"WvAM SWITZERLAND ; On, A JOl'KNAL OF A lOUR AND RESIDENCE IN THAT COUNTRY, IN THE YEARS 1817, 1818, AND 1819; FOLLOWED BY AN HisroiiicAL skf;i'ch on the ALVNNERS AND CUSTOMS OF AXCIEXr AND MODERN HELVETIA, I N ^v }n c H THE ):n;srs or one on's iimk auk Fui.i.y detaii.fi). ro(,):THi:ii Willi Tin: cal.shs to hiikh THF.y MAY BE REFEURHU By L. SIMOND, AriHOll oi- joiiiSAi. 01 I TOi I: AM) i!i:sn)E\< !■: ly (^iie.it kiiitaix, l)t Rl\(i THi: YE. tils Ihlii AM) i>-n. IN TWO VOIATMF.S VOL. T. LONDON : lOHN :VT URR A Y , A I ,H l.M A 11 1 .Iv STREET MDCCCXXll. LONDON i'KlNTED BY WILLIAM CLOWRS, NorlhiinibrrlHriil-coiirl. PREFACE. The Author published, a few years ag-o, a work on England, which was favourably re- ceived by the Public ; and on the occasion of a late tour and residence in Switzerland, he continued the practice, followed before, of daily recording his first impressions, and draw- ing from nature the objects which passed under his eye. Such cursory reflections as they had suggested were matured at leisure, as well as facts verified, by consulting the historians of Switzerland, its antiquaries, its naturalists, and the living witnesses of recent events; but he soon found that an inconsi- derable part only of the niformation thus ob- tained could be introduced in a .Journal of Travels, and that it would be necessary to 1 .^^l^;' U^ V) P}iT.F.\(l, separate the historical part of his work from the descriptive : in doing so the Author has endeavoured to give the history of the people rather than that of its rulers ; the moral rather than the diplomatic history. Ancient chro- nicles were most sparing of details on men and manners ; and subsequent historians, in selecting among them, have generally neg- lected, as unimportant, or beneath the dig- nity of their subject, the very facts which would have conveyed some idea of the state of society, and exhibited a sort of likeness of our species in ancient times. The authen- tic and judicious Chronicle of Tschudi was the pnnciprd guide of Mullcr. It embraces a |)eriod of nearly six centuries, from 1000 lo 1559; but was published onl}' as far as ilie year 1470, and Muller's history likewise (loos not go farther tlian the fifteenth cen- tury. M.'illet's continuation, more regular, clearer, and in better taste, (for the elo- (jueiice oi" the learned Muller appears too often (■ommon-|)hu'(^ and decl.amatory,) is. PREFACE. Vll nevertheless, rather uninteresting, vind it stops at the beginning of the Revolution. A con- nected narrative of events, for the last thirty, or even forty years, is now attempted for the first time, and if too soon for history, which seems to require the sanction of years, the Author hopes it may, at least, be offered to the Public as Memoirs of our own time, and that as such it will be found to be im- partiah as well as faithful. SWITZERLAND, FoNTAiNERLEAU, May 30, 1817. 1 HIS place, as well as Versailles, presents the sad picture of grandeur in decay ; grass grows in the streets, and the pavement remains unsullied from one rainy day to another. This forlorn state, which began at Versailles with the Revolution, only C(jmmenced here with its close ; for Fontainebleau was an Imperial villa under Buona})arte. The palace has an imposing appearance, from its size, and the anti(|ue style of its architecture ; it recalls to the memory two great princes, Francis I. and Henry IV. The people of France may be said to owe much of their national character to the former. The peculiar elegance of the premier '^cntil/ioinnic (It su)i roijaunie, his valour, and liis wit, made him the model of an age yet rude and barbarous ; his Vol.. r. B FONTAINEBLEAU. contemporaries saw in him the bean ideal of good manners, which every one was desirous of imitating, and although it is, certainly, a long while since Francis I. has been nearly forgotten, yet the national bias remains ; a certain mixture of chivalry and of vanity, a showy, ostentatious, dramatic turn, leading to brilliant successes and lamentable reverses, and, upon the w^hole, to transitory results. Louis XIV. 's personal character gave dignity and weight to the vanity bequeathed to us by Francis I., and Buona- parte gave it strength. Strangers who visit Fontainebleau are shewn the stairs by which the Emperor came down to the great court, to review, for the last time, the remnants of an army with which he was going to part, and the small table upon w^hich he signed his abdication, as well as the mark of an angry kick he gave to that table ! an antechamber anecdote, for the correctness of which I do not vouch. Here is another : the pen with which the Emperor had signed his abdication became, as may be supposed, an object of great in- terest to curious or idle travellers visiting this palace, that is, to the English, who form the great majority of these travellers ! One of them bought this valuable^ pen for much more than its weight in gold, to the great disappointment of those who followed ; but the ixood-nature of the domestic who shews the OBJECTS OF CURIOSITY. 3 apartment, suggested to him the expedient of sup- plying another pen ; it soon found another amateur, who would have it to himself Matters could not stop there, and no English traveller since has been disappointed of the true pen of the abdication. There is a stone bench, in the private garden, where his Imperial Majesty used frequently to sit or recline, in a melancholy mood, beating the sand mechanically w^ith his stick, and often dozing, du- ring the three weeks w^hich preceded his departure for Elba. At first he appeared pale and dejected, but he soon recovered. Our guide occupying a room which looked upon the garden, he had every opportunity of observation. Another object of curiosity is the apartment his holiness the Pope occupied. He staid here nine- teen months without going out once, although pro- vided with carriages, wishing, no doubt, to mark his situation as a prisoner. His couch occupies still a corner of the vast bed-chamber, and the small table, upon which he took his frugal repasts, occupies an- other corner. His prison was otherwise comfortable enough, and sufficiently s})acious for a walk, from one end of the suite of apartments to another ; it looks over a large piece of water, and a beautiful garden beyond. The Pope gave daily, from a win- dow, his benediction to the gold and silver fish 4 FONTAINEBLEAU. below*, and a few good Catholics on the high road, a quarter of a mile off, partook of it occasionally. Buonaparte treated the Roman Pontiff alternately with great respect and much insolence ; oppressing him at one time with his visits, and at another time remaining months without seeing him. One day, after an angry conversation, which went the length of threats on his part, he tried wliat soothing would do, to obtain his pur})ose: " TragccUa,'' observed the old man calmly, " poi Commcdia!" The last curiosity I shall mention is the apart- ment of Christina, Queen of Sweden, and the spot where she caused Monaldesche to be assassinated under her eyes, and at her feet. To return to the road from Paris to this place. On leaving the capital, the eye of a travelh^r meets few objects worth notice ; dirty suburbs, high roads of great breadth, which appear deserted, beyond the immediate reach of the cabarets crowded together just out of the gates, to cheat the octroi. For the * As this nii^lit 1)1' (locMncd improper levity, I tliiiik jn'cessary to observe, that animals receive the blessings ot the chureh aii- miallv at Home. In the month of .lanuary, all sorts of creatures, from liorses, to eeerlin'i'<, ENVIRONS OF I'AUISi. :', first league or two you breathe an atmosphere tainted witli the effluvia of street manure ; you see a lew hhkoiis eountry-liouses, and a'ardens between lour walls, where the eitizens of Paris come to take the air, but not a creditable farm-house. The CluUcau de Vinccn/ia, altliouerve, or e\en attain, the form nature iniCiKled, A few })eople, having })retensions to modern taste. 6 ENVIRONS OF PARIS. allow themselves a bit of lawn, but the grass is only rank weeds, too scanty and poor for a meadow, too high for pasture; one quarter of the labour be- stowed, and the expense incurred, in pruning the trees, would keep this grass in good order. The walks are strewed over with river sand, which never binds, and it is brought from a distance at great expense, while the earth on the spot, coarsely sifted, would yield very good gravel. All their residences, with their esplaiiades of their white sand before and of street pavements behind, which dazzle your eyes in summer, and feel uncomforta- ble to your feet at all times, banish all thoughts of the country. You do not meet with any w^ell-grown trees in the environs of Paris ; those of the lower part of St. Cloud are indeed magnificent, and some in the Tuileries may be called fine, but their style of beauty is that of a forest. The effect of a full- grown single tree, or group of trees, balancing their horizontal limbs and vast masses of foliage with graceful majesty over the velvet lawn is quite un- known in France ; I have not seen any, except in lithographic prints in the shop windows along the quays, or at the opera. The trees of the forest of Fontainebleau have often pictures(;[ue forms, but tliey are thin and stunted ; the hillocks of sand-stone. ENVItlONS OF PARIS. 7 rising in regular cubical masses out of the sands, are singular, rather than fine. The reader may possibly be inclined to ask, how, travelling post from Paris to Fontainebleau, I could see thus minutely all the defects of the country houses or chateaux on the road .' The fact is, I did not see them, but only guessed ; and if I guessed right, as I am inclined to think I did, from previous observation elsewhere, I shall then have shewn how general bad taste is in this respect, since the descrip- tion thus made at random happens to lit. I shall only add a few observations on the subject of an English garden in the French ideas — it must have its ruin, its bridge, its rock, and, if possible, its cas- cade. The Empress Josephine has put some of these things ill the Jardins Auglah of Fontainebleau, which she made. The plantations are well enough for the bad taste*, but they are yet too recent for effect on such an extent of groimd. As we admired some fine horsc-chesnuts, the man in a bag and sword, who did the honours of the place to us for two francs, observed that the old garden ^vas for- merly covered with such trees as tliese, which had all been cut down — we expressed our regret, and inquired why they had been sacrificed. Dcunc ! Jc * The gardens ol" RanibouiUet and I'rian'jn are due to tlie good taste of the illustrious and unfortunate daughter of Maria Theresa, 8 FONTAINEBLEAU. ne suis pas moi, he answered, c'etait necessaire, vo?/ez vous, pour fair 6 un jar din Anglais. This inveterate good taste remains the same under the empire of legitimacy, for the present architecte en chef hsid just cut down three magnificent trees, on a small island in the middle of a large piece of water ; two of the victims w^ere pines eighty or a hundred feet high, which two centuries could not restore, and the third a very large weeping willow. They all three lie prostrate, withering on their ancient seat of glory, which looks now an insignificant little heap of mud, instead of the graceful island it used to be. The architect means, no doubt, to adorn it with a statue, a latticed arbour, or some other pretty thing, which may not intercept the view of a long line of cut trees on the other side of the water, as this venerable clump used to do. The English garden is about to be decorated with statues ; we were shewn the pedestals. AuxERRE, 3lst May. Postilions in France are in the habit of changin"; horses on the road. It is clear gain for the horses and men, and humane travellers are generally disposed to sacrifice a few miiHites for that purpose. Between Fontainebleau and Sens, one of these exchanges placed us along- RIOT AT SENS. side a Berline, as two ships at sea bring-to for the purpose of speaking. This was a Russian ironi Italy bound to Paris ; we learnt the yellow fever was not in Italy, as had been reported, and on our part informed liim, there was not any revolution actually impending at Paris, although apprehended each week for the next : the fear of a revolution prevailed so generally implying that few were for it. The riot these travellers had just witnessed at Sens alarmed them for the state of France in general. We found, indeed. Sens much agitated, the national guard under arms, and a detachment of hussars coming; in. The people, irritated by the dearness of pro\"isions, and not aware of the good forestalling does, are bent upon intlicting summary ])unishment, bv plundering the stores, at least, of some unfortu- nate speculator, obnoxious for this very unpo|)ular offence. The national guard, not being sufficientlv strong to prevent it, or perhaps not being sutHcientlv grounded in the true theory on the subject, and in- clined accordingly to side with the mob. had made it necessary to call in these hussars, who carinn- little about any theory, decide the ({uestion by fon-e, en attendant, that it may be so one day by good sense and reason. Let us suppose one hundred thousand quarters of wheat to be the quantity requisite for the yearly 10 ON THE SCARCITY supply of any given country, and the crops to have fallen so far short as to yield seventy-five quarters only, while a similar deficiency abroad precludes foreign assistance ; it is evident that, if consumption went on as usual, in the nine months immediately fol- lowing the bad crop, a famine would be the in- evitable consequence in the three succeeding months ; and the obvious remedy is an early check on con- sumption — an endeavour to provide auxiliary means of subsistence, and prevent worse. The only warn- ing the great bulk of the people will take, is the dearness of food; if there were no speculators (fore- stallers) farmers would become so themselves, that is, would lay up their produce, and refuse to sell it without an advance in the price ; but not perceiving so soon, or so accurately, the real state of the mar- ket, they w^ould make it too high or too low : most probably they would begin too late, and accumulate on the latter part of the year that rise which should have been equally divided on the whole course of it. The people w^ould undergo the same loss of money by the rise of prices, probably a greater one, and would at any rate feel it much more severely, be- cause this rise would be accumulated on a few months instead of bearing on the whole twelve, and because the rate of wages of labour would have had loss time to accommodate itself to this state of things. OF PUOVISIOXS. 11 The warning of clearness, coming so late, would be a gratuitous evil inflicted on the people, whereas spe- culation makes it useful. Forestalling rarely ope- rates a fictitious rise, not born out of a real deficiency of crop, and which would not have taken place otherwise. If it was possible for speculators to un- derstand each other from one end of the country to another, or rather from one end of Europe and of the world to another, and to be all partners in the same adventure, directed by the same hand, they might create a fictitious rise, but e\ en then they must go the length of destroying a part of the produce, ob- ject of this speculation, as the Dutch were said to burn cinnamon or cloves to prevent any but a cer- tain quantity coming into the market, for sooner or later this surplus would occasion a fall of prices, whenever it came into the market. As soon as pur- chases made with a view to a rise begin to o})erate, proprietors unconnected with the purchasing specu- lators never fail pouring in their supplies, and reap the benefit the contrivers of the rise intended for themselves. Some of the speculators themselves will defeat the scheme of the others by early sales ; in short, no speculation, no forestalling, can bo ])ro- fitable to the forestaller generally, unless it has a real deficiency of the article for its base, and then it is useful to the public likewise ; lor it saves them 12 CROWDS OF UEGGARS. from a public dearth, and wards ofF absolute famine at less cost of money. If the speculation be good, it is so for every one, those concerned in it, and those who are not ; if it be bad, it is so for the specu- lator alone, and nugatory in its results for the pub- lic at large. This view of the subject is not offered as new assuredly : but, as the prejudices against forestaUing are far from dissipated, no opportunity of setting the matter in its true light should be neg- lected. Maison Neuve, l6'^ Jiaw. Beggars, very numerous yesterday, have increased greatly ; at every stage, a crowd of women and cliiJ- dren, and of old men, gather round tlie carriage ; their cries, the chxjuence of all these pale and ema- ciated countenances, lifted up to us with imploring hands, are more tlian w^e can well bear. Many in- dividuals have died, if not of hungx^r, at least of the insuiliciency and bad (juality of the icxxl. A bag of small copper coin distributed along thc^ road can go a very little way towards the support of this famished multitude, wlien bread is at nine sous a pound. It is a singular fact, that ahhough the price of bread is three or four tinu^s higher tlian usual, meat has not risen much: a little of the latter boiled with such ve Pyrenee-. 22 THE JUUA. friends ! Friends or foes, such proceedings were un- justifiable on the part of gentlemen we admitted. But your fort was firing all the time, we added, on these friends, and they may very possibly have misconstrued such an act into a rejection of the proffered friendship which could not well be main- tained all on one side. The brother of our land- lady, a militaire en retraite, took the evils of war more patiently than his sister, and little caring about what the household gods had suffered, seemed only to grieve at his being no longer permitted to visit in the same manner those of his foreign neigh- bours ; and at his prospects of advancement being destroyed, and himself dwindling into the situation of inn-keeper at S alius. On leaving this place we began immediately to climb the Jura, and continued to ascend, at inter- vals, the whole day, and until we reached Jougne ; the road traversed a dark forest of pines of great extent, and said to abound with large game, stags, wild boars, S^'c. ; the trees lofty and well limbed, are now fringed over with new shoots of the most vivid green ; the pastures are already covered with nu- merous herds of cows, grazing between large patches of snow ; the higher summits are entirely white. Great quantities of cheese are made here in imitation of Gruy^re cheese. TOUSSAINT LOUVEUTURE. '2;j Our post-boy showed us the spot where, twenty - five years before, late in the night on Christmas eve, a traveller, whom he was driving, had met with his death ; this unfortunate man was flying from France, during the reign of terror, accompa- nied by his two daughters ; having alighted a mo- ment from the carriage, he was overtaken by a sudden blast of wind, thrown down in the snow, and almost overwhelmed ; extricated with difficulty by his two daughters, and replaced in the carriage, he died of cold before he could reach Rouque, where he lies buried. His daughters, who had been on the point of perishing with him, returned to Rheims, whence they had fled. The road being often quite obliterated by the snows in winter, there are poles planted at regular distances to guide travellers, in the manner described by Ammianus Marcellinus, fifteen centuries ago. Between Pontarlier and Rouque the Chateau dc Joux appears among rocks on the right ; it was here the unfortunate Tomsaint t Oliver tiirc, treach- erously carried away from St. Domingo, finished his days, some say by violent means, but the ef- fect of such a climate on an African constitution was quite sufficient to account for his death ; this, however, does not clear those who confined poor Toussaint, from the charge of murder. 24 SWISS iioi'sEs. The inn at Jougne, a very tolerable one, built of wood, with a projecting gallery in the roof, has already a foreign look. The custom-house esta- blished here gives no trouble to travellers going to Switzerland, but it is otlierwise on their return. If this prohibition of the proceeds of foreign in- dustry, made with a view to encourage home ma- nufactures, could be enforced effectually, it would assuredly defeat its purpose ; for although home manufactures might still hnd consumers in foreign countries, they certainly could not be paid for. We soon perceived a difference, not so much in the architecture of the house as in their cleanliness and their comforts. The countenances of the people we also fancied to be somewhat different. The numerous Swiss houses, eighty or one hundred feet square, have, although very low, a prodigiously lofty shingle roof, which is loaded with large stones to prevent its being blown away by the wind ; and projects in the piazza shape over an outside gallery up a flight of stairs. This is properly the ground floor, or rather the snow floor ; for the lower floor, ramparted as it is with hre wood, and buried in snow, be- comes in winter a sort of cellar, where the provi- sions are kept, and where the cows are housed. A large door, in the centre of the building, gives en- THE FRONTIERS. -25 trance to the various farming carriages and imple- ments, as well as to all the winter fodder ; thus the stable, the barn, the dwelling, are all under the same roof, with all the apparatus of home manu- factures, carried on in winter, and their produce, cheese and lace, butter and watches. The family have access to all parts of this their domestic world, without ever stepping out of doors. These houses, (which a single spark might set in a blaze) and all sort of houses into the Canton de Vaud, are insured mutually by a law. The accounts are kept by government, free from any contingent charges of administration, and the proprietors of houses pay no premium, but only their respective share of losses by fire. The houses are estimated at three- fourths of their value only, and the aggregate of losses is equal to about one in a thousand yearly. Soon after passing the frontiers of the two coun- tries, the view, heretofore bounded by near objects, woods and pastures, rocks and snows, opened all at once upon the Canton de Vaud and upon half Switzerland ; a vast extent of undulating country. tufted woods and fields, and silvery streams and lakes ; vihages and towns, with their antique towers, and their church steeples shining in the sun*. * We found ;i Iter wards they were [)artly covered on their roof, trimmed with tin at the angles. 26 SWISS SCENERY. The lake of Neuchatel, far below on the left, and those of Morat and of Vienne, like the mirrors set in deep frames, contrasted by the tranquillity of their lucid surfaces, with the dark shades, and broken grounds and ridges of the various land- scape. Beyond this vast extent of country, its vil- lages and towns, woods, lakes, and mountains ; be- yond all terrestrial objects — beyond the horizon it- self, rose a long range of aerial forms of the softest pale pink hue ; these were the high Alps, the ram- part of Italy, from Mont-Blanc, in Savoy, to the glaciers of the Oberland, and even farther. Their angle of elevation seen from this distance is very small indeed ; faithfully represented in a drawing the effect would be insignificant, but the aerial per- spective amply restored those proportions lost in the mathematical perspective. The human mind thirsts after immensity and im- mutability, and duration without bounds, but it needs some tangible object as a point of rest from which to take its flight, something present to lead to futurity, something bounded from whence to rise to the infinite. This vault of the heavens over our heads, sinking all terrestrial objects into absolute nothingness, might seem best fitted to awaken the creative powers of the mind ; but mere space is not a perceptible object to which we can readily apply THE JURA. 27 a scale, while the Alps, seen at a glance between heaven and earth met, as it were on the confines of the regions of fancy and of sober reality, are there like written characters, traced by a divine hand, suggesting thoughts such as human language never reached. Coming down the Jura, a long descent brought us to what appeared a plain, but which proved a varied country with hills and dales, divided into neat enclosures of hawthorn in full bloom, and large hedge-row trees, mostly walnut, oak, and ash ; it had altogether very much the appearance of the most beautiful parts of England, although the enclo- sures were on a smaller scale, and cottages less neat and ornamented ; they differed entirely from France, where the dwellings are always collected in villages, the fields all open, and without trees. Numerous streams of the clearest water crossed the road, and watered very fine meadows. The houses, built of stones, low, broad, and mossy, either thatched or covered with heavy wooden shingles, and shaded with magnificent walnut-trees, might all have furnished studies to an artist, but the ap- proach of Yverdun, at the head of the lake of Ncu- chatel, appeared, disfigured by a phmtation of Lombardy poplars, in a wretched sickly state, showing the soil to be unfriendly to their growth. 28 THE JURA. while a grove of enormous trees, limes, I believe, between the town and the water, might suggest to the good people of Yverdun what sort of trees are likely to flourish around this town. An hour's more travelling towards the left brought us to the end of our journey for the present, and under a friendly roof, where we were expected and kindly welcomed. GioN, June 9. The chain of the Jura, seen at a distance, pre- sents an unpromising straight line, but its beauties of detail are very great. It is known to have been much agitated by earthquakes at various periods, but the deep chasms and rents, and shifting of im- mense masses in the interior, bear testimony to far mightier revolutions anterior to all historical re- cords. Habit has not rendered the Swiss indifferent to the beauties of their mountains, over which they are fond of making excursions in summer, either on foot or in a light sort of carriage, called diar-d-hanc, consisting of two flexible bars on four wh(^els, drawn by one horse, two or three people sit upon these bars sideways, and a driver in front ; the seat is so low, that with a little practice you may ahght at pleasure, and take your seat again MOINTAIN F.XPF.DITIONS. 29 without Stopping the horse. Our friends scarcely allowed a fine day to pass without some mountain expedition ; but no task is, in general, more dis- couragingly unsuccessful than picturesque descrip- tions, and I shall venture on a few only. Our first jaunt was to Moitie-Travers, a place rendered fa- mous by the lapidation of Jean Jacques Rousseau ; having reached a village near the reservoir of the river, where, at the height of above one thousand eight hundred feet, the snow was not yet all melted, we intended to sleep at the only inn the place affords, and being shown into a common room where the landlord sat drinking with some of his neighbours ; we asked whether we could have another room, upon which the following dialogue ensued : — " Is not this good cnoi/gh ?" — " It mm/ ha good awugh, bid \va ivish for a room to ourselves." — " The?i you mtuj go fiirthtr if you phase.'' It was late in the evening, and night at hand, yet, as it w^as very fine, we determined not to let our pride yield to that of this republican publican*, and taking a guide, we proceeded to St. Croix, a more civilized village, where after a walk of three hours w"c arrived, at eleven o'clock at night, and found good accommodations. Next day we pursued our * The inhabiuuits of this part of Jura, althuu<;h so loud of equality, strenudusly opposed tlie separation from Berne. 30 ROUSSEAU. way through a very beautiful mountain country to Motiers-TraverSf in the Val-Travers, where Rous- seau's house is shown, and the desk against the wall, where he wrote standing, and the two peeping-holes in a sort of wooden gallery up stairs, through which he could, unperceived, watch people out of doors. Some old inhabitants remember the philosopher, (it is now more than fifty years since he was here), they admit there were a few stones thrown at him, or the house, by boys in the village, but question whether it was on account of his writings, (Les Lettres de la Montague J, and rather suppose they were instigated by his gouvGrnaiite, who was tired of the place and wished to disgust him with it. The inhabitants, husbandmen, and shepherds, in the summer season, make clocks, and weave lace during the winter season. The return of peace has put an end, it is not easy to see how, to the demand for these articles ; and two successive cold and rainy seasons having destroyed the crops, all means of subsistence have failed at once. The parish funds (I shall state in another place what they consist in) proving inadequate to such an emergency, these poor people, out of all patience with their situation, and even their country, think of emigrating to Poland and to the United States. Some of them learning THE VAL TRAVERS. 31 we came from the latter country, consulted us : we could not encourage those who have no capital at all, either to pay for their passage, or to begin an esta- blishment, to emigrate to America ; and rather ad- vised those who had, to wait at home for a change of circumstances, which cannot fail to take place in due time ; the evil, as far as trade goes, working its own remedy. The Val-Travers is overlooked on one side by the Creux-du-Var, a site well deserving a description. The Jura forms here a mighty terrace, a great piece of which seems to have been scooped out, or to have sunk into the earth, in a semi-circular horse-shoe shape. I found the circumference of this prodigious hole measured, by walking all round, along the edge of the precipice, to be upwards of nine thousand feet (two thousand eight hundred and thirty-three great steps), and the depth nearly eight hundred feet, at a place w^hcrc I could conveniently throw a stone, which was seven seconds in falling from the top to the bottom. Near the entrance the depth is much greater, probably three times, for it reaches down to the valley. What an amphitheatre the Ro- mans might have made there for the whole empire to sit at ease in, and see twenty thousand gladiators (jf a side contending for their bloody trophies ; their shrieks would have come on the ear of the spec- 32 THE JURA. tators like the crash of thunder, for there never was such an echo in the world : the firing of a gun, we had brought on purpose, produced an effect quite terrific, repeated with singular variety and force all round the circumference during several minutes, like afeii-de-file, or the successive discharge of batteries of cannon. An unlucky botanist, in pursuit of some rare plant, was killed here a few months ago ; he had ventured too far on a projecting point, which gave way under him, and he fell down to the bottom. On our return, we observed on the south slope of the Jura, above the village of Provence, at the height of one thousand five hundred or two thousand feet above the Lake of Neuchatel, several large blocks of granite, two of which had each more than twenty steps in circumference, lying loose on the surface of the earth. The Jura is wholly calcareous, and this granite is precisely that of the high Alps, on the other side of Switzerland. The whole chain of the Jura, that is, all the south-east slope, is strewed over with such blocks of granite and of gneiss, from its base almost to its summit. It is a very curious fact, which I shall have occasion to mention again. The view over Switzerland, in descending the Jura above Provence, is magnificent, and much suj^erior to the one already described on entering Switzerland by Jougiw. SOURCF, OF THE OP.RK. ,33 One of the most beaut i fill parts of the Jura is that whore the dent-de-vaulion is situated with the souree of the Orbc and its fails. We set out early on a fine morning, unseen, to visit it, and our chars- a-bane reached the village of Ballaigne in five hours, stopping in the way at the Groltccnix fees ; a cavern, from the mouth of which, as from a balcony, at an u})per v/indow, you look down some hundreds of feet on the torrent of the Orbc, in its deej) bed of rocks and woody precipices. Leaving our e{]ui- })ages at Ballaigne, and taking a g'uide, we pro- ceeded to the falls of the Orbe, through a hang-- ing wood of fine old oaks, and came, after a long descent, to a place where the Orbe breaks through a great mass of ruins, wliicli, at some very remote })eriod, fell from the mountain, and entirely obstructed its channel : all the eiirth, and all the smaller fragments, having long since disappt^aied, the water works its way, with great noise; and lury, between the larirer irairments, and i'alls above the height of eighty feet in the very best style ; tlie blocks, many of them as large as a good-sized three- story house, are heaped up most strangely, jammed in by their angles — in equilibrium or in a point, or forming perilous bridges, over which you may, w ith }iroper ])recaution, {)ick your way to the; other sicie. The cjuarry from ^^'llicll the materials ol" the bridu'c Vol ! u 34 FALLS OF THE ORBE. came is just above your head, and the miners are still at work; air, water, frost, weight, and time. The strata of lime-stone are evidently breaking down, their deep rents are widening, and enormous masses, loosened from the mountain, and suspended on their precarious bases, seem only waiting for the last effort of the great lever of nature to take the horrid leap, and bury under some hundred feet of new chaotic ruins the trees, the verdant lawn, and yourself, who are looking on and foretelling the catastrophe. This shifting of the scene will now be properly recorded, and handed down to poste- rity, with all the attending circumstances, and the tragical episode of the spectator swallowed up, will have a very happy effect. At the foot of these rocks, under the thick shade of the trees, a mossy carpet under our feet, in full view of the foam, and full hearing of the roar, we spread the stores kindly provided for our entertainment, a well-seasoned veal pie, a boeuf-a-la-mode, plenty of the best vin du ]}rty-9, and even a dessert (strawberries) ; a fire was lit with dry sticks to make coffee, and the clieerlul blaze cidded to the pleasurable feelings of the scene. We left it at last reluctantly, and, after long climbing, rt^u-ained Ballnignc\ where the least active of the party, mounting*: tjjeir cliar-a-baiic, went home, while wo pr()C(;c(lod towards tli(> (lenUk-vaiilion, at rHAIN OF THE JURA. ,> " the base of which wc arrived in two hours, and in two hours more reached the summit, which is four thousand four hundred and seventy-six feet above tlie sea, and three thousand three hundred and forty-two feet above the lake of Geneva : our path lay over a smooth lawn, sufficiently steep to make it difficult to climb. At the top we found a sharp ridge, not more than one hundred yards wide. The south view, a most magnificent one, was unfortu- nately too like the one at our entrance into Switzer- land to bear a second description, although it might be seen a hundred times v^^ith the same delight as the first; a proof, if any was wanting, of the inade- quacy of language for picturesque purposes. At this late hour, however, all Switzerland was en- veloped in evening shades, and the sun already low, and intercepted by the chain of the Jura, on the top of which wc stood, glanced over the whole lower country without touching it, and concentrated its last rays on the snows of the high Al})s, more rc- splendent than I ever yet had seen them. The vast extent of sober grey, over the w^hole intervening land- scape, added much to the impression of immensity. The other side of the narrow ridge can scarcely he approached w'ithout terror, being almost ])iM-p(Mi- (licuhir ; crawling, therefore, on our hands and kncHs, \v(^ vcMilunnl in this modest altitude to lock 1) 2 36 ALPJNE SCENEIIV. out of the window at the hundred and fiftieth story at least (two thousand feet), and sec wliat was doing in the street ; herds of cattle in the uifudnicnt petit were grazing on the verdant lawn of a narrow vale, on the other side of which a mountain over- grown with dark pines marked the boundary of France. Jougne, and the road by which we hud entered Switzerland, formed a zig-zag line between the mountains. Towards the west, we saw a piece of water, which appeared like a mere fish-pond : it was the lake of Joux, two leagues in length and half a league in breadth ; we were to look for our night's lodgings in the village on its banlvS. At sun-set, we began to descend or run down the smooth ])astL!re grounds, scarcely able to sto]) t)ur- sehes, and reached the lake in loss than a qua.rter of the time we had employed in going uy). The ap])roach to the inn was i]nj)eded by a cause most distr(."s>^ing to the inhabitants — the gradual rising of the waters of the ialce, which is now ten feet ab()\e its usually p(;nnanent level. This hike receives the waters of the surroiuidiug heights, without any other outlet than certain tlssures in the rock, called the iMitonrioirs, through which the water rushes v.ith if all the waters, and, in consecjuence much of the adjacent LAIvi: i: joi; i\ch\<. as well as part oi" the vill:)iix\ arc inundated: tho .