better taste than the last, on the facts of america, and i assured him he was in error, showing him wherein his error lay. he then asked me why some of our own people did not correct the false impressions of europe, on the subject of america, for the european could only judge by the information laid before him. he then mentioned two or three american writers, who he thought would do the world a service by giving it a book or two, on the subject. i told him that if they wrote honestly and frankly, europe would not read their books, for prejudice was not easily overcome, and no favourable account of us would be acceptable. it would not be enough for us to confess our real faults, but we should be required to confess the precise faults that, according to the notions of this quarter of the world, we are morally, logically, and politically bound to possess. this he would not admit, for what man is ever willing to confess that his own opinions are prejudiced? i mention this little incident, because its spirit, in my deliberate judgment, forms the _rule_, in the case of the feeling of all british subjects, and i am sorry to say the subjects of most other european countries; and the mawkish sentiment and honeyed words that sometimes appear in toasts, tavern dinners, and public speeches, the exception. i may be wrong, as well as another, but this, i repeat for the twentieth time, is the result of my own observations; you know under what opportunities these observations have been made, and how far they are likely to be influenced by personal considerations. in the evening i accompanied a gentleman, whose acquaintance i had made at rome, to the country-house of a family that i had also had the pleasure of meeting during their winter's residence in that town. we passed out by the gate of savoy, and walked a mile or two, among country-houses and pleasant alleys of trees, to a dwelling not unlike one of our own, on the island of manhattan, though furnished with more taste and comfort than it is usual to meet in america. m. and mad. n---- were engaged to pass the evening at the house of a connexion near by, and they frankly proposed that we should be of the party. of course we assented, leaving them to be the judges of what was proper. at this second dwelling, a stone's throw from the other, we found a small party of sensible and well-bred people, who received me as a stranger, with marked politeness, but with great simplicity. i was struck with the repast, which was exactly like what a country tea is, or perhaps i ought to say, used to be, in respectable families, at home, who have not, or had not, much of the habits of the world. we all sat round a large table, and, among other good things that were served, was an excellent fruit tart! i could almost fancy myself in new england, where i remember a judge of a supreme court once gave me _custards_, at a similar entertainment. the family we had gone to see, were perhaps a little too elegant for such a set-out, for i had seen them in rome with _mi-lordi_ and _monsignori_, at their six o'clock dinners; but the quiet good sense with which everybody dropped into their own distinctive habits at home, caused me to make a comparison between them and ourselves, much to the disadvantage of the latter. i do not mean that usages ought not to change, but that usages should be consistent with themselves, and based on their general fitness and convenience for the society for which they are intended. this is good sense, which is commonly not only good-breeding, but high-breeding. the genevois are french in their language, in their literature, and consequently in many of their notions. still they have independence enough to have hours, habits, and rules of intercourse that they find suited to their own particular condition. the fashions of paris, beyond the point of reason, would scarcely influence them; and the answer would probably be, were a discrepancy between the customs pointed out, "that the usage may suit paris, but it does not suit geneva." how is it with, us? our women read in novels and magazines, that are usually written by those who have no access to the society they write about, and which they oftener caricature than describe, that people of quality in england go late to parties; and they go late to parties, too, to be like english people of quality. let me make a short comparison, by way of illustration. the english woman of quality, in town, rises at an hour between nine and twelve. she is dressed by her maid, and if there are children, they are brought to her by a child's maid: nourishing them herself is almost out of the question. her breakfast is eaten between eleven and one. at three or four she may lunch. at four she drives out; at half-past seven she dines. at ten she begins to think of the evening's amusement, and is ready for it, whatever it may be, unless it should happen to be the opera, or the theatre, (the latter being almost proscribed as vulgar), when she necessarily forces herself to hours a little earlier. she returns home, between one and four, is undressed by her maid, and sleeps until ten or even one, according to circumstances. these are late hours, certainly, and in some respects unwise; but they have their peculiar advantages, and, at all events, _they are consistent with themselves_. in new york, the house is open for morning visits at twelve, and with a large straggling town, bad attendance at the door, and a total want of convenience in public vehicles, unless one travels in a stage-coach, yclept an omnibus, it is closed at three, for dinner. _sending_ a card would be little short of social treason. we are too country-bred for such an impertinence. after dinner, there is an interval of three hours, when tea is served, and the mistress of the house is at a loss for employment until ten, when she goes into the world, in order to visit at the hour she has heard, or read, that fashion prescribes such visits ought to be made, in other countries, england in particular. here she remains until one or two, returns home, undresses herself, passes a sleepless morning, perhaps, on account of a cross child, and rises at seven to make her husband's coffee at eight! there is no exaggeration in this, for such is the dependence and imitation of a country that has not sufficient tone to think and act for itself, in still graver matters, that the case might even be made stronger, with great truth.--the men are no wiser. when _invited_, they dine at six; and at home, as a rule, they dine between three and four. a man who is much in society, dines out at least half his time, and consequently he is eating one day at four and the next at six, all winter! the object of this digression is to tell you that, so far as my observation goes, we are the only people who do not think and act for ourselves, in these matters. french millinery may pass current throughout christendom, for mere modes of dress are habits scarce worth resisting; but in germany, belgium, italy, switzerland, or wherever we have resided, i have uniformly found that, in all essentials, the people have hours and usages of their own, founded on their own governing peculiarities of condition. in america, there is a constant struggle between the force of things and imitation, and the former often proving the strongest, it frequently renders the latter lame, and, of course, ungraceful. in consequence of this fact, social intercourse with us is attended with greater personal sacrifices, and returns less satisfaction, than in most other countries. there are other causes, beyond a doubt, to assist in producing such a result; more especially in a town like new york, that doubles its population in less than twenty years; but the want of independence, and the weakness of not adapting our usages to our peculiar condition, ought to be ranked among the first. in some cases, necessity compels us to be americans, but whenever there is a tolerable chance, we endeavour to become "second chop english." in a fit of gallantry, i entered a jeweller's shop, next day, and bought a dozen or fifteen rings, with a view to distribute them, on my return, among my young country women at vévey, of whom there were now not less than eight or ten, three families having met at that place. it may serve to make the ladies of your family smile, when i add, that, though i was aware of the difference between a european and an american foot and hand,[ ] every one of my rings, but three, had to be cut, in order to be worn! it will show you how little one part of mankind know the other, if i add, that i have often met with allusions in this quarter of the world to the females of america, in which the writers have evidently supposed them to be coarse and masculine! the country is deemed vulgar, and by a very obvious association, it has been assumed that the women of such a country must have the same physical peculiarities as the coarse and vulgar here. how false this notion is, let the rings of geneva testify; for when i presented my offerings, i was almost laughed out of countenance. [footnote : the southern parts of europe form an exception.] a wind called the _bise_ had been blowing for the last twenty-four hours, and when we left vévey the gale was so strong, that the steam-boat had great difficulty in getting ahead. this is a north wind, and it forces the water, at times, into the narrow pass at the head of the lake, in a way to cause a rise of some two or three feet. we had taken a large empty bark in tow, but by the time we reached nyon, where the lake widens suddenly, the boat pitched and struggled so hard, as to render it advisable to cast off the tow, after which we did much better. the poor fellow, as he fell off broadside to the sea, which made a fair breach over him, and set a shred of sail, reminded me of a man who had been fancying himself in luck, by tugging at the heels of a prosperous friend, but who is unexpectedly cut adrift, when he is found troublesome. i did not understand his philosophy, for, instead of hauling in for the nearest anchorage, he kept away before it, and ran down for geneva, as straight as a bee that is humming towards its hive. the lake gradually grew more tranquil as we proceeded north, and from lausanne to vévey we actually had smooth water. i saw vessels becalmed, or with baffling winds, under this shore, while the _bise_ was blowing stiff, a few leagues farther down the lake. when i got home i was surprised to hear that the family had been boating the previous evening, and that there had scarcely been any wind during the day. this difference was owing to the sheltered position of vévey, of which the fact may serve to give you a better notion than a more laboured description. the following morning was market-day, and i walked upon the promenade early, to witness the arrival of the boats. there was not a breath of wind, even to leeward, for the _bise_ had blown itself out of breath. the bay of naples, in a calm, scarcely presents a more picturesque view, than the head of the lake did, on this occasion. i counted more than fifty boats in sight; all steering towards vévey, stealing along the water, some crossing from savoy, in converging lines, some coming down, and others up the sheet, from different points on the swiss side. the great square was soon crowded, and i walked among the peasants to observe their costumes and listen to their language. neither, however, was remarkable, all speaking french, and, at need, all i believe using a _patois_, which does not vary essentially from that of vaud. there was a good deal of fruit, some of which was pretty good, though it did not appear in the abundance we had been taught to expect. the grapes were coming in, and they promised to be fine. though it is still early for them, we have them served at breakfast, regularly, for they are said to be particularly healthful when eaten with the morning dew on them. we try to believe ourselves the better for a regimen that is too agreeable to be lightly dropped. among other things in the market, i observed the inner husks of indian corn, that had been dried in a kiln or oven, rubbed, and which were now offered for sale as the stuffing of beds. it struck me that this was a great improvement on straw. i had received a visit the day before from a principal inhabitant of vévey, with an invitation to breakfast, at his country-house, on the heights. this gratuitous civility was not to be declined, though it was our desire to be quiet, as we considered the residence at vévey, a sort of _villagiatura_, after paris. accordingly, i got into a _char_, and climbed the mountain for a mile and a half, through beautiful pastures and orchards, by narrow winding lanes, that, towards the end, got to be of a very primitive character. without this little excursion, i should have formed no just idea of the variety in the environs of the place, and should have lost a good deal of their beauty. i have told you that this acclivity rises behind the town, for a distance exceeding a mile, but i am now persuaded it would have been nearer the truth had i said a league. the majesty of swiss nature constantly deceives the eye, and it requires great care and much experience to prevent falling into these mistakes. the house i sought, stood on a little natural terrace, a speck on the broad breast of the mountain, or what would be called a mountain, were it not for the granite piles in its neighbourhood, and was beautifully surrounded by woods, pastures, and orchards. we were above the vine. a small party, chiefly females, of good manners and great good sense, were assembled, and our entertainment was very much what it ought to be, simple, good, and without fuss. after i had been formally presented to the rest of the company, a young man approached, and was introduced as a countryman. it was a lieutenant of the navy, who had found his way up from the mediterranean squadron to this spot. it is so unusual to meet americans under such circumstances, that his presence was an agreeable surprise. our people abound in the taverns and public conveyances, but it is quite rare that they are met in european society at all. one of the guests to-day recounted an anecdote of cambacérè's, which was in keeping with a good banquet. he and the _arch-chancelier_ were returning from a breakfast in the country, together, when he made a remark on the unusual silence of his companion. the answer was, "_je digère_." we walked through the grounds, which were prettily disposed, and had several good look-outs. from one of the latter we got a commanding view of all the adjacent district. this acclivity is neither a _côte_, as the french call them, nor a hill-side, nor yet a mountain, but a region. its breadth is sufficiently great to contain hamlets, as you already know, and, seen from this point, the town of vévey came into the view, as a mere particle. the head of the lake lay deep in the distance, and it was only when the eye rose to the pinnacles of rock, hoary with glaciers above, that one could at all conceive he was not already perched on a magnificent alp. the different guests pointed out their several residences, which were visible at the distance of miles, perhaps, all seated on the same verdant acclivity. i descended on foot, the road being too precipitous in places to render even a _char_ pleasant. on rejoining the domestic circle, we took boat and pulled towards the little chateau-looking dwelling, on a narrow verdant peninsula, which, as you may remember, had first caught my eye on approaching vévey, as the very spot that a hunter of the picturesque would like for a temporary residence. the distance was about a mile, and, the condition of the house excepted, a nearer view confirmed all our first impressions. it had been a small chateau, and was called glayrole. it stands near the hamlet of st. saphorin, which, both françois and jean maintain, produces the best wines of vaud, and, though now reduced to the condition of a dilapidated farm-house, has still some remains of its ancient state. there is a ceiling, in the ritter saal, that can almost vie with that of the castle of habsburg, though it is less smoked. the road, more resembling the wheel-track of a lawn than a highway, runs quite near the house on one side, while the blue and limpid lake washes the foot of the little promontory. letter xxi. embark in the winkelried.--discussion with an englishman.--the valais.--free trade.--the drance.--terrible inundation.--liddes.--mountain scenery.--a mountain basin.--dead-houses.--melancholy spectacle.--approach of night.--desolate region.--convent of the great st. bernard.--our reception there.--unhealthiness of the situation.--the superior.--conversation during supper.--coal-mine on the mountain.--night in the convent. dear ----, after spending a few more days in the same delightful and listless enjoyments, my friend c---- came over from lausanne, and we embarked in the winkelried, on the afternoon of the th september, as she hove-to off our mole, on her way up the lake. we anchored off villeneuve in less than an hour, there being neither port, nor wharf, nor mole at that place. in a few minutes we were in a three-horse conveyance, called a diligence, and were trotting across the broad meadows of the rhone towards bex, where we found one of our american families, the t----s, on their way to italy. c---- and myself ate some excellent quails for supper in the public room. an englishman was taking the same repast, at another table, near us, and he inquired for news, wishing particularly to know the state of things about antwerp. this led to a little conversation, when i observed that, had the interests of france been consulted at the revolution of , belgium would have been received into the kingdom. our englishman grunted at this, and asked me what europe would have said to it. my answer was, that when both parties were agreed, i did not see what europe had to do with the matter; and that, at all events, the right europe could have to interfere was founded in might; and such was the state of south-western germany, italy, savoy, spain, and even england, that i was of opinion europe would have been glad enough to take things quietly. at all events, a war would only have made the matter worse for the allied monarchs. the other stared at me in amazement, muttered an audible dissent, and, i make no doubt, set me down as a most disloyal subject; for, while extending her empire, and spreading her commercial system, (her free trade _à l'anglaise!_) over every nook and corner of the earth where she can get footing, nothing sounds more treasonable to the ears of a loyal englishman than to give the french possession of antwerp, or the russians possession of constantinople. so inveterate become his national feelings on such subjects, that i am persuaded a portion of his antipathy to the americans arises from a disgust at hearing notions that have been, as it were, bred in and in, through his own moral system, contemned in a language that he deems his own peculiar property. men, in such circumstances, are rarely very philosophical or very just. we were off in a _char_ with the dawn. of course you will understand that we entered the valais by its famous bridge, and passed st. maurice, and the water-fall _à la teniers_; for you have already travelled along this road with me. i saw no reason to change my opinion of the valais, which looked as chill and repulsive now as it did in , though we were so early on the road as to escape the horrible sight of the basking _crétins_, most of whom were still housed. nor can i tell you how far these people have been elevated in the scale of men by an increasing desire for riches. at martigny we breakfasted, while the innkeeper sent for a guide. the canton has put these men under a rigid police, the prices being regulated by law, and the certificate of the traveller becoming important to them. this your advocate of the absurdity called free trade will look upon as tyranny, it being more for the interest of human intercourse than the traveller who arrives in a strange country should be cheated by a hackney-coachman, or the driver of a cart, or stand higgling an hour in the streets, than to violate an abstraction that can do no one any good! if travelling will not take the minor points of free tradeism out of a man, i hold him to be incorrigible. but such is humanity! there cannot be even a general truth, that our infirmities do not lead us to push it into falsehood, in particular practice. men are no more fitted to live under a system that should carry out the extreme doctrines of this theory, than they are fitted to live without law; and the legislator who should attempt the thing in practice, would soon find himself in the condition of don quixote, after he had liberated the galley-slaves from their fetters:--in other words, he would be cheated the first moment circumstances compelled him to make a hard bargain with a stranger. were the canton of valais to say, you _shall_ be a guide, and such _shall_ be your pay, the imputation of tyranny might lie; by saying, you _may_ be a guide, and such _must_ be your pay, it merely legislates for an interest that calls for particular protection in a particular way, to prevent abuses. our guide appeared with two mules harnessed to a _char à banc_, and we proceeded. the fragment of a village which the traveller passes for martigny, on his way to italy, is not the true hamlet of that name, but a small collection of houses that has sprung up since the construction of the simplon road. the real place is a mile distant, and of a much more rural and swiss character. driving through this hamlet, we took our way along the winding bank of a torrent called the drance, the direction, at first, being south. the road was not bad, but the valley had dwindled to a gorge, and, though broken and wild, was not sufficiently so to be grand. after travelling a few miles, we reached a point where our own route diverged from the course of the drance, which came in from the east, while we journeyed south. this drance is the stream that produced the terrible inundation a few years since. the calamity was produced by an accumulation of ice higher in the gorges, which formed a temporary lake. the canton made noble efforts to avert the evil, and men were employed as miners, to cut a passage for the water, through the ice, but their labour proved useless, although they had made a channel, and the danger was greatly lessened. before half the water had escaped, however, the ice gave way, and let the remainder of the lake down in a flood. the descent was terrific, sweeping before it every thing that came in its way, and although so distant, and there was so much space, the village of martigny was deluged, and several of its people lost their lives. the water rose to the height of several feet on the plain of the great valley, before it could disgorge itself into the rhone. the ascents now became more severe, though we occasionally made as sharp descents. the road lay through a broken valley, the mountains retiring from each other a little, and the wheel-track was very much like those we saw in our own hilly country, some thirty years since, though less obstructed by mud. at one o'clock we reached liddes, a crowded, rude, and dirty hamlet, where we made a frugal repast. here we were compelled to quit the _char_, and to saddle the mules. the guide also engaged another man to accompany us with a horse, that carried provender for himself, and for the two animals we had brought with us. we then mounted, and proceeded. on quitting liddes, the road, or rather path, for it had dwindled to that, led through a valley that had some low meadows; after which the ascents became more decided, though the course had always been upward. the vegetation gradually grew less and less, the tree diminishing to the bush, and finally disappearing altogether, while the grasses became coarse and wiry, or were entirely superseded by moss. we went through a hamlet or two, composed of stones stained apparently with iron ore, and, as the huts were covered with the same material, instead of lending the landscape a more humanized air, they rather added to its appearance of sterile dreariness. there were a few tolerably good bits of savage mountain scenes, especially in a wooded glen or two by the wayside; but, on the whole, i thought this the least striking of the swiss mountains i had ascended. we entered a sort of mountain basin, that was bounded on one side by the glacier of mont vélan; that which so beautifully bounds the view up the valais, as seen from vévey. i was disappointed in finding an object which, in the distance, was so white and shining, much disfigured and tarnished by fragments of broken rock. still the summit shone, in cold and spotless lustre. there was herbage for a few goats here, and some one had commenced the walls of a rude building that was intended for an inn. no one was at work near it, a hut of stone, for the shelter of the goatherds, being all that looked like a finished human habitation. winding our way across and out of this valley, we came to a turn in the rocks, and beheld two more stone cabins, low and covered, so as to resemble what in america are called root-houses. they stood a little from the path, on the naked rock. crossing to them, we dismounted and looked into the first. it was empty, had a little straw, and was intended for a refuge, in the event of storms. thrusting my head into the other, after the eye had got a little accustomed to the light, i saw a grinning corpse seated against the remotest side. the body looked like a mummy, but the clothes were still on it, and various shreds of garments lay about the place. the remains of other bodies, that had gradually shrunk into shapeless masses, were also dimly visible. human bones, too, were scattered around. it is scarcely necessary to add that this was one of the dead-houses, or places in which the bodies of those who perish on the mountain are deposited, to waste away, or to be claimed, as others may or may not feel an interest in their remains. interment could only be effected by penetrating the rock, for there was no longer any soil, and such is the purity of the atmosphere that putrescence never occurs. i asked the guide if he knew anything of the man, whose body still retained some of the semblance of humanity. he told me he remembered him well, having been at the convent in his company. it was a poor mason, who had crossed the _col_, from piémont, in quest of work; failing of which, he had left liddes, near nightfall, in order to enjoy the unremitting hospitality of the monks on his return, about a fortnight later. his body was found on the bare rock, quite near the refuge, on the following day. the poor fellow had probably perished in the dark, within a few yards of shelter, without knowing it. hunger and cold, aided, perhaps, by that refuge of the miserable, brandy, had destroyed him. he had been dead now two years, and yet his remains preserved a hideous resemblance to the living man. turning away from this melancholy spectacle, i looked about me with renewed interest. the sun had set, and evening was casting its shadows over the valley below, which might still be seen through the gorges of our path. the air above, and the brown peaks that rose around us like gloomy giants, were still visible in a mellow saddened light, and i thought i had never witnessed a more poetical, or a more vivid picture of the approach of night. following the direction of the upward path, a track that was visible only by the broken fragments of rock, and which now ascended suddenly, an opening was seen between two dark granite piles, through which the sky beyond still shone, lustrous and pearly. this opening appeared to be but a span. it was the _col_, or the summit of the path, and gazing at it, in that pure atmosphere, i supposed it might be half a mile beyond and above us. the guide shook his head at this conjecture, and told me it was still a weary league! at this intelligence we hurried to bestride our mules, which by this time were fagged, and as melancholy as the mountains. when we left the refuge there were no traces of the sun on any of the peaks or glaciers. a more sombre ascent cannot be imagined. vegetation had absolutely disappeared, and in its place lay scattered the fragments of the ferruginous looking rocks. the hue of every object was gloomy as desolation could make it, and the increasing obscurity served to deepen the intense interest we felt. although constantly and industriously ascending towards the light, it receded faster than we could climb. after half an hour of toil, it finally deserted us to the night. at this moment the guide pointed to a mass that i had thought a fragment of the living rock, and said it was the roof a building. it still appeared so near, that i fancied we had arrived; but minute after minute went by, and this too was gradually swallowed up in the gloom. at the end of another quarter of an hour, we came to a place where the path, always steep since quitting the refuge, actually began to ascend by a flight of broad steps formed in the living rock, like that already mentioned on the righi, though less precipitous. my weary mule seemed at times, to be tottering beneath my weight, or hanging in suspense, undecided, whether or not to yield to the downward pressure. it was quite dark, and i thought it best to trust to his instinct and his recollections. this unpleasant struggle between animal force and the attraction of gravitation, in which the part i played was merely to contribute to the latter, lasted nearly a quarter of an hour longer, when the mules appeared to be suddenly relieved. they moved more briskly for a minute, and then stopped before a pile of rock, that a second look in the dark enabled us to see was made of stone, thrown into the form of a large rude edifice. this was the celebrated convent of the great st. bernard! i bethought me of the romans, of the marauders of the middle ages, of the charity of a thousand years, and of napoleon, as throwing a leg over the crupper, my foot first touched the rock. our approach had been heard, for noises ascend far through such a medium, and we were met at the door by a monk in a black gown, a queer asiatic-looking cap, and a movement that was as laical as that of a _garçon de café_. he hastily enquired if there were any ladies, and i thought he appeared disappointed when we told him no. he showed us very civilly, however, into a room, that was warmed by a stove, and which already contained two travellers, who had the air of decent tradesmen who were crossing the mountain on business. a table was set for supper, and a lamp or two threw a dim light around. the little community soon assembled, the prior excepted, and the supper was served. i had brought a letter for the _clavier_, a sort of caterer, who is accustomed to wander through the vallies in quest of contributions; and this appeared to be a good time for presenting it, as our reception had an awkward coldness that was unpleasant. the letter was read, but it made no apparent difference in the warmth of our treatment then or afterwards. i presume the writer had unwittingly thrown the chill, which the american name almost invariably carries with it, over our reception. by this time seven of the augustines were in the room; four of whom were canons, and three novices. the entire community is composed of about thirty, who are professed, with a suitable number who are in their noviciate; but only eight in all are habitually kept on the mountain, the rest residing in a convent in the _bourg_, as the real village of martigny is called. it is said that the keen air of the _col_ affects the lungs after a time, and that few can resist its influence for a long continued period. you will remember that this building is the most elevated permanent abode in europe, if not in the old world, standing at a height of about , english feet above the sea. as soon as the supper was served, the superior or prior entered. he had a better air than most of his brethren, and was distinguished by a gold chain and cross. the others saluted him by removing their caps; and proceeding to the head of the table, he immediately commenced the usual offices in latin, the responses being audibly made by the monks and novices. we were then invited to take our places at table, the seats of honour being civilly left for the strangers. the meal was frugal, without tea or coffee, and the wine none of the best. but one ought to be too grateful for getting anything in such a place, to be too fastidious. during supper there was a free general conversation, and we were asked for news, the movements in la vendée being evidently a subject of great interest with them. our french fellow-traveller on the lake of brientz had been warm in his eulogiums on this community, and, coupling his conversation with the present question, the suspicion that they were connected by a tie of common feeling flashed upon me. a few remarks soon confirmed this conjecture, and i found, as indeed was natural for men in their situation, that these religious republicans[ ] took a strong interest in the success of the carlists. men may call themselves what they will, live where they may, and assume what disguises artifice or necessity may impose, political instincts, like love, or any other strong passion, are sure to betray themselves to an experienced observer. how many of our own republicans, of the purest water, have i seen sighing for ribands and stars--ay, and men too who appear before the nation as devoted to the institutions and the rights of the mass. the romish church is certain to be found in secret on the side of despotic power, let its pretensions to liberty be what it may, its own form of government possessing sympathies with that of political power too strong to be effectually concealed. i will not take on myself to say that the circumstance of our being americans caused the fraternity to manifest for us less warmth than common, but i will say that our carlist of the lake of brientz eloquently described the warm welcome and earnest hospitality of _les bons pères_, as he called them, in a way that was entirely inapplicable to their manner towards us. in short, the only way we could excite any warmth in them, was by blowing the anthracite coal, of which we had heard they had discovered a mine on the mountain. this was a subject of great interest, for you should know that, water excepted, every necessary of life is to be transported, for leagues to this place, up the path we came, on the backs of mules; and that about , persons cross the mountain annually; all, or nearly all, of whom lodge, of necessity, at the convent. the elevation renders fires constantly necessary for comfort, to say nothing of cooking; and a mine of gold could scarcely be as valuable to such a community, as one of coal. luckily, c----, like a true pennsylvanian, knew something about anthracite, and by making a few suggestions, and promising further intelligence, he finally succeeded in throwing one or two of the community into a blaze. [footnote : your common-place logicians argue from these sentiments that distinctions are natural, and ought to be maintained. these philosophers forget that human laws are intended to restrain the natural propensities, and that this argument would be just as applicable to the right of a strong man to knock down a weak one, and to take the bread from his mouth, as it is to the institution of exclusive political privileges.] a little before nine, we were shown into a plain but comfortable room, with two beds loaded with blankets, and were left to our slumbers. before we fell asleep, c---- and myself agreed, that, taking the convent altogether, it was a _rum_ place, and that it required more imagination than either of us possessed, to throw about it the poetry of monastic seclusion, and the beautiful and simple hospitality of the patriarchs. letter xxii. sublime desolation.--a morning walk.--the col.--a lake.--site of a roman temple.--enter italy.--dreary monotony.--return to the convent--tasteless character of the building.--its origin and purposes.--the dead-house.--dogs of st. bernard.--the chapel.--desaix interred here.--fare of st. bernard, and deportment of the monks.--leave the convent.--our guide's notion of the americans.--passage of napoleon across the great st. bernard.--similar passages in former times.--transport of artillery up the precipices.--napoleon's perilous accident.--return to vévey. dear ----, the next morning we arose betimes, and on thrusting my head out of a window, i thought, by the keen air, that we had been suddenly transferred to siberia. there is no month without frost at this great elevation, and as we had now reached the th september, the season was essentially beginning to change. hurrying our clothes on, and our beards off, we went into the air to look about us. monks, convent, and historical recollections were, at first, all forgotten, at the sight of the sublime desolation that reigned around. the _col_ is a narrow ravine, between lofty peaks, which happens to extend entirely across this point of the upper alps, thus forming a passage several thousand feet lower than would otherwise be obtained. the convent stands within a few yards of the northern verge of the precipice, and precisely at the spot where the lowest cavity is formed, the rocks beginning to rise, in its front and in its rear, at very short distances from the buildings. a little south of it, the mountains recede sufficiently to admit the bed of a small, dark, wintry-looking sheet of water, which is oval in form, and may cover fifty or sixty acres. this lake nearly fills the whole of the level part of the _col_, being bounded north by the site of the convent, east by the mountain, west by the path, for which there is barely room between the water and the rising rocks, and south by the same path, which is sheltered on its other side by a sort of low wall of fragments, piled some twenty or thirty feet high. beyond these fragments, or isolated rocks, was evidently a valley of large dimensions. we walked in the direction of this valley, descending gradually from the door of the convent, some thirty feet to the level of the lake. this we skirted by the regular path, rock smoothed by the hoof of horse and foot of man, until we came near the last curve of the oval formation. here was the site of a temple erected by the romans in honour of jupiter of the snows, this passage of the alps having been frequented from the most remote antiquity. we looked at the spot with blind reverence, for the remains might pass for these of a salad-bed of the monks, of which there was one enshrined among the rocks hard by, and which was about as large, and, i fancy, about as productive, as those that are sometimes seen on the quarter-galleries of ships. at this point we entered italy! passing from the frontier, we still followed the margin of the lake, until we reached a spot where its waters trickled, by a low passage, southward. the path took the same direction, pierced the barrier of low rocks, and came out on the verge of the southern declivity, which was still more precipitous than that on the other side. for a short distance the path ran _en corniche_ along the margin of the descent, until it reached the remotest point of what might be called the _col_, whose southern edge is irregular, and then it plunged, by the most practicable descent which could be found, towards its italian destination. when at this precise point our distance from the convent may have been half a mile, which, of course, is the breadth of the _col_. we could see more than half a league down the brown gulf below, but no sign of vegetation was visible. above, around, beneath, wherever the eye rested--the void of the heavens, the distant peaks of snow, the lake, the convent and its accessories excepted--was dark, frowning rock, of the colour of iron rust. as all the buildings, even to the roofs, were composed of this material, they produced little to relieve the dreary monotony. the view from the _col_ is in admirable keeping with its desolation. one is cut off completely from the lower world, and, beyond its own immediate scene, nothing is visible but the impending arch of heaven, and heaving mountain tops. the water did little to change this character of general and savage desolation, for it has the chill and wintry air of all the little mountain reservoirs that are so common in the alps. if anything, it rather added to the intensity of the feeling to which the other parts of the scenery gave rise. returning from our walk, the convent and its long existence, the nature of the institution, its present situation, and all that poetical feeling could do for both, were permitted to resume their influence; but, alas! the monks were common-place, their movements and utterance wanted the calm dignity of age and chastened habits, the building had too much of the machinery, smell, and smoke of the kitchen; and, altogether, we thought that the celebrated convent of st. bernard was more picturesque on paper than in fact. even the buildings were utterly tasteless, resembling a _barnish_-looking manufactory, and would be quite abominable, but for the delightfully dreary appearance of their material. it is a misfortune that vice so often has the best of it in outward appearance. although a little disposed to question the particular instance of taste, in substance, i am of the opinion of that religionist who was for setting his hymns to popular airs, in order "that the devil might not monopolize all the good music," and, under this impression, i think it a thousand pities that a little better keeping between appearances and substance did not exist on the great st. bernard. the convent is said to have been established by a certain bernard de menthon, an augustine of aoste, in , who was afterwards canonized for his holiness. in that remote age the institution must have been eminently useful, for posting and macadamized roads across the alps were not thought of. it even does much good now, as nine-tenths who stop here are peasants that pay nothing for their entertainment. at particular seasons, and on certain occasions, they cross in great numbers, my guide assuring me he had slept at the convent when there were eight hundred guests; a story, by the way, that one of the monks confirmed. some fair or festival, however, led to this extraordinary migration. formerly the convent was rich, and able to bear the charges of entertaining so many guests; but since the revolution it has lost most of its property, and has but a small fixed income. it is authorized, however, to make periodical _quêtes_ in the surrounding country, and obtains a good deal in that way. all who can pay, moreover, leave behind them donations of greater or less amount, and by that means the charity is still maintained. as many perish annually on the mountain, and none are interred, another dead-house stands quite near the convent for the reception of the bodies. it is open to the air, and contained forty or fifty corpses in every stage of decay apart from putrescency, and was a most revolting spectacle. when the flesh disappears entirely, the bones are cast into a small enclosure near by, in which skulls, thigh-bones, and ribs were lying in a sort of waltz-like confusion. soon after our return from the walk into italy, a novice opened a little door in the outer wall of the convent, and the famous dogs of st. bernard rushed forth like so many rampant tigers, and most famous fellows they certainly were. their play was like that of elephants, and one of them rushing past me, so near as to brush my clothes, gave me to understand that a blow from him might be serious. there were five of them in all, long-legged, powerful mastiffs, with short hair, long bushy tails, and of a yellowish hue. i have seen very similar animals in america. they are trained to keep the paths, can carry cordials and nourishment around their necks, and frequently find bodies in the snow by the scent. but their instinct and services have been greatly exaggerated, the latter principally consisting in showing the traveller the way, by following the paths themselves. were one belated in winter on this pass, i can readily conceive that a dog of this force that knew him, and was attached to him, would be invaluable. some pretend that the ancient stock is lost, and that their successors show the want of blood of all usurpers. we were now shown into a room where there was a small collection of minerals, and of roman remains found about the ruins of the temple. at seven we received a cup of coffee and some bread and butter, after which the prior entered, and invited us to look at the chapel, which is of moderate dimensions, and of plain ornaments. there is a box attached to a column, with _tronc pour les pauvres_, and as all the poor in this mountain are those who enjoy the hospitality of the convent, the hint was understood. we dropped a few francs into the hole, while the prior was looking earnestly the other way, and it then struck us we were at liberty to depart. the body of desaix lies in this chapel, and there is a small tablet in it, erected to his memory. it would be churlish and unreasonable to complain of the fare, in a spot where food is to be had with so much difficulty; and, on that head, i shall merely say, in order that you may understand the fact, that we found the table of st. bernard very indifferent. as to the deportment of the monks, certainly, so far as we were concerned, it had none of that warmth and hospitality that travellers have celebrated; but, on the contrary, it struck us both as cold and constrained, strongly reminding me, in particular, of the frigidity of the ordinary american manner.[ ] this might be discipline; it might be the consequence of habitual and incessant demands on their attentions and services; it might be accidental; or it might be prejudice against the country from which we came, that was all the stronger for the present excited state of europe. [footnote : the peculiar coldness of our manners, which are too apt to pass suddenly from the repulsive to the familiar, has often been commented on, but can only be appreciated by those who have been accustomed to a different. two or three days after the return of the writer from his journey in europe (which had lasted nearly eight years), a public dinner was given, in new york, to a distinguished naval officer, and he was invited to attend it, _as a guest_. here he met a crowd, one half of whom he knew personally. without a single exception, those of his acquaintances who did speak to him (two-thirds did not), addressed him as if they had seen him the week before, and so cold and constrained did every man's manner seem, that he had great difficulty in persuading himself there was not something wrong. he could not believe, however, that he was especially invited to be neglected, and he tried to revive his old impressions; but the chill was so thorough, that he found it impossible to sit out the dinner.] our mules were ready, and we left the _col_ immediately after breakfast. a ridge in the rock, just before the convent, is the dividing line for the flow of the waters. here a little snow still lay; and there were patches of snow, also, on the northern face of the declivity, the remains of the past winter. we chose to walk the first league, which brought us to the refuge. the previous day, the guide had given us a great deal of gossip; and, among other things, be mentioned having been up to the convent lately, with a family of americans, whom he described as a people of peculiar appearance, and _peculiar odour_. by questioning him a little, we discovered that he had been up with a party of coloured people from st. domingo. his head was a perfect babel as it respected america, which was not a hemisphere, but one country, one government, and one people. to this we were accustomed, however; and, finding that we passed for english, we trotted the honest fellow a good deal on the subject of his nasal sufferings from travelling in such company. on the descent we knew that we should encounter the party left at bex, and our companion was properly prepared for the interview. soon after quitting the refuge, the meeting took place, to the astonishment of the guide, who gravely affirmed, after we had parted, that there must be two sorts of americans, as these we had just left did not at all resemble those he had conducted to the convent. may this little incident prove an entering wedge to some new ideas in the valais, on the subject of the "twelve millions!" the population of this canton, more particularly the women, were much more good-looking on the mountain than in the valley. we saw no _crétins_ after leaving martigny; and soft lineaments, and clear complexions, were quite common in the other sex. you will probably wish to know something of the celebrated passage of napoleon, and of its difficulties. as far as the ascent was concerned, the latter has been greatly exaggerated. armies have frequently passed the great st. bernard. aulus coecinna led his barbarians across in ; the lombards crossed in ; several armies in the time of charlemagne, or about the year ; and in the wars of charles le téméraire, as well as at other periods, armies made use of this pass. near the year , a strong body of turkish corsairs crossed from italy, and seized the pass of st. maurice. thus history is full of events to suggest the idea of crossing. nor is this all. from the time the french entered switzerland in , troops occupied, manoeuvred, and even _fought_ on this mountain. the austrians having succeeded in turning the summit, contended an entire day with their enemies, who remained masters of the field, or rather rock. ebel estimates the number of the hostile troops who were on this pass, between the years and , , , including the army of napoleon, which was , strong. these facts of themselves, and i presume they cannot be contested, give a totally different colouring, from that which is commonly entertained, to the conception of the enterprise of the first consul, so far as the difficulties of the ascent were concerned. if the little community can transport stores for , souls to the convent, there could be no great difficulty in one, who had all france at his disposal, in throwing an army across the pass. when we quitted martigny, i began to study the difficulties of the route, and though the road as far as liddes has probably been improved a little within thirty years, taking its worst parts, i have often travelled, in my boyhood, during the early settlement of our country, in a heavy, high, old-fashioned coach over roads that were quite as bad, and, in some places, over roads that were actually more dangerous, than any part of this, _as far as liddes_. even a good deal of the road after quitting liddes is not worse than that we formerly travelled, but wheels are nearly useless for the last league or two. as we rode along this path, c---- asked me in what manner i would transport artillery up such an ascent. without the least reflection i answered, by making sledges of the larches, which is an expedient that i think would suggest instantly itself to nineteen men in twenty. i have since understood from the duc de ----, who was an aide of napoleon, on the occasion of the passage, that it was precisely the expedient adopted. several thousand swiss peasants were employed in drawing the logs, thus loaded, up the precipices. i do not think it absolutely impracticable to take up guns limbered, but the other plan would be much the easiest, as well as the safest. in short, i make no doubt, so far as mere toil and physical difficulties are concerned, that a hundred marches have been made through the swamps and forests of america, in every one of which, mile for mile, greater natural obstacles have been overcome than those on this celebrated passage. the french, it will be remembered, were unresisted, and had possession of the _col_, a garrison having occupied the convent for more than a year. the great merit of the first consul was in the surprise, the military manner in which the march was effected, and the brilliant success of his subsequent movements. had he been defeated, i fancy few would have thought so much of the simple passage of the mountain, unless to reproach him for placing the rocks between himself and a retreat. as he _was not_ defeated, the _audace_ of the experiment, a great military quality sometimes, enters, also, quite properly into the estimate of his glory. the guide pointed to a place where, according to his account of the matter, the horse of the first consul stumbled and pitched him over a precipice, the attendants catching him by his great-coat, assisted by a few bushes. this may be true, for the man affirmed he had heard it from the guide who was near napoleon at the time, and a mis-step of a horse might very well produce such a fall. the precipice was both steep and high, and had the first consul gone down it, it is not probable he would ever have gone up the st. bernard. at liddes we re-entered the _char_ and trotted down to martigny in good time. here we got another conveyance, and pushed down the valley, through st. maurice, across the bridge, and out of the gate of the canton, again, reaching bex a little after dark. the next morning we were off early for villeneuve, in order to reach the boat. this was handsomely effected, and heaving-to abreast of vévey, we succeeded in eating our breakfast at "mon repos." letter xxiii. democracy in america and in switzerland.--european prejudices.--influence of property.--nationality of the swiss.--want of local attachments in americans.--swiss republicanism.--political crusade against america.--affinities between america and russia.--feeling of the european powers towards switzerland. dear ----, it is a besetting error with those who write of america, whether as travellers, political economists, or commentators on the moral features of ordinary society, to refer nearly all that is peculiar in the country to the nature of its institutions. it is scarcely exaggerated to say that even its physical phenomena are ascribed to its democracy. reflecting on this subject, i have been struck by the fact that no such flights of the imagination are ever indulged in by those who speak of switzerland. that which is termed the rudeness of liberty and equality, with us, becomes softened down here into the frankness of mountaineers, or the sturdy independence of republicans; what is vulgarity on the other side of the atlantic, is unsophistication on this, and truculence in the states dwindles to be earnest remonstrances in the cantons! there undeniably exist marked points of difference between the swiss and the americans. the dominion of a really popular sway is admitted nowhere here, except in a few unimportant mountain cantons, that are but little known, and which, if known, would not exercise a very serious influence on any but their own immediate inhabitants. with us, the case is different. new york and pennsylvania and ohio, for instance, with a united population of near five millions of souls, are as pure democracies as can exist under a representative form of government, and their trade, productions, and example so far connect them with the rest of christendom, as to render them objects of deep interest to all who look beyond the present moment, in studying the history of man. we have states, however, in which the franchise does not materially differ from those of many of the cantons, and yet we do not find that strangers make any material exceptions even in _their_ favour. few think of viewing the states in which there are property qualifications, in a light different from those just named; nor is a disturbance in virginia deemed to be less the consequence of democratic effervescence, than it is in pennsylvania. there must be reasons for all this. i make no doubt they are to be found in the greater weight of the example of a large and growing community, of active commercial and political habits, than in one like this, which is satisfied with simply maintaining a quiet and secure existence; in our total rejection of the usual aristocratical distinctions which still exist, more or less, all over switzerland; in the jealousy of commercial and maritime power, and in the recollections which are inseparable from the fact that the parties once stood to each other, in the relation of principals and dependants. this latter feeling, an unavoidable consequence of metropolitan sway, is more general than you may imagine, for, as nearly all europe once had colonies, the feelings of superiority they uniformly excite, have as naturally led to jealousy of the rising importance of our hemisphere. you may smile at the suggestion, but i do not remember a single european in whom, under proper opportunities, i have not been able to trace some lingering feeling of the old notion of the moral and physical superiority of the man of europe over the man of america. i do not say that all i have met have betrayed this prejudice, for in not one case in ten have i had the means to probe them; but such, i think, has uniformly been the case, though in very different degrees, whenever the opportunity has existed. though the mountain, or the purely rural population, here, possess more independence and frankness of manner than those who inhabit the towns and advanced valleys, neither has them in so great a degree, as to leave plausible grounds for believing that the institutions are very essentially connected with the traits. institutions may _depress men below_ what may be termed the natural level of feeling in this respect, as in the case of slavery; but, in a civilized society, where property has its influence, i much question if any political regulations can raise them above it. after allowing for the independence of manner and feeling that are coincident to easy circumstances, and which is the result of obvious causes, i know no part of america in which this is not also the fact. the employed is, and will be everywhere, to a certain point, dependent on his employer, and the relations between the two cannot fail to bring forth a degree of authority and submission, that will vary according to the character of individuals and the circumstances of the moment. i infer from this that the general aspects of society, after men cease to be serfs and slaves, can never be expected to vary essentially from each other, merely on account of the political institutions, except, perhaps, as those institutions themselves may happen to affect their temporal condition. in other words, i believe that we are to look more to property and to the absence or presence of facilities of living, for effects of this nature, than to the breadth or narrowness of constituencies. the swiss, as is natural from their greater antiquity, richer recollections, and perhaps from their geographical position, are more national than the americans. with us, national pride and national character exist chiefly in the classes that lie between the yeomen and the very bottom of the social scale; whereas, here, i think the higher one ascends, the stronger the feeling becomes. the swiss moreover is pressed upon by his wants, and is often obliged to tear himself from his native soil, in order to find the means of subsistence; and yet very few of them absolutely expatriate themselves. the emigrants that are called swiss in america, either come from germany, or are french germans, from alsace and lorrain. i have never met with a migration of a body of true swiss, though some few cases probably have existed. it would be curious to inquire how far the noble nature of the country has an influence in producing their strong national attachments. the neapolitans love their climate, and would rather be lazzaroni beneath their sun, than gentlemen in holland, or england. this is simple enough, as it depends on physical indulgence. the charm that binds the swiss to his native mountains, must be of a higher character, and is moral in its essence. the american character suffers from the converse of the very feeling which has an effect so beneficial on that of the swiss. the migratory habits of the country prevent the formation of the intensity of interest, to which the long residence of a family in a particular spot gives birth, and which comes, at last, to love a tree, or a hill, or a rock, because they are the same tree, and hill, and rock, that have been loved by our fathers before us. these are attachments that depend on sentiment rather than on interest, and which are as much purer and holier, as virtuous sentiment is purer and holier than worldly interestedness. in this moral feature, therefore, we are inferior to all old nations, and to the swiss in particular, i think, as their local attachments are both quickened and heightened by the exciting and grand objects that surround them. the italians have the same local affections, in a still stronger degree; for with a nature equally, or even more winning, they have still prouder and more-remote recollections. i do not believe the swiss, at heart, are a bit more attached to their institutions than we are ourselves; for, while i complain of the _tone_ of so many of our people, i consider it, after all, as the tone of people who, the means of comparison having been denied them, neither know that which they denounce, nor that which they extol. apart from the weakness of wishing for personal distinctions, however, i never met with a swiss gentleman, who appeared to undervalue his institutions. they frequently, perhaps generally, lament the want of greater power in the confederation; but, as between a monarchy and a republic, so far as my observation goes, they are uniformly swiss. i do not believe there is such a thing, in all the cantons, as a man, for instance, who pines for the prussian despotism! they will take service under kings, be their soldiers, body-guards--real dugald dalgettys--but when the question comes to switzerland, one and all appear to think that the descendants of the companions of winkelried and stauffer must be republicans. now, all this may be because there are few in the condition of gentlemen, in the democratic cantons, and the gentlemen of the other parts of the confederation prefer that things should be as they are (or rather, so lately were, for the recent changes have hardly had time to make an impression), to putting a prince in the place of the aristocrats. self is so prominent in everything of this nature, that i feel no great faith in the generosity of men. still i do believe that time and history, and national pride, and swiss _morgue_, have brought about a state of feeling that would indispose them to bow down to a swiss sovereign. a policy is observed by the other states of europe towards this confederation, very different from that which is, or perhaps it would be better to say, has been observed toward us. as respects ourselves, i have already observed it was my opinion, there would have been a political crusade got up against us, had not the recent changes taken place in europe, and had the secret efforts to divide the union failed. their chief dependence, certainly, is on our national dissensions; but as this would probably fail them, i think we should have seen some pretence for an invasion. the motive would be the strong necessity which existed for destroying the example of a republic, or rather of a democracy, that was getting to be too powerful. strange as you may think it, i believe our chief protection in such a struggle would have been russia. we hear and read a great deal about the "russian bear," but it will be our own fault if this bear does us any harm. let the edinburgh review, the advocate of mystified liberalism, prattle as much as it choose, on this topic, it becomes us to look at the subject like americans. there are more practical and available affinities between america and russia, at this very moment, than there is between america and any other nation in europe. they have high common political objects to obtain, and russia has so little to apprehend from the example of america, that no jealousy of the latter need interrupt their harmony. you see the counterpart of this in the present condition of france and russia. so far as their general policy is concerned, they need not conflict, but rather ought to unite, and yet the mutual jealousy on the subject of the institutions keeps them alienated, and almost enemies. napoleon, it is true, said that these two nations, sooner or later, must fight for the possession of the east, but it was the ambition of the man, rather than the interests of his country, that dictated the sentiment. the france of napoleon, and the france of louis-philippe, are two very different things. now, as i have told you, switzerland is regarded by the powers who would crush america, with other eyes. i do not believe that a congress of europe would convert this republic into a monarchy, if it could, to-morrow. nothing essential would be gained by such a measure, while a great deal might be hazarded. a king must have family alliances, and these alliances would impair the neutrality it is so desirable to maintain. the cantons are equally good, as outworks, for france, austria, bavaria, wurtemburg, lombardy, sardinia, and the tyrol. all cannot have them, and all are satisfied to keep them as a defence against their neighbours. no one hears, in the war of opinion, that is going on here, the example of the swiss quoted on the side of liberty! for this purpose, they appear to be as totally out of view, as if they had no existence. letter xxiv. the swiss mountain passes.--excursion in the neighbourhood of vévey.--castle of blonay.--view from the terrace.--memory and hope.--great antiquity of blonay.--the knight's hall.--prospect from the balcony.--departure from blonay.--a modern chateau.--travelling on horseback.--news from america.--dissolution of the union predicted.--the prussian polity.--despotism in prussia. dear ----, you may have gathered from my last letters that i do not rank the path of the great st. bernard among the finest of the swiss mountain passes. you will remember, however, that we saw but little of the italian side, where the noblest features and grandest scenes on these roads are usually found. the simplon would not be so very extraordinary, were it confined to its swiss horrors and swiss magnificence, though, by the little i have seen of them, i suspect that both the st. gothard and the splugen do a little better on their northern faces. the pass by nice is peculiar, being less wild and rocky than any other, while it possesses beauties entirely its own (and extraordinary beauties they are), in the constant presence of the mediterranean, with its vast blue expanse, dotted with sails of every kind that the imagination can invent. it has always appeared to me that poets have been the riggers of that sea. c---- and myself were too _mountaineerish_ after this exploit to remain contented in a valley, however lovely it might be, and the next day we sallied forth on foot, to explore the hill-side behind vévey. the road led at first through narrow lanes, lined by vineyards; but emerging from these, we soon came out into a new world, and one that i can compare to no other i have ever met with. i should never tire of expatiating on the beauties of this district, which really appear to be created expressly to render the foreground of one of the sublimest pictures on earth worthy of the rest of the piece. it was always mountain, but a mountain so gradual of ascent, so vast, and yet so much like a broad reach of variegated low land, in its ornaments, cultivation, houses, villages, copses, meadows, and vines, that it seemed to be a huge plain canted into a particular inclination, in order to give the spectator a better opportunity to examine it in detail, and at his leisure, as one would hold a picture to the proper light. some of the ascents, nevertheless, were sufficiently sharp, and more than once we were glad enough to stop to cool ourselves, and to take breath. at length, after crossing some lovely meadows, by the margin of beautiful woods, we came out at the spot which was the goal we had aimed at from the commencement of the excursion. this was the castle of blonay, of whose picturesque site and pleasant appearance i have already spoken in my letters, as a venerable hold that stands about a league from the town, on one of the most striking positions of the mountain. the family of blonay has been in possession of this place for seven hundred years. one branch of it is in sardinia; but i suppose its head is the occupant of the house, or castle. as the building was historical, and the de blonays of unquestionable standing, i was curious to examine the edifice, since it might give me some further insight into the condition of the old swiss nobility. accordingly we applied for admission, and obtained it without difficulty. the swiss castles, with few exceptions, are built on the breasts, or spurs, of mountains. the immediate foundation is usually a rock, and the sites were generally selected on account of the difficulties of the approach. this latter peculiarity, however, does not apply so rigidly to blonay as to most of the other holds of the country, for the rock which forms its base serves for little else than a solid foundation. i presume one of the requisites of such a site was the difficulty or impossibility of undermining the walls, a mode of attack that existed long before gunpowder was known. the buildings of blonay are neither extensive nor very elaborate. we entered by a modest gateway in a retired corner, and found ourselves at once in a long, narrow, irregular court. on the left was a _corps de bâtiment_, that contained most of the sleeping apartments, and a few of the others, with the offices; in front was a still older wing, in which was the knight's hall, and one or two other considerable rooms; and on the right was the keep, an old solid tower, that was originally the nucleus and parent of all the others, as well as a wing that is now degraded to the duties of a storehouse. these buildings form the circuit of the court, and complete the edifice; for the side next the mountain, or that by which we entered, had little besides the ends of the two lateral buildings and the gate. the latter was merely a sort of chivalrous back-door, for there was another between the old tower and the building of the knight's hall, of more pretension, and which was much larger. the great gate opens on a small elevated terrace, that is beautifully shaded by fine trees, and which commands a view, second, i feel persuaded, to but few on earth. i do not know that it is so perfectly exquisite as that we got from the house of cardinal rufo, at naples, and yet it has many admirable features that were totally wanting to the neapolitan villa. i esteem these two views as much the best that it has ever been my good fortune to gaze at from any dwelling, though the beauties of both are, as a matter of course, more or less shared by all the houses in their respective neighbourhoods. the great carriage-road, as great carriage-roads go on such a mountain-side, comes up to this gate, though it is possible to enter also by the other. blonay, originally, must have been a hold of no great importance, as neither the magnitude, strength, nor position of the older parts, is sufficient to render the place one to be seriously assailed or obstinately defended. without knowing the fact, i infer that its present interest arises from its great antiquity, coupled with the circumstance of its having been possessed by the same family for so long a period. admitting a new owner for each five-and-twenty years, the present must be somewhere about the twenty-fifth de blonay who has lived on this spot! a common housemaid showed us through the building, but, unfortunately, to her it was a house whose interest depended altogether on the number of floors there were to be scrubbed, and windows to be cleaned. this labour-saving sentiment destroys a great deal of excellent poetry and wholesome feeling, reducing all that is venerable and romantic to the level of soap and house-cloths. i dare say one could find many more comfortable residences than this, within a league of vévey; perhaps "mon repos" has the advantage of it, in this respect: but there must be a constant, quiet, and enduring satisfaction, with one whose mind is properly trained, in reflecting that he is moving, daily and hourly, through halls that have been trodden by his fathers for near a thousand years! hope is a livelier, and, on the whole, a more useful, because a more stimulating, feeling, than that connected with memory; but there is a solemn and pleasing interest clinging about the latter, that no buoyancy of the first can ever equal. europe is fertile of recollections; america is pregnant with hope. i have tried hard, aided by the love which is quickened by distance, as well as by the observations that are naturally the offspring of comparison, to draw such pictures of the latter for the future, as may supplant the pictures of the past that so constantly rise before the mind in this quarter of the world; but, though reasonably ingenious in castle-building, i have never been able to make it out. i believe laziness lies at the bottom of the difficulty. in our moments of enjoyment we prefer being led, to racking the brain for invention. the past is a fact; while, at the best, the future is only conjecture. in this case the positive prevails over the assumed, and the imagination finds both and easier duty, and all it wants, in throwing around the stores of memory, the tints and embellishments that are wanting to complete the charm. i know little of the history of blonay, beyond the fact of its great antiquity, nor is it a chateau of remarkable interest as a specimen of the architecture and usages of its time; and yet, i never visited a modern palace, with half the intense pleasure with which i went through this modest abode. fancy had a text, in a few unquestionable facts, and it preached copiously on their authority. at caserta, or st. cloud, we admire the staircases, friezes, salons, and marbles, but i never could do anything with your kings, who are so much mixed up with history, as to leave little to the fancy; while here, one might imagine not only time, but all the various domestic and retired usages that time brings forth. the ritter saal, or knight's hall, of blonay has positive interest enough to excite the dullest mind. neither the room nor its ornaments are very peculiar of themselves, the former being square, simple, and a good deal modernized, while the latter was such as properly belonged to a country gentleman of limited means. but the situation and view form its great features; for all that has just been said of the terrace, can be better said of this room. owing to the formation of the mountain, the windows are very high above the ground, and at one of them is a balcony, which, i am inclined to think, is positively without a competitor in this beautiful world of ours. cardinal rufo has certainly no such balcony. it is _le balcon des balcons_. i should despair of giving you a just idea of the mingled magnificence and softness of the scene that lies stretched before and beneath the balcony of blonay. you know the elements of the view already,--for they are the same mysterious glen, or valley, the same blue lake, the same _côtes_, the same solemn and frowning rocks, the same groupings of towers, churches, hamlets, and castles, of which i have had such frequent occasion to speak in these letters. but the position of blonay has about it that peculiar nicety, which raises every pleasure to perfection. it is neither too high, nor too low; too retired, nor too much advanced; too distant, nor too near. i know nothing of m. de blonay beyond the favourable opinion of the observant jean, the boatman, but he must be made of flint, if he can daily, hourly, gaze at the works of the deity as they are seen from this window, without their producing a sensible and lasting effect on the character of his mind. i can imagine a man so far _blasé_, as to pass through the crowd of mites, who are his fellows, without receiving or imparting much; but i cannot conceive of a heart, whose owner can be the constant observer of such a scene, without bending in reverence to the hand that made it. it would be just as rational to suppose one might have the communion of st. jerome hanging in his drawing-room, without ever thinking of domenichino, as to believe one can be the constant witness of these natural glories without thinking of god. i could have liked, above all things, to have been in this balcony during one of the fine sunsets of this season of the year. i think the creeping of the shadows up the acclivities, the growing darkness below, and the lingering light above, with the exquisite arabesques of the rocks of savoy, must render the scene even more perfect than we found it. blonay is surrounded by meadows of velvet, the verdure reaching its very walls, and the rocks that occasionally do thrust their heads above the grass, aid in relieving rather than in lessening their softness. there are just enough of them to make a foreground that is not unworthy of the rocky belt which encircles most of the picture, and to give a general idea of the grand geological formation of the whole region. we left blonay with regret, and not without lingering some time on its terrace, a spot in which retirement is better blended with a bird's eye view of men and their haunts, than any other i know. one is neither in nor out of this world at such a spot; near enough to enjoy its beauties, and yet so remote as to escape its blemishes. in quilting the castle, we met a young female of simple lady-like carriage and attire, whom i saluted as the lady of blonay, and glad enough we were to learn from an old dependant, whom we afterwards fell in with, that the conjecture was true. one bows with reverence to the possessor of such an abode. from blonay we crossed the meadows and orchards, until we hit a road that led us towards the broad terrace that lies more immediately behind vévey. we passed several hamlets, which lie on narrow stripes of land more level than common, a sort of _shelves_ on the broad breast of the mountain, and which were rural and pretty. at length we came to the object of our search, a tolerably spacious modern house, that is called a _château_, and whose roofs and chimneys had often attracted our eyes from the lake. the place was french in exterior, though the grounds were more like those of germany than those of france. the terrace is irregular but broad, and walks wind prettily among woods and copses. altogether, the place is quite modern and much more extensive than is usual in switzerland. we did not presume to enter the house, but, avoiding a party that belonged to the place, we inclined to the left, and descended, through the vines, to the town. the true mode to move about this region is on horseback. the female in particular, who has a good seat, possesses a great advantage over most of her sex, if she will only improve it; and all things considered, i believe a family could travel through the cantons in no other manner so pleasantly; always providing that the women can ride. by riding, however, i do not mean sticking on a horse, by dint of rein and clinging, but a seat in which the fair one feels secure and entirely at her ease. otherwise she may prove to be the _gazee_ instead of the gazer. on my return home, i went to a reading-room that i have frequented during our residence here, where i found a good deal of feeling excited by the news from america. the swiss, i have told you, with very few exceptions, wish us well, but i take it nothing would give greater satisfaction to a large majority of the upper classes in most of the other countries of europe, than to hear that the american republic was broken up: if buttons and broadcloths could be sent after us, it is not too much to add, or sent to the nether world. this feeling does not proceed so much from inherent dislike to us, as to our institutions. as a people, i rather think we are regarded with great indifference by the mass; but they who so strongly detest our institutions and deprecate our example, cannot prevent a little personal hatred from mingling with their political antipathies. unlike the woman who was for beginning her love "with a little aversion," they begin with a little philanthropy, and end with a strong dislike for all that comes from the land they hate. i have known this feeling carried so far as to refuse credit even to the productions of the earth! i saw strong evidences of this truth, among several of the temporary _habitués_ of the reading-room in question, most of whom were french. a speedy dissolution of the american union was proclaimed in all the journals, on account of some fresh intelligence from the other side of the atlantic; and i dare say that, at this moment, nine-tenths of the europeans, who think at all on the subject, firmly and honestly believe that our institutions are not worth two years' purchase. this opinion is very natural, because falsehood is so artfully blended with truth, in what is published, that it requires a more intimate knowledge of the country to separate them, than a stranger can possess. i spent an hour to-day in a fruitless attempt to demonstrate to a very sensible frenchman that nothing serious was to be apprehended from the present dispute, but all my logic was thrown away, and nothing but time will convince him of that which he is so strongly predisposed not to believe. they rarely send proper diplomatic men among us, in the first place; for a novel situation like that in america requires a fertile and congenial mind,--and then your diplomatist is usually so much disposed to tell every one that which he wishes to hear! we mislead, too, ourselves, by the exaggerations of the opposition. your partizan writes himself into a fever, and talks like any other man whose pulse is unnatural. this fact ought to be a matter of no surprise, since it is one of the commonest foibles of man to dislike most the evils that press on him most; although an escape from them to any other might even entail destruction. it is the old story of king log and king stork. as democracy is in the ascendant, they revile democracy, while we all feel persuaded we should be destroyed, or muzzled, under any other form of government. a few toad-eaters and court butterflies excepted, i do not believe there is a man in all america who could dwell five years in any country in europe, without being made sensible of the vast superiority of his own free institutions over those of every other christian nation. i have been amused of late, by tracing, in the publications at home, a great and growing admiration for the prussian polity! there is something so absurd in an american's extolling such a system, that it is scarcely possible to say where human vagaries are to end. the prussian government is a _despotism_; a mode of ruling that one would think the world understood pretty well by this time. it is true that the government is mildly administered, and hence all the mystifying that we hear and read about it. prussia is a kingdom compounded of heterogenous parts; the north is protestant, the south catholic; the nation has been overrun in our own times, and the empire dismembered. ruled by a king of an amiable and paternal disposition, and one who has been chastened by severe misfortunes, circumstances have conspired to render his sway mild and useful. no one disputes, that the government which is controlled by a single will, when that will is pure, intelligent, and just, is the best possible. it is the government of the universe, which is perfect harmony. but men with pure intentions, and intelligent and just minds, are rare, and more rare among rulers, perhaps, than any other class of men. even frederic ii, though intelligent enough, was a tyrant. he led his subjects to slaughter for his own aggrandizement. his father, frederic william, used to compel tall men to marry tall women. the time for the latter description of tyranny may be past, but oppression has many outlets, and the next king may discover some of them. in such a case his subjects would probably take refuge in a revolution and a constitution, demanding guarantees against this admirable system, and blow the new model-government to the winds! many of our people are like children who, having bawled till they get a toy, begin to cry to have it taken away from them. fortunately the heart and strength of the nation, its rural population, is sound and practical, else we might prove ourselves to be insane as well as ridiculous. letter xxv. controversy respecting america.