-anio accident iiaj)!)cncd in. the sixteenth cen- tury, and the inundations lasted iltty years : we sk^pt, however, very comibrtably on the verixe of thi-< deluge, and very early in the morning got into a boat to cr(* its wavers ; a tunnei oi' no groLit lengtli would p.ot only jn'event a dLiugerou-; in.crease ot" the water, but the lake m'ght be drained altoi.rethcr, leaving an extcn-ive plain of rich level land insread of it. About two leagues I'urther, but only about se\'en hundre;! perpendicular i'eet lower dewn, the river Orbe, wlii( li we liad seen tiie day belbro l()rm- iiii; sucii a beautiiUl cascade, bursts out lull-grown t'rem the eartii, ur ratlier, from due ba-" doubt, a', tiic lowei" extremity oi the cutonnoirs ot' the lake de Joux. by a -uc('e-:-ion oi' such ca\'erns a> ai'e ^;o commc-n. ie calcareou:s ri)cks. The vvater riiu- out Ikm'c widi great velocity, beautillilly clear, and iuU a chauu''! twelve or iirtecn i'eet wuie and i'our feet dee]'). Hued with moss oi' tiie n'o>t \ i\ id green ; it tern- t!;e wh'-cl ot" a forge, where we sto[)ped a lew minutes to uaze a.f ilu.^ uiowitie' mass(,:s of iron Vioi'Vn.; ■,-. i-'. 38 LES CLI'En. such case to the blows of monstrous hammers moving with incessant fury. The Orbe liere fer- tilizes a valley of great beauty, and gives its name to the antique town of the same name, situated at the foot of the Jura. Orbe was a Roman town, and possesses mosaic pavements and other remains of the taste and power of the masters of the world. Before coming to it, we passed by the chateau of Lcs Clccs, of tragic memory. During the atro cious wars of the fifteenth century, vvhtui execii- tioners spilt as much blood as soldiers, the Swiss took Orbe by assault, after an obstinate resistance : the garrison fought, says Ebcl, on the stairs, in the passages, in the great hall, in the garrets, and on the battlements. A remnant of them still held out in the main tower, w^iich the Swiss having forced and set fire to, and still pursuing the enemy amidst the flames, all those taken alive were thrown over the waif The Swiss next marched against Lcs Glees, an important place commanding the de- file towards France ; some c-ounsc^llors of Berne and Fribourg having lately been })ut to death tht^e, by orders oi" Count Romont, no mercy was ex- pected ; the commander, Pierre de Cossonney, st^t {\rc. to the town, which could not be defended, and threw himse'f into the castle, which having soon uccii ciirned l)y assault, lie un<\ all those who had ounr.. any share in the death of the counsellors })crished on the scaffold. It was at Orbe that Brunehaut, (jLieen of the Franks, was betrayed, in ()1,'5, into the hands of Clotaire II., who put her to death; and there, likewise, that the three sons of Charlemagne met, in S55, to divide his vast empire. Such his- torical recollections as these add much to the pic- tures(|ue effect of the little town of Orbe, built on an insulated hill, of its towers and walls, terraces and old houses, seen athwart the sky. A bold arch thrown across the torrent leads into the 'town. Meadows watered, as most of them are in thi< region of springs, are mowed three times a year, without the assistance of any manure, and need not ever be ploughed up and renewed. Such land as is not within reach of water bears grain and aiti- ficiaJ grasses ; or if on a slo})e ex])osed to the sun, it is planted with vines ; the worst situations are left in wood. Here, as in France, arable land lies fallow every third, fourth, or fifth year ; the courses are, first, ploughing for wheat, three or four times in one year, without a crop ; second, a crop of wheat the next year, which returns generally fi\e and a half for one ; third, barley ; fcjurth, esparsel (sanifoin)or some other artificial grass ; then plough- ing again for wheat, without a crop. The turnip and sheep system is said not to answcM' here. Acovs 40 APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY. on the Jura yields in the summer season, upon an average, six measures of milk daily, weighing each three pounds, of seventeen ounces. The general appearcince of the country is very woody, owing to the great number of walnut trees, which grow to an immense size ; every village, farm house, and gentleman's residence, is surrounded with them, you travel under their shade, and woods, or rather groves, of ancient and very picturesque forest trees are not uncommon. In mountainous countries you frequently meet with inhabitants where you would least expect them. A few days ago, we were conducted to a beautiji!.! water-fall at the foot of the Jura. The steep ])ath which ascends to the top of the water-fall, conti]iu- iiig, arrives at the height of eight hundred or a thousand feet, at a sort of natuj'al landing-place, scooped out of the perpendicular face of the moun- tain, and Ibrming a level piece of ground of ten or twelve acres, nearly encompassed by stupendous rocks. This beautil'iil green nook was watered by it stieani, cold as the snows whence it cam>e, cUicl form- ing die cascade beknv ; many goats, the only grazing animal which could well iind its way here, rjinging at liberty among the rocks, v/ere climbiiig ui) to c\'ery attainabk^ blade of grass ; ajid under the slia.de of some spreading trees we discovered a cottage, SCHOOL OF PEsT\l,OZ/l 41 whcvc the solo j)ropriotor of this socKulod domain resides with his family. They appear to live in patriarehal plenty on the milk of their goats and on the potatoes, and even corn, which they rai-e. The path leading to this aerial residence only rests, in some places, on sticks driven into fissures of the rock, and on trees growing out of these same iis- sures ; what it must bL3 in winter may e:i-il\" be imagined : yet these people mak*' nothi:;g oi' siM'am- blinu" i;p and down tlieir fourscore tiighls of stairs at all season-. The esuite lia-^. no doub;, ren!aiii''d in the family many centuries, entail ^hI on tlieui. as it were, bv nature : for who v.'ould tliink of buying'. ev(Mi if they were willing to sell i V/'he]i ioreign in\'a'!ers ravaged Switzerland, in the iieh, ti'e lendi, and tiie (}iglit:jentii centurie:-, th^s })riv;l(>ge* 1 laniily at a minute's warning mighi have made tlieir asy- kim inacces.-:ble, Just by kicking away the ladder, and iVom their lofty battlements mii;iit iuu'e deiied cither Attila or Rcubel. The celebrated scliool of Pestalozzi. [\t Yverchm, is vi>iied by most travelf^'s throeuli Switzerland: ha\ing br-cn introduced to iiie venerable i'ound'M'. he favv)ured me with an account of his method o'.' in- struction : I was pr(>scnt at som(3 of the jr-sotis, and having renewed my in([uiries dm'in.u- a sub- sequent visit, I shall now give a conn''cted view of 42 I'ESTALOZZI. their result. The whole life of Pestalozzi has been devoted to usefulness, but in endeavouring to pro- mote the welfare of mankind, his own was always out of the question. His apostolical poverty and simplicity, the homeliness of his appearance, and, above all, his obscure and perplexed elocution, had never recommended his active and energetic virtues to the notice of the world, if public calamities had not called them forth into action on a conspicuous stage. Tlie bloody 9th of September, 1798, having left many children of Underwalden fatherless*, Pestalozzi collected at Stantz about eighty of these destitute orphans, and undertook to provide for their wants of body and mind ; but the house he occupied having been soon taken away from him, for a military hospital, he had, with his adopted family, to seek shelter elsewhere. Berne provided him with another house, and made him liberal offers, but in the year 1804 he finally settled at Yverdun, where an ancient castle was appropriated to the use of his school. The great aim of Mr. Pestalozzi was to make his pupils construct the sciences themselves, as far as they were able, first exciting a si)irit of incjuiry among them, by conversations properly dir(u;ted, by tlie disclosure of curious facts connected with *" Cluip. N.\.\l>. . Vol. II. MKNTAI. MilTIIMFTIC . 4:] these ricien.'es, and then leaving them to pursue the objcet for some time, without assistance and in their own way, before suggesting any of those ar- tificial rules, which, at the same time that they almost mechanically facilitate the progress of the pupil towards any particular science, leave him in ignorance with regard to its rationale, and do not improve his mental faculties in general-. The school being only preparatory, and for pupils inider fourleen years ol" age, intended afterwanls for higher, or at least more special, schools, or to be sent into tlie world to earn their bread as artisans, the object was less to teach, than to prepare the pupils to be taught, to give them the ready use of their tools ; and considering how little, before this age, children really learn, it may readily be ad- * in order to convry a jiosilive, instead of an abstract, idea of numbers to the mind of his pupils, INIr. Pcstaloz/i used small cubes or dice, out? of theni representing a unit. Any child might retnin a distinct idea of a group of three units — for instance, of four or five ; then of several of these groups ; and, ijy that means, of a considerable sum of units, added up and multiplied without the lu'lp of figures. Sometliing of this sort most probably lake- place in the mind of llK)se who have the faculty of calculating without /igures, as was the case with an .American boy some yeais ago ; and such, again, may have been the mental process of I'hilidor playing chess, and even two or three games at the same lime, with- out s'cing tlie boards: he used to say he .v/U' l/ic pieces and I Inn ■ Juiii::(.'' < in their intercourse with tlie pupils ; and once the ninster for reliaious instrueti(3n, in an au<;Ty mo- ment, as I was t()lcl, burst one of the desks with a blow' of his fist: " C'e-sl ham cela pour iiii maitrc dc 7\'lii>;ion," observed my informant, an intelli^'ent boy, who, however, had no dislike to the school, nor any wush to leaA'e it. There arc several other minor schools at Yver- dun, all offsets of the lirst, and all better than this ])arent school, because they are nev/ and the mas- ters ha's'e their reputation to establish. Each of ihxnn professes the ii;eneral principles of Mr. Pes- talozzi. which are very good in themselves certainly, but require, in practice, a great deal of zeal and attention not to be expected ifom any but ])arents, and not always irom them. j\Ir. Pestalozzi has shewn hhnself ca})able of this devotedness and constancy, for a number of years, and I am assured was very successiul ; but he stands alone, and a system, founded on personal ([ualitics so rarely ])ossessed, may well be deemed visionary: yet it is by aJmiiiL!; at the highest dei'-ree of perfection that inferior degrees are obtained, and this esta- blishment has Lm(k)ubtedly given a favourable im- pulse to education at Yverdun and in the whole canton. Poor Pestalozzi has been kuighed at all hiS life, jdr his German mvsticism, awkward en- 46 PESTALOZZI'S WORKS. thusiasm, and simplicity, by people who neither felt nor understood his worth ; but a Dieu ne plaise, as Fontenelle said, que je voulussejetter le plus petit ridicule sur la plus petite vertu. Worldly-wise men of the ordinary stamp, the prudent, and the cold, may deride safely, as far as regards every purpose of common life, the enthusiastic few, who, while their minds are far away in a world of their ow-n, walk on earth stumbling at every pebble in their way : yet are these the forlorn hope of mankind, falling often obscurely at the outposts, but falling in order that the army may conquer. To return to Mr. Pestalozzi : he admits that his principles have been in a great degree abandoned, at the great school, but says that they are main- tained in their purity, at Clcndy, where he has established more recently another school for the express purpose of educating future teachers ; a small number of young persons of both sexes, (nineteen at present) are brought up at his ex- pense, and cost him twelve louis a year each ; four more pupils from England, pay fifteen louis a year, I was certainly better j)leased with what I saw there, and believe that the practice corresponds more with the tlicory. Of all the tracts ])ub]islio(l by Mr. Pestalozzi on his favourite pursuit, I only know his moral story of Leonard and GtMlrud(\ in (ANTON I)F. VAUn. 17 ^vhich the simple ^Taces of Gcssncr are united to mueh practical philosophy, on the subject of edu- cation, in the lower ranks of society. In 1814, when the allies were about establish- ing a military hospital at Yverdun, this venerable man, having been deputed to Alexander, obtained for his town the exemption from this burthen, and was, on the occasion, decorated with a Russian order. The municipal constitution of the Canton de Vaud, which is, as I understand, nearly the same as in the rest of Switzerland, deserves atten- tion. Each corporate district possesses a common fund, out of which destitute burghers are assisted, and when the income of this fund does not prove sufficient, the municipal council supplies the defi- ciency by a tax on such proprietors as are burghers, and u})on no others ; this tax is often considerable, I know, for instance, a case of the proprietor of a monlay^nc (which means a certain extent of moun- tain ]:)asture) })roducing forty louis a year ; rated for his share of the poor rates at six louis ; this was, indeed, in a year of extraordinary distress. A proprietor may become a burgher by paying to the public fund a certain sum, determined by the municipal council, which gives him an e(iuality of riuiil to assistance^ iucax^ of iuhhI Switzerland 48 Y VERDUN. is, perhaps, the only country in Europe, where there is a special fund appropriated to the assist- ance of the poor, exclusive of occasional poor rates raised by taxes. Every Swiss is a burgher some- where in the country. Yverdun was built out of the ruins of a Roman city of great importance, the ancient Ebroduniim. These ruins are still seen on a level with the soil, all over the plain to the east and south-east of Yverdun. The ancient city was farther from the lake than the modern town, or rather the lake ex- tended farther. The Romans had likewise a fort on the site of Yverdun, being the residence of the naval commanders of the lake of Neuchatcl, where large quantities of timber, furnished by the Jura, were formed into rafts, and sent down that lake, the lake of Bienne, the rivers Thielle, Aar, and Rhine, to the ocean. This fort appears to have been destroyed by hro, from the quantity of corn reduced into a mass of coal, found cmiong its ruins. The modern chateau of Yverdun, now occupied by the school of Pestalozzi, was built, in 1130, by the Duke of Zeringcn, lieutenant of the emperor. In going from the lake of Geneva to Yverdun, on the lake of Neuchatel, you ascend two hundred and forty feet to the point where the waters divide, (Entre Roche), whence you descend fifty feet to ROMAN REMAINS. 41) Yverdun ; the difFercnce of level between the two lakes is, therefore, one hundred and ninety feet, for a distance of twenty-four miles. An attempt was made, about two centuries ago, to construct a canal, which would have joined the two lakes ; and, there- fore, the Rhone and the Rhine, the ocean and the Mediterranean, by means of locks. It was made as far as Entre Roche, very nearly, being twelve miles, and navigable so far by means of only one lock. If a cut were made at Entre Roche, down to the level of the lake of Neuchatel, it certainly might be drained to any extent and much fertile land acquired ; at any rate, the marshy plain tra- versed by the Orbe w^ould be effectually drained. The pavement of a Roman road has been dis- covered at Entre Roche, and it appears, by a Ro- man mile-stone found upon the spot, to have been constructed under Adrian, A.D. 117 — 1.38. This and other Roman roads, traced in several places between Entre Roche and Yverdun, are from four to five feet below the present level of the soil, raised to that height in the course of so many ages. This Yverdun canal would be of little use unless another was constructed at the Pas-de- lEcluse, making the Rhone navigable from Geneva to Lyons. Landed property is in general very dear all Vol. I. E 50 CHAIN OF THE JUUA, over Switzerland, for space is wanted, and every one wishes to obtain a morsel of land rather than emigrate. I was, however, shewn a domain of one hundred and forty poses, consisting of mea- dows, good arable land and wood, with a large dwelling-house, and farming buildings in indiffer- ent order ; springs of water, and a fine prospect, sold for about one thousand six hundred pounds sterling. Large estates, and such a one as this is not deemed small here, sell proportionally low, unless they can be divided ; purchasers being in general of the class of peasants. Along the whole chain of the Jura, pastures let at the rate of forty-five to fifty French francs for each cow, from June to the 9th of October. The herdsmen hire cows as well as pasture, and pay twenty-four francs a head. With forty cows they can make a cheese a day, weighing forty-five pounds. The cows give upon an average twelve English quarts a day. A moun- tain, meaning a grazing farm, sells at the rate of twenty years' purchase ; some of these mountains are bare of trees, while on others trees are thinly scattered. I measured on the Suchet many firs, fifteen feet in circumference, with prodigiously large limbs at right angles with the trunk. The scarcity, although severely felt, has not yet reduced the population to absolute beggary, and STATE OF THE I'OPUl-ATION. .51 the number of deaths is not greater than usual, nor are there more debtors or criminals in the gaols, but marriages have been much less nume- rous *. * Mr. Bengger, of Arau, had the goodness to communicate to mc Ills valuable materials, collected for the purpose of giving to the public a statistical account of the Canton de V'aud, and per- mitted mc to abstract the following interesting acts : — Population of the Canton de Vuud, in the Years 1803 to 1810, officiallij collected from the Parish Register. BOYS GIKLS DIED 1^^ Mar- ria;;e» iiialo HlegitL- IllitO Loniti- iiiate Illegiti- iiiati: Total Males F.'11i:jU-! Tutal S,344 ir,-r.8 480 17,010 510 35,770 12,110 12,025 2!, Ml Mortalitij accordinc/ to Age. \r. 1 5 10 15 20 30 40 50 00 7 75 SO 85 ilO ! -^ to to to lu ti) to to to to 'o to to to '.] The landscape about Giez presents a broken sur- face, divided into small enclosures, with abundant spring;s of water. Groves of large walnut-trees shade every farm-house and village, as well as the public roads, giving to the whole country the ap- pearance of a wood. While the Alps skirt our southern horizon, we have the Jura close by, ex- tending from east to west, on the north side. This beautiful situation is besides classic ground: Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, occupied Giez and the neighbouring villages with sixty thousand men, on the eve of the battle of Grandson, the first of the three great battles which cost him his kingdom and his life. Fronting Giez, towards the left, and on the bank of the lake, is the castle of Grandson ; WAV I The four drcek k'ttcrs, added by Palamcdes, daring the biege of I'roy, and the four others, attributed to Simonides, are not to 1)1' fouuii in the Irish al[)liai)(-t ; so that it was l\\v alph;ibet of Cadiiuis, and not that of Ionia, subsi'([uent]y adopted by all Cireece, tliat the Irish nation received. The letter F, (as it is written in the Latin manner) they probably added ; but not till the Emperor Claudian had inserted it in tlu' Latin alphabet: this assuredly is no mean pedigree tor a lani;ua-e. — Mt/tioir on the Anc'unt IJisfari/ of Sxiitzvrhind, l)y I-oys de Bt)ehat, \~ \7 ■ Bochat might ha\'e obsei'scd, besick's, that Xtiiophon says, Cadmus's alphabet \Nas like the one used l)y the dal iti\uis. or ylMdfic Ciuuls, wliieh si'ems to imply, that this alphabtt [las-cd from the (iauls to the (ireeks, and not trom tin ( mcc ks to tl;e Gauls ! 54 CHARLES TIIK HOLD. the garrison of which was deliberately put to deatli by this same Charles the Bold, a few days before the battle. His camp was before this castle ; but advancing to meet the Swiss three leagues farther, along the banks of the lake of Neuchatel, he was driven back afterwards to his camp, and half-a-mile beyond *. Fragments of arms are still found occa- sionally over all this space, after the lapse of three centuries and a half. To the right of Giez, on a height, is the Castle of Champvent ; one of those built in the time of Queen Bertha, for safety against the ravages of the Saracens f. Notwith- standing its nine hundred years, this castle is still in good repair, and inhabited ; its walls, fifteen feet thick, vying in durability with the hill on which they stand. The castle of Grandson recals to mind an inte- resting anecdote of the fourteenth century, concern- ing two ancient and powerful families, whose re- spective castles and estates lay on opposite sides of the lake : the Grandsons on the north-west side ; and the Estavayers on the south-east, where the town of that name now stands. The knights oi" France and England, of Burgundy and Savoy, bore testimony to the valour of Otho de Grandson : * See \'()1. II., Chap, xxiii. I Sit" Vol. II., Cha[). wiii. CATHl^inNl-: 1)E UKLP. .00 and his chivalrous accomplishments had made, it seems, a fatal impression on the heart of Catherine de Belp, wife of Gerard d'Estavayer. The hus- band, not ignorant of his disgrace, but unwilling to come to an open rupture with a wife, heiress to great estates, dissembled the injury, and waited for a favourable opportunity to be revenged; which the mysterious death of Ame VII., duke of Savoy, killed while hunting, seemed to furnish. Otho of Grandson was known to have disliked the Duke. It was enough for Estavayer to accuse him openly before the grand bailli of the Pays de Vaud, Louis de Joinville, offering to prove the charge by single combat, in the han-de-moiidon. A cause so import- ant, between such illustrious adversaries, could not fail to excite universal attention ; and when Ame VIII. appointed the day and place of meeting (the 7th of August, 1397, at Bourg-cn-Brcssc,) noble barons and knights hastened from the neighbouring states, and even from distant parts of Europe, to witness the combat. Otho, although in a declining state of health, scorned to avoid the encounter on that account ; but when he appeared before the assembly, he re- minded them of a solemn inquest held after the death of the duke, and that not a shadow of suspi- cion had been found to rest on him : '" how can if 56 OTIIO DE GRANDSON. be Otherwise," continued he, " when none of the noble knights of Savoy here present, some of whom were related by blood to the late prince, and all of them his vassals, has thought it his duty to challenge me, as this Kstavayer has done, for private purposes. He lies,'' added he : " so much the worse for him — so much the better for me!'' Am6 of Savoy rose, bowed, and, crossing himself, said, " In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, amen ; que gage de hataille soit fait, et se fasse, and let us entreat the Divine Judge to afford protection to the good cause, and render truth majiifest." The two champions, for whose appearance on the appointed day, twenty-one knights had given bail, each in one thousand marks, entered the lists on caparisoned steeds, and completely armed, each with a lance, two swords, and a dagger. During the desperate combat which ensued, the spectators, divided into opposite parties, with their respective badges and colours, evinced the liveliest interest. In the end, success did not attend the best cause ; Otho falling lifeless on the field. Ame de Savoy took immediate possession of Grandson and all the domains of the unfortunate Otho, regardless of the claims of his brother, the last of the race. After a fortnight spent very pleasantly at Giez, NF.UCIIATF.L. .;7 wc parted with rcG^ret from our friends. Two of them are of a much older date than the others ; but none are new friends now : a fortnight spent under the same roof telling as years of common acquaint- ance. The daily familiar intercourse of domestic life scarcely admits of indiiference ; you must like or dislike : and assuredly the latter sentiment is not the one we feel. Neuciiatel, June 17. A thick haze which hung all day on the distant prospect, hid the A1{)S from our sight ; but the im- mediate banks of the lake of Neuchatel, between which and the parallel chain of the Jura we tra- velled, presented an endless variety of views : from the comfortable habitations, and multitude of villages, on the fore-ground, overshaded with trees, and surrounded with rich meadows and fields, wa- tered by innumerable springs, to the black forests of j)ines, and the snowy summits of the Jura. The peasantry, of both sexes, at work in the fields, were well dressed, and the women wore immense hats, of I know not what light materials, shining in the sun. At Scrrieres, near Neuchatel, a magni- ficent bridge of one arch crosses a considerable river, w^hich is, however, scarcely three minutes above ground ; this space of time being suliicient 58 NEUCIIATEL. to carry it from its source, at the foot of the Jura, to the lake ; a distance of about three hundred yards. We saw its deep and clear waters burst out of the rocks, and boil up from between the stones of its bed, forming at once a river, which gave motion to a good deal of machinery, erected in a most picturesque dell, among such rocks and such trees as even manufactories cannot wholly disfigure. A feudal castle, on high, overlooks the smiling landscape ; and no breathing creature dis- putes the commands of its powerful lord, the master-manufacturer of calicoes and muslins ; and all below being his spinners and weavers. Oppo- sites meet here : feudality and manufactures ; castles and cotton-mills : times, perhaps, are not so much altered as one might suppose. We have been looking curiously at every spot, appearing to be a gentleman's residence, and there are many, to ascertain what sort of taste they dis- play ; I am sorry to say it is none of the best : cut trees and box-borders, rectilinear walks and jets- d'eaux, terraces decorated with terra cotta, or leaden shepherds and shepherdesses. Had Pliny himself made these gardens, they could not be more purely classical. One of their men of taste has been several years occupied in making a mountain ; labourers with spades and wheelbarrows are very m:iciiati:i.. busy throwing' up earth ; the heap is already some thirty feet high, with a Simplon road over it, and may reach to sixty feet, if he goes on with the same spirit for the rest of his Hfe. Mountblanc had bet- ter look about him, this may prove a dangerous rival. As to the houses, their elevated red tile roofs, and spiral brick chimneys, have a sort of pic- turesque homeliness not unpleasing ; they are scru- pulously neat within and without doors, and the hue trees about them, the springs of running w^ater, and the glorious view^s on all sides, make ample amends for old-fashioned parterres. Neuchatel is a very good looking small town. with a pleasant walk by the lake, and several hand- some public buildings, mostly due to the muni- ficence of private citizens. Mr. Pury, a merchant, spent a million of Swiss livres on his native town, and left by his will four or live millions more for the same purpose. Mr. Pourtalis, another wealthy merchant, a few- years ago, built and endowed a very good hospital in a fine situation. The yearly returns shew, that, in the year 1;lois : th'. y ha\"e it here to peribctioii. Biemie struck us as more Swiss than any thing we had yet seen, or rather as if we were entering Switzerland for the first time : every thing loolced and sounded so foreign, and yet to see the curiosity we excited the moment we landed and entered the streets, we might have supposed it was ourselves who looked rather outlandish. The women wore their hail- })laited down to their heels, while the full pet- ticoat did not descend near so far : several groups of them, sitting at their doors, sung in penis with an accuracy of ear and of taste innate among the Germans. Gateways fortified with towers intersect the streets, which are composed of strange looking hous(^s built on arcades, like those of bridges, and variou^dy painted, blue with yellow borders, red with white, or ])urple and grey : projecting iron balconies, hiuhly workerl and of a glossy black, with bright green windows. The luxury of foun- tains andof rimning water is still greater luM'e than at Neuchatel. and you might be tempted to (quench your thirst in the kennel, it runs so clear and pure. These public fountains are adorned with the kind of figures already described, which charact(M'ize sui- ficiently the respective periods of their construc- tion : those of the fifteenth century have bearded A'oi I. 1- ()6' BIENNE. warriors ; those of the sixteenth, angels of light with wings, and angels of darkness with tails. Watchmen perambulate the streets all night, as in England, proclaiming in German recitativo what o'clock it is, the state of the weather, and tran- quillizing the citizens and their wives on the sub- ject of fire and thieves. At the w^elcome sound they turn on their other ear, and go to sleep. — Morning and evening goats, in an immense drove, conducted to or from the mountain, traverse the streets, and stop of themselves, each at its own door. In the interior of the houses, most articles of furniture ar.' qjiaintly shaped and ornamented, old-looking, but rubbed bright, and in good pre- servation ; from the nut-cracker, curiously carved, to the double-necked cruet, "oouring oil and vinegar out of the same bottk\ The accommodations at the inn are homely, but not iincomlortable ; sub- stantially good, though not elegant. This is a small village, eigiit or nine leagues from Bienne ; a distance which took us ten hours to travel, including an hour and a half baiting ; the league is eighteen thousand feet, the loot, smaller than the French, is about e(]ual to the English; therefore, a Swiss league represents nearly three ROMAN I.NSL'IUPTION. 67 and a half English miles, and is indifferently called an liour or a league. The road, immediately on leaving Bienne, ascends for a long while, and affords glorious views ; it traverses afterwards the ral dc Suze, and Vcd St. Imier, leading to Pierre, Pertim, a gateway through a rock, opening into Moufitier Gratul Veil, too irregular to be the work of art, yet not likely to be a mere accident: at any rate, this singuhir ])assage was known and fre- qu'.Mited under the Romans, as appears by the inscription in the rock above it : NYMINI AUG .... . . VM VIA . CTAPERT . . DV . . VM PATER . IL VIR . COL HELT . Mr. Ebel restored this inscription thus : N iniwii au'gustonnn via facta per Titum. Diinnium Patcrni/m 11 tirum colo.s.'i. Ilelvet. Writers, both ancient and modern, differ strangely on the simple fact of the dimensions of this passage, so easily ascertained, and Mr. Ebel himself, gene- rally so very exact, is as much mistaken as the others. Its irregular breadth is thirty feet in the narrowest part, and fifty in the wid(^st : its height, estimated by comparing it with the height of a 68 MOl.rSTIEU GRAND VAL. man standing under it, is nearly twenty feet ; the thickness of the sereen of roc 'k, through v^^hich the road passes, is twenty-four feet on one side of the passage, and twenty-eight on die other. This is considered as a strong military position ; yet our guide sealcKl the rock on one side, and descended on the other, with perfect ease, in a minute and a half, by my watch. In 1814 the French fortificMl Pierre Pcrtuis with palisades and a breast-work, still visible, but abandoned it on tlic approach of the Austrians, who reached Grelinger, some miles farther, that same evening. Their officer occupied, at Sohier, the room where we dined ; he sat up all night at tlie window, fearing, as the innkeeper told us, a surprise in so wild a country. It is, in- deed, difficult to convey an idea of its extraonii- nary a|)pearance ; the chain of the Jura, apparent from top to bottom, in its length from Pierre Pcrtuis to Sohier, and the torrent of the Birse flows in this gigantic channcd. A narrow, but otherwise excehent, road, constructed by the Ro- mans, and restored iu the tenth and the (nghteenth centuries, foUows tlu^ stream, changing si(his re- peatedly by means of bridges, and is in some places excavaltHl out of the rock ; the paraih}! cal- carc^.oLis strata oi" wliicli the Jura is coniposcnJ, bent and twisted frecjuently in various fantastic ways, C.KOIAX.IC AI. Al'ri'.MIANt'l.s. 69 retain, however, in general, a vertical position, bnt rarely correspond from side to side of l!ic chasm. It should seem as if the two respective sections of the mountain, after their violent separa- tif^n. had sunk unequally into the earth, or expe- rienced distinct changes so as to disturb the simi- hirity of dip. These vertical strata, some thou- sand feet high, in several })laces only a few feet thick, and separated by narrow interstices, re- semble the leaves of a book standing on end, or take from various breaks and other accidents thc^ ap})earance of towersand fortifications sei)arated by frightfcl trenches, wliere the light of day never pe- netrates, where no plant grows, or living creature draws its breath: the only sound, the only indica- tion of Hie amidst the general immobility and si- lence of this inert creation being occasioned bv the trickling of hiddcni waters down the rock, which tiu^y inscMisibly Vvi^ar away. Its substiuice iniinitc^ly (ii\i'!'cd, and waslunl away into tii(> ri\(M- Birse, thenccMuto ihv llhine. is dc^positcni in (iik^ timt^ on the low grounds of Holiand. and fcMtilizinu its meadows, ser\-cs ultimately to iatten Dntch cows, and ot" course DiitchnuMi theuiselves. Se- veral huge fragments of tlu^ vtMlical strata, dv- taclicMl au(i precipitated into the Birsc\ stand (Hlg(>- wise. in most tcM'rilic cM[ui|)oi>(\ M()r(> than once 70 MARECHAL DE TAVANNE. we thought we perceived, perched up on high, the ruins of real castles, monasteries, and hermits' cells ; and there are, in fact, several. Germanus, of Treves, of an illustrious family in Germany, built himself a cell some where here, in the seventh cen- tury, and the spot is said to be accessible by means of ladders. A rich monastery was afterwards erected on that spot, called in German Munster, (Monaste- rium), and in French Moiistier ; thence the names of Munster Thai and Moustier Grand- Val, which the country has retained. It flourished greatly under the protection of Germanus, who was, how- ever, assassinated, in A.D. 666, by the sons of a Duke of Alsace, jealous of his power. The family of the Marechal de Tavanne, one of the first to embrace the tenets of the Reformation, in 1520, and whose name recalls the horrors of the day of St. Bartholomew, had their castle near the entrance of Moustier-Grand-Val, where a village named Tavanne still exists. They were, it seems, de- scended from a Scotch engineer, called Macken- brie, probably Mackenzie, employed by Queen Bertha, in the tenth century, to restore the Roman road along the Birso. The Jura, like most calcareous mountains, abounds with fossil remains of plants and animals. Elephants' bones and a tusk, as well as various THE ANAUAF'riSls. 71 marine bodies, have been found in the rocks bor- dering tlie road we have travelled, that is at ttu^ very centre and foundation of the Jura. Similar facts respecting a former world with living plants and animals, anterior to the existence of rocks and mountains, are so numerous, that we might ceast^ to wonder at them, yet the thing is so passing strange, that it never will lose its novelty. Several troops of men and women passed by us in the course of the day, w^ho had much the ap- })earance of quakers, only thai; they were dressed in black instead of the characteristic drab. They are, we find, the peaceable descendants of those furious sectaries of the sixteenth century, the Ana- baptists, guilty then of such incredible excesses *, and now tlie quietest and most inoffensive of man- kind. Their ancestors were driven away from the Cantcn of Bernt\ about (.mc hun(]r(Hl and fiftv velars ago, bc^cause they refused to bear arms, and thi^y took sheltcn' here, where the Bernese found them, when subsecjuently they obtained posses^;ion of the country. But this time they agreed very Avell with their former masters, v/ho had learni^d to tcjlerate harmless peculiaritic^s, and they are very much respect(Ml in th(^ neighbourhood. At Grelingen, where we dined, a man had six- ^ Src Cli.li.. \\\l. V^^. II. 72 GRELINGEN. teen bags of oats seized, which he was carrying from a district of the Canton of Berne to the Can- ton of Soleiire, where it appears the scarcity is stiU more severely felt, and ran away for fear of worse consequences. This is the more strange, as the federal constitution of 1815, expressly pro- vides for the freedom of trade between the Can- tons, excepting, however, all attempts at forestall- ing or regrating. This poor fellow, with his six- teen bags of oats, must have been deemed a fore- staller. This is, I perceive, much as at Sens, ex- cepting that there it was the populace, which took the absurd and illiberal side of the question, and here the govcrnmxent. The memorable field of batde of St. Jaques, or Jakeh, was pointed out to us, as we approached Bale, on our right, betv/een the left bank of the Birse and the road*. Balk, Jutw 'JO. A high terracci before the cathedral of Bale overlooks the course of tlie PJiine, botli abovc^ and below the town, where that river, cliaiiging its direction iVom wc^st to north, makes a great bend ; it looks mcjre likc^ a ravaging torrcMit than a brHie- iicent and ferlili/ing stream: not ;i boat ap|)oared ' Sec Ciia)). XMi Vei. I! CATHEnilAI. OF RALE. 73 on its waters, which were of a greyish bhie, like the Rhone ; these two great rivers have a sort of family likeness, showing their common origin. The bridge which unites Bale, on the south side of the Rliine, with the suburb called Lesser Bale on the north side, is built of stone at both ends, and of wood in the middle, where the water is deepest and most rapid. Ten very large horse- chestnut -trees cover the beautiful terrace with their impervious shade : you thence see beyond the Rhine, the mountains of the Black Forest terminating the horizon in the north-west. The cathedral, built in the tenth century, is not large, biit its front is tine and in surprising preservation, considering the many and violent earthquakes it has been exposed to, especially the one in 135(i, w^hicli left only a hundred houses standing in the town. The name of Psaltz, given to the cathedral at Bale, is derived from Palatium, there; having hocn a Roman pa- lace on its site. A curious duel, in the Don Quixote style, was fought in U'iS, on the s([uare before tlie cathtnlral *. The hall wher(> the ce- lebrated council of Bale sat seventeen years. (14.*31 to MIS) is still in bemg, very shabby, and of dimtMisions, in kuigth and breadth, scarcely eijual to those of the British House; t)!' Commons, 74 ANTIQUITY' OF BALK. with the ceiling not half so high. It seems very inadequate to contain, and still loss to accommo- date, the fathers of the council, with the crowd of princes, ambassadors, and great men of all degrees, who attended it. The plague which ravaged Europe repeatedly in the fifteenth century, as it had done in the fourteenth, once reduced the Council of Bale to a single member, all those who did not die having fled *. This town, the situation of which appears as convenient for trade as it is beautiful, has seen better, or at least, more flourishing, day:^ than the present, and it is difflcult to assign a reason for the gradual decrease of its population. Ammianus Marcellinus, in the fourth century, speaks of it, under the name of Basilea, as already considera- ble ; and in the eleventh century it crrtninly was the largest town in Helvetia. The Crusaders, who conquered Constantinople, met here A.D. 1202. It had very early a celebrated university, and the art of printing, when in its infancy evi^y whore else, had here already been carried to a high de- gree of perfection. Amultitiide of emiiuMit men were born, or at least received thi^ir cvlucation, in this town ; it is enough to name I'Vasmus, Kifler. ^ Src ("h;il>. wii, \"nl. li. HOLBEIN. Bernouilli ; and in the arts, Holbein, who, notwith- standing liis defects, rose so much above the gene- ral standard of his time. A copy of the Elogc ile la Folk, with marginal drawings by him, is, we understand, preserved in the public library ; but it is very doubtful whether he had any thing to do with the celebrated Dam des Moris bearing his name. This celebrated composition was originally painted on the wall of a church-yard, which it was found necessary to pull down seventeen years ago. The picture having suffered much from long expo- sure, and being almost obliterated, was retouched, and perhaps wholly painted anew, four different times, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, yet always retained the name of Hol- bein: this tradition is the only proof of his having painted it the first time. There are here several good pictures by him : we saw the finest, perhaps, at Mr. VocherV. a very good artist hiiii-elf: it is on the same subject as the admirable picture of the three Mary's by Annibal Carracci (formerly in the Orleans collection, now at Castle Howard), and not unworthy of the (•om})arison. Next to this picture is a portrait of Anna BuUeii, by Hol- bein likewise, but where the dry, hard, inhar- monious style is most conspicuous. Wc saw, at the same artist's, a vc^ry fine panorama of Thuii, 76 DE THOU, THE HJSTORI.VN. and some interesting aqua-tinta engravings com- posed and executed by him. I read, with great interest, the fohowing account of Bale, given by no less a person than the his- torian De Thou, travelling in the year 1;>97; like Cscsar, he spoke of himself in the third person, and v^rote in Latin : " De Thou stopped a lew days at Bale of the Raiiraqiies' , where the Rhine begins to be navigable, and endeavoured to em- ploy his time to the best advantage. He had letters to Thomas Zwinger and to Basil Amer- bach ; this last, a polite and attentive gentleman, never left De Thou ; he shewed him, in his own house, Erasmus's library, his MSS., collection of medals, and some }jlate which liad been beciueathed to his father. Among other things, thc^re v;as a terrestrial globe, of silver, worked at Zurich ; while he was admiring it, the globe opened, form- ing two hemispheres, w]nc]i were, according to ('ustom here, filled with \\h\(\ and (h'ank by the company, to the health of De Thou*. Thenc(^ he * 'I'liis !4!oi)c was a present nuule to t'.rasnui.s, and not the only one of the knul, lor L'i'',scarl)()t, in his I'lctiirv n/' S:cif :cr/(i!/ I, a rare and curious bonk ijuhli-^lied in 1()IS, ^ays, that at iue rcnrwal ot a treaty of allianee hrtween /uricli and I'laiiee, in lol 1-, iheic \s a^ a i^reat enti rtanniu nt ii,i\cn to Air. i)e C'astilie, ainl.>a^sad(,)r nl the i^iu'I,- 1 he huds cuuii'-ellors ot Xumd: ! L>t S< i^iK nr/-) had ai (h'^t intenchd to jucsent liiin with a ),rodii:ioiis ox with ACCOINT OF RAi.K. 77 was roiiducted to the public library, in which many valuable MSS. are pre^^crvc(l, such as the com- nicMitaries of Proclus and other Greeks on Plato and Aristotle. He vished also Felix Platter, a doctor of medicine, iivinu: in a larij:e and pleasant housc\ where he was received very kindly, and shewn an elk (alee), a mountain rat, viil;rarly called dormoLis(\ as biu" as a cat, in a torpid .>taic, having passed the winter without food. Platter shewed him. likewise, in tii(» collection of ib.-sils of Conrad Gessner, a u'reat many stranue productions of nature, and uncommon insects, v;hich De Thou examined at leisure, and with great curiosity, assisted by Amerbach, who understood these thinirs extremely well. He then we;it to pay liis ri;spects to Theodorus Zwinger, wlu^se house was ornamented with numerous inscriptions, composed by himself, a thing in which he excelled*. He last went to the jM'inting-olhce of Peter Perna of , tor tli( })Ui-|)Osi" ot' driiikiii_' jnyou-lv aiui cojiiously. '^ 'I'ht'odorus /winder's n'sidciire had no other tapestry hut these iii>cri[)lioiis in lIciM\'\v, in (Ireek, in (u'linan, aU, a-< is afhrnicd, most iu;ieniou-ly devised; it to(,k ;i ureat ch'al oT time to [leiuse this harncd liouse ; aruateLiis ma}' liiid a sehction ot' these insci'iptions in the Basilia Sepulta ot' 'I'oiiiola. 78 CITADEL OF IIUNINGEN. Lucca, an old man, but so vigorous, that he worked himself at the press. Then De Thou, after re- turning thanks to Amerbach for all his good offices, took his departure from Bale," ^c. Whether the present inhabitants of Bale are as hospitable and as learned as they were at the time of De Thou, we had no opportunity whatever of judging ; but if public report is to be credited, their pursuits are now rather more directed to the acquisition of wealth, than to the cultivation of literature or science, and their houses not by any means so readily opened to strangers. The po- pulation of Bale has gradually decreased since the seventeenth century, and is now one half of what it was then ; a circumstance not easily ac- counted for, considering the advantages of situa- tion and the steady industry of the inhabitants. Louis XIV. built the citadel of Huningen within cannon-shot of Bale, with views little favourable to the Helvetic; neutrality. Its demolition, stipu- lated in the last general treaty of peace, has since been carried into execution ; the site is a heap of ruins, and forms but a melancholy residence for the remaining inhabitants of the Ibrty or fifty crippled houses still standing. A poor wretch, well worth describing, offered himself to us as a guide : he had lost an cyi\ his arm was in a sling. MIIJTAUV (illDF.. 7!) and liis head bound up with a dirty rag of a hand- kerc'hiot": the hirge military hat over it halt" hid an unshared eountenance, deeply tinged with bile and siekness, rather than sunburnt : a pair of cast- off shoes, much too large for his feet, were fastened on with packthread, and he wore about his waist something, which might have been an ofncer's scarf, in order to keep his tattered coat fi'om Hying abroad. Salwitor Rosa was stam})ed upon his figure ; and when. '■ sad historian of tlie }).-risive" ruins, he began his nar';ativ(\ the lowering expression of liis countenuncj and surly voice and manner ac- co''d'\' r^''fb"tlv with his g^Mie-ai appearance. He had been an artillery-n^ian diiring the siege, h[i(! been wounded, and v/as just dismissed from th.e hospital. In his ili-humour Ive abased every body : the Emperor of Austria lirst, his own com- mandeer next. (General Barbanegre. whose able defence of the place is well knowii): '" We were b'^travtMl," h" (>xclaimed, •"sold:" &f'. One hun- dred a.nd sixty v.'omen and tw(mty men are all that remain of the former popuhition, and our dri",(M\ ^'il() had been conversing with, some^ of the ^■olii.a.ry la.dits, whiK^ we looked over tlie dismantled bast!on>. found them still more discont'cnted than o"7- invalid a-uide. and consieun'ing the undue pro- 80 FRENCH .MONUMENT. portion their sex bore in the general popukition of the place, this discontent was natural enough. Halfway between Huningen and Bale, we ob- served some ruins with the following inscription : " L'arnicc dii Rhin sons Ics ordres du General I\Io- reau a son rctoiir d'Allemagne ; a la memoire du General Abhatucci, mart a la sidle dcs hlessures qiiil regut en defendant la tele du pont d' Huningen." — " Who destroyed this monument?" we asked a citizen of Bale. " We did," he answered. " ¥/hy," we continued, " should you wish to disturb the ashes of the dead .'" — " Ask those," he replied, " who pulled down the Ossuari/ of Morat* !" The two cases were not exactly similar, but the spirit which animated the actors was the sam(\ About two hours and a half after leaving Bale, on the road to SchafFhausen, we passed the village of Augst, on the site of a Roman city (Augusta Rauracorumf), founded by Augustus fifty years before our era, which perished in the fourth or fifth century, during some of tlic invasions of northern barbarians, without the circumstances being re- * Si'C cli;i]). ii. ^'ol. II. i' Lucius Munalius riaiicus coiidiu-tcd the colony; ;iii(l it ap- pears, hy an inscription loiind on the spot, that the coh>nists were the llaui'iaci (('(jlonia l'a\iri(;i>). liOMAN REMAINS. 81 corded any where. Mailer conjectures that it was destroyed by an earthquake, because a part of the ruins is now under the level of the Rhine, Mr. Ebel attributes the catastrophe to the Huns. ill the year 1589 the learned antiquary Amerbach, the same who was so friendly to De Thou, drew an accurate plan of all these ruins, which is preserved in the library of Bale. The theatre, the aqueduct, the walls of the town, have in a great degree dis- appeared since that time, but many other remains, then underground, have since been brought to light. The library of Bale possesses, it is said, twelve thousand medals, mostly found in these ruins. It is surely a matter of surprise that so many medals, and pieces of coin, should have been found among the ruins of antiquity, w^hich imply a much greater number still hidden. We moderns do not scatter about our money, and other valuables, in this man- ner; and when, some thousand years hence, Lon- don and Paris come to be dug out of corn fields, on the banks of the Thames and the Seine, the piec(;s of gold and silver, and of brass, picked up among their ruins, will still be Greek and Roman, with very few French or English. The reason must be, that, now a days, misers do not bury their treasures, which is assuredly all in favour of the modern state of society, and sc^curity of property. Vol. I. c. 82 FF.r DAI. LORDS. As late as the fourteenth century, merchants travelling along the Rhine were often plundered by the feudal lords of the country ; these proud chiefs, hospitable as the emirs of Arabia, enter- tained likewise a very exalted opinion of the pro- fession of highwaymen ; but the vulgar citizens of towns had far different ideas, and destroyed when- ever they could, the strong holds of these nobU^ robbers. Those of Bale, having taken the castle of Falkenstein, commanding the pass of Cluse, be- tween this and Soleure, on our right, cut off the heads of the whole garrison in terrorem. WALDsmjT, June 21. Here we are in Germany, eleven leagues, or hours, from Bale, in thirteen hours, including three hours' rest at Stein, a village on the Swiss side of the Rhine, opposite Scckingcn, where we dined at a country inn ; our room, perfectly neat, had five windows, commanding a glorious view up and down the Rhine, and tliat part of Germany called the Black Forest, extending on the other side to distant mountains. It is no longer a forest infested, as formerly, with robbers ; the best lands arc now cultivated, and the people are industrious and orderly : our landlord at Stein, a very sensible man, told us, that the strict police established by the nniDGF. AT SECKINOEN. R3 French had contributed to the change ; we had, he added, on the Swiss frontier much to suffer from the French armies from 1796 to 1799 ; not on the part of the soldiers, who, as soldiers, were rather of the better sort, but from the systematic plunder and insatiable rapacity of the general officers." The bridge over the Rhine at Seckingen is built of wood, and covered with a roof; its seven arches, estimated at fifty or sixty feet span, would give about four hundred feet width to the Rhine, al- though Mr. Ebel gives only two hundred and eighty feet to that river at Bale, where it appears full as wide as here. We should think an innkeeper's bill along the Rhine, in Caesar's time, Ammianus Marcellinus's, or even Mr. De Thou's, a most valuable document, and encouraged by this reflection, I shall here record our dinner at the country inn of Stein, al- though I think it in general unnecessary to trouble the reader with such details, however important they may in reality be to travellers during their journey*. Our landlord told us that he and his * The dishes were not ordered, but such as the laiuHord cliose to L;ive ; the pottage came ah)ii(\ I'licn lor the first course we had liouilli, veal cutlets over sour crout, fried calves' feet over spillage. Second course, two small trout, a pigeon, tongue in ragout, third course, a chiclo(a oi" high anti([uity, carved all over to imitate jxjnil lace, curiously woven into a rich ()atlern , 88 GERMAN HOUSES. then, a ponderous table, also of ancient oak, with spreading legs to secure it against overturns in case of an earthquake, these convulsions of nature being very frequent along the Rhine during the fifteenth century, a period when this table might have been in its prime ; the worsted carpet cover- ing, glowing with the primitive colours of the rain- bow, had seen many generations of travellers, and promised to see many more, from the uniform care with which furniture is kept in German houses, although neatness, particularly as to floors and stairs, is not so conspicuous as in Switzerland. Not a soul in the house spoke any thing but Ger- man, except the landlord, who understood a little French, and, bowing at every word, said, Tai llionntur d& rous saliwr, whenever we called for any thing. One half of the German words are the same, or nearly the same, as in English, particularly for common things, such as a house, icatcr, huUer, bread, milk, more, less, J Uiank you — in short, any English word wholly different from Latin may be sure to meet its feUow in German, yet the pro- nunciation of the two hmguages is so entir(;ly different, that the knowledge of one does not en- able you to understand the other. To-day we set off with line weather, and tra RAPIDS OF THE RHINE. 89 Yelled through a fine country, the hills covered with large trees, chictly oak, and ruined castles, extensive fields of hay and corn, promising well, but having fewer scattered dwellings than in Switzerland. Here, as well as there, the peasants bow or nod kindly to you as you pass along, Oxen are harnessed to the cart or plough, by a chain passing under the throat in such a manner as to strangle the animal if he should be so ill- advised as to exert his might in drawing. About three miles below SchafFhauscn we saw, at a distance, the rapids of the Rhine above its fall ; and leaving our vehicle, which went on to the town, we proceeded on foot to the spot, where, from a height, we discovered at once the foaming breakers above, the abyss below, the cataract be- tween, pouring through five distinct passages, se- parated by four insulated rocks, standing, like inverted cones, with huge black heads overhang- ing their narrow bases, undermined by the cease- less fury of the waters, to which every part of their surface has been successively exposed : first, the top only, when the cataract fell from that height, then gradually lower down, at the rate, perhaps, of a century for eac^h ini.'h. How many centuries might be required, at that rate, to wear away the whole solid fiood-gate down to its present 90 lAi>L AT SCIIAFFHAUSEN. level, leaving only the four insulated remnants, would be too bold a computation to undertake. There are living witnesses, who pretend there was a time when two of the pillars were accessi- ble from below, and tell of their own hair-breadth escapes in climbing to the top for birds' nests, while now, birds rear their young undisturbed on these their secure asylums ; possibly, these ad- venturous witnesses themselves have alone under- gone the change they ascribe to these rocks. Mr. Ebel draws, from the circumstance of Roman sta- tions having existed on the borders of the lake of Constance, where they would have been under water if the natural dam at Schaffhausen which occasions the fall had been considerably higher, an argument against any great change hav'ing taken place since the time of the Romans. Rome, however, was but yesterday, compared to the ac- cumulated number of ages evidently necessary sensibly to reduce a solid mass of rocks by the friction of water ; and the argument seems other- wise not very conclusive, for the fall at Schafl- hausen might be many feet higbt3r than it is now, and even as high as the remaining pillars, without at all raising the level of the lake of Constance, as the rapidity of the whole course of the Rhine shews this level to be much too hiirli above Schatf- FALL AT SCHAFFHAUSEN. 91 hausen to be affected by the supposed greater elevation of the fall. There are boats in attendance to take you across below the fall ; its proximity and noise, the agita- tion of the water, the foam, whirlpools, and rapidity of the current, especially when the Rhine is as full as at present, are certainly terrific, and give you the heau ideal of danger, although not the reality. But the best place to be frightened at, and really with some reason, is the Station, a wooden balcony projecting from the rocky shore, close to the fall, and at present touching it, so as to be at moments within its foam, shaken, and al- most overwhelmed; the whole crazy fabric might be carried off in an instant, We just looked in, and retired to safe grounds, where we had nearly as good a view. The velocity and the bustle, the deafening roar of this enfei' d'cau, as it has been called, surpass, perhaps, Niagara itself, but there is here less grandeur and majesty The mass of water of the American cataract is probably ten times greater, its breadth six times as great, and height three times * ; yet it bends over, and de- * One of ihe dimensions of an object iinended to be measured being known or estimated, tiie other dimension may be obtained with tolerable exactness, by liolding a straighc slick, a straw, your iinger at arm's length between the objt'ct and yuur eye, and cover- 92 FALL AT SCHAFFHAUSEN. scends unbroken, in its native emerald green, a vertical lake, as it were, instead of a horizontal one. The Rhine, on the contrary, is here all froth and fury, from top to bottom ; it might be com- pared to a cataract of snow, but does not make a worse picture on that account; and the height and length are besides in justcr propor- tions. At Niagara the scenery is insignificant ; but here it is ignoble, and positively offensive, the castle of LaufFen excepted, which, however, is not particularly picturesque, and, if I may be al- lowed the expression, belittles the fall. Had I the honour of being one of their Excellencies of Zurich or of SchafFhausen, I would certainly vote for levelling to the ground a vile mill and miller's house, three stories high, stuck up over against the very cataract, and full in front of it, on an island. I would next pull up by the roots every plant of a still viler vineyard, above this cataract, iiig the known dimension with a corresponding p'lrtion of tlu- stick or finger, which serves next us a scale to measure the uidsiiown dimensions. 'I'he fill of Xiairara, for instance, being known to Ijc one hundred and fifry-six feet high, (it can he ineasured with •n'cat case by a jjlunnuet and line when standing at the top,) and having taken a convenient station about one mih' and a half below, 1 found the length to Ijc nearly cightet-n times the known height, that is, (Hjual to two thousand seven huiulretl and fifty ieet, or thereabouts. FALL AT SCHAFFIlArsF.X. 93 and formino; now the back ground of it: mjtliing is more paltry than a vineyard in a picture. (I beg, however, to be understood, I would indemnify the miller and the proprietor of the vineyard.) The composition of the landscape below the fall being quite unexceptionable, luxuriant woods, and rocks, and every thing that could be wished, it is the more provoking for the picturesque spectator, as he must turn his back to it all when looking on the main object. Finally, I would plant, above the fall, a thick grove of forest trees ; without these improvements, one of the marvels c^f the world will for ever look little better than an over- llowing mill-dam. The day was drawing to a close, and it became necessarv, before dark, to think of our night (juarters, three miles off, through a country partly overflowed by the Rhine. Yet we lingered to cfjntemplate the cataract illuminated by the last ravs of the sun ; the dashes of emerald green at th(> to{) seemed now more bright than ever, the foam of a more dazzling whiteness, and a double rainbow still tinged the spray, while evening shades already spread th(>ir vague; terrors over tlu; abvss below ; in short, nature was making a last effort to touch our obdurate hearts, and force 94 GERMAN LADIES. US to admire this, one of her finest works — nor was the effort made in vain. There were other admirers here besides our- selves, some EngUsh, and more Germans, who fur- nished us with an opportunity of comparing the difference of national manners. The former di- vided into groups, carefully avoiding any commu- nication with each other still more than with the foreign travellers, never exchanged a word, and scarcely a look, with any but the legitimate inter- locutors of their own set ; women adhering more particularly to the rule, from native reserve and timidity, full as much as from pride or from ex- treme good breeding. Some of the ladies here might be Scotch ; they wore the national colours, and we overheard them drawing comparisons be- tween what we had under our eyes and Coralyn, giving, justly enough, the preference to the Clyde : but, at any rate, they behaved a I'Anglaisc. The German ladies, on the contrary, contrived to Her conversation in indifferent French ; with genuine simplicity, wholly unconscious of forwardness, although it might undoubtedly have been so qua- lified in England, they begged of my friend to let them hear a few words in English, just to know the sound, to which they were strangers. If we Tn.\VET,S OK DF, THor. 95 are to ju(]c!:c of the respective merits of these op- posite manners, by the impression they leave, I thnik the question is already decided by the English against themselves ; yet, at the same time that they blame and deride their own proud reserve, and would depart from it if they well knew how, a few only venture : I really believe they are the best bred who thus allow themselves to be good- humoured and vulgar. It can scarcely be deemed uninteresting to know how people travelled two hundred and fifty years ago, and particularly such a person as the historian De Thou, whom I shall again quote. The barbarian admires vineyards, and speaks only in general of the long course of falls of the Rhine, without bestowing a look or a word on the one par excellence, " De Thou," says he, (speak- ing always in the third person, and in Latin,) '• having accompanied his elder brotlier to the waters of Plombieres, in 1.57!), took advantage of the op})ortunity to visit a part of Swabia and Switzerland. From Augsburg he went, by way of Memingen and Lindau, to Constance. Those who go round the lake are gratified with the siglit of its banks covered with vines descending gently to tlie water, which reflects the brilliant ])erspec- tive. Thence, following the course of the Rhin(\ 96 SIGHTS AT SCHAFFHAUSEN. De Thou visited SchafFhausen, one of the principal towns of the Helvetic League, LaufFenberg, and Rainfelden: during all that space, the Rhine forms noisy cataracts, and hurries down to Bale of the Rauraques, where it begins to be navigable," ^c. Our driver, when he left us, had named rAii- berge de la Courronne, as the one where he should put up and wait for us ; but to our utter dismay, nobody in the streets of Schaffhausen, when we reached it on foot, understood our inquiries. It was already dark, and our situation became critical: at last I tried to ask for the Crown; Oh! die Krone! — and immediately we were conducted to the place. Constance, June 24. Thank heaven ! we might have exclaimed this morning, as a friend of ours did in similar cir- cumstances, that there is nothing to see at SchafFhausen. Some sights are, no doubt, cu- rious and gratifying ; but at the same time that travellers are, or may be, supposed to be expressly in search of sights, it is, nevertheless, true, that they become, after a while, excessively tired of them. The only thing SchafFhausen ofFers remarkable is, its celebrated wooden bridge that was, having been burnt down by the French, in 1799, traces of it only remaining, " to point a SCIIAFFIIAUSEN. 97 moral and adorn a talc." Schaffhauscn was, in the oii^-htli century, a mere landing-place above the falls, a s/iiff-hoiise or boat-house ; it became altcrwards the property of an abbey ; then an Imperial town, and its burghers having succes- sively extended their territory, by purchase and by conquests, over the neighbouring feudal chief- tains, they were ultimately admitted into the Hel- vetic League*. The overflowing of the Rhine on the Swiss side obliged us to pursue our way to Constance by the Duchy of Baden. The country through w^hich we travelled promised fine crops, but future plenty scarcely compensated for present wants ; food is dear, and demand for labour much reduced ; beg- gars swarm almost as much as in France. We passed by a singular rock, full six hundred feet high, starting out of the ground like a huge ])illar, in the manner (jf the rock of Edinburgh, only twice as high, and wholly insulated; it has much of the basaltic a})pearance, although without any decided prismatic pillars. I should class it, ignorantly perhaps, among the amygdaloid clink-stone. The summit is crowned with the extensive ruins of a fort, which capitulated to the French in 1 800, al- though to appearance impregnable, and was blown * Sec Chap, xxiii. Vol. II. Vol. I \i 98 CONSTANCE. up by them ; its commander was tried by court- martial, and confined many years. Constantms Chlorus having defeated the bar- barians in a great battle fought upon the present site of Constance, restored the Roman station, which they had destroyed, and gave it his name ; but the celebrity of Constance is principally due to the Council which mot within its walls eleven centuries after this Emperor (1414-1418); and the Council itself owes much of its own celebrity to the sad story of John Huss and Jerome of Prague. All Christendom was occupied, during five years, in effecting little that now lives in the minds of men, except the execution of these two unfortu- nate theologians, in violation of the Imperial safe conduct, on the faith of which they had appeared at Constance*. As soon as we were fairly established in our quarters, taking a guide, we proceeded, by land and water, on stepping-stones and tottering boards (the Rhine, higher than it has been for more than a century, overflows part of the town,) to the place of meeting of the Council, an old rambling house where the country people hold their fair or market for yarn. The hall in which that memorable assembly sat is very spacious ; measured by my ♦ Sri- Chap. xix. Vol. II. COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. ^9 Steps it appeared to be sixty feet wide and one hundred and fifty-three feet long ; the ceiling, about seventeen feet high, is supported by two rows of wooden pillars, to which leathern shields, mea- suring three feet and a half by eighteen inches, are suspended. If the red cross upon them indicates they had belonged to Crusaders, they would be of greater antiquity still than the Council, since the last Crusade preceded it one hundred and fifty years. The thick walls bear marks of partitions between each window, indicating the cells where the fathers of the Council were shut up while forming those solemn decisions which ultimately decided nothing. A hole in the gate is still seen, through which provisions and other necessaries used to be introduced ; and near that entrance, the places where a count and a bishop stood sentry night and day. The dusty seats of the Emperor Sigismund and Pope Martin V. are there, unceremoniously lilled on market-days by old women selling yarn, wholly unconscious of the awe those who filled these seats inspired four hundred years ago, and ignorant even of their names. In the cathedral the spot is marked by traditions, (Mr. Ebel says, by a piece of brass in the pavement, but we did not notice it,) where John Huss heard his sentence pronounced by the H 2 100 JOHN iiuss. fathers of the Council assembled for that purpose. The prisoner, being a doctor of divinity, was de- graded, after his sentence had been read ; then driven at once out of the door, a few yards distant by a kick*; and the civil power, ready there waiting for him, led him that instant to the stake, where he was burnt alive. The very guide w^ho conducted us, a simple man, smiled in contempt, and shrugged his shoulders while repeating the story ; yet not one, probably, of the one hundred and fifty thousand persons assembled here on the occasion of the Council, although some might have disapproved of the proceedings, would probably iiave been struck with their glaring absurdity, as well as cruelty, nor inclined to smile in contempt : so great is the change produced by time, in the mode of viewing the same things. Our guide smiled again, on another occasion, when I asked him v/hether many of the French regicides had not taken shelter at Constance? " Ftv," he an- swered, " twenty-four of them; the old fellow.^ arc * Joliu I hiss's flo.ik dropped on tlie occ;ision, aiid cscuixmI burning. It i^ now sliewn as a c-iiriosity, and I obtained a scrap of it — a coarse, threadbare, worsted sIuiT, of a rusM't l)lack, much such a thing as a .savant ot' the fifteenth cintury might be supposed to wear; yet the recollection of lUionaparte's pen at l'V)ntainel)leau shakes my faith in tliis relict. giEEN HORTEXsE. 101 seen .^troUijin: together in the sun, nobodi/ minds them Jiow..'