--conduct of american diplomatists.--_attachés_ to american legations.--unworthy state of public opinion in america. dear ----, the recent arrivals from america have brought a document that has filled me with surprise and chagrin. you may remember what i have already written you on the subject of a controversy at paris, concerning the cost of government, and the manner in which the agents of the united states, past and present, wrongfully or not, were made to figure in the affair. there is a species of instinct in matters of this sort, which soon enables a man of common sagacity, who enjoys the means of observation, to detect the secret bias of those with whom he is brought in contact. now, i shall say, without reserve, that so far as i had any connexion with that controversy, or had the ability to detect the feelings and wishes of others, the agents of the american government were just the last persons in france to whom i would have applied for aid or information. the minister himself stood quoted by the prime minister of france in the tribune, as having assured him (m. perier) that we were the wrong of the disputed question, and that the writers of the french government had truth on their side. this allegation remains before the world uncontradicted to the present hour. it was made six months since, leaving ample time for a knowledge of the circumstance to reach america, but no instructions have been sent to mr. rives to clear the matter up; or, if sent, they have not been obeyed. with these unquestionable facts before my eyes, you will figure to yourself my astonishment at finding in the papers, a circular addressed by the department of state to the different governors of the union, formally soliciting official reports that may enable us to prove to the world, that the position taken by our opponents is not true! this course is unusual, and, as the federal government has no control over, or connexion with, the expenditures of the states, it may even be said to be extra-constitutional. it is formally requesting that which the secretary of state had no official right to request. there was no harm in the proceeding, but it would be undignified, puerile, and unusual, for so grave a functionary to take it, without a commensurate object. lest this construction should be put on his course, the secretary has had the precaution to explain his own motives. he tells the different governors, in substance, _that the extravagant pretension is set up flat freedom is more costly than despotism, and that what he requests may be done, will be done in the defence of liberal institutions_. here then we have the construction that has been put on this controversy by our own government, _at home_, through one of its highest and ablest agents. still the course of its agents _abroad_ remains unchanged! _here_ the american functionaries are understood to maintain opinions, which a distinguished functionary _at home_ has openly declared to be injurious to free institutions. it may be, _it must be_, that the state of things here is unknown at washington. of this fact i have no means of judging positively; but when i reflect on the character and intelligence of the cabinet, i can arrive at no other inference. it has long been known to me that there exists, not only at washington, but all through the republic, great errors on the subject of our foreign relations; on the influence and estimation of the country abroad; and on what we are to expect from others, no less than what they expect from us. but these are subjects which, in general, give me little concern, while this matter of the finance controversy has become one of strong personal interest. the situation of the private individual, who, in a foreign nation, stands, or is supposed to stand, contradicted in his facts, by the authorized agents of their common country, is anything but pleasant. it is doubly so in europe, where men fancy those in high trusts are better authority, than those who are not. it is true that this supposition under institutions like ours, is absurd; but it is not an easy thing to change the settled convictions of an entire people. in point of truth, other things being equal, the american citizen who has been passing his time in foreign countries, employed in diplomacy, would know much less of the points mooted in his discussion, than the private citizen who had been living at home, in the discharge of his ordinary duties; but this is a fact not easily impressed on those who are accustomed to see not only the power, but all the machinery of government in the hands of a regular corps of _employés_. the name of mr. harris was introduced into the discussion, as one thus employed and trusted by our government. it is true he was falsely presented, for the diplomatic functions of this gentleman were purely accidental, and of very short continuance; but there would have been a littleness in conducting an argument that was so strong in its facts, by stooping to set this matter right, and it was suffered to go uncontradicted by me. he therefore possessed the advantage, the whole time, of appearing as one who enjoyed the confidence of his own government. we had this difficulty to overcome, as well as that of disproving his arguments, if, indeed, the latter could be deemed a difficulty at all.[ ] [footnote : the american government, soon after the date of this letter, appointed mr. harris to be _chargé d'affaires_ at paris.] the private individual, like myself, who finds himself in collision with the agents of two governments, powerful as those of france and america, is pretty sure to get the worst of it. it is quite probable that such has been my fortune in this affair (i believe it to be so in public opinion, both in france and at home), but there is one power of which no political combination can deprive an honest man, short of muzzling him:--that of telling the truth. of this power i have now availed myself, and the time will come when they who have taken any note of the matter may see reason to change their minds. louis-philippe sits on a throne, and wields a fearful force; but, thanks to him of harlem (or of cologne, i care not which), it is still within my reach to promulgate the facts. his reign will, at least, cease with his life, while that of truth will endure as long as means can be found to disseminate it. it is probable the purposes of the french ministers are answered, and that they care little now about the controversed points at all; but _their_ indifference to facts can have no influence with _me_. before dismissing this subject entirely, i will add another word on that of the tone of some of our agents abroad. it is not necessary for me to say, for the tenth time, that it is often what it ought not to be; the fact has been openly asserted in the european journals, and there can, therefore, be no mistake as to the manner in which their conduct and opinions are viewed by others. certainly every american has a right to his opinions, and, unless under very peculiar circumstances, a right to express them; but, as i have already said to you in these letters, one who holds a diplomatic appointment is under these peculiar circumstances. we are strangely, not to say disgracefully, situated, truly, if an american _diplomate_ is to express his private opinions abroad on political matters only when they happen to be adverse to the system and action of his own government! i would promptly join in condemning the american agent who should volunteer to unite against, or freely to give his opinions, even in society, against the political system of the country to which he is accredited. discretion and delicacy both tell him to use a proper reserve on a point that is of so much importance to others, while it is no affair of his, and by meddling with which he may possibly derange high interests that are entrusted to his especial keeping and care. all this is very apparent, and quite beyond discussion. still circumstances may arise, provocations may be given, which will amply justify such a man in presenting the most unqualified statements in favour of the principles he is supposed to represent. like every other accountable being, when called to speak at all, he is bound to speak the truth. but, admitting in the fullest extent the obligations and duties of the diplomatic man towards the country to which he is sent, is there nothing due to that from which he comes? is he to be justified in discrediting the principles, denying the facts, or mystifying the results of his own system, in order to ingratiate himself with those with whom he treats? are rights thus to be purchased by concessions so unworthy and base? i will not believe that we have yet reached the degraded state that renders a policy so questionable, or a course so mean, at all necessary. it really appears to me, that the conduct of an american minister on all these points ought to be governed by a very simple rule. he should in effect tell the other party, "gentlemen, i wish to maintain a rigid neutrality, as is due to you; but i trust you will manifest towards me the same respect and delicacy, if not on my own account, at least on account of the country i represent. if you drag me into the affair in any way, i give you notice that you may expect great frankness on my part, and nothing but the truth." such a man would not only get a _treaty_ of indemnity, but he would be very apt to get the _money_ into the bargain. the practice of naming _attachés_ to our legations leads to great abuses of this nature. in the first place the constitution is violated; for, without a law of congress to that effect (and i believe none exists), not even the president has a right to name one, without the approval of the senate. in no case can a minister appoint one legally, for the constitution gives him under no circumstances any such authority; and our system does not admit of the constructive authority that is used under other governments, unless it can be directly referred to an expressly delegated power. now the power of appointment to office is expressly delegated; but it is to another, or rather to another through congress, should congress choose to interfere. this difficulty is got over by saying an _attaché_ is not an officer. if not an officer of the government, he is nothing. he is, at all events, deemed to be an officer of the government in foreign countries, and enjoys immunities as such. besides, it is a dangerous precedent to name to any situation under a pretence like this, as the practice may become gradually enlarged. but i care nothing as to the legality of the common appointments of this nature, the question being as to the _tone_ of the nominees. you may be assured that i shall send you no idle gossip; but there is more importance connected with these things than you may be disposed at first to imagine. here, these young men are believed to represent the state of feeling at home, and are listened to with more respect than they would be as simple travellers. it would be far better not to appoint them at all; but, if this is an indulgence that it would be ungracious to withhold, they should at least be made to enter into engagements not _to deride the institutions they are thought to represent_; for, to say nothing of principle, such a course can only re-act, by discrediting the national character. in writing you these opinions, i wish not to do injustice to my own sagacity. i have not the smallest expectation, were they laid to-morrow before that portion of the american public which comprises the reading classes, that either these facts or these sentiments would produce the least effect on the indomitable selfishness, in which nine men in ten, or even a much larger proportion, are intrenched. i am fully aware that so much has the little national pride and national character created by the war of degenerated, that more of this class will forgive the treason to the institutions, on account of their hatred of the rights of the mass, than will feel that the republic is degraded by the course and practices of which i complain. i know no country that has retrograded in opinion so much as our own, within the last five years. it appears to me to go back, as others advance. let me not, therefore, be understood as expecting any _immediate_ results, were it in my power to bring these matters promptly and prominently before the nation. i fully know i should not be heard, were the attempt made; for nothing is more dull than the ear of him who believes himself already in possession of all the knowledge and virtue of his age, and peculiarly entitled, in right of his possessions, to the exclusive control of human affairs. the most that i should expect from them, were all the facts published to-morrow, would be the secret assent of the wise and good, the expressed censure of the vapid and ignorant (a pretty numerous clan, by the way), the surprise of the mercenary and the demagogue, and the secret satisfaction of the few who will come after me, and who may feel an interest in my conduct or my name. i have openly predicted bad consequences, in a political light, from the compliance of our agents here, and we shall yet see how far this prediction may prove true.[ ] [footnote : has it not? have we not been treated by france, in the affair of the treaty, in a manner she would not have treated any second-rate power of europe.] letter xxvi. approach of winter.--the _livret_.--regulations respecting servants.--servants in america.--governments of the different cantons of switzerland.--engagement of mercenaries.--population of switzerland.--physical peculiarities of the swiss.--women of switzerland.--mrs. trollope and the american ladies.--affected manner of speaking in american women.--patois in america.--peculiar manner of speaking at vévey.--swiss cupidity. dear ----, the season is giving warning for all intruders to begin to think of quitting the cantons. we have not been driven to fires, as in , for vévey is not berne; but the evenings are beginning to be cool, and a dash of rain, with a foaming lake, are taken to be symptoms, here, as strong as a frost would be there. speaking of berne, a little occurrence has just recalled the burgerschaft, which, shorn of its glory as it is, had some most praiseworthy regulations. during our residence near that place, i hired a bernois, as a footman, discharging the man, as a matter of course, on our departure for italy. yesterday i got a doleful letter from this poor fellow, informing me, among a series of other calamities, that he had had the misfortune to lose his _livret_, and begging i would send him such testimonials of character, as it might suit my sense of justice to bestow. it will be necessary to explain a little, in order that you may know what this _livret_ is. the commune, or district, issues to the domestics, a small certified blank book (_livret_), in which all the evidences of character are to be entered. the guides have the same, and in many instances, i believe, they are rendered necessary by law. the free-trade system, i very well know, would play the deuce with these regulations; but capital regulations they are, and i make no doubt, that the established fidelity of the swiss, as domestics, is in some measure owing to this excellent arrangement. if men and women were born servants, it might a little infringe on their natural rights, to be sure; but as even a von erlach or a de bonestetten would have to respect the regulation, were they to don a livery, i see no harm in a _livret_. now, by means of this little book, every moment of a domestic's time might be accounted for, he being obliged to explain what he was about in the interregnums. all this, to be sure, might be done by detached certificates, but neither so neatly nor so accurately; for a man would pretend a need, that he had lost a single certificate, oftener than he would pretend that he had lost those he really had, or in other words, his book. besides, the commune gives some relief, i believe, when such a calamity can be proved, as proved it probably might be. in addition, the authorities will not issue a _livret_ to any but those who are believed to be trust-worthy. of course i sent the man a character, so far as i was concerned, for he had conducted himself perfectly well during the short time he was in my service. a regulation like this could not exist in a very large town, without a good deal of trouble, certainly; and yet what is there of more moment to the comfort of a population, than severe police regulations on the subject of servants? america is almost--perhaps the only civilized country in which the free-trade system is fully carried out in this particular, and carried out it is with a vengeance. we have the let-alone policy, _in puris naturalibus_, and everything is truly let alone, but the property of the master. i do not wish, however, to ascribe effects to wrong causes. the dislike to being a servant in america, has arisen from the prejudice created by our having slaves. the negroes being of a degraded caste, by insensible means their idea is associated with service; and the whites shrink from the condition. this fact is sufficiently proved by the circumstance that he who will respectfully and honestly do your bidding in the field--be a farm-servant, in fact--will not be your domestic servant. there is no particular dislike in our people to obey, and to be respectful and attentive to their duties, as journeymen, farm-labourers, day-labourers, seamen, soldiers, or anything else, domestic servants excepted, which is just the duties they have been accustomed to see discharged by blacks and slaves. this prejudice is fast weakening, whites taking service more readily than formerly, and it is found that, with proper training, they make capital domestics, and are very faithful. in time the prejudice will disappear, and men will come to see it is more creditable to be trusted about the person and house, than to be turned into the fields. it is just as difficult to give a minute account of the governments of the different cantons of switzerland, as it is to give an account of the different state governments of america. each differs, in some respect, from all the others; and there are so many of them in both cases, as to make it a subject proper only for regular treatises. i shall therefore confine the remarks i have to make on this subject to a few general facts. previously to the recent changes, there were twenty-two cantons; a number that the recent secession of neufchâtel has reduced to twenty-one.[ ] until the french revolution, the number was not so great, many of the present cantons being then associated less intimately with the confederation, as _allies_, and some of them being held as political dependents, by those that were cantons. thus vaud and argovie were both provinces, owned and ruled by berne. [footnote : berne, soleure, zurich, lucerne, schweitz, unterwalden, uri, glarus, tessino, valais, vaud, geneva, basle, schaffhausen, argovie, thourgovie, zug, fribourg, st. gall, appenzell, and the grisons. they are named here without reference to their rank or antiquity.] the system is that of a confederation, which leaves each of its members to do pretty much as it pleases, in regard to its internal affairs. the central government is conducted by a diet, very much as our affairs were formerly managed by the old congress. in this diet, each canton has one vote. the executive power, such as it is, is wielded by a committee or council. its duties do not extend much beyond being the organ of communication between the diet and the cantons, the care of the treasury (no great matter), and the reception of, and the treating with, foreign ministers. the latter duty, however, and indeed all other acts, are subject to a revision by the diet. although the cantons themselves are only known to the confederation as they are enrolled on its list, many of them are subdivided into local governments that are perfectly independent of each other. thus there are two unterwaldens in fact, though only one in the diet; two appenzells, also; and i may add, half a dozen grisons and valais. in other words, the two unterwaldens are absolutely independent of each other, except as they are connected through the confederation, though they unite to choose common delegates to the diet, in which they are known as only one canton, and possess but one vote. the same is true of appenzell, and will soon, most probably, be true of schweitz and basle; in both of which there are, at this moment, serious dissensions that are likely to lead to internal separations.[ ] the grisons is more of a consolidated canton than these examples, but it is subdivided into _leagues_, which have a good many strong features of independence. the same is true of valais, where the subdivisions are termed _dizains_. the diet does little beyond controlling the foreign relations of the republic. it makes peace and war, receives ambassadors, forms treaties, and enters into alliances. it can only raise armies, however, by calling on the cantons for their prescribed contingents. the same is true as respects taxes. this, you will perceive, is very much like our own rejected confederation, and has most of its evils; though external pressure, and a trifling commerce, render them less here than they were in america. i believe the confederation has some control over the public mails, though i think this is done, also, _through_ the cantons. the diet neither coins money, nor establishes any courts, beyond its own power to decide certain matters that may arise between the cantons themselves. in short, the government is a very loose one, and it could not hold together in a crisis, were it not for the jealousy of its neighbours. [footnote : basle is now divided into what are called "basle town" and "basle country;" or the city population and the rural. before the late changes, the former ruled the latter.] i have already told you that there exists a strong desire among the intelligent to modify this system. consolidation, as you know from my letters, is wished by no one, for the great difference between the town and the rural populations causes both to wish to remain independent. three languages are spoken in switzerland, without including the rhetian, or any of the numerous _patois_. all the north is german. geneva, vaud, and valais are french, as are parts of berne; while tessino, lying altogether south of the alps, is italian. i have been told, that the states which treat with switzerland for mercenaries, condition that none of them shall be raised in tessino. but the practice of treating for mercenaries is likely to be discontinued altogether, though the republic has lately done something in this way for the pope. the objection is to the italian character, which is thought to be less constant than that of the real swiss. men, and especially men of narrow habits and secluded lives, part reluctantly with authority. nothing can to be more evident than the fact, that a common currency, common post-offices, common custom-houses, if there are to be any at all, and various other similar changes, would be a great improvement on the present system of switzerland. but a few who control opinion in the small cantons, and who would lose authority by the measure, oppose the change. the entire territory of the republic is not as great as that of pennsylvania, nor is the entire population much greater than that of the same state. it is materially less than the population of new york. on the subject of their numbers, there exists a singular, and to me an inapplicable, sensitiveness. it is not possible to come at the precise population of switzerland. that given in the tables of the contingents is thought to be exaggerated, though one does not very well understand the motive. i presume the entire population of the country is somewhere between , , , and , , . some pretend, however, there are , , . admitting the latter number, you will perceive that the single state of new york considerably surpasses it.[ ] more than one-third of the entire population of switzerland is probably in the single canton of berne, as one-seventh of that of the united states is in new york. the proportion between surface and inhabitants is not very different between new england and switzerland, if maine be excluded. parts of the cantons are crowded with people, as zurich for instance, while a large part is uninhabitable rocks and ice. [footnote : the population of new york, to-day, is about , , , or not greatly inferior to that of scotland; and superior to that of hanover, or wurtemberg, or denmark, or saxony, all of which are kingdoms. the increase of population in the united states, at present, the immigration included, is not far from , souls annually, which is equal to the addition of an average state each year! the western speculations find their solution in this fact.] the swiss have most of the physical peculiarities of the different nations that surround them. the german part of the population, however, are, on the whole, both larger and better-looking than the true germans. all the mountaineers are fresher and have clearer complexions than those in the lower portions of the country, but the difference in size is not very apparent. nowhere is there such a population as in our south-western states; indeed, i question if large men are as common in any other country. scotland, however, may possibly form an exception. the women of switzerland are better-looking than those of france or germany, but beauty, or even extreme prettiness, is rare. light, flexible, graceful forms are quite uncommon. large hands and feet are met with everywhere, those of our women being miraculous in comparison. but the same thing is true nearly all over the north of europe. even our men--meaning the gentlemen--i think, might be remarked for the same peculiarities in this part of the world. the english have absurd notions on this subject, and i have often enjoyed a malicious pleasure in bringing my own democratic paws and hoofs (no prodigies at home) in contrast with their aristocratic members. of course, the climate has great influence on all these things. i scarcely think the swiss women of the mountains entitled to their reputation for beauty. if strength, proportions on a scale that is scarcely feminine, symmetry that is more anatomically than poetically perfect, enter into the estimate, one certainly sees in some of the cantons, female peasants who may be called fine women. i remember, in , to have met one of these in the grisons, near the upper end of the valley of the rhine. this woman had a form, carriage, and proportions that would have made a magnificent duchess in a coronation procession; but the face, though fresh and fair, did not correspond with the figure. the women of our own mountains excel them altogether, being a more true medium between strength and coarseness. even mrs. trollope admits that the american women (perhaps she ought to have said the girls) are the most beautiful in the world, while they are the least interesting. mrs. trollope has written a vast deal of nonsense, putting cockneyisms into the mouths of americans, and calling them americanisms, but she has also written a good many truths. i will not go as far as to say she was right in the latter part of this charge; but if our girls would cultivate neater and more elegant forms of expression; equally avoiding vulgar oh's and ah's! and set phrases; be more careful not to drawl; and not to open the mouth, so as to call "hot," "haut;" giggle less; speak lower; have more calmness and more dignity of manner, and _think_ instead of _pulsating_,--i would put them, for all in all, against any women in the world. they lose half of these defects when they marry, as it is; but the wisdom of solomon would come to our ears with a diminished effect, were it communicated through the medium of any other than a neat enunciation. the great desideratum in female education, at home, is to impart a graceful, quiet, lady-like manner of speaking. were it not for precisely this place, vévey, i should add, that the women of america speak their language worse than the women of any other country i ever was in. we all know, that a calm, even, unemphatic mode of speaking, is almost a test of high-breeding; that a clear enunciation is, in short, an indispensable requisite, for either a gentleman or a lady. one may be a fool, and utter nonsense gracefully; but aphorisms lose their force when conveyed in a vulgar intonation. as a nation, i repeat, there is more of this fault in america, perhaps, than among an equal portion of educated people anywhere else. contrary to the general rule too, the men of america speak better than the women; though the men, as a class, speak badly. the peculiar dialect of new england, which prevails so much all over the country, is derived from a provincial mode of speaking in england which is just the meanest in the whole island; and though it is far more intelligible, and infinitely better grammar is used with us, than in the place whence the _patois_ came, i think we have gained little on the score of elegance. i once met in england a distinguished man, who was one of the wealthiest commoners of his county, and he had hardly opened his mouth before i was struck with this peculiarity. on inquiry, i learned that he came from the west of england. it is by no means uncommon to meet with bad grammar, and an improper use of words as relates to their significations, among the highest classes in england, though i think not as often as in america, but it is rare, indeed, that a gentleman or a lady does not express himself or herself, so far as utterance, delivery, and intonation go, as a gentleman and lady should. the fault in america arises from the habits of drawling, and of opening the mouth too wide. any one knows that, if he open the stop of an organ, and keep blowing the bellows, he will make anything but music. we have some extraordinary words, too: who, but a philadelphian, for instance, would think of calling his mother a _mare_? but i am digressing; the peculiar manner of speaking which prevails at vévey having led me from the main subject. these people absolutely sing in their ordinary conversation, more especially the women. in the simple expression of "_bon jour, madame_" each alternate syllable is uttered on an octave higher than the preceding. this is not a _patois_ at all, but merely a vicious and ungraceful mode of utterance. it prevails more among the women than among the men; and, as a matter of course, more among the women of the inferior, than among those of the superior classes. still it is more or less general. to ears that are accustomed to the even, unemphatic, graceful enunciation of paris, it is impossible to describe to you, in words, the ludicrous effect it produces. we have frequently been compelled to turn away, in the shops, to avoid downright laughter. there exists the same sensitiveness, on the subject of the modes of speech, between the french swiss and their french neighbours, as is to be found between us and the english. many intelligent men here have laboured to convince me that the genevese, in particular, speak purer french than even the parisians. i dare say a part of this pretension may be true, for a great people take great liberties with everything; but if america, with her fifteen millions, finds it difficult to maintain herself in such matters, even when in the right, against the influence of england, what can little geneva look for, in such a dispute with france, but to be put down by sheer volubility. she will be out-talked as a matter of course, clever as her citizens are. on the subject of the prevalent opinion of swiss cupidity, i have very little to say: the practice of taking service as mercenaries in other countries, has probably given rise to the charge. as is usually the case in countries where the means of obtaining a livelihood are not easy, the swiss strike me as being more influenced by money than most of their neighbours, though scarcely more so than the common classes of france. to a man who gains but twenty in a day, a sou is of more account than to him who gains forty. i presume this is the whole amount of the matter. i shall not deny, however, that the _honorarium_ was usually more in view, in a transaction with a swiss, than in a transaction with a frenchman, though i think the first the most to be depended on. notwithstanding one or two instances of roguery that i have encountered, i would as soon depend on a swiss, a clear bargain having been made, as on any other man i know. letter xxvii. departure from vévey.--passage down the lake.--arrival at geneva.--purchase of jewellery.--leave geneva.--ascent of the jura.--alpine views.--rudeness at the custom-house.--smuggling.--a smuggler detected.--the second custom-house.--final view of mont blanc.--re-enter france.--our luck at the post-house in dôle.--a scotch traveller.--nationality of the scotch.--road towards troyes.--source of the seine. dear ----, notwithstanding all the poetry of our situation, we found some of the ills of life in it. a few light cases of fever had occurred among us, which gave reason to distrust the lake-shore at this late season, and preparations were accordingly made to depart. watching an opportunity, the skiff of honest jean was loaded with us and our effects to the water's edge, and we embarked in the leman, as she lay-to, in one of her daily trips, bidding a final adieu to vévey, after a residence of about five weeks. the passage down the lake was pleasant, and our eyes rested on the different objects with melancholy interest, for we knew not that they would ever be again looked upon by any among us. it is an exquisite lake, and it grows on us in beauty each time that we look at it, the surest sign of perfection. we reached geneva early, and took lodgings at _l'ecu_, in season for the ladies to make some purchases. the jewellery of this town is usually too tempting to be resisted by female self-denial, and when we met at dinner, we had a course of ear-rings, chains and bracelets served up, by a succession of shopmen, who understand, as it were by instinct, the caprices of the daughters of eve. one of the party had taken a fancy to a pair of unfinished bracelets, and had expressed her regrets that she could not carry them with her. "madame goes to paris?" "yes." "if she will leave her address, they shall be sent to her in a month." as we were strangers in france, and the regulation which prevented travellers from buying articles of this sort for their personal use, however necessary, has always appeared to me inhospitable, i told the man that if delivered in paris, they should be received, and paid for. the bargain was made, and the jewels have already reached us. of course i have asked no questions, and am ignorant whether they came by a balloon, in the luggage of an ambassador, or by the means of a dog. the next day it rained tremendously; but having ordered horses, we left geneva in the afternoon, taking the road to ferney. not an individual of the whole party had any desire to visit the _chateau_, however, and we drove through the place on a gallop. we took french post-horses at the foot of the jura, where we found the first post-house, and began to climb the mountains. our party made a droll appearance just at that moment. the rain was falling in torrents, and the carriage was dragging slowly through the mud up the long winding ascent. of course the windows were shut, and we were a sort of full-dress party within, looking ridiculously fine, and, from time to time, laughing at our silly appearance. everybody was in travelling dresses, jewellery excepted. the late purchases, however, were all on our persons, for we had been told they would certainly be seized at the custom-houses, if left in their boxes in the trunks. the _douaniers_ could tell a recent purchase by instinct. accordingly, all our fingers were brilliant with rings, brows glittered with _ferronières_, ear-rings of the newest mode were shining beneath travelling caps and hats, and chains abounded. i could not persuade myself that this masquerade would succeed, but predicted a failure. it really appeared to me that so shallow a distinction could avail nothing against harpies who denied the right of strangers to pass through their country with a few purchases of this nature, that had been clearly made for their own use. but, while the sumptuary laws of the custom-houses are very rigid, and set limits to the wants of travellers without remorse, like quarantine regulations, they have some rules that seem framed expressly to defeat their own ordinances. the road led up the mountain, where a view that is much praised exists. it is the counterpart of that which is seen everywhere, when one touches on the eastern verge of the jura, and first gets sight of switzerland proper. these views are divided into that which embraces the valley of the aar and the oberland range, and this which comprises the basin of the leman, and the mountains that surround it. mont blanc, of course, is included in the other. on the whole, i prefer the first, although the last is singularly beautiful. we got clear weather near the summit, and stopped a few minutes to dissect the elements of this scene. the view is very lovely, beyond a question; but i think it much inferior to that which has been so often spoken of between us above vévey, notwithstanding mont blanc enters into this as one of its most conspicuous objects. i have, as yet, nowhere seen this mountain to so much advantage. in size, as compared with the peaks around it, it is a hay-stack among hay-cocks, with the advantage of being a pile of shining ice, or frozen snow, while everything else near it is granite. by insulating this mountain, and studying it by itself, one feels its mild sublimity; but still, as a whole, i give the preference greatly to the other view. from this point the lake is too distant, the shores of savoy dwindle in the presence of their mightier neighbour, and the mysterious-looking valais, which in its peculiar beauty has scarcely a rival on earth, is entirely hid from sight. then the lights and shades are nearly lost from the summit of the jura; and, after all, it is these lights and shades, the natural _chiaroscuro_, that finishes the picture. we reached the first custom-house a little before sunset; but, as there was a reasonably good inn opposite, i determined to pass the night there, in order to be able to defend my rights against the myrmidons of the law at leisure, should it be necessary. the carriage was driven to the door of the custom-house, and we were taken into separate rooms to be examined. as for myself, i have no reason to complain; but the ladies were indignant at being subjected to a personal examination by a female harpy, who was equally without politeness and propriety. surely france--polished, refined, intellectual france--cannot actually need this violation of decorum, not to say of decency! this is the second time that similar rudeness has been encountered by us, on entering the country; and, to make the matter worse, females have been the sufferers. i made a pretty vigorous remonstrance, in very animated french, and it had the effect of preventing a repetition of the rudeness. the men pleaded their orders, and i pleaded the rights of hospitality and propriety, as well as a determination not to submit to the insults. i would have made a _détour_ of a hundred leagues to enter at another point in preference. in the course of the conversation that succeeded, the officers explained to me the difficulties they had to contend with, which certainly are not trifling. as to station, they said that made no great difference, your duchess being usually an inveterate smuggler. travellers are not content to supply their own wants, but they purchase for all their friends. this i knew to be true, though not by experience, you will permit me to say, the ambassador's bags, half the time, containing more prohibited articles than despatches. but, notwithstanding this explanation, i did not deem the case of one who bought only for himself the less hard. it is so easy to conceal light articles, that, except in instances where is reason for distrust, it were better to confide in character. if anything could induce me to enter seriously into the contraband, it would be such treatment. the officers explained to me the manner in which smuggling is conducted. the usual mode is to cross the fields in the night; for when two custom-houses are passed, the jewellery may be put in a common trunk, and sent forward by the diligence, unless there is some particular grounds of suspicion. they know perfectly well, that bargains are constantly made in geneva, to deliver purchases in paris; but, with all their care and vigilance, the smugglers commonly succeed. on a recent occasion, however, the officers had been more successful. a cart loaded with split wood (larch) had boldly passed the door of the _douane_. the man who drove it was a peasant, and altogether he appeared to be one driving a very common burthen to his own home. the cart, however, was stopped and the wood unloaded; while reloading, for nothing but wood was found, one stick attracted attention. it was muddy, as if it had fallen into the road. the mud, however, had a suspicious _malice prepense_ air about it; it seemed as if it were _smeared_ on, and by examining it closely, two _seams_ were discovered, which it had been hoped the mud would conceal. the billet had been split in two, hollowed, and reunited by means of pegs. the mud was to hide these pegs and the seams, as i have told you, and in the cavity were found seventy gold watches! i saw the billet of wood, and really felt less resentment at the old virago who had offended us. the officers caught relenting in my eyes and inquired what i thought of it, and i told them that _we_ were not muddy logs of larch. the next morning we were off betimes, intending to push through the mountains and the custom-houses that day. the country was wild and far from fruitful, though there were bits of naked mountain, through which the road wound in a way to recall, on a greatly diminished scale however, that peculiar charm of the apennines. the villages were clean but dreary, and nowhere, for leagues, did we see a country that was genial, or likely to reward agriculture. this passage of the jura is immeasurably inferior to that by salins and neufchâtel. at first i was afraid it was my worn-out feelings that produced the impression; but, by close comparisons, and by questioning my companions, some of whom scarcely recollected the other road, i feel certain that such is the fact. indeed it would be like comparing a finished painting to an _esquisse_. we had not much trouble at the second custom-house, though the officers eyed our ornaments with a confiscating rapacity. for my part i took my revenge, by showing off the only ornament i had to the utmost. a---- had made me a present of a sapphire-ring, and this i flourished in all sorts of ways, as it might be in open defiance. one fellow had an extreme longing for a pretty _ferronière_, and there was a private consultation about it, among them, i believe; but after some detention, and a pretty close examination of the passports, we were permitted to proceed. if françois smuggled nothing, it must have been for want of funds, for speculation is his hobby, as well as his misfortune, entering into every bone of his body. we were all day busy in those barren, sterile, and unattractive mountains--thrice unattractive after the god-like alps--and were compelled to dip into the night, in order to get rid of them. once or twice on looking back, we saw the cold, chiseled peak of mont blanc, peering over our own nearer ridges; and as the weather was not very clear, it looked dim and spectral, as if sorry to lose us. it was rather late when we reached a small town, at the foot of the jura, and stopped for the night. this was france again,--france in cookery, beds, tone, and thought. we lost the swiss simplicity (for there is still relatively a good deal of it), and swiss directness, in politeness, _finesse_, and _manner_. we got "_monsieur sait--monsieur pense--monsieur fera_"--for "_que voulez-vous, monsieur?_" we had no more to do with mountains. our road next morning was across a wide plain, and we plunged at once into the undeviating monotony of french agriculture. a village had been burned, it was thought to excite political commotion, and the postilions began to manoeuvre with us, to curtail us of horse-flesh, as the road was full of carriages. it now became a matter of some moment to push on, for "first come, first served," is the law of the road. by dint of bribes and threats, we reached the point where the two great routes unite a little east of dôle, before a train of several carriages, which we could see pushing for the point of junction with the same object as ourselves, came up. no one could pass us, on the same road, unless we stopped, and abandoning all idea of eating, we drove up to the post-house in dôle, and preferred our claim. at the next moment, four other carriages stopped also. but five horses were in the stable, and seventeen were needed! even these five had just arrived, and were baiting. four of them fell to my share, and we drove off with many handsome expressions of regret at being obliged to leave but one for the four other carriages. your travelling is an epitome of life, in which the lucky look upon the unlucky with a supercilious compassion. a league or two beyond dôle, we met two carriages coming the other way, and exchanged horses; and really i had some such generous feelings on the occasion, as those of a rich man who hears that a poor friend has found a bank note. the carriage with which we exchanged was english, and it had an earl's coronet. the pair within were man and wife; and some fine children, with an attendant or two, were in the one that followed. they were scotch at a glance: the master himself wearing, besides the stamp of his nation on his face, a bonnet with the colours of his clan. there is something highly respectable in this scotch nationality, and i have no doubt it has greatly contributed towards making the people what they are. if the irish were as true to themselves, english injustice would cease in a twelvemonth. but, as a whole, the irish nobles are a band of mercenaries, of english origin, and they prefer looking to the flesh-pots of egypt, to falling back sternly on their rights, and sustaining themselves by the proud recollections of their forefathers. indeed half of them would find their forefathers among the english speculators, when they found them at all. i envied the scotchman his cap and tartan, though i dare say both he and his pretty wife had all the fine feelings that such an emblem is apt to inspire. your earldoms are getting to be paltry things; but it is really something to be the chief of a clan! you have travelled the road between dôle and dijon with me once, already, and i shall say no more than that we slept at the latter town. the next morning, with a view to vary the route, and to get off the train of carriages, we took the road towards troyes. our two objects were effected, for we saw no more of our competitors for post-horses, and we found ourselves in an entirely new country; but, parts of champagne and the ardennes excepted, a country that proved to be the most dreary portion of france we had yet been in. while trotting along a good road, through this naked, stony region, we came to a little valley in which there was a village that was almost as wild in appearance, as one of those on the great st. bernard. a rivulet flowed through the village, and meandered by our side, among the half sterile meadows. it was positively the only agreeable object that we had seen for some hours. recollecting the stream at tuttlingen, a---- desired me to ask the postilion, if it had a name. "_monsieur, cette petite rivière s'appelle la seine._" we were, then, at the sources of the seine! looking back i perceived, by the formation of the land, that it must take its rise a short distance beyond the village, among some naked and dreary-looking hills. a little beyond these, again, the streams flow towards the tributaries of the rhone, and we were consequently in the high region where the waters of the atlantic and the mediterranean divide. still there were no other signs of our being at such an elevation, except in the air of sterility that reigned around. it really seemed as if the river, so notoriously affluent in mud, had taken down with it all the soil. letter xxviii. miserable inn.--a french bed.--free-trade.--french relics.--cross roads.--arrival at la grange.--reception by general lafayette.--the nullification strife.--conversation with lafayette.--his opinion as to a separation of the union in america.--the slave question.--stability of the union.--style of living at la grange.--pap.--french manners, and the french cuisine.--departure from la grange.--return to paris. dear ----, i have little to say of the next two days' drive, except that ignorance, and the poetical conceptions of a postilion, led us into the scrape of passing a night in just the lowest inn we had entered in europe. we pushed on after dark to reach this spot, and it was too late to proceed, as all of the party were excessively fatigued. to be frank with you, it was an _auberge aux charretiers_. eating was nearly out of the question; and yet i had faith to the last, in a french bed. the experience of this night, however, enables me to say all france does not repose on excellent wool mattresses, for we were obliged to put up with a good deal of straw. and yet the people were assiduous, anxious to please, and civil. the beds, moreover, were tidy; our straw being clean straw. the next night we reached a small town, where we did much better. still one can see the great improvements that travellers are introducing into france, by comparing the taverns on the better roads with those on the more retired routes. at this place we slept well, and _à la française_. if sancho blessed the man who invented sleep after a nap on spanish earth, what would he have thought of it after one enjoyed on a french bed! the drums beat through the streets after breakfast, and the population crowded their doors, listening, with manifest interest, to the proclamation of the crier. the price of bread was reduced; an annunciation of great interest at all times, in a country where bread is literally the staff of life. the advocates of free-trade prices ought to be told that france would often be convulsed, literally from want, if this important interest were left to the sole management of dealers. a theory will not feed a starving multitude, and hunger plays the deuce with argument. in short, free-trade, as its warmest votaries now carry out their doctrines, approaches suspiciously near a state of nature: a condition which might do well enough, if trade were a principal, instead of a mere incident of life. with some men, however, it is a principal--an all in all--and this is the reason we frequently find those who are notoriously the advocates of exclusion and privileges in government, maintaining the doctrine, as warmly as those who carry their liberalism, in other matters, to extremes. there was a small picture, in the manner of watteau, in this inn, which the landlady told me had been bought at a sale of the effects of a neighbouring chateau. it is curious to discover these relics, in the shape of furniture, pictures, porcelain, &c., scattered all over france, though most of it has found its way to paris. i offered to purchase the picture, but the good woman held it to be above price. we left this place immediately after breakfast, and soon quitted the great route to strike across the country. the _chemins vicinaux_, or cross-roads of france, are pretty much in a state of nature; the public, i believe, as little liking to work them, as it does at home. previously to the revolution, all this was done by means of the _corvée_; a right which empowered the _seigneur_ to oblige his tenants to perform a certain amount of labour, without distinction, on the highways of his estate. thus, whenever m. le marquis felt disposed to visit the chateau, there was a general muster, to enable him and his friends to reach the house in safety, and to amuse themselves during their residence; after which the whole again reverted to the control of nature and accident. to be frank, one sometimes meets with by-roads in this old country, which are positively as bad as the very worst of our own, in the newest settlements. last year i actually travelled post for twenty miles on one of these trackless ways. we were more fortunate, however, on the present occasion; the road we took being what is called a _route départementale_, and little, if any, inferior to the one we had left. our drive was through a slightly undulating country that was prettily wooded, and in very good agriculture. in all but the wheel-track, the traveller gains by quitting the great routes in france, for nothing can be more fatiguing to the eye than their straight undeviating monotony. they are worse than any of our own air-line turnpikes; for in america the constant recurrence of small isolated bits of wood greatly relieves the scenery. we drove through this country some three or four leagues, until we at length came to an estate of better arrangements than common. on our left was a wood, and on our right a broad reach of meadow. passing the wood, we saw a wide, park-like lawn, that was beautifully shaded by copses, and in which there were touches of landscape-gardening, in a taste altogether better than was usual in france. passing this, another wood met us, and turning it, we entered a private road--you will remember the country has neither fence nor hedge, nor yet scarcely a wall--which wound round its margin, describing an irregular semicircle. then it ran in a straight line for a short distance, among a grove of young evergreens, towards two dark picturesque towers covered with ivy, crossed a permanent bridge that spanned a ditch, and dashing through a gateway, in which the grooves of the portcullis are yet visible, we alighted in the court of la grange! it was just nine, and the family was about assembling in the drawing-room. the "_le général sera charmé de vous voir, monsieur_," of the faithful bastien, told us we should find his master at home; and on the great stairs, most of the ladies met us. in short, the patriarch was under his own roof, surrounded by that family which has so long been the admiration of thousands--or, precisely as one would most wish to find him. it is not necessary to speak of our reception, where all our country are welcome. we were soon in the drawing-room, which i found covered with american newspapers, and in a few minutes i was made acquainted with all that was passing on the other side of the atlantic. mr. rives had sailed for home; and as m. perier was dead, general lafayette had not explained in the chamber the error into which that minister had permitted himself to fall, agreeably to a tardy authority to that effect received from mr. rives. the ministry was on the point of dissolution in france; and it was said the _doctrinaires_ were to come in--and the nullification strife ran high at home. on the latter subject, lafayette spoke with a reserve that was unusual on subjects connected with america, though he strongly deprecated the existence of the controversy. there is great weakness in an american's betraying undue susceptibility on the score of every little unpleasant occurrence that arises at home. no one of the smallest intelligence can believe that we are to be exempt from human faults, and we all ought to know that they will frequently lead to violence and wrongs. still there is so much jealousy here on this subject, the votaries of monarchies regard all our acts with so much malevolence, and have so strong a desire to exaggerate our faults, that it is not an easy matter at all times to suppress these feelings. i have often told our opponents that they pay us the highest possible compliment, in their constant effort to compare the results of the system with what is purely right in the abstract, instead of comparing its results with those of their own. but the predominance of the hostile interests are so great here, that reason and justice go for nothing in the conflict of opinions. if a member of congress is flogged, it is no answer to say that a deputy or a member of parliament has been murdered. they do not affirm, but they always _argue_ as if they thought we ought to be better than they! if we have an angry discussion and are told of it, one would think it would be a very good answer, so far as comparative results are concerned, to tell them that half-a-dozen of their provinces are in open revolt; but to this they will not listen. they expect _us_ never to quarrel! we must be without spot in all things, or we are worse than they. all this lafayette sees and feels; and although it is impossible not to detect the unfairness and absurdity of such a mode of forming estimates of men, it is almost equally impossible, in the present situation of europe, for one who understands the influence of american example, not to suffer these unpleasant occurrences to derange his philosophy. before breakfast the general took me into his library, and we had a long and a much franker conversation on the state of south carolina. he said that a separation of the union would break his heart. "i hope they will at least let me die," he added, "before they commit this _suicide_ on _our_ institutions." he particularly deprecated the practice of talking about such an event, which he thought would accustom men's minds to it. i had not the same apprehensions. to me it appeared that the habit of menacing dissolution, was the result of every one's knowing, and intimately feeling, the importance of hanging together, which induced the dissatisfied to resort to the threat, as the shortest means of attaining their object. it would be found in the end, that the very consciousness which pointed out this mode as the gravest attack that could be made on those whom the discontented wish to influence, would awaken enough to consequences to prevent any consummation in acts. this menace was a natural argument of the politically weak in america, just as the physically weak lay hold of knives and clubs, where the strong rely on their hands. it must be remembered that the latter, at need, can resort to weapons, too. i do not believe there could be found in all america any great number of respectable men who wish the union dissolved; and until that shall be the case, i see no great grounds of apprehension. moreover, i told him that so long as the northern states were tranquil i had no fears, for i felt persuaded that no great political change would occur in america that did not come from that section of the union. as this is a novel opinion, he inquired for its reasons, and, in brief, this was the answer:-- there is but one interest that would be likely to unite all the south against the north, and this was the interest connected with slavery. now, it was notorious that neither the federal government nor the individual states have anything to do with this as a national question, and it was not easy to see in what manner anything could be done that would be likely to push matters as far as disunion on such a point there might be, and there probably would be, discussion and denunciations--nay, there often had been; but a compromise having been virtually made, by which all new states at the north are to be free states, and all at the south slave-holding, i saw nothing else that was likely to be serious.[ ] as respects all other interests, it would be difficult to unite the whole south. taking the present discussion as an example: those that were disaffected, to use the strongest term the case admits of, were so environed by those that were not, that a serious separation became impossible. the tier of states that lies behind the carolinas, virginia, and georgia, for instance, are in no degree dependent on them for an outlet to the sea, while they are so near neighbours as to overshadow them in a measure. then the south must always have a northern boundary of free states, if they separate _en masse_--a circumstance not very desirable, as they would infallibly lose most of their slaves. [footnote : recent facts have confirmed this opinion.] on the other hand, the north is very differently situated. new england, new york, pennsylvania, ohio, and the tier of states west, are closely connected geographically, must and would go together, and they have one frontier that is nearly all water. they contain already a free population of eight millions, which is rapidly increasing, and are strong enough, and united enough, to act as they please. it is their interest to remain united with the south, and it is also a matter of feeling with them, and i apprehend little to the union so long as these states continue of this mind.[ ] [footnote : this was written before the recent events in texas, which give a new aspect to the question.] lafayette wished to know if i did not think the union was getting too large for its safety. i thought not, so long as the means of necessary intercommunication were preserved, but just the reverse, as the larger the union, the less probability there would be of agitating its whole surface by any one interest; and the parties that were tranquil, as a matter of course, would influence those that were disturbed. were the union to-day, for instance, confined to the coast, as it was forty years since, there would be no south-western states to hold the southern in check, as we all know is the fact at present, and the danger from nullification would be doubled. these things act both ways; for even the state governments, while they offer positive organised and _quasi_ legal means of resisting the federal government, also afford the same organized local means of counteracting them in their own neighbourhood. thus, carolina and georgia do not pull together in this very affair, and, in a sense, one neutralizes the other. the long and short of the matter was, that the union was a compromise that grew out of practical wants and _facts_, and this was the strongest possible foundation for any polity. men would assail it in words, precisely as they believed it important and valued by the public, to attain their ends.--we were here summoned to the breakfast. i was well laughed at the table for my ignorance. the family of la grange live in the real old french style, with an occasional introduction of an american dish, in compliment to a guest. we had obtained hints concerning one or two capital things there, especially one for a very simple and excellent dish, called _soupe au lait_; and i fancied i had now made discovery the second. a dish was handed to me that i found so excellent, _so very appropriate to breakfast_, that i sent it to a----, with a request that she would get its history from madame george lafayette, who sat next her. the ladies put their heads together, and i soon saw that they were amused at the suggestion. a---- then informed me, that it was an american as well as a french dish, and that she knew great quantities of it had been consumed in the hall at c----, in particular. of course i protested that i had no recollection of it. "all this is very likely, for it is a good while since you have eaten any. the dish is neither more nor less than pap!" two capital mistakes exist in america on the subject of france. one regards its manners, and the other its kitchen. we believe that french deportment is superficial, full of action, and exaggerated. this would truly be a wonder in a people who possess a better tone of manners, perhaps, than any other; for quiet and simplicity are indispensable to high breeding. the french of rank are perfect models of these excellences. as to the _cuisine_, we believe it is high-seasoned. nothing can be farther from the truth; spices of all sorts being nearly proscribed. when i went to london with the vicomte de v----, the first dinner was at a tavern. the moment he touched the soup, he sat with tears in his eyes, and with his mouth open, like a chicken with the pip! "_le diable!_" he exclaimed, "_celle-ci est infernale!_" and infernal i found it too; for after seven years' residence on the continent, it was no easy matter for even me to eat the food or to drink the wines of england; the one on account of the high seasoning, and the other on account of the brandy. we left la grange about noon, and struck into the great post-road as soon as possible. a succession of accidents, owing to the random driving of the postilions, detained us several hours, and it was dark before we reached the first _barrière_ of paris. we entered the town on our side of the river, and drove into our own gate about eight. the table was set for dinner; the beds were made, the gloves and toys lay scattered about, _à la princesse d'orange_, and we resumed our customary mode of life, precisely as if we had returned from an airing in the country, instead of a journey of three months! the end. the path to rome by hilaire belloc '... amore antiqui ritus, alto sub numine romae' praise of this book to every honest reader that may purchase, hire, or receive this book, and to the reviewers also (to whom it is of triple profit), greeting--and whatever else can be had for nothing. if you should ask how this book came to be written, it was in this way. one day as i was wandering over the world i came upon the valley where i was born, and stopping there a moment to speak with them all--when i had argued politics with the grocer, and played the great lord with the notary-public, and had all but made the carpenter a christian by force of rhetoric--what should i note (after so many years) but the old tumble-down and gaping church, that i love more than mother-church herself, all scraped, white, rebuilt, noble, and new, as though it had been finished yesterday. knowing very well that such a change had not come from the skinflint populace, but was the work of some just artist who knew how grand an ornament was this shrine (built there before our people stormed jerusalem), i entered, and there saw that all within was as new, accurate, and excellent as the outer part; and this pleased me as much as though a fortune had been left to us all; for one's native place is the shell of one's soul, and one's church is the kernel of that nut. moreover, saying my prayers there, i noticed behind the high altar a statue of our lady, so extraordinary and so different from all i had ever seen before, so much the spirit of my valley, that i was quite taken out of myself and vowed a vow there to go to rome on pilgrimage and see all europe which the christian faith has saved; and i said, 'i will start from the place where i served in arms for my sins; i will walk all the way and take advantage of no wheeled thing; i will sleep rough and cover thirty miles a day, and i will hear mass every morning; and i will be present at high mass in st peter's on the feast of st peter and st paul.' then i went out of the church still having that statue in my mind, and i walked again farther into the world, away from my native valley, and so ended some months after in a place whence i could fulfil my vow; and i started as you shall hear. all my other vows i broke one by one. for a faggot must be broken every stick singly. but the strict vow i kept, for i entered rome on foot that year in time, and i heard high mass on the feast of the apostles, as many can testify--to wit: monsignor this, and chamberlain the other, and the bishop of _so-and-so--o--polis in partibus infidelium;_ for we were all there together. and why (you will say) is all this put by itself in what anglo-saxons call a foreword, but gentlemen a preface? why, it is because i have noticed that no book can appear without some such thing tied on before it; and as it is folly to neglect the fashion, be certain that i read some eight or nine thousand of them to be sure of how they were written and to be safe from generalizing on too frail a basis. and having read them and discovered first, that it was the custom of my contemporaries to belaud themselves in this prolegomenaical ritual (some saying in a few words that they supplied a want, others boasting in a hundred that they were too grand to do any such thing, but most of them baritoning their apologies and chanting their excuses till one knew that their pride was toppling over)--since, i say, it seemed a necessity to extol one's work, i wrote simply on the lintel of my diary, _praise of this book,_ so as to end the matter at a blow. but whether there will be praise or blame i really cannot tell, for i am riding my pen on the snaffle, and it has a mouth of iron. now there is another thing book writers do in their prefaces, which is to introduce a mass of nincompoops of whom no one ever heard, and to say 'my thanks are due to such and such' all in a litany, as though any one cared a farthing for the rats! if i omit this believe me it is but on account of the multitude and splendour of those who have attended at the production of this volume. for the stories in it are copied straight from the best authors of the renaissance, the music was written by the masters of the eighteenth century, the latin is erasmus' own; indeed, there is scarcely a word that is mine. i must also mention the nine muses, the three graces; bacchus, the maenads, the panthers, the fauns; and i owe very hearty thanks to apollo. yet again, i see that writers are for ever anxious of their style, thinking (not saying)-- 'true, i used "and which" on page , but martha brown the stylist gave me leave;' or: 'what if i do end a sentence with a preposition? i always follow the rules of mr twist in his "'tis thus 'twas spoke", odd's body an' i do not!' now this is a pusillanimity of theirs (the book writers) that they think style power, and yet never say as much in their prefaces. come, let me do so... where are you? let me marshal you, my regiments of words! rabelais! master of all happy men! are you sleeping there pressed into desecrated earth under the doss-house of the rue st paul, or do you not rather drink cool wine in some elysian chinon looking on the vienne where it rises in paradise? are you sleeping or drinking that you will not lend us the staff of friar john wherewith he slaughtered and bashed the invaders of the vineyards, who are but a parable for the mincing pedants and bloodless thin-faced rogues of the world? write as the wind blows and command all words like an army! see them how they stand in rank ready for assault, the jolly, swaggering fellows! first come the neologisms, that are afraid of no man; fresh, young, hearty, and for the most part very long-limbed, though some few short and strong. there also are the misprints to confuse the enemy at his onrush. then see upon the flank a company of picked ambiguities covering what shall be a feint by the squadron of anachronisms led by old anachronos himself; a terrible chap with nigglers and a great murderer of fools. but here see more deeply massed the ten thousand egotisms shining in their armour and roaring for battle. they care for no one. they stormed convention yesterday and looted the cellar of good-manners, who died of fear without a wound; so they drank his wine and are to-day as strong as lions and as careless (saving only their captain, monologue, who is lantern-jawed). here are the aposiopaesian auxiliaries, and dithyramb that killed punctuation in open fight; parenthesis the giant and champion of the host, and anacoluthon that never learned to read or write but is very handy with his sword; and metathesis and hendiadys, two greeks. and last come the noble gallicisms prancing about on their light horses: cavalry so sudden that the enemy sicken at the mere sight of them and are overcome without a blow. come then my hearties, my lads, my indefatigable repetitions, seize you each his own trumpet that hangs at his side and blow the charge; we shall soon drive them all before us headlong, howling down together to the picrocholian sea. so! that was an interlude. forget the clamour. but there is another matter; written as yet in no other preface: peculiar to this book. for without rhyme or reason, pictures of an uncertain kind stand in the pages of the chronicle. why? _because it has become so cheap to photograph on zinc._ in old time a man that drew ill drew not at all. he did well. then either there were no pictures in his book, or (if there were any) they were done by some other man that loved him not a groat and would not have walked half a mile to see him hanged. but now it is so easy for a man to scratch down what he sees and put it in his book that any fool may do it and be none the worse--many others shall follow. this is the first. before you blame too much, consider the alternative. shall a man march through europe dragging an artist on a cord? god forbid! shall an artist write a book? why no, the remedy is worse than the disease. let us agree then, that, if he will, any pilgrim may for the future draw (if he likes) that most difficult subject, snow hills beyond a grove of trees; that he may draw whatever he comes across in order to enliven his mind (for who saw it if not he? and was it not his loneliness that enabled him to see it?), and that he may draw what he never saw, with as much freedom as you readers so very continually see what you never draw. he may draw the morning mist on the grimsel, six months afterwards; when he has forgotten what it was like: and he may frame it for a masterpiece to make the good draughtsman rage. the world has grown a boy again this long time past, and they are building hotels (i hear) in the place where acedes discovered the water of youth in a hollow of the hill epistemonoscoptes. then let us love one another and laugh. time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer--and meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest men are at siege upon us all around. let us suffer absurdities, for that is only to suffer one another. nor let us be too hard upon the just but anxious fellow that sat down dutifully to paint the soul of switzerland upon a fan. when that first proverb-maker who has imposed upon all peoples by his epigrams and his fallacious half-truths, his empiricism and his wanton appeals to popular ignorance, i say when this man (for i take it he was a man, and a wicked one) was passing through france he launched among the french one of his pestiferous phrases, _'ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûté'_ and this in a rolling-in-the-mouth self-satisfied kind of a manner has been repeated since his day at least seventeen million three hundred and sixty-two thousand five hundred and four times by a great mass of ushers, parents, company officers, elder brothers, parish priests, and authorities in general whose office it may be and whose pleasure it certainly is to jog up and disturb that native slumber and inertia of the mind which is the true breeding soil of revelation. for when boys or soldiers or poets, or any other blossoms and prides of nature, are for lying steady in the shade and letting the mind commune with its immortal comrades, up comes authority busking about and eager as though it were a duty to force the said mind to burrow and sweat in the matter of this very perishable world, its temporary habitation. 'up,' says authority, 'and let me see that mind of yours doing something practical. let me see him mixing painfully with circumstance, and botching up some imperfection or other that shall at least be a reality and not a silly fantasy.' then the poor mind comes back to prison again, and the boy takes his horrible homer in the real greek (not church's book, alas!); the poet his rough hairy paper, his headache, and his cross-nibbed pen; the soldier abandons his inner picture of swaggering about in ordinary clothes, and sees the dusty road and feels the hard places in his boot, and shakes down again to the steady pressure of his pack; and authority is satisfied, knowing that he will get a smattering from the boy, a rubbishy verse from the poet, and from the soldier a long and thirsty march. and authority, when it does this commonly sets to work by one of these formulae: as, in england north of trent, by the manifestly false and boastful phrase, 'a thing begun is half ended', and in the south by 'the beginning is half the battle'; but in france by the words i have attributed to the proverb-maker, _'ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte'._ by this you may perceive that the proverb-maker, like every other demagogue, energumen, and disturber, dealt largely in metaphor--but this i need hardly insist upon, for in his vast collection of published and unpublished works it is amply evident that he took the silly pride of the half-educated in a constant abuse of metaphor. there was a sturdy boy at my school who, when the master had carefully explained to us the nature of metaphor, said that so far as he could see a metaphor was nothing but a long greek word for a lie. and certainly men who know that the mere truth would be distasteful or tedious commonly have recourse to metaphor, and so do those false men who desire to acquire a subtle and unjust influence over their fellows, and chief among them, the proverb-maker. for though his name is lost in the great space of time that has passed since he flourished, yet his character can be very clearly deduced from the many literary fragments he has left, and that is found to be the character of a pusillanimous and ill-bred usurer, wholly lacking in foresight, in generous enterprise, and chivalrous enthusiasm--in matters of the faith a prig or a doubter, in matters of adventure a poltroon, in matters of science an ignorant parrot, and in letters a wretchedly bad rhymester, with a vice for alliteration; a wilful liar (as, for instance, '_the longest way round is the shortest way home_'), a startling miser (as, _'a penny saved is a penny earned'_), one ignorant of largesse and human charity (as, '_waste not, want not_'), and a shocking boor in the point of honour (as, _'hard words break no bones'_--he never fought, i see, but with a cudgel). but he had just that touch of slinking humour which the peasants have, and there is in all he said that exasperating quality for which we have no name, which certainly is not accuracy, and which is quite the opposite of judgement, yet which catches the mind as brambles do our clothes, causing us continually to pause and swear. for he mixes up unanswerable things with false conclusions, he is perpetually letting the cat out of the bag and exposing our tricks, putting a colour to our actions, disturbing us with our own memory, indecently revealing corners of the soul. he is like those men who say one unpleasant and rude thing about a friend, and then take refuge from their disloyal and false action by pleading that this single accusation is true; and it is perhaps for this abominable logicality of his and for his malicious cunning that i chiefly hate him: and since he himself evidently hated the human race, he must not complain if he is hated in return. take, for instance, this phrase that set me writing, _'ce nest que le premier pas qui coûte'_. it is false. much after a beginning is difficult, as everybody knows who has crossed the sea, and as for the first _step_ a man never so much as remembers it; if there is difficulty it is in the whole launching of a thing, in the first ten pages of a book, or the first half-hour of listening to a sermon, or the first mile of a walk. the first step is undertaken lightly, pleasantly, and with your soul in the sky; it is the five-hundredth that counts. but i know, and you know, and he knew (worse luck) that he was saying a thorny and catching thing when he made up that phrase. it worries one of set purpose. it is as though one had a voice inside one saying: 'i know you, you will never begin anything. look at what you might have done! here you are, already twenty-one, and you have not yet written a dictionary. what will you do for fame? eh? nothing: you are intolerably lazy--and what is worse, it is your fate. beginnings are insuperable barriers to you. what about that great work on the national debt? what about that little lyric on winchelsea that you thought of writing six years ago? why are the few lines still in your head and not on paper? because you can't begin. however, never mind, you can't help it, it's your one great flaw, and it's fatal. look at jones! younger than you by half a year, and already on the _evening yankee_ taking bribes from company promoters! and where are you?' &c., &c.