^ " What, so soon! the men who eoidd pass sentence of death on the King of France, and send hint, and soon after send, dailtj, hundreds of their fellow-citizens, to the guillotine! Those men of tlio Convention, who made all Europe tremble, and whose troops laid this very town of Constance under contribution, are already so completely out of date, as to be old fellows of no consequence ; and a simple man can now smile in contem})t. and see at once tlie ibhy of proceedings so serious twenty- live years ago! Tiiis, a:5sured]y, is a great and ni})id cliange ! Wahang fartlier, our guide said, " T/'uit fine house j/onder,'' pointing to tlie other side of the Rhine, " belonged to Queen Hor- tense !'" and he smiled at the name of Queen Ilor- tensc ! Another dream vanished, thought we, or I'ashion gonj by. " But," added he, "' she icas a good ladij, rc/v/ charitable to the poor ;" and saying this, he di;i not smile ! May it be. tlien — we trust it is — that tiiere is, after ah, notliini;- serious in the world but those eternal principles ol" morality and religion, to which men cUng in tlieir soljcr moments, and to which they return after many criminal deviations — that there is no real great- ness, even in this world, but in a tirin adherence t') tli(jse principles: no durable admiration among 102 CONSTANCE. men, without esteem ; and that even the lower part of mankind come at last to set the right value on the advantages this world affords, and din- tinguish between truth and falsehood. Constance had early a great transit trade with Italy, and flourishing manufactures of linen par- ticularly, and thirty-six thousand inhabitants ; but when a heterogeneous population of more than a hundred thousand souls * assembled there during the Council, with thirty thousand horses, manufac- tures and commerce, incommoded by this multi- tude, sought a more quiet and cheaper residence at St. Gall and other towns, the prosperity of which, and the decline of Constance, began at this period. But the loss of its independence, political and religious, when in 1548 it fell under the dominion of Austria, rendered its ruin irre- trievable ; nor did it gain by its last transfer, in 1805, from Austria to the Duke of Baden. Mr. Ebcl says, that the population is reduced to two thousand souls ; certain it is, that grass grows in * Poggio Bracciolini, who was present, says the Council brought together at Constance 2,300 i)rinces and noble kni"hts, 18,000 prelates, ])riests, and doctors, 80,000 laymen; and anions tradesmen he reckoned 228 tailors, .'JOO barbers, 75 confectioners, 44 apothecaries, and 1,500 courtezans, mentioning only (he was pleased to say) those of his acquaintance. Mr. Ebcl estimates the whole number at 100,000, iMuUer at 150,000, souls. CONj^TANCE. 103 the streets, which are half made up of empty convents ; and you may hire a large house for twenty-five francs a month. The door of our room at the Eagle turns on plated hinges, and the wood is curiously inlaid with figures of warriors on horseback ; this was the taste of the fifteenth century : but the walls are hung with more modern articles of luxury, which I thought decidedly in worse taste ; prints of the last age, very finely engraved, exhibiting unnatural affected manner and false expression, shepherds in full-bottomed wigs, dress coats, and a crook, at the feet of shepherdesses, with wasp shapes, and hoops under their petticoats, while multitudes of unbrceched Cupids flutter in mid air. All this anti(;[uatcd finery, so much ad- mired in two distant ages, is come at last together, to furnish a bed-room at an inn. The sheets of the beds ])artook of the ill-judged taste fbr luxury, being trimmed with lace, and starched muslin borders gently tickling the face of w^eary travellers just falling aslee}), and so very short as scarcely to reach the length of the bed. Bread here, a few weeks ago, was at five batz and a half the pound of twenty ounces ; it has lately been reduced to four batz, which is still 104 CONSTANCE. nearly double the usual price ; labour has, how- ever, risen in proportion. When the French entered Constance, two of the suburbs were plundered. They had, it seems, been attended by some Appenzel patriots, who not only bought the stolen goods, put up to auc- tion in the streets, but who acted as agents and guides, pointing out to the invaders where the game lay, and individuals best able to pay a high ransom for their persons and property. We were shewn the house of a tanner, in particular, who had been exorbitantly fleeced. For this behaviour, the citizens of Constance are ran- corous against their good neighbours the Swiss, but jealousy of superior industry and success (not less than the various differences arising out of religious opinions, and the local propinquity) is probably at the root of their hatred, or they wx)uld not so eagerly seek to attach the infamy of a few individuals to the character of a whole nation. St. Gall, June 26. The road from Constance to this place runs through Thurgovia, the new canton dismembered from Bern, and distinguished by its extraordinary fertility ; but as it has no mountains, no rocks, no LAKE OF CONSTANCE. 105 forests, nor even n;rGcn meadows or pastures, but arable lands, producing only the finest possible corn and hemp, and shaded by apple orchards, without so much as a grove of forest trees, we shall pass it over in silence. It is, however, worth observing, that the lake of Constance, bounded by this rich flat country, (Suabia, on the other side, is equally Hat,) is three times deeper than any of the mountain-girt lakes of Switzer- land : its greatest de])th being three hundred and sixty-eight fathoms of so\'en feet each, or two thousand live hundred and seventy-six feet ; its height abo\e the sea is only one thousand and eighty feet ; so that, in fact, more than one lialf of this vast body of water is below the ie\ei of the sea. It abounds in fish ; salmon often weigliini;' forty pounds, trout in plenty, and a fish called lavaret, the most esteemed of any. This town, like so many others, owes its existence to the protection of a ino- nastery. The abbey of St. Gall, founded by some learned Scots *, was, during the middle ages, a most erudite spot ; in aftertimes, the abbots neglected the learning and the Christian virtues of their pre- decessors, for politics and for war ; but lost, in the end, their power, with the (lualities by which ori- *■ bee ('hap. iv. Vol. 1 1 106 ST. GALL, ginally it had been obtained. They were driven away in 1798, and the community finally sup- pressed in 1805 ; its revenue reverting to the State, with a reserved provision for the monks during life. The Canton of St. Gall is divided nearly equally between the two communions, Protestant and Catholic ; the latter have here a very handsome church, highly and even gaily ornamented inside ; but all the wonders of the chisel and of the pencil are in imminent danger of being soon buried un- der the ruins of a stone arch terribly cracked, and to appearance near falling. We were taken to the most considerable cotton-mill of the place, set in motion, not by water or steam, but by the labour of an ox acting the part of turnspit ; the poor animal, shut up in a wheel thirty-three feet in diameter, walks on in self-defence, as the wheel, being once in motion, he must go with it, which he does very deliberately, resting his feet on brackets, or pieces of boards, nailed across the revolving floor. There are three oxen working by turns, each two hours ; they last at this rate two or three years ; the power is sufficient to move twenty-nine mw/tjv of two hundred and sixteen spindles each, (there were only twenty going when I saw it,) with carding and cleaning machines in ITS MANUFACTORIES. 107 proportion ; one hundred and thirty persons are employed, half of them children, who formerly earned about five batz (seven-pence sterling) a day ; the grown workmen, working by the piece, used to earn as much as twenty-four shillings ster- ling a week ; none of these people now get half what they did, and many of them, especially in the country, are wholly without work. Mr. Ebel tells us there were of late, in the Canton of St. Gall alone, from thirty to forty thousand women em- ployed in working (embroidering) muslin, and the whole manufacturing population, at this rate, must have been very great indeed: crimes multiply with wants, the prisons are full, and executions frequent. There have been three miserable women decapitated in the course of the last year for the crime of infanticide alone. This is laid to the ac- count of the manufacturing system; how justly, is well worth inquiring into. Agricultural labour here, as elsewhere, cannot afford the high wages of manufacturing labour, while the loom flourishes ; none but the richest land defrays the expense of cultivation, and in this mountainous country the quantity of rich arable land is very inconsiderable. Population, encou- raged by manufactures, advanced ; the greatest part of the country was laid down in grass, the 108 LANDED INTEREST, COMMERCE, quantity of corn grown diminishing in the same rate. The people depended justly in theory, if not, in fact, on being supplied with corn from other countries, so long as they could supply those coun- tries with what was corn's worth. In this state of things the return of peace, after a general war of unexampled duration, having di- rected the attention of every government towards the means of employing its own population, they have most of them hit upon the expedient of closing their doors against foreign industry by way of favouring their own. Each nation, shut up within itself, is now to become its own grower and con- sumer, but the results of such a prohibitory sys- tem, although adv antagcous to none, are not m the same degree unfavourable to all. Those countries, France and Germany for instance, which exported corn and imported manufactured produce, have now indeed a surplus of grain for which there is no de- mand. The landed interest suffers, without the manufacturing interest being proportionably bene- fited, fertile farmers cannot consume, at least they cannot buy and pay, unless they sell ; yet no one need starve in a country where there is a glut of corn ; whilst on the other hand, in those inland countries which, like the diminutive one now under consideration, exported manufactures and imjJottiHJ AND MANUFACTURES. 109 corn, the people, not beiniz; able to eat the article which they can no longer sell, may easily be re- duced to absolute famine. If commerce, univer- sally free, were allowed to find its own level, con- sumption would ever prove commensurate to pro- duction, commodities creating a market for each other; all past experience warrants this belief. Never at any period of the world was there such a mass and variety of commodities produced as during the last century, yet nothing remained on lumd : never were there so many machines in- vented ibr the express purpose of superseding hu- man labour, yet never w^as there such an increasing demand for it, marked by so rapid an advance in population ; the introduction of new objects of en- joyment, and consecjuently of new branches of in- (histry, liaving uniformly kept pace with, and even outstript, the introduction of new machines into the old and estnblislied branches. No one Coresaw all the while either the new manufacture or the new machine, any more than we can at present ibresee what will be invented in the same way hencefor- ward ; but we have no reason to suppose the ])ro- gression at an end, and the fear entertained, by some political economists, that too much inny be produced, are just only in this sense, that too much of an article, or a set of articles, may be produced 110 LANDED INTEREST, COMMERCE, at one time. There might, undoubtedly, be too many shoes, and too many hats, but there cannot be too many enjoyable commodities properly va- ried, and adjusted to the existing wants and de- mand*, for the one will create a market for the other. Commercial industry and skill may be safely trusted for the assortment. The peace deprived a vast number of indivi- duals, in every part of Europe, of their usual mode of earning a livelihood — not soldiers and sailors merely, but all the artificers, of whatever sort, who had administered to their wants. During the war, the money raised by taxes and by loans, from the richer part of the community, was distri- buted, in the shape of salaries, for useful or useless labour, or for no labour at all, to numberless indi- viduals, who themselves spent it among the indus- trious class of consumers ; but this mode of circu- lation is now stopped. The richer class, relieved from some of the war-taxes, might now afford to * Some differences of opinion have lately taken place respect- ing the theory of prices ; the question at issue seems to be, whe- ther prices are regulated by cost of production, or by demand ? Something analogous to this would be the question, whether the level of the sea is regulated by the winds, or by gravitation ? Like this great law of nature, cost of production must be deemed the fundamental regulator of prices, disturbed indeed incessantly within certain bounds, but never beyond them, by demand. AND KUND-HOLUERS. Ill spend something more, but such an increase of demand on their part would by no means com- pensate for the reduced consumption of the im- poverished majority ; add to which, a miserly dis- position to save a part of their income, instead of spending, has been ascribed to them, in order to recruit their capitals, diminished by war-taxes and high prices. On this an interesting question arises — What is saving, in a political point of view ? A man who saves a part of his income annually does not now hoard it as misers formerly did. The miser in our days is simply a person who employs somebody, else to spend his money for him. He lends it to others, or lays it out profitably himself; but in either case it is spent by somebody, and remains in circulation. Since the year 1815, the enormous sum of one hundred and fifty millions, or even more, has been added to the value of stocks in the market, i^risen from fifty-six to seventy-six,) by the competition of purchasers wanting to invest large sums saved annually ; but, as this increase of capital adds nothing to the revenue of the fund- holders, we might be led to conclude, that the rise in time of peace, of property yielding a fixed in- come by the investment of all the money which in time of war was spent among consumers being- just so much capital thrown away, since it yields 112 DEMAND FOR LAROUR, no additional income, is the obvious cause of the glut, of which manufacturers complain, and of the poverty of the labouring classes ; but every pur- chase implying a sale, the same sum invested by the buyer re-appears again in the hands of him who sold out, and thus savings remain available for the purposes of consumption. Lands and houses have fallen in price, ships and manufocturing stock still more, in consequence of the reduction of rents and profits ; some of the holders of this kind of property have been tempted by the high interest of money in the funds ; fund- holders, on the other hand, have been tempted by the low price of real property ; sales and purchases have taken place between them, but this shifting of property, however varied and multiplied, has no iniiuence on the consumption, which is regulated by income, and not by capital. The income from the funds remains as it was, that of almost every other species of property is much reduced, and there only we must look for the cause of the diminution of consumption. We have seen that the demand for that s^ort of labour incidental to a state of war has ceased, and moreover, that the revenue, out of which it was paid, has ceased also. One of the ecjuivalents in the series of barters, which constitute trade, being ENGLAND AND s\VlTZEUT,A\n COMPAHr.n 113 thus withdrawn, its cDrresptjiulciit c([uivakMU must necessarily remain on hand somewhere. It is not only the gunsmith, the shipwright, and the sail- maker, who can no longer employ the tailor or the shoemaker ; these, in their turn, are compelled to make similar retrenchments, wdiich descend lower and lower till they arrive at the mere labourer, who having lived, when in full work, as abstemiour>ly as he could live, is driven, when out of work, to the parish for subsistence, his poverty then re-acting on the richer classes. Such is the state of things in England at present. In Switzerland, the chain of causes and effects has not so many links ; yet, as far as it goes, it is perfectly similar, and the results still more calamitous ; for, in other countries, the starving artiticers are, in the last resort, thrown on the bounty of the corn-growers, but here ther(3 are no such people for them to have recourse to ; this is entirely a nation of artificers starving altogether, helpless and hopeless, and e\en the rich among tliem have not the resource cjf money saved in time of })eace by the cessatioii of war taxes, because, during war, tlu^y had no >uch taxes. England diflers from Switzt^iand, as from most otlier countri(^s. in this: that. aJthoiiu-h (^porting manufactured produce to a prodigious extent, she raises nearly hei- own supply of corn, under th(^ Vnj 1 F.\(ii.|SH ('<)11N-].AWS. protection of corn-laws, which give to the less ma- nageable machine, land, a legal monopoly, balancing the superior advantages of manufacturing machines. And thus the only country in Europe, where an in- sular situation, and the consequently safe and easy communication with distant corn-countries, might have rendered the fundamental principle of political economy, entire freedom of commerce, and un- shackled exercise of industry, least liable to incon- venience, was the one where it was least trusted to in practice. It is in Switzerland, if any where, that corn laws arc wanted. I am aware that the policy of corn-laws in England is defensible on other grounds, viz., on tlic necessity of preserving a cer- tain parity of value between landed and fundcnl pi-operty, and the danger of increasing the compa- rative value of the debt and sum of interest thereon, beyond a possibility of its discharge. Although this reason does not apply to Switzerland, I am in- ciitied to think a (kity on the importation of corn, protecting agriculture against manufactures, would be: a very wise meiisun^ there, not to ensure the debt, but to ensure bread. Th(3 tendency of manufactures has been arraigned by moralists, and the sect of liberal politicians is divided respecting th(nn. As ])hil()S()ph(;rs, they are bound to maintain the advantages of a simple conn- PEASANT-^ AND MAXl'FACTURERs. | 1 ,-, try-life ; as party-men, they must not overlook the A'alue of a manufacturing population. It cannot be denied that the world is indebted to the dense po- pulation of towns for most of its improvements, moral as well as political ; nor do I believe that pea- sants are much, or at all, better than towns' people, or even shepherds superior to weavers ; the former are but a coarser sort of peasants, with as little, or even less, intellect, and with stronger, because more concentrated, passions. It has been observed that more crimes, in pro- portion, are committed in mountainous countries, all over Europe, than in any others. No theory on the subject can be absolutely true, or abso- lutely false ; yet it might be said that there is more innocence and docility, and at the same time more stubbornness of prejudice, in the country — more experience of vice and virtue in towns, greater struggles between the two, more intelligence, more decided qualities, good and bad, than in the country. On the other hand, the lower employments in manufactures are so very confined, embrace so few objects of thought, exercise the faculties of mind and body so partially and so faintly, as to induce, from generation to genera- tion, a successive degradation of the species. Per- haps domestic manufactures in tlie country unite IKi INTRODUCTION OF M ANUFACTURF.s most of the advantages of towns, by inducing a certain degree of social intercourse, without a forced and indiscriminate contact with the vulgar ; by preventing idleness, particularly during the pro- tracted winters of northern or alpine countries, yet retaining those of the country, fresh air, space, cleanliness, and exercise. In these effects I find ample reason, not hastily to condemn the introduc- tion of manufactures among the Swiss mountains. Although I think it had been better for the people of St. Gall to have remained satisfied with the learned pre-eminence they formerly enjoyed, with- out aiming at commercial successes also, I only blame their having pursued it too exclusively, and, above all, their having relinquished the plough. The present crisis has administered a terrible les- son, and I should hope not in vain. The obloquy to which manufacturers are liable is abundantly shared by machines, which are by many supposed to multi])]y vices as fast as they produce cotton yarn or cloth; yet a moment's con- sid(;ratioii should convince the most prejudiced, that the object of machines being expressly to supersede manual hibour, and the excessi\'e accu- muhition of men in manufactories being aheged, and justly, to have a deniorali/ing tendency, ma- chines become, in hict, the natural allies of mo- AMONG Tlir, SWISS MOTNTAINS. I \1 rality ; and it is far better that the work should be })ertbrmed by the a<;-eiicy of wood and iron, than by the hand of man, particularly when w^e find that the immediate consequence is to raise w^orkmen to the condition of conductors of machines, from having been machines themselves. It is a matter of pain- ful surprise that the return of peace should ha\'e been the signal of great and lasting complaints of poverty all over Europe ; unfortunately, it might countenance the idea, that war, wdth its attend- ing circumstances of taxation, and an indefinite increase of debt, is a blessing. War undoubtedly occasions at first an immediate demand for men ; it takes from the rich to give to the poor ; and the rich make themselves ample amends by the increased value of property. Indivi- duals with fixed incomes alone suffer from the first. In time, the labouring })opulation having increased to the level of the war demand, w^ages fall again to their minimum, the rise of price stopping short of the increase of taxes is no longer a com])ensation to larmers and manufacturers. Alter a few years of war an impatience for ])eace becomes universal ; peace however, like surgical operations, intlicts much immediate ])ain, for the sake of prosj^ective U'ood : ibr all that part of the population. fostcM'ed ;uid sut)ported by war, falling back on the rest 118 ST. GALL OUPllAN ASYLUM. of the people, already not much at ease, makes them share in its distress. Farmers and manufac- turers, on the contrary, find they lose more by the decrease of consumption, and the lowering of prices, than by the partial relief from taxation ; — individuals with fixed incomes are alone relieved. In due time, however, new branches of industry are discovered, new exchangeable produce brought to market ; communications between countries long at war are opened by degrees ; production and consumption recover their equilibrium, and as at bottom there cannot be any thing desirable, per se, in killing and being killed, and in supporting at heavy cost, those who are so employed, the arts of peace, which administer to our pleasures and con- venience, must in the end obtain the preference over the arts of war. Yet, as there scarcely is any absolute good or absolute evil in this world, and that, in a moral point of view, even war is not wholly without its compensation, we are to look for the most favourable balance, which we shall undoubtedly find on the side of peace. St. Gall has an orphan asylum for seventy-five des- titute children, who are maintained till the age of fif- teen, and then bound to a trade. The building is spacious, the situation airy ; the kitchen, bed- rooms, ^c, in excellent order; but the school-room (. \!.L was a scene of confusion and idleness : th(M)nlv teaclier we could iind, a youth, who had ne\(M- heard of the systems now so well known all o\er Europe by the names of their inventors, Bell and Lancaster, nor even of his countryman, Mr. Pesta- lozzi : — the specimens of writins; and drawini:: th;it he shewed us were but indifferent : arithmetic and the elements of ij^eometry, which also enter inin the plan of instruction here, are probably not bet- t(^r tauu-ht. Our cham i»f (Ik 120 AM-STOFS. Jura, we no longer enjoy the luxury of running water in the streets of the towns. Gaiss, Jtme 27. From St. Gall to this place five leagues*, or hours, of mountain-road. A voiturier's horses only walk, and that not faster than a man ; in fact, you do generally walk, with the advantages of resting when you please by stepping into the carriage, being sheltered, tant hkn que mal, in case of rain, and having your baggage carried for you. The ride was pleasant ; we had torrents and rocks and fine woods enough to engage the eye, but nothing sufficiently marked for a description. Gaiss is a place of public resort for drinking goats' whey, as a remedy for what ailments I know not ; the taste is very peculiar, and not disagreeable. We walked, the evening of our arrival, to Am-Stofs, the spot marked by an old chapel, where, four hundred and two years ago, the men of Appenzal defeated, with great slaughter, an army of Austrians four times their number ; it is on the brow of a hill, fifteen hundred or tw^o thousand perpendicular feet above the valley of the Rheinthal, which is seen below, * A Swiss league is 1 8,000 iMTiu-se feet, nearly ecjiial to Ei'-'lish feet. It is also 1(),200 French feet, or about ^,'Z7^6d, kilonu'lrcs. THE TVROLESF. MOI'VT.MNS. 121 clicquered with cultivation ; villages and towns are scattered along the devious course of the Rhine. On the other side of this fine valley rose the Tyrolese mountains, capped with bright snows, on which it seemed as if we might have flung a stone. This picturesque field of battle was not very convenient for the assailants, who had to climb and fight at the same time*. The Gabris is a mountain of easy ascent, over smooth lawns ; it aficjrds the same prospect ex- tended Irom a greater height. Upon its very sum- mit, and in tho neighbourhood of unmelted snows, we Vv'ere much incommoded by a swarm of ants with ^vings, and much more active than could have been expected from the temperature. Near tliese stKjws, we observed a large shrub, vvith leaves like those of a laurel ; its line tlowers were not unlike those of the pomegranate, and also a tlourishing holly |, with abundance of roses and eglantine. We are here in the track of the pudding-stone, or breccia, which crosses Switzerland in a N.E. and S.W. direction. The rounded fragments, aguio- * Chap, xviii. Vol. II. f- III l-iii^laiiil, planlatioiH on niountaiiib scarcely succeed aliove the hei^lit of I'JOOleet, as has heen expeiiiiiced on Siiowduii, luit Iroin any excess of (cld in uuiier, but ironi absenix ot' heal ill buniiuer. 122 THE UANZ DE VACllEs. merated into distinct strata, are of various nature^ and origin, either striking fire with steel, or effer- vescing with acids ; some of them, indeed, belong to former pudding-stone formations. What waters could those be, which thus rolled together heaps of rounded fragments to the height of several thousand feet .' Certainly, not torrents, such as we are ac quainted with ; nor do the shores of our ocean pre- sent any such phenomenon. At a chalet, when coming down, we met, for tht^ first time, a cretin : those unfortunate creatures ai e not very common on elevated grounds. It vv^as milking time, w^hicli occurs twice a day, at ten o'clock in the morning and at ten at night ; the cows, looking all sleek and well, come of themseb/es to the stable, allured by a little salt, and are chaine;' to the manger. Some of them ha-1 a large egg- shaped brass bell, nearly a foot in diameter, sus- pended from the neck by a very wide leathern collar highly worked and. ornamented. During the milk- ing, a man sung the Rans dcs V aches ; wo had heard it before, but never so well ; the notes, singularly wild and melancholy, and yet lively, were IVcquently interrupted by a sudden shriek, very like those in the war songs of the American savages. I can perfectly conceive, that s(j peculiar a strain, asso- ciated with the rerneiubraiK.vs of v<>utli. its stn^ju: F.MI'LOVMHNTS OK THE WO.MK.V. 12;i affections and lively pleasures, might have a very powerful effect on the Swiss, when they heard it again in foreign lands ; and I am sorry to hear that its magic is now lost. While I was musing near the stable-door, after the melody, which had worked me up to something like ancient Swiss feelings, had ceased, the cowherd came out with his pails ol' milk ; and seeing me there, with a touch of sympathy perhaps still marked on my countenance, set down the pails, and with a vulgar, mirthful grin, which soon restored me to the level of real life, held his cap to receive a few batz for his performances I understood from him, that his cows, when in full milk, the first six months yielded, upon an averages eight to ten measures of milk each, equal to sixteen or twenty common bottles a day. The price is ten pounds, and a young acti\e pony costs about as much * . The women of the house where we stopixnl to rest were employed in working muslins, tambour- ing, open work, and embroidery, earning two batz a day, (not quite three pence sterling). One of them was churning, by means of a le\ or sus})ended * Lt't oiIkt travrllrrs beware — liaving iinpi-iKk'iitly jias^cd my haiul oil the sleek sinocith coat ot one ot these jioiiies, his two t'eet were up in the aiv in a moment, anci narrowly missed my Illl'USt. 124 SWISS HOUSES. from the ceiling. The house was built of larch, spacious and clean ; it had a large common room up stairs, for company, with many windows, com- manding the fine prospect. The furniture of that room consisted of a long bench round three sides, and a long table before it ; an enormous earthen stove, so constructed as to answer the purpose of steps to ascend to the next story above, by an opening in the ceiling of the room. The kitchen, in another part of the building, has no chimney, but the smoke issues out of a hole in the roof, covered with a shutter which is opened or closed by pulling a rope. I have already described the projecting roofs of these houses, the projecting gal- lery under the eaves of that roof, the high-pointed gable ends full of windows, the outside stairs, S^c. Above the first floor, built of stone, the upper struc- ture is composed of square beams, placed one over the other, and dovetailed at the angles of the build- ing ; the whole covered with boards, within and without. Although the sides of the building shew only one story above the ground-floor, yet the gable end, or rather front, has four or five, each marked by a row of small contiguous windows. This iront is decorated with })assages from the Scri])Lures, inscribed very neatly on the wood, as well as the date oi" tlie buildiuij," (often two buudred years GENERAL VANDAMME. 12,3 back), name of the builder, subsequent restorers, i$-c This wood is not painted ; but, which does as well, the rosin that oozes at first covers it with a sort of natural varnish of a brownish colour. As we again descended to Gaiss (for Gaiss, situated so much above St. Gall, was now much beneath us,) the magnificent sound of a bell, fifty- four hundred pounds weight, (how transporter! th(;rc I do not know), came upon the ear ; its sonorous vibrations, solemn, deep, and slow, gently shook our vast and rare atmosphere, yet scarcely broke the universal silence and peace of the wide world be- neath. The sensation was so vague and evanescent, that, while it raised the idea of sovereign power in the mind, you might still doubt its reality ; most melancholy, yet most beautiful: the music of the spheres must strike on just such a key. The fol- lowing anecdote was related to us by our lancUord at the Boeuf, a magistrate, a man of })roperty and of sense, and very moderate in his politics. When General Vandamme was in this neighbourhood, the magistrates of the commune of Gaiss received a letter from him, w ritten in French, which was trans- lated by our landlord (then, as he is now,) tlie only inhabitant at all versed in that \M)\\W hiiiguage ! The substance of the epistle was. to inform dunn. that some friends of the GiMieraJ. al Paris, iiavini! 126 GENERAL VANDAMME. heard of the great perfection of the worked muslins of Gaiss, had commissioned him, if he happened to go that way, to purchase for them a certain quantity of these muslins, as per margin ; he trusted the commune would charge the lowest price, at the longest credit. The magistrates did not well know what to make of this message, but our innkeeper Au BfT.uf, being a person of more experience, ex- plained to them that there was no room to hesitate, and that they would be very well off if no more was required. The muslins, therefore, were pro- cured, and sent the next day, with a request that the General would take his own time for the pay- ment. One short month afterwards. General Van- dammc's friends having found the muslins much to their liking, favoured the town of Gaiss with an- other order. Our landlord was again consulted, and again advised compliance ; the magistrates, however, thought best to procrastinate, and an- swered evasively, that the articles were not imme- diately to be had, but that they would be procured as soon as possible, S^c. ^-c. Upon this, they re- ceived no more commissions, but, instead, a visit from a company of soldiers, who remained some weeks quartered upon them, consuming and wasting many times the same amount. Stories not unlike this arc. tokl of Massena and others, who had all ni'-ll{F>s OF THF, AFWri' \( TlPvFFv^^. 127 a taste lor tine muslins : tlie Cv^nimon men g'cnerally behaved well. Hfuisai;. June '2S. Five hours and a half from Gaiss : a beaut il'ul ride even more rural than that from St. Gall, but the number of beggars, mostly women and children, is perfectly shocking, and their imploring cries and elot[uent looks are irresistible. Bread is five batz and a half the pound, of twenty ounces, (eight- pence English^ ; manufacturers are without W(,)rk, and it is impossible Ibr them to procure food : tlu^y are supponc^d by ])rivate and public cha- rities, and distributions of economical soup, (made with oatmeal and a little meat\ in tjuan- titic-s scarcely sufficient to sustain life. We see nothinLT b;it meadows and pastures, not a patch of potatoes c^r arain. not even a garden. On the con- trary, surrciunding every house is a nice a-recn car- pet t)f turf, which, nov/ undoubtedly, had better have been laid down in ])otatoes. The climate is not very favourable^ to any cro]) but hav. and tlu^ time of the inhabitants was more jirotitablv v\\\- ployed in their manufacturers: but circumstant c\- havc^ :-hewn. that tlie produce of \\\c loom cannot always command the ])roduceol" the ilc^lds. SiR'h evils work tluMF own rcMucHlv. but the adiuonition is s'.n"(MV. 128 EXECUTIONS. Whilst treading this land of heroic husbandmen and shepherds, who, for three centuries, defied the united hosts of Austria, her vassals and allies ; and, armed only with their clubs, attacked and defeated whole squadrons of mailed knights; and, finally, established their independence by more than Ro- man deeds ; we could not avoid forming a some- what mournful comparison between these historic visions of the past and the state of things actually before our eyes. What we saw might be the po- pulation of Rouen, or of Manchester, of Leeds, or of Abbeville ; in better air, no doubt, and better lodged, but pale and thin, and humbled ; and, I fear, not very moral. On entering the town of Appenzel we learnt that there were to be two ca- pital executions this weel^ (beheading), one for set- ting fire to a barn, the other ibr repeated robberies ; eight other culprits were lately whipt : there is no- thing Arcadian in all this ; and yet of the heroic age of Switzerland, (proud though no doubt it was), the latter half, at least, w^as decidedly more abandoned*, more lawless, in fact, more coiTupt, than this weaving age, contemptible as it certainly appears. The modern invention ol' braces, winch else- where aiFords so much comfort tunt will be f;ivori of a suhscqiioiit visit r'» T.hcsc works. LAKE OF WALLF.NSTADT. 