--and so forth. so this threat about the heavy task of beginning breeds discouragement, anger, vexation, irritability, bad style, pomposity and infinitives split from helm to saddle, and metaphors as mixed as the carlton. but it is just true enough to remain fast in the mind, caught, as it were, by one finger. for all things (you will notice) are very difficult in their origin, and why, no one can understand. _omne trinum_: they are difficult also in the shock of maturity and in their ending. take, for instance, the life of man, which is the difficulty of birth, the difficulty of death, and the difficulty of the grand climacteric. lector. what is the grand climacteric? auctor. i have no time to tell you, for it would lead us into a discussion on astrology, and then perhaps to a question of physical science, and then you would find i was not orthodox, and perhaps denounce me to the authorities. i will tell you this much; it is the moment (not the year or the month, mind you, nor even the hour, but the very second) when a man is grown up, when he sees things as they are (that is, backwards), and feels solidly himself. do i make myself clear? no matter, it is the shock of maturity, and that must suffice for you. but perhaps you have been reading little brown books on evolution, and you don't believe in catastrophes, or climaxes, or definitions? eh? tell me, do you believe in the peak of the matterhorn, and have you doubts on the points of needles? can the sun be said truly to rise or set, and is there any exact meaning in the phrase, 'done to a turn' as applied to omelettes? you know there is; and so also you must believe in categories, and you must admit differences of kind as well as of degree, and you must accept exact definition and believe in all that your fathers did, that were wiser men than you, as is easily proved if you will but imagine yourself for but one moment introduced into the presence of your ancestors, and ask yourself which would look the fool. especially must you believe in moments and their importance, and avoid with the utmost care the comparative method and the argument of the slowly accumulating heap. i hear that some scientists are already beginning to admit the reality of birth and death--let but some brave few make an act of faith in the grand climacteric and all shall yet be well. well, as i was saying, this difficulty of beginning is but one of three, and is inexplicable, and is in the nature of things, and it is very especially noticeable in the art of letters. there is in every book the difficulty of beginning, the difficulty of the turning-point (which is the grand climacteric of a book)-- lector. what is that in a book? auctor. why, it is the point where the reader has caught on, enters into the book and desires to continue reading it. lector. it comes earlier in some books than in others. auctor. as you say... and finally there is the difficulty of ending. lector. i do not see how there can be any difficulty in ending a book. auctor. that shows very clearly that you have never written one, for there is nothing so hard in the writing of a book--no, not even the choice of the dedication--as is the ending of it. on this account only the great poets, who are above custom and can snap their divine fingers at forms, are not at the pains of devising careful endings. thus, homer ends with lines that might as well be in the middle of a passage; hesiod, i know not how; and mr bailey, the new voice from eurasia, does not end at all, but is still going on. panurge told me that his great work on conchology would never have been finished had it not been for the bookseller that threatened law; and as it is, the last sentence has no verb in it. there is always something more to be said, and it is always so difficult to turn up the splice neatly at the edges. on this account there are regular models for ending a book or a poem, as there are for beginning one; but, for my part, i think the best way of ending a book is to rummage about among one's manuscripts till one has found a bit of fine writing (no matter upon what subject), to lead up the last paragraphs by no matter what violent shocks to the thing it deals with, to introduce a row of asterisks, and then to paste on to the paper below these the piece of fine writing one has found. i knew a man once who always wrote the end of a book first, when his mind was fresh, and so worked gradually back to the introductory chapter, which (he said) was ever a kind of summary, and could not be properly dealt with till a man knew all about his subject. he said this was a sovran way to write history. but it seems to me that this is pure extravagance, for it would lead one at last to beginning at the bottom of the last page, like the hebrew bible, and (if it were fully carried out) to writing one's sentences backwards till one had a style like the london school of poets: a very horrible conclusion. however, i am not concerned here with the ending of a book, but with its beginning; and i say that the beginning of any literary thing is hard, and that this hardness is difficult to explain. and i say more than this--i say that an interminable discussion of the difficulty of beginning a book is the worst omen for going on with it, and a trashy subterfuge at the best. in the name of all decent, common, and homely things, why not begin and have done with it? it was in the very beginning of june, at evening, but not yet sunset, that i set out from toul by the nancy gate; but instead of going straight on past the parade-ground, i turned to the right immediately along the ditch and rampart, and did not leave the fortifications till i came to the road that goes up alongside the moselle. for it was by the valley of this river that i was to begin my pilgrimage, since, by a happy accident, the valley of the upper moselle runs straight towards rome, though it takes you but a short part of the way. what a good opening it makes for a direct pilgrimage can be seen from this little map, where the dotted line points exactly to rome. there are two bends which take one a little out of one's way, and these bends i attempted to avoid, but in general, the valley, about a hundred miles from toul to the source, is an evident gate for any one walking from this part of lorraine into italy. and this map is also useful to show what route i followed for my first three days past epinal and remiremont up to the source of the river, and up over the great hill, the ballon d'alsace. i show the river valley like a trench, and the hills above it shaded, till the mountainous upper part, the vosges, is put in black. i chose the decline of the day for setting out, because of the great heat a little before noon and four hours after it. remembering this, i planned to walk at night and in the mornings and evenings, but how this design turned out you shall hear in a moment. i had not gone far, not a quarter of a mile, along my road leaving the town, when i thought i would stop and rest a little and make sure that i had started propitiously and that i was really on my way to rome; so i halted by a wall and looked back at the city and the forts, and drew what i saw in my book. it was a sight that had taken a firm hold of my mind in boyhood, and that will remain in it as long as it can make pictures for itself out of the past. i think this must be true of all conscripts with regard to the garrison in which they have served, for the mind is so fresh at twenty-one and the life so new to every recruit as he joins it, he is so cut off from books and all the worries of life, that the surroundings of the place bite into him and take root, as one's school does or one's first home. and i had been especially fortunate since i had been with the gunners (notoriously the best kind of men) and not in a big place but in a little town, very old and silent, with more soldiers in its surrounding circle than there were men, women, and children within its useless ramparts. it is known to be very beautiful, and though i had not heard of this reputation, i saw it to be so at once when i was first marched in, on a november dawn, up to the height of the artillery barracks. i remembered seeing then the great hills surrounding it on every side, hiding their menace and protection of guns, and in the south and east the silent valley where the high forests dominate the moselle, and the town below the road standing in an island or ring of tall trees. all this, i say, i had permanently remembered, and i had determined, whenever i could go on pilgrimage to rome, to make this place my starting-point, and as i stopped here and looked back, a little way outside the gates, i took in again the scene that recalled so much laughter and heavy work and servitude and pride of arms. i was looking straight at the great fort of st michel, which is the strongest thing on the frontier, and which is the key to the circle of forts that make up this entrenched camp. one could see little or nothing of its batteries, only its hundreds of feet of steep brushwood above the vineyards, and at the summit a stunted wood purposely planted. next to it on the left, of equal height, was the hog back of the cote barine, hiding a battery. between the cote barine and my road and wall, i saw the rising ground and the familiar barracks that are called (i know not why) the barracks of justice, but ought more properly to be called the barracks of petty tyrannies and good fellowship, in order to show the philosophers that these two things are the life of armies; for of all the virtues practised in that old compulsory home of mine justice came second at least if not third, while discipline and comradeship went first; and the more i think of it the more i am convinced that of all the suffering youth that was being there annealed and forged into soldiery none can have suffered like the lawyers. on the right the high trees that stand outside the ramparts of the town went dwindling in perspective like a palisade, and above them, here and there, was a roof showing the top of the towers of the cathedral or of st gengoult. all this i saw looking backwards, and, when i had noticed it and drawn it, i turned round again and took the road. i had, in a small bag or pocket slung over my shoulder, a large piece of bread, half a pound of smoked ham, a sketch-book, two nationalist papers, and a quart of the wine of brule--which is the most famous wine in the neighbourhood of the garrison, yet very cheap. and brule is a very good omen for men that are battered about and given to despairing, since it is only called brule on account of its having been burnt so often by romans, frenchmen, burgundians, germans, flemings, huns perhaps, and generally all those who in the last few thousand years have taken a short cut at their enemies over the neck of the cote barine. so you would imagine it to be a tumble-down, weak, wretched, and disappearing place; but, so far from this, it is a rich and proud village, growing, as i have said, better wine than any in the garrison. though toul stands in a great cup or ring of hills, very high and with steep slopes, and guns on all of them, and all these hills grow wine, none is so good as brule wine. and this reminds me of a thing that happened in the manoeuvres of , _quorum pars magna_; for there were two divisions employed in that glorious and fatiguing great game, and more than a gross of guns--to be accurate, a hundred and fifty-six--and of these one (the sixth piece of the tenth battery of the eighth--i wonder where you all are now? i suppose i shall not see you again; but you were the best companions in the world, my friends) was driven by three drivers, of whom i was the middle one, and the worst, having on my livret the note 'conducteur mediocre'. but that is neither here nor there; the story is as follows, and the moral is that the commercial mind is illogical. when we had gone some way, clattering through the dust, and were well on on the commercy road, there was a short halt, and during this halt there passed us the largest tun or barrel that ever went on wheels. you talk of the great tun of heidelburg, or of those monstrous vats that stand in cool sheds in the napa valley, or of the vast barrels in the catacombs of rheims; but all these are built _in situ_ and meant to remain steady, and there is no limit to the size of a barrel that has not to travel. the point about this enormous receptacle of bacchus and cavernous huge prison of laughter, was that it could move, though cumbrously, and it was drawn very slowly by stupid, patient oxen, who would not be hurried. on the top of it sat a strong peasant, with a face of determination, as though he were at war with his kind, and he kept on calling to his oxen, 'han', and 'hu', in the tones of a sullen challenge, as he went creaking past. then the soldiers began calling out to him singly, 'where are you off to, father, with that battery?' and 'why carry cold water to commercy? they have only too much as it is;' and 'what have you got in the little barrelkin, the barrellet, the cantiniere's brandy-flask, the gourd, the firkin?' he stopped his oxen fiercely and turned round to us and said: 'i will tell you what i have here. i have so many hectolitres of brule wine which i made myself, and which i know to be the best wine there is, and i am taking it about to see if i cannot tame and break these proud fellows who are for ever beating down prices and mocking me. it is worth eight 'scutcheons the hectolitre, that is, eight sols the litre; what do i say? it is worth a louis a cup: but i will sell it at the price i name, and not a penny less. but whenever i come to a village the innkeeper begins bargaining and chaffering and offering six sols and seven sols, and i answer, "eight sols, take it or leave it", and when he seems for haggling again i get up and drive away. i know the worth of my wine, and i will not be beaten down though i have to go out of lorraine into the barrois to sell it.' so when we caught him up again, as we did shortly after on the road, a sergeant cried as we passed, 'i will give you seven, seven and a quarter, seven and a half', and we went on laughing and forgot all about him. for many days we marched from this place to that place, and fired and played a confused game in the hot sun till the train of sick horses was a mile long, and till the recruits were all as deaf as so many posts; and at last, one evening, we came to a place called heiltz le maurupt, which was like heaven after the hot plain and the dust, and whose inhabitants are as good and hospitable as angels; it is just where the champagne begins. when we had groomed and watered our horses, and the stable guard had been set, and we had all an hour or so's leisure to stroll about in the cool darkness before sleeping in the barns, we had a sudden lesson in the smallness of the world, for what should come up the village street but that monstrous barrel, and we could see by its movements that it was still quite full. we gathered round the peasant, and told him how grieved we were at his ill fortune, and agreed with him that all the people of the barrois were thieves or madmen not to buy such wine for such a song. he took his oxen and his barrel to a very high shed that stood by, and there he told us all his pilgrimage and the many assaults his firmness suffered, and how he had resisted them all. there was much more anger than sorrow in his accent, and i could see that he was of the wood from which tyrants and martyrs are carved. then suddenly he changed and became eloquent: 'oh, the good wine! if only it were known and tasted!... here, give me a cup, and i will ask some of you to taste it, then at least i shall have it praised as it deserves. and this is the wine i have carried more than a hundred miles, and everywhere it has been refused!' there was one guttering candle on a little stool. the roof of the shed was lost up in the great height of darkness; behind, in the darkness, the oxen champed away steadily in the manger. the light from the candle flame lit his face strongly from beneath and marked it with dark shadows. it flickered on the circle of our faces as we pressed round, and it came slantwise and waned and disappeared in the immense length of the barrel. he stood near the tap with his brows knit as upon some very important task, and all we, gunners and drivers of the battery, began unhooking our mugs and passing them to him. there were nearly a hundred, and he filled them all; not in jollity, but like a man offering up a solemn sacrifice. we also, entering into his mood, passed our mugs continually, thanking him in a low tone and keeping in the main silent. a few linesmen lounged at the door; he asked for their cups and filled them. he bade them fetch as many of their comrades as cared to come; and very soon there was a circulating crowd of men all getting wine of brule and murmuring their congratulations, and he was willing enough to go on giving, but we stopped when we saw fit and the scene ended. i cannot tell what prodigious measure of wine he gave away to us all that night, but when he struck the roof of the cask it already sounded hollow. and when we had made a collection which he had refused, he went to sleep by his oxen, and we to our straw in other barns. next day we started before dawn, and i never saw him again. this is the story of the wine of brule, and it shows that what men love is never money itself but their own way, and that human beings love sympathy and pageant above all things. it also teaches us not to be hard on the rich. i walked along the valley of the moselle, and as i walked the long evening of summer began to fall. the sky was empty and its deeps infinite; the clearness of the air set me dreaming. i passed the turn where we used to halt when we were learning how to ride in front of the guns, past the little house where, on rare holidays, the boys could eat a matelote, which is fish boiled in wine, and so on to the place where the river is held by a weir and opens out into a kind of lake. here i waited for a moment by the wooden railing, and looked up into the hills. so far i had been at home, and i was now poring upon the last familiar thing before i ventured into the high woods and began my experience. i therefore took a leisurely farewell, and pondered instead of walking farther. everything about me conduced to reminiscence and to ease. a flock of sheep passed me with their shepherd, who gave me a good-night. i found myself entering that pleasant mood in which all books are conceived (but none written); i was 'smoking the enchanted cigarettes' of balzac, and if this kind of reverie is fatal to action, yet it is so much a factor of happiness that i wasted in the contemplation of that lovely and silent hollow many miles of marching. i suppose if a man were altogether his own master and controlled by no necessity, not even the necessity of expression, all his life would pass away in these sublime imaginings. this was a place i remembered very well. the rising river of lorraine is caught and barred, and it spreads in a great sheet of water that must be very shallow, but that in its reflections and serenity resembles rather a profound and silent mere. the steeps surrounding it are nearly mountainous, and are crowned with deep forests in which the province reposes, and upon which it depends for its local genius. a little village, which we used to call 'st peter of the quarries', lies up on the right between the steep and the water, and just where the hills end a flat that was once marshy and is now half fields, half ponds, but broken with luxuriant trees, marks the great age of its civilization. along this flat runs, bordered with rare poplars, the road which one can follow on and on into the heart of the vosges. i took from this silence and this vast plain of still water the repose that introduces night. it was all consonant with what the peasants were about: the return from labour, the bleating folds, and the lighting of lamps under the eaves. in such a spirit i passed along the upper valley to the spring of the hills. in st pierre it was just that passing of daylight when a man thinks he can still read; when the buildings and the bridges are great masses of purple that deceive one, recalling the details of daylight, but when the night birds, surer than men and less troubled by this illusion of memory, have discovered that their darkness has conquered. the peasants sat outside their houses in the twilight accepting the cool air; every one spoke to me as i marched through, and i answered them all, nor was there in any of their salutations the omission of good fellowship or of the name of god. saving with one man, who was a sergeant of artillery on leave, and who cried out to me in an accent that was very familiar and asked me to drink; but i told him i had to go up into the forest to take advantage of the night, since the days were so warm for walking. as i left the last house of the village i was not secure from loneliness, and when the road began to climb up the hill into the wild and the trees i was wondering how the night would pass. with every step upward a greater mystery surrounded me. a few stars were out, and the brown night mist was creeping along the water below, but there was still light enough to see the road, and even to distinguish the bracken in the deserted hollows. the highway became little better than a lane; at the top of the hill it plunged under tall pines, and was vaulted over with darkness. the kingdoms that have no walls, and are built up of shadows, began to oppress me as the night hardened. had i had companions, still we would only have spoken in a whisper, and in that dungeon of trees even my own self would not raise its voice within me. it was full night when i had reached a vague clearing in the woods, right up on the height of that flat hill. this clearing was called 'the fountain of magdalen'. i was so far relieved by the broader sky of the open field that i could wait and rest a little, and there, at last, separate from men, i thought of a thousand things. the air was full of midsummer, and its mixture of exaltation and fear cut me off from ordinary living. i now understood why our religion has made sacred this season of the year; why we have, a little later, the night of st john, the fires in the villages, and the old perception of fairies dancing in the rings of the summer grass. a general communion of all things conspires at this crisis of summer against us reasoning men that should live in the daylight, and something fantastic possesses those who are foolish enough to watch upon such nights. so i, watching, was cut off. there were huge, vague summits, all wooded, peering above the field i sat in, but they merged into a confused horizon. i was on a high plateau, yet i felt myself to be alone with the immensity that properly belongs to plains alone. i saw the stars, and remembered how i had looked up at them on just such a night when i was close to the pacific, bereft of friends and possessed with solitude. there was no noise; it was full darkness. the woods before and behind me made a square frame of silence, and i was enchased here in the clearing, thinking of all things. then a little wind passed over the vast forests of lorraine. it seemed to wake an indefinite sly life proper to this seclusion, a life to which i was strange, and which thought me an invader. yet i heard nothing. there were no adders in the long grass, nor any frogs in that dry square of land, nor crickets on the high part of the hill; but i knew that little creatures in league with every nocturnal influence, enemies of the sun, occupied the air and the land about me; nor will i deny that i felt a rebel, knowing well that men were made to work in happy dawns and to sleep in the night, and everything in that short and sacred darkness multiplied my attentiveness and my illusion. perhaps the instincts of the sentry, the necessities of guard, come back to us out of the ages unawares during such experiments. at any rate the night oppressed and exalted me. then i suddenly attributed such exaltation to the need of food. 'if we must try this bookish plan of sleeping by day and walking by night,' i thought, 'at least one must arrange night meals to suit it.' i therefore, with my mind still full of the forest, sat down and lit a match and peered into my sack, taking out therefrom bread and ham and chocolate and brûlé wine. for seat and table there was a heathery bank still full of the warmth and savour of the last daylight, for companions these great inimical influences of the night which i had met and dreaded, and for occasion or excuse there was hunger. of the many that debate what shall be done with travellers, it was the best and kindest spirit that prompted me to this salutary act. for as i drank the wine and dealt with the ham and bread, i felt more and more that i had a right to the road; the stars became familiar and the woods a plaything. it is quite clear that the body must be recognized and the soul kept in its place, since a little refreshing food and drink can do so much to make a man. on this repast i jumped up merrily, lit a pipe, and began singing, and heard, to my inexpressible joy, some way down the road, the sound of other voices. they were singing that old song of the french infantry which dates from louis xiv, and is called 'auprès de ma blonde'. i answered their chorus, so that, by the time we met under the wood, we were already acquainted. they told me they had had a forty-eight hours' leave into nancy, the four of them, and had to be in by roll-call at a place called villey the dry. i remembered it after all those years. it is a village perched on the brow of one of these high hills above the river, and it found itself one day surrounded by earthworks, and a great fort raised just above the church. then, before they knew where they were, they learnt that ( ) no one could go in or out between sunset and sunrise without leave of the officer in command; ( ) that from being a village they had become the 'buildings situate within fort no. '; ( ) that they were to be deluged with soldiers; and ( ) that they were liable to evacuate their tenements on mobilization. they had become a fort unwittingly as they slept, and all their streets were blocked with ramparts. a hard fate; but they should not have built their village just on the brow of a round hill. they did this in the old days, when men used stone instead of iron, because the top of a hill was a good place to hold against enemies; and so now, these , years after, they find the same advantage catching them again to their hurt. and so things go the round. anyway villey the dry is a fort, and there my four brothers were going. it was miles off, and they had to be in by sunrise, so i offered them a pull of my wine, which, to my great joy, they refused, and we parted courteously. then i found the road beginning to fall, and knew that i had crossed the hills. as the forest ended and the sloping fields began, a dim moon came up late in the east in the bank of fog that masked the river. so by a sloping road, now free from the woods, and at the mouth of a fine untenanted valley under the moon, i came down again to the moselle, having saved a great elbow by this excursion over the high land. as i swung round the bend of the hills downwards and looked up the sloping dell, i remembered that these heathery hollows were called 'vallons' by the people of lorraine, and this set me singing the song of the hunters, 'entends tu dans nos vallons, le chasseur sonner du clairon,' which i sang loudly till i reached the river bank, and lost the exhilaration of the hills. i had now come some twelve miles from my starting-place, and it was midnight. the plain, the level road (which often rose a little), and the dank air of the river began to oppress me with fatigue. i was not disturbed by this, for i had intended to break these nights of marching by occasional repose, and while i was in the comfort of cities--especially in the false hopes that one got by reading books--i had imagined that it was a light matter to sleep in the open. indeed, i had often so slept when i had been compelled to it in manoeuvres, but i had forgotten how essential was a rug of some kind, and what a difference a fire and comradeship could make. thinking over it all, feeling my tiredness, and shivering a little in the chill under the moon and the clear sky, i was very ready to capitulate and to sleep in bed like a christian at the next opportunity. but there is some influence in vows or plans that escapes our power of rejudgement. all false calculations must be paid for, and i found, as you will see, that having said i would sleep in the open, i had to keep to it in spite of all my second thoughts. i passed one village and then another in which everything was dark, and in which i could waken nothing but dogs, who thought me an enemy, till at last i saw a great belt of light in the fog above the moselle. here there was a kind of town or large settlement where there were ironworks, and where, as i thought, there would be houses open, even after midnight. i first found the old town, where just two men were awake at some cooking work or other. i found them by a chink of light streaming through their door; but they gave me no hope, only advising me to go across the river and try in the new town where the forges and the ironworks were. 'there,' they said, 'i should certainly find a bed.' i crossed the bridge, being now much too weary to notice anything, even the shadowy hills, and the first thing i found was a lot of waggons that belonged to a caravan or fair. here some men were awake, but when i suggested that they should let me sleep in their little houses on wheels, they told me it was never done; that it was all they could do to pack in themselves; that they had no straw; that they were guarded by dogs; and generally gave me to understand (though without violence or unpoliteness) that i looked as though i were the man to steal their lions and tigers. they told me, however, that without doubt i should find something open in the centre of the workmen's quarter, where the great electric lamps now made a glare over the factory. i trudged on unwillingly, and at the very last house of this detestable industrial slavery, a high house with a gable, i saw a window wide open, and a blonde man smoking a cigarette at a balcony. i called to him at once, and asked him to let me a bed. he put to me all the questions he could think of. why was i there? where had i come from? where (if i was honest) had i intended to sleep? how came i at such an hour on foot? and other examinations. i thought a little what excuse to give him, and then, determining that i was too tired to make up anything plausible, i told him the full truth; that i had meant to sleep rough, but had been overcome by fatigue, and that i had walked from toul, starting at evening. i conjured him by our common faith to let me in. he told me that it was impossible, as he had but one room in which he and his family slept, and assured me he had asked all these questions out of sympathy and charity alone. then he wished me good-night, honestly and kindly, and went in. by this time i was very much put out, and began to be angry. these straggling french towns give no opportunity for a shelter. i saw that i should have to get out beyond the market gardens, and that it might be a mile or two before i found any rest. a clock struck one. i looked up and saw it was from the belfry of one of those new chapels which the monks are building everywhere, nor did i forget to curse the monks in my heart for building them. i cursed also those who started smelting works in the moselle valley; those who gave false advice to travellers; those who kept lions and tigers in caravans, and for a small sum i would have cursed the whole human race, when i saw that my bile had hurried me out of the street well into the countryside, and that above me, on a bank, was a patch of orchard and a lane leading up to it. into this i turned, and, finding a good deal of dry hay lying under the trees, i soon made myself an excellent bed, first building a little mattress, and then piling on hay as warm as a blanket. i did not lie awake (as when i planned my pilgrimage i had promised myself i would do), looking at the sky through the branches of trees, but i slept at once without dreaming, and woke up to find it was broad daylight, and the sun ready to rise. then, stiff and but little rested by two hours of exhaustion, i took up my staff and my sack and regained the road. i should very much like to know what those who have an answer to everything can say about the food requisite to breakfast? those great men marlowe and jonson, shakespeare, and spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. in the regiment we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat nothing more till the halt: for the matter of that, the great victories of ' were fought upon such unsubstantial meals; for the republicans fought first and ate afterwards, being in this quite unlike the ten thousand. sailors i know eat nothing for some hours--i mean those who turn out at four in the morning; i could give the name of the watch, but that i forget it and will not be plagued to look up technicalities. dogs eat the first thing they come across, cats take a little milk, and gentlemen are accustomed to get up at nine and eat eggs, bacon, kidneys, ham, cold pheasant, toast, coffee, tea, scones, and honey, after which they will boast that their race is the hardiest in the world and ready to bear every fatigue in the pursuit of empire. but what rule governs all this? why is breakfast different from all other things, so that the greeks called it the best thing in the world, and so that each of us in a vague way knows that he would eat at breakfast nothing but one special kind of food, and that he could not imagine breakfast at any other hour in the day? the provocation to this inquiry (which i have here no time to pursue) lies in the extraordinary distaste that i conceived that morning for brule wine. my ham and bread and chocolate i had consumed overnight. i thought, in my folly, that i could break my fast on a swig of what had seemed to me, only the night before, the best revivifier and sustenance possible. in the harsh dawn it turned out to be nothing but a bitter and intolerable vinegar. i make no attempt to explain this, nor to say why the very same wine that had seemed so good in the forest (and was to seem so good again later on by the canal) should now repel me. i can only tell you that this heavy disappointment convinced me of a great truth that a politician once let slip in my hearing, and that i have never since forgotten. _'man,'_ said the director of the state, _'man is but the creature of circumstance.'_ as it was, i lit a pipe of tobacco and hobbled blindly along for miles under and towards the brightening east. just before the sun rose i turned and looked backward from a high bridge that recrossed the river. the long effort of the night had taken me well on my way. i was out of the familiar region of the garrison. the great forest-hills that i had traversed stood up opposite the dawn, catching the new light; heavy, drifting, but white clouds, rare at such an hour, sailed above them. the valley of the moselle, which i had never thought of save as a half mountainous region, had fallen, to become a kind of long garden, whose walls were regular, low, and cultivated slopes. the main waterway of the valley was now not the river but the canal that fed from it. the tall grasses, the leaves, and poplars bordering the river and the canal seemed dark close to me, but the valley as a whole was vague, a mass of trees with one lorraine church-tower showing, and the delicate slopes bounding it on either side. descending from this bridge i found a sign-post, that told me i had walked thirty-two kilometres--which is twenty miles--from toul; that it was one kilometre to flavigny, and heaven knows how much to a place called charmes. the sun rose in the mist that lay up the long even trends of the vale, between the low and level hills, and i pushed on my thousand yards towards flavigny. there, by a special providence, i found the entertainment and companionship whose lack had left me wrecked all these early hours. as i came into flavigny i saw at once that it was a place on which a book might easily be written, for it had a church built in the seventeenth century, when few churches were built outside great towns, a convent, and a general air of importance that made of it that grand and noble thing, that primary cell of the organism of europe, that best of all christian associations - a large village. i say a book might be written upon it, and there is no doubt that a great many articles and pamphlets must have been written upon it, for the french are furiously given to local research and reviews, and to glorifying their native places: and when they cannot discover folklore they enrich their beloved homes by inventing it. there was even a man (i forget his name) who wrote a delightful book called _popular and traditional songs of my province,_ which book, after he was dead, was discovered to be entirely his own invention, and not a word of it familiar to the inhabitants of the soil. he was a large, laughing man that smoked enormously, had great masses of hair, and worked by night; also he delighted in the society of friends, and talked continuously. i wish he had a statue somewhere, and that they would pull down to make room for it any one of those useless bronzes that are to be found even in the little villages, and that commemorate solemn, whiskered men, pillars of the state. for surely this is the habit of the true poet, and marks the vigour and recurrent origin of poetry, that a man should get his head full of rhythms and catches, and that they should jumble up somehow into short songs of his own. what could more suggest (for instance) a whole troop of dancing words and lovely thoughts than this refrain from the tourdenoise-- ... son beau corps est en terre son âme en paradis. tu ris? et ris, tu ris, ma bergère, ris, ma bergère, tu ris. that was the way they set to work in england before the puritans came, when men were not afraid to steal verses from one another, and when no one imagined that he could live by letters, but when every poet took a patron, or begged or robbed the churches. so much for the poets. flavigny then, i say (for i seem to be digressing), is a long street of houses all built together as animals build their communities. they are all very old, but the people have worked hard since the revolution, and none of them are poor, nor are any of them very rich. i saw but one gentleman's house, and that, i am glad to say, was in disrepair. most of the peasants' houses had, for a ground floor, cavernous great barns out of which came a delightful smell of morning -- that is, of hay, litter, oxen, and stored grains and old wood; which is the true breath of morning, because it is the scent that all the human race worth calling human first meets when it rises, and is the association of sunrise in the minds of those who keep the world alive: but not in the wretched minds of townsmen, and least of all in the minds of journalists, who know nothing of morning save that it is a time of jaded emptiness when you have just done prophesying (for the hundredth time) the approaching end of the world, when the floors are beginning to tremble with machinery, and when, in a weary kind of way, one feels hungry and alone: a nasty life and usually a short one. to return to flavigny. this way of stretching a village all along one street is roman, and is the mark of civilization. when i was at college i was compelled to read a work by the crabbed tacitus on the germans, where, in the midst of a deal that is vague and fantastic nonsense and much that is wilful lying, comes this excellent truth, that barbarians build their houses separate, but civilized men together. so whenever you see a lot of red roofs nestling, as the phrase goes, in the woods of a hillside in south england, remember that all that is savagery; but when you see a hundred white-washed houses in a row along a dead straight road, lift up your hearts, for you are in civilization again. but i continue to wander from flavigny. the first thing i saw as i came into the street and noted how the level sun stood in a haze beyond, and how it shadowed and brought out the slight irregularities of the road, was a cart drawn by a galloping donkey, which came at and passed me with a prodigious clatter as i dragged myself forward. in the cart were two nuns, each with a scythe; they were going out mowing, and were up the first in the village, as religious always are. cheered by this happy omen, but not yet heartened, i next met a very old man leading out a horse, and asked him if there was anywhere where i could find coffee and bread at that hour; but he shook his head mournfully and wished me good-morning in a strong accent, for he was deaf and probably thought i was begging. so i went on still more despondent till i came to a really merry man of about middle age who was going to the fields, singing, with a very large rake over his shoulder. when i had asked him the same question he stared at me a little and said of course coffee and bread could be had at the baker's, and when i asked him how i should know the baker's he was still more surprised at my ignorance, and said, 'by the smoke coming from the large chimney.' this i saw rising a short way off on my right, so i thanked him and went and found there a youth of about nineteen, who sat at a fine oak table and had coffee, rum, and a loaf before him. he was waiting for the bread in the oven to be ready; and meanwhile he was very courteous, poured out coffee and rum for me and offered me bread. it is a matter often discussed why bakers are such excellent citizens and good men. for while it is admitted in every country i was ever in that cobblers are argumentative and atheists (i except the cobbler under plinlimmon, concerning whom would to heaven i had the space to tell you all here, for he knows the legends of the mountain), while it is public that barbers are garrulous and servile, that millers are cheats (we say in sussex that every honest miller has a large tuft of hair on the palm of his hand), yet--with every trade in the world having some bad quality attached to it--bakers alone are exempt, and every one takes it for granted that they are sterling: indeed, there are some societies in which, no matter how gloomy and churlish the conversation may have become, you have but to mention bakers for voices to brighten suddenly and for a good influence to pervade every one. i say this is known for a fact, but not usually explained; the explanation is, that bakers are always up early in the morning and can watch the dawn, and that in this occupation they live in lonely contemplation enjoying the early hours. so it was with this baker of mine in flavigny, who was a boy. when he heard that i had served at toul he was delighted beyond measure; he told me of a brother of his that had been in the same regiment, and he assured me that he was himself going into the artillery by special enlistment, having got his father's leave. you know very little if you think i missed the opportunity of making the guns seem terrible and glorious in his eyes. i told him stories enough to waken a sentry of reserve, and if it had been possible (with my youth so obvious) i would have woven in a few anecdotes of active service, and described great shells bursting under my horses and the teams shot down, and the gunners all the while impassive; but as i saw i should not be believed i did not speak of such things, but confined myself to what he would see and hear when he joined. meanwhile the good warm food and the rising morning had done two things; they had put much more vigour into me than i had had when i slunk in half-an-hour before, but at the same time (and this is a thing that often comes with food and with rest) they had made me feel the fatigue of so long a night. i rose up, therefore, determined to find some place where i could sleep. i asked this friend of mine how much there was to pay, and he said 'fourpence'. then we exchanged ritual salutations, and i took the road. i did not leave the town or village without noticing one extraordinary thing at the far end of it, which was that, whereas most places in france are proud of their town-hall and make a great show of it, here in flavigny they had taken a great house and written over it École communale in great letters, and then they had written over a kind of lean-to or out-house of this big place the words 'hôtel de ville' in very small letters, so small that i had a doubt for a moment if the citizens here were good republicans--a treasonable thought on all this frontier. then, a mile onward, i saw the road cross the canal and run parallel to it. i saw the canal run another mile or so under a fine bank of deep woods. i saw an old bridge leading over it to that inviting shade, and as it was now nearly six and the sun was gathering strength, i went, with slumber overpowering me and my feet turning heavy beneath me, along the tow-path, over the bridge, and lay down on the moss under these delightful trees. forgetful of the penalty that such an early repose would bring, and of the great heat that was to follow at midday, i quickly became part of the life of that forest and fell asleep. when i awoke it was full eight o'clock, and the sun had gained great power. i saw him shining at me through the branches of my trees like a patient enemy outside a city that one watches through the loopholes of a tower, and i began to be afraid of taking the road. i looked below me down the steep bank between the trunks and saw the canal looking like black marble, and i heard the buzzing of the flies above it, and i noted that all the mist had gone. a very long way off, the noise of its ripples coming clearly along the floor of the water, was a lazy barge and a horse drawing it. from time to time the tow-rope slackened into the still surface, and i heard it dripping as it rose. the rest of the valley was silent except for that under-humming of insects which marks the strength of the sun. now i saw clearly how difficult it was to turn night into day, for i found myself condemned either to waste many hours that ought to be consumed on my pilgrimage, or else to march on under the extreme heat; and when i had drunk what was left of my brule wine (which then seemed delicious), and had eaten a piece of bread, i stiffly jolted down the bank and regained the highway. in the first village i came to i found that mass was over, and this justly annoyed me; for what is a pilgrimage in which a man cannot hear mass every morning? of all the things i have read about st louis which make me wish i had known him to speak to, nothing seems to me more delightful than his habit of getting mass daily whenever he marched down south, but why this should be so delightful i cannot tell. of course there is a grace and influence belonging to such a custom, but it is not of that i am speaking but of the pleasing sensation of order and accomplishment which attaches to a day one has opened by mass; a purely temporal, and, for all i know, what the monks back at the ironworks would have called a carnal feeling, but a source of continual comfort to me. let them go their way and let me go mine. this comfort i ascribe to four causes (just above you will find it written that i could not tell why this should be so, but what of that?), and these causes are: . that for half-an-hour just at the opening of the day you are silent and recollected, and have to put off cares, interests, and passions in the repetition of a familiar action. this must certainly be a great benefit to the body and give it tone. . that the mass is a careful and rapid ritual. now it is the function of all ritual (as we see in games, social arrangements and so forth) to relieve the mind by so much of responsibility and initiative and to catch you up (as it were) into itself, leading your life for you during the time it lasts. in this way you experience a singular repose, after which fallowness i am sure one is fitter for action and judgement. . that the surroundings incline you to good and reasonable thoughts, and for the moment deaden the rasp and jar of that busy wickedness which both working in one's self and received from others is the true source of all human miseries. thus the time spent at mass is like a short repose in a deep and well-built library, into which no sounds come and where you feel yourself secure against the outer world. . and the most important cause of this feeling of satisfaction is that you are doing what the human race has done for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years. this is a matter of such moment that i am astonished people hear of it so little. whatever is buried right into our blood from immemorial habit that we must be certain to do if we are to be fairly happy (of course no grown man or woman can really be very happy for long--but i mean reasonably happy), and, what is more important, decent and secure of our souls. thus one should from time to time hunt animals, or at the very least shoot at a mark; one should always drink some kind of fermented liquor with one's food--and especially deeply upon great feast-days; one should go on the water from time to time; and one should dance on occasions; and one should sing in chorus. for all these things man has done since god put him into a garden and his eyes first became troubled with a soul. similarly some teacher or ranter or other, whose name i forget, said lately one very wise thing at least, which was that every man should do a little work with his hands. oh! what good philosophy this is, and how much better it would be if rich people, instead of raining the influence of their rank and spending their money on leagues for this or that exceptional thing, were to spend it in converting the middle-class to ordinary living and to the tradition of the race. indeed, if i had power for some thirty years i would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig; and those that would not should be compelled by force. now in the morning mass you do all that the race needs to do and has done for all these ages where religion was concerned; there you have the sacred and separate enclosure, the altar, the priest in his vestments, the set ritual, the ancient and hierarchic tongue, and all that your nature cries out for in the matter of worship. from these considerations it is easy to understand how put out i was to find mass over on this first morning of my pilgrimage. and i went along the burning road in a very ill-humour till i saw upon my right, beyond a low wall and in a kind of park, a house that seemed built on some artificial raised ground surrounded by a wall, but this may have been an illusion, the house being really only very tall. at any rate i drew it, and in the village just beyond it i learnt something curious about the man that owned it. for i had gone into a house to take a third meal of bread and wine and to replenish my bottle when the old woman of the house, who was a kindly person, told me she had just then no wine. 'but,' said she, 'mr so and so that lives in the big house sells it to any one who cares to buy even in the smallest quantities, and you will see his shed standing by the side of the road.' everything happened just as she had said. i came to the big shed by the park wall, and there was a kind of counter made of boards, and several big tuns and two men: one in an apron serving, and the other in a little box or compartment writing. i was somewhat timid to ask for so little as a quart, but the apron man in the most businesslike way filled my bottle at a tap and asked for fourpence. he was willing to talk, and told me many things: of good years in wine, of the nature of their trade, of the influence of the moon on brewing, of the importance of spigots, and what not; but when i tried to get out of him whether the owner were an eccentric private gentleman or a merchant that had the sense to earn little pennies as well as large ones, i could not make him understand my meaning; for his idea of rank was utterly different from mine and took no account of idleness and luxury and daftness, but was based entirely upon money and clothes. moreover we were both of us republicans, so the matter was of no great moment. courteously saluting ourselves we parted, he remaining to sell wine and i hobbling to rome, now a little painfully and my sack the heavier by a quart of wine, which, as you probably know, weighs almost exactly two pounds and a half. it was by this time close upon eleven, and i had long reached the stage when some kinds of men begin talking of dogged determination, bull-dog pluck, the stubborn spirit of the island race and so forth, but when those who can boast a little of the sacred french blood are in a mood of set despair (both kinds march on, and the mobility of either infantry is much the same), i say i had long got to this point of exhaustion when it occurred to me that i should need an excellent and thorough meal at midday. but on looking at my map i found that there was nothing nearer than this town of charmes that was marked on the milestones, and that was the first place i should come to in the department of the vosges. it would take much too long to describe the dodges that weary men and stiff have recourse to when they are at the close of a difficult task: how they divide it up in lengths in their minds, how they count numbers, how they begin to solve problems in mental arithmetic: i tried them all. then i thought of a new one, which is really excellent, and which i recommend to the whole world. it is to vary the road, suddenly taking now the fields, now the river, but only occasionally the turnpike. this last lap was very well suited for such a method. the valley had become more like a wide and shallow trench than ever. the hills on either side were low and exactly even. up the middle of it went the river, the canal and the road, and these two last had only a field between them; now broad, now narrow. first on the tow-path, then on the road, then on the grass, then back on the tow-path, i pieced out the last baking mile into charmes, that lies at the foot of a rather higher hill, and at last was dragging myself up the street just as the bell was ringing the noon angelus; nor, however tedious you may have found it to read this final effort of mine, can you have found it a quarter as wearisome as i did to walk it; and surely between writer and reader there should be give and take, now the one furnishing the entertainment and now the other. the delightful thing in charmes is its name. of this name i had indeed been thinking as i went along the last miles of that dusty and deplorable road--that a town should be called 'charms'. not but that towns, if they are left to themselves and not hurried, have a way of settling into right names suited to the hills about them and recalling their own fields. i remember sussex, and as i remember it i must, if only for example, set down my roll-call of such names, as--fittleworth, where the inn has painted panels; amberley in the marshes; delicate fernhurst, and ditchling under its hill; arundel, that is well known to every one; and climping, that no one knows, set on a lonely beach and lost at the vague end of an impassable road; and barlton, and burton, and duncton, and coldwatham, that stand under in the shadow and look up at the great downs; and petworth, where the spire leans sideways; and timberley, that the floods make into an island; and no man's land, where first there breaks on you the distant sea. i never knew a sussex man yet but, if you noted him such a list, would answer: 'there i was on such and such a day; this i came to after such and such a run; and that other is my home.' but it is not his recollection alone which moves him, it is sound of the names. he feels the accent of them, and all the men who live between hind-head and the channel know these names stand for eden; the noise is enough to prove it. so it is also with the hidden valleys of the lie de france; and when you say jouy or chevreuse to a man that was born in those shadows he grows dreamy--yet they are within a walk of paris. but the wonderful thing about a name like charmes is that it hands down the dead. for some dead man gave it a keen name proceeding from his own immediate delight, and made general what had been a private pleasure, and, so to speak, bequeathed a poem to his town. they say the arabs do this; calling one place 'the rest of the warriors', and another 'the end', and another 'the surprise of the horses': let those who know them speak for it. i at least know that in the west of the cotentin (a sea-garden) old danes married to gaulish women discovered the just epithet, and that you have 'st mary on the hill' and 'high town under the wind' and 'the borough over the heath', which are to-day exactly what their name describes them. if you doubt that england has such descriptive names, consider the great truth that at one junction on a railway where a mournful desolation of stagnant waters and treeless, stonewalled fields threatens you with experience and awe, a melancholy porter is told off to put his head into your carriage and to chant like charon, 'change here for ashton under the wood, moreton on the marsh, bourton on the water, and stow in the wold.' charmes does not fulfil its name nor preserve what its forgotten son found so wonderful in it. for at luncheon there a great commercial traveller told me fiercely that it was chiefly known for its breweries, and that he thought it of little account. still even in charmes i found one marvellous corner of a renaissance house, which i drew; but as i have lost the drawing, let it go. when i came out from the inn of charmes the heat was more terrible than ever, and the prospect of a march in it more intolerable. my head hung, i went very slowly, and i played with cowardly thoughts, which were really (had i known it) good angels. i began to look out anxiously for woods, but saw only long whitened wall glaring in the sun, or, if ever there were trees, they were surrounded by wooden palisades which the owners had put there. but in a little time (now i had definitely yielded to temptation) i found a thicket. you must know that if you yield to entertaining a temptation, there is the opportunity presented to you like lightning. a theologian told me this, and it is partly true: but not of mammon or belphegor, or whatever devil it is that overlooks the currency (i can see his face from here): for how many have yielded to the desire of riches and professed themselves very willing to revel in them, yet did not get an opportunity worth a farthing till they died? like those two beggars that rabelais tells of, one of whom wished for all the gold that would pay for all the merchandise that had ever been sold in paris since its first foundation, and the other for as much gold as would go into all the sacks that could be sewn by all the needles (and those of the smallest size) that could be crammed into notre-dame from the floor to the ceiling, filling the smallest crannies. yet neither had a crust that night to rub his gums with. whatever devil it is, however, that tempts men to repose--and for my part i believe him to be rather an aeon than a devil: that is, a good-natured fellow working on his own account neither good nor ill--whatever being it is, it certainly suits one's mood, for i never yet knew a man determined to be lazy that had not ample opportunity afforded him, though he were poorer than the cure of maigre, who formed a syndicate to sell at a scutcheon a gross such souls as were too insignificant to sell singly. a man can always find a chance for doing nothing as amply and with as ecstatic a satisfaction as the world allows, and so to me (whether it was there before i cannot tell, and if it came miraculously, so much the more amusing) appeared this thicket. it was to the left of the road; a stream ran through it in a little ravine; the undergrowth was thick beneath its birches, and just beyond, on the plain that bordered it, were reapers reaping in a field. i went into it contentedly and slept till evening my third sleep; then, refreshed by the cool wind that went before the twilight, i rose and took the road again, but i knew i could not go far. i was now past my fortieth mile, and though the heat had gone, yet my dead slumber had raised a thousand evils. i had stiffened to lameness, and had fallen into the mood when a man desires companionship and the talk of travellers rather than the open plain. but (unless i went backward, which was out of the question) there was nowhere to rest in for a long time to come. the next considerable village was thayon, which is called 'thayon of the vosges', because one is nearing the big hills, and thither therefore i crawled mile after mile. but my heart sank. first my foot limped, and then my left knee oppressed me with a sudden pain. i attempted to relieve it by leaning on my right leg, and so discovered a singular new law in medicine which i will propose to the scientists. for when those excellent men have done investigating the twirligigs of the brain to find out where the soul is, let them consider this much more practical matter, that you cannot relieve the pain in one limb without driving it into some other; and so i exchanged twinges in the left knee for a horrible great pain in the right. i sat down on a bridge, and wondered; i saw before me hundreds upon hundreds of miles, painful and exhausted, and i asked heaven if this was necessary to a pilgrimage. (but, as you shall hear, a pilgrimage is not wholly subject to material laws, for when i came to Épinal next day i went into a shop which, whatever it was to the profane, appeared to me as a chemist's shop, where i bought a bottle of some stuff called 'balm', and rubbing myself with it was instantly cured.) then i looked down from the bridge across the plain, and saw, a long way off beyond the railway, the very ugly factory village of thayon, and reached it at last, not without noticing that the people were standing branches of trees before their doors, and the little children noisily helping to tread the stems firmly into the earth. they told me it was for the coming of corpus christi, and so proved to me that religion, which is as old as these valleys, would last out their inhabiting men. even here, in a place made by a great laundry, a modern industrial row of tenements, all the world was putting out green branches to welcome the procession and the sacrament and the priest. comforted by this evident refutation of the sad nonsense i had read in cities from the pen of intellectuals--nonsense i had known to be nonsense, but that had none the less tarnished my mind--i happily entered the inn, ate and drank, praised god, and lay down to sleep in a great bed. i mingled with my prayers a firm intention of doing the ordinary things, and not attempting impossibilities, such as marching by night, nor following out any other vanities of this world. then, having cast away all theories of how a pilgrimage should be conducted, and broken five or six vows, i slept steadily till the middle of the morning. i had covered fifty miles in twenty-five hours, and if you imagine this to be but two miles an hour, you must have a very mathematical mind, and know little of the realities of living. i woke and threw my shutters open to the bright morning and the masterful sun, took my coffee, and set out once more towards epinal, the stronghold a few miles away--delighted to see that my shadow was so short and the road so hot to the feet and eyes. for i said, 'this at least proves that i am doing like all the world, and walking during the day.' it was but a couple of hours to the great garrison. in a little time i passed a battery. then a captain went by on a horse, with his orderly behind him. where the deep lock stands by the roadside--the only suggestion of coolness--i first heard the bugles; then i came into the long street and determined to explore epinal, and to cast aside all haste and folly. there are many wonderful things in epinal. as, for instance, that it was evidently once, like paris and melun and a dozen other strongholds of the gauls, an island city. for the rivers of france are full of long, habitable islands, and these were once the rallying-places of clans. then there are the forts which are placed on high hills round the town and make it even stronger than toul; for epinal stands just where the hills begin to be very high. again, it is the capital of a mountain district, and this character always does something peculiar and impressive to a town. you may watch its effect in grenoble, in little aubusson, and, rather less, in geneva. for in such towns three quite different kinds of men meet. first there are the old plain-men, who despise the highlanders and think themselves much grander and more civilized; these are the burgesses. then there are the peasants and wood-cutters, who come in from the hill-country to market, and who are suspicious of the plain-men and yet proud to depend upon a real town with a bishop and paved streets. lastly, there are the travellers, who come there to enjoy the mountains and to make the city a base for their excursions, and these love the hill-men and think they understand them, and they despise the plain-men for being so middle-class as to lord it over the hill-men: but in truth this third class, being outsiders, are equally hated and despised by both the others, and there is a combination against them and they are exploited. and there are many other things in which Épinal is wonderful, but in nothing is it more wonderful than in its great church. i suppose that the high dukes of burgundy and lorraine and the rich men from flanders and the house of luxemburg and the rest, going to rome, the centre of the world, had often to pass up this valley of the moselle, which (as i have said) is a road leading to rome, and would halt at fipinal and would at times give money for its church; with this result, that the church belongs to every imaginable period and is built anyhow, in twenty styles, but stands as a whole a most enduring record of past forms and of what has pleased the changing mind when it has attempted to worship in stone. thus the transept is simply an old square barn of rough stone, older, i suppose, than charlemagne and without any ornament. in its lower courses i thought i even saw the roman brick. it had once two towers, northern and southern; the southern is ruined and has a wooden roof, the northern remains and is just a pinnacle or minaret too narrow for bells. then the apse is pure and beautiful gothic of the fourteenth century, with very tall and fluted windows like single prayers. the ambulatory is perfectly modern, gothic also, and in the manner that viollet le duc in france and pugin in england have introduced to bring us back to our origins and to remind us of the place whence all we europeans came. again, this apse and ambulatory are not perpendicular to the transept, but set askew, a thing known in small churches and said to be a symbol, but surely very rare in large ones. the western door is purely romanesque, and has byzantine ornaments and a great deep round door. to match it there is a northern door still deeper, with rows and rows of inner arches full of saints, angels, devils, and flowers; and this again is not straight, but so built that the arches go aslant, as you sometimes see railway bridges when they cross roads at an angle. finally, there is a central tower which is neither gothic nor romanesque but pure italian, a loggia, with splendid round airy windows taking up all its walls, and with a flat roof and eaves. this some one straight from the south must have put on as a memory of his wanderings. the barn-transept is crumbling old grey stone, the romanesque porches are red, like strasburg, the gothic apse is old white as our cathedrals are, the modern ambulatory is of pure white stone just quarried, and thus colours as well as shapes are mingled up and different in this astonishing building. i drew it from that point of view in the market-place to the north-east which shows most of these contrasts at once, and you must excuse the extreme shakiness of the sketch, for it was taken as best i could on an apple-cart with my book resting on the apples--there was no other desk. nor did the apple-seller mind my doing it, but on the contrary gave me advice and praise saying such things as-- 'excellent; you have caught the angle of the apse... come now, darken the edge of that pillar... i fear you have made the tower a little confused,' and so forth. i offered to buy a few apples off him, but he gave me three instead, and these, as they incommoded me, i gave later to a little child. indeed the people of Épinal, not taking me for a traveller but simply for a wandering poor man, were very genial to me, and the best good they did me was curing my lameness. for, seeing an apothecary's shop as i was leaving the town, i went in and said to the apothecary-- 'my knee has swelled and is very painful, and i have to walk far; perhaps you can tell me how to cure it, or give me something that will.' 'there is nothing easier,' he said; 'i have here a specific for the very thing you complain of.' with this he pulled out a round bottle, on the label of which was printed in great letters, 'balm'. 'you have but to rub your knee strongly and long with this ointment of mine,' he said, 'and you will be cured.' nor did he mention any special form of words to be repeated as one did it. everything happened just as he had said. when i was some little way above the town i sat down on a low wall and rubbed my knee strongly and long with this balm, and the pain instantly disappeared. then, with a heart renewed by this prodigy, i took the road again and began walking very rapidly and high, swinging on to rome. the moselle above fipinal takes a bend outwards, and it seemed to me that a much shorter way to the next village (which is called archettes, or 'the very little arches', because there are no arches there) would be right over the hill round which the river curved. this error came from following private judgement and not heeding tradition, here represented by the highroad which closely follows the river. for though a straight tunnel to archettes would have saved distance, yet a climb over that high hill and through the pathless wood on its summit was folly. i went at first over wide, sloping fields, and some hundred feet above the valley i crossed a little canal. it was made on a very good system, and i recommend it to the riparian owners of the upper wye, which needs it. they take the water from the moselle (which is here broad and torrential and falls in steps, running over a stony bed with little swirls and rapids), and they lead it along at an even gradient, averaging, as it were, the uneven descent of the river. in this way they have a continuous stream running through fields that would otherwise be bare and dry, but that are thus nourished into excellent pastures. above these fields the forest went up steeply. i had not pushed two hundred yards into its gloom and confusion when i discovered that i had lost my way. it was necessary to take the only guide i had and to go straight upwards wherever the line of greatest inclination seemed to lie, for that at least would take me to a summit and probably to a view of the valley; whereas if i tried to make for the shoulder of the hill (which had been my first intention) i might have wandered about till nightfall. it was an old man in a valley called the curicante in colorado that taught me this, if one lost one's way going _upwards_ to make at once along the steepest line, but if one lost it going _downwards_, to listen for water and reach it and follow it. i wish i had space to tell all about this old man, who gave me hospitality out there. he was from new england and was lonely, and had brought out at great expense a musical box to cheer him. of this he was very proud, and though it only played four silly hymn tunes, yet, as he and i listened to it, heavy tears came into his eyes and light tears into mine, because these tunes reminded him of his home. but i have no time to do more than mention him, and must return to my forest. i climbed, then, over slippery pine needles and under the charged air of those trees, which was full of dim, slanting light from the afternoon sun, till, nearly at the summit, i came upon a clearing which i at once recognized as a military road, leading to what we used to call a 'false battery', that is, a dug-out with embrasures into which guns could be placed but in which no guns were. for ever since the french managed to produce a really mobile heavy gun they have constructed any amount of such auxiliary works between the permanent forts. these need no fixed guns to be emplaced, since the french can use now one such parapet, now another, as occasion serves, and the advantage is that your guns are never useless, but can always be brought round where they are needed, and that thus six guns will do more work than twenty used to do. this false battery was on the brow of the hill, and when i reached it i looked down the slope, over the brushwood that hid the wire entanglements, and there was the whole valley of the moselle at my feet. as this was the first really great height, so this was the first really great view that i met with on my pilgrimage. i drew it carefully, piece by piece, sitting there a long time in the declining sun and noting all i saw. archettes, just below; the flat valley with the river winding from side to side; the straight rows of poplar trees; the dark pines on the hills, and the rounded mountains rising farther and higher into the distance until the last i saw, far off to the south-east, must have been the ballon d'alsace at the sources of the moselle--the hill that marked the first full stage in my journey and that overlooked switzerland. indeed, this is the peculiar virtue of walking to a far place, and especially of walking there in a straight line, that one gets these visions of the world from hill-tops. when i call up for myself this great march i see it all mapped out in landscapes, each of which i caught from some mountain, and each of which joins on to that before and to that after it, till i can piece together the whole road. the view here from the hill of archettes, the view from the ballon d'alsace, from glovelier hill, from the weissenstein, from the brienzer grat, from the grimsel, from above bellinzona, from the principessa, from tizzano, from the ridge of the apennines, from the wall of siena, from san quirico, from radicofani, from san lorenzo, from montefiascone, from above viterbo, from roncigleone, and at last from that lift in the via cassia, whence one suddenly perceives the city. they unroll themselves all in their order till i can see europe, and rome shining at the end. but you who go in railways are necessarily shut up in long valleys and even sometimes by the walls of the earth. even those who bicycle or drive see these sights but rarely and with no consecution, since roads also avoid climbing save where they are forced to it, as over certain passes. it is only by following the straight line onwards that any one can pass from ridge to ridge and have this full picture of the way he has been. so much for views. i clambered down the hill to archettes and saw, almost the first house, a swinging board 'at the sign of the trout of the vosges', and as it was now evening i turned in there to dine. two things i noticed at once when i sat down to meat. first, that the people seated at that inn table were of the middle-class of society, and secondly, that i, though of their rank, was an impediment to their enjoyment. for to sleep in woods, to march some seventy miles, the latter part in a dazzling sun, and to end by sliding down an earthy steep into the road, stamps a man with all that this kind of people least desire to have thrust upon them. and those who blame the middle-class for their conventions in such matters, and who profess to be above the care for cleanliness and clothes and social ritual which marks the middle-class, are either anarchists by nature, or fools who take what is but an effect of their wealth for a natural virtue. i say it roundly; if it were not for the punctiliousness of the middle-class in these matters all our civilization would go to pieces. they are the conservators and the maintainers of the standard, the moderators of europe, the salt of society. for the kind of man who boasts that he does not mind dirty clothes or roughing it, is either a man who cares nothing for all that civilization has built up and who rather hates it, or else (and this is much more common) he is a rich man, or accustomed to live among the rich, and can afford to waste energy and stuff because he feels in a vague way that more clothes can always be bought, that at the end of his vagabondism he can get excellent dinners, and that london and paris are full of luxurious baths and barber shops. of all the corrupting effects of wealth there is none worse than this, that it makes the wealthy (and their parasites) think in some way divine, or at least a lovely character of the mind, what is in truth nothing but their power of luxurious living. heaven keep us all from great riches--i mean from very great riches. now the middle-class cannot afford to buy new clothes whenever they feel inclined, neither can they end up a jaunt by a turkish bath and a great feast with wine. so their care is always to preserve intact what they happen to have, to exceed in nothing, to study cleanliness, order, decency, sobriety, and a steady temper, and they fence all this round and preserve it in the only way it can be preserved, to wit, with conventions, and they are quite right. i find it very hard to keep up to the demands of these my colleagues, but i recognize that they are on the just side in the quarrel; let none of them go about pretending that i have not defended them in this book. so i thought of how i should put myself right with these people. i saw that an elaborate story (as, that i had been set upon by a tramp who forced me to change clothes: that i dressed thus for a bet: that i was an officer employed as a spy, and was about to cross the frontier into germany in the guise of a labourer: that my doctor forbade me to shave--or any other such rhodomontade): i saw, i say, that by venturing upon any such excuses i might unwittingly offend some other unknown canon of theirs deeper and more sacred than their rule on clothes; it had happened to me before now to do this in the course of explanations. so i took another method, and said, as i sat down-- 'pray excuse this appearance of mine. i have had a most unfortunate adventure in the hills, losing my way and being compelled to sleep out all night, nor can i remain to get tidy, as it is essential that i should reach my luggage (which is at remiremont) before midnight.' i took great care to pay for my glass of white wine before dinner with a bank-note, and i showed my sketches to my neighbour to make an impression. i also talked of foreign politics, of the countries i had seen, of england especially, with such minute exactitude that their disgust was soon turned to admiration. the hostess of this inn was delicate and courteous to a degree, and at every point attempting to overreach her guests, who, as regularly as she attacked, countered with astonishing dexterity. thus she would say: 'perhaps the joint would taste better if it were carved on the table; or do the gentlemen prefer it carved aside?' to which a banker opposite me said in a deep voice: 'we prefer, madam, to have it carved aside.' or she would put her head in and say: 'i can recommend our excellent beer. it is really preferable to this local wine.' and my neighbour, a tourist, answered with decision: 'madame, we find your wine excellent. it could not be bettered.' nor could she get round them on a single point, and i pitied her so much that i bought bread and wine off her to console her, and i let her overcharge me, and went out into the afterglow with her benediction, followed also by the farewells of the middle-class, who were now taking their coffee at little tables outside the house. i went hard up the road to remiremont. the night darkened. i reached remiremont at midnight, and feeling very wakeful i pushed on up the valley under great woods of pines; and at last, diverging up a little path, i settled on a clump of trees sheltered and, as i thought, warm, and lay down there to sleep till morning; but, on the contrary, i lay awake a full hour in the fragrance and on the level carpet of the pine needles looking up through the dark branches at the waning moon, which had just risen, and thinking of how suitable were pine-trees for a man to sleep under. 