133 partly risen from its ashes during the feudal times, was again destroyed, and not altogether without just cause*, in 1388, by its neighbours of Claris, and since that has never been considerable. The price of a boat, fit to carry a carriage and horses, to the farthest end of the lake, (four leagues) is ten shillmgs sterling, exclusive of a small pre- sent to the men. We performed the voyage with oars in four hours and a half; sailing with a fa- vourable wind it may be accomplished in two. Terrible tales are told of the tempests on this lake, as indeed on all the lakes enclosed, as this is, by mountains ; government has thought proper to in- terfere for the safety of ignorant or rash travel- lers, forbidding the boatmen to venture out at all, under certain circumstances of weather, oblifrin^; them, in more dubious cases, to keep close along the southern shore, where there are harbours, and al- lowing n(3 boat to remain more than three years in use. The most dangerous is supposed to be the north wind, which falling verticallv, furrows the surface of the water into deep short waves that suck in every floating thing : at least so it is said, nor does the form and make of the boats give the smallest hope of their being able to weather any storm, c^uite fiat, and so shallow as to ' f'luin. XVI. Vni. II 134 EARTHQUAKES. fill with the slightest swell ; very weakly built, and not even ceiled or lined inside, to protect the planks from the kick of a horse ; they are mere square boxes, rowing and sailing equally ill ; but were you inclined for any other mode of convey- ance, there is no road for a carriage round the lake ; add to which, that to give up the view of the shores from the water, would be to forego the very purpose of the expedition. The lake is seldom more than two miles across, so that sail where you will, you cannot lose sight of either bank. This part of the country has always been subject to earthquakes. Thirty-three are upon record as having happened in the seventeenth cen- tury, and eighty-seven in the eighteenth ; that is, thirty-seven between August, 1701, and February, 1702; fifty between September, 1763, and May, 1764; but the geological revolutions, indicated by the general appearances of this district, are far beyond the power of common earthquakes, which are, indeed, more likely to have been an effect than a cause ; for the vast vacuities left between, and among, the fragments of the old earth's crust, when they settled into their present positions, would naturally become so many gazomcters, oc- casionally filling with an elastic fluid, the sudden expansion, rarefaction, or possibly inflammation. GEOLOGICAL APPEARANCEJ>. 135 of which now heaves, at times, their ponderous co- verings, and communicates to the surface of our earth those undulations, denominated earthquakes, which spread terror and dismay among its inhabi- tants*. To convey some idea of these geological ap- pearances, and of the speculations which I have ventured to build upon them, I will here give a transverse section of the lake and its banks. i>.^^ a hy surface of the lake of Wallenstaclt, in its breadth. A B, north bank of the lake. D B, south bank dipping into the lake. The section A B is supposed to have coincided formerly with B C, and the latter to have slid down to its present position, form- ing the basin of the lake of Wallenstadt, the greatest depth of which is near the northern bank. It seems as if the section A B of the North bank, and the section B C of the South bank, * They have been compared, and not unaptly, to the wind blowmi; under a carpel 136 GEOLOGY AND THE PICTURESQUE. had once been contiguous and upon the same plane ; but that, broken asunder by some mighty force, the portion B C had slipped down, leaving the precipice A B to stand exposed to our won- dering eyes, a gigantic specimen of natural his- tory, presenting from four to six thousand feet per- pendicular of parallel strata, all containing, in the organic remains, abundant proof of their secon- dary origin. Geology is certainly no mean auxiliary of the picturesque, for imagination will ever follow with peculiar delight the traces of a former w^orld. It is roused to mighty contemplation at the sight of piles of rocks, as high as the clouds, recumbent on a bed of fern, and at finding the remains of animals, that once sported on the summits of other Alps, now buried beneath the very base and foun- dations of ours. In the course of our voyage, approaching some- times the northern, but oftencr the southern shore, which is rent in several places from top to bottom, we happened to pass close by one of these great fissures. It was dark as night itself; invisible torrents roared down its precipices ; nothing hu- man could climb their sides, or breathe in their eternal mist ; as tlie eye measured in wonder the fearilil height, and dwelt on the heavenly softness MOl NT.VIN SCENERY. 137 of the mountain verdure seen through the opening at the top, we could scarcely believe our senses when we discovered peasants making hay quietly on the brink of such an abyss, thousands of feet above our head, on the northern shore of the lake, at the foot of its abrupt rampart, close to its tremendous cataracts, the greatest perhaps in Swit- zerland. On the very promontories of earth and stone, originally brought by them, we often des- cried a farm-house, with its grove of umbrageous walnuts, its meadows, and husbandmen at their work. A nearer approach to what appeared a per- pendicular wall of rocks, enabled us to detect some slight marks of a climbing path, where notched logs, or sticks driven into holes, or overhanging branches and withy ropes leading from one beetling shelf to another, shewed that a strong hand and steady step left nothing inaccessible to the mu:e- nuity and perseverance of man. Enormous as the mountain appeared before, such points of compa- rison as these swelled its dimensions at once to an oppressive excess, from which the eye turned with a sort of dread. The lake, which never freezes, abounds with iish : salmon (even at this distance from tlie Ger- man ocean), trout, (j-c, and \V\kc in proportion, sonn.^ of them weighing thirty prouiids Our boat- 138 THE LAMMEUGEYER. man picked up a large fish, just dead of wounds received in an encounter with a jack. We were told of a man catching fifty hundred weight of fish in one day. Angling is allowed in all the waters of Switzerland, but every other kind of fishery is private property, and leased out. The Lammergeyer, the largest, after the Ame- rican condor, of all the birds of prey, measuring sixteen feet from wing to wing, haunts this lake, chiefly the northern bank, and carries off kids, and even large dogs. Mr. Ebel speaks of a hunter, Joseph Schorer, who having discovered a nest of these powerful birds, and killed the male, crept bare-footed, for greater safety, along a shelf of the rock, and was just lifting to seize the young, when the hen, pouncing down upon him, stuck her claws into his arm, and her bill into his back. The hunter, whom the least movement might have pre- cipitated from his dangerous station, remained at first quite still, then, gradually with his foot, di- recting the muzzle of his gun, which fortunately he still held in his left hand, towards the bird, he in the same manner cocked it, pushed the trigger, and shot her dead, not however before she had inflicted wounds which confined him to his bed for some months. These hunters arc men from whom the North American Iruiians themselves might learn patient VILLAGERS OF WALLENSTADT. 139 endurance under the severest privations and hard- ships ; acuteness of sense, boldness, and contempt of death ; there are few of them who do not come to an untimely end ; they disappear one after the other, and their lamentable story is only known from the mangled remains sometimes discovered. The villagers of Wallenstadt (at the upper end of the lake), like those of Wesen at the lower, have been boatmen and mule-drivers from time imme- morial, under the Roman prefects, under the Ostro- goths, the Huns, and the Saracens ; under Mas- sena and the French army, and now in the service of curious gentlemen and ladies ; yet all without having advanced one step in the art of building, or managing boats, during this apprenticeship of se- venteen centuries. Some assuredly of their pre- sent passengers, citizens bold of the British me- troj)olis, Sunday -navigators of the Thames between London-bridge and Richmond, could teach them better things ; yet, when we consider the inartificial state of these same nautical arts upon the Seine, at the very fountain-head of European civilization, as every body at Paris knows, we see less reason to wonder at the Swiss. Having no freight for Italy by the mountains, nor for Zurich and the Rhine by the lakes, we staid no longer on the slimy (juay of Wallen- 140 SAllGANh. stadt than was requisite to arrange the crazy tackle of our carriage. This poor little town was, like Wesen, repeatedly plundered in 1799, and, besides, burnt to the ground. From Wallenstadt to Sargans, two hours, along a fine valley, formed by the same screens of mag- nificent mountains, and being in fact a continua- tion of the basin of the lake, but above water instead of beneath ; a solid instead of a liquid surface, and in high cultivation. The inhabitants, in their jioliday dresses, were sitting at the doors of their broad wooden dwellings, too large, it seems, to be denominated cottages, under the shade of spreadijig walnut-trees. Not a beggar was to be seen. The women, sunburnt and mas- culine from habitual exposure in the fields, wear a small skull-cap, under w^iich the hair is drawn up so tight as finally to eradicate it even to bald- ness, an infirmity to which women are not naturally subject. The crane, so common along the course of the Rhine in Germany, rc-appcars here, near its source. Every steeple is capped with a gigan- tic nest, and the highest houses have one or more about their chimneys. Jiilij 1. — The Stag at Sargans, where we slept, is kept by two sisters, with whom we had a good deal ()(■ interesting conversation, by signs, by Tin. HHINK. 141 means of Mr. Ebel's Swiss Vocabulary, and by the help of English words : their house deserves to be recommended*. From thence to Ragatz, half a mile from the Rhine, in one hour. The mountains on both sides of us, much lower than yesterday, presented many feudal and Roman ruins, now involved in equal obscurity. A trifling rise of the ground of the valley, nineteen feet only above the usual level of the Rhine, alone prevents its making a short cut by the lakes of Wallenstadt and of Zurich, instead of passing by the lake of Constance. About two miles North-East of Sar- gans, the Rhine passes between two high moun- tains, the Schollberg on this side, and the Falkniss on the Grison side, which bear strong marks of having been united formerly. The Rhine must then have flowed in the direction mentioned above ; but as its course appears clearly to have been ob- structed also at Baden, below Zurich, the proba- ■* ] Living already advanced substantia! reasons tor particu- larizini:; tlie items of an in;i dinner, 1 shall here insert those ol our whole entertainimnt al the Sta^. First, emi,s and herb soup; second, omelet, S[)inage, custard pucidiiii:;, tried bread covered with mashed strawberries anti cream ; third, mast veal, sallad. and fritters; fourth, dessiut. NViiu' of the country; cotlee and cream. Strawberries and cream in the evening;. \'ery pood beds. C'otfee and strawberries for breakfast. The bill lor two persons was ten shillings sterling (twelve French frai.cs). 142 l.AKE OF WALLENSTADT. bility is, that the whole space between Baden and Coire in the Grisons formed then an immense lake, twice as long as the lake of Constance, and about as broad in some places. Both these obstacles to the course of the Rhine have been removed by some causes to us unknown ; that at the Scholl- berg gave way first, otherwise the stream never would afterwards have left the shorter for the longer course, the greater for the lesser fall. Whatever may have been the state of things in former times, if an eboulement (a fall of a mountain) was to take place now between the Schollberg and the Falk- niss, and fill up the bed of the Rhine, elevating it only nineteen feet (we have seen it would be suffi- cient), the Rhine would infallibly turn to the lake of Wallenstadt. There is no danger of the great lake being formed again, unless the gap at Baden was also filled up again ; but the waters of the Rhine added to those of the Limmat would certainly make it overflow permanently its present banks, and cause much damage. An embankment across the valley of Sargans is pointed out by all those who understand the subject best, as an easy and safe remedy against any thing but a very great eboulement at the Schollberg, where, however, the passage is not less than two miles wide. Leaving our carriage, to wail our return, at Ragatz. HOT-SPRINGS OF PFEFFKR. 14.'} we proceeded on foot, with a guide, along a path not very practicable for horses, towards the Pfeffers baths, which we reached in two hours, passing the remains of several avalanches ; the snow of one of them filling the bed of a mountain stream, had melted below, and formed an arch, broken through in some places, so as to shew us the danger we had incurred in crossing over. About eight hundred years ago, one of the hunters of the abbey of Pfeffer, being in pursuit of game, discovered, at the bottom of a tremendous cleft, where the Tamina rolls its foaming waters, the hot springs since so famous. The abbey had then flourished for three centuries, and had during that time introduced cultivation and law into the wild region traversed by the Tamina, from its source to the Rhine, an empire of eight square leagues, which nearly equalled in duration, if not in power, the Roman Empire itself, and was likewise destroyed by a northern invasion, during the successive cam- paigns of 17!)9 and KSOO. The French and the Austrians contending for the possession of these eight leagues of rocks and precipices, ruined the miserable inliabitants by carrying away their cattle. The sick formerly were let down by ropes, some hundred leet, to certain rude iiuts, which they en- 144 HOT-BATHS OF PFF.FFKR. tered by the roof, and where they remained a week stewing in hot water and steam ; by degrees, com- munications became better, and about one hundred years ago the abbot of PfefFer had the present stone house and baths constructed, and a path to it cut zig-zag among rocks and trees. These baths are situated about six hundred yards below the spring, the water blood heat, and continually running in and out, forms, in fact, a steam as well as a water bath. One part of the ceremony of sight-seeing is to go along a scaffolding, suspended against the face of the rock, to the place where the water gushes out of the mountain piping hot. Desirous to perform my duty on all occasions, as far as I am able, I proceeded about half way, and fully convincing my- self that I should return quite wet from the dripping of the rock ; finding, besides, the plank so narrow and slippery, and the torrent below so very furious, that a fall (not very unlikely to happen) would leave no hopes of salvation, and the scene appearing al- together frightful, I thought to myself, that a con- fession of prudence might do full as well in a jour- nal as a confession cf rashness, being, at any rate, much more original ; therefore, after several awful pauses, I stopped at last near a projection of the rock, overhanging the trembling board which stands insulated from the side, and where the rash adven- LAKE >(r.NF,UV. 14;", tnrcY finds himself mucli in the situation of a rope- dancer, without even the assistance of his })ole, and liere intimated to the guide that I should proceed no farther. This sort of cavern is formed by the loose rocks already mentioned, piled up above, be- tween the perpendicular side of the cleft ; it is about two hundred feet high, and perfectly dark, except from a small opening at the top, through which a single ray of light falling on those who pass under it in their progress to and from the spring, gives them, to the curious eye looking on from a safe distance, the air of shades wandering on the precincts of the infernal regions. The water has scarcely any taste, a bottle of it con- tains, as Mr. Ebel says, 1 grain selenite, 9-1 G"' gr. sulphate of soda, 5-8'^ gr. sulphate of magnesia, 3-8"' gr. calcareous earth, 5.8"' gr. calcareous nitrate of potash. It is principally good for debility of stomach, rheumatisms, (^x. Provisions and other necessaries arc brought to within six hundred and sixty-four feet perpendicular above the house, and then let down by ropes ; the cases containing bottles of the water, which are sent all over Europe, are hoisted u{) the same way. From this great depth the mountain rises at once to a h(Mght where the snow never melts entirely in Vol.. 1. L 146 TTIF. TAMINA. summer ; there are summits of five thousand and six thousand feet all in sight, one even of nine thousand two hundred feet. We dined and spent an evening and a night at this strange place ; the company was very small, it being yet early in the season : one lady from Italy and two from Appen- zel, an Englishman, a Capuchin, and two Benedic- tines ; none of the attendants understood any thing but German. The house is built like a convent, with long galleries and immensely thick walls. The mode of life is original, like the place : the dinner bell rang at eleven in the morning, and the supper was announced at seven. The principal dish on table, and a very good one, was wholly made of the blood of chamois, which, strange as it may seem, looked and tasted a good deal like spinage ; the feet of chamois was another, and there were no vegetables. Although the torrent of the Tamina never could have formed of itself the whole of its gigantic bed, yet, that it has worn it down many feet, ap- pears from the many large holes, and even caverns of great size, hollowed out of the calcareous rock, a little above the present level of the water, on each side, by the violent eddies of tlie current. One of them, which I did not see, is twenty- UAdATZ. 147 eiG;ht feet in depth, thirty-five feet wide, and twenty-four feet hif:^h*. This Tamina is a furious torrent, which in its short course collects and carries to the Rhine an incredible quantity of water and of stones. Fifty-five years ago, during one of its most memorable inundations, the village of Ragatz was nearly buried under a mass of rubbish, not yet entirely removed. During the last war, this same village, scarcely recovered from the effects of the first calamity, experienced an- other — a military inundation, of which to convey some idea, it is enough to say, that the physician of the place, a Dr. Hager, had seven thousand foreign soldiers successively quartered upon him, during the years 1799 and 1800; ten men, upon an average, daily entering his house. At last, the wooden bridge over the river having been set on fire by the French, as a measure of defence, the flames communicated to the village, which was reduced to ashes, and the inhabitants at once re- lieved of their guests, by this means. July 1, 2. — Returned to occupy our comfortable quarters at the Stag ; we embarked again this * Mr. Kbel slaus, that gigantic human bones havr bci'u rc- pratctlly found in that part of the valley of (ilaris the neare>t to this place. Tin' men of the valley of Tavestch, which i^, also very near, are even at this day above the ordinary -tature. I. '2 148 HKMOVAL OF PAIPEIIS. morning at Wallenstadt, favoured with a lowering sky and mist, which spread over the oceanic land- scape of the lake a suitable tinge of inky blue ; a few rays of the sun piercing through the clouds, played here and there on the tender green of the mountain pastures, and brought to view peaceful chalets and villages among hanging woods and precipices. At last, the clouds poured down their deluge, from which we sought shelter under the crazy top of our carriage. It washed down the vapours and cleared the air, but without improving the landscape, for a cold grey atmosphere, a dis- tinct clear light without shadows constitute its most unfavourable state to a picturesque eye. We were amused, however, on discovering hun- dreds of white goats, till then unpcrceived, ad- hering like flies apparently against the perpen- dicular face of the rock ; some of them putting us in mind of Gray's deer, which " danced, and scratched an ear with its hind foot," in a place where I could not have stood stock still, " For all beneath the moon." Amidst these noble scenes of nature, one of a different sort came unluckily to obtrude itself on our sight: Crabbe might have tliought it not unwelcome. A Swiss gend'arme conducting, in a boat, half a dozen paupers, from a parish where VALI,i:V OF GLAHIS. 149 they had been found loitering, to the one to which they lei2:ally befonged. One of them was an old shepherd, with a venerable length of grey beard, a mountain stick in his hand, and scarcely clothed. Another was a woman with young children. The gend'arme speaking of his charge, called them lazzaroni. This is melancholy in such a country ; and yet it would be difficult to point out any mode of public assistance not leading to such incon- veniences ; there is no knowing where to stop when once attempted. After landing at Wesen, we left the valley of the Linth, by which we had arrived the first time, to the right, and crossing the river, entered the valley of Glaris on our left. Some idea may be formed of the Helvetic geography, by comparing the c(juntry to a large town, of which the valleys are the streets and the mountains groups of contiguous houses. Four or five considerable rivers, the Rhone and the Rhine, the Aar, the Reuss, and the Limmat, mark the princi})al a\enues and fashionable residences, where wealthy and polite people live ; side valleys, short and parallel with each other, opening into these main avenues, are the bye streets or alleys, not thoroughfares, and yet communicating with each other by winding and dark })assages among the houses. As we 150 GLAUIS. judge better of a town by walking the principal streets, than by entering houses and ascending to the garrets, thus we see Switzerland to more ad- vantage by travelling through its valleys, than by taking the trouble to ascend many of its moun- tains, which in general afford prospects singularly confined. Three hours' ride, by an excellent road per- fectly level, and through a luxuriant country hemmed in on either side by ramparts of rock, the most stupendous we had seen, brought us to Glaris. Its narrow crooked streets, its diminutive and antiquated houses with low entrances, heavy doors, and walls painted in fresco ; the silence and quietness which prevailed — the surrounding heights, which seemed almost to overhang the town, altogether suggested to us the idea of a place just dug out of the earth like Pompeii or Herculaneum. We thought, at Bienne, we were entering Switzerland for the first time, but this is more Swiss than any thing we had yet seen ; more different, at least, from any thing you see in other countries. Glaris is so closely invested by moun- tains, that the sun is visible but four hours of a winter's day ; from our room window, at the inn, it is necessary to put your head quite out to see something of the sky. Most of the houses bear AVALANCI1E>. 1.31 tlie (late of their construction ; there arc but icw that are not several hundred years old, some as many as five hundred. The walls of the house just opposite to us, one of considerable size and appearance, and oddly ornamented with fine iron gratings to the windows, evidently of high an- tiquity, are painted in fresco ; the figures are gi- gantic, and represent a knight in complete armour on horseback, engaged in mortal combat with a Turk, who is also mounted; a woman appears at a window looking at them. Various coats of arms also adorn this house, the original owner of which was probably a Crusader. It would seem that Glaris must be liable to avalanches ; yet, though many do in fact fall near it every winter, the town itself has never been endangered. A village in sight was nearly over- whelmed this spring, and the snow is not all melted yet. Within a walk of twenty minutes north of the town is a heap of rocky fragments, half a mile in breadth, and some hundred feel high, which fell from the Glarnish during an earth- quake in 1593. The place whence they fell, at a height of seven or eight thousand feet, is easily discernible, looking like a mere dimple on the face of the mountain, such as one might cover with the end of one's linger ; yet the muss below 152 TSCIIUDI. would be deemed, near Paris or London, a very respectable mountain. The Glarnish rising eight thousand nine hundred feet, which is above the level at which snow melts in summer, is conse- quently covered with a glacier. This place may boast of having given birth to the first and greatest historian of Switzerland (Tschudi) : he died in 1572. The two first volumes of his Chronicle, embracing a period of nearly five centuries, from A.D. 1000 to 1470, was not printed till 1734-36. The sequel, carrying on the history to 1559, vis., four volumes of text and two of supplement, remains still unpublished. Mr. Ebel says there are five copies existing in manuscript. The name of Tschudi occurs very frequently among the magistrates and warriors of Claris, during a space of nine centuries. Few families in Europe are so ancient. The historian himself was Landamman of the Republic. Jul?/ 3. — We took horse very early this morn- ing, rode up to the chaotic heap of rock before described, and skirting round it, ascended the base of Mount Pragel, by the side of a furious torrent, which rushed towards us with a swiftness that almost made us giddy to look at. The fall of rocks from the Glarnish having filled up its origi- nal bed, occasions a sudden bend in its course. MOUNT PHAGEL. 153 which was fatal to many a Russian, on the night of the 8()th of September, 1799, when retreating under Suwarrow, after the battle of the Mouotta- thal*, and coming in crow^ds upon the sudden turn unawares, and in total darkness, they went down, one after another, headlong into the abyss ; their cries, if they uttered any, being lost in the noise of the stream, and affording no warning to those who followed close at their heels. Some pack- horses loaded with money fell down likewise, and pieces of gold and silver used to be picked up occasionally for years after. To the left of us was the Glarnish, risinn; " abrupt and sheer," its towering summit termi- nated by a sharp edge of ice, brighter and of a purer blue than even the sky of this fair summer's day. To the right was the Wigghis, scarcely less high and less abrupt than the Glarnish. The precipitous tracks are pointed out along which some of the adventurous detachments of pursuing French came down upon the Russians, intending to cut off their retreat, instead of which some hundreds of themselves were made prisoners. No avalanches ever come down the Glarnish. it is too abrupt for the requisite accumulations of snow, but they are frequent down the Wigghis: thus, * Cluu). x.wix. \ ul. ]1. 154 DESCENT OF AN AV/VLANCIIE. to use a humble, but very exact, comparison, we sec sheets of snow sliding down the roof of a house in winter, but never down its walls. This very spring a prodigious avalanche came down the precipitous side of the Wigghis, crossed the path we are now treading, and actually went up the opposite side of the Glarnish, that is, up the slope at its base several hundred feet, laying down a whole forest of pines in its descent, and laying up another similar forest in its ascent ; trees, two and three feet in diameter, uprooted, broken or bent to the ground, have not been able to get up again ; a few of the youngest and more slender are making a more successful effort. In about two hours we reached a level spot, the landing-place of the lirst hoor of the mountain, in the middle of which was a very pretty basin of water, the reservoir of our stream : flowery meadows, now just mowing down, and pastures of the freshest green, surround tliis beautiful water. We thought we might have roilc round in a few minutes, and our surprise was very great when we found it would require three hours ; so easily is the eye deceived among these gigantic forms, which reduce the apparent dimensions of lesser objects. On the south side of this lake, towards the base of the mountain, on the face ol" a large fragment of rock, some friends of Gessner NATIVES OF CLARIS. 155 have inscribed a lew German lines commemoratinii- the poet, who was fond of the spot, and used to come from Zurich, in the summer season, to spend some wrecks in one of the chalets of the neigh- bourhood. • The population of Glaris recruits the armies, counting-houses, and work-shops of all Europe ; but most of those who meet W'ith success in their respective callings, return to end their life where it began. Like the people of Appenzel and St. Gall, those of Glaris have much increased their wealth and numbers, during the last sixty ov eighty years, by the manufacture of calicoes and muslins, and, like them, are now beginning to feel the small avail of their fictitious opulence, and the embarrassment of having more mouths to feed than bread to put into them. Yet beggars are not so numerous here as in Appenzel, or even at St. Gall ; and a glance at the respective statistical tables will suggest the reason, ?'. c, an excess of population beyond the means of support*. .Si|iiaie Leagues. Soul*. To a Square l.ea;^iie. * Claris . . . 30 . . lf;,000 . . 600 St. Gall . .100 . . 130,000 . . 1,300 Appcnzal . . '20 . . 55,000 . . 2,750 The population of Fi-ancc i^i (.'stimatcd at 1,100 suuls to cacli !>([uai'i' league, but the proportion ot' productive lanil is much irreater there than in Switzerland. 156 THE LINX'H. The Linth, a furious stream, traverses the vale of Glaris, and the fearful bridge over it was, in October, 1799, the scene of several obstinaite combats between Suwarrow and General Molitor, who, with inferior forces, succeeded in stopping the Russians at the outlet of the valley of Glaris, as Soult and Mortier had done, two days before, at the outlet of the Mouottathal*. Soon after pass- ing it, I was induced, by the singular appearance of the mountain on the left, (the Wigghis,) to take a hasty sketch of its strata. I have taken many such in other places, as extraordinary, perhaps, but this will suffice to give, and much more effectually than any written description, an idea of the incon- ceivable revolutions that the surface of our earth must have experienced. The calcareous strata of the Wigghis, parallel to each other and nearly horizontal, have been * General jNlolitor, who opposed Suwarrow so successl'ully, had, two days before, cleared the \aUey of (Maris of several corps of Austrians, which had come there in concert with the llussian Cieaeral, and displayed on the occasion as much inlre[)idity. RAPPERSCHWYL. 157 broken throug;h and carried away at A B C. The prodigious gap cannot well be less than three thousand feet in depth. The same strata con- tinue at D E F, bent into the saddle shape, with- out breaks any where, which supposes a flexibility totally different from the present hard state of the rock. The valley of Glaris has ever been subject to earthquakes, as the basin of the lake of Wal- lenstadt. They are felt along a narrow tract of country, which Mr. Ebel considers as gyp- seous, and which abounds in sulphureous springs. As I mentioned before, there have been one hun- dred and twenty earthquakes recorded in the two last centuries. July 4. — Rapperschw^yl, where we slept, is a small walled town ; its antiquated and crazy for- tifications look very well from the outside, but the buildings cooped up within them, equally anti- quated, are not alike picturesque. This is, how- ever, a premature old age, as the town was burnt to the ground by the usurper Rodolph Brun*, four hundred and sixty-seven years ago only, the pre- sent erection must be of a subsequent date. All artists and lovers of the picturesque must ever regret high towers and embattled walls, and * See Chan. xi. \"ol. H. 158 LAKE OF ZURICH. if, as is asserted, none of the modern engineering, close cropped and half hid under ground, which you must be upon to see, and which no picturesque eye will for a moment bear to look at, can resist more than a given number of days, while the old- fashioned walls, impregnable in Homer's time, remained so for two thousand years after the siege of Troy, it seems a great pity that they should have been discarded to so little purpose. The scenery of the lake of Zurich is wholly different from what we have been accustomed to for some days past, particularly upon the lake of Wallenstadt, its twin brother. Having turned our backs on the Alps, the only mountain in sight was the Albis, on the other side of the lake, so green, so smooth and inhabited, that although twelve or fifteen hundred feet in height, it seemed only a gentle knoll. Our side of the lake appeared very fertile, and thickly inhabited by small proprietors, whose farms, cultivated like a garden, are laid out in patches of all sorts of crops. The people were busy making hay, hoeing potatoes and maize, and carrying in wooden vessels on their shoulders that liquid manure already described, forming a valua- ble, but most offensive, ingredient in their rural economy. The road was excellent, but passed, oddly enough, now and then through a house, and MANNERS OF TIIF. PEOPLE. l,->9 in some place? was shaded by vines trained from side to side like an arbour. Across the glassy lake the view extended to innumerable habitations among groves of trees on its lofty banks. Being overtaken by a violent storm of thunder and light- ning, we sought shelter in the house of one of the inhabitants of the poorest class. Scythes, rakes, and other implements of agriculture, hung round the naked wall of a large room ; a loom stood near the window, on which some of the women had been at work on a piece of silk ; but in the fright occasioned by several loud claps of thunder, the shuttle was abandoned, and the whole family, skulking about in great perturbation, bestowed little attention on the sudden appearance of strangers. We happened to travel for some time behind the mail-carriage from Glaris to Zurich, which gave us an o):)portunity of observing the composed and phlegmatic manners of the country ; for it stopped every five minutes, in a road too narrow for our own creeping vehicle to pass by it, and as people came out with letters or parcels, a conversation never failed to commence between them and the driver of the mail or his passengers, while extinguished pipes were lighted again, or replenished. A Swiss or German pipe is a jHjrtly article, not made of vulgar clav. but of hi^li- 100 MODE OF TRAVELLING, wrought and embossed silver, tipped with horn ; it is a thing that waves gracefully from the mouth, down upon the breast and up again, in Hogarth's line of beauty. The mode of travelling in this country is just that of Horace and other gentle- men of antiquity, whose day's journey rarely ex- ceeded fifteen or twenty miles. Juli/ 5. — It has rained all day, and excepting for a few minutes that we ventured out to a beau- tiful walk planted with lime-trees and affording an extensive prospect, we have passed a good deal of our time at the window of our apartment at the Epee, in full view and hearing of the blue waves of the Limmat, rushing by even under us with the noise of a fast-sailing vessel at sea. There is a bridge also before this house, full fifty or sixty feet wide, serving as a market-place, where we have an opportunity of seeing all classes of people, in their various employments and dresses. The beauty of the fair sex, and that of the draught horses, divide our attention ; the latter would most of them do credit to the best appointed equipage ; they are full-tailed, very neatly har- nessed, with English collars, to country waggons, the leaders a great way before the pole. We are told that these teams work ten hours a day ; and it is enough to see them to be certain that farming (ji:rman music. 