'the beech,' i thought, 'is a good tree to sleep under, for nothing will grow there, and there is always dry beech-mast; the yew would be good if it did not grow so low, but, all in all, pine-trees are the best.' i also considered that the worst tree to sleep under would be the upas tree. these thoughts so nearly bordered on nothing that, though i was not sleepy, yet i fell asleep. long before day, the moon being still lustrous against a sky that yet contained a few faint stars, i awoke shivering with cold. in sleep there is something diminishes us. this every one has noticed; for who ever suffered a nightmare awake, or felt in full consciousness those awful impotencies which lie on the other side of slumber? when we lie down we give ourselves voluntarily, yet by the force of nature, to powers before which we melt and are nothing. and among the strange frailties of sleep i have noticed cold. here was a warm place under the pines where i could rest in great comfort on pine needles still full of the day; a covering for the beasts underground that love an even heat--the best of floors for a tired man. even the slight wind that blew under the waning moon was warm, and the stars were languid and not brilliant, as though everything were full of summer, and i knew that the night would be short; a midsummer night; and i had lived half of it before attempting repose. yet, i say, i woke shivering and also disconsolate, needing companionship. i pushed down through tall, rank grass, drenched with dew, and made my way across the road to the bank of the river. by the time i reached it the dawn began to occupy the east. for a long time i stood in a favoured place, just above a bank of trees that lined the river, and watched the beginning of the day, because every slow increase of light promised me sustenance. the faint, uncertain glimmer that seemed not so much to shine through the air as to be part of it, took all colour out of the woods and fields and the high slopes above me, leaving them planes of grey and deeper grey. the woods near me were a silhouette, black and motionless, emphasizing the east beyond. the river was white and dead, not even a steam rose from it, but out of the further pastures a gentle mist had lifted up and lay all even along the flanks of the hills, so that they rose out of it, indistinct at their bases, clear-cut above against the brightening sky; and the farther they were the more their mouldings showed in the early light, and the most distant edges of all caught the morning. at this wonderful sight i gazed for quite half-an-hour without moving, and took in vigour from it as a man takes in food and wine. when i stirred and looked about me it had become easy to see the separate grasses; a bird or two had begun little interrupted chirrups in the bushes, a day-breeze broke from up the valley ruffling the silence, the moon was dead against the sky, and the stars had disappeared. in a solemn mood i regained the road and turned my face towards the neighbouring sources of the river. i easily perceived with each laborious mile that i was approaching the end of my companionship with the moselle, which had become part of my adventure for the last eighty miles. it was now a small stream, mountainous and uncertain, though in parts still placid and slow. there appeared also that which i take to be an infallible accompaniment of secluded glens and of the head waters of rivers (however canalized or even overbuilt they are), i mean a certain roughness all about them and the stout protest of the hill-men: their stone cottages and their lonely paths off the road. so it was here. the hills had grown much higher and come closer to the river-plain; up the gullies i would catch now and then an aged and uncouth bridge with a hut near it all built of enduring stone: part of the hills. then again there were present here and there on the spurs lonely chapels, and these in catholic countries are a mark of the mountains and of the end of the riches of a valley. why this should be so i cannot tell. you find them also sometimes in forests, but especially in the lesser inlets of the sea-coast, and, as i have said, here in the upper parts of valleys in the great hills. in such shrines mass is to be said but rarely, sometimes but once a year in a special commemoration. the rest of the time they stand empty, and some of the older or simpler, one might take for ruins. they mark everywhere some strong emotion of supplication, thanks, or reverence, and they anchor these wild places to their own past, making them up in memories what they lack in multitudinous life. i broke my fast on bread and wine at a place where the road crosses the river, and then i determined i would have hot coffee as well, and seeing in front of me a village called rupt, which means 'the cleft' (for there is here a great cleft in the hillside), i went up to it and had my coffee. then i discovered a singular thing, that the people of the place are tired of making up names and give nothing its peculiar baptism. this i thought really very wonderful indeed, for i have noticed wherever i have been that in proportion as men are remote and have little to distract them, in that proportion they produce a great crop of peculiar local names for every stream, reach, tuft, hummock, glen, copse, and gully for miles around; and often when i have lost my way and asked it of a peasant in some lonely part i have grown impatient as he wandered on about 'leaving on your left the stone we call the nuggin, and bearing round what some call holy dyke till you come to what they call mary's ferry'... and so forth. long-shoremen and the riparian inhabitants of dreadful and lonely rivers near the sea have just such a habit, and i have in my mind's eye now a short stretch of tidal water in which there are but five shoals, yet they all have names, and are called 'the house, the knowle, goodman's plot, mall, and the patch.' but here in rupt, to my extreme astonishment, there was no such universal and human instinct. for i said to the old man who poured me out my coffee under the trellis (it was full morning, the sun was well up, and the clouds were all dappled high above the tops of the mountains): 'father, what do you call this hill?' and with that i pointed to a very remarkable hill and summit that lie sheer above the village. 'that,' he said, 'is called the hill over above rupt.' 'yes, of course,' i said, 'but what is its name?' 'that is its name,' he answered. and he was quite right, for when i looked at my map, there it was printed, 'hill above rupt'. i thought how wearisome it would be if this became a common way of doing things, and if one should call the thames 'the river of london', and essex 'the north side', and kent 'the south side'; but considering that this fantastic method was only indulged in by one wretched village, i released myself from fear, relegated such horrors to the colonies, and took the road again. all this upper corner of the valley is a garden. it is bound in on every side from the winds, it is closed at the end by the great mass of the ballon d'alsace, its floor is smooth and level, its richness is used to feed grass and pasturage, and knots of trees grow about it as though they had been planted to please the eye. nothing can take from the sources of rivers their character of isolation and repose. here what are afterwards to become the influences of the plains are nurtured and tended as though in an orchard, and the future life of a whole fruitful valley with its regal towns is determined. something about these places prevents ingress or spoliation. they will endure no settlements save of peasants; the waters are too young to be harnessed; the hills forbid an easy commerce with neighbours. throughout the world i have found the heads of rivers to be secure places of silence and content. and as they are themselves a kind of youth, the early home of all that rivers must at last become--i mean special ways of building and a separate state of living, a local air and a tradition of history, for rivers are always the makers of provinces--so they bring extreme youth back to one, and these upper glens of the world steep one in simplicity and childhood. it was my delight to lie upon a bank of the road and to draw what i saw before me, which was the tender stream of the moselle slipping through fields quite flat and even and undivided by fences; its banks had here a strange effect of nature copying man's art: they seemed a park, and the river wound through it full of the positive innocence that attaches to virgins: it nourished and was guarded by trees. there was about that scene something of creation and of a beginning, and as i drew it, it gave me like a gift the freshness of the first experiences of living and filled me with remembered springs. i mused upon the birth of rivers, and how they were persons and had a name--were kings, and grew strong and ruled great countries, and how at last they reached the sea. but while i was thinking of these things, and seeing in my mind a kind of picture of the river valley, and of men clustering around their home stream, and of its ultimate vast plains on either side, and of the white line of the sea beyond all, a woman passed me. she was very ugly, and was dressed in black. her dress was stiff and shining, and, as i imagined, valuable. she had in her hand a book known to the french as 'the roman parishioner', which is a prayer-book. her hair was hidden in a stiff cap or bonnet; she walked rapidly, with her eyes on the ground. when i saw this sight it reminded me suddenly, and i cried out profanely, 'devil take me! it is corpus christi, and my third day out. it would be a wicked pilgrimage if i did not get mass at last.' for my first day (if you remember) i had slept in a wood beyond mass-time, and my second (if you remember) i had slept in a bed. but this third day, a great feast into the bargain, i was bound to hear mass, and this woman hurrying along to the next village proved that i was not too late. so i hurried in her wake and came to the village, and went into the church, which was very full, and came down out of it (the mass was low and short--they are a christian people) through an avenue of small trees and large branches set up in front of the houses to welcome the procession that was to be held near noon. at the foot of the street was an inn where i entered to eat, and finding there another man--i take him to have been a shopkeeper--i determined to talk politics, and began as follows: 'have you any anti-semitism in your town?' 'it is not my town,' he said, 'but there is anti-semitism. it flourishes.' 'why then?' i asked. 'how many jews have you in your town?' he said there were seven. 'but,' said i, 'seven families of jews--' 'there are not seven families,' he interrupted; 'there are seven jews all told. there are but two families, and i am reckoning in the children. the servants are christians.' 'why,' said i, 'that is only just and proper, that the jewish families from beyond the frontier should have local christian people to wait on them and do their bidding. but what i was going to say was that so very few jews seem to me an insufficient fuel to fire the anti-semites. how does their opinion flourish?' 'in this way,' he answered. 'the jews, you see, ridicule our young men for holding such superstitions as the catholic. our young men, thus brought to book and made to feel irrational, admit the justice of the ridicule, but nourish a hatred secretly for those who have exposed their folly. therefore they feel a standing grudge against the jews.' when he had given me this singular analysis of that part of the politics of the mountains, he added, after a short silence, the following remarkable phrase-- 'for my part i am a liberal, and would have each go his own way: the catholic to his mass, the jew to his sacrifice.' i then rose from my meal, saluted him, and went musing up the valley road, pondering upon what it could be that the jews sacrificed in this remote borough, but i could not for the life of me imagine what it was, though i have had a great many jews among my friends. i was now arrived at the head of this lovely vale, at the sources of the river moselle and the base of the great mountain the ballon d'alsace, which closes it in like a wall at the end of a lane. for some miles past the hills had grown higher and higher upon either side, the valley floor narrower, the torrent less abundant; there now stood up before me the marshy slopes and the enormous forests of pine that forbid a passage south. up through these the main road has been pierced, tortuous and at an even gradient mile after mile to the very top of the hill; for the ballon d'alsace is so shaped that it is impossible for the moselle valley to communicate with the gap of belfort save by some track right over its summit. for it is a mountain with spurs like a star, and where mountains of this kind block the end of main valleys it becomes necessary for the road leading up and out of the valley to go over their highest point, since any other road over the passes or shoulders would involve a second climb to reach the country beyond. the reason of this, my little map here, where the dark stands for the valley and the light for the high places, will show better than a long description. not that this map is of the ballon d'alsace in particular, but only of the type of hill i mean. since, in crossing a range, it is usually possible to find a low point suitable for surmounting it, such summit roads are rare, but when one does get them they are the finest travel in the world, for they furnish at one point (that is, at the summit) what ordinary roads going through passes can never give you: a moment of domination. from their climax you look over the whole world, and you feel your journey to be adventurous and your advance to have taken some great definite step from one province and people to another. i would not be bound by the exaggerated zig-zags of the road, which had been built for artillery, and rose at an easy slope. i went along the bed of the dell before me and took the forest by a little path that led straight upward, and when the path failed, my way was marked by the wire of the telegraph that crosses to belfort. as i rose i saw the forest before me grow grander. the pine branches came down from the trunks with a greater burden and majesty in their sway, the trees took on an appearance of solemnity, and the whole rank that faced me--for here the woods come to an even line and stand like an army arrested upon a downward march -- seemed something unusual and gigantic. nothing more helped this impression of awe than the extreme darkness beneath those aged growths, and the change in the sky that introduced my entry into the silence and perfume of so vast a temple. great clouds, so charged with rain that you would have thought them lower than the hills (and yet just missing their tops), came covering me like a tumbled roof and gathered all around; the heat of the day waned suddenly in their shade: it seemed suddenly as though summer was over or as though the mountains demanded an uncertain summer of their own, and shot the sunshine with the chill of their heights. a little wind ran along the grass and died again. as i gained the darkness of the first trees, rain was falling. the silence of the interior wood was enhanced by a bare drip of water from the boughs that stood out straight and tangled i know not how far above me. its gloom was rendered more tremendous by the half-light and lowering of the sky which the ceiling of branches concealed. height, stillness, and a sort of expectancy controlled the memories of the place, and i passed silently and lightly between the high columns of the trees from night (as it seemed) through a kind of twilight forward to a near night beyond. on every side the perspective of these bare innumerable shafts, each standing apart in order, purple and fragrant, merged into recesses of distance where all light disappeared, yet as i advanced the slight gloaming still surrounded me, as did the stillness framed in the drip of water, and beneath my feet was the level carpet of the pine needles deadening and making distant every tiny noise. had not the trees been so much greater and more enduring than my own presence, and had not they overwhelmed me by their regard, i should have felt afraid. as it was i pushed upward through their immovable host in some such catching of the breath as men have when they walk at night straining for a sound, and i felt myself to be continually in a hidden companionship. when i came to the edge of this haunted forest it ceased as suddenly as it had begun. i left behind me such a rank of trees aligned as i had entered thousands of feet below, and i saw before me, stretching shapely up to the sky, the round dome-like summit of the mountain--a great field of grass. it was already evening; and, as though the tall trees had withdrawn their virtue from me, my fatigue suddenly came upon me. my feet would hardly bear me as i clambered up the last hundred feet and looked down under the rolling clouds, lit from beneath by the level light of evening, to the three countries that met at my feet. for the ballon d'alsace is the knot of europe, and from that gathering up and ending of the vosges you look down upon three divisions of men. to the right of you are the gauls. i do not mean that mixed breed of lorraine, silent, among the best of people, but i mean the tree gauls, who are hot, ready, and born in the plains and in the vineyards. they stand in their old entrenchments on either side of the saône and are vivacious in battle; from time to time a spirit urges them, and they go out conquering eastward in the germanics, or in asia, or down the peninsulas of the mediterranean, and then they suck back like a tide homewards, having accomplished nothing but an epic. then on the left you have all the germanics, a great sea of confused and dreaming people, lost in philosophies and creating music, frozen for the moment under a foreign rigidity, but some day to thaw again and to give a word to us others. they cannot long remain apart from visions. then in front of you southward and eastward, if you are marching to rome, come the highlanders. i had never been among them, and i was to see them in a day; the people of the high hills, the race whom we all feel to be enemies, and who run straight across the world from the atlantic to the pacific, understanding each other, not understood by us. i saw their first rampart, the mountains called the jura, on the horizon, and above my great field of view the clouds still tumbled, lit from beneath with evening. i tired of these immensities, and, feeling now my feet more broken than ever, i very slowly and in sharp shoots of pain dragged down the slope towards the main road: i saw just below me the frontier stones of the prussians, and immediately within them a hut. to this i addressed myself. it was an inn. the door opened of itself, and i found there a pleasant woman of middle age, but frowning. she had three daughters, all of great strength, and she was upbraiding them loudly in the german of alsace and making them scour and scrub. on the wall above her head was a great placard which i read very tactfully, and in a distant manner, until she had restored the discipline of her family. this great placard was framed in the three colours which once brought a little hope to the oppressed, and at the head of it in broad black letters were the three words, 'freedom, brotherhood, and an equal law'. underneath these was the emblematic figure of a cock, which i took to be the gallic bird, and underneath him again was printed in enormous italics-- quand ce coq chantera ici crédit l'on fera. which means-- when you hear him crowing then's the time for owing. till that day--pay. while i was still wondering at this epitome of the french people, and was attempting to combine the french military tradition with the french temper in the affairs of economics; while i was also delighting in the memory of the solid coin that i carried in a little leathern bag in my pocket, the hard-working, god-fearing, and honest woman that governs the little house and the three great daughters, within a yard of the frontier, and on the top of this huge hill, had brought back all her troops into line and had the time to attend to me. this she did with the utmost politeness, though cold by race, and through her politeness ran a sense of what teutons called duty, which would once have repelled me; but i have wandered over a great part of the world, and i know it now to be a distorted kind of virtue. she was of a very different sort from that good tribe of the moselle valley beyond the hill; yet she also was catholic-- (she had a little tree set up before her door for the corpus christi: see what religion is, that makes people of utterly different races understand each other; for when i saw that tree i knew precisely where i stood. so once all we europeans understood each other, but now we are divided by the worst malignancies of nations and classes, and a man does not so much love his own nation as hate his neighbours, and even the twilight of chivalry is mixed up with a detestable patronage of the poor. but as i was saying--) she also was a catholic, and i knew myself to be with friends. she was moreover not exactly of- what shall i say? the words celtic and latin mean nothing-- not of those who delight in a delicate manner; and her good heart prompted her to say, very loudly-- 'what do you want?' 'i want a bed,' i said, and i pulled out a silver coin. 'i must lie down at once.' then i added, 'can you make omelettes?' now it is a curious thing, and one i will not dwell on-- lector. you do nothing but dwell. auctor. it is the essence of lonely travel; and if you have come to this book for literature you have come to the wrong booth and counter. as i was saying: it is a curious thing that some people (or races) jump from one subject to another naturally, as some animals (i mean the noble deer) go by bounds. while there are other races (or individuals--heaven forgive me, i am no ethnologist) who think you a criminal or a lunatic unless you carefully plod along from step to step like a hippopotamus out of water. when, therefore, i asked this family-drilling, house-managing, mountain-living woman whether she could make omelettes, she shook her head at me slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on mine, and said in what was the corpse of french with a german ghost in it, 'the bed is a franc.' 'motherkin,' i answered, 'what i mean is that i would sleep until i wake, for i have come a prodigious distance and have last slept in the woods. but when i wake i shall need food, for which,' i added, pulling out yet another coin, 'i will pay whatever your charge may be; for a more delightful house i have rarely met with. i know most people do not sleep before sunset, but i am particularly tired and broken.' she showed me my bed then much more kindly, and when i woke, which was long after dusk, she gave me in the living room of the hut eggs beaten up with ham, and i ate brown bread and said grace. then (my wine was not yet finished, but it is an abominable thing to drink your own wine in another person's house) i asked whether i could have something to drink. 'what you like,' she said. 'what have you?' said i. 'beer,' said she. 'anything else?' said i. 'no,' said she. 'why, then, give me some of that excellent beer.' i drank this with delight, paid all my bill (which was that of a labourer), and said good-night to them. in good-nights they had a ceremony; for they all rose together and curtsied. upon my soul i believe such people to be the salt of the earth. i bowed with real contrition, for at several moments i had believed myself better than they. then i went to my bed and they to theirs. the wind howled outside; my boots were stiff like wood and i could hardly take them off; my feet were so martyrized that i doubted if i could walk at all on the morrow. nevertheless i was so wrapped round with the repose of this family's virtues that i fell asleep at once. next day the sun was rising in angry glory over the very distant hills of germany, his new light running between the pinnacles of the clouds as the commands of a conqueror might come trumpeted down the defiles of mountains, when i fearlessly forced my boots on to my feet and left their doors. the morning outside came living and sharp after the gale--almost chilly. under a scattered but clearing sky i first limped, then, as my blood warmed, strode down the path that led between the trees of the farther vale and was soon following a stream that leaped from one fall to another till it should lead me to the main road, to belfort, to the jura, to the swiss whom i had never known, and at last to italy. but before i call up the recollection of that hidden valley, i must describe with a map the curious features of the road that lay before me into switzerland. i was standing on the summit of that knot of hills which rise up from every side to form the ballon d'alsace, and make an abrupt ending to the vosges. before me, southward and eastward, was a great plain with the fortress of belfort in the midst of it. this plain is called by soldiers 'the gap of belfort', and is the only break in the hill frontier that covers france all the way from the mediterranean to flanders. on the farther side of this plain ran the jura mountains, which are like a northern wall to switzerland, and just before you reach them is the frontier. the jura are fold on fold of high limestone ridges, thousands of feet high, all parallel, with deep valleys, thousands of feet deep, between them; and beyond their last abrupt escarpment is the wide plain of the river aar. now the straight line to rome ran from where i stood, right across that plain of belfort, right across the ridges of the jura, and cut the plain of the aar a few miles to the west of a town called solothurn or soleure, which stands upon that river. it was impossible to follow that line exactly, but one could average it closely enough by following the high road down the mountain through belfort to a swiss town called porrentruy or portrut--so far one was a little to the west of the direct line. from portrut, by picking one's way through forests, up steep banks, over open downs, along mule paths, and so forth, one could cross the first ridge called the 'terrible hill', and so reach the profound gorge of the river doubs, and a town called st ursanne. from st ursanne, by following a mountain road and then climbing some rocks and tracking through a wood, one could get straight over the second ridge to glovelier. from glovelier a highroad took one through a gap to undervelier and on to a town called moutier or munster. then from munster, the road, still following more or less the line to rome but now somewhat to the east of it, went on southward till an abrupt turn in it forced one to leave it. then there was another rough climb by a difficult path up over the last ridge, called the weissenstein, and from its high edge and summit it was but a straight fall of a mile or two on to soleure. so much my map told me, and this mixture of roads and paths and rock climbs that i had planned out, i exactly followed, so as to march on as directly as possible towards rome, which was my goal. for if i had not so planned it, but had followed the highroads, i should have been compelled to zig-zag enormously for days, since these ridges of the jura are but little broken, and the roads do not rise above the crests, but follow the parallel valleys, taking advantage only here and there of the rare gaps to pass from one to another. here is a sketch of the way i went, where my track is a white line, and the round spots in it are the towns and villages whose names are written at the side. in this sketch the plains and low valleys are marked dark, and the crests of the mountains left white. the shading is lighter according to the height, and the contour lines (which are very far from accurate) represent, i suppose, about a thousand feet between each, or perhaps a little more; and as for the distance, from the ballon d'alsace to soleure might be two long days' march on a flat road, but over mountains and up rocks it was all but three, and even that was very good going. my first stage was across the plain of belfort, and i had determined to sleep that night in switzerland. i wandered down the mountain. a little secret path, one of many, saved me the long windings of the road. it followed down the central hollow of the great cleft and accompanied the stream. all the way for miles the water tumbled in fall after fall over a hundred steps of rock, and its noise mixed with the freshness of the air, and its splashing weighted the overhanging branches of the trees. a little rain that fell from time to time through the clear morning seemed like a sister to the spray of the waterfalls; and what with all this moisture and greenery, and the surrounding silence, all the valley was inspired with content. it was a repose to descend through its leaves and grasses, and find the lovely pastures at the foot of the descent, a narrow floor between the hills. here there were the first houses of men; and, from one, smoke was already going up thinly into the morning. the air was very pure and cold; it was made more nourishing and human by the presence and noise of the waters, by the shining wet grasses and the beaded leaves all through that umbrageous valley. the shreds of clouds which, high above the calm, ran swiftly in the upper air, fed it also with soft rains from time to time as fine as dew; and through those clear and momentary showers one could see the sunlight. when i had enjoyed the descent through this place for but a few miles, everything changed. the road in front ran straight and bordered--it led out and onwards over a great flat, set here and there with hillocks. the vosges ended abruptly. houses came more thickly, and by the ceaseless culture of the fields, by the flat slate roofs, the white-washed walls, and the voices, and the glare, i knew myself to be once more in france of the plains; and the first town i came to was giromagny. here, as i heard a bell, i thought i would go up and hear mass; and i did so, but my attention at the holy office was distracted by the enormous number of priests that i found in the church, and i have wondered painfully ever since how so many came to be in a little place like giromagny. there were three priests at the high altar, and nearly one for each chapel, and there was such a buzz of masses going on, beginning and ending, that i am sure i need not have gone without my breakfast in my hurry to get one. with all this there were few people at mass so early; nothing but these priests going in and out, and continual little bells. i am still wondering. giromagny is no place for relics or for a pilgrimage, it cures no one, and has nothing of a holy look about it, and all these priests-- lector. pray dwell less on your religion, and-- auctor. pray take books as you find them, and treat travel as travel. for you, when you go to a foreign country, see nothing but what you expect to see. but i am astonished at a thousand accidents, and always find things twenty-fold as great as i supposed they would be, and far more curious; the whole covered by a strange light of adventure. and that is the peculiar value of this book. now, if you can explain these priests--- lector. i can. it was the season of the year, and they were swarming. auctor. so be it. then if you will hear nothing of what interests me, i see no reason for setting down with minute care what interests you, and i may leave out all mention of the girl who could only speak german, of the arrest of the criminal, and even of the house of marshal turenne--- this last something quite exceptionally entertaining. but do not let us continue thus, nor push things to an open quarrel. you must imagine for yourself about six miles of road, and then--then in the increasing heat, the dust rising in spite of the morning rain, and the road most wearisome, i heard again the sound of bugles and the sombre excitement of the drums. it is a thought-provoking thing, this passing from one great garrison to another all the way down the frontier. i had started from the busy order of toul; i had passed through the silence and peace of all that moselle country, the valley like a long garden, and i had come to the guns and the tramp of Épinal. i had left Épinal and counted the miles and miles of silence in the forests, i had crossed the great hills and come down into quite another plain draining to another sea, and i heard again all the clamour that goes with soldiery, and looking backward then over my four days, one felt--one almost saw--the new system of fortification, the vast entrenched camps each holding an army, the ungarnished gaps between. as i came nearer to belfort, i saw the guns going at a trot down a side road, and, a little later, i saw marching on my right, a long way off, the irregular column, the dust and the invincible gaiety of the french line. the sun here and there glinted on the ends of rifle-barrels and the polished pouches. their heavy pack made their tramp loud and thudding. they were singing a song. i had already passed the outer forts; i had noted a work close to the road; i had gone on a mile or so and had entered the long and ugly suburb where the tramway lines began, when, on one of the ramshackle houses of that burning, paved, and noisy endless street, i saw written up the words, wine; shut or open. as it is a great rule to examine every new thing, and to suck honey out of every flower, i did not--as some would--think the phrase odd and pass on. i stood stock-still gazing at the house and imagining a hundred explanations. i had never in my life heard wine divided into shut and open wine. i determined to acquire yet one more great experience, and going in i found a great number of tin cans, such as the french carry up water in, without covers, tapering to the top, and standing about three feet high; on these were pasted large printed labels, ' ', ' ', and ' ', and they were brimming with wine. i spoke to the woman, and pointing at the tin cans, said-- 'is this what you call open wine?' 'why, yes,' said she. 'cannot you see for yourself that it is open?' that was true enough, and it explained a great deal. but it did not explain how--seeing that if you leave a bottle of wine uncorked for ten minutes you spoil it--you can keep gallons of it in a great wide can, for all the world like so much milk, milked from the panthers of the god. i determined to test the prodigy yet further, and choosing the middle price, at fourpence a quart, i said-- 'pray give me a hap'orth in a mug.' this the woman at once did, and when i came to drink it, it was delicious. sweet, cool, strong, lifting the heart, satisfying, and full of all those things wine-merchants talk of, bouquet, and body, and flavour. it was what i have heard called a very pretty wine. i did not wait, however, to discuss the marvel, but accepted it as one of those mysteries of which this pilgrimage was already giving me examples, and of which more were to come--(wait till you hear about the brigand of radicofani). i said to myself-- 'when i get out of the terre majeure, and away from the strong and excellent government of the republic, when i am lost in the jura hills to-morrow there will be no such wine as this.' so i bought a quart of it, corked it up very tight, put it in my sack, and held it in store against the wineless places on the flanks of the hill called terrible, where there are no soldiers, and where swiss is the current language. then i went on into the centre of the town. as i passed over the old bridge into the market-place, where i proposed to lunch (the sun was terrible--it was close upon eleven), i saw them building parallel with that old bridge a new one to replace it. and the way they build a bridge in belfort is so wonderfully simple, and yet so new, that it is well worth telling. in most places when a bridge has to be made, there is an infinite pother and worry about building the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven knows what else. some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and some try to throw an arch of one span from side to side. there are a thousand different tricks. in belfort they simply wait until the water has run away. then a great brigade of workmen run down into the dry bed of the river and dig the foundations feverishly, and begin building the piers in great haste. soon the water comes back, but the piers are already above it, and the rest of the work is done from boats. this is absolutely true. not only did i see the men in the bed of the river, but a man whom i asked told me that it seemed to him the most natural way to build bridges, and doubted if they were ever made in any other fashion. there is also in belfort a great lion carved in rock to commemorate the siege of . this lion is part of the precipice under the castle, and is of enormous size--- how large i do not know, but i saw that a man looked quite small by one of his paws. the precipice was first smoothed like a stone slab or tablet, and then this lion was carved into and out of it in high relief by bartholdi, the same man that made the statue of liberty in new york harbour. the siege of has been fixed for history in yet another way, and one that shows you how the church works on from one stem continually. for there is a little church somewhere near or in belfort (i do not know where, i only heard of it) which, a local mason and painter being told to decorate for so much, he amused himself by painting all round it little pictures of the siege--of the cold, and the wounds, and the heroism. this is indeed the way such things should be done, i mean by men doing them for pleasure and of their own thought. and i have a number of friends who agree with me in thinking this, that art should not be competitive or industrial, but most of them go on to the very strange conclusion that one should not own one's garden, nor one's beehive, nor one's great noble house, nor one's pigsty, nor one's railway shares, nor the very boots on one's feet. i say, out upon such nonsense. then they say to me, what about the concentration of the means of production? and i say to them, what about the distribution of the ownership of the concentrated means of production? and they shake their heads sadly, and say it would never endure; and i say, try it first and see. then they fly into a rage. when i lunched in belfort (and at lunch, by the way, a poor man asked me to use _all my influence_ for his son, who was an engineer in the navy, and this he did because i had been boasting of my travels, experiences, and grand acquaintances throughout the world)--when, i say, i had lunched in a workman's cafe at belfort, i set out again on my road, and was very much put out to find that showers still kept on falling. in the early morning, under such delightful trees, up in the mountains, the branches had given me a roof, the wild surroundings made me part of the out-of-doors, and the rain had seemed to marry itself to the pastures and the foaming beck. but here, on a road and in a town, all its tradition of discomfort came upon me. i was angry, therefore, with the weather and the road for some miles, till two things came to comfort me. first it cleared, and a glorious sun showed me from a little eminence the plain of alsace and the mountains of the vosges all in line; secondly, i came to a vast powder-magazine. to most people there is nothing more subtle or pleasing in a powder-magazine than in a reservoir. they are both much the same in the mere exterior, for each is a flat platform, sloping at the sides and covered with grass, and each has mysterious doors. but, for my part, i never see a powder-magazine without being filled at once with two very good feelings--- laughter and companionship. for it was my good fortune, years and years ago, to be companion and friend to two men who were on sentry at a powder-magazine just after there had been some anarchist attempts (as they call them) upon such depots--and for the matter of that i can imagine nothing more luscious to the anarchist than seven hundred and forty-two cases of powder and fifty cases of melinite all stored in one place. and to prevent the enormous noise, confusion, and waste that would have resulted from the over-attraction of this base of operations to the anarchists, my two friends, one of whom was a duty-doing burgundian, but the other a loose parisian man, were on sentry that night. they had strict orders to challenge once and then to fire. now, can you imagine anything more exquisite to a poor devil of a conscript, fagged out with garrison duty and stale sham-fighting, than an order of that kind? so my friends took it, and in one summer night they killed a donkey and wounded two mares, and broke the thin stem of a growing tree. this powder-magazine was no exception to my rule, for as i approached it i saw a round-faced corporal and two round-faced men looking eagerly to see who might be attacking their treasure, and i became quite genial in my mind when i thought of how proud these boys felt, and of how i was of the 'class of ninety, rifled and mounted on its carriage' (if you don't see the point of the allusion, i can't stop to explain it. it was a good gun in its time--now they have the seventy-five that doesn't recoil--_requiescat), _and of how they were longing for the night, and a chance to shoot anything on the sky line. full of these foolish thoughts, but smiling in spite of their folly, i went down the road. shall i detail all that afternoon? my leg horrified me with dull pain, and made me fear i should never hold out, i do not say to rome, but even to the frontier. i rubbed it from time to time with balm, but, as always happens to miraculous things, the virtue had gone out of it with the lapse of time. at last i found a side road going off from the main way, and my map told me it was on the whole a short cut to the frontier. i determined to take it for those few last miles, because, if one is suffering, a winding lane is more tolerable than a wide turnpike. just as i came to the branching of the roads i saw a cross put up, and at its base the motto that is universal to french crosses-- _ave crux spes unica._ i thought it a good opportunity for recollection, and sitting down, i looked backward along the road i had come. there were the high mountains of the vosges standing up above the plain of alsace like sloping cliffs above a sea. i drew them as they stood, and wondered if that frontier were really permanent. the mind of man is greater than such accidents, and can easily overleap even the high hills. then having drawn them, and in that drawing said a kind of farewell to the influences that had followed me for so many miles--the solemn quiet, the steady industry, the self-control, the deep woods, of lorraine-- rose up stiffly from the bank that had been my desk, and pushed along the lane that ran devious past neglected villages. the afternoon and the evening followed as i put one mile after another behind me. the frontier seemed so close that i would not rest. i left my open wine, the wine i had found outside belfort, untasted, and i plodded on and on as the light dwindled. i was in a grand wonderment for switzerland, and i wished by an immediate effort to conquer the last miles before night, in spite of my pain. also, i will confess to a silly pride in distances, and a desire to be out of france on my fourth day. the light still fell, and my resolution stood, though my exhaustion undermined it. the line of the mountains rose higher against the sky, and there entered into my pilgrimage for the first time the loneliness and the mystery of meres. something of what a man feels in east england belonged to this last of the plain under the guardian hills. everywhere i passed ponds and reeds, and saw the level streaks of sunset reflected in stagnant waters. the marshy valley kept its character when i had left the lane and regained the highroad. its isolation dominated the last effort with which i made for the line of the jura in that summer twilight, and as i blundered on my whole spirit was caught or lifted in the influence of the waste waters and of the birds of evening. i wished, as i had often wished in such opportunities of recollection and of silence, for a complete barrier that might isolate the mind. with that wish came in a puzzling thought, very proper to a pilgrimage, which was: 'what do men mean by the desire to be dissolved and to enjoy the spirit free and without attachments?' that many men have so desired there can be no doubt, and the best men, whose holiness one recognizes at once, tell us that the joys of the soul are incomparably higher than those of the living man. in india, moreover, there are great numbers of men who do the most fantastic things with the object of thus unprisoning the soul, and milton talks of the same thing with evident conviction, and the saints all praise it in chorus. but what is it? for my part i cannot understand so much as the meaning of the words, for every pleasure i know comes from an intimate union between my body and my very human mind, which last receives, confirms, revives, and can summon up again what my body has experienced. of pleasures, however, in which my senses have had no part i know nothing, so i have determined to take them upon trust and see whether they could make the matter clearer in rome. but when it comes to the immortal mind, the good spirit in me that is so cunning at forms and colours and the reasons of things, that is a very different story. _that_, i do indeed desire to have to myself at whiles, and the waning light of a day or the curtains of autumn closing in the year are often to me like a door shutting after one, as one comes in home. for i find that with less and less impression from without the mind seems to take on a power of creation, and by some mystery it can project songs and landscapes and faces much more desirable than the music or the shapes one really hears and sees. so also memory can create. but it is not the soul that does this, for the songs, the landscapes, and the faces are of a kind that have come in by the senses, nor have i ever understood what could be higher than these pleasures, nor indeed how in anything formless and immaterial there could be pleasure at all. yet the wisest people assure us that our souls are as superior to our minds as are our minds to our inert and merely material bodies. i cannot understand it at all. as i was pondering on these things in this land of pastures and lonely ponds, with the wall of the jura black against the narrow bars of evening--(my pain seemed gone for a moment, yet i was hobbling slowly)--i say as i was considering this complex doctrine, i felt my sack suddenly much lighter, and i had hardly time to rejoice at the miracle when i heard immediately a very loud crash, and turning half round i saw on the blurred white of the twilit road my quart of open wine all broken to atoms. my disappointment was so great that i sat down on a milestone to consider the accident and to see if a little thought would not lighten my acute annoyance. consider that i had carefully cherished this bottle and had not drunk throughout a painful march all that afternoon, thinking that there would be no wine worth drinking after i had passed the frontier. i consoled myself more or less by thinking about torments and evils to which even such a loss as this was nothing, and then i rose to go on into the night. as it turned out i was to find beyond the frontier a wine in whose presence this wasted wine would have seemed a wretched jest, and whose wonderful taste was to colour all my memories of the mount terrible. it is always thus with sorrows if one will only wait. so, lighter in the sack but heavier in the heart, i went forward to cross the frontier in the dark. i did not quite know where the point came: i only knew that it was about a mile from delle, the last french town. i supped there and held on my way. when i guessed that i had covered this mile i saw a light in the windows on my left, a trellis and the marble tables of a cafe. i put my head in at the door and said-- 'am i in switzerland?' a german-looking girl, a large heavy man, a bavarian commercial traveller, and a colleague of his from marseilles, all said together in varying accents: 'yes.' 'why then,' i said, 'i will come in and drink.' this book would never end if i were to attempt to write down so much as the names of a quarter of the extraordinary things that i saw and heard on my enchanted pilgrimage, but let me at least mention the commercial traveller from marseilles. he talked with extreme rapidity for two hours. he had seen all the cities in the world and he remembered their minutest details. he was extremely accurate, his taste was abominable, his patriotism large, his wit crude but continual, and to his german friend, to the host of the inn, and to the blonde serving-girl, he was a familiar god. he came, it seems, once a year, and for a day would pour out the torrent of his travels like a waterfall of guide-books (for he gloried in dates, dimensions, and the points of the compass in his descriptions); then he disappeared for another year, and left them to feast on the memory of such a revelation. for my part i sat silent, crippled with fatigue, trying to forget my wounded feet, drinking stoup after stoup of beer and watching the phocean. he was of the old race you see on vases in red and black; slight, very wiry, with a sharp, eager, but well-set face, a small, black, pointed beard, brilliant eyes like those of lizards, rapid gestures, and a vivacity that played all over his features as sheet lightning does over the glow of midnight in june. that delta of the rhone is something quite separate from the rest of france. it is a wedge of greece and of the east thrust into the gauls. it came north a hundred years ago and killed the monarchy. it caught the value in, and created, the great war song of the republic. i watched the phocean. i thought of a man of his ancestry three thousand years ago sitting here at the gates of these mountains talking of his travels to dull, patient, and admiring northerners, and travelling for gain up on into the germanics, and i felt the changeless form of europe under me like a rock. when he heard i was walking to rome, this man of information turned off his flood into another channel, as a miller will send the racing water into a side sluice, and he poured out some such torrent as this: 'do not omit to notice the famous view s.e. from the villa so and so on monte mario; visit such and such a garden, and hear mass in such and such a church. note the curious illusion produced on the piazza of st peter's by the interior measurements of the trapezium, which are so many years and so many yards,...' &c., and so forth... exactly like a mill. i meanwhile sat on still silent, still drinking beer and watching the phocean; gradually suffering the fascination that had captured the villagers and the german friend. he was a very wonderful man. he was also kindly, for i found afterwards that he had arranged with the host to give me up his bed, seeing my weariness. for this, most unluckily, i was never able to thank him, since the next morning i was off before he or any one else was awake, and i left on the table such money as i thought would very likely satisfy the innkeeper. it was broad day, but not yet sunrise (there were watery thin clouds left here and there from the day before, a cold wind drove them) when, with extreme pain, going slowly one step after the other and resting continually, i started for porrentruy along a winding road, and pierced the gap in the jura. the first turn cut me off from france, and i was fairly in a strange country. the valley through which i was now passing resembled that of the lovely river jed where it runs down from the cheviots, and leads like a road into the secret pastures of the lowlands. here also, as there, steep cliffs of limestone bounded a very level dale, all green grass and plenty; the plateau above them was covered also with perpetual woods, only here, different from scotland, the woods ran on and upwards till they became the slopes of high mountains; indeed, this winding cleft was a natural passage through the first ridge of the jura; the second stood up southward before me like a deep blue storm. i had, as i passed on along this turning way, all the pleasures of novelty; it was quite another country from the governed and ordered france which i had left. the road was more haphazard, less carefully tended, and evidently less used. the milestones were very old, and marked leagues instead of kilometres. there was age in everything. moss grew along the walls, and it was very quiet under the high trees. i did not know the name of the little river that went slowly through the meadows, nor whether it followed the custom of its french neighbours on the watershed, and was called by some such epithet as hangs to all the waters in that gap of belfort, that plain of ponds and marshes: for they are called 'the sluggish', 'the muddy', or 'the laggard'. even the name of the saone, far off, meant once 'slow water'. i was wondering what its name might be, and how far i stood from porrentruy (which i knew to be close by), when i saw a tunnel across the valley, and i guessed by the trend of the higher hills that the river was about to make a very sharp angle. both these signs, i had been told, meant that i was quite close to the town; so i took a short cut up through the forest over a spur of hill--a short cut most legitimate, because it was trodden and very manifestly used--and i walked up and then on a level for a mile, along a lane of the woods and beneath small, dripping trees. when this short silence of the forest was over, i saw an excellent sight. there, below me, where the lane began to fall, was the first of the german cities. lector. how 'german'? auctor. let me explain. there is a race that stretches vaguely, without defined boundaries, from the baltic into the high hills of the south. i will not include the scandinavians among them, for the scandinavians (from whom we english also in part descend) are long-headed, lean, and fierce, with a light of adventure in their pale eyes. but beneath them, i say, there stretches from the baltic to the high hills a race which has a curious unity. yes; i know that great patches of it are catholic, and that other great patches hold varying philosophies; i know also that within them are counted long-headed and round-headed men, dark and fair, violent and silent; i know also that they have continually fought among themselves and called in welch allies; still i go somewhat by the language, for i am concerned here with the development of a modern european people, and i say that the germans run from the high hills to the northern sea. in all of them you find (it is not race, it is something much more than race, it is the type of culture) a dreaminess and a love of ease. in all of them you find music. they are those germans whose countries i had seen a long way off, from the ballon d'alsace, and whose language and traditions i now first touched in the town that stood before me. lector. but in porrentruy they talk french! auctor. they are welcome; it is an excellent tongue. nevertheless, they are germans. who but germans would so preserve--would so rebuild the past? who but germans would so feel the mystery of the hills, and so fit their town to the mountains? i was to pass through but a narrow wedge of this strange and diffuse people. they began at porrentruy, they ended at the watershed of the adriatic, in the high passes of the alps; but in that little space of four days i made acquaintance with their influence, and i owe them a perpetual gratitude for their architecture and their tales. i had come from france, which is full of an active memory of rome. i was to debouch into those larger plains of italy, which keep about them an atmosphere of rome in decay. here in switzerland, for four marches, i touched a northern, exterior, and barbaric people; for though these mountains spoke a distorted latin tongue, and only after the first day began to give me a teutonic dialect, yet it was evident from the first that they had about them neither the latin order nor the latin power to create, but were contemplative and easily absorbed by a little effort. the german spirit is a marvel. there lay porrentruy. an odd door with gothic turrets marked the entry to the town. to the right of this gateway a tower, more enormous than anything i remembered to have seen, even in dreams, flanked the approach to the city. how vast it was, how protected, how high, how eaved, how enduring! i was told later that some part of that great bastion was roman, and i can believe it. the germans hate to destroy. it overwhelmed me as visions overwhelm, and i felt in its presence as boys feel when they first see the mountains. had i not been a christian, i would have worshipped and propitiated this obsession, this everlasting thing. as it was i entered porrentruy soberly. i passed under its deep gateway and up its steep hill. the moment i was well into the main street, something other of the middle ages possessed me, and i began to think of food and wine. i went to the very first small guest-house i could find, and asked them if they could serve me food. they said that at such an early hour (it was not yet ten) they could give me nothing but bread, yesterday's meat, and wine. i said that would do very well, and all these things were set before me, and by a custom of the country i paid before i ate. (a bad custom. up in the limousin, when i was a boy, in the noisy valley of the torrent, on the vienne, i remember a woman that did not allow me to pay till she had held the bottle up to the light, measured the veal with her finger, and estimated the bread with her eye; also she charged me double. god rest her soul!) i say i paid. and had i had to pay twenty or twenty-three times as much it would have been worth it for the wine. i am hurrying on to rome, and i have no time to write a georgic. but, oh! my little friends of the north; my struggling, strenuous, introspective, self-analysing, autoscopic, and generally reentrant friends, who spout the 'hue! pater, oh! lenae!' without a ghost of an idea what you are talking about, do you know what is meant by the god? bacchus is everywhere, but if he has special sites to be ringed in and kept sacred, i say let these be brule, and the silent vineyard that lies under the square wood by tournus, the hollow underplace of heltz le maurupt, and this town of porrentruy. in these places if i can get no living friends to help me, i will strike the foot alone on the genial ground, and i know of fifty maenads and two hundred little attendant gods by name that will come to the festival. what a wine! i was assured it would not travel. 'nevertheless,' said i, 'give me a good quart bottle of it, for i have to go far, and i see there is a providence for pilgrims.' so they charged me fourpence, and i took my bottle of this wonderful stuff, sweet, strong, sufficient, part of the earth, desirable, and went up on my way to rome. could this book be infinite, as my voyage was infinite, i would tell you about the shifty priest whom i met on the platform of the church where a cliff overhangs the valley, and of the anarchist whom i met when i recovered the highroad--- he was a sad, good man, who had committed some sudden crime and so had left france, and his hankering for france all those years had soured his temper, and he said he wished there were no property, no armies, and no governments. but i said that we live as parts of a nation, and that there was no fate so wretched as to be without a country of one's own--what else was exile which so many noble men have thought worse than death, and which all have feared? i also told him that armies fighting in a just cause were the happiest places for living, and that a good battle for justice was the beginning of all great songs; and that as for property, a man on his own land was the nearest to god. he therefore not convinced, and i loving and pitying him, we separated; i had not time to preach my full doctrine, but gave him instead a deep and misty glass of cool beer, and pledged him brotherhood, freedom, and an equal law. then i went on my way, praying god that all these rending quarrels might be appeased. for they would certainly be appeased if we once again had a united doctrine in europe, since economics are but an expression of the mind and do not (as the poor blind slaves of the great cities think) mould the mind. what is more, nothing makes property run into a few hands but the worst of the capital sins, and you who say it is 'the modern facilities of distribution' are like men who cannot read large print without spectacles; or again, you are like men who should say that their drunkenness was due to their drink, or that arson was caused by matches. but, frankly, do you suppose i came all this way over so many hills to talk economics? very far from it! i will pray for all poor men when i get to st peter's in rome (i should like to know what capital st peter had in that highly capitalistic first century), and, meanwhile, do you discuss the margin of production while i go on the open way; there are no landlords here, and if you would learn at least one foreign language, and travel but five miles off a railway, you town-talkers, you would find how much landlordism has to do with your 'necessities' and your 'laws'. lector. i thought you said you were not going to talk economics? auctor. neither am i. it is but the backwash of a wave... well, then, i went up the open way, and came in a few miles of that hot afternoon to the second ridge of the jura, which they call 'the terrible hill', or 'the mount terrible'--and, in truth, it is very jagged. a steep, long crest of very many miles lies here between the vale of porrentruy and the deep gorge of the doubs. the highroad goes off a long way westward, seeking for a pass or neck in the chain, but i determined to find a straight road across, and spoke to some wood-cutters who were felling trees just where the road began to climb. they gave me this curious indication. they said-- 'go you up this muddy track that has been made athwart the woods and over the pastures by our sliding logs' (for they had cut their trunks higher up the mountains), 'and you will come to the summit easily. from thence you will see the doubs running below you in a very deep and dark ravine.' i thanked them, and soon found that they had told me right. there, unmistakable, a gash in the forest and across the intervening fields of grass, was the run of the timber. when i had climbed almost to the top, i looked behind me to take my last view of the north. i saw just before me a high isolated rock; between me and it was the forest. i saw beyond it the infinite plain of alsace and the distant vosges. the cliff of limestone that bounded that height fell sheer upon the tree-tops; its sublimity arrested me, and compelled me to record it. 'surely,' i said, 'if switzerland has any gates on the north they are these.' then, having drawn the wonderful outline of what i had seen, i went up, panting, to the summit, and, resting there, discovered beneath me the curious swirl of the doubs, where it ran in a dark gulf thousands of feet below. the shape of this extraordinary turn i will describe in a moment. let me say, meanwhile, that there was no precipice or rock between me and the river, only a down, down, down through other trees and pastures, not too steep for a man to walk, but steeper than our steep downs and fells in england, where a man hesitates and picks his way. it was so much of a descent, and so long, that one looked above the tree-tops. it was a place where no one would care to ride. i found a kind of path, sideways on the face of the mountain, and followed it till i came to a platform with a hut perched thereon, and men building. here a good woman told me just how to go. i was not to attempt the road to brune-farine--that is, 'whole-meal farm'--as i had first intended, foolishly trusting a map, but to take a gully she would show me, and follow it till i reached the river. she came out, and led me steeply across a hanging pasture; all the while she had knitting in her hands, and i noticed that on the levels she went on with her knitting. then, when we got to the gully, she said i had but to follow it. i thanked her, and she climbed up to her home. this gully was the precipitous bed of a stream; i clanked down it--thousands of feet--warily; i reached the valley, and at last, very gladly, came to a drain, and thus knew that i approached a town or village. it was st ursanne. the very first thing i noticed in st ursanne was the extraordinary shape of the lower windows of the church. they lighted a crypt and ran along the ground, which in itself was sufficiently remarkable, but much more remarkable was their shape, which seemed to me to approach that of a horseshoe; i never saw such a thing before. it looked as though the weight of the church above had bulged these little windows out, and that is the way i explain it. some people would say it was a man coming home from the crusades that had made them this eastern way, others that it was a symbol of something or other. but i say-- lector. what rhodomontade and pedantry is this talk about the shape of a window? auctor. little friend, how little you know! to a building windows are everything; they are what eyes are to a man. out of windows a building takes its view; in windows the outlook of its human inhabitants is framed. if you were the lord of a very high tower overlooking a town, a plain, a river, and a distant hill (i doubt if you will ever have such luck!), would you not call your architect up before you and say-- 'sir, see that the windows of my house are _tall, narrow, thick_, and have a _round top to them'?_ of course you would, for thus you would best catch in separate pictures the sunlit things outside your home. never ridicule windows. it is out of windows that many fall to their deaths. by windows love often enters. through a window went the bolt that killed king richard. king william's father spied arlette from a window (i have looked through it myself, but not a soul did i see washing below). when a mob would rule england, it breaks windows, and when a patriot would save her, he taxes them. out of windows we walk on to lawns in summer and meet men and women, and in winter windows are drums for the splendid music of storms that makes us feel so masterly round our fires. the windows of the great cathedrals are all their meaning. but for windows we should have to go out-of-doors to see daylight. after the sun, which they serve, i know of nothing so beneficent as windows. fie upon the ungrateful man that has no window-god in his house, and thinks himself too great a philosopher to bow down to windows! may he live in a place without windows for a while to teach him the value of windows. as for me, i will keep up the high worship of windows till i come to the windowless grave. talk to me of windows! yes. there are other things in st ursanne. it is a little tiny town, and yet has gates. it is full of very old houses, people, and speech. it was founded (or named) by a bear saint, and the statue of the saint with his bear is carved on the top of a column in the market-place. but the chief thing about it, so it seemed to me, was its remoteness. the gorge of the doubs, of which i said a word or two above, is of that very rare shape which isolates whatever may be found in such valleys. it turns right back upon itself, like a very narrow u, and thus cannot by any possibility lead any one anywhere; for though in all times travellers have had to follow river valleys, yet when they come to such a long and sharp turn as this, they have always cut across the intervening bend. here is the shape of this valley with the high hills round it and in its core, which will show better than description what i mean. the little picture also shows what the gorge looked like as i came down on it from the heights above. in the map the small white 'a' shows where the railway bridge was, and in this map, as in the others, the dark is for the depth and the light is for the heights. as for the picture, it is what one sees when one is coming over the ridge at the north or top of the map, and when one first catches the river beneath one. i thought a good deal about what the romans did to get through the mont terrible, and how they negotiated this crook in the doubs (for they certainly passed into gaul through the gates of porrentruy, and by that obvious valley below it). i decided that they probably came round eastward by delemont. but for my part, i was on a straight path to rome, and as that line lay just along the top of the river bend i was bound to take it. now outside st ursanne, if one would go along the top of the river bend and so up to the other side of the gorge, is a kind of subsidiary ravine--awful, deep, and narrow--and this was crossed, i could see, by a very high railway bridge. not suspecting any evil, and desiring to avoid the long descent into the ravine, the looking for a bridge or ford, and the steep climb up the other side, i made in my folly for the station which stood just where the railway left solid ground to go over this high, high bridge. i asked leave of the stationmaster to cross it, who said it was strictly forbidden, but that he was not a policeman, and that i might do it at my own risk. thanking him, therefore, and considering how charming was the loose habit of small uncentralized societies, i went merrily on to the bridge, meaning to walk across it by stepping from sleeper to sleeper. but it was not to be so simple. the powers of the air, that hate to have their kingdom disturbed, watched me as i began. i had not been engaged upon it a dozen yards when i was seized with terror. i have much to say further on in this book concerning terror: the panic that haunts high places and the spell of many angry men. this horrible affection of the mind is the delight of our modern scribblers; it is half the plot of their insane 'short stories', and is at the root of their worship of what they call 'strength', a cowardly craving for protection, or the much more despicable fascination of brutality. for my part i have always disregarded it as something impure and devilish, unworthy of a christian. fear i think, indeed, to be in the nature of things, and it is as much part of my experience to be afraid of the sea or of an untried horse as it is to eat and sleep; but terror, which is a sudden madness and paralysis of the soul, that i say is from hell, and not to be played with or considered or put in pictures or described in stories. all this i say to preface what happened, and especially to point out how terror is in the nature of a possession and is unreasonable. for in the crossing of this bridge there was nothing in itself perilous. the sleepers lay very close together--i doubt if a man could have slipped between them; but, i know not how many hundred feet below, was the flashing of the torrent, and it turned my brain. for the only parapet there was a light line or pipe, quite slender and low down, running from one spare iron upright to another. these rather emphasized than encouraged my mood. and still as i resolutely put one foot in front of the other, and resolutely kept my eyes off the abyss and fixed on the opposing hill, and as the long curve before me was diminished by successive sharp advances, still my heart was caught half-way in every breath, and whatever it is that moves a man went uncertainly within me, mechanical and half-paralysed. the great height with that narrow unprotected ribbon across it was more than i could bear. i dared not turn round and i dared not stop. words and phrases began repeating themselves in my head as they will under a strain: so i know at sea a man perilously hanging on to the tiller makes a kind of litany of his instructions. the central part was passed, the three-quarters; the tension of that enduring effort had grown intolerable, and i doubted my ability to complete the task. why? what could prevent me? i cannot say; it was all a bundle of imaginaries. perhaps at bottom what i feared was sudden giddiness and the fall-- at any rate at this last supreme part i vowed one candle to our lady of perpetual succour if she would see that all went well, and this candle i later paid in rome; finding our lady of succour not hung up in a public place and known to all, as i thought she would be, but peculiar to a little church belonging to a scotchman and standing above his high altar. yet it is a very famous picture, and extremely old. well, then, having made this vow i still went on, with panic aiding me, till i saw that the bank beneath had risen to within a few feet of the bridge, and that dry land was not twenty yards away. then my resolution left me and i ran, or rather stumbled, rapidly from sleeper to sleeper till i could take a deep breath on the solid earth beyond. i stood and gazed back over the abyss; i saw the little horrible strip between heaven and hell--the perspective of its rails. i was made ill by the relief from terror. yet i suppose railway-men cross and recross it twenty times a day. better for them than for me! there is the story of the awful bridge of the mont terrible, and it lies to a yard upon the straight line--_quid dicam_--the segment of the great circle uniting toul and rome. the high bank or hillside before me was that which ends the gorge of the doubs and looks down either limb of the sharp bend. i had here not to climb but to follow at one height round the curve. my way ran by a rather ill-made lane and passed a village. then it was my business to make straight up the farther wall of the gorge, and as there was wood upon this, it looked an easy matter. but when i came to it, it was not easy. the wood grew in loose rocks and the slope was much too steep for anything but hands and knees, and far too soft and broken for true climbing. and no wonder this ridge seemed a wall for steepness and difficulty, since it was the watershed between the mediterranean and the cold north sea. but i did not know this at the time. it must have taken me close on an hour before i had covered the last thousand feet or so that brought me to the top of the ridge, and there, to my great astonishment, was a road. where could such a road lead, and why did it follow right along the highest edge of the mountains? the jura with their unique parallels provide twenty such problems. wherever it led, however, this road was plainly perpendicular to my true route, and i had but to press on my straight line. so i crossed it, saw for a last time through the trees the gorge of the doubs, and then got upon a path which led down through a field more or less in the direction of my pilgrimage. here the country was so broken that one could make out but little of its general features, but of course, on the whole, i was following down yet another southern slope, the southern slope of the _third_ chain of the jura, when, after passing through many glades and along a stony path, i found a kind of gate between two high rocks, and emerged somewhat suddenly upon a wide down studded with old trees and also many stunted yews, and this sank down to a noble valley which lay all before me. the open down or prairie on which i stood i afterwards found to be called the 'pasturage of common right', a very fine name; and, as a gallery will command a great hall, so this field like a platform commanded the wide and fading valley below. it was a very glad surprise to see this sight suddenly unrolled as i stood on the crest of the down. the jura had hitherto been either lonely, or somewhat awful, or naked and rocky, but here was a true vale in which one could imagine a spirit of its own; there were corn lands and no rocks. the mountains on either side did not rise so high as three thousand feet. though of limestone they were rounded in form, and the slanting sun of the late afternoon (all the storm had left the sky) took them full and warm. the valley remaining wide and fruitful went on out eastward till the hills became mixed up with brume and distance. as i did not know its name i called it after the village immediately below me for which i was making; and i still remember it as the valley of glovelier, and it lies between the third and fourth ridges of the jura. before leaving the field i drew what i saw but i was much too tired by the double and prodigious climb of the past hours to draw definitely or clearly. such as it is, there it is. then i went down over the smooth field. there is something that distinguishes the rugged from the gracious in landscape, and in our europe this something corresponds to the use and presence of men, especially in mountainous places. for men's habits and civilization fill the valleys and wash up the base of the hills, making, as it were, a tide mark. into this zone i had already passed. the turf was trodden fine, and was set firm as it can only become by thousands of years of pasturing. the moisture that oozed out of the earth was not the random bog of the high places but a human spring, caught in a stone trough. attention had been given to the trees. below me stood a wall, which, though rough, was not the haphazard thing men pile up in the last recesses of the hills, but formed of chosen stones, and these bound together with mortar. on my right was a deep little dale with children playing in it--and this' i afterwards learned was called a 'combe': delightful memory! all our deeper hollows are called the same at home, and even the welsh have the word, but they spell it _cwm_; it is their mountain way. well, as i was saying, everything surrounding me was domestic and grateful, and i was therefore in a mood for charity and companionship when i came down the last dip and entered glovelier. but glovelier is a place of no excellence whatever, and if the thought did not seem extravagant i should be for putting it to the sword and burning it all down. for just as i was going along full of kindly thoughts, and had turned into the sign of (i think it was) the 'sun' to drink wine and leave them my benediction-- lector. why your benediction? auctor. who else can give benedictions if people cannot when they are on pilgrimage? learn that there are three avenues by which blessing can be bestowed, and three kinds of men who can bestow it. ( ) there is the good man, whose goodness makes him of himself a giver of blessings. his power is not conferred or of office, but is _inhaerens persona_; part of the stuff of his mind. this kind can confer the solemn benediction, or _benedictio major_, if they choose; but besides this their every kind thought, word, or action is a _benedictio generalise_ and even their frowns, curses, angry looks and irritable gestures may be called _benedictiones minores vel incerti_. i believe i am within the definitions. i avoid heresy. all this is sound theology. i do not smell of the faggot. and this kind of benedictory power is the fount or type or natural origin, as it were, of all others. ( ) there is the official of religion who, in the exercise of his office-- lector. for heaven's sake-- auctor. who began it? you protested my power to give benediction, and i must now prove it at length; otherwise i should fall under the accusation of lesser simony--that is, the false assumption of particular powers. well, then, there is the official who _ex officio_, and when he makes it quite clear that it is _qua sponsus_ and not _sicut ut ipse_, can give formal benediction. this power belongs certainly to all bishops, mitred abbots, and archimandrates; to patriarchs of course, and _a fortiori_ to the pope. in rome they will have it that monsignores also can so bless, and i have heard it debated whether or no the same were not true in some rustic way of parish priests. however this may be, all their power proceeds, not from themselves, but from the accumulation of goodness left as a deposit by the multitudes of exceptionally good men who have lived in times past, and who have now no use for it. ( ) thirdly--and this is my point--any one, good or bad, official or non-official, who is for the moment engaged in an _opusfaustum_ can act certainly as a conductor or medium, and the influence of what he is touching or doing passes to you from him. this is admitted by every one who worships trees, wells, and stones; and indeed it stands to reason, for it is but a branch of the well-known _'sanctificatio ex loco, opere, tactu vel conditione.'_ i will admit that this power is but vague, slight, tenuous, and dissipatory, still there it is: though of course its poor effect is to that of the _benedictio major_ what a cat's-paw in the solent is to a north-east snorter on lindsey deeps. i am sorry to have been at such length, but it is necessary to have these things thrashed out once for all. so now you see how i, being on pilgrimage, could give a kind of little creeping blessing to the people on the way, though, as st louis said to the hascisch-eaters, _'may it be a long time before you can kiss my bones.'_ so i entered the 'sun' inn and saw there a woman sewing, a great dull-faced man like an ox, and a youth writing down figures in a little book. i said-- 'good morning, madam, and sirs, and the company. could you give me a little red wine?' not a head moved. true i was very dirty and tired, and they may have thought me a beggar, to whom, like good sensible christians who had no nonsense about them, they would rather have given a handsome kick than a cup of cold water. however, i think it was not only my poverty but a native churlishness which bound their bovine souls in that valley. i sat down at a very clean table. i notice that those whom the devil has made his own are always spick and span, just as firemen who have to go into great furnaces have to keep all their gear highly polished. i sat down at it, and said again, still gently-- 'it is, indeed, a fine country this of yours. could you give me a little red wine?' then the ox-faced man who had his back turned to me, and was the worst of the lot, said sulkily, not to me, but to the woman-- 'he wants wine.' the woman as sulkily said to me, not looking me in the eyes-- 'how much will you pay?' i said, 'bring the wine. set it here. see me drink it. charge me your due.' i found that this brutal way of speaking was just what was needed for the kine and cattle of this pen. she skipped off to a cupboard, and set wine before me, and a glass. i drank quite quietly till i had had enough, and asked what there was to pay. she said 'threepence,' and i said 'too much,' as i paid it. at this the ox-faced man grunted and frowned, and i was afraid; but hiding my fear i walked out boldly and slowly, and made a noise with my stick upon the floor of the hall without. neither did i bid them farewell. but i made a sign at the house as i left it. whether it suffered from this as did the house at dorchester which the man in the boat caused to wither in one night, is more than i can tell. the road led straight across the valley and approached the further wall of hills. these i saw were pierced by one of the curious gaps which are peculiar to limestone ranges. water cuts them, and a torrent ran through this one also. the road through it, gap though it was, went up steeply, and the further valley was evidently higher than the one i was leaving. it was already evening as i entered this narrow ravine; the sun only caught the tops of the rock-walls. my fatigue was very great, and my walking painful to an extreme, when, having come to a place where the gorge was narrowest and where the two sides were like the posts of a giant's stile, where also the fifth ridge of the jura stood up beyond me in the further valley, a vast shadow, i sat down wearily and drew what not even my exhaustion could render unremarkable. while i was occupied sketching the slabs of limestone, i heard wheels coming up behind me, and a boy in a waggon stopped and hailed me. what the boy wanted to know was whether i would take a lift, and this he said in such curious french that i shuddered to think how far i had pierced into the heart of the hills, and how soon i might come to quite strange people. i was greatly tempted to get into his cart, but though i had broken so many of my vows one remained yet whole and sound, which was that i would ride upon no wheeled thing. remembering this, therefore, and considering that the faith is rich in interpretation, i clung on to the waggon in such a manner that it did all my work for me, and yet could not be said to be actually carrying me. _distinguo_. the essence of a vow is its literal meaning. the spirit and intention are for the major morality, and concern natural religion, but when upon a point of ritual or of dedication or special worship a man talks to you of the spirit and intention, and complains of the dryness of the word, look at him askance. he is not far removed from heresy. i knew a man once that was given to drinking, and i made up this rule for him to distinguish between bacchus and the devil. to wit: that he should never drink what has been made and sold since the reformation--i mean especially spirits and champagne. let him (said i) drink red wine and white, good beer and mead--if he could get it--liqueurs made by monks, and, in a word, all those feeding, fortifying, and confirming beverages that our fathers drank in old time; but not whisky, nor brandy, nor sparkling wines, not absinthe, nor the kind of drink called gin. this he promised to do, and all went well. he became a merry companion, and began to write odes. his prose clarified and set, that had before been very mixed and cloudy. he slept well; he comprehended divine things; he was already half a republican, when one fatal day--it was the feast of the eleven thousand virgins, and they were too busy up in heaven to consider the needs of us poor hobbling, polyktonous and betempted wretches of men--i went with him to the society for the prevention of annoyances to the rich, where a certain usurer's son was to read a paper on the cruelty of spaniards to their mules. as we were all seated there round a table with a staring green cloth on it, and a damnable gas pendant above, the host of that evening offered him whisky and water, and, my back being turned, he took it. then when i would have taken it from him he used these words-- 'after all, it is the intention of a pledge that matters;' and i saw that all was over, for he had abandoned definition, and was plunged back into the horrible mazes of conscience and natural religion. what do you think, then, was the consequence? why, he had to take some nasty pledge or other to drink nothing whatever, and become a spectacle and a judgement, whereas if he had kept his exact word he might by this time have been a happy man. remembering him and pondering upon the advantage of strict rule, i hung on to my cart, taking care to let my feet still feel the road, and so passed through the high limestone gates of the gorge, and was in the fourth valley of the jura, with the fifth ridge standing up black and huge before me against the last of the daylight. there were as yet no stars. there, in this silent place, was the little village of undervelier, and i thanked the boy, withdrew from his cart, and painfully approached the inn, where i asked the woman if she could give me something to eat, and she said that she could in about an hour, using, however, with regard to what it was i was to have, words which i did not understand. for the french had become quite barbaric, and i was now indeed lost in one of the inner places of the world. a cigar is, however, even in undervelier, a cigar; and the best cost a penny. one of these, therefore, i bought, and then i went out smoking it into the village square, and, finding a low wall, leaned over it and contemplated the glorious clear green water tumbling and roaring along beneath it on the other side; for a little river ran through the village. as i leaned there resting and communing i noticed how their church, close at hand, was built along the low banks of the torrent. i admired the luxuriance of the grass these waters fed, and the generous arch of the trees beside it. the graves seemed set in a natural place of rest and home, and just beyond this churchyard was that marriage of hewn stone and water which is the source of so peculiar a satisfaction; for the church tower was built boldly right out into the stream and the current went eddying round it. but why it is that strong human building when it dips into water should thus affect the mind i cannot say, only i know that it is an emotion apart to see our device and structure where it is most enduring come up against and challenge that element which we cannot conquer, and which has always in it something of danger for men. it is therefore well to put strong mouldings on to piers and quays, and to make an architecture of them, and so it was a splendid thought of the romans to build their villas right out to sea; so they say does venice enthrall one, but where i have most noticed this thing is at the mont st michel--only one must take care to shut one's eyes or sleep during all the low tide. as i was watching that stream against those old stones, my cigar being now half smoked, a bell began tolling, and it seemed as if the whole village were pouring into the church. at this i was very much surprised, not having been used at any time of my life to the unanimous devotion of an entire population, but having always thought of the faith as something fighting odds, and having seen unanimity only in places where some sham religion or other glozed over our tragedies and excused our sins. certainly to see all the men, women, and children of a place taking catholicism for granted was a new sight, and so i put my cigar carefully down under a stone on the top of the wall and went in with them. i then saw that what they were at was vespers. all the village sang, knowing the psalms very well, and i noticed that their latin was nearer german than french; but what was most pleasing of all was to hear from all the men and women together that very noble good-night and salutation to god which begins-- _te, lucis ante terminum._ my whole mind was taken up and transfigured by this collective act, and i saw for a moment the catholic church quite plain, and i remembered europe, and the centuries. then there left me altogether that attitude of difficulty and combat which, for us others, is always associated with the faith. the cities dwindled in my imagination, and i took less heed of the modern noise. i went out with them into the clear evening and the cool. i found my cigar and lit it again, and musing much more deeply than before, not without tears, i considered the nature of belief. of its nature it breeds a reaction and an indifference. those who believe nothing but only think and judge cannot understand this. of its nature it struggles with us. and we, we, when our youth is full on us, invariably reject it and set out in the sunlight content with natural things. then for a long time we are like men who follow down the cleft of a mountain and the peaks are hidden from us and forgotten. it takes years to reach the dry plain, and then we look back and see our home. what is it, do you think, that causes the return? i think it is the problem of living; for every day, every experience of evil, demands a solution. that solution is provided by the memory of the great scheme which at last we remember. our childhood pierces through again... but i will not attempt to explain it, for i have not the power; only i know that we who return suffer hard things; for there grows a gulf between us and many companions. we are perpetually thrust into minorities, and the world almost begins to talk a strange language; we are troubled by the human machinery of a perfect and superhuman revelation; we are over-anxious for its safety, alarmed, and in danger of violent decisions. and this is hard: that the faith begins to make one abandon the old way of judging. averages and movements and the rest grow uncertain. we see things from within and consider one mind or a little group as a salt or leaven. the very nature of social force seems changed to us. and this is hard when a man has loved common views and is happy only with his fellows. and this again is very hard, that we must once more take up that awful struggle to reconcile two truths and to keep civic freedom sacred in spite of the organization of religion, and not to deny what is certainly true. it is hard to accept mysteries, and to be humble. we are tost as the great schoolmen were tost, and we dare not neglect the duty of that wrestling. but the hardest thing of all is that it leads us away, as by a command, from all that banquet of the intellect than which there is no keener joy known to man. i went slowly up the village place in the dusk, thinking of this deplorable weakness in men that the faith is too great for them, and accepting it as an inevitable burden. i continued to muse with my eyes upon the ground... there was to be no more of that studious content, that security in historic analysis, and that constant satisfaction of an appetite which never cloyed. a wisdom more imperative and more profound was to put a term to the comfortable wisdom of learning. all the balance of judgement, the easy, slow convictions, the broad grasp of things, the vision of their complexity, the pleasure in their innumerable life--all that had to be given up. fanaticisms were no longer entirely to be despised, just appreciations and a strong grasp of reality no longer entirely to be admired. the catholic church will have no philosophies. she will permit no comforts; the cry of the martyrs is in her far voice; her eyes that see beyond the world present us heaven and hell to the confusion of our human reconciliations, our happy blending of good and evil things. by the lord! i begin to think this intimate religion as tragic as a great love. there came back into my mind a relic that i have in my house. it is a panel of the old door of my college, having carved on it my college arms. i remembered the lion and the shield, _haec fuit, haec almae janua sacra domus._ yes, certainly religion is as tragic as first love, and drags us out into the void away from our dear homes. it is a good thing to have loved one woman from a child, and it is a good thing not to have to return to the faith. they cook worse in undervelier than any place i was ever in, with the possible exception of omaha, neb. lector. why do you use phrases like _'possible exception'?_ auctor. why not? i see that all the religion i have stuck into the book has no more effect on you than had rousseau upon sir henry maine. you are as full of pride as a minor devil. you would avoid the _cliché_ and the commonplace, and the _phrase toute faite_. why? not because you naturally write odd prose--contrariwise, left to yourself you write pure journalese; but simply because you are swelled and puffed up with a desire to pose. you want what the martha brown school calls 'distinction' in prose. my little friend, i know how it is done, and i find it contemptible. people write their articles at full speed, putting down their unstudied and valueless conclusions in english as pale as a film of dirty wax--sometimes even they dictate to a typewriter. then they sit over it with a blue pencil and carefully transpose the split infinitives, and write alternative adjectives, and take words away out of their natural place in the sentence and generally put the queen's english--yes, the queen's english--on the rack. and who is a penny the better for it? the silly authors get no real praise, not even in the horrible stucco villas where their clique meet on sundays. the poor public buys the _marvel_ and gasps at the cleverness of the writing and despairs, and has to read what it can understand, and is driven back to toshy novels about problems, written by cooks. 'the hungry sheep,' as some one says somewhere, 'look up and are not fed;' and the same poet well describes your pipings as being on wretched straw pipes that are 'scrannel'--a good word. oh, for one man who should write healthy, hearty, straightforward english! oh, for cobbett! there are indeed some great men who write twistedly simply because they cannot help it, but _their_ honesty is proved by the mass they turn out. what do you turn out, you higglers and sticklers? perhaps a bad triolet every six months, and a book of criticism on something thoroughly threadbare once in five years. if i had my way-- lector. i am sorry to have provoked all this. auctor. not at all! not at all! i trust i have made myself clear. well, as i was saying, they cook worse at undervelier than any place i was ever in, with the possible exception of omaha, neb. however, i forgave them, because they were such good people, and after a short and bitter night i went out in the morning before the sun rose and took the moutier road. the valley in which i was now engaged--the phrase seems familiar--was more or less like an h. that is, there were two high parallel ranges bounding it, but across the middle a low ridge of perhaps a thousand feet. the road slowly climbed this ridge through pastures where cows with deep-toned bells were rising from the dew on the grass, and where one or two little cottages and a village already sent up smoke. all the way up i was thinking of the surfeit of religion i had had the night before, and also of how i had started that morning without bread or coffee, which was a folly. when i got to the top of the ridge there was a young man chopping wood outside a house, and i asked him in french how far it was to moutier. he answered in german, and i startled him by a loud cry, such as sailors give when they see land, for at last i had struck the boundary of the languages, and was with pure foreigners for the first time in my life. i also asked him for coffee, and as he refused it i took him to be a heretic and went down the road making up verses against all such, and singing them loudly through the forest that now arched over me and grew deeper as i descended. and my first verse was-- heretics all, whoever you be, in tarbes or nimes, or over the sea, you never shall have good words from me. _caritas non conturbat me._ if you ask me why i put a latin line at the end, it was because i had to show that it was a song connected with the universal fountain and with european culture, and with all that heresy combats. i sang it to a lively hymn-tune that i had invented for the occasion. i then thought what a fine fellow i was, and how pleasant were my friends when i agreed with them. i made up this second verse, which i sang even more loudly than the first; and the forest grew deeper, sending back echoes-- but catholic men that live upon wine are deep in the water, and frank, and fine; wherever i travel i find it so, _benedicamus domino._ there is no doubt, however, that if one is really doing a catholic work, and expressing one's attitude to the world, charity, pity, and a great sense of fear should possess one, or, at least, appear. so i made up this third verse and sang it to suit-- on childing women that are forlorn, and men that sweat in nothing but scorn: that is on all that ever were born, _miserere domine._ then, as everything ends in death, and as that is just what heretics least like to be reminded of, i ended thus-- to my poor self on my deathbed, and all my dear companions dead, because of the love that i bore them, _dona eis requiem._ i say 'i ended.' but i did not really end there, for i also wrote in the spirit of the rest a verse of mea culpa and confession of sin, but i shall not print it here. so my song over and the woods now left behind, i passed up a dusty piece of road into moutier, a detestable town, all whitewashed and orderly, down under the hills. i was tired, for the sun was now long risen and somewhat warm, and i had walked ten miles, and that over a high ridge; and i had written a canticle and sung it--- and all that without a sup or a bite. i therefore took bread, coffee, and soup in moutier, and then going a little way out of the town i crossed a stream off the road, climbed a knoll, and, lying under a tree, i slept. i awoke and took the road. the road after moutier was not a thing for lyrics; it stirred me in no way. it was bare in the sunlight, had fields on either side; and in the fields stood houses. in the houses were articulately-speaking mortal men. there is a school of poets (i cannot read them myself) who treat of common things, and their admirers tell us that these men raise the things of everyday life to the plane of the supernatural. note that phrase, for it is a shaft of light through a cloud revealing their disgusting minds. everyday life! as _la croix_ said in a famous leading article: _'la presse?'_ pooh!' i know that everyday life. it goes with sandals and pictures of lean ugly people all just like one another in browny photographs on the wall, and these pictures are called, one 'the house of life', or another, 'the place beautiful', or yet again a third, 'the lamp of the valley', and when you complain and shift about uneasily before these pictures, the scrub-minded and dusty-souled owners of them tell you that of course in photographs you lose the marvellous colour of the original. this everyday life has mantelpieces made of the same stuff as cafe-tables, so that by instinct i try to make rings on them with my wine-glass, and the people who suffer this life get up every morning at eight, and the poor sad men of the house slave at wretched articles and come home to hear more literature and more appreciations, and the unholy women do nothing and attend to local government, that is, the oppression of the poor; and altogether this accursed everyday life of theirs is instinct with the four sins crying to heaven for vengeance, and there is no humanity in it, and no simplicity, and no recollection. i know whole quarters of the towns of that life where they have never heard of virtus or verecundia or pietas. lector. then-- auctor. alas! alas! dear lector, in these houses there is no honest dust. not a bottle of good wine or bad; no prints inherited from one's uncle, and no children's books by mrs barbauld or miss edgeworth; no human disorder, nothing of that organic comfort which makes a man's house like a bear's fur for him. they have no debts, they do not read in bed, and they will have difficulty in saving their souls. lector. then tell me, how would you treat of common things? auctor. why, i would leave them alone; but if i had to treat of them i will show you how i would do it. let us have a dialogue about this road from moutier. lector. by all means. auctor. what a terrible thing it is to miss one's sleep. i can hardly bear the heat of the road, and my mind is empty! lector. why, you have just slept in a wood! auctor. yes, but that is not enough. one must sleep at night. lector. my brother often complains of insomnia. he is a policeman. auctor. indeed? it is a sad affliction. lector. yes, indeed. auctor. indeed, yes. lector. i cannot go on like this. auctor. there. that is just what i was saying. one cannot treat of common things: it is not literature; and for my part, if i were the editor even of a magazine, and the author stuck in a string of dialogue, i would not pay him by the page but by the word, and i would count off per cent for epigrams, per cent for dialect, and some quarter or so for those stage directions in italics which they use to pad out their work. so. i will not repeat this experiment, but next time i come to a bit of road about which there is nothing to say, i will tell a story or sing a song, and to that i pledge myself. by the way, i am reminded of something. do you know those books and stories in which parts of the dialogues often have no words at all? only dots and dashes and asterisks and interrogations? i wonder what the people are paid for it? if i knew i would earn a mint of money, for i believe i have a talent for it. look at this-- there. that seems to me worth a good deal more money than all the modern 'delineation of character', and 'folk' nonsense ever written. what verve! what terseness! and yet how clear! lector. let us be getting on. auctor. by all means, and let us consider more enduring things. after a few miles the road going upwards, i passed through another gap in the hills and-- lector. pardon me, but i am still ruminating upon that little tragedy of yours. why was the guardian a duchess? auctor. well, it was a short play and modern, was it not? lector. yes. and therefore, of course, you must have a title in it. i know that. i do not object to it. what i want to know is, why a duchess? auctor. on account of the reduction of scale: the concentration of the thing. you see in the full play there would have been a lord, two baronets, and say three ladies, and i could have put suitable words into their mouths. as it was i had to make absolutely sure of the element of nobility without any help, and, as it were, in one startling moment. do you follow? is it not art? i cannot conceive why a pilgrimage, an adventure so naturally full of great, wonderful, far-off and holy things should breed such fantastic nonsense as all this; but remember at least the little acolyte of rheims, whose father, in , seeing him apt for religion, put him into a cassock and designed him for the church, whereupon the youngling began to be as careless and devilish as mercury, putting beeswax on the misericords, burning feathers in the censer, and even going round himself with the plate without leave and scolding the rich in loud whispers when they did not put in enough. so one way with another they sent him home to his father; the archbishop thrusting him out of the south porch with his own hands and giving him the common or ferial malediction, which is much the same as that used by carters to stray dogs. when his father saw him he fumed terribly, cursing like a pagan, and asking whether his son were a roysterer fit for the gallows as well as a fool fit for a cassock. on hearing which complaint the son very humbly and contritely said-- 'it is not my fault but the contact with the things of the church that makes me gambol and frisk, just as the devil they say is a good enough fellow left to himself and is only moderately heated, yet when you put him into holy water all the world is witness how he hisses and boils.' the boy then taking a little lamb which happened to be in the drawing-room, said-- 'father, see this little lamb; how demure he is and how simple and innocent, and how foolish and how tractable. yet observe!' with that he whipped the cassock from his arm where he was carrying it and threw it all over the lamb, covering his head and body; and the lamb began plunging and kicking and bucking and rolling and heaving and sliding and rearing and pawing and most vigorously wrestling with the clerical and hierarchically constraining garment of darkness, and bleating all the while more and more angrily and loudly, for all the world like the great goat baphomet himself when the witches dance about him on all-hallowe'en. but when the boy suddenly plucked off the cassock again, the lamb, after sneezing a little and finding his feet, became quite gentle once more, and looked only a little confused and dazed. 'there, father,' said the boy, 'is proof to you of how the meekest may be driven to desperation by the shackles i speak of, and which i pray you never lay upon me again.' his father finding him so practical and wise made over his whole fortune and business to him, and thus escaped the very heavy heriot and death dues of those days, for he was a socage tenant of st remi in double burgage. but we stopped all that here in england by the statute of uses, and i must be getting back to the road before the dark catches me. as i was saying, i came to a gap in the hills, and there was there a house or two called gansbrunnen, and one of the houses was an inn. just by the inn the road turned away sharply up the valley; the very last slope of the jura, the last parallel ridge, lay straight before me all solemn, dark, and wooded, and making a high feathery line against the noon. to cross this there was but a vague path rather misleading, and the name of the mountain was weissenstein. so before that last effort which should lead me over those thousands of feet, and to nourish instinct (which would be of use to me when i got into that impenetrable wood), i turned into the inn for wine. a very old woman having the appearance of a witch sat at a dark table by the little criss-cross window of the dark room. she was crooning to herself, and i made the sign of the evil eye and asked her in french for wine; but french she did not understand. catching, however, two words which sounded like the english 'white' and 'red', i said 'yaw' after the last and nodded, and she brought up a glass of exceedingly good red wine which i drank in silence, she watching me uncannily. then i paid her with a five-franc piece, and she gave me a quantity of small change rapidly, which, as i counted it, i found to contain one greek piece of fifty lepta very manifestly of lead. this i held up angrily before her, and (not without courage, for it is hard to deal with the darker powers) i recited to her slowly that familiar verse which the well-known satyricus empiricius was for ever using in his now classical attacks on the grammarians; and without any alexandrian twaddle of accents i intoned to her--and so left her astounded to repentance or to shame. then i went out into the sunlight, and crossing over running water put myself out of her power. the wood went up darkly and the path branched here and there so that i was soon uncertain of my way, but i followed generally what seemed to me the most southerly course, and so came at last up steeply through a dip or ravine that ended high on the crest of the ridge. just as i came to the end of the rise, after perhaps an hour, perhaps two, of that great curtain of forest which had held the mountain side, the trees fell away to brushwood, there was a gate, and then the path was lost upon a fine open sward which was the very top of the jura and the coping of that multiple wall which defends the swiss plain. i had crossed it straight from edge to edge, never turning out of my way. it was too marshy to lie down on it, so i stood a moment to breathe and look about me. it was evident that nothing higher remained, for though a new line of wood--firs and beeches--stood before me, yet nothing appeared above them, and i knew that they must be the fringe of the descent. i approached this edge of wood, and saw that it had a rough fence of post and rails bounding it, and as i was looking for the entry of a path (for my original path was lost, as such tracks are, in the damp grass of the little down) there came to me one of those great revelations which betray to us suddenly the higher things and stand afterwards firm in our minds. there, on this upper meadow, where so far i had felt nothing but the ordinary gladness of the summit, i had a vision. what was it i saw? if you think i saw this or that, and if you think i am inventing the words, you know nothing of men. i saw between the branches of the trees in front of me a sight in the sky that made me stop breathing, just as great danger at sea, or great surprise in love, or a great deliverance will make a man stop breathing. i saw something i had known in the west as a boy, something i had never seen so grandly discovered as was this. in between the branches of the trees was a great promise of unexpected lights beyond. i pushed left and right along that edge of the forest and along the fence that bound it, until i found a place where the pine-trees stopped, leaving a gap, and where on the right, beyond the gap, was a tree whose leaves had failed; there the ground broke away steeply below me, and the beeches fell, one below the other, like a vast cascade, towards the limestone cliffs that dipped down still further, beyond my sight. i looked through this framing hollow and praised god. for there below me, thousands of feet below me, was what seemed an illimitable plain; at the end of that world was an horizon, and the dim bluish sky that overhangs an horizon. there was brume in it and thickness. one saw the sky beyond the edge of the world getting purer as the vault rose. but right up--a belt in that empyrean--ran peak and field and needle of intense ice, remote, remote from the world. sky beneath them and sky above them, a steadfast legion, they glittered as though with the armour of the immovable armies of heaven. two days' march, three days' march away, they stood up like the walls of eden. i say it again, they stopped my breath. i had seen them. so little are we, we men: so much are we immersed in our muddy and immediate interests that we think, by numbers and recitals, to comprehend distance or time, or any of our limiting infinities. here were these magnificent creatures of god, i mean the alps, which now for the first time i saw from the height of the jura; and because they were fifty or sixty miles away, and because they were a mile or two high, they were become something different from us others, and could strike one motionless with the awe of supernatural things. up there in the sky, to which only clouds belong and birds and the last trembling colours of pure light, they stood fast and hard; not moving as do the things of the sky. they were as distant as the little upper clouds of summer, as fine and tenuous; but in their reflection and in their quality as it were of weapons (like spears and shields of an unknown array) they occupied the sky with a sublime invasion: and the things proper to the sky were forgotten by me in their presence as i gazed. to what emotion shall i compare this astonishment? so, in first love one finds that _this_ can belong to _me._ their sharp steadfastness and their clean uplifted lines compelled my adoration. up there, the sky above and below them, part of the sky, but part of us, the great peaks made communion between that homing creeping part of me which loves vineyards and dances and a slow movement among pastures, and that other part which is only properly at home in heaven. i say that this kind of description is useless, and that it is better to address prayers to such things than to attempt to interpret them for others. these, the great alps, seen thus, link one in some way to one's immortality. nor is it possible to convey, or even to suggest, those few fifty miles, and those few thousand feet; there is something more. let me put it thus: that from the height of weissenstein i saw, as it were, my religion. i mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of god, the infinite potentiality of reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny. for i know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man. since i could now see such a wonder and it could work such things in my mind, therefore, some day i should be part of it. that is what i felt. this it is also which leads some men to climb mountain-tops, but not me, for i am afraid of slipping down. then you will say, if i felt all this, why do i draw it, and put it in my book, seeing that my drawings are only for fun? my jest drags down such a memory and makes it ludicrous. well, i said in my beginning that i would note down whatever most impressed me, except figures, which i cannot draw (i mean figures of human beings, for mathematical figures i can draw well enough), and i have never failed in this promise, except where, as in the case of porrentruy, my drawing was blown away by the wind and lost--- if anything ever is lost. so i put down here this extraordinary drawing of what i saw, which is about as much like it as a printed song full of misprints is to that same song sung by an army on the march. and i am consoled by remembering that if i could draw infinitely well, then it would become sacrilege to attempt to draw that sight. moreover, i am not going to waste any more time discussing why i put in this little drawing. if it disturbs your conception of what it was i saw, paste over it a little bit of paper. i have made it small for the purpose; but remember that the paper should be thin and opaque, for thick paper will interfere with the shape of this book, and transparent paper will disturb you with a memory of the picture. it was all full of this, as a man is full of music just after hearing it, that i plunged down into the steep forest that led towards the great plain; then, having found a path, i worked zig-zag down it by a kind of gully that led through to a place where the limestone cliffs were broken, and (so my map told me) to the town of soleure, which stands at the edge of the plain upon the river aar. i was an hour or more going down the enormous face of the jura, which is here an escarpment, a cliff of great height, and contains but few such breaks by which men can pick their way. it was when i was about half-way down the mountain side that its vastness most impressed me. and yet it had been but a platform as it were, from which to view the alps and their much greater sublimity. this vastness, even of these limestone mountains, took me especially at a place where the path bordered a steep, or rather precipitous, lift of white rock to which only here and there a tree could cling. i was still very high up, but looking somewhat more eastward than before, and the plain went on inimitably towards some low vague hills; nor in that direction could any snow be seen in the sky. then at last i came to the slopes which make a little bank under the mountains, and there, finding a highroad, and oppressed somewhat suddenly by the afternoon heat of those low places, i went on more slowly towards soleure. beside me, on the road, were many houses, shaded by great trees, built of wood, and standing apart. to each of them almost was a little water-wheel, run by the spring which came down out of the ravine. the water-wheel in most cases worked a simple little machine for sawing planks, but in other cases it seemed used for some purpose inside the house, which i could not divine; perhaps for spinning. all this place was full of working, and the men sang and spoke at their work in german, which i could not understand. i did indeed find one man, a young hay-making man carrying a scythe, who knew a little french and was going my way. i asked him, therefore, to teach me german, but he had not taught me much before we were at the gates of the old town and then i left him. it is thus, you will see, that for my next four days or five, which were passed among the german-speaking swiss, i was utterly alone. this book must not go on for ever; therefore i cannot say very much about soleure, although there is a great deal to be said about it. it is distinguished by an impression of unity, and of civic life, which i had already discovered in all these swiss towns; for though men talk of finding the middle ages here or there, i for my part never find it, save where there has been democracy to preserve it. thus i have seen the middle ages especially alive in the small towns of northern france, and i have seen the middle ages in the university of paris. here also in switzerland. as i had seen it at st ursanne, so i found it now at soleure. there were huge gates flanking the town, and there was that evening a continual noise of rifles, at which the swiss are for ever practising. over the church, however, i saw something terribly seventeenth century, namely, jaweh in great hebrew letters upon its front. well, dining there of the best they had to give me (for this was another milestone in my pilgrimage), i became foolishly refreshed and valiant, and instead of sleeping in soleure, as a wise man would have done, i determined, though it was now nearly dark, to push on upon the road to burgdorf. i therefore crossed the river aar, which is here magnificently broad and strong, and has bastions jutting out into it in a very bold fashion. i saw the last colourless light of evening making its waters seem like dull metal between the gloomy banks; i felt the beginnings of fatigue, and half regretted my determination. but as it is quite certain that one should never go back, i went on in the darkness, i do not know how many miles, till i reached some cross roads and an inn. this inn was very poor, and the people had never heard in their lives, apparently, that a poor man on foot might not be able to talk german, which seemed to me an astonishing thing; and as i sat there ordering beer for myself and for a number of peasants (who but for this would have me their butt, and even as it was found something monstrous in me), i pondered during my continual attempts to converse with them (for i had picked up some ten words of their language) upon the folly of those who imagine the world to be grown smaller by railways. i suppose this place was more untouched, as the phrase goes, that is, more living, more intense, and more powerful to affect others, whenever it may be called to do so, than are even the dear villages of sussex that lie under my downs. for those are haunted by a nearly cosmopolitan class of gentry, who will have actors, financiers, and what not to come and stay with them, and who read the paper, and from time to time address their village folk upon matters of politics. but here, in this broad plain by the banks of the emmen, they knew of nothing but themselves and the church which is the common bond of europe, and they were in the right way. hence it was doubly hard on me that they should think me such a stranger. when i had become a little morose at their perpetual laughter, i asked for a bed, and the landlady, a woman of some talent, showed me on her fingers that the beds were c., c., and a franc. i determined upon the best, and was given indeed a very pleasant room, having in it the statue of a saint, and full of a country air. but i had done too much in this night march, as you will presently learn, for my next day was a day without salt, and in it appreciation left me. and this breakdown of appreciation was due to what i did not know at the time to be fatigue, but to what was undoubtedly a deep inner exhaustion. when i awoke next morning it was as it always is: no one was awake, and i had the field to myself, to slip out as i chose. i looked out of the window into the dawn. the race had made its own surroundings. these people who suffocated with laughter at the idea of one's knowing no german, had produced, as it were, a german picture by the mere influence of years and years of similar thoughts. out of my window i saw the eaves coming low down. i saw an apple-tree against the grey light. the tangled grass in the little garden, the dog-kennel, and the standing butt were all what i had seen in those german pictures which they put into books for children, and which are drawn in thick black lines: nor did i see any reason why tame faces should not appear in that framework. i expected the light lank hair and the heavy unlifting step of the people whose only emotions are in music. but it was too early for any one to be about, and my german garden, _si j'ose m'exprimer ainsi,_ had to suffice me for an impression of the central europeans. i gazed at it a little while as it grew lighter. then i went downstairs and slipped the latch (which, being german, was of a quaint design). i went out into the road and sighed profoundly. all that day was destined to be covered, so far as my spirit was concerned, with a motionless lethargy. nothing seemed properly to interest or to concern me, and not till evening was i visited by any muse. even my pain (which was now dull and chronic) was no longer a subject for my entertainment, and i suffered from an uneasy isolation that had not the merit of sharpness and was no spur to the mind. i had the feeling that every one i might see would be a stranger, and that their language would be unfamiliar to me, and this, unlike most men who travel, i had never felt before. the reason being this: that if a man has english thoroughly he can wander over a great part of the world familiarly, and meet men with whom he can talk. and if he has french thoroughly all italy, and i suppose spain, certainly belgium, are open to him. not perhaps that he will understand what he hears or will be understood of others, but that the order and nature of the words and the gestures accompanying them are his own. here, however, i, to whom english and french were the same, was to spend (it seemed) whole days among a people who put their verbs at the end, where the curses or the endearments come in french and english, and many of whose words stand for ideas we have not got. i had no room for good-fellowship. i could not sit at tables and expand the air with terrible stories of adventure, nor ask about their politics, nor provoke them to laughter or sadness by my tales. it seemed a poor pilgrimage taken among dumb men. also i have no doubt that i had experienced the ebb of some vitality, for it is the saddest thing about us that this bright spirit with which we are lit from within like lanterns, can suffer dimness. such frailty makes one fear that extinction is our final destiny, and it saps us with numbness, and we are less than ourselves. seven nights had i been on pilgrimage, and two of them had i passed in the open. seven great heights had i climbed: the forest, archettes, the ballon, the mont terrible, the watershed, the pass by moutier, the weissenstein. seven depths had i fallen to: twice to the moselle, the gap of belfort, the gorge of the doubs, glovelier valley, the hole of moutier, and now this plain of the aar. i had marched miles. it was no wonder that on this eighth day i was oppressed and that all the light long i drank no good wine, met no one to remember well, nor sang any songs. all this part of my way was full of what they call duty, and i was sustained only by my knowledge that the vast mountains (which had disappeared) would be part of my life very soon if i still went on steadily towards rome. the sun had risen when i reached burgdorf, and i there went to a railway station, and outside of it drank coffee and ate bread. i also bought old newspapers in french, and looked at everything wearily and with sad eyes. there was nothing to draw. how can a man draw pain in the foot and knee? and that was all there was remarkable at that moment. i watched a train come in. it was full of tourists, who (it may have been a subjective illusion) seemed to me common and worthless people, and sad into the bargain. it was going to interlaken; and i felt a languid contempt for people who went to interlaken instead of driving right across the great hills to rome. after an hour, or so of this melancholy dawdling, i put a map before me on a little marble table, ordered some more coffee, and blew into my tepid life a moment of warmth by the effort of coming to a necessary decision. i had (for the first time since i had left lorraine) the choice of two roads; and why this was so the following map will make clear. here you see that there is no possibility of following the straight way to rome, but that one must go a few miles east or west of it. from burgundy one has to strike a point on the sources of the emmen, and burgdorf is on the emmen. therefore one might follow the emmen all the way up. but it seemed that the road climbed up above a gorge that way, whereas by the other (which is just as straight) the road is good (it seemed) and fairly level. so i chose this latter eastern way, which, at the bifurcation, takes one up a tributary of the emmen, then over a rise to the upper emmen again. do you want it made plainer than that? i should think not. and, tell me--what can it profit you to know these geographical details? believe me, i write them down for my own gratification, not yours. i say a day without salt. a trudge. the air was ordinary, the colours common; men, animals, and trees indifferent. something had stopped working. our energy also is from god, and we should never be proud of it, even if we can cover thirty miles day after day (as i can), or bend a peony in one's hand as could frocot, the driver in my piece--a man you never knew--or write bad verse very rapidly as can so many moderns. i say our energy also is from god, and we should never be proud of it as though it were from ourselves, but we should accept it as a kind of present, and we should be thankful for it; just as a man should thank god for his reason, as did the madman in the story of the rose, who thanked god that he at least was sane though all the rest of the world had recently lost their reason. indeed, this defaillance and breakdown which comes from time to time over the mind is a very sad thing, but it can be made of great use to us if we will draw from it the lesson that we ourselves are nothing. perhaps it is a grace. perhaps in these moments our minds repose... anyhow, a day without salt. you understand that under (or in) these circumstances-- when i was at oxford there was a great and terrible debate that shook the empire, and that intensely exercised the men whom we send out to govern the empire, and which, therefore, must have had its effect upon the empire, as to whether one should say 'under these circumstances' or 'in these circumstances'; nor did i settle matters by calling a conclave and suggesting _quae quum ita sint_ as a common formula, because a new debate arose upon when you should say _sint_ and when you should say _sunt,_ and they all wrangled like kittens in a basket. until there rose a deep-voiced man from an outlying college, who said, 'for my part i will say that under these circumstances, or in these circumstances, or in spite of these circumstances, or hovering playfully above these circumstances, or-- i take you all for fools and pedants, in the chief, in the chevron, and in the quarter fess. fools absolute, and pedants lordless. free fools, unlanded fools, and fools incommensurable, and pedants displayed and rampant of the tierce major. fools incalculable and pedants irreparable; indeed, the arch fool-pedants in a universe of pedantic folly and foolish pedantry, o you pedant-fools of the world!' but by this time he was alone, and thus was this great question never properly decided. under these circumstances, then (or in these circumstances), it would profit you but little if i were to attempt the description of the valley of the emmen, of the first foot-hills of the alps, and of the very uninteresting valley which runs on from langnau. i had best employ my time in telling the story of the hungry student. lector. and if you are so worn-out and bereft of all emotions, how can you tell a story? auctor. these two conditions permit me. first, that i am writing some time after, and that i have recovered; secondly, that the story is not mine, but taken straight out of that nationalist newspaper which had served me so long to wrap up my bread and bacon in my haversack. this is the story, and i will tell it you. now, i think of it, it would be a great waste of time. here am i no farther than perhaps a third of my journey, and i have already admitted so much digression that my pilgrimage is like the story of a man asleep and dreaming, instead of the plain, honest, and straightforward narrative of fact. i will therefore postpone the story of the hungry student till i get into the plains of italy, or into the barren hills of that peninsula, or among the over-well-known towns of tuscany, or in some other place where a little padding will do neither you nor me any great harm. on the other hand, do not imagine that i am going to give you any kind of description of this intolerable day's march. if you want some kind of visual concept (pretty word), take all these little châlets which were beginning and make what you can of them. lector. where are they? auctor. they are still in switzerland; not here. they were overnumerous as i maundered up from where at last the road leaves the valley and makes over a little pass for a place called schangnau. but though it is not a story, on the contrary, an exact incident and the truth--a thing that i would swear to in the court of justice, or quite willingly and cheerfully believe if another man told it to me; or even take as historical if i found it in a modern english history of the anglo-saxon church--though, i repeat, it is a thing actually lived, yet i will tell it you. it was at the very end of the road, and when an enormous weariness had begun to add some kind of interest to this stuffless episode of the dull day, that a peasant with a brutal face, driving a cart very rapidly, came up with me. i said to him nothing, but he said to me some words in german which i did not understand. we were at that moment just opposite a little inn upon the right hand of the road, and the peasant began making signs to me to hold his horse for him while he went in and drank. how willing i was to do this you will not perhaps understand, unless you have that delicate and subtle pleasure in the holding of horses' heads, which is the boast and glory of some rare minds. and i was the more willing to do it from the fact that i have the habit of this kind of thing, acquired in the french manoeuvres, and had once held a horse for no less a person than a general of division, who gave me a franc for it, and this franc i spent later with the men of my battery, purchasing wine. so to make a long story short, as the publisher said when he published the popular edition of _pamela,_ i held the horse for the peasant; always, of course, under the implicit understanding that he should allow me when he came out to have a drink, which i, of course, expected him to bring in his own hands. far from it. i can understand the anger which some people feel against the swiss when they travel in that country, though i will always hold that it is monstrous to come into a man's country of your own accord, and especially into a country so free and so well governed as is switzerland, and then to quarrel with the particular type of citizen that you find there. let us not discuss politics. the point is that the peasant sat in there drinking with his friends for a good three-quarters of an hour. now and then a man would come out and look at the sky, and cough and spit and turn round again and say something to the people within in german, and go off; but no one paid the least attention to me as i held this horse. i was already in a very angry and irritable mood, for the horse was restive and smelt his stable, and wished to break away from me. and all angry and irritable as i was, i turned around to see if this man were coming to relieve me; but i saw him laughing and joking with the people inside; and they were all looking my way out of their window as they laughed. i may have been wrong, but i thought they were laughing at me. a man who knows the swiss intimately, and who has written a book upon 'the drink traffic: the example of switzerland', tells me they certainly were not laughing at me; at any rate, i thought they were, and moved by a sudden anger i let go the reins, gave the horse a great clout, and set him off careering and galloping like a whirlwind down the road from which he had come, with the bit in his teeth and all the storms of heaven in his four feet. instantly, as you may imagine, all the scoffers came tumbling out of the inn, hullabooling, gesticulating, and running like madmen after the horse, and one old man even turned to protest to me. but i, setting my teeth, grasping my staff, and remembering the purpose of my great journey, set on up the road again with my face towards rome. i sincerely hope, trust, and pray that this part of my journey will not seem as dull to you as it did to me at the time, or as it does to me now while i write of it. but now i come to think of it, it cannot seem as dull, for i had to walk that wretched thirty miles or so all the day long, whereas you have not even to read it; for i am not going to say anything more about it, but lead you straight to the end. oh, blessed quality of books, that makes them a refuge from living! for in a book everything can be made to fit in, all tedium can be skipped over, and the intense moments can be made timeless and eternal, and as a poet who is too little known has well said in one of his unpublished lyrics, we, by the art of writing-- can fix the high elusive hour and stand in things divine. and as for high elusive hours, devil a bit of one was there all the way from burgdorf to the inn of the bridge, except the ecstatic flash of joy when i sent that horse careering down the road with his bad master after him and all his gang shouting among the hollow hills. so. it was already evening. i was coming, more tired than ever, to a kind of little pass by which my road would bring me back again to the emmen, now nothing but a torrent. all the slope down the other side of the little pass (three or four hundred feet perhaps) was covered by a village, called, if i remember right, schangnau, and there was a large school on my right and a great number of children there dancing round in a ring and singing songs. the sight so cheered me that i determined to press on up the valley, though with no definite goal for the night. it was a foolish decision, for i was really in the heart of an unknown country, at the end of roads, at the sources of rivers, beyond help. i knew that straight before me, not five miles away, was the brienzer grat, the huge high wall which it was my duty to cross right over from side to side. i did not know whether or not there was an inn between me and that vast barrier. the light was failing. i had perhaps some vague idea of sleeping out, but that would have killed me, for a heavy mist that covered all the tops of the hills and that made a roof over the valley, began to drop down a fine rain; and, as they sing in church on christmas eve, 'the heavens sent down their dews upon a just man'. but that was written in palestine, where rain is a rare blessing; there and then in the cold evening they would have done better to have warmed the righteous. there is no controlling them; they mean well, but they bungle terribly. the road stopped being a road, and became like a californian trail. i approached enormous gates in the hills, high, precipitous, and narrow. the mist rolled over them, hiding their summits and making them seem infinitely lifted up and reaching endlessly into the thick sky; the straight, tenuous lines of the rain made them seem narrower still. just as i neared them, hobbling, i met a man driving two cows, and said to him the word, 'guest-house?' to which he said 'yaw!' and pointed out a clump of trees to me just under the precipice and right in the gates i speak of. so i went there over an old bridge, and found a wooden house and went in. it was a house which one entered without ceremony. the door was open, and one walked straight into a great room. there sat three men playing at cards. i saluted them loudly in french, english, and latin, but they did not understand me, and what seemed remarkable in an hotel (for it was an hotel rather than an inn), no one in the house understood me--neither the servants nor any one; but the servants did not laugh at me as had the poor people near burgdorf, they only stood round me looking at me patiently in wonder as cows do at trains. then they brought me food, and as i did not know the names of the different kinds of food, i had to eat what they chose; and the angel of that valley protected me from boiled mutton. i knew, however, the word wein, which is the same in all languages, and so drank a quart of it consciously and of a set purpose. then i slept, and next morning at dawn i rose up, put on my thin, wet linen clothes, and went downstairs. no one was about. i looked around for something to fill my sack. i picked up a great hunk of bread from the dining-room table, and went out shivering into the cold drizzle that was still falling from a shrouded sky. before me, a great forbidding wall, growing blacker as it went upwards and ending in a level line of mist, stood the brienzer grat. to understand what i next had to do it is necessary to look back at the little map on page . you will observe that the straight way to rome cuts the lake of brienz rather to the eastward of the middle, and then goes slap over wetterhorn and strikes the rhone valley at a place called ulrichen. that is how a bird would do it, if some high pope of birds lived in rome and needed visiting, as, for instance, the great auk; or if some old primal relic sacred to birds was connected therewith, as, for instance, the bones of the dodo.... but i digress. the point is that the straight line takes one over the brienzer grat, over the lake, and then over the wetterhorn. that was manifestly impossible. but whatever of it was possible had to be done, and among the possible things was clambering over the high ridge of the brienzer grat instead of going round like a coward by interlaken. after i had clambered over it, however, needs must i should have to take a pass called the grimsel pass and reach the rhone valley that way. it was with such a determination that i had come here to the upper waters of the emmen, and stood now on a moist morning in the basin where that stream rises, at the foot of the mountain range that divided me from the lake. the brienzer grat is an extraordinary thing. it is quite straight; its summits are, of course, of different heights, but from below they seem even, like a ridge: and, indeed, the whole mountain is more like a ridge than any other i have seen. at one end is a peak called the 'red horn', the other end falls suddenly above interlaken, and wherever you should cut it you would get a section like this, for it is as steep as anything can be short of sheer rock. there are no precipices on it, though there are nasty slabs quite high enough to kill a man--i saw several of three or four hundred feet. it is about five or six thousand feet high, and it stands right up and along the northern shore of the lake of brienz. i began the ascent. spongy meads, that soughed under the feet and grew steeper as one rose, took up the first few hundred feet. little rivulets of mere dampness ran in among the under moss, and such very small hidden flowers as there were drooped with the surfeit of moisture. the rain was now indistinguishable from a mist, and indeed i had come so near to the level belt of cloud, that already its gloom was exchanged for that diffused light which fills vapours from within and lends them their mystery. a belt of thick brushwood and low trees lay before me, clinging to the slope, and as i pushed with great difficulty and many turns to right and left through its tangle a wisp of cloud enveloped me, and from that time on i was now in, now out, of a deceptive drifting fog, in which it was most difficult to gauge one's progress. now and then a higher mass of rock, a peak on the ridge, would show clear through a corridor of cloud and be hidden again; also at times i would stand hesitating before a sharp wall or slab, and wait for a shifting of the fog to make sure of the best way round. i struck what might have been a loose path or perhaps only a gully; lost it again and found it again. in one place i climbed up a jagged surface for fifty feet, only to find when it cleared that it was no part of the general ascent, but a mere obstacle which might have been outflanked. at another time i stopped for a good quarter of an hour at an edge that might have been an indefinite fall of smooth rock, but that turned out to be a short drop, easy for a man, and not much longer than my body. so i went upwards always, drenched and doubting, and not sure of the height i had reached at any time. at last i came to a place where a smooth stone lay between two pillared monoliths, as though it had been put there for a bench. though all around me was dense mist, yet i could see above me the vague shape of a summit looming quite near. so i said to myself-- 'i will sit here and wait till it grows lighter and clearer, for i must now be within two or three hundred feet of the top of the ridge, and as anything at all may be on the other side, i had best go carefully and knowing my way.' so i sat down facing the way i had to go and looking upwards, till perhaps a movement of the air might show me against a clear sky the line of the ridge, and so let me estimate the work that remained to do. i kept my eyes fixed on the point where i judged that sky line to lie, lest i should miss some sudden gleam revealing it; and as i sat there i grew mournful and began to consider the folly of climbing this great height on an empty stomach. the soldiers of the republic fought their battles often before breakfast, but never, i think, without having drunk warm coffee, and no one should attempt great efforts without some such refreshment before starting. indeed, my fasting, and the rare thin air of the height, the chill and the dampness that had soaked my thin clothes through and through, quite lowered my blood and left it piano, whimpering and irresolute. i shivered and demanded the sun. then i bethought me of the hunk of bread i had stolen, and pulling it out of my haversack i began to munch that ungrateful breakfast. it was hard and stale, and gave me little sustenance; i still gazed upwards into the uniform meaningless light fog, looking for the ridge. suddenly, with no warning to prepare the mind, a faint but distinct wind blew upon me, the mist rose in a wreath backward and upward, and i was looking through clear immensity, not at any ridge, but over an awful gulf at great white fields of death. the alps were right upon me and before me, overwhelming and commanding empty downward distances of air. between them and me was a narrow dreadful space of nothingness and silence, and a sheer mile below us both, a floor to that prodigious hollow, lay the little lake. my stone had not been a halting-place at all, but was itself the summit of the ridge, and those two rocks on either side of it framed a notch upon the very edge and skyline of the high hills of brienz. surprise and wonder had not time to form in my spirit before both were swallowed up by fear. the proximity of that immense wall of cold, the alps, seen thus full from the level of its middle height and comprehended as it cannot be from the depths; its suggestion of something never changing throughout eternity--yet dead--was a threat to the eager mind. they, the vast alps, all wrapped round in ice, frozen, and their immobility enhanced by the delicate, roaming veils which (as from an attraction) hovered in their hollows, seemed to halt the process of living. and the living soul whom they thus perturbed was supported by no companionship. there were no trees or blades of grass around me, only the uneven and primal stones of that height. there were no birds in the gulf; there was no sound. and the whiteness of the glaciers, the blackness of the snow-streaked rocks beyond, was glistening and unsoftened. there had come something evil into their sublimity. i was afraid. nor could i bear to look downwards. the slope was in no way a danger. a man could walk up it without often using his hands, and a man could go down it slowly without any direct fall, though here and there he would have to turn round at each dip or step and hold with his hands and feel a little for his foothold. i suppose the general slope, down, down, to where the green began was not sixty degrees, but have you ever tried looking down five thousand feet at sixty degrees? it drags the mind after it, and i could not bear to begin the descent. however i reasoned with myself. i said to myself that a man should only be afraid of real dangers. that nightmare was not for the daylight. that there was now no mist but a warm sun. then choosing a gully where water sometimes ran, but now dry, i warily began to descend, using my staff and leaning well backwards. there was this disturbing thing about the gully, that it went in steps, and before each step one saw the sky just a yard or two ahead: one lost the comforting sight of earth. one knew of course that it would only be a little drop, and that the slope would begin again, but it disturbed one. and it is a trial to drop or clamber down, say fourteen or fifteen feet, sometimes twenty, and then to find no flat foothold but that eternal steep beginning again. and this outline in which i have somewhat, but not much, exaggerated the slope, will show what i mean. the dotted line is the line of vision just as one got to a 'step'. the little figure is auctor. lector is up in the air looking at him. observe the perspective of the lake below, but make no comments. i went very slowly. when i was about half-way down and had come to a place where a shoulder of heaped rock stood on my left and where little parallel ledges led up to it, having grown accustomed to the descent and easier in my mind, i sat down on a slab and drew imperfectly the things i saw: the lake below me, the first forests clinging to the foot of the alps beyond, their higher slopes of snow, and the clouds that had now begun to gather round them and that altogether hid the last third of their enormous height. then i saw a steamer on the lake. i felt in touch with men. the slope grew easier. i snapped my fingers at the great devils that haunt high mountains. i sniffed the gross and comfortable air of the lower valleys, i entered the belt of wood and was soon going quite a pace through the trees, for i had found a path, and was now able to sing. so i did. at last i saw through the trunks, but a few hundred feet below me, the highroad that skirts the lake. i left the path and scrambled straight down to it. i came to a wall which i climbed, and found myself in somebody's garden. crossing this and admiring its wealth and order (i was careful not to walk on the lawns), i opened a little private gate and came on to the road, and from there to brienz was but a short way along a fine hard surface in a hot morning sun, with the gentle lake on my right hand not five yards away, and with delightful trees upon my left, caressing and sometimes even covering me with their shade. i was therefore dry, ready and contented when i entered by mid morning the curious town of brienz, which is all one long street, and of which the population is protestant. i say dry, ready and contented; dry in my clothes, ready for food, contented with men and nature. but as i entered i squinted up that interminable slope, i saw the fog wreathing again along the ridge so infinitely above me, and i considered myself a fool to have crossed the brienzer grat without breakfast. but i could get no one in brienz to agree with me, because no one thought i had done it, though several people there could talk french. the grimsel pass is the valley of the aar; it is also the eastern flank of that great _massif,_ or bulk and mass of mountains called the bernese oberland. western switzerland, you must know, is not (as i first thought it was when i gazed down from the weissenstein) a plain surrounded by a ring of mountains, but rather it is a plain in its northern half (the plain of the lower aar), and in its southern half it is two enormous parallel lumps of mountains. i call them 'lumps', because they are so very broad and tortuous in their plan that they are hardly ranges. now these two lumps are the bernese oberland and the pennine alps, and between them runs a deep trench called the valley of the rhone. take mont blanc in the west and a peak called the crystal peak over the val bavona on the east, and they are the flanking bastions of one great wall, the pennine alps. take the diablerets on the west, and the wetterhorn on the east, and they are the flanking bastions of another great wall, the bernese oberland. and these two walls are parallel, with the rhone in between. now these two walls converge at a point where there is a sort of knot of mountain ridges, and this point may be taken as being on the boundary between eastern and western switzerland. at this wonderful point the ticino, the rhone, the aar, and the reuss all begin, and it is here that the simple arrangement of the alps to the west turns into the confused jumble of the alps to the east. when you are high up on either wall you can catch the plan of all this, but to avoid a confused description and to help you to follow the marvellous, hannibalian and never-before-attempted charge and march which i made, and which, alas! ended only in a glorious defeat--to help you to picture faintly to yourselves the mirific and horripilant adventure whereby i nearly achieved superhuman success in spite of all the powers of the air, i append a little map which is rough but clear and plain, and which i beg you to study closely, for it will make it easy for you to understand what next happened in my pilgrimage. the dark strips are the deep cloven valleys, the shaded belt is that higher land which is yet passable by any ordinary man. the part left white you may take to be the very high fields of ice and snow with great peaks which an ordinary man must regard as impassable, unless, indeed, he can wait for his weather and take guides and go on as a tourist instead of a pilgrim. you will observe that i have marked five clefts or valleys. a is that of the _aar,_ and the little white patch at the beginning is the lake of brienz. b is that of the _reuss._ c is that of the _rhone;_ and all these three are _north_ of the great watershed or main chain, and all three are full of german-speaking people. on the other hand, d is the valley of the _toccia,_ e of the _maggia,_ and f of the _ticino._ all these three are _south_ of the great watershed, and are inhabited by italian-speaking people. all these three lead down at last to lake major, and so to milan and so to rome. the straight line to rome is marked on my map by a dotted line ending in an arrow, and you will see that it was just my luck that it should cross slap over that knot or tangle of ranges where all the rivers spring. the problem was how to negotiate a passage from the valley of the aar to one of the three italian valleys, without departing too far from my straight line. to explain my track i must give the names of all the high passes between the valleys. that between a and c is called the _grimsel;_ that between b and c the _furka._ that between d and c is the _gries_ pass, that between f and c the _nufenen,_ and that between e and f is not the easy thing it looks on the map; indeed it is hardly a pass at all but a scramble over very high peaks, and it is called the crystalline mountain. finally, on the far right of my map, you see a high passage between b and f. this is the famous st gothard. the straightest way of all was ( ) over the _grimsel,_ then, the moment i got into the valley of the rhone ( ), up out of it again over the _nufenen,_ then the moment i was down into the valley of the _ticino_ (f), up out of it again ( ) over the crystalline to the valley of the _maggia_ (e). once in the maggia valley (the top of it is called the _val bavona),_ it is a straight path for the lakes and rome. there were also these advantages: that i should be in a place very rarely visited--all the guide-books are doubtful on it; that i should be going quite straight; that i should be accomplishing a feat, viz. the crossing of those high passes one after the other (and you must remember that over the nufenen there is no road at all). but every one i asked told me that thus early in the year (it was not the middle of june) i could not hope to scramble over the crystalline. no one (they said) could do it and live. it was all ice and snow and cold mist and verglas, and the precipices were smooth--a man would never get across; so it was not worth while crossing the nufenen pass if i was to be balked at the crystal, and i determined on the gries pass. i said to myself: 'i will go on over the grimsel, and once in the valley of the rhone, i will walk a mile or two down to where the gries pass opens, and i will go over it into italy.' for the gries pass, though not quite in the straight line, had this advantage, that once over it you are really in italy. in the ticino valley or in the val bavona, though the people are as italian as catullus, yet politically they count as part of switzerland; and therefore if you enter italy thereby, you are not suddenly introduced to that country, but, as it were, inoculated, and led on by degrees, which is a pity. for good things should come suddenly, like the demise of that wicked man, mr _(deleted by the censor),_ who had oppressed the poor for some forty years, when he was shot dead from behind a hedge, and died in about the time it takes to boil an egg, and there was an end of him. having made myself quite clear that i had a formed plan to go over the grimsel by the new road, then up over the gries, where there is no road at all, and so down into the vale of the tosa, and having calculated that on the morrow i should be in italy, i started out from brienz after eating a great meal, it being then about midday, and i having already, as you know, crossed the brienzer grat since dawn. the task of that afternoon was more than i could properly undertake, nor did i fulfil it. from brienz to the top of the grimsel is, as the crow flies, quite twenty miles, and by the road a good twenty-seven. it is true i had only come from over the high hills; perhaps six miles in a straight line. but what a six miles! and all without food. not certain, therefore, how much of the pass i could really do that day, but aiming at crossing it, like a fool, i went on up the first miles. for an hour or more after brienz the road runs round the base of and then away from a fine great rock. there is here an alluvial plain like a continuation of the lake, and the aar runs through it, canalized and banked and straight, and at last the road also becomes straight. on either side rise gigantic cliffs enclosing the valley, and (on the day i passed there) going up into the clouds, which, though high, yet made a roof for the valley. from the great mountains on the left the noble rock jutted out alone and dominated the little plain; on the right the buttresses of the main alps all stood in a row, and between them went whorls of vapour high, high up--just above the places where snow still clung to the slopes. these whorls made the utmost steeps more and more misty, till at last they were lost in a kind of great darkness, in which the last and highest banks of ice seemed to be swallowed up. i often stopped to gaze straight above me, and i marvelled at the silence. it was the first part of the afternoon when i got to a place called meiringen, and i thought that there i would eat and drink a little more. so i steered into the main street, but there i found such a yelling and roaring as i had never heard before, and very damnable it was; as though men were determined to do common evil wherever god has given them a chance of living in awe and worship. for they were all bawling and howling, with great placards and tickets, and saying, 'this way to the extraordinary waterfall; that way to the strange cave. come with me and you shall see the never-to-be-forgotten falls of the aar,' and so forth. so that my illusion of being alone in the roots of the world dropped off me very quickly, and i wondered how people could be so helpless and foolish as to travel about in switzerland as tourists and meet with all this vulgarity and beastliness. if a man goes to drink good wine he does not say, 'so that the wine be good i do not mind eating strong pepper and smelling hartshorn as i drink it,' and if a man goes to read a good verse, for instance, jean richepin, he does not say, 'go on playing on the trombone, go on banging the cymbals; so long as i am reading good verse i am content.' yet men now go into the vast hills and sleep and live in their recesses, and pretend to be indifferent to all the touts and shouters and hurry and hotels and high prices and abominations. thank god, it goes in grooves! i say it again, thank god, the railways are trenches that drain our modern marsh, for you have but to avoid railways, even by five miles, and you can get more peace than would fill a nosebag. all the world is my garden since they built railways, and gave me leave to keep off them. also i vowed a franc to the black virgin of la delivrande (next time i should be passing there) because i was delivered from being a tourist, and because all this horrible noise was not being dinned at me (who was a poor and dirty pilgrim, and no kind of prey for these cabmen, and busmen, and guides and couriers), but at a crowd of drawn, sad, jaded tourists that had come in by a train. soon i had left them behind. the road climbed the first step upwards in the valley, going round a rock on the other side of which the aar had cut itself a gorge and rushed in a fall and rapids. then the road went on and on weary mile after weary mile, and i stuck to it, and it rose slowly all the time, and all the time the aar went dashing by, roaring and filling the higher valley with echoes. i got beyond the villages. the light shining suffused through the upper mist began to be the light of evening. rain, very fine and slight, began to fall. it was cold. there met and passed me, going down the road, a carriage with a hood up, driving at full speed. it could not be from over the pass, for i knew that it was not yet open for carriages or carts. it was therefore from a hotel somewhere, and if there was a hotel i should find it. i looked back to ask the distance, but they were beyond earshot, and so i went on. my boots in which i had sworn to walk to rome were ruinous. already since the weissenstein they had gaped, and now the brienzer grat had made the sole of one of them quite free at the toe. it flapped as i walked. very soon i should be walking on my uppers. i limped also, and i hated the wet cold rain. but i had to go on. instead of flourishing my staff and singing, i leant on it painfully and thought of duty, and death, and dereliction, and every other horrible thing that begins with a d. i had to go on. if i had gone back there was nothing for miles. before it was dark--indeed one could still read--i saw a group of houses beyond the aar, and soon after i saw that my road would pass them, going over a bridge. when i reached them i went into the first, saying to myself, 'i will eat, and if i can go no farther i will sleep here.' there were in the house two women, one old, the other young; and they were french-speaking, from the vaud country. they had faces like scotch people, and were very kindly, but odd, being calvinist. i said, 'have you any beans?' they said, 'yes.' i suggested they should make me a dish of beans and bacon, and give me a bottle of wine, while i dried myself at their great stove. all this they readily did for me, and i ate heartily and drank heavily, and they begged me afterwards to stop the night and pay them for it; but i was so set up by my food and wine that i excused myself and went out again and took the road. it was not yet dark. by some reflection from the fields of snow, which were now quite near at hand through the mist, the daylight lingered astonishingly late. the cold grew bitter as i went on through the gloaming. there were no trees save rare and stunted pines. the aar was a shallow brawling torrent, thick with melting ice and snow and mud. coarse grass grew on the rocks sparsely; there were no flowers. the mist overhead was now quite near, and i still went on and steadily up through the half-light. it was as lonely as a calm at sea, except for the noise of the river. i had overworn myself, and that sustaining surface which hides from us in our health the abysses below the mind--i felt it growing weak and thin. my fatigue bewildered me. the occasional steeps beside the road, one especially beneath a high bridge where a tributary falls into the aar in a cascade, terrified me. they were like the emptiness of dreams. at last it being now dark, and i having long since entered the upper mist, or rather cloud (for i was now as high as the clouds), i saw a light gleaming through the fog, just off the road, through pine-trees. it was time. i could not have gone much farther. to this i turned and found there one of those new hotels, not very large, but very expensive. they knew me at once for what i was, and welcomed me with joy. they gave me hot rum and sugar, a fine warm bed, told me i was the first that had yet stopped there that year, and left me to sleep very deep and yet in pain, as men sleep who are stunned. but twice that night i woke suddenly, staring at darkness. i had outworn the physical network upon which the soul depends, and i was full of terrors. next morning i had fine coffee and bread and butter and the rest, like a rich man; in a gilded dining-room all set out for the rich, and served by a fellow that bowed and scraped. also they made me pay a great deal, and kept their eyes off my boots, and were still courteous to me, and i to them. then i bought wine of them--the first wine not of the country that i had drunk on this march, a burgundy--and putting it in my haversack with a nice white roll, left them to wait for the next man whom the hills might send them. the clouds, the mist, were denser than ever in that early morning; one could only see the immediate road. the cold was very great; my clothes were not quite dried, but my heart was high, and i pushed along well enough, though stiffly, till i came to what they call the hospice, which was once a monk-house, i suppose, but is now an inn. i had brandy there, and on going out i found that it stood at the foot of a sharp ridge which was the true grimsel pass, the neck which joins the bernese oberland to the eastern group of high mountains. this ridge or neck was steep like a pitched roof--very high i found it, and all of black glassy rock, with here and there snow in sharp, even, sloping sheets just holding to it. i could see but little of it at a time on account of the mist. hitherto for all these miles the aar had been my companion, and the road, though rising always, had risen evenly and not steeply. now the aar was left behind in the icy glen where it rises, and the road went in an artificial and carefully built set of zig-zags up the face of the cliff. there is a short cut, but i could not find it in the mist. it is the old mule-path. here and there, however, it was possible to cut off long corners by scrambling over the steep black rock and smooth ice, and all the while the cold, soft mist wisped in and out around me. after a thousand feet of this i came to the top of the grimsel, but not before i had passed a place where an avalanche had destroyed the road and where planks were laid. also before one got to the very summit, no short cuts or climbing were possible. the road ran deep in a cutting like a devonshire lane. only here the high banks were solid snow. some little way past the summit, on the first zig-zag down, i passed the lake of the dead in its mournful hollow. the mist still enveloped all the ridge-side, and moved like a press of spirits over the frozen water, then--as suddenly as on the much lower brienzer grat, and (as on the brienzer grat) to the southward and the sun, the clouds lifted and wreathed up backward and were gone, and where there had just been fulness was only an immensity of empty air and a sudden sight of clear hills beyond and of little strange distant things thousands and thousands of feet below. lector. pray are we to have any more of that fine writing? auctor. i saw there as in a cup things that i had thought (when i first studied the map at home) far too spacious and spread apart to go into the view. yet here they were all quite contained and close together, on so vast a scale was the whole place conceived. it was the comb of mountains of which i have written; the meeting of all the valleys. there, from the height of a steep bank, as it were (but a bank many thousands of feet high), one looked down into a whole district or little world. on the map, i say, it had seemed so great that i had thought one would command but this or that portion of it; as it was, one saw it all. and this is a peculiar thing i have noticed in all mountains, and have never been able to understand--- namely, that if you draw a plan or section to scale, your mountain does not seem a very important thing. one should not, in theory, be able to dominate from its height, nor to feel the world small below one, nor to hold a whole countryside in one's hand--yet one does. the mountains from their heights reveal to us two truths. they suddenly make us feel our insignificance, and at the same time they free the immortal mind, and let it feel its greatness, and they release it from the earth. but i say again, in theory, when one considers the exact relation of their height to the distances one views from them, they ought to claim no such effect, and that they can produce that effect is related to another thing--the way in which they exaggerate their own steepness. for instance, those noble hills, my downs in sussex, when you are upon them overlooking the weald, from chanctonbury say, feel like this--or even lower. indeed, it is impossible to give them truly, so insignificant are they; if the stretch of the weald were made nearly a yard long, chanctonbury would not, in proportion, be more than a fifth of an inch high! and yet, from the top of chanctonbury, how one seems to overlook it and possess it all! well, so it was here from the grimsel when i overlooked the springs of the rhone. in true proportion the valley i gazed into and over must have been somewhat like this-- it felt for all the world as deep and utterly below me as this other-- moreover, where there was no mist, the air was so surprisingly clear that i could see everything clean and sharp wherever i turned my eyes. the mountains forbade any very far horizons to the view, and all that i could see was as neat and vivid as those coloured photographs they sell with bright green grass and bright white snow, and blue glaciers like precious stones. i scrambled down the mountain, for here, on the south side of the pass, there was no snow or ice, and it was quite easy to leave the road and take the old path cutting off the zig-zags. as the air got heavier, i became hungry, and at the very end of my descent, two hundred feet or so above the young rhone, i saw a great hotel. i went round to their front door and asked them whether i could eat, and at what price. 