161 is carried on on a larger scale than fell under our notice yesterday. A summons to the table cVlwtc suspended the course of our observations, or rather changed their object. Among the strangers, with whom we sat down at dinner, the most conspicuous were an English company of seven persons, travelling en famille, who, from the colour of the servants, and the stately dulness of the masters, we Judged to be nabobs. A German making love to his young wife tbrmed, by the ingenuous \'ulgarity of his manners and complete unconsciousness of ridicule, a good contrast with the immovable stiffness and reserve of his next neighbours : we were nearly tired of our company, when the folding doors of an adjoin- ing room were thrown open, and a glorious harmony of two clarionets, two tlutes, two bassoons, and a French horn struck up at once. The Germans are indeed adepts in the magic of sounds ; there is a breathing soul in their instruments as well as in their voices, unlike any thing of the kind any where else. I think music, even when it is not Germ.an, is an excellent auxiliary to most dinners : as Prince Eugene is made to say in his memoirs, Ctla vuu^ ti'ite la peine de purler. We were shewn the spot where Lavater was mortally wounded, in the street, a few steps from \'()L. I. M ]o2 ASSASSINATION OF LAVATER. his own door, while endeavouring to rescue one of his friends, mal -treated by some soldiers. Massena, aware of the very deep impression this treatment of a man so highly respected would produce, caused the strictest search to be made after the perpetrator of the deed, and would not have spared him if he had been discovered; but he remained unknown, except to Lavater himself and his family, who for- bore informing against him. The stone over the grave simply bears his name, without any mention of the manner of his death or even a date. The rapacity of Massena's predecessor having already placed the public treasury out of his reach, left him no opportunity of tarnishing the fame of his military achievements at Zurich. Here, as well as every where else in Switzerland, the complaints we hear against the French apply to the civil and military authorities, more than to the soldiers, who, raised by conscription, were a better sort of men than are usually brought together by military enlistments. The people of Switzerland yielded but a doubtful acquiescence to a revolution forced upon them by a foreign army, and the counter-revolution was there- fore eflected with little difficulty, when Buonaparte's policy inclined to the restoration of the old forms of government in Switzerland. " Ow peasants, ,"" I liear tlv^ SAvl'ii; -av, " 'irc- (cd iikc u forJr of s-heo) :" PRISON ON THF LAKE OF ZURICH. If.?, a rare disposition in this age, but scarcely to be re- gretted here, considering the total ignorance in which this people appear to be of the commonest principles of civil liberty. A creditable citizen of Zurich, pointing to the insulated tower in the lake, told us that it was a prison for criminals, and added, that when a man was sent there, it was all over with him — son affaire est bdntot faite. " It is, then," I observed, '' the prison of condemned criminals .'" " No," he replied. " but it is the prison of those to be condemned !'' " But how, pray, is that known before trial ?" " Oh ! on sait bien ca ! — c'est qu'on ne badine pas ici,foijez foil.'' As he said this, my informant, helping his bad French with a most in- telligible sign, drew the edge of his hard hand across his neck. In his idea, the Zurich judges only gave, by this anticipation of trial, a proof of their ability and zeal : and as the criminal's con- fession of his guilt is, in their opinion of justice, or of mercy even, absolutely necessary to complete the evidence, the culprit is stimulated by the applica- tion of a cow-skin, to pronounce his own condemna- tion. Having bestowed on this judicial proceeding the name of torture, my Zurich friend undeceived me, by observing, that torture came from tordre (to twist or distort the limbs,) a thing totally different 164 rOETS OF ZURICH, from their practice : the torture, or rack, he admitted^ was used at Soleure, but not the least at Zurich. This town very early enjoyed a high literary re- putation, and in an age of profound darkness — ^the tenth century — was called learned. The thirteenth century gave birth to a multitude of poets. Roger Manesse, the Mecsenas of those times (he died in 1304) noticed one hundred and forty of them. Several eminent theologians appeared at the Refor- mation; and, in modern times, the names of Gessner, Lavater, and Zimmerman, have acquired celebrity throughout Europe. Mani/ an honest Sioiss, Voltaire used to say, has hem cheated of his fame, by the uncoiithness of his name ! He probably meant in his own country, for elsewhere so frivolous an objection did not invalidate a good title to literary fame. There are now at Zurich several men of great acquirements in the sciences, and several eminent artists. A multitude of public establishments tes- tify the humanity and public spirit of its citizens ; among others, a saving bank, established earlier, probably, than any other (1805) ; a good school for the education of the blind, who are taught to read and write by means of sharp types denting or tear- ing the paper ; and another, for the deaf and dumb ; ROAD OVER THE ALBIS. 165 finally, there are no beggars in the canton, although its very numerous population, in a considerable de- gree fostered by manufactures, amounts to eighteen hundred souls on a square league. There is here a delightful public walk, but the private garden of whicii we had a glimpse, highly carved in charmillc, recalls to mind what Madame de Stael said of German conversation, that the anec- dotes of the court of Louis XIV. are still the news of the day. The Gout dcs Jardins in Switzerland is likewise full a hundred years behind hand. Jiibj (). — Zurich to Zug, five leagues, in seven hours ; then by the lake of Zug to Arth, three leagues, in two miles and a half. Our road lay first over the Albis, a rich, although mountainous, district, affording very beautiful views, with old castles in commanding situations. These strong- holds of Austrian bailiffs, now in ruins, still occa- sionally shelter some forlorn inhabitant : to a tyrant of the fourteenth century succeeds a wea\er of the nineteenth ! I entered into conversation with our landlady at Zug, respecting the late wars. This, the smallest of the cantons, containing only twelve thousand live hundred souls, had, lor nearly three years, eleven thousand men quartered u})on it. The good woman gave us a lamentable account of tlu^ wanton destruction of all her crockerv-\varc. vel 166 ANTIQUITY OF ZUG. without showing resentment, and mentioned, even with expressions of great regret, the fate of an officer killed at Underwalden, who had been some time an inmate of her family, and to whom they had become attached. The Swiss in general speak of those times with surprising temper, much as of an earthquake, or the fall of a mountain, a severe dispensation of providence, in which man was only a secondary agent. The boat which conveyed us and our carriage from Zug to Art, cost ten shillings sterling : it was navigated en famille, by two men, a woman, a girl, and a boy. The women had their plaited hair fastened to the top of the head by the large gilt broach of antiquity ; no hat, very short petticoats, and neat shoes and stockings ; red stays, laced with black, and tucked-up shift-sleeves. The little town of Zug boasts its remote antiquity, being one of the twelve destroyed by the Hel- vetians *, when they attempted to emigrate into the Roman provinces, in Caesar's time, and re-built, of course, on their return. Strabo makes some men- tion of it ; and the antiquarian Bochat says, that its name means, in the Celtic language. Near deep waters. The winter of 1435 was so excessively cold, that * Chap. 1. V.'>1. Jl. LAKE OF ZIG. |(i7 the whole course oi" the Rhine froze to the sea. and not only the lake of Zurich was crossed on horse- back and in carriages, but the lake of Constance likewise, although the largest and deepest of any. It is on record, that the magistrates forbad the kill- ing the wild birds, which came into the town for shelter. Early in the spring, when the lake of Zug began to thaw, profound rents under that part of the town nearest to the water alarmed the inhabitants, many of whom tied. On the 4th of March, al night, two streets and a part of the walls of the town suddenly slid into the lake, carrying with them sixty persons, and among others the lirst magistrate of the canton : his infant son, who was found floating in his cradle, lived to a very advanced age, and succeeded to the dignity of his father. One hundred and fifty years after this catastrophe, some few houses again sunk ; but although this lake, the deepest in Switzerland after that of Con- stance, be two hundred fathoms in many places, near Zug it is not now more than twenty or thirty fathoms. Mountains of no great elevation encom- pass the lake of Zug. but towards the south Mount Righi stands an insulated Colossus; its bold and dark outline opposed to the vague and bluish distance. The first sight of Art. when we laniled. rcnewcii 168 FALL OF THE ROSSBEIIG. the impression we had experienced at Bienne and at Glaris, when we seemed again to enter Switzer- land for the first time ; so new and foreign did every thing appear — the people, their dress, their houses, their manners. July 8. — Early yesterday morning we set off for the Righi, which separates the lake of Zug from the lake of Lucerne, and forms a sort of tower of observation, affording the most extensive view of any in Switzerland. In half an hour, we reached the chaos of ruins formed by the fall of the Rossberg. Eleven years ago, five or six villages, containing al- together one hundred and eleven houses, were sud- denly buried, with four hundred and fifty-seven of their inhabitants ; only seventeen were dug out alive : we spoke to a man who assisted in rescuing them. The Rossberg, the cause of this disaster, rose on our left hand towards the north-cast, to the height of three thousand six hundred perpendicular feet above Zug ; the Righi, on our right, towards the south-west, to four thousand five hundred feet : these two mountains are here called, one Sonncn- berg, the other Schaltenbtrg (the sunny mountain and shadi/ mountain), from their res})ective situations in regard to Zug. Leaving for the present this deso- late tract, we began to ascend the Righi, on horse- back for nearly two hours, then on foot for two CHAIN OF THE ALPS. 169 hours more, to a convent of Capuchins, whither pilgrims resort ; we met several upon their return, singing aloud in German. After taking some re- freshment (goats' milk whey and new cheese), we climbed, for an hour and a half more, to the summit of the mountain, a narrow platfomi of smooth turf, called the Righi-Coidm, where a house has lately been erected for the accommodation of tourists, who spend the night there, in order to see the sun rise and set over all Switzerland, and follow their own shadows, projected to a distance of fifty miles. This is an out post of the great body of the Alps ; their inner chain, bright with eternal snows, stretches irregularly, but with scarce any interruptions from the Glarnish, due east, behind Schwitz to the Bernese Oberland in the south- west. The outer chain of the Alps, separating Italy from Switzerland, higher and more frozen still, is almost entirely hidden by the inner chain. The groupe of Oberland Glaciers and the Finster Aar- hom, although not so high by one thousand eiglil hundred feet, intercepting the view of Monte Rosa and the Blumlis Alp, eleven thousand three hun- dred and seventy feet, hiding Mont Blanc itself, which is fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty ieet, but at double the distance. 170 MOUNT III GUI. The northern horizon, from east to west, bounded only by the rounding of the earth, comprehends nearly all the area circumscribed by the Rhine, from the Lake of Constance to Basle, and by the chain of the Jura from Bale to Neuchatel, that is three fourths of Switzerland, with fourteen of its lakes. It is a quarter of an hour before sun-rise, and when the vapours of the night have not yet begun to rise and alter the purity of the atmo- sphere, that the details of this great geographical map are most discernible. There is a crevice on the level top of the Righi, down which if you throw a stone, and then lie Ihit, with your head over the perpendicular side of the mountain, you see the stone come out of an o|)cn- ing a thousand feet below, glance over the snow, which in this northern aspect is still unmelted in July, and taking a second leap, never stops till it reaches the lake, four thousand three hundred and thirty-two perpendicular feet below. Who could suppose that armies should have thought it worth while to contend for the posses- sion of this insulated pillar of a former world .' — yet so it was. The French ascended that part of the Righi on which we were, while the Austriaiis climbed another summit, separated from it by the deep ravine in which the Capuchin's convent is FIELD OF BATTLE. 171 situated, firing at each otlier, for a day or two, very harmlessly, as there could not be less than twelve or fifteen hundred yards between them. A panoramic view of three hundred miles in cir- cumference, at least, displayed itself before the astonished spectator, by just turning round on the summit of the Righi : this space includes a greater number of memorable fields of battle than pro- bably the same space in any other part of the world ; it was ravaged by incessant wars in the Iburtecnth and fifteenth centuries, and after a peace of three hundred years became again, and ail at once, the seat of the most active wariare between all the belligerent powers of Europe. The French entered first in March, 171)8, the Aus- trians in May, 1799, the Russians soon after, and finally the Prussians. Our guide, an old soldier, hav- ing, of course, no objection to fight his battles over again, gave us a long talk about former and recent wars, to which we listened with great interest. I wrote it down immediately after, nearly in his own words. " You see this lake immediately under us," he said, throwing a stone which went bound- ing down, I know not where, possibly to the very Lake of Zug ; " in ancient times there was a wall across the defile, between the lake and the moun- tain, and the same on the other side u( the lake to 172 MILITARY OPERATIONS. the Mossberg; our Canton was thus safe under lock and key, it is now no longer so ; there it was that the French endeavoured to penetrate on the 2d of May, 1798, but our marksmen, stationed among the rocks and precipices on their flanks, took aim as at a herd of chamois ; every shot told, and most of their officers being killed or wounded, they were obliged to retire. Another attack was made at the same time on Morgarten, near the lake which you see in front of us, partly hidden by the Mossberg ; it was there also we fought, a great while ago (1315) our first great battle against Austria, in which one thousand three hundred of our people, commanded by Rodolph Reding, de- feated twenty thousand enemies *. It was a Red- ing also, who commanded us in 1798 ; during four successive days the enemy had been repulsed every where, even at the point of the bayonet ; they had buried three thousand of their men, and we not five hundred ; but a few more such victories and we were annihilated, having only four thousand men able to bear arms. Several positions were occu- pied by our women only, who made fascines, and dragged cannon, night and day, over the moun- tains. At last we found it necessary to listen to the terms held out, and to submit, for the present, * Chap. .N. V'ol. II. MOINT PILATUS. 173 to the new government imposed on us, rather than come to such extremities as those poor people on the other side," turning round and pointing beyond the lake of Lucerne. " You see," he continued, " Stantz, in that green valley at the foot of Mount Pilatus, the highest snowy mountain south-west of us ; the spire of the church is just now glittering in the sun ; there is a fine dark wood behind, and the valley, smooth as velvet, winds up between the mountains as far as Sarnersea ; that beautiful little lake as blue as the skies, so shady and green all round." I saw the speck, and could not believe it was a lake ; yet he assured us it was two hours long and near one hour wide. " These high moun- tains on the left, whose snows look like white wreaths thrown over their dark blue sides from one summit to another, are the Surren* Alps, which surround the Underwald with an almost inaccessible rampart. They form a striking contrast whh the comparatively gentle and smooth irregularities, * In 1786", a bold a(l\i'iUurcr, with wn guides, bculi'd the 'I'illis, one of the highest summits of the cliain of the Si/rrcn -///'v, where he found the iee one hundred and sc\i>nty-li\\' fiet thick, and from whence he could see the second line of the Alps, on the confines (jf Italy, scarcely a few summits of which are visible fiom the Rigid. Towards the north, his view extended over all l>\\ itzeriand, into Germany, and followed the course ol the Rhine bevond Strasburiz, 174 NICHOLAS DE FLUE. which diversify the intermediate landscape. In a glen of the Melchthal, three leagues behind Stantz, the lowly cell is still shown where Nicholas de Flue, the pacificator and legislator of his country, lived a hermit in the fifteenth century =*, " Twenty years ago, the innocent, harmless people of Underwald, rich and happy in their ob- scurity, were all at once invaded by a foreign army, for the avowed purpose of imposing on them that new government, to which we had submitted four months before. The French first endeavoured to starve them into compliance by cutting ofi^ their supplies, but this mode was too slow for their im- patience. On the ,3d of September, 1798, General Schawenberg, their commander, directed a general attack to be made, by means of boats, from Lucerne, as well as by the Oberland. Repulsed with great spirit by the inhabitants, only two thousand strong, the attack was renewed every day from the ,3d to the 9th of September. On this last day, towards two in the afternoon, new reinforcements having penetrated by the land side with field-pieces, the invaders forced their way into the very heart of the country. In their despair the people rushed on them with very inferior arms ; whole families pe- rished together ; no quarter was given on either ' Cha)j. x\iii- Vol. U. M.VSSAC.RF RY THE FRF.NCIl. 175 side. Eighteen young women were found among the dead, side by side, with their Axthers and bro- thers, near the chapel of Winkelreid. Sixty-three persons, who had taken sheker in the church of Stantz, were slaughtered there, with the priest at the altar. Every house in the open country, in all six hundred, was burnt down ; Stantz itself ex- cepted, which was saved by the humanity of a Chef de Brigade. The inhabitants who survived this day, wandering in the mountains without the means of subsistence, would have diod during the ensuing winter, if they had not received timely assistance from the other cantons, from Germany and England, and from the French army itself, after its first fury was abated. The enemy knew very well, that if the attack of the 9th of September had not suc- ceeded, the people of Zug were ready, with the wliole country, to rise again ; and they punished us f )r the intention, by the occupation of our town of Art, where they remained to the end of the year. On the 10th of October, we were called upon to deliver up the warlike trophies of former times, pre- served in many private families, although won by our ancestors, in the defence of liberty, against those very Austrians with whom the French were at war ! Our expostulations and jiraycrs were all in Miiii : <\v()rds and banncMN. iialbcrts and shiekls. 176 SUWARROW AND MASSENA. were thrown into a fire, lighted for the purpose, on the public square of Art, and the iron which re- mained was sunk in the lake. The day after this wanton insult, another was added, by the erection of a pole and cap of liberty on the still warm ashes. An insurrection, which broke out in April following, served only to render our situation worse. " See there," the guide continued, pointing east, " these two spiral heights, each a naked insulated rock, with white clouds gathering on one side, like a fantastic crest of feathers : they are Kleine Mythc and Grosse Mi/ the, so called, because from a certain position they have together the form of a huge mitre over the head of Schwitz, which you see belov/ with the lake of Lowertz before it. More to the right, observe a narrow gorge between high moun- tains, with a torrent issuing out of it : that is the entrance of the Mouottathal, or Valley of the Mouotta, where Suwarrow, with an army of twenty-five thou- sand Russians, coming from Italy by the St. Gothard, appeared, the 29th September, 1799, on his way to Massena's position on the Albis, intending to sur- prise that General, who, he knew, had been there a long while watching another Russian army, under Korsakau, in possession of Zurich. But Massena, well apprized of his approach, had already attacked and defeated the other Russian army, and detached RATTLE OF THE KIENTZIGKOULM. 17"/ the divisions of Soult and Morticr to meet Suwarrow on hi.s way. They met at the entrance of the Mouotlathal*, and a desperate engagement ensued. Many French and Russian soldiers fell together into the Mouotta from the bridge, which a projecting point hides from our sight. This bridge was taken and re-taken manv times ; the minss the friction, wliich cannot well be estimated, and was much less for the upper than the lower strata in motion. We may fairly suppose that the upper strata of the falling rocks struck the soil of the valley in about half a minute after they began to fall. FALL OF THE ROSSBERG. 181 bitants have at least the certainty of saving their lives, if not their property. I shall here give some of the most authentic and interesting circumstances of the fall of the Ross- berg, taken from the narrative published at the time by Dr. Zay, of Art, an eye-witness. The summer of 18()G had been very rainy, and on the 1st and 2d of September it rained incessantly. New crevices were observed in the flank of the mountain, a sort of cracking noise was heard internally, stones started out of the ground, detached fragments of rocks roiled down the mountain ; at two oclock in the afternoon on the 2d of September, a large rock became loose, and in falling raised a cloud of black dust. Toward the lower part of the mountain, the ground seemed pressed down from above, and when a stick or a spade was driven in, it moved of itself A man, who had been digging in his garden, ran away from fright at these extraordinary appear- ances ; soon a fissure, larger than all the others, was observed, insensibly it increased : springs of water ceased all at once to flow, the pine-trees of the forest absolutely reeled ; birds flew away screaming. A few minutes before five o'clock, the symptoms of some mighty catastrophe became still stronger ; the whole surface of the mountain seemed to glide down, but so slowly, as to afford time to the inha- 182 FALL OF THE UOSSRERG. bitants to go away. An old man, who had often predicted some such disaster, was quietly smoking his pipe, when told by a young man, running by, that the mountain was in the act of falling ; he rose and looked out, but came in to his house again, saying he had time to fill another pipe. The young man, continuing to fly, was thrown down several times, and escaped with difficulty ; looking back, he saw the house carried off all at once. Another inhabitant, being alarmed, took two of his children and ran away with them, calling to his wife to follow with the third ; but she went in for another, who still remained (Marianne, aged five) ; just then Francisca Ulrich, their servant, was cross- ing the room, with this Marianne, whom she held by the hand, and saw her mistress ; at that instant, as Francisca afterwards said, " the house appeared to be torn from its foundation (it was of wood), and spun round and round like a tetotum ; I was some- times on my head, sometimes on my feet, in total darkness, and violently separated from the child" — when the motion stopped, she found herself jammed in on all sides, with her head downwards, much bruised, and in extreme pain. She supposed she was buried alive at a great depth ; with much dif- ficulty she disengaged her right hand, and wiped the blood from her eyes Presently she heard the faint PALL OF THE ROSSRERG. 183 moans of Marianne, and called to her by her name ; the child answered that she was on her back among stones and bushes, which held her fast, but that her hands were free, and that she saw the light, and even something green ; she asked whether people would not soon come to take them out ; Francisca answered that it was the day of judgment, and that no one was left to help them, but that they would be released by death, and be happy in heaven ; they prayed together ; at last Francisca's ear was struck by the sound of a bell, which she knew to be that of Stenenberg ; then seven o'clock struck in another village, and she began to hope there were still living beings, and endeavoured to comfort the child ; the poor little girl was at first clamorous for her supper, but her cries soon became fainter, and at last quite died away. Francisca, still with her head down- wards, and surrounded with damp earth, experienced a sense of cold in her feet almost insupportable ; after prodigious efforts, she succeeded in disengaging her legs, and thinks this saved her life. Many hours had passed in this situation, when she again heard the voice of Marianne, who had been asleep, and now renewed her lamentations. In the mean time the unfortunate father, who, with much difficulty, had saved himself and two children, wandered about till davlitA'ht, when he came ajuung the ruins to look 184 FALL OF TIIK 110SS15EUG. for the rest of his family ; he soon discovered his wife, by a foot which appeared above ground ; she was dead with a child in her arms — his cries, and the noise he made in digging, were heard by Mari- anne, who called out. She was extricated with a broken thigh, and saying that Francisca was not far off, a farther search led to her release also, but in such a state, that her life was despaired of; she was blind for some days, and remained subject to con- vulsive fits of terror. It appeared that the house, or themselves at least, had been carried down about one thousand five hundred feet from where it stood before. In another place a child two years old was found unhurt, lying on its straw mattress upon the mud, without any vestige of the house from which he had been separated. Such a mass of earth and stones rushed at once into the lake of Lowertz, although five miles distant, that one end of it was filled up, and a prodigious wave passing completely over the island of Schwanau, seventy feet above the usual level of the water, overwhelmed the opposite shore, and as it returned swept away into the lake many houses with their inhabitants. The chapel of Olten, built of wood, was found half a league from the place it had previously occupied, and many large blocks of stone completely changed their position. MOUNT PILATE. 185 The day gave promise of a glorious sun-set, to be succeeded, in a very few hours, by as glorious a sun- rise : we had determined to spend the night upon the mountain, in order to enjoy both, and to see the shades of evening pervade the grey world below, while we should bathe in floods of golden light ; but we are destined to contemplate a totally different, though not less splendid, scene. Towards evening the clouds began to gather above the head of Mount Pilate, famous for the dismal lake * upon its sum- mit. When the cloud, which is very apt to form over that dark unfathomed pool, instead of rising, remains attached to the surrounding rocks, a violent storm generally follows. In remote ages this water bore the name of Mare Infeniale. The belief was, that Pontius Pilatus -}- had dro^\Tied himself there, after his crime, (thence the present name of the mountain,) and the approach of a stranger being * Mount Pihite is nearly !-cvcn thousand feet high; the calca- reous rocti.s of which it is coni])osed abound in remains ot' fish, shells, and madrepore, and shew two ])etritied trunl.:!^. :. : any trace- oi" h;-nii:; Le;::^? ^vc;•v. a-. :; wdl ki^-Avn. K'^:: louau : a c;rcuras;anct :i:e "ore ren^-irK^b't;. a; \ve:e :hv v:e- lOii" v.. "iQ to U(_- .■ie^t^ :'\ 6U. inc caar.'itv or nurkiar. ^v^."lu:^.:^ '.^ouU 50 r-iUCTi !.xcn:u a:",v O''r.o:> ; ar...; r..i; crcura^ta:.!., tc^.-^ ^ r.^a- larly :o roconcilv ra^:M:5a:c -.v;::; ;;.^ ~c;r:;;.:;>: ^^ i._y. :!.c:v- veai-\: ^v;::l -h^ :;.::a:o;. ,.ccou[-i: • t.:av 192 FALL OF THE ROSSRERG. to the most distinguished families there, arrived at Art on the 2d of September, and set off on foot for the Righi, a few minutes before the catas- trophe ; seven of them had got about two hundred yards ahead, the other four saw them entering the village of Goldau, and one of the latter, Mr. R. Jenner, pointing out to the rest the summit of the Rossberg, (full four miles off in a straight line,) where some strange commotion seemed taking place, which they themselves (the four behind) were observing with a telescope, and had entered into conversation on the subject with some stran- gers just come up ; when, all at once, a flight of stones, like cannon-balls, traversed the air above their heads, a cloud of dust obscured the valley ; a frightful noise was heard ; they fled ! As soon as the obscurity was so far dissipated as to make objects discernible, they sought their friends, but the village of Goldau had disappeared under a heap of stones and rubbish one hundred feet in height, and the whole valley presented nothing but a perfect chaos ! Of the unfortunate survivors one lost a wife to whom he was just married, one a son, a third the two pupils under his care ; all researches to discover their remains were, and have ever since been, fruitless. Nothing is left of Goldau but the bell which hung in its steeple, and l.AKC OK LOWERTZ. 193 which was found about a mile off. With the rocks torrents of mud came down, acting as rollers ; but they took a different direction when in the valley, the mud following the slope of the ground towards the lake of Lowertz, while the rocks, preserving a straight course, glanced across the valley towards the Righi. The rocks above, moving much faster than those near the ground, went farther, and ascended even a great way up the Righi ; its base is covered with large blocks carried to an incredi- ble height, and by v.'hich trees were mowed down, as they might have been by cannon. A few straggling cottages, timid attempts towards a restoration of the desolated country to something like fruitfulness, appear here and there ; beggarly children in ill health, for the place is become sickly from stagnant water, came running to us for a few batz — the sad remains of a wealthy po- pulation, remarkable for personal comeliness as well as for morality. A vast extent of flat shore without vegetation marks the encroachment on the lake of Lowertz ; not a blade of grass seems to grow upon the sterile surface. The road along the south side of this lake passes pic- turesquely, but rather fearfully, along a narrow causeway overhung by a high cliff; beyond this we travelled over the rich vale of Schwytz, an Vol. I. o 194 LAKE OF WAI.DSTETTKN. image of what the one we had just left was a few years ago. Schwytz, which we only traversed in our way to Brunnen, is neatly built and delight- fully situated. It is generally supposed that the patriotism of its inliabitants made the name pre- vail in the Helvetic League ; but this name became collective in the sixteenth, and not in the four- teenth, century, at a period of civil wars, not at that which secured Helvetic independence. In the guilty times of national discord, not of union, Schwytz, therefore, has less cause for boasting. At Brunnen we. went, in a small row-boat, up the southern branch of the lake of the Waldstetten, a sort of deep bay or gulf penetrating into the canton of Uri. The beauty of its scenery exceeds even that of the lake of Wallenstadt, and every part of it is classical ground. Soon after passing the magnificent entrance, through a lofty portal of moun- tains, marked by an insulated rock on the right, rising like a pillar out of the water, we landed on the same side as the Grutli The spot is marked by a triple fountain, where the (»ur>[)iraiors, whom I shall call patriots, beca.use their cause was just, because it was successful, and because tliey shed no blood, held tlieir nightly meetings fi\ e hundred years ago*. A peasant brought us an ancient cup, * (liap. xix. Vol. II. Wll.I.lAM I'EIA. to drink out of at tlie sacred spring, and made a speech, unintelligible to us, but to which some other peasants, who had landed at the same time as ourselves, listened with great attention. This liistorian of the Stauffachers, of the Ernis of Melch- thai, and of the Walter Furtz, received gratefully a few batz in his cap for his performance. Farther on, on the opposite shore, at the foot of the Ach- senberg, about the distance of two hours from Grutli, is the rock (Tellensprung) on which William Tell leaped on shore, from the boat in which Gess- ler was carrying him away a prisoner. Eighty-one years after the event, and thirty-one after the death of the hero, a chapel was constructed on this rock : one hundred and fourteen individuals, who had known him personally, were then living. William Tell fought at Morgarten in 1315, and was drowned in Ki.'iS, at a very advanced age, in attem})ting to rescue a boy who had fallen into the Schechen, a torrent which traverses Burglen. his birth-place, and where he then tilled the station of first magis- trate : it is situated bu^yond Aitor]). and above three hours from Tellensprung : the fiunily was not ex- tinct till the year 1 7'2i). Tlu-re is I know not what of absurd and fabu- lous in the story of Gessler's cap and the apple, which throws a degree of doubt on all that relates 19G ( IIAPEL OF WILLIAM TKLL. to William Tell ; and his name had some how been ranked in my mind, with those of Theseus and Hercules, and of the founders of Rome, to whose reality w^e yield only a sort of hypothetical belief. The lake, the rock, the fountains, the chapel, the story painted on the wall ; the hundred and fourteen persons who had knowm him ; the local tradition in every man's mouth ; — have all at once given a totally different colour and shape to the whole transaction, yet the story of the apple is questioned by the Swiss themselves ; by the critics, at least, in the learned part of the country ; for on the spot, there are no such critics, and doubt would be trea- son. This anecdote will be found elucidated in the historical part of this work. Chap. ix. Observing, wdien on the Tellensprung, that the floor of the chapel, close to the lake, was not more than three feet above its level, we inquired of the boatmen, w^hether the chapel had never received any damage from the tempests, which they describe as so dangerous ; but found that even the floor was rarely wetted by them : a fact w hich may enable us to form an estimate of such temiiests. The Achsenberg, behind Tellensprung, was five thousand three hundred and forty feet above the sea ; but the chain of the Suren Alps, attaining almost every where the height of ten thousand feet. FALL OF A FRAGMENT. 197 presents an interrupted succession of glaciers, easily distinguishable from mere snows, by the azure streaks on their surface : nothing can exceed the wild magnificence of this part of the lake. The boatmen made us observe a whitish mark on the perpendicular face of the Frolm AIpe, about two miles north of the Tellensprung : a piece of the rock having scaled off, fell into the lake in the year 1801. The fragment which has left such a trifling blemish on the fair face of the mountain, was about twelve hundred feet wide ; when it fell, it raised such a wave on the lake as overwhelmed five houses of the village of Sissigen, distant one mile: eleven of the inhabitants were drowned; but a child found iloating asleep in its cradle, is now ali\ o in the village. The swell occasioned several other acci- dents of less consequence, and was felt at Lucerne, thirty miles off! To look at the mark, I should not have supposed that the fall could have occa- sioned more than a rippling along the adjacent shore. The navigation from Althorf to Brunnen takes two or three hours ; but the journey by the mountains requires a whole day: in 1799, the French, under General dc Courbe, performed it in the night by torch-light. The national name of this lake (Vier Waldstatten See) means the Wuter of ihe iour svlvan. or rural. 198 OllIGIXAI, INHAlilTANTs. States. Uri, Schwytz, and Underwald, are the three which first asserted their independence in 1307-8 ; Lucerne was the first which joined their league in lo.'i2. A tradition exists, of the first inhabitants havdng come irom the North-West Frieze, or Denmar/t: ; whence they were driven by famine. They lived long entirely secluded and unknown, in their almost inaccessible fortresses ; and although some of the subsequent northern in- vaders penetrated to the banks of their lake in the fifth century, they did not reduce the people to obedience. The motives which, in after-times, induced the Waldstetten to place themselves under the protection of the German empire, cannot be conjectured ; but an imperial diploma of 809, in the archives of Uri, proves the fact : the Dukes of Austria and Swabia, long their advocates, or repre- sentatives at the Imperial court, assumed, during the anarchy of the empire, the title of Hereditary Protectors, and delegated their powers to bailiffs ; who exercised it so much the more tyrannically, from its being more questionable, and who were finally driven away in 1308*. July 9. — From Brunnen (whither we returned last night) to Lucerne;, twenty-four miles : we per- formed the voyage in six hours in a large boat, with ' CI-aiK IV. Vol. !|. lU-l'LBLlC OF CiF.RSAL. 19'.) our vehicle and horses ; it was rowed by nine men (several of whom might be passengers in disguise), for tliirty French francs (twenty-four shilHngs ster- ling). The lake was perfectly calm, and the prospect lovely ; but not grand hke that of yesterday, al- though ]\iount Pilatus would any whei'e else be; deemed a magnificent feature in the landscape. The Righi on this side is monstrous ; the steep declivity at its base, shehing into the lake, was oriii-inally a mere heay) of rubbish, such as is formed at tlie toot of all mountains ; but four centuries oi" persevering industry have im})roved it into lux- uriant meadows and fields, interspersed with com- Ibrtable dwellings, shaded by wahiut and even tig trees, which ilourish in this sunny ex})osure, shel- tered from the north. This was the territory of the little republic of Gersau, the smallest in Europe. Our boeilmen inf'ormeei us,thcit it rv^quired fi\c; hun- dred and iiity strokes of tlu; oar to pass along thc^ sliore oi'its territory. Aft(U' four centuries c)f inde- j)en(lent sovereignty, acknowledge{i, anti icgiinnalc as any that ever was. it has been annexed, wh.y I do not know, to Schwytz* ; but as no canton can now have subjects, the union must be on the t()oting of '■ It was lilcrally loi-L^ctU'ii al the C<»n-i\'^s of "S icnna, ami iint lH'iii;j; .u'kiU/\vK-ciL:,(,(i by any powrr, iinriinl in the canton <>!" 'JOO DISTRICT OF WEGGHIS. equality. During the whole period of the existence of the republic of Gersau, no instance occurred of an individual punished for any crime. Farther on, upon the same littoral slope of the Righi, the district of Wegghis, formerly a subject 2irovince of the canton of Lucerne (it might in other countries be deemed a good-sized parish), was, twenty-two years ago, nearly all swallowed up by an irruption of mud. I should first say, that this district belonged one thousand years ago, to the Abbey of Pfeffers, by which it was enfeoffed to a noble baron; who sold his right to Lucerne in 1380, at the moment the inhabitants were about redeem- ing themselves by purchase ; and all hopes of obtaining their independence was from that moment extinguished, as republics are not apt to alienate, and still less to give away gratuitously, any of their advantages. Gersau, under similar circum- stances, had the good fortune to obtain her freedom in L390, by purchasing a mortgage granted by her feudal lord to one of his creditors. In those remote times, it seems not to have occurred to any body, that a state might not be exactly an estate. But to return to the mud: in the spring of the year 1 795, longitudinal cracks, or crevices, appeared on the perpendicular front of the Righi. at about one-third of its height (seen from the lake); the place is now DESCENT OF A bTUEAM OF MUD. JUl distinguishable by its reddish colour. Before day, on the 16th of July, the inhabitants were awakened by strange noises, and soon observed a stream of mud, a mile wide, and fifty or sixty feet high, com- ing down upon them; but as it travelled very slowly, they had ample time to take care of their moveables ; like a stream of lava it overtopped and crushed down houses, walls, and every artificial obstacle in its way ; and, flowing during a fortniglit, covered a great part of the country with a bed of fer- ruginous clay, which the long appH/'ation of indus- trious labour, at length begins to render productive. Doubtless this clay, intervening between strata of rock, and soaked by the accidental introduction of springs, was pressed out by the superincumbent weight of two or three tliousand perpendicular feet of mountain, and, as the fall of the Rossberg was also to all appearance determined by this same circumstance {i.e., the softening of tlu^ earthv strata into mud), and as the g(^neral dip of the strata is the same in both mountains, there was great rea- son to fear that the whole top of the Righi might have come down, sliding over its base, as a uktc slice of the Rossberg had done before ; but as this mass would have been, at least, ten times as large as the other, it is frightful to think of the possible consequences of its fall into the lak(^ : the \va,ttM's. '202 FALLa KROM THE MOUNTAINS. driven at one stroke from their bed, would have covered the valleys of the E'our Waldstetten, as- sailed even the highest mountains, and perhaps swept away every living creature from the ancient hold of the Helvetic League. That such a mis- fortune did not happen when appearances seemed so threatening, affords, however, strong reason for hoping that it will never happen in this place at least, the earthy stratum having been entirely squeezed out. In the case of the Rossbeig, the catastrophe was announced, by various signs, years before-hand, and so strongly, for some hours before, as not to be mistaken ; affording ample time for the inhabitants to save their lives. When we were on tlie Rii>;hi Coidm, I observed a hole or crevice on the level top of the moun- tain, and about three hundred yards south of the house where we slept, in the direction of the lake of the Waldstetten, so situated as to absorb most (i" the waters of the melting snows, which then formed a stream into it, penetrating to the very heart of the mountain : nothing is more Hkely to produce the dreadful accident under consideration. It seems obvious that superlicial drains sfiould be made to lead away the waters. It is necessary to observe, that th(^ gr(>ater part of the incUncd strata of the RossbeTg resting, at Tin: uossinnu; and the KUiiii. W3 its lower extremity, on the solid ground of the valley, a very small part of it eould slide down ; whereas the whole strata of the Righi stands in- sulated, and wholly unsupported on the south side, towards the lake of Lucerne, and nothing keeps the strata in their places, but the adhesion of their surfaces. A sketch of the tranverse section, or prohle, of the two mountains, the intervening vaTiey of Goldau, the lake, c^'-c., will render the foregoing account of the catastrophe of Goldau mucli clearer. r. J A, lake ()f Lucerne. 1 ', l;;k(.' of I .in\(.'ilz. A 1) C, the lliiilii ; the straight lines inaik liie caleai'eou^ strata, the dolled lines the jiuddinu-stoiie strata, all dipping in the same manner. K, the llossherg. Vj D(1, fall ol' the upjxu' stratunr of pudilin^-stone into the valU'y of Goldau, down to the lake ol I.owertz, and to the Rii;hi. C, cross on the toj) of lliuhi, and lu)use near it. B A, eru[)tion of mud down the Hii;hi, into the lake of Lucerne. Soon after passing the Righi, the Gulf of Kus- nacht opens to your view on the right. It was at the Ibrlher end of it thai the Bidlli (Je-sirr Iniidod. 'i04 LABiiE KEYNEL. after weathering the storm, during which William Tell made his escape from the boat: the latter, who had reached the place sooner by land, way- laid the tyrant in a hollow road, near the castle to which he was to have been carried a prisoner, and shot him dead w^ith an arrow, tlie 18th of November, 1307. This action, however question- able its character, and although it was on the point of defeating the plan of the patriots of Grutli, and was much blamed by them, w^as, nevertheless, commemorated by a chapel, built on the spot. Some thirty-five years ago, L'Abbc Raynal, in a fit of that theatrical patriotism of whicli he con- tributed to set the fashion in France, and wJiich he condemned so severely himself, wIumi too hite, erected in a small island of the gulf of Kusnacht, at his own expense, an obelisk of sham granite, forty f(M^t high, with William Toll's arrow and apple on the top of it: an upright bar of iron, by which it was secured on the inside, attracting lightning, caused tlie destruction of the whole fabric very soon after it was erected. The patriotic Abbe would have wished to erect his opera monument at the fountain of Grutli, and petitioned the magis- trates of Uri for permission ; but he was answered, that they had no need ol" such a line thing to put them in mind (.)f their ancestors. (-EVEHAL PFEFFEU. •JO"; Tho old fashioned towor> and battlements, in amphitheatre behind Lueerne, make a fine termina- tion to the hike. On landing, we were carried to a mairnifieent hotel, with a dining-room eighty feet by forty, on a garden in better taste than any we liave yet seen in Switzerland. The principal sight at Lucerne is the celebrated relievo of General Pfeifer, who employed half a cen- tury in walking over, and measurinii' with his own lianils.one hundred and (^iuhty square lea2:ues of the most moun:ainou.s })art of Switzerland, inch.Kling the Waldstetttm, and modtdling the vdiok^ in ( -^'a'-t pro- portion. Each s([iiare leairue of country covers in the model a space of nearly fifie^cn iiiclies by fif- teen, and a mountain of nine thousand sev(Mi hun- dred feet rises ten inclies over the level ot" the lake of Wakl^ttnten : not a mountain path, not a house, iKjt a (TiKs. on tlie clilf. but is conspicuous tluM'i^ : the iauh. iiKhMMl. is. tliat th(>s(^ object.- aro bevond all r(\i.-ontO() larL'"(\ manv a village^ st(H~])h^ ri\"aMiiig in hc^ight the neighbouring Al})s ! This spoils th(^ etfect altogether, and dis])arai:'es a work, in tin; main very accuratc\ although clumsily executcHl. "With all its defects, nothing in the shapc^ of a si^ht c^ver gave me more ])leasure. It is hiulily intcM-est- ing to retrace thus c^asily your own laborious f)c)l- steps, and go over them again as a bii"d Hies : to •20G GENERAL PKEFFER. be initiated in detail into the mysteries of the moun- tains, and learn to despise the ideal terrors of pre- cipices, thus measured by the inch. The common observation, that a road appears shorter and easier the second time you travel it, than the first, applies here : there is no first time in travelling over Swit- zerland, when you have studied this model. A full-length portrait of General Pfeffer, a spare, active, old man, hangs on the wall of the room in which the model is preserved, and in the house he inhabited. He is represented in his working-dress, and in a climbing attitude ; his iron-shod ga/oches, portable seat, and mountain-stick lay also there. The plunderers who invaded this country, at the end of the last century, had been on the point of carrying off the model to Paris, but were shamed out of it. The old General died soon after (1802), at the age of eighty -five, in possession of his moun- tains and his fame. About two centuries and a lialf ago, one of his ancc^stors, Louis Pfeffer, at the head of six thousand Swiss, def(^n(i(xl Mary of Medicis and her son Charles IX. against the Pro- testants, and conveyed them safe to Paris. I shall not undertake to decidt; bt;tvveen tlie respective merits of these two members of the family. The arsenal contains, among other curious things, the banner carried by the heroic Gunfk)ldingen, at I.l (RliNF.. -2(17 the battle of Seinpaeh, in loS(), stained with liis blood, aiid tiie iron eoiiar armed with points, wliieli tlie Anstrians had brought to put on him ; likewise the {-(jcit of arms (jf Leopold ol" Austria, also killed in th(^ battle. I was sorry to see there the battle- axe and tlic helmet oi" Zwingle^-, thinking this best of the relbrmers, killed at the battle of Cappel in 1.5,31, had assisted there as a minister of pc^ace, to eomfort the dying, and not to add to their numbers. This arsenal sutlered muc]i during the French in- \a>i(;u. aiid the public treasury, previously carried away, tilled six wagons. There was very early a printing-])ress at Lucerne, and one of its citizens, Ulrich Goring, was the tirst printer who introduced the art in the ca])ital of France, in 1 l()i)-7(). He followed the traik^ tluM'e fisrty years, and bcx^ueatluHl his large tdrtune to the stii(i(M)ts (;i' die University and tlu^ poor ot' Paris. Hi> biilliday, or lalher his _y'//c', was Joug kept at tiie Sorbonne-j-. vVo(,(f ii bridges of iinmerisc^ lejigth, (one is one * (iiap. .\x\ in. \ <:1. II. t 'i iu re i> no l/iniiday, jv.ojn rly -prakinLT, ki-pt in i'laiirc, but a patroijyinic o!' i)a[ai-h:al 'lay, wiiicii aii>\UTs tlu ^anir pur- jjo-c ; that i■^, tlic (lay m ihc lloinan ('lUliciic calrndar iji'aMni; t;.f name f.; ;lu' -auit ;;ii;:i wni :n your ('liii-t;an na:;n' i*. taKcii. No\s iliat it 1-! tlif la;liioii to uivt.' hi-aihcii or iicioic nanus, I (!'> !K>t know flow thr iiu i^ nKlna^('(l. 208 LUCERNE, AND ITS ENVIRONS. thousand feet long, the other one thousand three hundred, over the lake, connect different parts of the town ; you may walk there at all times, screened from the sun and rain by a roof, and enjoy one of the finest prospects in existence ; prodigious moun- tains rising at once from the tranquil and pure ex- panse of the waters, at the distance of a few miles between Mount Pilatus and the Righi, on the fore- ground. Ancient pictures on scriptural subjects, in a singular and characteristic taste, decorate the interior of the roof One hour and a half after our departure from Lucerne for Berne, we had a retrospective view of the lake and mountain, even more beautiful than the view from the bridges, as wc stood on higher ground, and had a wider and more distant horizon. The near view of prodigious mountains and deep valleys, striking at first in the highest degree, is apt to become in time oppressive and dull. These noble objects, so clearly seen and so exactly defined, are generally hard, and often mean in their details ; the effect is too positive for the mind to imagine aught but what the senses convey. I must have a due proportion of celestial vagueness, with just so much of reality as gives a certain coherence and fixity to the dreams of fancy. A succession of woody hills and fertile valleys HATTLE OF SEMPACH. 209 hif^hly cultivated brought us, in a few hours, to the banks of the lake of Scmpach, shaded with those immense walnut-trees which are such an ornament to Swiss landscape. I was half tempted to take a boat, and cross over to the field of battle of Sem- pach * ; but the afternoon was very hot, and when I came to reflect that even there I should have to imagine the battle, of which no other vestige re- mains but a small chapel on the spot where Leopold fcllf, I thought I might do that full as well after dinner, while resting under the shade of the trees. In the cool of the evening, we pursued our way to Sursee, a pretty town six leagues from Lucerne. The English hill (Englander hubel) is seen at a short distance to the left of the road ; it is the spot where three thousand of the followers of Enguerard de Coucy met the fate they so well deserved, and where they lie buried ;}:. The road from Sursee to Berne, by the west end of the canton of Argovie, is fifteen leagues, through the richest country imaginable. Meadows, irrigated with the utmost care by means of never-failing springs, yield three or four, and even five, crops of hay : the ground is not divided into small patches of aU sorts of heterogeneous productions, as on the banks of the lake of Zurich, but into sufficiently * See Chap. xv. Vol. IT. t Ibid. t Chap. xiv. Vol. II. Vol [, p 210 COSTUME OF THE WOMEN. large farms, for the best division of labour and im- proved mode of cultivation to be introduced to ad- vantage ; not a beggar, not a mean dwelling, to be seen. Houses are rarely thatched in Switzerland, the most usual covering for peasants' houses is wooden shingles, very clumsily split out of pine wood, and secured in their position on the huge roofs by poles laid across and heavy stones ; but in this improved part of the country, the houses are generally covered with tiles, very neatly made ; thin, flat, about six inches by twelve, instead of laying double, a thin wooden shingle is introduced under each seam of the tiles, which reduces the expense to just half, and the weight likewise. The women we meet are elegantly dressed in the national costume, with large straw hats, which, however, are not made of straw, nor are hats pro- perly speaking, having no crown at all, but being quite flat, and kept on by means of a ribbon tied under the chin ; they are made of some light sub- stance, painted light yellow and highly glazed, with a bunch of flowers or knot of ribbons in lieu of a crown ; black stays, short full shift-slecvcs, Scotch kilt rather than })etticoats, very white stockings, and small neat shoes. They are generally portly ladies, showing a round, good-humoured face, with a verv scantv share of the bmu ideal in it. SWISS CHURCHYARDS. 211 On approaching nearer Berne, the straw hat is superseded by a very odd-looking black scull-cap, standing off the face stiffly, like the fly-caps of our great-grandmothers, or rather, like the two wings of a butterfly. We thought, at first, they were made of wire, but found the materials were black horse-hair — a perfect coat of mail in millinery, passing from one generation to another, never the worse for wear ; the hair under it descends in two enormous tresses from the back of the head down to the heels. As to the men, they have no longer a national dress. The churchyards of German Switzerland are adorned in an odd taste, with fantastical crosses on each grave, tricked out with small puppet-show figures of saints or of angels dangling loose in the wind, the wood curioudy carved into devices, and the whole gaudily painted and gilt, forming a very singular assemblage and ever-standing crop of mortuary weeds. Two leagues from Berne, we stopped to see a tomb of another sort — the cele- brated monument of Maria Langhans : the lid of th(^, tomb is represented breaking asunder at the sound of the trumpet of the day of judgment, and a ycumg and beautiful woman, pushing away the fragments with one hand, rises out with an infant on her arm. There is a great deal of sweetness I' J 212 MONUMENT OF MARIA LANGHANS, in her face, mixed with a certain expression of awe, of surprise, at least, and yet, of faith ; but the action is scarcely simple enough for the chisel. Painting, as well as poetry, need not tell all ; part of the story may be left to be supplied by the feelings of him w^ho reads or looks on, and it is not the least poetical part that is thus suggested and not expressed ; but a stone picture can leave no- thing untold, it must go into every, the most trifling, insignificant, and mean, detail. This tomb, for instance, is a square box, or rather, stone trough, necessarily of small and precise dimensions, lying flat in a hole made in the pavement of the church, with a wooden covering over it, which must be lifted up to see it : the contrivance is clumsy, and the accompaniment mean. The figure of the mother and her child would have been far better without the trick of the broken tomb ; although the idea might make a fine picture, or be intro- duced happily in a poem. This monument was executed about the middle of the last century, by a German artist, J. A. Nahl, out of a single block of stone, unfortunately of too soft a grain. It is a matter of surprise, that so considerable a part of a country over-peopled should ^till be a forest. The trees, oaks, beeches, and pines, older than the Helvetic League, are magnificent, and EXTENT OF THE FORESTS. -21.5 many of them, having already passed the produc- tive age as timber, are entering that of the great- est beauty. In the name of taste, I would forbid a single one being cut down ; but, in the name of political economy, and even humanity, I thinlv I would recommend clearing out the best land, and planting, at the same time, some of the moun- tains, which, by a strange inconsistency, have been stripped quite bare. These fine woods extend almost to the very gates of Berne, where you arrive under an avenue of limes, which in this season perfume the air. There are seats on the side of the road, for the convenience of foot pas- sengers, especially women going to market, with a shelf above, at the height of a person standing, for the purpose of receiving their baskets while they rest themselves on the bench : you meet also with fountains at regular distances. A Bernese road resembles the best roads in England, only wider : they are carried in every direction, even to the highest mountains, on the borders of eternal snows ; and all this, I understand, without corn'es, without a tax, or even a toll. The whole country has the appearance of English pleasure-grounds. The town itself stands on the elevated banks of a rapid river, the Aar, to which the Rhine is in- debted for one half of its waters ! A sudden bend 214 EXTRAORDINARY LEAP. of the Aar encloses, on all sides but one, the pro- montory on which the town is built ; the slope all round is in some places covered with turf, sup- ported in others by lofty terraces planted with trees, and commanding wonderful views over the surrounding rich country and the high Alps beyond it. The parapet wall of one of these terraces, which is one hundred and eight feet high, bears an inscription, recording a singular accident which happened there one hundred and sixty -three years ago. A young student having mounted a horse, which happened to be grazing on the terrace, his companions frightened the animal, and made him leap over. The horse was killed ; but though the imprudent rider had several limbs broken, he survived. Looking over, we observed that the wall projects gradually below, forming an inclined plane, which, though little deviating from the ver- tical, must have retarded the fall. As if there was something catching in it, a woman condemned to the wheelbarrow for some crime, and employed in sweeping the terrace, with other prisoners, took her opportunity, and jumped over at the same place, two years ago ; but she was killed on the spot. The mode of punishment by labour in public, seems to unite every possible objection, swc^eping the streets in chains is idleness, scarcely disguised; STREETS OF BERNE. 21.j while habitual exposure in the most degraded of all situations, destroys at last, all sense of shame and of dread, in those who suffer and in those who look on ; the punishment neither amends the cri- minal, nor deters any one from the commission of crimes ; it answers none of its ostensible purposes. Real hard labour, abstemious fare, and seclusion, long continued, but not divested of hope, afford the only possible chance of moral cure, at the same time that it is sufficiently severe to operate as a preventive check. The side galleries in the streets of Berne are the prototypes of the Palais Royal at Paris, and of several new constructions in that capital and in London, as they were originally imitated from the Lombard towns, which, from their superior state of civilization, were the models of the imperial towns of Germany and Switzerland, as to architecture and municipal institutions ; thereibre, they should not be so severely criticized: the pillars, indeed, are too massy, and the arches too low for the sho])s to have sufficient liglit and air. Covered ways, screening passengers from the winter storms, seem absolutely requisite in a situation like Berne, elevated to more than seventeen hundred feet above the level of the sea: they would scarcely be less useful in a tropical climate, and their con\e- ■216 WEALTH OF BERNE. nience is so obvious in all climates, that they will be adopted in time all over Europe. It is not an easy matter to account for the first impression you receive upon entering Berne : you certainly -think you enter an ancient and a great city ; yet, before the eleventh century, it had not a name*, and its present population does not exceed twelve thousand souls. It is a republic ; yet it looks kingly. Something of Roman majesty ap- pears in its lofty terraces ; in those massy arches on each side of the streets ; in the abundance of water flowing night and day into gigantic basins ; in the magnificent avenues of trees. The very silence, and absence of bustle, a certain stateliness and reserved demeanour in the inhabitants, by show- ing it to be not a money-making town, implies that its wealth springs from more solid and perma- nent sources than trade can afford, and that ano- ther spirit animates its inhabitants. In short, of all the first-sight impressions and guesses about Berne, that of its being a Roman town would be nearer right than any other. Circumstances, in some respects similar, have produced like results in the Alps, and on the plains of Latium, at the interval of twenty centuries. Luxury at Berne seems wholly directed to objects of public ^ Sec Chap, vl.. Vol. II. ITS ARISTOCRACY. 217 Utility : by the side of those gigantic terraces, of those fine fountains and noble shades, you see none but simple and solid dwellings, yet scarcely any beggarly ones ; not an equipage to be seen, but many a country wagon, coming to market, with a capital team of horses, or oxen, well appointed every way. Aristocratic pride is said to be excessive at Berne ; and the antique simplicity of its magis- trates, the plain and easy manners they uniformly preserve in their intercourse with the people, are not by any means at variance with the assertion ; for that external simplicity and affability to inferiors is one of the characteristics of the aristocratic government; all assumption of superiority being carefully avoided when real authority is not in (jucstion. Zurich suggests the idea of a mu- nicipal aristocracy ; Berne of a warlike one : there we think we see citizens of a town transformed into nobility; here nobles who have made them- selves citizens. The most remarkable edifice at Berne is tlu^ cathedral, built in the Gothic style, on tht^ high terrace, at the beginning of the fifteenth century ; the terrace itself is sixty years older. We were delighted with the church music ; we hear every night in the streets admirable vocal concerts 218 GERMAN MUSIC. by the common people. This German race is born musical, and the diiference is observable in Swit- zerland, the moment you leave the Pays Romand. The Germans being equally famous for wind instru- ments as for vocal music, I expected to find their military music admirable ; but here, as elsewhere, the clumsy roar of the Turkish drum, and gingle of the Turkish bells, exclude altogether both melody and harmony ; they might as well have a parcel of coopers beating their casks, and coppersmiths their kettles, by way of a musical band. I am told this bad taste does not extend to the Austrian troops. July 13. — The friends we expected having joined us here, we determined upon performing at once our intended tour in the Oberland, (the high lands of Berne,) postponing, till our return, a further acquaintance with this town. From Berne to Thun, six leagues in four hours, the finest road and richest country imaginable ; the inhabitants, in their holiday dresses, were enjoy- ing themselves at their doors, under the shade of walnut-trees, comfort and independence appeared conspicuous in their looks, although subjects of an aristocracy they certainly do not seem conscious of a want of liberty ; I never saw such a proud looking set of men as the Bernese peasantry, nor any better fed and clad. The peculiar dress of BERNESE PEASANTRY. 219 their women has been already described, they are naturally good looking, but most of them working in the fields they become frightful old women. Female beauty is wholly incompatible with expo- sure and fatigue ; it is a decree of nature, and that state of society in which they are subjected to hard labour, may be deemed somewhat barba- rous. This being uniformly the case among small proprietors, it forms a serious consideration in fa- vour of husbandry on a large scale, against the system of subdivision, notwithstanding its pecu- liar advantages. Sunday is by no means so strictly observed here as in England; many of the men play at bowls, and amuse themselves in dif- ferent ways during the intervals of public wor- ship. Thun, by the superior advantages of its situa- tion, and its greater antiquity, should seem en- titled to be the capital of the Canton of Berne : but Berne was born free, and having obtained the cession of Thun from its feudal lord, kept it in a subordinate state : such is political justice. The castle, where the sons of the Comte de Kibourg ended their quarrel by a fratricide*^, stands most picturesquely on a rock, with every ])rop(M' ap- pendage of turrets and battlements. This noble * \'nl. II. 220 SWISS HUSBANDRY. object came out with great force on the back ground of mountains, which, although eight leagues distant in a straight line, overtopped the castle ; their blue-black velvety surface, and silvery- edge of glaciers, had an uncommonly soft and beautiful effect. It was near Thun Mr. Tralles measured a base for the first triangle of his trigonometrical mea- surement of the Alps, in the year 1788. July 14. — The most active of our party rose at three o'clock this morning, to see the sun rise behind the Jungfraw. This activity was not con- tented with such a sun-rise as several windows, or the covered gallery at the back of the inn, might have afforded, but sought an open station on the banks of the lake ; the advantage of the situation of the inn had, indeed, been rendered quite unavailable this morning, in consequence of a practice, which is, I believe, peculiar to Swiss husbandry ; the liquid manure, which fills such an important part in its economy, under the name of jauche, or niist wasscr, in the German Cantons, and of lisier, (from lisi^re, border,) in the Canton de Vaud, is not merely collected round the bor- ders of the enormous dung-hill heaped up at the doors of their stables, but is drawn from a still more impure source : the receptacle of our inn VIEW OF THE RISING SUN. 221 had been opened in the night, and a farmer was there with his beautiful team and casks, as bright and clean as if they had been destined for quite different purposes, at work under the picturesque gallery, loading the atmosphere at the same time as his wagon. Intent upon reaching the lake before sun-rise, we w^alked along the left side of the rapid Aar ; but the river being now uncommonly high, we found the fields and our path under water, and had to take off shoes and stockings, and wade a full mile in water, which, not many hours before, might have been in a solid form on the glacier of the Kander, for any thing that its temperature indicated to the contrary. We arrived before sun- rise, and saw its first rays gild the heads of the Schreck-horn, the two Eighers, and the Jungfraw, while the lower range was still in darkness, and before the last of the stars had descended below the western horizon. These bright summits looked more like heavenly bodies just rising than any thing terrestrial ; so large and yet so distant, so plainly seen and yet nothing visible on the whole lucid surface. We turned our backs in contempt upon the sun, when it appeared, and wading back again, reached Thun and the inn, when other travellers of less spirit were calling for their '222 SINGULAR GARDENS. breakfasts, which they had not earned so well. On my way back I was induced to look over the paling of a large garden, pleasantly situated on the banks of the Aar, and just above the univer- sal waters, like an island. Not a tree that was not a sugar-loaf, a wall, or an arch ; not a shrub or a plant that was not a toad-stool or a jar ; sweet peas, holyhocks, larkspurs, China asters, and other plants, not amenable to the shears, were gathered up, each round its pole, majestic and tall, painted red, white, and blue, with a gilt head. The files of painted poles and clipped shrubs, enclosed beds of thriving cabbages and onions, tall leeks and lettuces, hicn pommies ; a stout girl was very busy with her heavy water- ing-pot, administering the /uz'er in proper doses to the eager roots and leaves of the culinary vege- tables. A broad straight walk with box borders, not gravelled, but strewed over with loose sand, led from the iron gate to the middle door of the square country-house ; a few small statues graced that entrance. The gardens of France must now hide their diminished heads, and leave to those of Switzerland and Italy that pre-eminence of good old Roman taste, degenerated every where else. We embarked at Thun, seven of us, in a small LAKE OF THUN. 22^1 boat, furnished with an awning, and benches at each side of a table. It had a pair of sculls and a small sail ; the latter, with a favourable wind, was sufficient to carry us to the other end of the lake, four or five leagues, in two hours and a half. In the middle a2:es this lake retained the name of Lacus Vandalicus, no doubt from the Barbarians, who had established themselves on its banks. We could see from our boat the foaming waters of the Kander, pouring into the lake through the artificial channel dug out for them, rather more than one hundred years ago. The torrent fell before into the Aar, between Thun and Berne, as the Linth did lately into the Limmat, carrying likewise such quantities of gravel and stone as filled its bed, and, dispersing the water, made of the beautiful valley, through which we travelled yesterday, a perfect marsh : a short cut threw the Kander into the lake of Thun. as may be seen in the map. Lakes seem intended by nature to check the fui'y of torrents, and, retaining the sediment tliey bring from the mountains, restore them to their beds traii- c[uil and clear. The Kander has already formed a promontory of se\eral hundred acres into the lake, although six hundred feet dee}) at that jilace, and many rare plants of the high Alps now grow spon- taneously there, no doubt from seeds brought by the 224 THE GOLDEN COURT. torrent. It has been observed that one of the most esteemed of the species of fish, which abound in this lake, the Salmo Marcena has nearly disap- peared, since the introduction of the waters of the Kander. Tradition has preserved the remembrance of a temple of the twelve Vandalic towns somewhere on the banks of the lake of Thun, and numerous ruins indicate the existence of towns concerning which nothing is known. Muller gives some account of these antiquities. At a period comparatively modern in the ninth century, the Counts of Stratlingen, heirs of the Helvetic part of Charlemagne's empire, occupied the castles of Spiez and Stratlingen, and their mag- nificent court was emphatically called the Golden Court CGoldener HoffJ. Vast subterranean passages are still connected with the tower of Stratlingen, near the mouth of the Kander, and vestiges of the walls of a town are seen about the castle of Spietz. There arc sulphureous springs on this side of the lake, and on the other side, at the foot of the Beatenberg, several bituminous springs rise out of beds of gypsum, which yield petroleum floating on the surface of the water, and fossil coals are found at no great depth ; an invaluable treasure, from which Switzerland derives as yet very little advantage. EXTHAOKDINAKY FHKNOMENON. 