'four francs,' they said. 'what!' said i, 'four francs for a meal! come, let me eat in the kitchen, and charge me one.' but they became rude and obstinate, being used only to deal with rich people, so i cursed them, and went down the road. but i was very hungry. the road falls quite steeply, and the rhone, which it accompanies in that valley, leaps in little falls. on a bridge i passed a sad englishman reading a book, and a little lower down, two american women in a carriage, and after that a priest (it was lucky i did not see him first. anyhow, i touched iron at once, to wit, a key in my pocket), and after that a child minding a goat. altogether i felt myself in the world again, and as i was on a good road, all down hill, i thought myself capable of pushing on to the next village. but my hunger was really excessive, my right boot almost gone, and my left boot nothing to exhibit or boast of, when i came to a point where at last one looked down the rhone valley for miles. it is like a straight trench, and at intervals there are little villages, built of most filthy chalets, the said chalets raised on great stones. there are pine-trees up, up on either slope, into the clouds, and beyond the clouds i could not see. i left on my left a village called 'between the waters'. i passed through another called 'ehringen', but it has no inn. at last, two miles farther, faint from lack of food, i got into ulrichen, a village a little larger than the rest, and the place where i believed one should start to go either over the gries or nufenen pass. in ulrichen was a warm, wooden, deep-eaved, frousty, comfortable, ramshackle, dark, anyhow kind of a little inn called 'the bear'. and entering, i saw one of the women whom god loves. she was of middle age, very honest and simple in the face, kindly and good. she was messing about with cooking and stuff, and she came up to me stooping a little, her eyes wide and innocent, and a great spoon in her hand. her face was extremely broad and flat, and i have never seen eyes set so far apart. her whole gait, manner, and accent proved her to be extremely good, and on the straight road to heaven. i saluted her in the french tongue. she answered me in the same, but very broken and rustic, for her natural speech was a kind of mountain german. she spoke very slowly, and had a nice soft voice, and she did what only good people do, i mean, looked you in the eyes as she spoke to you. beware of shifty-eyed people. it is not only nervousness, it is also a kind of wickedness. such people come to no good. i have three of them now in my mind as i write. one is a professor. and, by the way, would you like to know why universities suffer from this curse of nervous disease? why the great personages stammer or have st vitus' dance, or jabber at the lips, or hop in their walk, or have their heads screwed round, or tremble in the fingers, or go through life with great goggles like a motor car? eh? i will tell you. it is the punishment of their _intellectual pride,_ than which no sin is more offensive to the angels. what! here are we with the jolly world of god all round us, able to sing, to draw, to paint, to hammer and build, to sail, to ride horses, to run, to leap; having for our splendid inheritance love in youth and memory in old age, and we are to take one miserable little faculty, our one-legged, knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, rough-skinned, underfed, and perpetually irritated and grumpy intellect, or analytical curiosity rather (a diseased appetite), and let it swell till it eats up every other function? away with such foolery. lector. when shall we get on to... auctor. wait a moment. i say, away with such foolery. note that pedants lose all proportion. they never can keep sane in a discussion. they will go wild on matters they are wholly unable to judge, such as armenian religion or the politics of paris or what not. never do they use one of those three phrases which keep a man steady and balance his mind, i mean the words ( ) _after all it is not my business_. ( ) tut! tut! you don't say so! and ( ) _credo in unum deum patrem omnipotentem, factorem omnium visibilium atque invisibilium;_ in which last there is a power of synthesis that can jam all their analytical dust-heap into such a fine, tight, and compact body as would make them stare to see. i understand that they need six months' holiday a year. had i my way they should take twelve, and an extra day on leap years. lector. pray, pray return to the woman at the inn. auctor. i will, and by this road: to say that on the day of judgement, when st michael weighs souls in his scales, and the wicked are led off by the devil with a great rope, as you may see them over the main porch of notre dame (i will heave a stone after them myself i hope), all the souls of the pedants together will not weigh as heavy and sound as the one soul of this good woman at the inn. she put food before me and wine. the wine was good, but in the food was some fearful herb or other i had never tasted before--a pure spice or scent, and a nasty one. one could taste nothing else, and it was revolting; but i ate it for her sake. then, very much refreshed, i rose, seized my great staff, shook myself and said, 'now it is about noon, and i am off for the frontier.' at this she made a most fearful clamour, saying that it was madness, and imploring me not to think of it, and running out fetched from the stable a tall, sad, pale-eyed man who saluted me profoundly and told me that he knew more of the mountains than any one for miles. and this by asking many afterwards i found out to be true. he said that he had crossed the nufenen and the gries whenever they could be crossed since he was a child, and that if i attempted it that day i should sleep that night in paradise. the clouds on the mountain, the soft snow recently fallen, the rain that now occupied the valleys, the glacier on the gries, and the pathless snow in the mist on the nufenen would make it sheer suicide for him, an experienced guide, and for me a worse madness. also he spoke of my boots and wondered at my poor coat and trousers, and threatened me with intolerable cold. it seems that the books i had read at home, when they said that the nufenen had no snow on it, spoke of a later season of the year; it was all snow now, and soft snow, and hidden by a full mist in such a day from the first third of the ascent. as for the gries, there was a glacier on the top which needed some kind of clearness in the weather. hearing all this i said i would remain--but it was with a heavy heart. already i felt a shadow of defeat over me. the loss of time was a thorn. i was already short of cash, and my next money was milan. my return to england was fixed for a certain date, and stronger than either of these motives against delay was a burning restlessness that always takes men when they are on the way to great adventures. i made him promise to wake me next morning at three o'clock, and, short of a tempest, to try and get me across the gries. as for the nufenen and crystalline passes which i had desired to attempt, and which were (as i have said) the straight line to rome, he said (and he was right), that let alone the impassability of the nufenen just then, to climb the crystal mountain in that season would be as easy as flying to the moon. now, to cross the nufenen alone, would simply land me in the upper valley of the ticino, and take me a great bend out of my way by bellinzona. hence my bargain that at least he should show me over the gries pass, and this he said, if man could do it, he would do the next day; and i, sending my boots to be cobbled (and thereby breaking another vow), crept up to bed, and all afternoon read the school-books of the children. they were in french, from lower down the valley, and very genevese and heretical for so devout a household. but the genevese civilization is the standard for these people, and they combat the calvinism of it with missions, and have statues in their rooms, not to speak of holy water stoups. the rain beat on my window, the clouds came lower still down the mountain. then (as is finely written in the song of roland), 'the day passed and the night came, and i slept.' but with the coming of the small hours, and with my waking, prepare yourselves for the most extraordinary and terrible adventure that befell me out of all the marvels and perils of this pilgrimage, the most momentous and the most worthy of perpetual record, i think, of all that has ever happened since the beginning of the world. at three o'clock the guide knocked at my door, and i rose and came out to him. we drank coffee and ate bread. we put into our sacks ham and bread, and he white wine and i brandy. then we set out. the rain had dropped to a drizzle, and there was no wind. the sky was obscured for the most part, but here and there was a star. the hills hung awfully above us in the night as we crossed the spongy valley. a little wooden bridge took us over the young rhone, here only a stream, and we followed a path up into the tributary ravine which leads to the nufenen and the gries. in a mile or two it was a little lighter, and this was as well, for some weeks before a great avalanche had fallen, and we had to cross it gingerly. beneath the wide cap of frozen snow ran a torrent roaring. i remembered colorado, and how i had crossed the arkansaw on such a bridge as a boy. we went on in the uneasy dawn. the woods began to show, and there was a cross where a man had slipped from above that very april and been killed. then, most ominous and disturbing, the drizzle changed to a rain, and the guide shook his head and said it would be snowing higher up. we went on, and it grew lighter. before it was really day (or else the weather confused and darkened the sky), we crossed a good bridge, built long ago, and we halted at a shed where the cattle lie in the late summer when the snow is melted. there we rested a moment. but on leaving its shelter we noticed many disquieting things. the place was a hollow, the end of the ravine--a bowl, as it were; one way out of which is the nufenen, and the other the gries. here it is in a sketch map. the heights are marked lighter and lighter, from black in the valleys to white in the impassable mountains. e is where we stood, in a great cup or basin, having just come up the ravine b. c is the italian valley of the tosa, and the neck between it and e is the gries. d is the valley of the ticino, and the neck between e and it is the nufenen. a is the crystal mountain. you may take the necks or passes to be about , and the mountains , or , feet above the sea. we noticed, i say, many disquieting things. first, all, that bowl or cup below the passes was a carpet of snow, save where patches of black water showed, and all the passes and mountains, from top to bottom, were covered with very thick snow; the deep surface of it soft and fresh fallen. secondly, the rain had turned into snow. it was falling thickly all around. nowhere have i more perceived the immediate presence of great death. thirdly, it was far colder, and we felt the beginning of a wind. fourthly, the clouds had come quite low down. the guide said it could not be done, but i said we must attempt it. i was eager, and had not yet felt the awful grip of the cold. we left the nufenen on our left, a hopeless steep of new snow buried in fog, and we attacked the gries. for half-an-hour we plunged on through snow above our knees, and my thin cotton clothes were soaked. so far the guide knew we were more or less on the path, and he went on and i panted after him. neither of us spoke, but occasionally he looked back to make sure i had not dropped out. the snow began to fall more thickly, and the wind had risen somewhat. i was afraid of another protest from the guide, but he stuck to it well, and i after him, continually plunging through soft snow and making yard after yard upwards. the snow fell more thickly and the wind still rose. we came to a place which is, in the warm season, an alp; that is, a slope of grass, very steep but not terrifying; having here and there sharp little precipices of rock breaking it into steps, but by no means (in summer) a matter to make one draw back. now, however, when everything was still arctic it was a very different matter. a sheer steep of snow whose downward plunge ran into the driving storm and was lost, whose head was lost in the same mass of thick cloud above, a slope somewhat hollowed and bent inwards, had to be crossed if we were to go any farther; and i was terrified, for i knew nothing of climbing. the guide said there was little danger, only if one slipped one might slide down to safety, or one might (much less probably) get over rocks and be killed. i was chattering a little with cold; but as he did not propose a return, i followed him. the surface was alternately slabs of frozen snow and patches of soft new snow. in the first he cut steps, in the second we plunged, and once i went right in and a mass of snow broke off beneath me and went careering down the slope. he showed me how to hold my staff backwards as he did his alpenstock, and use it as a kind of brake in case i slipped. we had been about twenty minutes crawling over that wall of snow and ice; and it was more and more apparent that we were in for danger. before we had quite reached the far side, the wind was blowing a very full gale and roared past our ears. the surface snow was whirring furiously like dust before it: past our faces and against them drove the snow-flakes, cutting the air: not falling, but making straight darts and streaks. they seemed like the form of the whistling wind; they blinded us. the rocks on the far side of the slope, rocks which had been our goal when we set out to cross it, had long ago disappeared in the increasing rush of the blizzard. suddenly as we were still painfully moving on, stooping against the mad wind, these rocks loomed up over as large as houses, and we saw them through the swarming snow-flakes as great hulls are seen through a fog at sea. the guide crouched under the lee of the nearest; i came up close to him and he put his hands to my ear and shouted to me that nothing further could be done--he had so to shout because in among the rocks the hurricane made a roaring sound, swamping the voice. i asked how far we were from the summit. he said he did not know where we were exactly, but that we could not be more than feet from it. i was but that from italy and i would not admit defeat. i offered him all i had in money to go on, but it was folly in me, because if i had had enough to tempt him and if he had yielded we should both have died. luckily it was but a little sum. he shook his head. he would not go on, he broke out, for all the money there was in the world. he shouted me to eat and drink, and so we both did. then i understood his wisdom, for in a little while the cold began to seize me in my thin clothes. my hands were numb, my face already gave me intolerable pain, and my legs suffered and felt heavy. i learnt another thing (which had i been used to mountains i should have known), that it was not a simple thing to return. the guide was hesitating whether to stay in this rough shelter, or to face the chances of the descent. this terror had not crossed my mind, and i thought as little of it as i could, needing my courage, and being near to breaking down from the intensity of the cold. it seems that in a _tourmente_ (for by that excellent name do the mountain people call such a storm) it is always a matter of doubt whether to halt or go back. if you go back through it and lose your way, you are done for. if you halt in some shelter, it may go on for two or three days, and then there is an end of you. after a little he decided for a return, but he told me honestly what the chances were, and my suffering from cold mercifully mitigated my fear. but even in that moment, i felt in a confused but very conscious way that i was defeated. i had crossed so many great hills and rivers, and pressed so well on my undeviating arrow-line to rome, and i had charged this one great barrier manfully where the straight path of my pilgrimage crossed the alps--and i had failed! even in that fearful cold i felt it, and it ran through my doubt of return like another and deeper current of pain. italy was there, just above, right to my hand. a lifting of a cloud, a little respite, and every downward step would have been towards the sunlight. as it was, i was being driven back northward, in retreat and ashamed. the alps had conquered me. let us always after this combat their immensity and their will, and always hate the inhuman guards that hold the gates of italy, and the powers that lie in wait for men on those high places. but now i know that italy will always stand apart. she is cut off by no ordinary wall, and death has all his army on her frontiers. well, we returned. twice the guide rubbed my hands with brandy, and once i had to halt and recover for a moment, failing and losing my hold. believe it or not, the deep footsteps of our ascent were already quite lost and covered by the new snow since our halt, and even had they been visible, the guide would not have retraced them. he did what i did not at first understand, but what i soon saw to be wise. he took a steep slant downward over the face of the snow-slope, and though such a pitch of descent a little unnerved me, it was well in the end. for when we had gone down perhaps feet, or a thousand, in perpendicular distance, even i, half numb and fainting, could feel that the storm was less violent. another two hundred, and the flakes could be seen not driving in flashes past, but separately falling. then in some few minutes we could see the slope for a very long way downwards quite clearly; then, soon after, we saw far below us the place where the mountain-side merged easily into the plain of that cup or basin whence we had started. when we saw this, the guide said to me, 'hold your stick thus, if you are strong enough, and let yourself slide.' i could just hold it, in spite of the cold. life was returning to me with intolerable pain. we shot down the slope almost as quickly as falling, but it was evidently safe to do so, as the end was clearly visible, and had no break or rock in it. so we reached the plain below, and entered the little shed, and thence looking up, we saw the storm above us; but no one could have told it for what it was. here, below, was silence, and the terror and raging above seemed only a great trembling cloud occupying the mountain. then we set our faces down the ravine by which we had come up, and so came down to where the snow changed to rain. when we got right down into the valley of the rhone, we found it all roofed with cloud, and the higher trees were white with snow, making a line like a tide mark on the slopes of the hills. i re-entered 'the bear', silent and angered, and not accepting the humiliation of that failure. then, having eaten, i determined in equal silence to take the road like any other fool; to cross the furka by a fine highroad, like any tourist, and to cross the st gothard by another fine highroad, as millions had done before me, and not to look heaven in the face again till i was back after my long detour, on the straight road again for rome. but to think of it! i who had all that planned out, and had so nearly done it! i who had cut a path across europe like a shaft, and seen so many strange places!--now to have to recite all the litany of the vulgar; bellinzona, lugano, and this and that, which any railway travelling fellow can tell you. not till como should i feel a man again... indeed it is a bitter thing to have to give up one's sword. i had not the money to wait; my defeat had lowered me in purse as well as in heart. i started off to enter by the ordinary gates--not italy even, but a half-italy, the canton of the ticino. it was very hard. this book is not a tragedy, and i will not write at any length of such pain. that same day, in the latter half of it, i went sullenly over the furka; exactly as easy a thing as going up st james' street and down piccadilly. i found the same storm on its summit, but on a highroad it was a different affair. i took no short cuts. i drank at all the inns--at the base, half-way up, near the top, and at the top. i told them, as the snow beat past, how i had attacked and all but conquered the gries that wild morning, and they took me for a liar; so i became silent even within my own mind. i looked sullenly at the white ground all the way. and when on the far side i had got low enough to be rid of the snow and wind and to be in the dripping rain again, i welcomed the rain, and let it soothe like a sodden friend my sodden uncongenial mind. i will not write of hospenthal. it has an old tower, and the road to it is straight and hideous. much i cared for the old tower! the people of the inn (which i chose at random) cannot have loved me much. i will not write of the st gothard. get it out of a guide-book. i rose when i felt inclined; i was delighted to find it still raining. a dense mist above the rain gave me still greater pleasure. i had started quite at my leisure late in the day, and i did the thing stolidly, and my heart was like a dully-heated mass of coal or iron because i was acknowledging defeat. you who have never taken a straight line and held it, nor seen strange men and remote places, you do not know what it is to have to go round by the common way. only in the afternoon, and on those little zig-zags which are sharper than any other in the alps (perhaps the road is older), something changed. a warm air stirred the dense mist which had mercifully cut me off from anything but the mere road and from the contemplation of hackneyed sights. a hint or memory of gracious things ran in the slight breeze, the wreaths of fog would lift a little for a few yards, and in their clearings i thought to approach a softer and more desirable world. i was soothed as though with caresses and when i began to see somewhat farther and felt a vigour and fulness in the outline of the trees, i said to myself suddenly-- 'i know what it is! it is the south, and a great part of my blood. they may call it switzerland still, but i know now that i am in italy, and this is the gate of italy lying in groves.' then and on till evening i reconciled myself with misfortune, and when i heard again at airolo the speech of civilized men, and saw the strong latin eyes and straight forms of the race after all those days of fog and frost and german speech and the north, my eyes filled with tears and i was as glad as a man come home again, and i could have kissed the ground. the wine of airolo and its songs, how greatly they refreshed me! to see men with answering eyes and to find a salute returned; the noise of careless mouths talking all together; the group at cards, and the laughter that is proper to mankind; the straight carriage of the women, and in all the people something erect and noble as though indeed they possessed the earth. i made a meal there, talking to all my companions left and right in a new speech of my own, which was made up, as it were, of the essence of all the latin tongues, saying-- _'ha! si jo a traversa li montagna no erat facile! nenni! ii san gottardo? nil est! pooh! poco! ma hesterna jo ha voulu traversar in val bavona, e credi non ritornar, namfredo, fredo erat in alto! la tourmente ma prise...'_ and so forth, explaining all fully with gestures, exaggerating, emphasizing, and acting the whole matter, so that they understood me without much error. but i found it more difficult to understand them, because they had a regular formed language with terminations and special words. it went to my heart to offer them no wine, but a thought was in me of which you shall soon hear more. my money was running low, and the chief anxiety of a civilized man was spreading over my mind like the shadow of a cloud over a field of corn in summer. they gave me a number of 'good-nights', and at parting i could not forbear from boasting that i was a pilgrim on my way to rome. this they repeated one to another, and one man told me that the next good halting-place was a town called faido, three hours down the road. he held up three fingers to explain, and that was the last intercourse i had with the airolans, for at once i took the road. i glanced up the dark ravine which i should have descended had i crossed the nufenen. i thought of the val bavona, only just over the great wall that held the west; and in one place where a rift (you have just seen its picture) led up to the summits of the hills i was half tempted to go back to airolo and sleep and next morning to attempt a crossing. but i had accepted my fate on the gries and the falling road also held me, and so i continued my way. everything was pleasing in this new valley under the sunlight that still came strongly from behind the enormous mountains; everything also was new, and i was evidently now in a country of a special kind. the slopes were populous, i had come to the great mother of fruits and men, and i was soon to see her cities and her old walls, and the rivers that glide by them. church towers also repeated the same shapes up and up the wooded hills until the villages stopped at the line of the higher slopes and at the patches of snow. the houses were square and coloured; they were graced with arbours, and there seemed to be all around nothing but what was reasonable and secure, and especially no rich or poor. i noticed all these things on the one side and the other till, not two hours from airolo, i came to a step in the valley. for the valley of the ticino is made up of distinct levels, each of which might have held a lake once for the way it is enclosed: and each level ends in high rocks with a gorge between them. down this gorge the river tumbles in falls and rapids and the road picks its way down steeply, all banked and cut, and sometimes has to cross from side to side by a bridge, while the railway above one overcomes the sharp descent by running round into the heart of the hills through circular tunnels and coming out again far below the cavern where it plunged in. then when all three--the river, the road, and the railway--- have got over the great step, a new level of the valley opens. this is the way the road comes into the south, and as i passed down to the lower valley, though it was darkening into evening, something melted out of the mountain air, there was content and warmth in the growing things, and i found it was a place for vineyards. so, before it was yet dark, i came into faido, and there i slept, having at last, after so many adventures, crossed the threshold and occupied italy. next day before sunrise i went out, and all the valley was adorned and tremulous with the films of morning. now all of you who have hitherto followed the story of this great journey, put out of your minds the alps and the passes and the snows--postpone even for a moment the influence of the happy dawn and of that south into which i had entered, and consider only this truth, that i found myself just out of faido on this blessed date of god with eight francs and forty centimes for my viaticum and temporal provision wherewith to accomplish the good work of my pilgrimage. now when you consider that coffee and bread was twopence and a penny for the maid, you may say without lying that i had left behind me the escarpment of the alps and stood upon the downward slopes of the first italian stream and at the summit of the entry road with _eight francs ten centimes_ in my pocket--my body hearty and my spirit light, for the arriving sun shot glory into the sky. the air was keen, and a fresh day came radiant over the high eastern walls of the valley. and what of that? why, one might make many things of it. for instance, eight francs and ten centimes is a very good day's wages; it is a lot to spend in cab fares but little for a _coupé._ it is a heavy price for burgundy but a song for tokay. it is eighty miles third-class and more; it is thirty or less first-class; it is a flash in a train _de luxe,_ and a mere fleabite as a bribe to a journalist. it would be enormous to give it to an apostle begging at a church door, but nothing to spend on luncheon. properly spent i can imagine it saving five or six souls, but i cannot believe that so paltry a sum would damn half an one. then, again, it would be a nice thing to sing about. thus, if one were a modern fool one might write a dirge with 'huit francs et dix centimes' all chanted on one low sad note, and coming in between brackets for a 'motif, and with a lot about autumn and death--which last, death that is, people nowadays seem to regard as something odd, whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world. or one might make the words the backbone of a triolet, only one would have to split them up to fit it into the metre; or one might make it the decisive line in a sonnet; or one might make a pretty little lyric of it, to the tune of 'madame la marquise'-- _'huit francs et dix centimes, tra la la, la la la.'_ or one might put it rhetorically, fiercely, stoically, finely, republicanly into the heroics of the great school. thus-- hernani _(with indignation)... dans ces efforts sublimes_'qu'avez vous à offrir?_' ruy blas _(simply) huit francs et dix centimes!_ or finally (for this kind of thing cannot go on for ever), one might curl one's hair and dye it black, and cock a dirty slouch hat over one ear and take a guitar and sit on a flat stone by the roadside and cross one's legs, and, after a few pings and pongs on the strings, strike up a ballad with the refrain-- _car j'ai toujours huit francs et dix centimes!_ a jocular, sub-sardonic, a triumphant refrain! but all this is by the way; the point is, why was the eight francs and ten centimes of such importance just there and then? for this reason, that i could get no more money before milan; and i think a little reflection will show you what a meaning lies in that phrase. milan was nearer ninety miles than eighty miles off. by the strict road it was over ninety. and so i was forced to consider and to be anxious, for how would this money hold out? there was nothing for it but forced marches, and little prospect of luxuries. but could it be done? i thought it could, and i reasoned this way. 'it is true i need a good deal of food, and that if a man is to cover great distances he must keep fit. it is also true that many men have done more on less. on the other hand, they were men who were not pressed for time--i am; and i do not know the habits of the country. ninety miles is three good days; two very heavy days. indeed, whether it can be done at all in two is doubtful. but it can be done in two days, two nights, and half the third day. so if i plan it thus i shall achieve it; namely, to march say forty-five miles or more to-day, and to sleep rough at the end of it. my food may cost me altogether three francs. i march the next day twenty-five to thirty, my food costing me another three francs. then with the remaining two francs and ten centimes i will take a bed at the end of the day, and coffee and bread next morning, and will march the remaining twenty miles or less (as they may be) into milan with a copper or two in my pocket. then in milan, having obtained my money, i will eat.' so i planned with very careful and exact precision, but many accidents and unexpected things, diverting my plans, lay in wait for me among the hills. and to cut a long story short, as the old sailor said to the young fool-- lector. what did the old sailor say to the young fool? auctor. why, the old sailor was teaching the young fool his compass, and he said--- 'here we go from north, making round by west, and then by south round by east again to north. there are thirty-two points of the compass, namely, first these four, n., w., s., and e., and these are halved, making four more, viz., nw., s w., se., and ne. i trust i make myself clear,' said the old sailor. 'that makes eight divisions, as we call them. so look smart and follow. each of these eight is divided into two symbolically and symmetrically divided parts, as is most evident in the nomenclature of the same,' said the old sailor. 'thus between n. and ne. is nne., between ne. and e. is ene., between e. and se. is...' 'i see,' said the young fool. the old sailor, frowning at him, continued-- 'smart you there. heels together, and note you well. each of these sixteen divisions is separated quite reasonably and precisely into two. thus between n. and nne. we get n. by e.,' said the old sailor; 'and between nne. and ne. we get ne. by e., and between ne. and ene. we get ne. by e.,' said the old sailor; 'and between ene. and e. we get e. by n., and then between e. and ese. we get...' but here he noticed something dangerous in the young fool's eyes, and having read all his life admiral griles' 'notes on discipline', and knowing that discipline is a subtle bond depending 'not on force but on an attitude of the mind,' he continued-- 'and so to cut a long story short we come round to the north again.' then he added, 'it is customary also to divide each of these points into quarters. thus nne. / e. signifies...' but at this point the young fool, whose hands were clasped behind him and concealed a marlin-spike, up and killed the old sailor, and so rounded off this fascinating tale. well then, to cut a long story short, i had to make forced marches. with eight francs and ten centimes, and nearer ninety than eighty-five miles before the next relief, it was necessary to plan and then to urge on heroically. said i to myself, 'the thing can be done quite easily. what is ninety miles? two long days! who cannot live on four francs a day? why, lots of men do it on two francs a day.' but my guardian angel said to me, 'you are an ass! ninety miles is a great deal more than twice forty-five. besides which' (said he) 'a great effort needs largeness and ease. men who live on two francs a day or less are not men who attempt to march forty-five miles a day. indeed, my friend, you are pushing it very close.' 'well,' thought i, 'at least in such a glorious air, with such hills all about one, and such a race, one can come to no great harm.' but i knew within me that latins are hard where money is concerned, and i feared for my strength. i was determined to push forward and to live on little. i filled my lungs and put on the spirit of an attempt and swung down the valley. alas! i may not linger on that charge, for if i did i should not give you any measure of its determination and rapidity. many little places passed me off the road on the flanks of that valley, and mostly to the left. while the morning was yet young, i came to the packed little town of bodio, and passed the eight franc limit by taking coffee, brandy, and bread. there also were a gentleman and a lady in a carriage who wondered where i was going, and i told them (in french) 'to rome'. it was nine in the morning when i came to biasca. the sun was glorious, and not yet warm: it was too early for a meal. they gave me a little cold meat and bread and wine, and seven francs stood out dry above the falling tide of my money. here at biasca the valley took on a different aspect. it became wider and more of a countryside; the vast hills, receding, took on an appearance of less familiar majesty, and because the trend of the ticino turned southerly some miles ahead the whole place seemed enclosed from the world. one would have said that a high mountain before me closed it in and rendered it unique and unknown, had not a wide cleft in the east argued another pass over the hills, and reminded me that there were various routes over the crest of the alps. indeed, this hackneyed approach to italy which i had dreaded and despised and accepted only after a defeat was very marvellous, and this valley of the ticino ought to stand apart and be a commonwealth of its own like andorra or the gresivaudan: the noble garden of the isere within the first gates of the dauphine. i was fatigued, and my senses lost acuteness. still i noticed with delight the new character of the miles i pursued. a low hill just before me, jutting out apparently from the high western mountains, forbade me to see beyond it. the plain was alluvial, while copses and wood and many cultivated fields now found room where, higher up, had been nothing but the bed of a torrent with bare banks and strips of grass immediately above them; it was a place worthy of a special name and of being one lordship and a countryside. still i went on towards that near boundary of the mountain spur and towards the point where the river rounded it, the great barrier hill before me still seeming to shut in the valley. it was noon, or thereabouts, the heat was increasing (i did not feel it greatly, for i had eaten and drunk next to nothing), when, coming round the point, there opened out before me the great fan of the lower valley and the widening and fruitful plain through which the ticino rolls in a full river to reach lake major, which is its sea. weary as i was, the vision of this sudden expansion roused me and made me forget everything except the sight before me. the valley turned well southward as it broadened. the alps spread out on either side like great arms welcoming the southern day; the wholesome and familiar haze that should accompany summer dimmed the more distant mountains of the lakes and turned them amethystine, and something of repose and of distance was added to the landscape; something i had not seen for many days. there was room in that air and space for dreams and for many living men, for towns perhaps on the slopes, for the boats of happy men upon the waters, and everywhere for crowded and contented living. history might be in all this, and i remembered it was the entry and introduction of many armies. singing therefore a song of charlemagne, i swung on in a good effort to where, right under the sun, what seemed a wall and two towers on a sharp little hillock set in the bosom of the valley showed me bellinzona. within the central street of that city, and on its shaded side, i sank down upon a bench before the curtained door of a drinking booth and boasted that i had covered in that morning my twenty-five miles. the woman of the place came out to greet me, and asked me a question. i did not catch it (for it was in a foreign language), but guessing her to mean that i should take something, i asked for vermouth, and seeing before me a strange door built of red stone, i drew it as i sipped my glass and the woman talked to me all the while in a language i could not understand. and as i drew i became so interested that i forgot my poverty and offered her husband a glass, and then gave another to a lounging man that had watched me at work, and so from less than seven francs my money fell to six exactly, and my pencil fell from my hand, and i became afraid. 'i have done a foolish thing,' said i to myself, 'and have endangered the success of my endeavour. nevertheless, that cannot now be remedied, and i must eat; and as eating is best where one has friends i will ask a meal of this woman.' now had they understood french i could have bargained and chosen; as it was i had to take what they were taking, and so i sat with them as they all came out and ate together at the little table. they had soup and flesh, wine and bread, and as we ate we talked, not understanding each other, and laughing heartily at our mutual ignorance. and they charged me a franc, which brought my six francs down to five. but i, knowing my subtle duty to the world, put down twopence more, as i would have done anywhere else, for a _pour boire;_ and so with four francs and eighty centimes left, and with much less than a third of my task accomplished i rose, now drowsy with the food and wine, and saluting them, took the road once more. but as i left bellinzona there was a task before me which was to bring my poverty to the test; for you must know that my map was a bad one, and on a very small scale, and the road from bellinzona to lugano has a crook in it, and it was essential to find a short cut. so i thought to myself, 'i will try to see a good map as cheaply as possible,' and i slunk off to the right into a kind of main square, and there i found a proud stationer's shop, such as would deal with rich men only, or tourists of the coarser and less humble kind. i entered with some assurance, and said in french-- 'sir, i wish to know the hills between here and lugano, but i am too poor to buy a map. if you will let me look at one for a few moments, i will pay you what you think fit.' the wicked stationer became like a devil for pride, and glaring at me, said-- 'look! look for yourself. i do not take pence. i sell maps; i do not hire them!' then i thought, 'shall i take a favour from such a man?' but i yielded, and did. i went up to the wall and studied a large map for some moments. then as i left, i said to him-- 'sir, i shall always hold in remembrance the day on which you did me this signal kindness; nor shall i forget your courtesy and goodwill.' and what do you think he did at that? why, he burst into twenty smiles, and bowed and seemed beatified, and said: 'whatever i can do for my customers and for visitors to this town, i shall always be delighted to do. pray, sir, will you not look at other maps for a moment?' now, why did he say this and grin happily like a gargoyle appeased? did something in my accent suggest wealth? or was he naturally kindly? i do not know; but of this i am sure, one should never hate human beings merely on a first, nor on a tenth, impression. who knows? this map-seller of bellinzona may have been a good man; anyhow, i left him as rich as i had found him, and remembering that the true key to a forced march is to break the twenty-four hours into three pieces, and now feeling the extreme heat, i went out along the burning straight road until i found a border of grass and a hedge, and there, in spite of the dust and the continually passing carts, i lay at full length in the shade and fell into the sleep of men against whom there is no reckoning. just as i forgot the world i heard a clock strike two. i slept for hours beneath that hedge, and when i woke the air was no longer a trembling furnace, but everything about me was wrapped round as in a cloak of southern afternoon, and was still. the sun had fallen midway, and shone in steady glory through a haze that overhung lake major, and the wide luxuriant estuary of the vale. there lay before me a long straight road for miles at the base of high hills; then, far off, this road seemed to end at the foot of a mountain called, i believe, ash mount or cinder hill. but my imperfect map told me that here it went sharp round to the left, choosing a pass, and then at an angle went down its way to lugano. now lugano was not fifteen miles as the crow flies from where i stood, and i determined to cut off that angle by climbing the high hills just above me. they were wooded only on their slopes; their crest and much of their sides were a down-land of parched grass, with rocks appearing here and there. at the first divergent lane i made off eastward from the road and began to climb. in under the chestnut trees the lane became a number of vague beaten paths; i followed straight upwards. here and there were little houses standing hidden in leaves, and soon i crossed the railway, and at last above the trees i saw the sight of all the bellinzona valley to the north; and turning my eyes i saw it broaden out between its walls to where the lake lay very bright, in spite of the slight mist, and this mist gave the lake distances, and the mountains round about it were transfigured and seemed part of the mere light. the italian lakes have that in them and their air which removes them from common living. their beauty is not the beauty which each of us sees for himself in the world; it is rather the beauty of a special creation; the expression of some mind. to eyes innocent, and first freshly noting our great temporal inheritance-- mean to the eyes of a boy and girl just entered upon the estate of this glorious earth, and thinking themselves immortal, this shrine of europe might remain for ever in the memory; an enchanted experience, in which the single sense of sight had almost touched the boundary of music. they would remember these lakes as the central emotion of their youth. to mean men also who, in spite of years and of a full foreknowledge of death, yet attempt nothing but the satisfaction of sense, and pride themselves upon the taste and fineness with which they achieve this satisfaction, the italian lakes would seem a place for habitation, and there such a man might build his house contentedly. but to ordinary christians i am sure there is something unnatural in this beauty of theirs, and they find in it either a paradise only to be won by a much longer road to a bait and veil of sorcery, behind which lies great peril. now, for all we know, beauty beyond the world may not really bear this double aspect; but to us on earth--if we are ordinary men--beauty of this kind has something evil. have you not read in books how men when they see even divine visions are terrified? so as i looked at lake major in its halo i also was afraid, and i was glad to cross the ridge and crest of the hill and to shut out that picture framed all round with glory. but on the other side of the hill i found, to my great disgust, not as i had hoped, a fine slope down leading to lugano, but a second interior valley and another range just opposite me. i had not the patience to climb this so i followed down the marshy land at the foot of it, passed round the end of the hill and came upon the railway, which had tunnelled under the range i had crossed. i followed the railway for a little while and at last crossed it, penetrated through a thick brushwood, forded a nasty little stream, and found myself again on the main road, wishing heartily i had never left it. it was still at least seven miles to lugano, and though all the way was downhill, yet fatigue threatened me. these short cuts over marshy land and through difficult thickets are not short cuts at all, and i was just wondering whether, although it was already evening, i dared not rest a while, when there appeared at a turn in the road a little pink house with a yard all shaded over by a vast tree; there was also a trellis making a roof over a plain bench and table, and on the trellis grew vines. 'into such houses,' i thought, 'the gods walk when they come down and talk with men, and such houses are the scenes of adventures. i will go in and rest.' so i walked straight into the courtyard and found there a shrivelled brown-faced man with kindly eyes, who was singing a song to himself. he could talk a little french, a little english, and his own italian language. he had been to america and to paris; he was full of memories; and when i had listened to these and asked for food and drink, and said i was extremely poor and would have to bargain, he made a kind of litany of 'i will not cheat you; i am an honest man; i also am poor,' and so forth. nevertheless i argued about every item--the bread, the sausage, and the beer. seeing that i was in necessity, he charged me about three times their value, but i beat him down to double, and lower than that he would not go. then we sat down together at the table and ate and drank and talked of far countries; and he would interject remarks on his honesty compared with the wickedness of his neighbours, and i parried with illustrations of my poverty and need, pulling out the four francs odd that remained to me, and jingling them sorrowfully in my hand. 'with these,' i said, 'i must reach milan.' then i left him, and as i went down the road a slight breeze came on, and brought with it the coolness of evening. at last the falling plateau reached an edge, many little lights glittered below me, and i sat on a stone and looked down at the town of lugano. it was nearly dark. the mountains all around had lost their mouldings, and were marked in flat silhouettes against the sky. the new lake which had just appeared below me was bright as water is at dusk, and far away in the north and east the high alps still stood up and received the large glow of evening. everything else was full of the coming night, and a few stars shone. up from she town came the distant noise of music; otherwise there was no sound. i could have rested there a long time, letting my tired body lapse into the advancing darkness, and catching in my spirit the inspiration of the silence--had it not been for hunger. i knew by experience that when it is very late one cannot be served in the eating-houses of poor men, and i had not the money or any other. so i rose and shambled down the steep road into the town, and there i found a square with arcades, and in the south-eastern corner of this square just such a little tavern as i required. entering, therefore, and taking off my hat very low, i said in french to a man who was sitting there with friends, and who was the master, 'sir, what is the least price at which you can give me a meal?' he said, 'what do you want?' i answered, 'soup, meat, vegetables, bread, and a little wine.' he counted on his fingers, while all his friends stared respectfully at him and me. he then gave orders, and a very young and beautiful girl set before me as excellent a meal as i had eaten for days on days, and he charged me but a franc and a half. he gave me also coffee and a little cheese, and i, feeling hearty, gave threepence over for the service, and they all very genially wished me a good-night; but their wishes were of no value to me, for the night was terrible. i had gone over forty miles; how much over i did not know. i should have slept at lugano, but my lightening purse forbade me. i thought, 'i will push on and on; after all, i have already slept, and so broken the back of the day. i will push on till i am at the end of my tether, then i will find a wood and sleep.' within four miles my strength abandoned me. i was not even so far down the lake as to have lost the sound of the band at lugano floating up the still water, when i was under an imperative necessity for repose. it was perhaps ten o'clock, and the sky was open and glorious with stars. i climbed up a bank on my right, and searching for a place to lie found one under a tree near a great telegraph pole. here was a little parched grass, and one could lie there and see the lake and wait for sleep. it was a benediction to stretch out all supported by the dry earth, with my little side-bag for pillow, and to look at the clear night above the hills, and to listen to the very distant music, and to wonder whether or not, in this strange southern country, there might not be snakes gliding about in the undergrowth. caught in such a skein of influence i was soothed and fell asleep. for a little while i slept dreamlessly. just so much of my living self remained as can know, without understanding, the air around. it is the life of trees. that under-part, the barely conscious base of nature which trees and sleeping men are sunk in, is not only dominated by an immeasurable calm, but is also beyond all expression contented. and in its very stuff there is a complete and changeless joy. this is surely what the great mind meant when it said to the athenian judges that death must not be dreaded since no experience in life was so pleasurable as a deep sleep; for being wise and seeing the intercommunion of things, he could not mean extinction, which is nonsense, but a lapse into that under-part of which i speak. for there are gods also below the earth. but a dream came into my sleep and disturbed me, increasing life, and therefore bringing pain. i dreamt that i was arguing, at first easily, then violently, with another man. more and more he pressed me, and at last in my dream there were clearly spoken words, and he said to me, 'you must be wrong, because you are so cold; if you were right you would not be so cold.' and this argument seemed quite reasonable to me in my foolish dream, and i muttered to him, 'you are right, i must be in the wrong. it is very cold...' then i half opened my eyes and saw the telegraph pole, the trees, and the lake. far up the lake, where the italian frontier cuts it, the torpedo-boats, looking for smugglers, were casting their search-lights. one of the roving beams fell full on me and i became broad awake. i stood up. it was indeed cold, with a kind of clinging and grasping chill that was not to be expressed in degrees of heat, but in dampness perhaps, or perhaps in some subtler influence of the air. i sat on the bank and gazed at the lake in some despair. certainly i could not sleep again without a covering cloth, and it was now past midnight, nor did i know of any house, whether if i took the road i should find one in a mile, or in two, or in five. and, note you, i was utterly exhausted. that enormous march from faido, though it had been wisely broken by the siesta at bellinzona, needed more than a few cold hours under trees, and i thought of the three poor francs in my pocket, and of the thirty-eight miles remaining to milan. the stars were beyond the middle of their slow turning, and i watched them, splendid and in order, for sympathy, as i also regularly, but slowly and painfully, dragged myself along my appointed road. but in a very short time a great, tall, square, white house stood right on the roadway, and to my intense joy i saw a light in one of its higher windows. standing therefore beneath, i cried at the top of my voice, 'hola!' five or six times. a woman put her head out of the window into the fresh night, and said, 'you cannot sleep here; we have no rooms,' then she remained looking out of her window and ready to analyse the difficulties of the moment; a good-natured woman and fat. in a moment another window at the same level, but farther from me, opened, and a man leaned out, just as those alternate figures come in and out of the toys that tell the weather. 'it is impossible,' said the man; 'we have no rooms.' then they talked a great deal together, while i shouted, _'quid vis? non e possibile dormire in la foresta! e troppo fredo! vis ne me assassinare? veni de lugano--e piu--non e possibile ritornare!'_ and so forth. they answered in strophe and antistrophe, sometimes together in full chorus, and again in semichorus, and with variations, that it was impossible. then a light showed in the chinks of their great door; the lock grated, and it opened. a third person, a tall youth, stood in the hall. i went forward into the breach and occupied the hall. he blinked at me above a candle, and murmured, as a man apologizing 'it is not possible.' whatever i have in common with these southerners made me understand that i had won, so i smiled at him and nodded; he also smiled, and at once beckoned to me. he led me upstairs, and showed me a charming bed in a clean room, where there was a portrait of the pope, looking cunning; the charge for that delightful and human place was sixpence, and as i said good-night to the youth, the man and woman from above said good-night also. and this was my first introduction to the most permanent feature in the italian character. the good people! when i woke and rose i was the first to be up and out. it was high morning. the sun was not yet quite over the eastern mountains, but i had slept, though so shortly yet at great ease, and the world seemed new and full of a merry mind. the sky was coloured like that high metal work which you may see in the studios of paris; there was gold in it fading into bronze, and above, the bronze softened to silver. a little morning breeze, courageous and steady, blew down the lake and provoked the water to glad ripples, and there was nothing that did not move and take pleasure in the day. the lake of lugano is of a complicated shape, and has many arms. it is at this point very narrow indeed, and shallow too; a mole, pierced at either end with low arches, has here been thrown across it, and by this mole the railway and the road pass over to the eastern shore. i turned in this long causeway and noticed the northern view. on the farther shore was an old village and some pleasure-houses of rich men on the shore; the boats also were beginning to go about the water. these boats were strange, unlike other boats; they were covered with hoods, and looked like floating waggons. this was to shield the rowers from the sun. far off a man was sailing with a little brown sprit-sail. it was morning, and all the world was alive. coffee in the village left me two francs and two pennies. i still thought the thing could be done, so invigorating and deceiving are the early hours, and coming farther down the road to an old and beautiful courtyard on the left, i drew it, and hearing a bell at hand i saw a tumble-down church with trees before it, and went in to mass; and though it was a little low village mass, yet the priest had three acolytes to serve it, and (true and gracious mark of a catholic country!) these boys were restless and distracted at their office. you may think it trivial, but it was certainly a portent. one of the acolytes had half his head clean shaved! a most extraordinary sight! i could not take my eyes from it, and i heartily wished i had an omen-book with me to tell me what it might mean. when there were oracles on earth, before pan died, this sight would have been of the utmost use. for i should have consulted the oracle woman for a lira--at biasca for instance, or in the lonely woods of the cinder mountain; and, after a lot of incense and hesitation, and wrestling with the god, the oracle would have accepted apollo and, staring like one entranced, she would have chanted verses which, though ambiguous, would at least have been a guide. thus: _matutinus adest ubi vesper, et accipiens te saepe recusatum voces intelligit hospes rusticus ignotas notas, ac flumina tellus occupat--in sancto tum, tum, stans aede caveto tonsuram hirsuti capitis, via namque pedestrem ferrea praeveniens cursum, peregrine, laborem pro pietate tuâ inceptum frustratur, amore antiqui ritus alto sub numine romae._ lector. what hoggish great participles! auctor. well, well, you see it was but a rustic oracle at / d. the revelation, and even that is supposing silver at par. let us translate it for the vulgar: when early morning seems but eve and they that still refuse receive: when speech unknown men understand; and floods are crossed upon dry land. within the sacred walls beware the shaven head that boasts of hair, for when the road attains the rail the pilgrim's great attempt shall fail. of course such an oracle might very easily have made me fear too much. the 'shaven head' i should have taken for a priest, especially if it was to be met with 'in a temple'--it might have prevented me entering a church, which would have been deplorable. then i might have taken it to mean that i should never have reached rome, which would have been a monstrous weight upon my mind. still, as things unfolded themselves, the oracle would have become plainer and plainer, and i felt the lack of it greatly. for, i repeat, i had certainly received an omen. the road now neared the end of the lake, and the town called capo di lago, or 'lake-head', lay off to my right. i saw also that in a very little while i should abruptly find the plains. a low hill some five miles ahead of me was the last roll of the mountains, and just above me stood the last high crest, a precipitous peak of bare rock, up which there ran a cog-railway to some hotel or other. i passed through an old town under the now rising heat; i passed a cemetery in the italian manner, with marble figures like common living men. the road turned to the left, and i was fairly on the shoulder of the last glacis. i stood on the alps at their southern bank, and before me was lombardy. also in this ending of the swiss canton one was more evidently in italy than ever. a village perched upon a rock, deep woods and a ravine below it, its houses and its church, all betrayed the full italian spirit. the frontier town was chiasso. i hesitated with reverence before touching the sacred soil which i had taken so long to reach, and i longed to be able to drink its health; but though i had gone, i suppose, ten miles, and though the heat was increasing, i would not stop; for i remembered the two francs, and my former certitude of reaching milan was shaking and crumbling. the great heat of midday would soon be on me, i had yet nearly thirty miles to go, and my bad night began to oppress me. i crossed the frontier, which is here an imaginary line. two slovenly customs-house men asked me if i had anything dutiable on me. i said no, and it was evident enough, for in my little sack or pocket was nothing but a piece of bread. if they had applied the american test, and searched me for money, then indeed they could have turned me back, and i should have been forced to go into the fields a quarter of a mile or so and come into their country by a path instead of a highroad. this necessity was spared me. i climbed slowly up the long slope that hides como, then i came down upon that lovely city and saw its frame of hills and its lake below me. these things are not like things seen by the eyes. i say it again, they are like what one feels when music is played. i entered como between ten and eleven faint for food, and then a new interest came to fill my mind with memories of this great adventure. the lake was in flood, and all the town was water. como dry must be interesting enough; como flooded is a marvel. what else is venice? and here is a venice at the foot of high mountains, and _all_ in the water, no streets or squares; a fine even depth of three feet and a half or so for navigators, much what you have in the spitway in london river at low spring tides. there were a few boats about, but the traffic and pleasure of como was passing along planks laid on trestles over the water here and there like bridges; and for those who were in haste, and could afford it (such as take cabs in london), there were wheelbarrows, coster carts, and what not, pulled about by men for hire; and it was a sight to remember all one's life to see the rich men of como squatting on these carts and barrows, and being pulled about over the water by the poor men of como, being, indeed, an epitome of all modern sociology and economics and religion and organized charity and strenuousness and liberalism and sophistry generally. for my part i was determined to explore this curious town in the water, and i especially desired to see it on the lake side, because there one would get the best impression of its being really an aquatic town; so i went northward, as i was directed, and came quite unexpectedly upon the astonishing cathedral. it seemed built of polished marble, and it was in every way so exquisite in proportion, so delicate in sculpture, and so triumphant in attitude, that i thought to myself-- 'no wonder men praise italy if this first italian town has such a building as this.' but, as you will learn later, many of the things praised are ugly, and are praised only by certain followers of charlatans. so i went on till i got to the lake, and there i found a little port about as big as a dining-room (for the italian lakes play at being little seas. they have little ports, little lighthouses, little fleets for war, and little custom-houses, and little storms and little lines of steamers. indeed, if one wanted to give a rich child a perfect model or toy, one could not give him anything better than an italian lake), and when i had long gazed at the town, standing, as it seemed, right in the lake, i felt giddy, and said to myself, 'this is the lack of food,' for i had eaten nothing but my coffee and bread eleven miles before, at dawn. so i pulled out my two francs, and going into a little shop, i bought bread, sausage, and a very little wine for fourpence, and with one franc eighty left i stood in the street eating and wondering what my next step should be. it seemed on the map perhaps twenty-five, perhaps twenty-six miles to milan. it was now nearly noon, and as hot as could be. i might, if i held out, cover the distance in eight or nine hours, but i did not see myself walking in the middle heat on the plain of lombardy, and even if i had been able i should only have got into milan at dark or later, when the post office (with my money in it) would be shut; and where could i sleep, for my one franc eighty would be gone? a man covering these distances must have one good meal a day or he falls ill. i could beg, but there was the risk of being arrested, and that means an indefinite waste of time, perhaps several days; and time, that had defeated me at the gries, threatened me here again. i had nothing to sell or to pawn, and i had no friends. the consul i would not attempt; i knew too much of such things as consuls when poor and dirty men try them. besides which, there was no consul i pondered. i went into the cool of the cathedral to sit in its fine darkness and think better. i sat before a shrine where candles were burning, put up for their private intentions by the faithful. of many, two had nearly burnt out. i watched them in their slow race for extinction when a thought took me. 'i will,' said i to myself, 'use these candles for an ordeal or heavenly judgement. the left hand one shall be for attempting the road at the risk of illness or very dangerous failure; the right hand one shall stand for my going by rail till i come to that point on the railway where one franc eighty will take me, and thence walking into milan:--and heaven defend the right.' they were a long time going out, and they fell evenly. at last the right hand one shot up the long flame that precedes the death of candles; the contest took on interest, and even excitement, when, just as i thought the left hand certain of winning, it went out without guess or warning, like a second-rate person leaving this world for another. the right hand candle waved its flame still higher, as though in triumph, outlived its colleague just the moment to enjoy glory, and then in its turn went fluttering down the dark way from which they say there is no return. none may protest against the voice of the gods. i went straight to the nearest railway station (for there are two), and putting down one franc eighty, asked in french for a ticket to whatever station that sum would reach down the line. the ticket came out marked milan, and i admitted the miracle and confessed the finger of providence. there was no change, and as i got into the train i had become that rarest and ultimate kind of traveller, the man without any money whatsoever-- without passport, without letters, without food or wine; it would be interesting to see what would follow if the train broke down. i had marched miles and some three furlongs, or thereabouts. thus did i break--but by a direct command--the last and dearest of my vows, and as the train rumbled off, i took luxury in the rolling wheels. i thought of that other medieval and papistical pilgrim hobbling along rather than 'take advantage of any wheeled thing', and i laughed at him. now if moroso-malodoroso or any other non-aryan, antichristian, over-inductive, statistical, brittle-minded man and scientist, sees anything remarkable in one self laughing at another self, let me tell him and all such for their wide-eyed edification and astonishment that i knew a man once that had fifty-six selves (there would have been fifty-seven, but for the poet in him that died young)--he could evolve them at will, and they were very useful to lend to the parish priest when he wished to make up a respectable procession on holy-days. and i knew another man that could make himself so tall as to look over the heads of the scientists as a pine-tree looks over grasses, and again so small as to discern very clearly the thick coating or dust of wicked pride that covers them up in a fine impenetrable coat. so much for the moderns. the train rolled on. i noticed lombardy out of the windows. it is flat. i listened to the talk of the crowded peasants in the train. i did not understand it. i twice leaned out to see if milan were not standing up before me out of the plain, but i saw nothing. then i fell asleep, and when i woke suddenly it was because we were in the terminus of that noble great town, which i then set out to traverse in search of my necessary money and sustenance. it was yet but early in the afternoon. what a magnificent city is milan! the great houses are all of stone, and stand regular and in order, along wide straight streets. there are swift cars, drawn by electricity, for such as can afford them. men are brisk and alert even in the summer heats, and there are shops of a very good kind, though a trifle showy. there are many newspapers to help the milanese to be better men and to cultivate charity and humility; there are banks full of paper money; there are soldiers, good pavements, and all that man requires to fulfil him, soul and body; cafés, arcades, mutoscopes, and every sign of the perfect state. and the whole centres in a splendid open square, in the midst of which is the cathedral, which is justly the most renowned in the world. my pilgrimage is to rome, my business is with lonely places, hills, and the recollection of the spirit. it would be waste to describe at length this mighty capital. the mists and the woods, the snows and the interminable way, had left me ill-suited for the place, and i was ashamed. i sat outside a café, opposite the cathedral, watching its pinnacles of light; but i was ashamed. perhaps i did the master a hurt by sitting there in his fine great café, unkempt, in such clothes, like a tramp; but he was courteous in spite of his riches, and i ordered a very expensive drink for him also, in order to make amends. i showed him my sketches, and told him of my adventures in french, and he was kind enough to sit opposite me, and to take that drink with me. he talked french quite easily, as it seems do all such men in the principal towns of north italy. still, the broad day shamed me, and only when darkness came did i feel at ease. i wandered in the streets till i saw a small eating shop, and there i took a good meal. but when one is living the life of the poor, one sees how hard are the great cities. everything was dearer, and worse, than in the simple countrysides. the innkeeper and his wife were kindly, but their eyes showed that they had often to suspect men. they gave me a bed, but it was a franc and more, and i had to pay before going upstairs to it. the walls were mildewed, the place ramshackle and evil, the rickety bed not clean, the door broken and warped, and that night i was oppressed with the vision of poverty. dirt and clamour and inhuman conditions surrounded me. yet the people meant well. with the first light i got up quietly, glad to find the street again and the air. i stood in the crypt of the cathedral to hear the ambrosian mass, and it was (as i had expected) like any other, save for a kind of second _lavabo_ before the elevation. to read the distorted stupidity of the north one might have imagined that in the ambrosian ritual the priest put a _non_ before the _credo,_ and _nec's_ at each clause of it, and renounced his baptismal vows at the _kyrie;_ but the milanese are catholics like any others, and the northern historians are either liars or ignorant men. and i know three that are both together. then i set out down the long street that leads south out of milan, and was soon in the dull and sordid suburb of the piacenzan way. the sky was grey, the air chilly, and in a little while--alas!--it rained. lombardy is an alluvial plain. that is the pretty way of putting it. the truth is more vivid if you say that lombardy is as flat as a marsh, and that it is made up of mud. of course this mud dries when the sun shines on it, but mud it is and mud it will remain; and that day, as the rain began falling, mud it rapidly revealed itself to be; and the more did it seem to be mud when one saw how the moistening soil showed cracks from the last day's heat. lombardy has no forests, but any amount of groups of trees; moreover (what is very remarkable), it is all cultivated in fields more or less square. these fields have ditches round them, full of mud and water running slowly, and some of them are themselves under water in order to cultivate rice. all these fields have a few trees bordering them, apart from the standing clumps; but these trees are not very high. there are no open views in lombardy, and lombardy is all the same. irregular large farmsteads stand at random all up and down the country; no square mile of lombardy is empty. there are many, many little villages; many straggling small towns about seven to eight miles apart, and a great number of large towns from thirty to fifty miles apart. indeed, this very road to piacenza, which the rain now covered with a veil of despair, was among the longest stretches between any two large towns, although it was less than fifty miles. on the map, before coming to this desolate place, there seemed a straighter and a better way to rome than this great road. there is a river called the lambro, which comes east of milan and cuts the piacenzan road at a place called melegnano. it seemed to lead straight down to a point on the po, a little above piacenza. this stream one could follow (so it seemed), and when it joined the po get a boat or ferry, and see on the other side the famous trebbia, where hannibal conquered and joubert fell, and so make straight on for the apennine. since it is always said in books that lombardy is a furnace in summer, and that whole great armies have died of the heat there, this river bank would make a fine refuge. clear and delicious water, more limpid than glass, would reflect and echo the restless poplars, and would make tolerable or even pleasing the excessive summer. not so. it was a northern mind judging by northern things that came to this conclusion. there is not in all lombardy a clear stream, but every river and brook is rolling mud. in the rain, not heat, but a damp and penetrating chill was the danger. there is no walking on the banks of the rivers; they are cliffs of crumbling soil, jumbled anyhow. man may, as pinkerton (sir jonas pinkerton) writes, be master of his fate, but he has a precious poor servant. it is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour. nevertheless, though it was apparent that i should have to follow the main road for a while, i determined to make at last to the right of it, and to pass through a place called 'old lodi', for i reasoned thus: 'lodi is the famous town. how much more interesting must old lodi be which is the mothertown of lodi?' also, old lodi brought me back again on the straight line to rome, and i foolishly thought it might be possible to hear there of some straight path down the lambro (for that river still possessed me somewhat). therefore, after hours and hours of trudging miserably along the wide highway in the wretched and searching rain, after splashing through tortuous melegnano, and not even stopping to wonder if it was the place of the battle, after noting in despair the impossible lambro, i came, caring for nothing, to the place where a secondary road branches off to the right over a level crossing and makes for lodi vecchio. it was not nearly midday, but i had walked perhaps fifteen miles, and had only rested once in a miserable trattoria. in less than three miles i came to that unkempt and lengthy village, founded upon dirt and living in misery, and through the quiet, cold, persistent rain i splashed up the main street. i passed wretched, shivering dogs and mournful fowls that took a poor refuge against walls; passed a sad horse that hung its head in the wet and stood waiting for a master, till at last i reached the open square where the church stood, then i knew that i had seen all old lodi had to offer me. so, going into an eating-house, or inn, opposite the church, i found a girl and her mother serving, and i saluted them, but there was no fire, and my heart sank to the level of that room, which was, i am sure, no more than fifty-four degrees. why should the less gracious part of a pilgrimage be specially remembered? in life were remember joy best--that is what makes us sad by contrast; pain somewhat, especially if it is acute; but dulness never. and a book--which has it in its own power to choose and to emphasize--has no business to record dulness. what did i at lodi vecchio? i ate; i dried my clothes before a tepid stove in a kitchen. i tried to make myself understood by the girl and her mother. i sat at a window and drew the ugly church on principle. oh, the vile sketch! worthy of that lombard plain, which they had told me was so full of wonderful things. i gave up all hope of by-roads, and i determined to push back obliquely to the highway again--obliquely in order to save time! nepios! these 'by-roads' of the map turned out in real life to be all manner of abominable tracks. some few were metalled, some were cart-ruts merely, some were open lanes of rank grass; and along most there went a horrible ditch, and in many fields the standing water proclaimed desolation. in so far as i can be said to have had a way at all, i lost it. i could not ask my way because my only ultimate goal was piacenza, and that was far off. i did not know the name of any place between. two or three groups of houses i passed, and sometimes church towers glimmered through the rain. i passed a larger and wider road than the rest, but obviously not my road; i pressed on and passed another; and by this time, having ploughed up lombardy for some four hours, i was utterly lost. i no longer felt the north, and, for all i knew, i might be going backwards. the only certain thing was that i was somewhere in the belt between the highroad and the lambro, and that was little enough to know at the close of such a day. grown desperate, i clamoured within my mind for a miracle; and it was not long before i saw a little bent man sitting on a crazy cart and going ahead of me at a pace much slower than a walk--the pace of a horse crawling. i caught him up, and, doubting much whether he would understand a word, i said to him repeatedly-- _'la granda via? la via a piacenza?'_ he shook his head as though to indicate that this filthy lane was not the road. just as i had despaired of learning anything, he pointed with his arm away to the right, perpendicularly to the road we were on, and nodded. he moved his hand up and down. i had been going north! on getting this sign i did not wait for a cross road, but jumped the little ditch and pushed through long grass, across further ditches, along the side of patches of growing corn, heedless of the huge weight on my boots and of the oozing ground, till i saw against the rainy sky a line of telegraph poles. for the first time since they were made the sight of them gave a man joy. there was a long stagnant pond full of reeds between me and the railroad; but, as i outflanked it, i came upon a road that crossed the railway at a level and led me into the great piacenzan way. almost immediately appeared a village. it was a hole called secugnano, and there i entered a house where a bush hanging above the door promised entertainment, and an old hobbling woman gave me food and drink and a bed. the night had fallen, and upon the roof above me i could hear the steady rain. the next morning--heaven preserve the world from evil!--it was still raining. lector. it does not seem to me that this part of your book is very entertaining. auctor. i know that; but what am i to do? lector. why, what was the next point in the pilgrimage that was even tolerably noteworthy? auctor. i suppose the bridge of boats. lector. and how far on was that? auctor. about fourteen miles, more or less... i passed through a town with a name as long as my arm, and i suppose the bridge of boats must have been nine miles on after that. lector. and it rained all the time, and there was mud? auctor. precisely. lector. well, then, let us skip it and tell stories. auctor. with all my heart. and since you are such a good judge of literary poignancy, do you begin. lector. i will, and i draw my inspiration from your style. once upon a time there was a man who was born in croydon, and whose name was charles amieson blake. he went to rugby at twelve and left it at seventeen. he fell in love twice and then went to cambridge till he was twenty-three. having left cambridge he fell in love more mildly, and was put by his father into a government office, where he began at _ _ pounds a year. at thirty-five he was earning pounds a year, and perquisites made pounds a year. he met a pleasant lady and fell in love quite a little compared with the other times. she had pounds a year. that made _ _ pounds a year. they married and had three children--richard, amy, and cornelia. he rose to a high government position, was knighted, retired at sixty-three, and died at sixty-seven. he is buried at kensal green... auctor. thank you, lector, that is a very good story. it is simple and full of plain human touches. you know how to deal with the facts of everyday life... it requires a master-hand. tell me, lector, had this man any adventures? lector. none that i know of. auctor. had he opinions? lector. yes. i forgot to tell you he was a unionist. he spoke two foreign languages badly. he often went abroad to assisi, florence, and boulogne... he left , pounds s. d., and a house and garden at sutton. his wife lives there still. auctor. oh! lector. it is the human story... the daily task! auctor. very true, my dear lector... the common lot... now let me tell my story. it is about the hole that could not be filled up. lector. oh no! auctor, no! that is the oldest story in the-- auctor. patience, dear lector, patience! i will tell it well. besides which i promise you it shall never be told again. i will copyright it. well, once there was a learned man who had a bargain with the devil that he should warn the devil's emissaries of all the good deeds done around him so that they could be upset, and he in turn was to have all those pleasant things of this life which the devil's allies usually get, to wit a comfortable home, self-respect, good health, 'enough money for one's rank', and generally what is called 'a happy useful life'--_till_ midnight of all-hallowe'en in the last year of the nineteenth century. so this learned man did all he was required, and daily would inform the messenger imps of the good being done or prepared in the neighbourhood, and they would upset it; so that the place he lived in from a nice country town became a great centre of industry, full of wealth and desirable family mansions and street property, and was called in hell 'depot b' (depot a you may guess at). but at last toward the th of october , the learned man began to shake in his shoes and to dread the judgement; for, you see, he had not the comfortable ignorance of his kind, and was compelled to believe in the devil willy-nilly, and, as i say, he shook in his shoes. so he bethought him of a plan to cheat the devil, and the day before all-hallowe'en he cut a very small round hole in the floor of his study, just near the fireplace, right through down to the cellar. then he got a number of things that do great harm (newspapers, legal documents, unpaid bills, and so forth) and made ready for action. next morning when the little imps came for orders as usual, after prayers, he took them down into the cellar, and pointing out the hole in the ceiling, he said to them: 'my friends, this little hole is a mystery. it communicates, i believe, with the chapel; but i cannot find the exit. all i know is, that some pious person or angel, or what not, desirous to do good, slips into it every day whatever he thinks may be a cause of evil in the neighbourhood, hoping thus to destroy it' (in proof of which statement he showed them a scattered heap of newspapers on the floor of the cellar beneath the hole). 'and the best thing you can do,' he added, 'is to stay here and take them away as far as they come down and put them back into circulation again. tut! tut!' he added, picking up a moneylender's threatening letter to a widow, 'it is astonishing how these people interfere with the most sacred rights! here is a letter actually stolen from the post! pray see that it is delivered.' so he left the little imps at work, and fed them from above with all manner of evil-doing things, which they as promptly drew into the cellar, and at intervals flew away with, to put them into circulation again. that evening, at about half-past eleven, the devil came to fetch the learned man, and found him seated at his fine great desk, writing. the learned man got up very affably to receive the devil, and offered him a chair by the fire, just near the little round hole. 'pray don't move,' said the devil; 'i came early on purpose not to disturb you.' 'you are very good,' replied the learned man. 'the fact is, i have to finish my report on lady grope's settlement among our poor in the bull ring--it is making some progress. but their condition is heart-breaking, my dear sir; heart-breaking!' 'i can well believe it,' said the devil sadly and solemnly, leaning back in his chair, and pressing his hands together like a roof. 'the poor in our great towns, sir charles' (for the learned man had been made a baronet), 'the condition, i say, of the--don't i feel a draught?' he added abruptly. for the devil can't bear draughts. 'why,' said the learned man, as though ashamed, 'just near your chair there _is_ a little hole that i have done my best to fill up, but somehow it seemed impossible to fill it... i don't know...' the devil hates excuses, and is above all practical, so he just whipped the soul of a lawyer out of his side-pocket, tied a knot in it to stiffen it, and shoved it into the hole. 'there!' said the devil contentedly; 'if you had taken a piece of rag, or what not, you might yourself... hulloa!...' he looked down and saw the hole still gaping, and he felt a furious draught coming up again. he wondered a little, and then muttered: 'it's a pity i have on my best things. i never dare crease them, and i have nothing in my pockets to speak of, otherwise i might have brought something bigger.' he felt in his left-hand trouser pocket, and fished out a pedant, crumpled him carefully into a ball, and stuffed him hard into the hole, so that he suffered agonies. then the devil watched carefully. the soul of the pedant was at first tugged as if from below, then drawn slowly down, and finally shot off out of sight. 'this is a most extraordinary thing!' said the devil. 'it is the draught. it is very strong between the joists,' ventured the learned man. 'fiddle-sticks ends!' shouted the devil. 'it is a trick! but i've never been caught yet, and i never will be.' he clapped his hands, and a whole host of his followers poured in through the windows with mortgages, acts of parliament, legal decisions, declarations of war, charters to universities, patents for medicines, naturalization orders, shares in gold mines, specifications, prospectuses, water companies' reports, publishers' agreements, letters patent, freedoms of cities, and, in a word, all that the devil controls in the way of hole-stopping rubbish; and the devil, kneeling on the floor, stuffed them into the hole like a madman. but as fast as he stuffed, the little imps below (who had summoned a number of their kind to their aid also) pulled it through and carted it away. and the devil, like one possessed, lashed the floor with his tail, and his eyes glared like coals of fire, and the sweat ran down his face, and he breathed hard, and pushed every imaginable thing he had into the hole so swiftly that at last his documents and parchments looked like streaks and flashes. but the loyal little imps, not to be beaten, drew them through into the cellar as fast as machinery, and whirled them to their assistants; and all the poor lost souls who had been pressed into the service were groaning that their one holiday in the year was being filched from them, when, just as the process was going on so fast that it roared like a printing-machine in full blast, the clock in the hall struck twelve. the devil suddenly stopped and stood up. 'out of my house,' said the learned man; 'out of my house! i've had enough of you, and i've no time for fiddle-faddle! it's past twelve, and i've won!' the devil, though still panting, smiled a diabolical smile, and pulling out his repeater (which he had taken as a perquisite from the body of a member of parliament), said, 'i suppose you keep greenwich time?' 'certainly!' said sir charles. 'well,' said the devil, 'so much the worse for you to live in suffolk. you're four minutes fast, so i'll trouble you to come along with me; and i warn you that any words you now say may be used against...' at this point the learned man's patron saint, who thought things had gone far enough, materialized himself and coughed gently. they both looked round, and there was st charles sitting in the easy chair. 'so far,' murmured the saint to the devil suavely, 'so far from being four minutes too early, you are exactly a year too late.' on saying this, the saint smiled a genial, priestly smile, folded his hands, twiddled his thumbs slowly round and round, and gazed in a fatherly way at the devil. 'what do you mean?' shouted the devil. 'what i say,' said st charles calmly; ' is not the last year of the nineteenth century; it is the first year of the twentieth.' 'oh!' sneered the devil, 'are you an anti-vaccinationist as well? now, look here' (and he began counting on his fingers); 'supposing in the year b.c....' 'i never argue,' said st charles. 'well, all i know is,' answered the devil with some heat, 'that in this matter as in most others, thank the lord, i have on my side all the historians and all the scientists, all the universities, all the...' 'and i,' interrupted st charles, waving his hand like a gentleman (he is a borromeo), 'i have the pope!' at this the devil gave a great howl, and disappeared in a clap of thunder, and was never seen again till his recent appearance at brighton. so the learned man was saved; but hardly; for he had to spend five hundred years in purgatory catechizing such heretics and pagans as got there, and instructing them in the true faith. and with the more muscular he passed a knotty time. you do not see the river po till you are close to it. then, a little crook in the road being passed, you come between high trees, and straight out before you, level with you, runs the road into and over a very wide mass of tumbling water. it does not look like a bridge, it looks like a quay. it does not rise; it has all the appearance of being a strip of road shaved off and floated on the water. all this is because it passes over boats, as do some bridges over the rhine. (at cologne, i believe, and certainly at kiel--for i once sat at the end of that and saw a lot of sad german soldiers drilling, a memory which later made me understand ( ) why they can be out-marched by latins; ( ) why they impress travellers and civilians; ( ) why the governing class in germany take care to avoid common service; ( ) why there is no promotion from the ranks; and ( ) why their artillery is too rigid and not quick enough. it also showed me something intimate and fundamental about the germans which tacitus never understood and which all our historians miss--they are _of necessity_ histrionic. note i do not say it is a vice of theirs. it is a necessity of theirs, an appetite. they must see themselves on a stage. whether they do things well or ill, whether it is their excellent army with its ridiculous parade, or their eighteenth-century _sans-soucis_ with avenues and surprises, or their national legends with gods in wigs and strong men in tights, they _must_ be play-actors to be happy and therefore to be efficient; and if i were lord of germany, and desired to lead my nation and to be loved by them, i should put great golden feathers on my helmet, i should use rhetorical expressions, spout monologues in public, organize wide cavalry charges at reviews, and move through life generally to the crashing of an orchestra. for by doing this even a vulgar, short, and diseased man, who dabbled in stocks and shares and was led by financiers, could become a hero, and do his nation good.) lector. what is all this? auctor. it is a parenthesis. lector. it is good to know the names of the strange things one meets with on one's travels. auctor. so i return to where i branched off, and tell you that the river po is here crossed by a bridge of boats. it is a very large stream. half-way across, it is even a trifle uncomfortable to be so near the rush of the water on the trembling pontoons. and on that day its speed and turbulence were emphasized by the falling rain. for the marks of the rain on the water showed the rapidity of the current, and the silence of its fall framed and enhanced the swirl of the great river. once across, it is a step up into piacenza--a step through mud and rain. on my right was that plain where barbarossa received, and was glorified by, the rising life of the twelfth century; there the renaissance of our europe saw the future glorious for the first time since the twilight of rome, and being full of morning they imagined a new earth and gave it a lord. it was at roncaglia, i think in spring, and i wish i had been there. for in spring even the lombard plain they say is beautiful and generous, but in summer i know by experience that it is cold, brutish, and wet. and so in piacenza it rained and there was mud, till i came to a hotel called the moor's head, in a very narrow street, and entering it i discovered a curious thing: the italians live in palaces: i might have known it. they are the impoverished heirs of a great time; its garments cling to them, but their rooms are too large for the modern penury. i found these men eating in a great corridor, in a hall, as they might do in a palace. i found high, painted ceilings and many things of marble, a vast kitchen, and all the apparatus of the great houses--at the service of a handful of contented, unknown men. so in england, when we have worked out our full fate, happier but poorer men will sit in the faded country-houses (a community, or an inn, or impoverished squires), and rough food will be eaten under mouldering great pictures, and there will be offices or granaries in the galleries of our castles; and where lord saxonthorpe (whose real name is hauptstein) now plans our policy, common englishmen will return to the simpler life, and there will be dogs, and beer, and catches upon winter evenings. for italy also once gathered by artifice the wealth that was not of her making. he was a good man, the innkeeper of this palace. he warmed me at his fire in his enormous kitchen, and i drank malaga to the health of the cooks. i ate of their food, i bought a bottle of a new kind of sweet wine called 'vino dolce', and--i took the road. lector. and did you see nothing of piacenza? auctor. nothing, lector; it was raining, and there was mud. i stood in front of the cathedral on my way out, and watched it rain. it rained all along the broad and splendid emilian way. i had promised myself great visions of the roman soldiery passing up that eternal road; it still was stamped with the imperial mark, but the rain washed out its interest, and left me cold. the apennines also, rising abruptly from the plain, were to have given me revelations at sunset; they gave me none. their foothills appeared continually on my right, they themselves were veiled. and all these miles of road fade into the confused memory of that intolerable plain. the night at firenzuola, the morning (the second morning of this visitation) still cold, still heartless, and sodden with the abominable weather, shall form no part of this book. things grand and simple of their nature are possessed, as you know, of a very subtle flavour. the larger music, the more majestic lengths of verse called epics, the exact in sculpture, the classic drama, the most absolute kinds of wine, require a perfect harmony of circumstance for their appreciation. whatever is strong, poignant, and immediate in its effect is not so difficult to suit; farce, horror, rage, or what not, these a man can find in the arts, even when his mood may be heavy or disturbed; just as (to take their parallel in wines) strong beaune will always rouse a man. but that which is cousin to the immortal spirit, and which has, so to speak, no colour but mere light, _that_ needs for its recognition so serene an air of abstraction and of content as makes its pleasure seem rare in this troubled life, and causes us to recall it like a descent of the gods. for who, having noise around him, can strike the table with pleasure at reading the misanthrope, or in mere thirst or in fatigue praise chinon wine? who does not need for either of these perfect things recollection, a variety of according conditions, and a certain easy plenitude of the mind? so it is with the majesty of plains, and with the haunting power of their imperial roads. all you that have had your souls touched at the innermost, and have attempted to release yourselves in verse and have written trash--(and who know it)--be comforted. you shall have satisfaction at last, and you shall attain fame in some other fashion--perhaps in private theatricals or perhaps in journalism. you will be granted a prevision of complete success, and your hearts shall be filled--but you must not expect to find this mood on the emilian way when it is raining. all you that feel youth slipping past you and that are desolate at the approach of age, be merry; it is not what it looks like from in front and from outside. there is a glory in all completion, and all good endings are but shining transitions. there will come a sharp moment of revelation when you shall bless the effect of time. but this divine moment--- it is not on the emilian way in the rain that you should seek it. all you that have loved passionately and have torn your hearts asunder in disillusions, do not imagine that things broken cannot be mended by the good angels. there is a kind of splice called 'the long splice' which makes a cut rope seem what it was before; it is even stronger than before, and can pass through a block. there will descend upon you a blessed hour when you will be convinced as by a miracle, and you will suddenly understand the _redintegratio amoris (amoris redintegratio,_ a latin phrase). but this hour you will not receive in the rain on the emilian way. here then, next day, just outside a town called borgo, past the middle of morning, the rain ceased. its effect was still upon the slippery and shining road, the sky was still fast and leaden, when, in a distaste for their towns, i skirted the place by a lane that runs westward of the houses, and sitting upon a low wall, i looked up at the apennines, which were now plain above me, and thought over my approaching passage through those hills. but here i must make clear by a map the mass of mountains which i was about to attempt, and in which i forded so many rivers, met so many strange men and beasts, saw such unaccountable sights, was imprisoned, starved, frozen, haunted, delighted, burnt up, and finally refreshed in tuscany--in a word, where i had the most extraordinary and unheard-of adventures that ever diversified the life of man. the straight line to rome runs from milan not quite through piacenza, but within a mile or two of that city. then it runs across the first folds of the apennines, and gradually diverges from the emilian way. it was not possible to follow this part of the line exactly, for there was no kind of track. but by following the emilian way for several miles (as i had done), and by leaving it at the right moment, it was possible to strike the straight line again near a village called medesano. now on the far side of the apennines, beyond their main crest, there happens, most providentially, to be a river called the serchio, whose valley is fairly straight and points down directly to rome. to follow this valley would be practically to follow the line to rome, and it struck the tuscan plain not far from lucca. but to get from the emilian way over the eastern slope of the apennines' main ridge and crest, to where the serchio rises on the western side, is a very difficult matter. the few roads across the apennines cut my track at right angles, and were therefore useless. in order to strike the watershed at the sources of the serchio it was necessary to go obliquely across a torrent and four rivers (the taro, the parma, the enza, and the secchia), and to climb the four spurs that divided them; crossing each nearer to the principal chain as i advanced until, after the secchia, the next climb would be that of the central crest itself, on the far side of which i should find the serchio valley. perhaps in places roads might correspond to this track. certainly the bulk of it would be mule-paths or rough gullies--how much i could not tell. the only way i could work it with my wretched map was to note the names of towns' or hamlets more or less on the line, and to pick my way from one to another. i wrote them down as follows: fornovo, calestano, tizzano, colagna--the last at the foot of the final pass. the distance to that pass as the crow flies was only a little more than thirty miles. so exceedingly difficult was the task that it took me over two days. till i reached fornovo beyond the taro, i was not really in the hills. by country roads, picking my way, i made that afternoon for medesano. the lanes were tortuous; they crossed continual streams that ran from the hills above, full and foaming after the rain, and frothing with the waste of the mountains. i had not gone two miles when the sky broke; not four when a new warmth began to steal over the air and a sense of summer to appear in the earth about me. with the greatest rapidity the unusual weather that had accompanied me from milan was changing into the normal brilliancy of the south; but it was too late for the sun to tell, though he shone from time to time through clouds that were now moving eastwards more perceptibly and shredding as they moved. quite tired and desiring food, keen also for rest after those dispiriting days, i stopped, before reaching medesano, at an inn where three ways met; and there i purposed to eat and spend the night, for the next day, it was easy to see, would be tropical, and i should rise before dawn if i was to save the heat. i entered. the room within was of red wood. it had two tables, a little counter with a vast array of bottles, a woman behind the counter, and a small, nervous man in a strange hat serving. and all the little place was filled and crammed with a crowd of perhaps twenty men, gesticulating, shouting, laughing, quarrelling, and one very big man was explaining to another the virtues of his knife; and all were already amply satisfied with wine. for in this part men do not own, but are paid wages, so that they waste the little they have. i saluted the company, and walking up to the counter was about to call for wine. they had all become silent, when one man asked me a question in italian. i did not understand it, and attempted to say so, when another asked the same question; then six or seven--and there was a hubbub. and out of the hubbub i heard a similar sentence rising all the time. to this day i do not know what it meant, but i thought (and think) it meant 'he is a venetian,' or 'he is the venetian.' something in my broken language had made them think this, and evidently the venetians (or a venetian) were (or was) gravely unpopular here. why, i cannot tell. perhaps the venetians were blacklegs. but evidently a venetian, or the whole venetian nation, had recently done them a wrong. at any rate one very dark-haired man put his face close up to mine, unlipped his teeth, and began a great noise of cursing and threatening, and this so angered me that it overmastered my fear, which had till then been considerable. i remembered also a rule which a wise man once told me for guidance, and it is this: 'god disposes of victory, but, as the world is made, when men smile, smile; when men laugh, laugh; when men hit, hit; when men shout, shout; and when men curse, curse you also, my son, and in doubt let them always take the first move.' i say my fear had been considerable, especially of the man with the knife, but i got too angry to remember it, and advancing my face also to this insulter's i shouted, _'dio ladro! dios di mi alma! sanguinamento! nombre di dios! che? che vole? non sono da venezia io! sono de francia! je m'en fiche da vestra venezia! non se vede che non parlar vestra lingua? che sono forestiere?'_ and so forth. at this they evidently divided into two parties, and all began raging amongst themselves, and some at me, while the others argued louder and louder that there was an error. the little innkeeper caught my arm over the counter, and i turned round sharply, thinking he was doing me a wrong, but i saw him nodding and winking at me, and he was on my side. this was probably because he was responsible if anything happened, and he alone could not fly from the police. he made them a speech which, for all i know, may have been to the effect that he had known and loved me from childhood, or may have been that he knew me for one jacques of turin, or may have been any other lie. whatever lie it was, it appeased them. their anger went down to a murmur, just like soda-water settling down into a glass. i stood wine; we drank. i showed them my book, and as my pencil needed sharpening the large man lent me his knife for courtesy. when i got it in my hand i saw plainly that it was no knife for stabbing with; it was a pruning-knife, and would have bit the hand that cherished it (as they say of serpents). on the other hand, it would have been a good knife for ripping, and passable at a slash. you must not expect too much of one article. i took food, but i saw that in this parish it was safer to sleep out of doors than in; so in the falling evening, but not yet sunset, i wandered on, not at a pace but looking for shelter, and i found at last just what i wanted: a little shed, with dried ferns (as it seemed) strewed in a corner, a few old sacks, and a broken piece of machinery--though this last was of no use to me. i thought: 'it will be safe here, for i shall rise before day, and the owner, if there is one, will not disturb me.' the air was fairly warm. the place quite dry. the open side looked westward and a little south. the sun had now set behind the apennines, and there was a deep effulgence in the sky. i drank a little wine, lit a pipe, and watched the west in silence. whatever was left of the great pall from which all that rain had fallen, now was banked up on the further side of heaven in toppling great clouds that caught the full glow of evening. the great clouds stood up in heaven, separate, like persons; and no wind blew; but everything was full of evening. i worshipped them so far as it is permitted to worship inanimate things. they domed into the pure light of the higher air, inviolable. they seemed halted in the presence of a commanding majesty who ranked them all in order. this vision filled me with a large calm which a travelled man may find on coming to his home, or a learner in the communion of wise men. repose, certitude, and, as it were, a premonition of glory occupied my spirit. before it was yet quite dark i had made a bed out of the dry bracken, covered myself with the sacks and cloths, and very soon i fell asleep, still thinking of the shapes of clouds and of the power of god. next morning it was as i had thought. going out before it was fully light, a dense mist all around and a clear sky showed what the day was to be. as i reached medesano the sun rose, and in half-an-hour the air was instinct with heat; within an hour it was blinding. an early mass in the church below the village prepared my day, but as i took coffee afterwards in a little inn, and asked about crossing the taro to fornovo--my first point--to my astonishment they shook their heads. the taro was impassable. why could it not be crossed? my very broken language made it difficult for me to understand. they talked _oframi,_ which i thought meant oars; but _rami,_ had i known it, meant the separate branches or streams whereby these torrential rivers of italy flow through their arid beds. i drew a boat and asked if one could not cross in that (for i was a northerner, and my idea of a river was a river with banks and water in between), but they laughed and said 'no.' then i made the motion of swimming. they said it was impossible, and one man hung his head to indicate drowning. it was serious. they said to-morrow, or rather next day, one might do it. finally, a boy that stood by said he remembered a man who knew the river better than any one, and he, if any one could, would get me across. so i took the boy with me up the road, and as we went i saw, parallel to the road, a wide plain of dazzling rocks and sand, and beyond it, shining and silhouetted like an arab village, the group of houses that was fornovo. this plain was their sort of river in these hills. the boy said that sometimes it was full and a mile wide, sometimes it dwindled into dirty pools. now, as i looked, a few thin streams seemed to wind through it, and i could not understand the danger. after a mile or two we came to a spot in the road where a patch of brushwood only separated us from the river-bed. here the boy bade me wait, and asked a group of peasants whether the guide was in; they said they thought so, and some went up into the hillside with the boy to fetch him, others remained with me, looking at the river-bed and at fornovo beyond, shaking their heads, and saying it had not been done for days. but i did not understand whether the rain-freshet had passed and was draining away, or whether it had not yet come down from beyond, and i waited for the guide. they brought him at last down from his hut among the hills. he came with great strides, a kindly-looking man, extremely tall and thin, and with very pale eyes. he smiled. they pointed me out to him, and we struck the bargain by holding up three fingers each for three lira, and nodding. then he grasped his long staff and i mine, we bade farewell to the party, and together we went in silence through thick brushwood down towards the broad river-bed. the stones of it glared like the sands of africa; fornovo baked under the sun all white and black; between us was this broad plain of parched shingle and rocks that could, in a night, become one enormous river, or dwindle to a chain of stagnant ponds. to-day some seven narrow streams wandered in the expanse, and again they seemed so easy to cross that again i wondered at the need of a guide. we came to the edge of the first, and i climbed on the guide's back. he went bare-legged into the stream deeper and deeper till my feet, though held up high, just touched the water; then laboriously he climbed the further shore, and i got down upon dry land. it had been but twenty yards or so, and he knew the place well. i had seen, as we crossed, what a torrent this first little stream was, and i now knew the difficulty and understood the warnings of the inn. the second branch was impassable. we followed it up for nearly a mile to where 'an island' (that is, a mass of high land that must have been an island in flood-time, and that had on it an old brown village) stood above the white bed of the river. just at this 'island' my guide found a ford. and the way he found it is worth telling. he taught me the trick, and it is most useful to men who wander alone in mountains. you take a heavy stone, how heavy you must learn to judge, for a more rapid current needs a heavier stone; but say about ten pounds. this you lob gently into mid-stream. _how,_ it is impossible to describe, but when you do it it is quite easy to see that in about four feet of water, or less, the stone splashes quite differently from the way it does in five feet or more. it is a sure test, and one much easier to acquire by practice than to write about. to teach myself this trick i practised it throughout my journey in these wilds. having found a ford then, he again took me on his shoulders, but, in mid-stream, the water being up to his breast, his foot slipped on a stone (all the bed beneath was rolling and churning in the torrent), and in a moment we had both fallen. he pulled me up straight by his side, and then indeed, overwhelmed in the rush of water, it was easy to understand how the taro could drown men, and why the peasants dreaded these little ribbons of water. the current rushed and foamed past me, coming nearly to my neck; and it was icy cold. one had to lean against it, and the water so took away one's weight that at any moment one might have slipped and been carried away. the guide, a much taller man (indeed he was six foot three or so), supported me, holding my arm: and again in a moment we reached dry land. after that adventure there was no need for carrying. the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth branches were easily fordable. the seventh was broad and deep, and i found it a heavy matter; nor should i have waded it but for my guide, for the water bore against me like a man wrestling, and it was as cold as acheron, the river of the dead. then on the further shore, and warning him (in lingua franca) of his peril, i gave him his wage, and he smiled and thanked me, and went back, choosing his plans at leisure. thus did i cross the river taro; a danger for men. where i landed was a poor man sunning himself. he rose and walked with me to fornovo. he knew the guide. 'he is a good man,' he said to me of this friend. 'he is as good as a little piece of bread.' 'e vero,' i answered; 'e san cristophero.' this pleased the peasant; and indeed it was true. for the guide's business was exactly that of st christopher, except that the saint took no money, and lived, i suppose, on air. and so to fornovo; and the heat blinded and confused, and the air was alive with flies. but the sun dried me at once, and i pressed up the road because i needed food. after i had eaten in this old town i was preparing to make for calestano and to cross the first high spur of the apennines that separated me from it, when i saw, as i left the place, a very old church; and i stayed a moment and looked at carvings which were in no order, but put in pell-mell, evidently chosen from some older building. they were barbaric, but one could see that they stood for the last judgement of man, and there were the good looking foolish, and there were the wicked being boiled by devils in a pot, and what was most pleasing was one devil who with great joy was carrying off a rich man's gold in a bag. but now we are too wise to believe in such follies, and when we die we take our wealth with us; in the ninth century they had no way of doing this, for no system of credit yet obtained. then leaving the main road which runs to pontremoli and at last to spezzia, my lane climbed up into the hills and ceased, little by little, to be even a lane. it became from time to time the bed of a stream, then nothing, then a lane again, and at last, at the head of the glen, i confessed to having lost it; but i noted a great rock or peak above me for a landmark, and i said to myself-- 'no matter. the wall of this glen before me is obviously the ridge of the spur; the rock must be left to the north, and i have but to cross the ridge by its guidance.' by this time, however, the heat overcame me, and, as it was already afternoon, and as i had used so much of the preceding night for my journey, i remembered the wise custom of hot countries and lay down to sleep. i slept but a little while, yet when i woke the air was cooler. i climbed the side of the glen at random, and on the summit i found, to my disgust, a road. what road could it be? to this day i do not know. perhaps i had missed my way and struck the main highway again. perhaps (it is often so in the apennines) it was a road leading nowhere. at any rate i hesitated, and looked back to judge my direction. it was a happy accident. i was now some feet above the taro. there, before me, stood the high strange rock that i had watched from below; all around it and below me was the glen or cup of bare hills, slabs, and slopes of sand and stone calcined in the sun, and, beyond these near things, all the plain of lombardy was at my feet. it was this which made it worth while to have toiled up that steep wall, and even to have lost my way--to see a hundred miles of the great flat stretched out before me: all the kingdoms of the world. nor was this all. there were sharp white clouds on the far northern horizon, low down above the uncertain edge of the world. i looked again and found they did not move. then i knew they were the alps. believe it or not, i was looking back to a place of days before: over how many, many miles of road! the rare, white peaks and edges could not deceive me; they still stood to the sunlight, and sent me from that vast distance the memory of my passage, when their snows had seemed interminable and their height so monstrous; their cold such a cloak of death. now they were as far off as childhood, and i saw them for the last time. all this i drew. then finding a post directing me to a side road for calestano, i followed it down and down into the valley beyond; and up the walls of this second valley as the evening fell i heard the noise of the water running, as the taro had run, a net of torrents from the melting snows far off. these streams i soon saw below me, winding (as those of the taro had wound) through a floor of dry shingle and rock; but when my road ceased suddenly some hundreds of feet above the bed of the river, and when, full of evening, i had scrambled down through trees to the brink of the water, i found i should have to repeat what i had done that morning and to ford these streams. for there was no track of any kind and no bridge, and calestano stood opposite me, a purple cluster of houses in the dusk against the farther mountain side. very warily, lobbing stones as i had been taught, and following up and down each branch to find a place, i forded one by one the six little cold and violent rivers, and reaching the farther shore, i reached also, as i thought, supper, companionship, and a bed. but it is not in this simple way that human life is arranged. what awaited me in calestano was ill favour, a prison, release, base flattery, and a very tardy meal. it is our duty to pity all men. it is our duty to pity those who are in prison. it is our duty to pity those who are not in prison. how much more is it the duty of a christian man to pity the rich who cannot ever get into prison? these indeed i do now specially pity, and extend to them my commiseration. what! never even to have felt the grip of the policeman; to have watched his bold suspicious eye; to have tried to make a good show under examination... never to have heard the bolt grinding in the lock, and never to have looked round at the cleanly simplicity of a cell? then what emotions have you had, unimprisonable rich; or what do you know of active living and of adventure? it was after drinking some wine and eating macaroni and bread at a poor inn, the only one in the place, and after having to shout at the ill-natured hostess (and to try twenty guesses before i made her understand that i wanted cheese), it was when i had thus eaten and shouted, and had gone over the way to drink coffee and to smoke in a little cafe, that my adventure befell me. in the inn there had been a fat jolly-looking man and two official-looking people with white caps dining at another table. i had taken no notice of them at the time. but as i sat smoking and thinking in the little cafe, which was bright and full of people, i noticed a first danger-signal when i was told sullenly that 'they had no bed; they thought i could get none in the town': then, suddenly, these two men in white caps came in, and they arrested me with as much ease as you or i would hold a horse. a moment later there came in two magnificent fellows, gendarmes, with swords and cocked hats, and moustaches _a l'abd el kader,_ as we used to say in the old days; these four, the two gendarmes and two policemen, sat down opposite me on chairs and began cross-questioning me in italian, a language in which i was not proficient. i so far understood them as to know that they were asking for my papers. 'niente!' said i, and poured out on the table a card-case, a sketch-book, two pencils, a bottle of wine, a cup, a piece of bread, a scrap of french newspaper, an old _secolo,_ a needle, some thread, and a flute--but no passport. they looked in the card-case and found lira; that is, not quite three pounds. they examined the sketch-book critically, as behoved southerners who are mostly of an artistic bent: but they found no passport. they questioned me again, and as i picked about for words to reply, the smaller (the policeman, a man with a face like a fox) shouted that he had heard me speaking italian _currently_ in the inn, and that my hesitation was a blind. this lie so annoyed me that i said angrily in french (which i made as southern as possible to suit them): 'you lie: and you can be punished for such lies, since you are an official.' for though the police are the same in all countries, and will swear black is white, and destroy men for a song, yet where there is a _droit administratif-_ that is, where the revolution has made things tolerable--you are much surer of punishing your policeman, and he is much less able to do you a damage than in england or america; for he counts as an official and is under a more public discipline and responsibility if he exceeds his powers. then i added, speaking distinctly, 'i can speak french and latin. have you a priest in calestano, and does he know latin?' this was a fine touch. they winced, and parried it by saying that the sindaco knew french. then they led me away to their barracks while they fetched the sindaco, and so i was imprisoned. but not for long. very soon i was again following up the street, and we came to the house of the sindaco or mayor. there he was, an old man with white hair, god bless him, playing cards with his son and daughter. to him therefore, as understanding french, i was bidden address myself. i told him in clear and exact idiom that his policemen were fools, that his town was a rabbit-warren, and his prison the only cleanly thing in it; that half-a-dozen telegrams to places i could indicate would show where i had passed; that i was a common tourist, not even an artist (as my sketch-book showed), and that my cards gave my exact address and description. but the sindaco, the french-speaking sindaco, understood me not in the least, and it seemed a wicked thing in me to expose him in his old age, so i waited till he spoke. he spoke a word common to all languages, and one he had just caught from my lips. 'tourist-e?' he said. i nodded. then he told them to let me go. it was as simple as that; and to this day, i suppose, he passes for a very bilingual mayor. he did me a service, and i am willing to believe that in his youth he smacked his lips over the subtle flavour of voltaire, but i fear to-day he would have a poor time with anatole france. what a contrast was there between the hour when i had gone out of the cafe a prisoner and that when i returned rejoicing with a crowd about me, proclaiming my innocence, and shouting one to another that i was a tourist and had seventy-three lira on my person! the landlady smiled and bowed: she had before refused me a bed! the men at the tables made me a god! nor did i think them worse for this. why should i? a man unknown, unkempt, unshaven, in tatters, covered with weeks of travel and mud, and in a suit that originally cost not ten shillings; having slept in leaves and ferns, and forest places, crosses a river at dusk and enters a town furtively, not by the road. he is a foreigner; he carries a great club. is it not much wiser to arrest such a man? why yes, evidently. and when you have arrested him, can you do more than let him go without proof, on his own word? hardly! thus i loved the people of calestano, especially for this strange adventure they had given me; and next day, having slept in a human room, i went at sunrise up the mountain sides beyond and above their town, and so climbed by a long cleft the _second_ spur of the apennines: the spur that separated me from the _third_ river, the parma. and my goal above the parma (when i should have crossed it) was a place marked in the map 'tizzano'. to climb this second spur, to reach and cross the parma in the vale below, to find tizzano, i left calestano on that fragrant morning; and having passed and drawn a little hamlet called frangi, standing on a crag, i went on up the steep vale and soon reached the top of the ridge, which here dips a little and allows a path to cross over to the southern side. it is the custom of many, when they get over a ridge, to begin singing. nor did i fail, early as was the hour, to sing in passing this the second of my apennine summits. i sang easily with an open throat everything that i could remember in praise of joy; and i did not spare the choruses of my songs, being even at pains to imitate (when they were double) the various voices of either part. now, so much of the englishman was in me that, coming round a corner of rock from which one first sees beduzzo hanging on its ledge (as you know), and finding round this corner a peasant sitting at his ease, i was ashamed. for i did not like to be overheard singing fantastic songs. but he, used to singing as a solitary pastime, greeted me, and we walked along together, pointing out to each other the glories of the world before us and exulting in the morning. it was his business to show me things and their names: the great mountain of the pilgrimage to the south, the strange rock of castel-nuovo; in the far haze the plain of parma; and tizzano on its high hill, the ridge straight before me. he also would tell me the name in italian of the things to hand--my boots, my staff, my hat; and i told him their names in french, all of which he was eager to learn. we talked of the way people here tilled and owned ground, of the dangers in the hills, and of the happiness of lonely men. but if you ask how we understood each other, i will explain the matter to you. in italy, in the apennines of the north, there seem to be three strata of language. in the valleys the italian was pure, resonant, and foreign to me. there dwell the townsmen, and they deal down river with the plains. half-way up (as at frangi, at beduzzo, at tizzano) i began to understand them. they have the nasal 'n'; they clip their words. on the summits, at last, they speak like northerners, and i was easily understood, for they said not _'vino' _but _'vin';_ not _'duo'_ but _'du'_, and so forth. they are the gauls of the hills. i told them so, and they were very pleased. then i and my peasant parted, but as one should never leave a man without giving him something to show by way of token on the day of judgement, i gave this man a little picture of milan, and bade him keep it for my sake. so he went his way, and i mine, and the last thing he said to me was about a _'molinar'_, but i did not know what that meant. when i had taken a cut down the mountain, and discovered a highroad at the bottom, i saw that the river before me needed fording, like all the rest; and as my map showed me there was no bridge for many miles down, i cast about to cross directly, if possible on some man's shoulders. i met an old woman with a heap of grass on her back; i pointed to the river, and said (in lingua franca) that i wished to cross. she again used that word _'molinar',_ and i had an inkling that it meant 'miller'. i said to myself-- 'where there is a miller there is a mill. for _ubi petrus ibi ecclesia._ where there is a mill there is water; a mill must have motive power:' (a) i must get near the stream; (b) i must look out for the noise and aspect of a mill. i therefore (thanking the grass-bearing woman) went right over the fields till i saw a great, slow mill-wheel against a house, and a sad man standing looking at it as though it were the procession of god's providence. he was thinking of many things. i tapped him on the shoulder (whereat he started) and spoke the great word of that valley, _'molinar'_. it opened all the gates of his soul. he smiled at me like a man grown young again, and, beckoning me to follow, led radiantly up the sluice to where it drew from the river. here three men were at work digging a better entry for the water. one was an old, happy man in spectacles, the second a young man with stilts in his hands, the third was very tall and narrow; his face was sad, and he was of the kind that endure all things and conquer. i said '_molinar_?'' i had found him. to the man who had brought me i gave c., and so innocent and good are these people that he said _'pourquoi?'_ or words like it, and i said it was necessary. then i said to the molinar, _'quanta?'_ and he, holding up a tall finger, said '_una lira'._ the young man leapt on to his stilts, the molinar stooped down and i got upon his shoulders, and we all attempted the many streams of the river parma, in which i think i should by myself have drowned. i say advisedly--'i should have been drowned.' these upper rivers of the hills run high and low according to storms and to the melting of the snows. the river of parma (for this torrent at last fed parma) was higher than the rest. even the molinar, the god of that valley, had to pick his way carefully, and the young man on stilts had to go before, much higher than mortal men, and up above the water. i could see him as he went, and i could see that, to tell the truth, there was a ford--a rare thing in upper waters, because in the torrent-sources of rivers either the upper waters run over changeless rocks or else over gravel and sand. now if they run over rocks they have their isolated shallow places, which any man may find, and their deep--evident by the still and mysterious surface, where fish go round and round in the hollows; but no true ford continuous from side to side. so it is in scotland. and if they run over gravel and sand, then with every storm or 'spate' they shift and change. but here by some accident there ran--perhaps a shelf or rock, perhaps a ruin of a roman bridge--something at least that was deep enough and solid enough to be a true ford--and that we followed. the molinar--even the molinar--was careful of his way. twice he waited, waist high, while the man on stilts before us suddenly lost ground and plunged to his feet. once, crossing a small branch (for the river here, like all these rivers, runs in many arms over the dry gravel), it seemed there was no foothold and we had to cast up and down. whenever we found dry land, i came off the molinar's back to rest him, and when he took the water again i mounted again. so we passed the many streams, and stood at last on the tizzanian side. then i gave a lira to the molinar, and to his companion on stilts c., who said, 'what is this for?' and i said, 'you also helped.' the molinar then, with gesticulations and expression of the eyes, gave me to understand that for this c. the stilt-man would take me up to tizzano on the high ridge and show me the path up the ridge; so the stilt-man turned to me and said, _'andiamo' _which means _'allons'. _but when the italians say _'andiamo' _they are less harsh than the northern french who say _'allans'; _for the northern french have three troubles in the blood. they are fighters; they will for ever be seeking the perfect state, and they love furiously. hence they ferment twice over, like wine subjected to movement and breeding acidity. therefore is it that when they say _'allons'_ it is harsher than _'andiamo'._ my italian said to me genially, _'andiamo_'. the catholic church makes men. by which i do not mean boasters and swaggerers, nor bullies nor ignorant fools, who, finding themselves comfortable, think that their comfort will be a boon to others, and attempt (with singular unsuccess) to force it on the world; but men, human beings, different from the beasts, capable of firmness and discipline and recognition; accepting death; tenacious. of her effects the most gracious is the character of the irish and of these italians. of such also some day she may make soldiers. have you ever noticed that all the catholic church does is thought beautiful and lovable until she comes out into the open, and then suddenly she is found by her enemies (which are the seven capital sins, and the four sins calling to heaven for vengeance) to be hateful and grinding? so it is; and it is the fine irony of her present renovation that those who were for ever belauding her pictures, and her saints, and her architecture, as we praise things dead, they are the most angered by her appearance on this modern field all armed, just as she was, with works and art and songs, sometimes superlative, often vulgar. note you, she is still careless of art or songs, as she has always been. she lays her foundations in something other, which something other our moderns hate. yet out of that something other came the art and song of the middle ages. and what art or songs have you? she is europe and all our past. she is returning. _andiamo._ lector. but mr _(deleted by the censor)_ does not think so? auctor. i last saw him supping at the savoy. _andiamo._ we went up the hill together over a burnt land, but shaded with trees. it was very hot. i could scarcely continue, so fast did my companion go, and so much did the heat oppress me. we passed a fountain at which oxen drank, and there i supped up cool water from the spout, but he wagged his finger before his face to tell me that this was an error under a hot sun. we went on and met two men driving cattle up the path between the trees. these i soon found to be talking of prices and markets with my guide. for it was market-day. as we came up at last on to the little town--a little, little town like a nest, and all surrounded with walls, and a castle in it and a church--we found a thousand beasts all lowing and answering each other along the highroad, and on into the market square through the gate. there my guide led me into a large room, where a great many peasants were eating soup with macaroni in it, and some few, meat. but i was too exhausted to eat meat, so i supped up my broth and then began diapephradizing on my fingers to show the great innkeeper what i wanted. i first pulled up the macaroni out of the dish, and said, _fromagio, pommodoro,_ by which i meant cheese--tomato. he then said he knew what i meant, and brought me that spaghetti so treated, which is a dish for a king, a cosmopolitan traitor, an oppressor of the poor, a usurer, or any other rich man, but there is no spaghetti in the place to which such men go, whereas these peasants will continue to enjoy it in heaven. i then pulled out my bottle of wine, drank what was left out of the neck (by way of sign), and putting it down said, _'tale, tantum, vino rosso.'_ my guide also said many things which probably meant that i was a rich man, who threw his money about by the sixpence. so the innkeeper went through a door and brought back a bottle all corked and sealed, and said on his fingers, and with his mouth and eyes, 'this kind of wine is something very special.' only in the foolish cities do men think it a fine thing to appear careless of money. so i, very narrowly watching him out of half-closed eyes, held up my five fingers interrogatively, and said, _'cinquante?'_ meaning 'dare you ask fivepence?' at which he and all the peasants around, even including my guide, laughed aloud as at an excellent joke, and said, _'cinquante, ho! ho!'_ and dug each other in the ribs. but the innkeeper of tizzano val parmense said in italian a number of things which meant that i could but be joking, and added (in passing) that a lira made it a kind of gift to me. a lira was, as it were, but a token to prove that it had changed hands: a registration fee: a matter of record; at a lira it was pure charity. then i said, _'soixante dix?'_ which meant nothing to him, so i held up seven fingers; he waved his hand about genially, and said that as i was evidently a good fellow, a traveller, and as anyhow he was practically giving me the wine, he would make it ninepence; it was hardly worth his while to stretch out his hand for so little money. so then i pulled out c. in coppers, and said, _'tutto',_ which means 'all'. then he put the bottle before me, took the money, and an immense clamour rose from all those who had been watching the scene, and they applauded it as a ratified bargain. and this is the way in which bargains were struck of old time in these hills when your fathers and mine lived and shivered in a cave, hunted wolves, and bargained with clubs only. so this being settled, and i eager for the wine, wished it to be opened, especially to stand drink to my guide. the innkeeper was in another room. the guide was too courteous to ask for a corkscrew, and i did not know the italian for a corkscrew. i pointed to the cork, but all i got out of my guide was a remark that the wine was very good. then i made the emblem and sign of a corkscrew in my sketch-book with a pencil, but he pretended not to understand--such was his breeding. then i imitated the mode, sound, and gesture of a corkscrew entering a cork, and an old man next to me said '_tira-buchon'--_a common french word as familiar as the woods of marly! it was brought. the bottle was opened and we all drank together. as i rose to go out of tizzano val parmense my guide said to me, _'se chiama tira-buchon perche e' lira il buchon'_ and i said to him, _'dominus vobiscum'_ and left him to his hills. i took the road downwards from the ridge into the next dip and valley, but after a mile or so in the great heat (it was now one o'clock) i was exhausted. so i went up to a little wooded bank, and lay there in the shade sketching tizzano val parmense, where it stood not much above me, and then i lay down and slept for an hour and smoked a pipe and thought of many things. from the ridge on which tizzano stands, which is the third of these apennine spurs, to the next, the fourth, is but a little way; one looks across from one to the other. nevertheless it is a difficult piece of walking, because in the middle of the valley another ridge, almost as high as the principal spurs, runs down, and this has to be climbed at its lowest part before one can get down to the torrent of the enza, where it runs with a hollow noise in the depths of the mountains. so the whole valley looks confused, and it appears, and is, laborious. very high up above in a mass of trees stood the first of those many ruined towers and castles in which the apennines abound, and of which canossa, far off and indistinguishable in the haze, was the chief example. it was called 'the tower of rugino'. beyond the deep trench of the enza, poised as it seemed on its southern bank (but really much further off, in the secchia valley), stood that strange high rock of castel-nuovo, which the peasant had shown me that morning and which was the landmark of this attempt. it seemed made rather by man than by nature, so square and exact was it and so cut off from the other hills. it was not till the later afternoon, when the air was already full of the golden dust that comes before the fall of the evening, that i stood above the enza and saw it running thousands of feet below. here i halted for a moment irresolute, and looked at the confusion of the hills. it had been my intention to make a straight line for collagna, but i could not tell where collagna lay save that it was somewhere behind the high mountain that was now darkening against the sky. moreover, the enza (as i could see down, down from where i stood) was not fordable. it did not run in streams but in one full current, and was a true river. all the scene was wild. i had come close to the central ridge of the apennines. it stood above me but five or six clear miles away, and on its slopes there were patches and fields of snow which were beginning to glimmer in the diminishing light. four peasants sat on the edge of the road. they were preparing to go to their quiet homesteads, and they were gathering their scythes together, for they had been mowing in a field. coming up to these, i asked them how i might reach collagna. they told me that i could not go straight, as i had wished, on account of the impassable river, but that if i went down the steep directly below me i should find a bridge; that thence a path went up the opposite ridge to where a hamlet, called ceregio (which they showed me beyond the valley), stood in trees on the crest, and once there (they said) i could be further directed. i understood all their speech except one fatal word. i thought they told me that ceregio was _half_ the way to collagna; and what that error cost me you shall hear. they drank my wine, i ate their bread, and we parted: they to go to their accustomed place, and i to cross this unknown valley. but when i had left these grave and kindly men, the echo of their voices remained with me; the deep valley of the enza seemed lonely, and as i went lower and lower down towards the noise of the river i lost the sun. the enza was flooded. a rough bridge, made of stout logs resting on trunks of trees that were lashed together like tripods and supported a long plank, was afforded to cross it. but in the high water it did not quite reach to the hither bank. i rolled great stones into the water and made a short causeway, and so, somewhat perilously, i attained the farther shore, and went up, up by a little precipitous path till i reached the hamlet of ceregio standing on its hill, blessed and secluded; for no road leads in or out of it, but only mule-paths. the houses were all grouped together round a church; it was dim between them; but several men driving oxen took me to a house that was perhaps the inn, though there was no sign; and there in a twilight room we all sat down together like christians in perfect harmony, and the woman of the house served us. now when, after this communion, i asked the way to collagna, they must have thought me foolish, and have wondered why i did not pass the night with them, for they knew how far off collagna was. but i (by the error in language of which i have told you) believed it to be but a short way off. it was in reality ten miles. the oldest of my companions said he would put me on the way. we went together in the half light by a lane that followed the crest of the hill, and we passed a charming thing, a little white sculpture in relief, set up for a shrine and representing the annunciation; and as we passed it we both smiled. then in a few hundred yards we passed another that was the visitation, and they were gracious and beautiful to a degree, and i saw that they stood for the five joyful mysteries. then he had to leave me, and he said, pointing to the little shrine: 'when you come to the fifth of these the path divides. take that to the left, and follow it round the hollow of the mountain: it will become a lane. this lane crosses a stream and passes near a tower. when you have reached the tower it joins a great highroad, and that is the road to collagna.' and when he indicated the shrines he smiled, as though in apology for them, and i saw that we were of the same religion. then (since people who will not meet again should give each other presents mutually) i gave him the best of my two pipes, a new pipe with letters carved on it, which he took to be the initials of my name, and he on his part gave me a hedge-rose which he had plucked and had been holding in his fingers. and i continued the path alone. certainly these people have a benediction upon them, granted them for their simple lives and their justice. their eyes are fearless and kindly. they are courteous, straight, and all have in them laughter and sadness. they are full of songs, of memories, of the stories of their native place; and their worship is conformable to the world that god made. may they possess their own land, and may their influence come again from italy to save from jar, and boasting, and ineptitude the foolish, valourless cities, and the garish crowds of shouting men.... and let us especially pray that the revival of the faith may do something for our poor old universities. already, when i heard all these directions, they seemed to argue a longer road than i had expected. it proved interminable. it was now fully dark; the night was very cold from the height of the hills; a dense dew began to fall upon the ground, and the sky was full of stars. for hours i went on slowly down the lane that ran round the hollow of the wooded mountain, wondering why i did not reach the stream he spoke of. it was midnight when i came to the level, and yet i heard no water, and did not yet see the tower against the sky. extreme fatigue made it impossible, as i thought, to proceed farther, when i saw a light in a window, and went to it quickly and stood beneath it. a woman from the window called me _caro mio,_ which was gracious, but she would not let me sleep even in the straw of the barn. i hobbled on in despair of the night, for the necessity of sleep was weighing me down after four high hills climbed that day, and after the rough ways and the heat and the continual marching. i found a bridge which crossed the deep ravine they had told me of. this high bridge was new, and had been built of fine stone, yet it was broken and ruined, and a gap suddenly showed in the dark. i stepped back from it in fear. the clambering down to the stream and up again through the briars to regain the road broke me yet more, and when, on the hill beyond, i saw the tower faintly darker against the dark sky, i went up doggedly to it, fearing faintness, and reaching it where it stood (it was on the highest ground overlooking the secchia valley), i sat down on a stone beside it and waited for the morning. the long slope of the hills fell away for miles to where, by daylight, would have lain the misty plain of emilia. the darkness confused the landscape. the silence of the mountains and the awful solemnity of the place lent that vast panorama a sense of the terrible, under the dizzy roof of the stars. every now and again some animal of the night gave a cry in the undergrowth of the valley, and the great rock of castel-nuovo, now close and enormous--bare, rugged, a desert place--added something of doom. the hours were creeping on with the less certain stars; a very faint and unliving grey touched the edges of the clouds. the cold possessed me, and i rose to walk, if i could walk, a little farther. what is that in the mind which, after (it may be) a slight disappointment or a petty accident, causes it to suffer on the scale of grave things? i have waited for the dawn a hundred times, attended by that mournful, colourless spirit which haunts the last hours of darkness; and influenced especially by the great timeless apathy that hangs round the first uncertain promise of increasing light. for there is an hour before daylight when men die, and when there is nothing above the soul or around it, when even the stars fail. and this long and dreadful expectation i had thought to be worst when one was alone at sea in a small boat without wind; drifting beyond one's harbour in the ebb of the outer channel tide, and sogging back at the first flow on the broad, confused movement of a sea without any waves. in such lonely mornings i have watched the owers light turning, and i have counted up my gulf of time, and wondered that moments could be so stretched out in the clueless mind. i have prayed for the morning or for a little draught of wind, and this i have thought, i say, the extreme of absorption into emptiness and longing. but now, on this ridge, dragging myself on to the main road, i found a deeper abyss of isolation and despairing fatigue than i had ever known, and i came near to turning eastward and imploring the hastening of light, as men pray continually without reason for things that can but come in a due order. i still went forward a little, because when i sat down my loneliness oppressed me like a misfortune; and because my feet, going painfully and slowly, yet gave a little balance and rhythm to the movement of my mind. i heard no sound of animals or birds. i passed several fields, deserted in the half-darkness; and in some i felt the hay, but always found it wringing wet with dew, nor could i discover a good shelter from the wind that blew off the upper snow of the summits. for a little space of time there fell upon me, as i crept along the road, that shadow of sleep which numbs the mind, but it could not compel me to lie down, and i accepted it only as a partial and beneficent oblivion which covered my desolation and suffering as a thin, transparent cloud may cover an evil moon. then suddenly the sky grew lighter upon every side. that cheating gloom (which i think the clouds in purgatory must reflect) lifted from the valley as though to a slow order given by some calm and good influence that was marshalling in the day. their colours came back to things; the trees recovered their shape, life, and trembling; here and there, on the face of the mountain opposite, the mists by their movement took part in the new life, and i thought i heard for the first time the tumbling water far below me in the ravine. that subtle barrier was drawn which marks to-day from yesterday; all the night and its despondency became the past and entered memory. the road before me, the pass on my left (my last ridge, and the entry into tuscany), the mass of the great hills, had become mixed into the increasing light, that is, into the familiar and invigorating present which i have always found capable of opening the doors of the future with a gesture of victory. my pain either left me, or i ceased to notice it, and seeing a little way before me a bank above the road, and a fine grove of sparse and dominant chestnuts, i climbed up thither and turned, standing to the east. there, without any warning of colours, or of the heraldry that we have in the north, the sky was a great field of pure light, and without doubt it was all woven through, as was my mind watching it, with security and gladness. into this field, as i watched it, rose the sun. the air became warmer almost suddenly. the splendour and health of the new day left me all in repose, and persuaded or compelled me to immediate sleep. i found therefore in the short grass, and on the scented earth beneath one of my trees, a place for lying down; i stretched myself out upon it, and lapsed into a profound slumber, which nothing but a vague and tenuous delight separated from complete forgetfulness. if the last confusion of thought, before sleep possessed me, was a kind of prayer--and certainly i was in the mood of gratitude and of adoration--this prayer was of course to god, from whom every good proceeds, but partly (idolatrously) to the sun, which, of all the things he has made, seems, of what we at least can discover, the most complete and glorious. therefore the first hours of the sunlight, after i had wakened, made the place like a new country; for my mind which received it was new. i reached collagna before the great heat, following the fine highroad that went dipping and rising again along the mountain side, and then (leaving the road and crossing the little secchia by a bridge), a path, soon lost in a grassy slope, gave me an indication of my way. for when i had gone an hour or so upwards along the shoulder of the hill, there opened gradually before me a silent and profound vale, hung with enormous woods, and sloping upwards to where it was closed by a high bank beneath and between two peaks. this bank i knew could be nothing else than the central ridge of the apennines, the watershed, the boundary of tuscany, and the end of all the main part of my journey. beyond, the valleys would open on to the tuscan plain, and at the southern limit of that, siena was my mark; from siena to rome an eager man, if he is sound, may march in three long days. nor was that calculation all. the satisfaction of the last lap, of the home run, went with the word tuscany in my mind; these cities were the approaches and introduction of the end. when i had slept out the heat, i followed the woods upward through the afternoon. they stood tangled and huge, and the mosses under them were thick and silent, because in this last belt of the mountains height and coolness reproduced the north. a charcoal burner was making his furnace; after that for the last miles there was no sound. even the floor of the vale was a depth of grass, and no torrent ran in it but only a little hidden stream, leafy like our streams at home. at last the steep bank, a wall at the end of the valley, rose immediately above me. it was very steep and bare, desolate with the many stumps of trees that had been cut down; but all its edge and fringe against the sky was the line of a deep forest. after its laborious hundreds of feet, when the forest that crowned it evenly was reached, the apennines were conquered, the last great range was passed, and there stood no barrier between this high crest and rome. the hither side of that bank, i say, had been denuded of its trees; the roots of secular chestnuts stood like graves above the dry steep, and had marked my last arduous climb. now, at the summit, the highest part was a line of cool forest, and the late afternoon mingled with the sanctity of trees. a genial dampness pervaded the earth beneath; grasses grew, and there were living creatures in the shade. nor was this tenanted wood all the welcome i received on my entry into tuscany. already i heard the noise of falling waters upon every side, where the serchio sprang from twenty sources on the southern slope, and leapt down between mosses, and quarrelled, and overcame great smooth dark rocks in busy falls. indeed, it was like my own country in the north, and a man might say to himself--'after so much journeying, perhaps i am in the enchanted wood, and may find at last the fairy melisaunde.' a glade opened, and, the trees no longer hiding it, i looked down the vale, which was the gate of tuscany. there--high, jagged, rapt into the sky--stood such a group of mountains as men dream of in good dreams, or see in the works of painters when old age permits them revelations. their height was evident from the faint mist and grey of their hues; their outline was tumultuous, yet balanced; full of accident and poise. it was as though these high walls of carrara, the western boundary of the valley, had been shaped expressly for man, in order to exalt him with unexpected and fantastic shapes, and to expand his dull life with a permanent surprise. for a long time i gazed at these great hills. then, more silent in the mind through their influence, i went down past the speech and companionship of the springs of the serchio, and the chestnut trees were redolent of evening all round. down the bank to where the streams met in one, down the river, across its gaping, ruinous bridge (which some one, generations ago, had built for the rare travellers--there were then no main roads across the apennine, and perhaps this rude pass was in favour); down still more gently through the narrow upper valley i went between the chestnut trees, and calm went with me for a companion: and the love of men and the expectation of good seemed natural to all that had been made in this blessed place. of borda, where the peasants directed me, there is no need to speak, till crossing the serchio once more, this time on a trestle bridge of wood, i passed by a wider path through the groves, and entered the dear village of sillano, which looks right into the pure west. and the peaks are guardians all about it: the elder brothers of this remote and secluded valley. an inn received me: a great kitchen full of men and women talking, a supper preparing, a great fire, meat smoking and drying in the ingle-nook, a vast timbered roof going up into darkness: there i was courteously received, but no one understood my language. seeing there a young priest, i said to him-- _'pater, habeo linguam latinam, sed non habeo linguam italicam. visne mi dare traductionem in istam linguam toscanam non nullorum verborum?'_ to this he replied, _'libenter,'_ and the people revered us both. thus he told me the name for a knife was _cultello;_ for a room, _camera par domire;_ for 'what is it called?' _'come si chiama?';_ for 'what is the road to?' _'quella e la via a...?'_ and other phrases wherein, no doubt, i am wrong; but i only learnt by ear. then he said to me something i did not understand, and i answered, _'pol-hercle!'_ at which he seemed pleased enough. then, to make conversation, i said, _'diaconus es?'_ and he answered me, mildly and gravely, _'presbyter sum.'_ and a little while after he left for his house, but i went out on to the balcony, where men and women were talking in subdued tones. there, alone, i sat and watched the night coming up into these tuscan hills. the first moon since that waning in lorraine--(how many nights ago, how many marches!)--hung in the sky, a full crescent, growing into brightness and glory as she assumed her reign. the one star of the west called out his silent companions in their order; the mountains merged into a fainter confusion; heaven and the infinite air became the natural seat of any spirit that watched this spell. the fire-flies darted in the depths of vineyards and of trees below; then the noise of the grasshoppers brought back suddenly the gardens of home, and whatever benediction surrounds our childhood. some promise of eternal pleasures and of rest deserved haunted the village of sillano. in very early youth the soul can still remember its immortal habitation, and clouds and the edges of hills are of another kind from ours, and every scent and colour has a savour of paradise. what that quality may be no language can tell, nor have men made any words, no, nor any music, to recall it--only in a transient way and elusive the recollection of what youth was, and purity, flashes on us in phrases of the poets, and is gone before we can fix it in our minds--oh! my friends, if we could but recall it! whatever those sounds may be that are beyond our sounds, and whatever are those keen lives which remain alive there under memory--whatever is youth--youth came up that valley at evening, borne upon a southern air. if we deserve or attain beatitude, such things shall at last be our settled state; and their now sudden influence upon the soul in short ecstasies is the proof that they stand outside time, and are not subject to decay. this, then, was the blessing of sillano, and here was perhaps the highest moment of those seven hundred miles--or more. do not therefore be astonished, reader, if i now press on much more hurriedly to rome, for the goal is almost between my hands, and the chief moment has been enjoyed, until i shall see the city. now i cry out and deplore me that this next sixty miles of way, but especially the heat of the days and the dank mists of the night, should have to be told as of a real journey in this very repetitive and sui-similar world. how much rather i wish that being free from mundane and wide-awake (that is to say from perilously dusty) considerations and droughty boredoms, i might wander forth at leisure through the air and visit the regions where everything is as the soul chooses: to be dropped at last in the ancient and famous town of siena, whence comes that kind of common brown paint wherewith men, however wicked, can produce (if they have but the art) very surprising effects of depth in painting: for so i read of it in a book by a fool, at six shillings, and even that was part of a series: but if you wish to know anything further of the matter, go you and read it, for i will do nothing of the kind. oh to be free for strange voyages even for a little while! i am tired of the road; and so are you, and small blame to you. your fathers also tired of the treadmill, and mine of the conquering marches of the republic. heaven bless you all! but i say that if it were not for the incredulity and doubt and agnostico-schismatical hesitation, and very cumbersome air of questioning-and-peering-about, which is the bane of our moderns, very certainly i should now go on to tell of giants as big as cedars, living in mountains of precious stones, and drawn to battle by dragons in cars of gold; or of towns where the customs of men were remote and unexpected; of countries not yet visited, and of the gods returning. for though it is permissible, and a pleasant thing (as bacon says), to mix a little falsehood with one's truth (so st louis mixed water with his wine, and so does sir john growl mix vinegar with his, unless i am greatly mistaken, for if not, how does he give it that taste at his dinners? eh? there, i think, is a question that would puzzle him!) yet is it much more delectable, and far worthier of the immortal spirit of man to soar into the empyrean of pure lying--that is, to lay the bridle on the neck of pegasus and let him go forward, while in the saddle meanwhile one sits well back, grips with the knee, takes the race, and on the energy of that steed visits the wheeling stars. this much, then, is worth telling of the valley of the serchio, that it is narrow, garrulous with water brawling, wooded densely, and contained by fantastic mountains. that it has a splendid name, like the clashing of cymbals--garfagnana; that it leads to the tuscan plain, and that it is over a day's march long. also, it is an oven. never since the early liars first cooked eggs in the sand was there such heat, and it was made hotter by the consciousness of folly, than which there is no more heating thing; for i think that not old championnet himself, with his division of iron, that fought one to three and crushed the aged enormities of the oppressors as we would crush an empty egg, and that found the summer a good time for fighting in naples, i say that he himself would not have marched men up the garfagnana in such a sun. folly planned it, pride held to it, and the devils lent their climate. garfagnana! garfagnana! to have such a pleasant name, and to be what you are! not that there were not old towers on the steep woods of the apennine, nor glimpses of the higher peaks; towns also: one castle surrounded by a fringe of humble roofs--there were all these things. but it was an oven. so imagine me, after having passed chapels built into rocks, and things most curious, but the whole under the strain of an intolerable sun, coming, something after midday, to a place called castel-nuovo, the first town, for campogiamo is hardly a town. at castel-nuovo i sat upon a bridge and thought, not what good men think (there came into my memory no historical stuff; for all i know, liberty never went by that valley in arms); no appreciation of beauty filled me; i was indifferent to all save the intolerable heat, when i suddenly recognized the enormous number of bridges that bespattered the town. 'this is an odd thing,' i mused. 'here is a little worriment of a town up in the hills, and what a powerful lot of bridges!' i cared not a fig for the thousand things i had been told to expect in tuscany; everything is in a mind, and as they were not in my mind they did not exist. but the bridges, they indeed were worthy of admiration! here was a horrible little place on a torrent bank. one bridge was reasonable for by it went the road leading south to lucca and to rome; it was common honour to let men escape. but as i sat on that main bridge i counted seven others; indeed there must have been a worship of a bridge-god some time or other to account for such a necklace of bridges in such a neglected borough. you may say (i am off hard on the road to borgo, drooping with the heat, but still going strongly), you may say that is explicable enough. first a thing is useful, you say, then it has to become routine; then the habit, being a habit, gets a sacred idea attached to it. so with bridges: _e.g._ pontifex; dervorguilla, our ballici saint that built a bridge; the devil that will hinder the building of bridges; _cf. _the porphyry bridge in the malay cosmogony; amershickel, brueckengebildung im kult-historischer. passenmayer; durât, _le pont antique, étude sur les origines toscanes;_ mr dacre's _the command of bridges in warfare; bridges and empire,_ by captain hole, u.s.a. you may say all this; i shall not reply. if the heat has hindered me from saying a word of the fine open valley on the left, of the little railway and of the last of the hills, do you suppose it will permit me to discuss the sanctity of bridges? if it did, i think there is a little question on 'why should habit turn sacred?' which would somewhat confound and pose you, and pose also, for that matter, every pedant that ever went blind and crook-backed over books, or took ivory for horn. and there is an end of it. argue it with whom you will. it is evening, and i am at borgo (for if many towns are called castel-nuovo so are many called borgo in italy), and i desire to be free of interruption while i eat and sleep and reflect upon the error of that march in that heat, spoiling nearly thirty miles of road, losing so many great and pleasurable emotions, all for haste and from a neglect of the italian night. and as i ate, and before i slept, i thought of that annotated guide book which is cried out for by all europe, and which shall tell blunt truths. look you out _'garfagnana, district of, valley of serchio'_ in the index. you will be referred to p. . turn to p. . you will find there the phrase-- 'one can walk from the pretty little village of sillano, nestling in its chestnut groves, to the flourishing town of borgo on the new bagni railway in a day.' you will find a mark [ ] after that phrase. it refers to a footnote. glance (or look) at the bottom of the page and you will find: [ ] but if one does one is a fool. so i slept late and uneasily the insufficient sleep of men who have suffered, and in that uneasy sleep i discovered this great truth: that if in a southern summer you do not rest in the day the night will seem intolerably warm, but that, if you rest in the day, you will find coolness and energy at evening. the next morning with daylight i continued the road to lucca, and of that also i will say nothing. lector. why on earth did you write this book? auctor. for my amusement. lector. and why do you suppose i got it? auctor. i cannot conceive... however, i will give up this much, to tell you that at decimo the mystery of cypress trees first came into my adventure and pilgrimage: of cypress trees which henceforward were to mark my tuscan road. and i will tell you that there also i came across a thing peculiar (i suppose) to the region of lucca, for i saw it there as at decimo, and also some miles beyond. i mean fine mournful towers built thus: in the first storey one arch, in the second two, in the third three, and so on: a very noble way of building. and i will tell you something more. i will tell you something no one has yet heard. to wit, why this place is called decimo, and why just below it is another little spot called sexta. lector.... auctor. i know what you are going to say! do not say it. you are going to say: 'it is because they were at the sixth and tenth milestones from lucca on the roman road.' heaven help these scientists! did you suppose that i thought it was called decimo because the people had ten toes? tell me, why is not every place ten miles out of a roman town called by such a name? eh? you are dumb. you cannot answer. like most moderns you have entirely missed the point. we all know that there was a roman town at lucca, because it was called luca, and if there had been no roman town the modern town would not be spelt with two _c's._ all roman towns had milestones beyond them. but why did _this_ tenth milestone from _this_ roman town keep its name? lector. i am indifferent. auctor. i will tell you. up in the tangle of the carrara mountains, overhanging the garfagnana, was a wild tribe, whose name i forget (unless it were the bruttii), but which troubled the romans not a little, defeating them horribly, and keeping the legionaries in some anxiety for years. so when the soldiers marched out north from luca about six miles, they could halt and smile at each other, and say 'at _sextant..._ that's all right. all safe so far!' and therefore only a little village grew up at this little rest and emotion. but as they got nearer the gates of the hills they began to be visibly perturbed, and they would say: 'the eighth mile! cheer up!' then 'the ninth mile! sanctissima madonna! have you seen anything moving on the heights?' but when they got to the _tenth_ milestone, which stands before the very jaws of the defile, then indeed they said with terrible emphasis, _'ad decimam!'_ and there was no restraining them: they would camp and entrench, or die in the venture: for they were romans and stern fellows, and loved a good square camp and a ditch, and sentries and a clear moon, and plenty of sharp stakes, and all the panoply of war. that is the origin of decimo. for all my early start, the intolerable heat had again taken the ascendant before i had fairly entered the plain. then, it being yet but morning, i entered from the north the town of lucca, which is the neatest, the regularest, the exactest, the most fly-in-amber little town in the world, with its uncrowded streets, its absurd fortifications, and its contented silent houses--all like a family at ease and at rest under its high sun. it is as sharp and trim as its own map, and that map is as clear as a geometrical problem. everything in lucca is good. i went with a short shadow, creeping when i could on the eastern side of the street to save the sunlight; then i came to the main square, and immediately on my left was the albergo di something-or-other, a fine great hotel, but most unfortunately right facing the blazing sky. i had to stop outside it to count my money. i counted it wrong and entered. there i saw the master, who talked french. 'can you in an hour,' said i, 'give me a meal to my order, then a bed, though it is early day?' this absurd question i made less absurd by explaining to him my purpose. how i was walking to rome and how, being northern, i was unaccustomed to such heat; how, therefore, i had missed sleep, and would find it necessary in future to walk mainly by night. for i had now determined to fill the last few marches up in darkness, and to sleep out the strong hours of the sun. all this he understood; i ordered such a meal as men give to beloved friends returned from wars. i ordered a wine i had known long ago in the valley of the saône in the old time of peace before ever the greek came to the land. while they cooked it i went to their cool and splendid cathedral to follow a late mass. then i came home and ate their admirable food and drank the wine which the burgundians had trodden upon the hills of gold so many years before. they showed me a regal kind of a room where a bed with great hangings invited repose. all my days of marching, the dirty inns, the forests, the nights abroad, the cold, the mists, the sleeplessness, the faintness, the dust, the dazzling sun, the apennines--all my days came over me, and there fell on me a peaceful weight, as his two hundred years fell upon charlemagne in the tower of saragossa when the battle was done; after he had curbed the valley of ebro and christened bramimonde. so i slept deeply all day long; and, outside, the glare made a silence upon the closed shutters, save that little insects darted in the outer air. when i woke it was evening. so well had they used me that i paid what they asked, and, not knowing what money remained over, i left their town by the southern gate, crossed the railway and took the road. my way lay under the flank of that mountain whereby the luccans cannot see pisa, or the pisans cannot see lucca--it is all one to me, i shall not live in either town, god willing; and if they are so eager to squint at one another, in heaven's name, cannot they be at the pains to walk round the end of the hill? it is this laziness which is the ruin of many; but not of pilgrims, for here was i off to cross the plain of arno in one night, and reach by morning the mouth and gate of that valley of the elsa, which same is a very manifest proof of how rome was intended to be the end and centre of all roads, the chief city of the world, and the popes' residence--as, indeed, it plainly is to this day, for all the world to deny at their peril, spiritual, geographical, historical, sociological, economic, and philosophical. for if some such primeval and predestinarian quality were not inherent in the city, how, think you, would the valley of the serchio--the hot, droughty, and baking garfagnana--lead down pointing straight to rome; and how would that same line, prolonged across the plain, find fitting it exactly beyond that plain this vale of the elsa, itself leading up directly towards rome? i say, nowhere in the world is such a coincidence observable, and they that will not take it for a portent may go back to their rationalism and consort with microbes and make their meals off logarithms, washed down with an exact distillation of the root of minus one; and the peace of fools, that is the deepest and most balmy of all, be theirs for ever and ever. here again you fall into errors as you read, ever expecting something new; for of that night's march there is nothing to tell, save that it was cool, full of mist, and an easy matter after the royal entertainment and sleep of the princely albergo that dignifies lucca. the villages were silent, the moon soon left the sky, and the stars could not show through the fog, which deepened in the hours after midnight. a map i had bought in lucca made the difficulties of the first part of the road (though there were many cross-ways) easy enough; and the second part, in midnight and the early hours, was very plain sailing, till--having crossed the main line and having, at last, very weary, come up to the branch railway at a slant from the west and north, i crossed that also under the full light--i stood fairly in the elsa valley and on the highroad which follows the railway straight to siena. that long march, i say, had been easy enough in the coolness and in the dark; but i saw nothing; my interior thoughts alone would have afforded matter for this part; but of these if you have not had enough in near six hundred miles of travel, you are a stouter fellow than i took you for. though it was midsummer, the light had come quickly. long after sunrise the mist dispersed, and the nature of the valley appeared. it was in no way mountainous, but easy, pleasant, and comfortable, bounded by low, rounded hills, having upon them here and there a row of cypresses against the sky; and it was populous with pleasant farms. though the soil was baked and dry, as indeed it is everywhere in this south, yet little regular streams (or canals) irrigated it and nourished many trees--- but the deep grass of the north was wanting. for an hour or more after sunrise i continued my way very briskly; then what had been the warmth of the early sun turned into the violent heat of day, and remembering merlin where he says that those who will walk by night must sleep by day, and having in my mind the severe verses of james bayle, sometime fellow of st anne's, that 'in tuscan summers as a general rule, the days are sultry but the nights are cool' (he was no flamboyant poet; he loved the quiet diction of the right wing of english poetry), and imagining an owlish habit of sleeping by day could be acquired at once, i lay down under a tree of a kind i had never seen; and lulled under the pleasant fancy that this was a picture-tree drawn before the renaissance, and that i was reclining in some background landscape of the fifteenth century (for the scene was of that kind), i fell asleep. when i woke it was as though i had slept long; but i doubted the feeling. the young sun still low in the sky, and the shadows not yet shortened, puzzled me. i looked at my watch, but the dislocation of habit which night marches produce had left it unwound. it marked a quarter to three, which was absurd. i took the road somewhat stiffly and wondering. i passed several small white cottages; there was no clock in them, and their people were away. at last in a trattoria, as they served me with food, a woman told me it was just after seven; i had slept but an hour. outside, the day was intense; already flies had begun to annoy the darkened room within. through the half-curtained door the road was white in the sun, and the railway ran just beyond. i paid my reckoning, and then, partly for an amusement, i ranged my remaining pence upon the table, first in the shape of a maltese cross, then in a circle (interesting details!). the road lay white in the sunlight outside, and the railway ran just beyond. i counted the pence and the silver--there was three francs and a little over; i remembered the imperial largesse at lucca, the lordly spending of great sums, where, now in the pocket of an obsequious man, the pounds were taking care of themselves. i remembered how at como i had been compelled by poverty to enter the train for milan. how little was three francs for the remaining twenty-five miles to siena! the road lay white in the sunlight, and the railway ran just beyond. i remembered the pleasing cheque in the post-office of siena; the banks of siena, and the money changers at their counters changing money at the rate of change. 'if one man,' thought i, 'may take five per cent discount on a sum of money in the exchange, may not another man take discount off a walk of over seven hundred miles? may he not cut off it, as his due, twenty-five miserable little miles in the train?' sleep coming over me after my meal increased the temptation. alas! how true is the great phrase of averroes (or it may be boa-ed-din: anyhow, the arabic escapes me, but the meaning is plain enough), that when one has once fallen, it is easy to fall again (saving always heavy falls from cliffs and high towers, for after these there is no more falling).... examine the horse's knees before you buy him; take no ticket-of-leave man into your house for charity; touch no prospectus that has founders' shares, and do not play with firearms or knives and never go near the water till you know how to swim. oh! blessed wisdom of the ages! sole patrimony of the poor! the road lay white in the sun, and the railway ran just beyond. if the people of milo did well to put up a statue in gold to the man that invented wheels, so should we also put one up in portland stone or plaster to the man that invented rails, whose property it is not only to increase the speed and ease of travel, but also to bring on slumber as can no drug: not even poppies gathered under a waning moon. the rails have a rhythm of slight falls and rises... they make a loud roar like a perpetual torrent; they cover up the mind with a veil. once only, when a number of men were shouting 'poggi-bon-si,' like a war-cry to the clank of bronze, did i open my eyes sleepily to see a hill, a castle wall, many cypresses, and a strange tower bulging out at the top (such towers i learned were the feature of tuscany). then in a moment, as it seemed, i awoke in the station of siena, where the railway ends and goes no farther. it was still only morning; but the glare was beyond bearing as i passed through the enormous gate of the town, a gate pierced in high and stupendous walls that are here guarded by lions. in the narrow main street there was full shade, and it was made cooler by the contrast of the blaze on the higher storeys of the northern side. the wonders of siena kept sleep a moment from my mind. i saw their great square where a tower of vast height marks the guildhall. i heard mass in a chapel of their cathedral: a chapel all frescoed, and built, as it were, out of doors, and right below the altar-end or choir. i noted how the city stood like a queen of hills dominating all tuscany: above the elsa northward, southward above the province round mount amiato. and this great mountain i saw also hazily far off on the horizon. i suffered the vulgarities of the main street all in english and american, like a show. i took my money and changed it; then, having so passed not a full hour, and oppressed by weariness, i said to myself: 'after all, my business is not with cities, and already i have seen far off the great hill whence one can see far off the hills that overhang rome.' with this in my mind i wandered out for a quiet place, and found it in a desolate green to the north of the city, near a huge, old red-brick church like a barn. a deep shadow beneath it invited me in spite of the scant and dusty grass, and in this country no one disturbs the wanderer. there, lying down, i slept without dreams till evening. auctor. turn to page . lector. i have it. it is not easy to watch the book in two places at once; but pray continue. auctor. note the words from the eighth to the tenth lines. lector. why? auctor. they will make what follows seem less abrupt. once there was a man dining by himself at the cafe anglais, in the days when people went there. it was a full night, and he sat alone at a small table, when there entered a very big man in a large fur coat. the big man looked round annoyed, because there was no room, and the first man very courteously offered him a seat at his little table. they sat down and ate and talked of several things; among others, of bureaucracy. the first maintained that bureaucracy was the curse of france. 'men are governed by it like sheep. the administrator, however humble, is a despot; most people will even run forward to meet him halfway, like the servile dogs they are,' said he. 'no,' answered the man in the big fur coat, 'i should say men were governed just by the ordinary human sense of authority. i have no theories. i say they recognize authority and obey it. whether it is bureaucratic or not is merely a question of form.' at this moment there came in a tall, rather stiff englishman. he also was put out at finding no room. the two men saw the manager approach him; a few words were passed, and a card; then the manager suddenly smiled, bowed, smirked, and finally went up to the table and begged that the duke of sussex might be allowed to share it. the duke hoped he did not incommode these gentlemen. they assured him that, on the contrary, they esteemed his presence a favour. 'it is our prerogative,' said the man in the big fur coat, 'to be the host paris entertaining her guest.' they would take no denial; they insisted on the duke's dining with them, and they told him what they had just been discussing. the duke listened to their theories with some _morgue,_ much _spleen,_ and no little _phlegm,_ but with _perfect courtesy,_ and then, towards the coffee, told them in fluent french with a strong accent, his own opinion. (he had had eight excellent courses; yquem with his fish, the best chambertin during the dinner, and a glass of wonderful champagne with his dessert.) he spoke as follows, with a slight and rather hard smile: 'my opinion may seem to you impertinent, but i believe nothing more subtly and powerfully affects men than the aristocratic feeling. do not misunderstand me,' he added, seeing that they would protest; 'it is not my own experience alone that guides me. all history bears witness to the same truth.' the simple-minded frenchmen put down this infatuation to the duke's early training, little knowing that our english men of rank are the simplest fellows in the world, and are quite indifferent to their titles save in business matters. the frenchmen paid the bill, and they all three went on to the boulevard. 'now,' said the first man to his two companions, 'i will give you a practical example of what i meant when i said that bureaucracy governed mankind.' he went up to the wall of the credit lyonnais, put the forefinger of either hand against it, about twenty-five centimetres apart, and at a level of about a foot above his eyes. holding his fingers thus he gazed at them, shifting them slightly from time to time and moving his glance from one to the other rapidly. a crowd gathered. in a few moments a pleasant elderly, short, and rather fat gentleman in the crowd came forward, and, taking off his hat, asked if he could do anything for him. 'why,' said our friend, 'the fact is i am an engineer (section d of the public works department) and i have to make an important measurement in connexion with the apothegm of the bilateral which runs to-night precisely through this spot. my fingers now mark exactly the concentric of the secondary focus whence the radius vector should be drawn, but i find that (like a fool) i have left my double refractor in the cafe hard by. i dare not go for fear of losing the place i have marked; yet i can get no further without my double refractor.' 'do not let that trouble you,' said the short, stout stranger; 'i will be delighted to keep the place exactly marked while you run for your instrument.' the crowd was now swelled to a considerable size; it blocked up the pavement, and was swelled every moment by the arrival of the curious. the little fat elderly man put his fingers exactly where the other's had been, effecting the exchange with a sharp gesture; and each watched intently to see that it was right to within a millimetre. the attitude was constrained. the elderly man smiled, and begged the engineer not to be alarmed. so they left him with his two forefingers well above his head, precisely twenty-five centimetres apart, and pressing their tips against the wall of the credit lyonnais. then the three friends slipped out of the crowd and pursued their way. 'let us go to the theatre,' said the experimenter, 'and when we come back i warrant you will agree with my remarks on bureaucracy.' they went to hear the admirable marble lines of corneille. for three hours they were absorbed by the classics, and, when they returned, a crowd, now enormous, was surging all over the boulevard, stopping the traffic and filled with a noise like the sea. policemen were attacking it with the utmost energy, but still it grew and eddied; and in the centre--a little respectful space kept empty around him--still stretched the poor little fat elderly man, a pitiable sight. his knees were bent, his head wagged and drooped with extreme fatigue, he was the colour of old blotting-paper; but still he kept the tips of his two forefingers exactly twenty-five centimetres apart, well above his head, and pressed against the wall of the credit lyonnais. 'you will not match that with your aristocratic sentiment!' said the author of the scene in pardonable triumph. 'i am not so sure,' answered the duke of sussex. he pulled out his watch. 'it is midnight,' he said, 'and i must be off; but let me tell you before we part that you have paid for a most expensive dinner, and have behaved all night with an extravagant deference under the impression that i was the duke of sussex. as a fact my name is jerks, and i am a commercial traveller in the linseed oil line; and i wish you the best of good evenings.' 'wait a moment,' said the man in the big fur coat; 'my theory of the simple human sense of authority still holds. i am a detective officer, and you will both be good enough to follow me to the police station.' and so they did, and the engineer was fined fifty francs in correctional, and the duke of sussex was imprisoned for ten days, with interdiction of domicile for six months; the first indeed under the prefectorial decree of the th of november , but the second under the law of the th germinal of the year viii. in this way i have got over between twenty and thirty miles of road which were tramped in the dark, and the description of which would have plagued you worse than a swarm of hornets. oh, blessed interlude! no struggling moon, no mist, no long-winded passages upon the genial earth, no the sense of the night, no marvels of the dawn, no rhodomontade, no religion, no rhetoric, no sleeping villages, no silent towns (there was one), no rustle of trees--just a short story, and there you have a whole march covered as though a brigade had swung down it. a new day has come, and the sun has risen over the detestable parched hillocks of this downward way. no, no, lector! do not blame me that tuscany should have passed beneath me unnoticed, as the monotonous sea passes beneath a boat in full sail. blame all those days of marching; hundreds upon hundreds of miles that exhausted the powers of the mind. blame the fiery and angry sky of etruria, that compelled most of my way to be taken at night. blame st augustine, who misled me in his confessions by talking like an african of 'the icy shores of italy'; or blame rome, that now more and more drew me to herself as she approached from six to five, from five to four, from four to three--now she was but _three_ days off. the third sun after that i now saw rising would shine upon the city. i did indeed go forward a little in the heat, but it was useless. after an hour i abandoned it. it was not so much the sun, though that was intemperate and deadly; it was rather the inhuman aspect of the earth which made me despair. it was as though the soil had been left imperfect and rough after some cataclysm; it reminded me of those bad lands in the west of america, where the desert has no form, and where the crumbling and ashy look of things is more abhorrent than their mere desolation. as soon march through evil dreams! the north is the place for men. eden was there; and the four rivers of paradise are the seine, the oise, the thames, and the arun; there are grasses there, and the trees are generous, and the air is an unnoticed pleasure. the waters brim up to the edges of the fields. but for this bare tuscany i was never made. how far i had gone i could not tell, nor precisely how much farther san quirico, the neighbouring town, might be. the imperfect map i had bought at siena was too minute to give me clear indications. i was content to wait for evening, and then to go on till i found it. an hour or so in the shade of a row of parched and dusty bushes i lay and ate and drank my wine, and smoked, and then all day i slept, and woke a while, and slept again more deeply. but how people sleep and wake, if you do not yet know it after so much of this book you never will. it was perhaps five o'clock, or rather more, when i rose unhappily and took up the ceaseless road. even the goodness of the italian nature seemed parched up in those dry hollows. at an inn where i ate they shouted at me, thinking in that way to make me understand; and their voices were as harsh as the grating of metal against stone. a mile farther i crossed a lonely line of railway; then my map told me where i was, and i went wearily up an indefinite slope under the declining sun, and thought it outrageous that only when the light had gone was there any tolerable air in this country. soon the walls of san quirico, partly ruinous, stood above the fields (for the smallest places here have walls); as i entered its gate the sun set, and as though the cool, coming suddenly, had a magic in it, everything turned kinder. a church that could wake interest stood at the entry of the town; it had stone lions on its steps, and the pillars were so carved as to resemble knotted ropes. there for the first time i saw in procession one of those confraternities which in italy bury the dead; they had long and dreadful hoods over their heads, with slits for the eyes. i spoke to the people of san quirico, and they to me. they were upstanding, and very fine and noble in the lines of the face. on their walls is set a marble tablet, on which it is registered that the people of tuscany, being asked whether they would have their hereditary duke or the house of savoy, voted for the latter by such and such a great majority; and this kind of tablet i afterwards found was common to all these small towns. then passing down their long street i came, at the farther gate, to a great sight, which the twilight still permitted me to receive in its entirety. for san quirico is built on the edge of a kind of swell in the land, and here where i stood one looked over the next great wave; for the shape of the view was, on a vast scale, just what one sees from a lonely boat looking forward over a following sea. the trough of the wave was a shallow purple valley, its arid quality hidden by the kindly glimmer of evening; few trees stood in it to break its sweep, and its irregularities and mouldings were just those of a sweep of water after a gale. the crest of the wave beyond was seventeen miles away. it had, as have also such crests at sea, one highest, toppling peak in its long line, and this, against the clear sky, one could see to be marked by buildings. these buildings were the ruined castle and walls of radicofani, and it lay straight on my way to rome. it is a strange thing, arresting northern eyes, to see towns thus built on summits up into the sky, and this height seemed the more fantastic because it was framed. a row of cypress trees stood on either side of the road where it fell from san quirico, and, exactly between these, this high crest, a long way off, was set as though by design. with more heart in me, and tempted by such an outline as one might be by the prospect of adventure, i set out to cross the great bare run of the valley. as i went, the mountain of amiato came more and more nearly abreast of me in the west; in its foothills near me were ravines and unexpected rocks; upon one of them hung a village. i watched its church and one tall cypress next it, as they stood black against the last of daylight. then for miles i went on the dusty way, and crossed by old bridges watercourses in which stood nothing but green pools; and the night deepened. it was when i had crossed the greater part of the obscure plain, at its lowest dip and not far from the climb up to radicofani, that i saw lights shining in a large farmhouse, and though it was my business to walk by night, yet i needed companionship, so i went in. there in a very large room, floored with brick and lit by one candle, were two fine old peasants, with faces like apostles, playing a game of cards. there also was a woman playing with a strong boy child, that could not yet talk: and the child ran up to me. nothing could persuade the master of the house but that i was a very poor man who needed sleep, and so good and generous was this old man that my protests seemed to him nothing but the excuses and shame of poverty. he asked me where i was going. i said, 'to rome.' he came out with a lantern to the stable, and showed me there a manger full of hay, indicating that i might sleep in it... his candle flashed upon the great silent oxen standing in rows; their enormous horns, three times the length of what we know in england, filled me with wonder... well! (may it count to me as gain!), rather than seem to offend him i lay down in that manger, though i had no more desire to sleep than has the flittermouse in our sussex gloamings; also i was careful to offer no money, for that is brutality. when he had left me i took the opportunity for a little rest, and lay on my back in the hay wide-awake and staring at darkness. the great oxen champed and champed their food with a regular sound; i remembered the steerage in a liner, the noise of the sea and the regular screw, for this it exactly resembled. i considered in the darkness the noble aspect of these beasts as i had seen them in the lantern light, and i determined when i got to rome to buy two such horns, and to bring them to england and have them mounted for drinking horns--great drinking horns, a yard deep--and to get an engraver to engrave a motto for each. on the first i would have-- king alfred was in wantage born he drank out of a ram's horn. here is a better man than he, who drinks deeper, as you see. thus my friends drinking out of it should lift up their hearts and no longer be oppressed with humility. but on the second i determined for a rousing latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this seemed to suit me-- _salve, cornu cornuum! cornutorum vis boûm. munus excellent deûm! gregis o praesidium! sitis desiderium! dignum cornuum cornu romae memor salve tu! tibi cornuum cornuto--_ lector. that means nothing. auctor. shut up! _tibi cornuum cornuto tibi clamo, te saluto salve cornu cornuum! fortunatam da domunt!_ and after this cogitation and musing i got up quietly, so as not to offend the peasant: and i crept out, and so upwards on to the crest of the hill. but when, after several miles of climbing, i neared the summit, it was already beginning to be light. the bareness and desert grey of the distance i had crossed stood revealed in a colourless dawn, only the mont' amiata, now somewhat to the northward, was more gentle, and softened the scene with distant woods. between it and this height ran a vague river-bed as dry as the stones of a salt beach. the sun rose as i passed under the ruined walls of the castle. in the little town itself, early as was the hour, many people were stirring. one gave me good-morning--a man of singular character, for here, in the very peep of day, he was sitting on a doorstep, idle, lazy and contented, as though it was full noon. another was yoking oxen; a third going out singing to work in the fields. i did not linger in this crow's nest, but going out by the low and aged southern gate, another deeper valley, even drier and more dead than the last, appeared under the rising sun. it was enough to make one despair! and when i thought of the day's sleep in that wilderness, of the next night's toil through it-- lector. what about the brigand of radicofani of whom you spoke in lorraine, and of whom i am waiting to hear? auctor. what about him? why, he was captured long ago, and has since died of old age. i am surprised at your interrupting me with such questions. pray ask for no more tales till we get to the really absorbing story of the hungry student. well, as i was saying, i was in some despair at the sight of that valley, which had to be crossed before i could reach the town of acquapendente, or hanging-water, which i knew to lie somewhere on the hills beyond. the sun was conquering me, and i was looking hopelessly for a place to sleep, when a cart drawn by two oxen at about one mile an hour came creaking by. the driver was asleep, his head on the shady side. the devil tempted me, and without one struggle against temptation, nay with cynical and congratulatory feelings, i jumped up behind, and putting my head also on the shady side (there were soft sacks for a bed) i very soon was pleasantly asleep. we lay side by side for hour after hour, and the day rose on to noon; the sun beat upon our feet, but our heads were in the shade and we slept heavily a good and honest sleep: he thinking that he was alone, but i knowing that i was in company (a far preferable thing), and i was right and he was wrong. and the heat grew, and sleep came out of that hot sun more surely than it does out of the night air in the north. but no dreams wander under the noon. from time to time one or the other of us would open our eyes drowsily and wonder, but sleep was heavy on us both, and our minds were sunk in calm like old hulls in the dark depths of the sea where there are no storms. we neither of us really woke until, at the bottom of the hill which rises into acquapendente, the oxen stopped. this halt woke us up; first me and then my companion. he looked at me a moment and laughed. he seemed to have thought all this while that i was some country friend of his who had taken a lift; and i, for my part, had made more or less certain that he was a good fellow who would do me no harm. i was right, and he was wrong. i knew not what offering to make him to compensate him for this trouble which his heavy oxen had taken. after some thought i brought a cigar out of my pocket, which he smoked with extreme pleasure. the oxen meanwhile had been urged up the slow hill, and it was in this way that we reached the famous town of acquapendente. but why it should be called famous is more than i can understand. it may be that in one of those narrow streets there is a picture or a church, or one of those things which so attract unbelieving men. to the pilgrim it is simply a group of houses. into one of these i went, and, upon my soul, i have nothing to say of it except that they furnished me with food. i do not pretend to have counted the flies, though they were numerous; and, even had i done so, what interest would the number have, save to the statisticians? now as these are patient men and foolish, i heartily recommend them to go and count the flies for themselves. leaving this meal then, this town and this people (which were all of a humdrum sort), and going out by the gate, the left side of which is made up of a church, i went a little way on the short road to san lorenzo, but i had no intention of going far, for (as you know by this time) the night had become my day and the day my night. i found a stream running very sluggish between tall trees, and this sight sufficiently reminded me of my own country to permit repose. lying down there i slept till the end of the day, or rather to that same time of evening which had now become my usual waking hour... and now tell me, lector, shall i leave out altogether, or shall i give you some description of, the next few miles to san lorenzo? lector. why, if i were you i would put the matter shortly and simply, for it is the business of one describing a pilgrimage or any other matter not to puff himself up with vain conceit, nor to be always picking about for picturesque situations, but to set down plainly and shortly what he has seen and heard, describing the whole matter. auctor. but remember, lector, that the artist is known not only by what he puts in but by what he leaves out. lector. that is all very well for the artist, but you have no business to meddle with such people. auctor. how then would you write such a book if you had the writing of it? lector. i would not introduce myself at all; i would not tell stories at random, nor go in for long descriptions of emotions, which i am sure other men have felt as well as i. i would be careful to visit those things my readers had already heard of (auctor. the pictures! the remarkable pictures! all that is meant by culture! the brown photographs! oh! lector, indeed i have done you a wrong!), and i would certainly not have the bad taste to say anything upon religion. above all, i would be terse. auctor. i see. you would not pile words one on the other, qualifying, exaggerating, conditioning, superlativing, diminishing, connecting, amplifying, condensing, mouthing, and glorifying the mere sound: you would be terse. you should be known for your self-restraint. there should be no verbosity in your style (god forbid!), still less pomposity, animosity, curiosity, or ferocity; you would have it neat, exact, and scholarly, and, above all, chiselled to the nail. a fig (say you), the pip of a fig, for the rambling style. you would be led into no hilarity, charity, vulgarity, or barbarity. eh! my jolly lector? you would simply say what you had to say? lector. precisely; i would say a plain thing in a plain way. auctor. so you think one can say a plain thing in a plain way? you think that words mean nothing more than themselves, and that you can talk without ellipsis, and that customary phrases have not their connotations? you think that, do you? listen then to the tale of mr benjamin franklin hard, a kindly merchant of cincinnati, o., who had no particular religion, but who had accumulated a fortune of six hundred thousand dollars, and who had a horror of breaking the sabbath. he was not 'a kind husband and a good father,' for he was unmarried; nor had he any children. but he was all that those words connote. this man hard at the age of fifty-four retired from business, and determined to treat himself to a visit to europe. he had not been in europe five weeks before he ran bang up against the catholic church. he was never more surprised in his life. i do not mean that i have exactly weighed all his surprises all his life through. i mean that he was very much surprised indeed--and that is all that these words connote. he studied the catholic church with extreme interest. he watched high mass at several places (hoping it might be different). he thought it was what it was not, and then, contrariwise, he thought it was not what it was. he talked to poor catholics, rich catholics, middle-class catholics, and elusive, wellborn, penniless, neatly dressed, successful catholics; also to pompous, vain catholics; humble, uncertain catholics; sneaking, pad-footed catholics; healthy, howling, combative catholics; doubtful, shoulder-shrugging, but devout catholics; fixed, crabbed, and dangerous catholics; easy, jovial, and shone-upon-by-the-heavenly-light catholics; subtle catholics; strange catholics, and _(quod tibi manifeste absurdum videtur)_ intellectual, _pince-nez,_ jejune, twisted, analytical, yellow, cranky, and introspective catholics: in fine, he talked to all catholics. and when i say 'all catholics' i do not mean that he talked to every individual catholic, but that he got a good, integrative grip of the church militant, which is all that the words connote. well, this man hard got to know, among others, a certain good priest that loved a good bottle of wine, a fine deep dish of_ poulet à la casserole, _and a kind of egg done with cream in a little platter; and eating such things, this priest said to him one day: 'mr hard, what you want is to read some books on catholicism.' and hard, who was on the point of being received into the church as the final solution of human difficulties, thought it would be a very good thing to instruct his mind before baptism. so he gave the priest a note to a bookseller whom an american friend had told him of; and this american friend had said: 'you will find mr fingle (for such was the bookseller's name) a hard-headed, honest, business man. he can say a _plain thing in a plain way.'_ 'here,' said mr hard to the priest, 'is ten pounds. send it to this bookseller fingle and he shall choose books on catholicism to that amount, and you shall receive them, and i will come and read them here with you.' so the priest sent the money, and in four days the books came, and mr hard and the priest opened the package, and these were the books inside: _auricular confession:_ a history. by a brand saved from the burning. _isabella; or, the little female jesuit._ by 'hephzibah'. _elisha macnab:_ a tale of the french huguenots. _england and rome._ by the rev. ebenezer catchpole of emmanuel, birmingham. _nuns and nunneries._ by 'ruth', with a preface by miss carran, lately rescued from a canadian convent. _history of the inquisition._ by llorente. _the beast with seven heads; or, the apocalyptical warning._ _no truce with the vatican._ _the true cause of irish disaffection._ _decline of the latin nations._ _anglo-saxons the chosen race,_ and their connexion with the ten lost tribes: with a map. finally, a very large book at the bottom of the case called _giant pope._ and it was no use asking for the money back or protesting. mr fingle was an honest, straightforward man, who said a plain thing in a plain way. they had left him to choose a suitable collection of books on catholicism, and he had chosen the best he knew. and thus did mr hard (who has recently given a hideous font to the new catholic church at bismarckville) learn the importance of estimating what words connote. lector. but all that does not excuse an intolerable prolixity? auctor. neither did i say it did, dear lector. my object was merely to get you to san lorenzo where i bought that wine, and where, going out of the gate on the south, i saw suddenly the wide lake of bolsena all below. it is a great sheet like a sea; but as one knows one is on a high plateau, and as there is but a short dip down to it; as it is round and has all about it a rim of low even hills, therefore one knows it for an old and gigantic crater now full of pure water; and there are islands in it and palaces on the islands. indeed it was an impression of silence and recollection, for the water lay all upturned to heaven, and, in the sky above me, the moon at her quarter hung still pale in the daylight, waiting for glory. i sat on the coping of a wall, drank a little of my wine, ate a little bread and sausage; but still song demanded some outlet in the cool evening, and companionship was more of an appetite in me than landscape. please god, i had become southern and took beauty for granted. anyhow, seeing a little two-wheeled cart come through the gate, harnessed to a ramshackle little pony, bony and hard, and driven by a little, brown, smiling, and contented old fellow with black hair, i made a sign to him and he stopped. this time there was no temptation of the devil; if anything the advance was from my side. i was determined to ride, and i sprang up beside the driver. we raced down the hill, clattering and banging and rattling like a piece of ordnance, and he, my brother, unasked began to sing. i sang in turn. he sang of italy, i of four countries: america, france, england, and ireland. i could not understand his songs nor he mine, but there was wine in common between us, and _salami_ and a merry heart, bread which is the bond of all mankind, and that prime solution of ill-ease--i mean the forgetfulness of money. that was a good drive, an honest drive, a human aspiring drive, a drive of christians, a glorifying and uplifted drive, a drive worthy of remembrance for ever. the moon has shone on but few like it though she is old; the lake of bolsena has glittered beneath none like it since the etruscans here unbended after the solemnities of a triumph. it broke my vow to pieces; there was not a shadow of excuse for this use of wheels: it was done openly and wantonly in the face of the wide sky for pleasure. and what is there else but pleasure, and to what else does beauty move on? not i hope to contemplation! a hideous oriental trick! no, but to loud notes and comradeship and the riot of galloping, and laughter ringing through old trees. who would change (says aristippus of pslinthon) the moon and all the stars for so much wine as can be held in the cup of a bottle upturned? the honest man! and in his time (note you) they did not make the devilish deep and fraudulent bottoms they do now that cheat you of half your liquor. moreover if i broke my vows (which is a serious matter), and if i neglected to contemplate the heavens (for which neglect i will confess to no one, not even to a postulate sub-deacon; it is no sin; it is a healthy omission), if (i say) i did this, i did what peasants do. and what is more, by drinking wine and eating pig we proved ourselves no mohammedans; and on such as he is sure of, st peter looks with a kindly eye. now, just at the very entry to bolsena, when we had followed the lovely lake some time, my driver halted and began to turn up a lane to a farm or villa; so i, bidding him good-night, crossed a field and stood silent by the lake and watched for a long time the water breaking on a tiny shore, and the pretty miniatures of waves. i stood there till the stars came out and the moon shone fully; then i went towards bolsena under its high gate which showed in the darkness, and under its castle on the rock. there, in a large room which was not quite an inn, a woman of great age and dignity served me with fried fish from the lake, and the men gathered round me and attempted to tell me of the road to rome, while i in exchange made out to them as much by gestures as by broken words the crossing of the alps and the apennines. then, after my meal, one of the men told me i needed sleep; that there were no rooms in that house (as i said, it was not an inn), but that across the way he would show me one he had for hire. i tried to say that my plan was to walk by night. they all assured me he would charge me a reasonable sum. i insisted that the day was too hot for walking. they told me, did these etruscans, that i need fear no extortion from so honest a man. certainly it is not easy to make everybody understand everything, and i had had experience already up in the mountains, days before, of how important it is not to be misunderstood when one is wandering in a foreign country, poor and ill-clad. i therefore accepted the offer, and, what was really very much to my regret, i paid the money he demanded. i even so far fell in with the spirit of the thing as to sleep a certain number of hours (for after all, my sleep that day in the cart had been very broken, and instead of resting throughout the whole of the heat i had taken a meal at acquapendente). but i woke up not long after midnight--perhaps between one and two o'clock--and went out along the borders of the lake. the moon had set; i wish i could have seen her hanging at the quarter in the clear sky of that high crater, dipping into the rim of its inland sea. it was perceptibly cold. i went on the road quite slowly, till it began to climb, and when the day broke i found myself in a sunken lane leading up to the town of montefiascone. the town lay on its hill in the pale but growing light. a great dome gave it dignity, and a castle overlooked the lake. it was built upon the very edge and lip of the volcano-cup commanding either side. i climbed up this sunken lane towards it, not knowing what might be beyond, when, at the crest, there shone before me in the sunrise one of those unexpected and united landscapes which are among the glories of italy. they have changed the very mind in a hundred northern painters, when men travelled hither to rome to learn their art, and coming in by her mountain roads saw, time and again, the set views of plains like gardens, surrounded by sharp mountain-land and framed. the road did not pass through the town; the grand though crumbling gate of entry lay up a short straight way to the right, and below, where the road continued down the slope, was a level of some eight miles full of trees diminishing in distance. at its further side an ample mountain, wooded, of gentle flattened outline, but high and majestic, barred the way to rome. it was yet another of those volcanoes, fruitful after death, which are the mark of latium: and it held hidden, as did that larger and more confused one on the rim of which i stood, a lake in its silent crater. but that lake, as i was to find, was far smaller than the glittering sea of bolsena, whose shores now lay behind me. the distance and the hill that bounded it should in that climate have stood clear in the pure air, but it was yet so early that a thin haze hung over the earth, and the sun had not yet controlled it: it was even chilly. i could not catch the towers of viterbo, though i knew them to stand at the foot of the far mountain. i went down the road, and in half-an-hour or so was engaged upon the straight line crossing the plain. i wondered a little how the road would lie with regard to the town, and looked at my map for guidance, but it told me little. it was too general, taking in all central italy, and even large places were marked only by small circles. when i approached viterbo i first saw an astonishing wall, perpendicular to my road, untouched, the bones of the middle ages. it stood up straight before one like a range of cliffs, seeming much higher than it should; its hundred feet or so were exaggerated by the severity of its stones and by their sheer fall. for they had no ornament whatever, and few marks of decay, though many of age. tall towers, exactly square and equally bare of carving or machicolation, stood at intervals along this forbidding defence and flanked its curtain. then nearer by, one saw that it was not a huge castle, but the wall of a city, for at a corner it went sharp round to contain the town, and through one uneven place i saw houses. many men were walking in the roads alongside these walls, and there were gates pierced in them whereby the citizens went in and out of the city as bees go in and out of the little opening in a hive. but my main road to rome did not go through viterbo, it ran alongside of the eastern wall, and i debated a little with myself whether i would go in or no. it was out of my way, and i had not entered montefiascone for that reason. on the other hand, viterbo was a famous place. it is all very well to neglect florence and pisa because they are some miles off the straight way, but viterbo right under one's hand it is a pity to miss. then i needed wine and food for the later day in the mountain. yet, again, it was getting hot. it was past eight, the mist had long ago receded, and i feared delay. so i mused on the white road under the tall towers and dead walls of viterbo, and ruminated on an unimportant thing. then curiosity did what reason could not do, and i entered by a gate. the streets were narrow, tortuous, and alive, all shaded by the great houses, and still full of the cold of the night. the noise of fountains echoed in them, and the high voices of women and the cries of sellers. every house had in it something fantastic and peculiar; humanity had twined into this place like a natural growth, and the separate thoughts of men, both those that were alive there and those dead before them, had decorated it all. there were courtyards with blinding whites of sunlit walls above, themselves in shadow; and there were many carvings and paintings over doors. i had come into a great living place after the loneliness of the road. there, in the first wide street i could find, i bought sausage and bread and a great bottle of wine, and then quitting viterbo, i left it by the same gate and took the road. for a long while yet i continued under the walls, noting in one place a thing peculiar to the middle ages, i mean the apse of a church built right into the wall as the old cathedral of st stephen's was in paris. these, i suppose, enemies respected if they could; for i have noticed also that in castles the chapel is not hidden, but stands out from the wall. so be it. your fathers and mine were there in the fighting, but we do not know their names, and i trust and hope yours spared the altars as carefully as mine did. the road began to climb the hill, and though the heat increased--for in italy long before nine it is glaring noon to us northerners (and that reminds me: your fathers and mine, to whom allusion has been made above {as they say in the dull history books--[lector. how many more interior brackets are we to have? is this algebra? auctor. you yourself, lector, are responsible for the worst.]} your fathers and mine coming down into this country to fight, as was their annual custom, must have had a plaguy time of it, when you think that they could not get across the alps till summer-time, and then had to hack and hew, and thrust and dig, and slash and climb, and charge and puff, and blow and swear, and parry and receive, and aim and dodge, and butt and run for their lives at the end, under an unaccustomed sun. no wonder they saw visions, the dear people! they are dead now, and we do not even know their names.)--where was i? lector. you were at the uninteresting remark that the heat was increasing. auctor. precisely. i remember. well, the heat was increasing, but it seemed far more bearable than it had been in the earlier places; in the oven of the garfagnana or in the deserts of siena. for with the first slopes of the mountain a forest of great chestnut trees appeared, and it was so cool under these that there was even moss, as though i were back again in my own country where there are full rivers in summer-time, deep meadows, and all the completion of home. also the height may have begun to tell on the air, but not much, for when the forest was behind me, and when i had come to a bare heath sloping more gently upwards--a glacis in front of the topmost bulwark of the round mountain--- i was oppressed with thirst, and though it was not too hot to sing (for i sang, and two lonely carabinieri passed me singing, and we recognized as we saluted each other that the mountain was full of songs), yet i longed for a bench, a flagon, and shade. and as i longed, a little house appeared, and a woman in the shade sewing, and an old man. also a bench and a table, and a tree over it. there i sat down and drank white wine and water many times. the woman charged me a halfpenny, and the old man would not talk. he did not take his old age garrulously. it was his business, not mine; but i should dearly have liked to have talked to him in lingua franca, and to have heard him on the story of his mountain: where it was haunted, by what, and on which nights it was dangerous to be abroad. such as it was, there it was. i left them, and shall perhaps never see them again. the road was interminable, and the crest, from which i promised myself the view of the crater-lake, was always just before me, and was never reached. a little spring, caught in a hollow log, refreshed a meadow on the right. drinking there again, i wondered if i should go on or rest; but i was full of antiquity, and a memory in the blood, or what not, impelled me to see the lake in the crater before i went to sleep: after a few hundred yards this obsession was satisfied. i passed between two banks, where the road had been worn down at the crest of the volcano's rim; then at once, far below, in a circle of silent trees with here and there a vague shore of marshy land, i saw the pond of venus: some miles of brooding water, darkened by the dark slopes around it. its darkness recalled the dark time before the dawn of our saved and happy world. at its hither end a hill, that had once been a cone in the crater, stood out all covered with a dense wood. it was the hill of venus. there was no temple, nor no sacrifice, nor no ritual for the divinity, save this solemn attitude of perennial silence; but under the influence which still remained and gave the place its savour, it was impossible to believe that the gods were dead. there were no men in that hollow; nor was there any memory of men, save of men dead these thousands of years. there was no life of visible things. the mind released itself and was in touch with whatever survives of conquered but immortal spirits. thus ready for worship, and in a mood of adoration; filled also with the genius which inhabits its native place and is too subtle or too pure to suffer the effect of time, i passed down the ridge-way of the mountain rim, and came to the edge overlooking that arena whereon was first fought out and decided the chief destiny of the world. for all below was the campagna. names that are at the origin of things attached to every cleft and distant rock beyond the spreading level, or sanctified the gleams of rivers. there below me was veii; beyond, in the wall of the apennines, only just escaped from clouds, was tibur that dignified the ravine at the edge of their rising; that crest to the right was tusculum, and far to the south, but clear, on a mountain answering my own, was the mother of the city, alba longa. the tiber, a dense, brown fog rolling over and concealing it, was the god of the wide plain. there and at that moment i should have seen the city. i stood up on the bank and shaded my eyes, straining to catch the dome at least in the sunlight; but i could not, for rome was hidden by the low sabinian hills. soracte i saw there--soracte, of which i had read as a boy. it stood up like an acropolis, but it was a citadel for no city. it stood alone, like that soul which once haunted its recesses and prophesied the conquering advent of the northern kings. i saw the fields where the tribes had lived that were the first enemies of the imperfect state, before it gave its name to the fortunes of the latin race. dark etruria lay behind me, forgotten in the backward of my march: a furnace and a riddle out of which religion came to the romans--a place that has left no language. but below me, sunlit and easy (as it seemed in the cooler air of that summit), was the arena upon which were first fought out the chief destinies of the world. and i still looked down upon it, wondering. was it in so small a space that all the legends of one's childhood were acted? was the defence of the bridge against so neighbouring and petty an alliance? were they peasants of a group of huts that handed down the great inheritance of discipline, and made an iron channel whereby, even to us, the antique virtues could descend as a living memory? it must be so; for the villages and ruins in one landscape comprised all the first generations of the history of rome. the stones we admire, the large spirit of the last expression came from that rough village and sprang from the broils of that one plain; rome was most vigorous before it could speak. so a man's verse, and all he has, are but the last outward appearance, late and already rigid, of an earlier, more plastic, and diviner fire. 'upon this arena,' i still said to myself, 'were first fought out the chief destinies of the world'; and so, played upon by an unending theme, i ate and drank in a reverie, still wondering, and then lay down beneath the shade of a little tree that stood alone upon that edge of a new world. and wondering, i fell asleep under the morning sun. but this sleep was not like the earlier oblivions that had refreshed my ceaseless journey, for i still dreamt as i slept of what i was to see, and visions of action without thought--pageants and mysteries--surrounded my spirit; and across the darkness of a mind remote from the senses there passed whatever is wrapped up in the great name of rome. when i woke the evening had come. a haze had gathered upon the plain. the road fell into ronciglione, and dreams surrounded it upon every side. for the energy of the body those hours of rest had made a fresh and enduring vigour; for the soul no rest was needed. it had attained, at least for the next hour, a vigour that demanded only the physical capacity of endurance; an eagerness worthy of such great occasions found a marching vigour for its servant. in ronciglione i saw the things that turner drew; i mean the rocks from which a river springs, and houses all massed together, giving the steep a kind of crown. this also accompanied that picture, the soft light which mourns the sun and lends half-colours to the world. it was cool, and the opportunity beckoned. i ate and drank, asking every one questions of rome, and i passed under their great gate and pursued the road to the plain. in the mist, as it rose, there rose also a passion to achieve. all the night long, mile after mile, i hurried along the cassian way. for five days i had slept through the heat, and the southern night had become my daytime; and though the mist was dense, and though the moon, now past her quarter, only made a vague place in heaven, yet expectation and fancy took more than the place of sight. in this fog i felt with every step of the night march the approach to the goal. long past the place i had marked as a halt, long past sette vene, a light blurred upon the white wreaths of vapour; distant songs and the noise of men feasting ended what had been for many, many hours--for more than twenty miles of pressing forward--an exaltation worthy of the influence that bred it. then came on me again, after the full march, a necessity for food and for repose. but these things, which have been the matter of so much in this book, now seemed subservient only to the reaching of an end; they were left aside in the mind. it was an inn with trellis outside making an arbour. in the yard before it many peasants sat at table; their beasts and waggons stood in the roadway, though, at this late hour, men were feeding some and housing others. within, fifty men or more were making a meal or a carousal. what feast or what necessity of travel made them keep the night alive i neither knew nor asked; but passing almost unobserved amongst them between the long tables, i took my place at the end, and the master served me with good food and wine. as i ate the clamour of the peasants sounded about me, and i mixed with the energy of numbers. with a little difficulty i made the master understand that i wished to sleep till dawn. he led me out to a small granary (for the house was full), and showed me where i should sleep in the scented hay. he would take no money for such a lodging, and left me after showing me how the door latched and unfastened; and out of so many men, he was the last man whom i thanked for a service until i passed the gates of rome. above the soft bed which the hay made, a square window, unglazed, gave upon the southern night; the mist hardly drifted in or past it, so still was the air. i watched it for a while drowsily; then sleep again fell on me. but as i slept, rome, rome still beckoned me, and i woke in a struggling light as though at a voice calling, and slipping out i could not but go on to the end. the small square paving of the via cassia, all even like a palace floor, rang under my steps. the parched banks and strips of dry fields showed through the fog (for its dampness did not cure the arid soil of the campagna). the sun rose and the vapour lifted. then, indeed, i peered through the thick air--but still i could see nothing of my goal, only confused folds of brown earth and burnt-up grasses, and farther off rare and un-northern trees. i passed an old tower of the middle ages that was eaten away at its base by time or the quarrying of men; i passed a divergent way on the right where a wooden sign said 'the triumphal way', and i wondered whether it could be the road where ritual had once ordained that triumphs should go. it seemed lonely and lost, and divorced from any approach to sacred hills. the road fell into a hollow where soldiers were manoeuvring. even these could not arrest an attention that was fixed upon the approaching revelation. the road climbed a little slope where a branch went off to the left, and where there was a house and an arbour under vines. it was now warm day; trees of great height stood shading the sun; the place had taken on an appearance of wealth and care. the mist had gone before i reached the summit of the rise. there, from the summit, between the high villa walls on either side--at my very feet i saw the city. and now all you people whatsoever that are presently reading, may have read, or shall in the future read, this my many-sided but now-ending book; all you also that in the mysterious designs of providence may not be fated to read it for some very long time to come; you then i say, entire, englobed, and universal race of men both in gross and regardant, not only living and seeing the sunlight, but dead also under the earth; shades, or to come in procession afterwards out of the dark places into the day for a little, swarms of you, an army without end; all you black and white, red, yellow and brown, men, women, children and poets--all of you, wherever you are now, or have been, or shall be in your myriads and deka myriads and hendeka myriads, the time has come when i must bid you farewell-- _ludisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti; tempus abire tibi est...._ only lector i keep by me for a very little while longer with a special purpose, but even he must soon leave me; for all good things come to an end, and this book is coming to an end--has come to an end. the leaves fall, and they are renewed; the sun sets on the vexin hills, but he rises again over the woods of marly. human companionship once broken can never be restored, and you and i shall not meet or understand each other again. it is so of all the poor links whereby we try to bridge the impassable gulf between soul and soul. oh! we spin something, i know, but it is very gossamer, thin and strained, and even if it does not snap time will at last dissolve it. indeed, there is a song on it which you should know, and which runs-- [bar of music] so my little human race, both you that have read this book and you that have not, good-bye in charity. i loved you all as i wrote. did you all love me as much as i have loved you, by the black stone of rennes i should be rich by now. indeed, indeed, i have loved you all! you, the workers, all puffed up and dyspeptic and ready for the asylums; and you, the good-for-nothing lazy drones; you, the strong silent men, who have heads quite empty, like gourds; and you also, the frivolous, useless men that chatter and gabble to no purpose all day long. even you, that, having begun to read this book, could get no further than page , and especially you who have read it manfully in spite of the flesh, i love you all, and give you here and now my final, complete, full, absolving, and comfortable benediction. to tell the truth, i have noticed one little fault about you. i will not call it fatuous, inane, and exasperating vanity or self- absorption; i will put it in the form of a parable. sit you round attentively and listen, dispersing yourselves all in order, and do not crowd or jostle. once, before we humans became the good and self-respecting people we are, the padre eterno was sitting in heaven with st michael beside him, and he watched the abyss from his great throne, and saw shining in the void one far point of light amid some seventeen million others, and he said: 'what is that?' and st michael answered: 'that is the earth,' for he felt some pride in it. 'the earth?' said the padre eterno, a little puzzled... 'the earth? ...?... i do not remember very exactly...' 'why,' answered st michael, with as much reverence as his annoyance could command, 'surely you must recollect the earth and all the pother there was in heaven when it was first suggested to create it, and all about lucifer--' 'ah!' said the padre eterno, thinking twice, 'yes. it is attached to sirius, and--' 'no, no,' said st michael, quite visibly put out. 'it is the earth. the earth which has that changing moon and the thing called the sea.' 'of course, of course,' answered the padre eterno quickly, 'i said sirius by a slip of the tongue. dear me! so that is the earth! well, well! it is years ago now... michael, what are those little things swarming up and down all over it?' 'those,' said st michael, 'are men.' 'men?' said the padre eterno, 'men... i know the word as well as any one, but somehow the connexion escapes me. men...' and he mused. st michael, with perfect self-restraint, said a few things a trifle staccato, defining man, his dual destiny, his hope of heaven, and all the great business in which he himself had fought hard. but from a fine military tradition, he said nothing of his actions, nor even of his shrine in normandy, of which he is naturally extremely proud: and well he may be. what a hill! 'i really beg your pardon,' said the padre eterno, when he saw the importance attached to these little creatures. 'i am sure they are worthy of the very fullest attention, and' (he added, for he was sorry to have offended) 'how sensible they seem, michael! there they go, buying and selling, and sailing, driving, and wiving, and riding, and dancing, and singing, and the rest of it; indeed, they are most practical, business-like, and satisfactory little beings. but i notice one odd thing. here and there are some not doing as the rest, or attending to their business, but throwing themselves into all manner of attitudes, making the most extraordinary sounds, and clothing themselves in the quaintest of garments. what is the meaning of that?' 'sire!' cried st michael, in a voice that shook the architraves of heaven, 'they are worshipping you!' 'oh! they are worshipping _me!_ well, that is the most sensible thing i have heard of them yet, and i altogether commend them. _continuez,'_ said the padre eterno, _'continuez!'_ and since then all has been well with the world; at least where _us continuent._ and so, carissimi, multitudes, all of you good-bye; the day has long dawned on the via cassia, this dense mist has risen, the city is before me, and i am on the threshold of a great experience; i would rather be alone. good-bye my readers; good-bye the world. at the foot of the hill i prepared to enter the city, and i lifted up my heart. there was an open space; a tramway: a tram upon it about to be drawn by two lean and tired horses whom in the heat many flies disturbed. there was dust on everything around. a bridge was immediately in front. it was adorned with statues in soft stone, half-eaten away, but still gesticulating in corruption, after the manner of the seventeenth century. beneath the bridge there tumbled and swelled and ran fast a great confusion of yellow water: it was the tiber. far on the right were white barracks of huge and of hideous appearance; over these the dome of st peter's rose and looked like something newly built. it was of a delicate blue, but made a metallic contrast against the sky. then (along a road perfectly straight and bounded by factories, mean houses and distempered walls: a road littered with many scraps of paper, bones, dirt, and refuse) i went on for several hundred yards, having the old wall of rome before me all this time, till i came right under it at last; and with the hesitation that befits all great actions i entered, putting the right foot first lest i should bring further misfortune upon that capital of all our fortunes. and so the journey ended. it was the gate of the poplar--not of the people. (ho, pedant! did you think i missed you, hiding and lurking there?) many churches were to hand; i took the most immediate, which stood just within the wall and was called our lady of the people--(not 'of the poplar'. another fall for the learned! professor, things go ill with you to-day!). inside were many fine pictures, not in the niminy-piminy manner, but strong, full-coloured, and just. to my chagrin, mass was ending. i approached a priest and said to him: _'pater, quando vel a quella hora e la prossimma missa?'_ _'ad nonas,'_ said he. _'pol! hercle!'_ (thought i), 'i have yet twenty minutes to wait! well, as a pilgrimage cannot be said to be over till the first mass is heard in rome, i have twenty minutes to add to my book.' so, passing an egyptian obelisk which the great augustus had nobly dedicated to the sun, i entered.... lector. but do you intend to tell us nothing of rome? auctor. nothing, dear lector. lector. tell me at least one thing; did you see the coliseum? auctor.... i entered a cafe at the right hand of a very long, straight street, called for bread, coffee, and brandy, and contemplating my books and worshipping my staff that had been friends of mine so long, and friends like all true friends inanimate, i spent the few minutes remaining to my happy, common, unshriven, exterior, and natural life, in writing down this loud and final song dithyrambic epithalamium or threnody in these boots, and with this staff two hundred leaguers and a half-- (that means, two and a half hundred leagues. you follow? not two hundred and one half league.... well--) two hundred leaguers and a half walked i, went i, paced i, tripped i, marched i, held i, skelped i, slipped i, pushed i, panted, swung and dashed i; picked i, forded, swam and splashed i, strolled i, climbed i, crawled and scrambled, dropped and dipped i, ranged and rambled; plodded i, hobbled i, trudged and tramped i, and in lonely spinnies camped i, and in haunted pinewoods slept i, lingered, loitered, limped and crept i, clambered, halted, stepped and leapt i; slowly sauntered, roundly strode i, _and_... (oh! patron saints and angels that protect the four evangels! and you prophets vel majores vel incerti, vel minores, virgines ac confessores chief of whose peculiar glories est in aula regis stare atque orare et exorare et clamare et conclamare clamantes cum clamoribus pro nobis peccatoribus.) _let me not conceal it... rode i. _ (for who but critics could complain of 'riding' in a railway train?) _across the valleys and the high-land, with all the world on either hand. drinking when i had a mind to, singing when i felt inclined to; nor ever turned my face to home till i had slaked my heart at rome._ the end again lector. but this is dogg-- auctor. not a word! finis