2-2,j The presence of these substances may account, in some measure, for a very extraordinary phenomenon which took pkice in the sixth century, as reported by Fredig:aine, the continuator of Gregory of Tours, 598-9: " The water of the lake of Thun," he says, " became spontaneously heated, particularly about the mouth of the Aar ( Arola), so as to boil the fish alive ■■ ." A writer of the ninth century (Aimoins), tells the story nearly in the same manner, placing it in the fourth year of the reign of Thieri, the second King of Burgondy, who died in Gl. ')'(". During many centuries, pilgrims resorted in great numbers to a cave in the Beatenberg, where a holy hermit, Suetonius, otherwise St. Beat, the earliest Christian in Helvetia, ended his days, and was buried. He was a Briton, and had been at Rome, whence he came, in the reign of the Em- " J.')'^-,'',') '" anno aijua caliilis'-iina in lacu nuiipii^i '|Ui'ni Arola Huviu'' inliuit, ^ic \ali(l(- (l)iil!iN;:. ut nuihiuidiiicni pisciuni co\is>C't. t Two l"rcn('h writers, llir jMTsulciit I'auclul and I'a[)ii\' .Mas- son, lav claim to this boilini; lake, sa}s the antiijuanan I.ons do Bochat ; and as lakes are rather scarce in France, thev apply the story to a pool ot' water situat( d near Chattau Dun, which receives a brook called A/ii^i'c, these names a[)pearing to them pertecily identic with Lticiis Dinicn>,is, and Avith AroJfi — there are great nuinl)ers of rivers in 1-Airope, the names of which hc^i!' with an A or Aa, .A.\, Arc. Boch dorives ;ill these name^ from the Celtic word Ani, fir .\raii, Ac. Vol.. I 22G ST. BEAT. peror Claude*, to preach the gospel in these wild regions. At the time of the Reformation, the en- trance to Beat's cave was walled up, by order of the government of Berne ; the wall has since dis- appeared, and pilgrims of another sort are again seen here as formerly, but without causing any alarm to the Bernese, being worshippers of pic- turesque beauty, and not of Popery. A stream of the purest water issues out of the cavern, into which curious travellers have penetrated about six hundred feet, without discovering its inmost recesses. The view from the entrance over the lake, the pyramidal Nieser on the other side, and a whole horizon of glaciers, is truly magnificent. The people of the village of Merlinghen, at the foot of the Beatenbergh, arc obnoxious to the same sort of jokes as the Champenois in France, the Irish in England, and the citizens of Schilda and of Scheppenstedt, in Germany. Every absurd story, gross blunder, or foolish trick, is attributed to them : in short, they are the iiiais en litre of the country. Some other places in Switzerland arc also noted tor * This account of the introduction of Christianity into Helvetia, so early as the first century of our cia, seems rather fabulous ; it is better ascertained that some learned Scotchmen were the first who propat^ated the light of the (iospel in that country six hun- drerl years later. See Chap. iv. vol. 11. the peculiarities; of their inhabitant?^, and the stancl- in^i' jokes to which they arc subject are often the occasion of bloody quarrels. The people of the Entlibuch, in the Canton of Lucerne, alone bear such jokes with exemplary good humour : on the last Monday of the carnival (hirs montag) each vil- lage bard repairs to the neighbouring hamlet, and then assembling the inliabitants, repeats in extem- pore verse, more or less hannonious, but sometimes shewing considerable talents, such traits of their secret history during the preceding year, as have transpired, while the man of song belonging to this place acts the same part elsewhere. This scirt of practical censorship is allowed in that district, and tjiken in good part. At the place of landing (Neuhous) we procuu'cnl a char-a-banc, which carried us swiftly to Interlaken, situated, as it- namc^ indicates, b( t\V(\Mi the lakes of Thun and Brientz, in a rich valley. ram])arted with rocks and mountains, which ])()ure{l down their cataracts on eidier side of us. The inn at Tnt(M-- laken is built on the site of an ancient and rich monastery, or formerly tlu^joint habitation of Au- gustine monks and nuns, founded in the twelfth century: the scandal of their liv(\-^ became such that the Bernes(\ under whose protection the mo- ■l-i6 THE MONKS. nastery bad been placed soon after its foundation by the German Emperor Henry Vlth, complained to the Pope, and after a solemn investigation the convent of nuns was suppressed in 14,31, and its revenue given to the Chapter of St. Vincent's at Berne. At the Reformation, one hundred years after this, the people of Interlaken rose against it, at the instigation of the monks, and their resist- ance was not overcome without bloodshed. In the early times of the institution of these joint monas- teries, and before a rigorous discipline had relaxed by degrees into the extreme of profligacy, which extinguishes love itself as a refined passion, pro- pinquity sometimes occasioned interesting inci- dents, which might be sung by the poets, and re- corded by the chroniclers without scandal. Eliza- beth of Schamachthal, of an illustrious and wealthy family, when brought to the altar to pronounce her religious vows, declared her love for Thomann Guatchi, then a novice of the order as well as her- self, and was allowed to marry him. The magni- ficent lime and walnut-trees, exceeding tw^enty feet in circumference, which spread their shade over the spot, date from the foundation of the monastery, and the green lawn under them was trod by the monks during four centuries. VALLEY OF LAUTERBHIN. 229 At Interlaken you are deemed rich with a capital of one thousand pounds sterling, or even one-half of the sum ; and at Lautebrien, in the neighbour- hood, with three hundred pounds. All that is not made in the country, or of its growth, is deemed luxury : a silver chain here, as at Berne, is trans- mitted from mother to daughter, and so are cow- bells from heifer to heifer. Dwellings and barns covered with tiles, and wnidows glazed with large panes of glass, give to the owner a reputation of wealth ; and if the outside walls are adorned with paintings, and passages of the Scripture are in- scribed on the front of the house, the owner of the house ranks at once among the aristocracy of the country. After dinner, we began to ascend the vaUey of Lauterbrun, by the side of its torrent (the Lutschine), among fragments of rocks, torn from the heights on both sides, and beautiful trees, shooting up with great luxuriance and in infinite variety ; smooth pastures of the richest verdure car- petted over every interval of plain ground : and the harmony of the sonorous cow-bell of the Alps, heard among precipices above oiu' heads and below us, told us we were not in a desert. The ruins of the mineral world, apparently so durable, and yet in a state of incessant decompo- 230 JUNCTION OF THE TWO J.IITSCHLNS. sition, form a striking contrast with the perennial youth of the vegetable world ; each individual plant, so frail and perishable, while the species is eternal in the existing economy of nature. Imper- ceptible forests of lichen scarcely tinge the surface of those inert masses of gneiss and granite, into which they anchor their roots ; grappling with sub- stances which, when struck with steel, tear up its tempered grain, and dash out the spark. Each valley has its appropriate stream, propor- tioned to its length, and the number of lateral valleys opening into it. The boisterous Lutzchine is the stream of this valley, and it carries to the lake of Brientz scarcely less water than t]ie Aar itself. About half-way between Interlakcn and Lauterbrun, we came to the junction of tlie two Lutschins, the black and the white, from the difter- ent substances with which they have been in con- tact. A promontory, or circular terrace, of a re- markable appearance, divides the two streams : it is called Hiinnenflue, and is marked by tradition, as having been the place of shelter and the strong hold of the inhabitants, at the time of the invasion of the Huns. MiiUer observes, that in Switzerland all traditional havoc and devastation is ascribed to Attila ; all antique towers pass as having been built by Cti'sar ; and ail civil and religious insti- FALL OF THE STAUBHAC'H '231 tutions are traced to Charlemagne : a tradition which, whether accurate or not, justly characterizes th(^se three extraordinary men. After passing several falls of water, each of which we mistook for the Staubbach, we came at last to the house where we were to sleep ; and the cataract was in sight. It had taken us three hours to come thus far ; in twenty minutes more, we reached the heap of rubbish, accumulated by de- grees at the toot of the Staubbach : its w^aters descending from the height of the Plctschberg, form, in their course, several mighty cataracts, and the last but one is said to be the finest ; but is not readily accessible, nor seen at all from the valley. The fall of the Staubbach, about eight hundred feet in height, wholly detached from the rock, is re- fhiced into vapour, long before it reaches the ground ; the water and the vapour undulating through the air with more grace and elegance than sublimity. While amusing ourselves with watching the singular appearance of rockets of water shoot- ing down into the dense cloud of vapour below, we were joined by some country girls, who gave us a concert of three voices, pitched excessi\eiy high, and more like the vibrations of metal or glass than tlie human voice, but in perfect harmony, and although painful in some degree yet very fine. •232 LAUTERBRUN. Ill winter an immense accumulation of ice takes? place at the foot of the fall, sometimes as much as three hundred feet broad, with two enormous icy stalactites hanging down over it. When heat re- turns, the falling waters hollow out cavernous chan- nels through that mass, the effect of which is said to be very fine: this is, no doubt, the proper season to see the Staubbach to most advantage. In the patriarchal times of Switzerland, the minister or the curate of the parish readily gave an hospitable reception to strangers, and his house was the only one in which they could find con- venient accommodations. These calls, however, when frequent, could not suit the slender means of a clergyman, and it became the custom for travel- lers to leave on the table, or with the maid-servant, as much as they would have paid at an inn. But a real inn, where you are not called upon to make a speech, is much preferable ; and although the minister at Lauterbrun receives strangers, and is, we are informed, a very obliging and very con- versable gentleman, we went to the inn, which is is a good one. If the celebrated waterfall did not quite answer our expectations, the vale itself exceeded them ; and it deserves to be explored six or eight miles further. wh(^rc. taking the nanir Ammerthenthal. it VALLEY OK LAUTERBRLN. 233 ends in glaciers scarcely practicable for chamois hunters. So late as the fourteenth century, there was a village of Ammerten, frequented by tra- vellers going to the Valais. A noble Valaisan, called Antonio De Thurn, gave to the chapter of Interlaken certain lands he possessed in the Grin- delwald, Lauterbrun, and Ammerten: the title deed, still existing, bears date 1395. Some miners who belonged to the Valais, being at work in the valley of Lauterbrun, undertook, thirty-hve years ago, to cross over to their own country, simply to hear mass on a Sunday. They traversed the level top of the glacier in three hours ; then descended, amidst the greatest dangers, its broken slope into the Valais, and returned the day after by the same way : but no one has since ventured on the dan- gerous enterprise. Ju/iy I."). — It rained all night, and as this sort of vveatlier prevails much in the mountains, we were a little afraid that we might be kept all day, in- voluntary admirers ot" the Staubbach ; but the morn- ing turned out fine, and we set oif at break of day, with five saddle-horses for our whole party, com- posed of nine persons, a pack-horsey and four guides. The caravan, forming a long iile, lelt the valley of Lauterbrun on the right, and began unmodiately to ascend the Wingernalp, dirough 234 TOUU OF THE WlNGl'llNALl'. hollow roads, open pastures, and woods, with fewer and fewer indications of culture. The valley of Lauterbrunn, which we had left involved in the rising vapours of the night, had become invisible, while the Staubbach, and the other falls above it, shining conspicuous in the morning sun, seemed to pour their torrents into an abyss of clouds. While contemplating the prospect, it occurred to us, that a taste for the picturesque and the romEintic must certainly be deemed first among the brightest endowments of the human mind — for it is the very last generated. Who would believe that the tour of the Wingern- alp we are now upon, the most picturesque of any in Switzerland, was undertaken, for the first time, by a contemporary traveller, a distinguished Ber- nese, whom we are proud of calling our friend, (Mr. De Bonstetten). After nearly five hours' toil, we reached a chuld on the top of the mountain. This summer habita- tion of the shepherds was still unoccupied ; for the snow having been unusually deep last winter, and the grass, till lately covered, being still very short, the cows have not ventured so high. Here wc resolved upon a halt, and having implements for striking fire, a few dry sticks gave us n cheerful blaze in the open air : a pail of cream, or at least VALLEV OK TUL MLATENTIIAL. 235 of very rich milk, was brought up by the shep- herds, with a kettle to make coffee and afterwards boil the milk ; very large wooden spoons or ladles answered the purpose of cups. The stock of pro- visions we had brought was spread upon the very low roof of the chalet, being the best station for our repas champetre, as it afforded dry seats sloping conveniently towards the prospect. We had then before us the Jwi<>-fraw, the two Evrers, and some of the highest summits in the Alps, shooting up from an uninterrupted level of glaciers of more than two hundred square miles, and although placed ourselves four thousand five hundred feet above the lake of Thun, and that lake one thousand seven hundred and eighty feet above the sea, the mighty rampart rose still six thousand feet above our head. Between us and the Jungfraw. the desert valley of Trumlatenthal formed a deep trencli, into which avalanches fell, with scarcelv a (juarter of an hour's interval between them, fol- lowed by a thundering noise continued along the whole range : not, however, a reverberation oi' sound, tor echo is mute under the universal wind- itig-sheet of snow*, but a ])rolongatic)n of sound. ■ 'I'Im^ line of rtLTiud snows on llic iiiountains forms a curve about 1 t,4()() feet above the sea, under the tro[)ic>, gradually approaching; the surface of the earth towards the poles, and in- (.er^eclin- Us -urlacc about llie eij,htieth de;;rei' ol' latitude, in. 236 FALLS OF AVALANCHES. in consequence of the successive rents or fissures forming themselves, when some large section of the glacier slides down one step. We sometimes saw a blue line suddenly drawn across a field of pure white ; then another, above it, and another, all parallel, and attended each time with a loud crash like cannon, producing together the effect of long-protracted peals of thunder. At other times, some portion of the vast field of snov/, or rather, snowy ice, gliding gently away, exposed to view^ a new surface of purer white than the first, and the cast-off drapery gather- ing in long folds*, either fell at once down the Switzerland, the line of eternal snow is almost 8,000 feet ; in Nor- way, by the sixty-second degree of latitude, 5,400 teel. * Our guides assured us, that pushing with your foot against the edge of a beginning cleft in a bed of snow is often sufficient to detcnnine the fall of an avalanche ; that is, the sliding of the newer over the older bed of snow. 'I'lic discharge of a gun, the jingling of the bells of mules, tlie vnicis of men, may he attended with the same consecuiences. Avalanches in the sha])c of loose dust (staubleuiui-n) are the most dangerous, on account of the great space they involve, and the whirlwinds which accompany them, often so very violent, as to tear up the trees by the roots, demolish houses, and ir.ove large stones ; wliile an avalanche of compact snow or ice only strikes a narrow field : the latter sort of ava- lanche takes place in spring and summer only; the former, in winter. It is deemed unsate to cut down the grass on very steep ;U) wliolo fubric into the compa^>^ of a ^^ing'le thou;i, as it is called, ready pnq)ar(^d. two stones standing up on end, with sullici(Mit space ])et ween to see through \\ithout being sihmi : there .'lu- of the hunters crcf^ps. unpercci'^ed. with- it J 244 CHAMOIS HUNTING.. out his gun, and carefully observing every way virith his spy-glass, directs his companions by signs. The utmost circumspection and patience are re- quisite on the part of the hunter, when approaching his game ; a windward situation would infallibly betray him by the scent ; he creeps on from one hiding rock to another, with his shirt over his clothes, and lies motionless in the snow, often for half an hour together, when the herd appears alarmed and near taking flight. Whenever he is near enough to distinguish the bending of the Jiorns, that is about the distance of two hundred or two hundred and fifty steps, he takes aim ; but if at the moment of raising his piece the chamois should look towards him, he must remain perfectly still, the least motion would put them to flight, before he could fire, and he is too far to risk a shot other- wise than at rest. In taking aim he endeavours to pick out the darkest coat, which is always the fattest animal ; this darkness is only comparative, for the colour of the animal varies continually, between light bay in summer, and dark brown, or even black, in winter. Accustomed as the chamois are to frequent and loud detonations among the gla- ciers, they do not mind the report of the arms so much as the smell of gunpowder, or the sight of a CHAMOIS HUNTING. '245 man ; there are instances of the hunter having time to load again, and fire a second time after missing the first, if not seen. No one but a sportsman can understand the joy of him, who after so much toil sees his prey fall ; with shouts of savage triumph he springs to seize it, up to his knees in snow, despatches the victim if he finds it not quite dead, and often swallows a draft of warm blood, deemed a specific against giddiness. He then guts the beast to lessen its weight, ties the feet together, in such a manner as to pass his arms through on each side, and then proceeds down the mountain, much lighter for the additional load he carries ! When the day is not too far spent, the hunters, hiding carefully their game, continue the chase. At home the chamois is cut up, and the pieces salted or smoked, the skin is sold to make gloves and leathern breeches, and the horns are hung up as a trophy in the family. A middle-sized chcnnois weighs from fifty to se\'enty pounds, and when in good case yields as much as seven pounds of fat. Not unfrequently the best marksman is selected to lie in wait for the game, while his associates, leaving their rifies loaded by him, and acting the part of hounds, drive it towards the spot. Some- times when the passage is too narrow, a chamois reduced to the last extremity will rush headlong 2A6 fUAMOis HUNTING. Oil the foe, whose only resource to avoid the eti counter, which on the brink of precipices must be fatal, is to lie down immediately and let the fright- ened animal pass over him. There was once an instance of a herd of fourteen chamois, which being hard pressed, rushed down a precipice to certain death rather than be taken. It is wonder- ful to see them climb abrupt and naked rocks, and leap from one narrow cJiff to another, the smallest projection serving them for a point of rest, upon which they alight, but only just to take another spring ; their agility made people beheve formerly that they could support themselves by means ol' their hooked horns. They have been known to take leaps of twenty-five feet down hill, over fields of snow. The leader of the herd is always an old female, never a male. She stands watching when the others lie down, and rests when they are up and feed, listening to every sound, and anxiously looking round; she often ascends a fragment of rock, or heap of drifted snow, for a wide field of observa- tion, making a sort of gentle hissing noise whci] she suspects any dang(u\ But when the sound rises to a sharper note, the whole troop flies at once like the wind to some niore remote and higher part of the mountain: the death of this old leader is ^e CHAMOfN HINTING. 247 neralJy fatal to the herd ; their fondness for salt makes them frequent salt-springs and salt-marshes, where hunters lie in wait for them : the latter prac- tise also a very odd ruse de guerre ; having ob- served the chamois are apt to approach cattle on the pastures, and graze near them, a hunter will crawl on all fours towards cattle, with salt spread on his back to attract the cattle, and is imme- diately surrounded and hid by them so com- pletely, that he fmds no difficulty in advancing very near the chamois, and taking a sure aim. At other times a hunter, when discovered, will drive his stick into the snow, and place his hat on the top of it : then, creeping away, go round another w^ay, while the game remains intent on the strange object, which it still sees in the same place. The males generally live apart, and only come near the herd in Nov(unber and December : hi May th(^ females bring ibrth their young, which walk from the moment of their birth, and are very pretty and tame. When caught they are easily reared, but cannot live in a warm stable in winter-. The age of each individual is known by the number of rings marked on its horns, each year adding a new one: in winter tlicy subsist on the !ic/icn c/lnin's nine lhou!>aiici and ilmlv-^ix ti^ci al.ioM' iHl' bca. IIAUITN OF Tin: I'KOIM.l.. 2'>\ tnanul'actmvs, and their husbandry is confined to the eukivation of a little barley and potatoes, and to the raising of cattle three times as numerous as themseh es. They are strangers to every object of kixury but what is })roduced by themselves, and are certjiinly not contaminated by the world : in short, they might be supposed to ha\e retained those vir- tues generally ascribed to primitive times, together with patriarchal health and longevity. But, in point ol" fact, we finrl that the same causes which have narrowed the field of their intellectual facul- ties, have not, by any means, secured the purity of their morals ; and also, that the average duration of the longest lives rarely exceeds sixty or seventy years, having extended, in a single instance, to ninety-five years — dangerous fevers frequently oc- cur in the spring. Upon the whole, it should seem that both health and virtue are better promoted by cuhivaticni of mind, and a variety of steady ])ur- suits, even when not all directed to the very best of purposes, than by the simj^licity of ignorance, a residence in the Alps, and chamois hunting. Mf.vrin'gkx, JkIij 1(). The day was again fine alter a rainy niuiil. and iliis jiiornitig we resumed our jouniev. in the same manner and direction as vesterdav. and iia\inL' a 252 GLACIER OF MEYRINGEN. greater distance to go. Although more down hill than up, we set out earlier. Half-an-hour brought us to the second branch or outlet of the great gla- cier, that is, to a precipitous channel, or couloir, between the Mettenberg and the Wetterhorn, de- scending to our level on the Wingernalp. The ice brings down stones of all sizes, which are depo- sited on the lower extremity of the inclined plane or channel, where the ice melts, forming then one or more transverse ridges, called Moraine, parallel to each other, and twenty or thirty feet high — the most forward, and distant from the ice, overgrown with large trees, dates from the seventeenth cen- tury, since which the glacier has receded consi- derably ; forty or fifty years ago it advanced again for a while, but is now falling back, as it did be- fore. When the glacier recedes, the people here say, that it turns up its nose ; and when advancing, that it carries its nose to the ground, from the peculiar appearance it exhibits in these respective cases. The interval between the glacier and the Moraine, strewed over with fragments of half-melted ice, all over mud and loose stones, has, as well as the whole lower extremity of the glacier, rather a shabby appearance. The dusky covering of sand, dead leaves, ^-c, adhering to its surface, is, however, of grcFit service in hastening the thawing of the ice. DFsfT.NT OF THT fil.AClKU. '>:>[', Mr. Ebel states, that the ice sUdes down the in- clined plane at the rate of twelve to fifteen feet an- nually, according to circumstances ; the channel is generally several leagues in length, sometimes ten or twehe, as appears by the samples of rocks of known origin brought forw^ard by the ice ; and at the rate of nine hundred years for a league (eighteen feet a year). Some of the fragments of w^hich the Moraines are formed would furnish curious geological data. Thc^ remains of animals, occasionally brought down in the same manner, may also be of an anti- ([uity fit t(3 match the mammoths discovered entire among the ice of the North Polo. While the glacier is thus dragged down by its own weight to warmer regions, its upper and lower surfaces melt gradually by the heat of the sun and that of the ejirth, there- fore the thickness of the ice is at last reduced from several hundred feet that it was above to ibrty feet or even less. The ice of glaciers being formed of snow infiltrated with w'ater, although very hard, is full of interstices, arranged in a certain order, wholly different, however, from the crystallization of congealed water. In the year 1787, the 7th of July, Christen Bohnen, innkeeper at Grindelwald, where we slept yesterday, traversing the glacier with a flock of sheep from the distant pastures of the Banireck. 254 TITF. VALAIs AND GRINDELWALD. fell suddenly into one of the fissures or clefts of the ice, which was afterwards found to be sixty- four feet in depth. He dislocated his wrist and broke his arm, yet preserved his presence of mind. Groping about in the dark, and guided by the noise of water, he found a channel the stream had formed under the ice, and crawling along, reached the low^- est extremity of the glacier, and escaped, by a sort of miracle, the danger of being buried alive, or rather, frozen to death. He died only a few years ago. So late as the sixteenth century, a direct com- munication existed between the Valais and Grin- delwald*, by a path now under the glacier; and it is on record, that in the year 1561 some Valais people came to a wedding at Grindelwald ; in 1578, also, on the occasion of a christening ; and again in 1615, to a wedding ; finally, in the year 1712, during the last civil dissensions, three Ober- landmen, having been detained by the Valais people, in order to compel them to turn Catholics, made their escape over the glacier to tlieir own country. On the Valais side they experienced great difficulty in ascending, but the descent to- wards Grindelwald proved full of peril, and but for the extraordinary exertions they were obliged to * Dr. Wvsss Ohcrlaiul. PXSSAGF, OF TIIF. MOIN'TA 1 Ns. 255 use, and the labour ol" cuttinn; steps into the ice to secure a ibotmii-, they would have been frozen to death. These poor fellows, to a\oid going to mass, exposed themselves to precisely the same dangers as, seventy years after, the four Valaisans at Lau- terbrunn did for the opposite pur])ose of going to mass ! Yesterday and to-day we passed frequently over large beds of snow, accumulated into deep hollows from the last spring avalanches, sent down in gr(.\at abundance from several of the mountains. |)articu- larly the Wetterhorn. One of the horses fell over and rolled with its rider, without any harm to man or beast but a complete suit of white from head to foot. Our steeds behaved remarkably well, and towards the end of the day's journey we had all become so bold, that the ladies even ventured up and down many frightfuldooking {"tlaces, compared to which, certain terrific passages some of us re- membered exploring on horseback, between Bor- rowdale and Wastwater in Cumberland, would appear a bowling-green. Our guides shriek(i(l the wild lament of the Ranz des J 'aches, answer! ni;- each other from one (md of the caravan to the other. and one of them, not satisfied with the fatigue of the march, danced along from exuberance nf s])irits. In that manner we reached the sharp vdf^c of the 2.'5G EXPLOSIONS OF Tin- GLACIER. Scheideck, close, or at least, appearing close, to the foot of the Wetterhorn, which is eleven thousand seven hundred feet above the sea. We were our- selves elevated six thousand feet, yet the mountain before us appeared higher than before, and far more stupendous than any thing we saw yesterday. Once, the hollow rumbling, like thunder, lasted so long, as to make us pause altogether, in expecta- tion, not unmixed with fear, of some impending catastrophe. The noise continued increasing, with scarcely any intermission, for nearly twenty mi- nutes ; sudden explosions, every now and then, in- dicating new rents in the glacier ; we kept our eyes fixed on its blue edge along the sky, and even thought we saw it move — yet nothing fell. Pro- ceeding reluctantly on our way, we were many times induced to look back, half dreading, half wishing, to see something answering such fearful notes of preparation. The guides were of opinion that some great internal shifting had taken place, each lateral valley giving way in succession, and pouring down its stores to fill vacancies formed below. Some travellers, who have ventured as far as the pasture-grounds of the Zezenberg, a sort of green island in the middle of the glacier, where shepherds lead their flocks for a few weeks in summer, gave the following account of this phe- RinOi: OF THE s( IIF.IUF.CK. 'Zryl nomenon, known in the country by the name oi' the growinix of the ice" : "• We had sat down on the ice," they said. *■ to liii'ht our pipes, when a tremendous sound, louder than thunder, sutldenly rose. Every thing about us was in motion — our guns, our sticks, our bags ; Large stones, which we should ha\e supposed immovable, started out of the ice and knocked against each other ; fissures, closing of themselves, sent up into the air the water they contained, which fell down again in the shape of rain, half converted into snow ; new fissures, from ten to twenty feet wide, opened in our sight, with a loud crash, like the report of cannon : a terrible catastrophe seemed at hand. The whole glacier advanced probably a step or two : but it became cjuiet again, as suddenly as it had been disturbed: the re])ose and silence of death were all at once restored, interru])ted only now and then by the whistHng of the Dutrmofs." The higher ridge of tlie Scheideck, when we passed it, was crowded witli cattle, assembled there for miles to avoid the Hies, which, in more sheltered situations, torment them during the heat of the day. The natural process by which soil is made was every where observable on the Esel- siicken (Ass's Back), where the uncovere^d edge oi' * Ml, Wv-^sV Olifilan.l, •ZCS RIDGF. (JF THE SCHF.IDFCK. the slate is so far decomposed by exposure tc; weather, that large fragments, apparently sound, crumbled into black dust under our feet. This dust, fertilized by the cattle, is in some places covered with grass ; in others, it is washed away to lower grounds, leaving the surface of the slate again ex- posed to the weather, to be farther decomposed. Some way beyond this ridge, we came to a chalet, which, being occupied by the shepherds, afforded more conveniencies than our halt of yes- terday. Here a fire was already blazing, in a sort of pit or trench dug around by way of a seat, and a huge kettle hung over for the purpose of cheese- making. We had plenty of cream furnished us, in which the spoon literally stood on end ; a kettle to make coffee, and wooden ladles by way of cups. All the utensils were made of maple, of linden, and of a sort of odorous pine (pinus cembra*), by the shepherds themselves, who bestow much time on this manufacture. We noticed the porta- ble seat with a single leg, oddly strap}:»ed to the back of those who milk the cows : the milk-pails, * This pino, commonly called a/vicr, is of vory .slow growth. One of them, ciu down when nineteen inches in diameter, showed three hundred and fifty-three concentric circles ; and as these trees reach a much gieaier ^ly.r, we may judr'.e ^f the- a^c of tht older ones by the three centurie>= and a halt ol this adolescent ! AMF.HICAN LOG-HOUSF. ■^.'iQ the milk-hod fastened to their shoulders, the mea- sures, the ladles made in the shape of shells, the milk-strainer (a tripod funnel full of pine leaves), the vase in which i^unnd (used to coagulate milk) is preserved, the press, the form, and many other implements of their trade, all elegantly shaped and very clean. The chakt itself was an American log-house of the rudest construction ; the roof, composed of clumsy shingles, gave vent to the smoke in the absence of a chimney ; this roof, projecting eight or ten feet, formed a sort of piazza, called the melkgang, a German word, which, like many others in that language, needs no English translation. The bed-room of the shepherds in these sum- mer chcdcifi is a wooden gallery, hung up over the ?>?e//'grt/?g, close to the projecting roof; tliey go up to it by a ladder, and all herd together on a little straw, ne\er changed. The cows come home to be milked, attracted from the most distant pas- tures by a handful of salt, which the slu^pluM'd draws out of the leathern pouch hanging across his shoulder. The ground round the clia/ct i.s so broken, poached, and made iihhy by tn\uling of cattle, that without ste])ping-stones it would he difiicult to reach the door ; to finish the picture, a lierd of swine ranees about uailinu for the al -2G0 RIDGE OF THE SCHEIDECK. lotted portion of butter-milk and curds. All this is, no doubt, very different from Rousseau's charming description of a chalet ; but the chalets about Heloise's residence were family dwellings, inhabited the whole year round, and such as are found on lower mountains only ; they are kept per- fectly clean and comfortable, and are in all re- spects different from those on the High Alps, con- structed for mere temporary shelters during a few months ; no women live in the latter *. When the weather is tempestuous the shep- herds, or rather the herdsmen, are up all night in the mountains with their cattle, calling to them, as without this precaution they might take fright, run into dangers and be lost. A few places of shelter, built of logs on the principal pastures, would, it seems, answer the purpose better with less trouble. The cattle look very beautiful and active, full of spirit and wild sport ; they show much more curiosity and intelligence than the rest * The extent of a pasture is estimated by the luimber of cows it maintains ; six or eight goats are deemed equal to a cow, four calves the same, four sheep or four liogs, hut a horse is reckoned as four or five or even six cows, because he roots up the grass. The Grindelwald Alps feed three thousand cows, as many sheep and goats. The proceeds of a cow in summer is estimated at twenty-five shillings sterling, and during the other nine months at thirty-six or forty shillings, altogether seventy to spventy-five shil- liniis annual I V. ANTIPATHIES OF AMMALs. '261 of their kind, and often follow travellers from rocks to rocks a long while, merely to observe them. Bulls, notwithstanding the fierceness of their looks, never attack any body. Mr. Ramond, in his notes on C'ojd'.y Travel-^, tells an interesting story concerning these animals, which if it should happen not to be quite true, at least deserves to be so. Speaking of their antipathy for bears — '• It is impossible, ■■ he says, "■ to restrain a bull when he scents a bear in the neighbourhood ; he comes up to him, and a running hght begins, which often lasts for several days, and till one of the two is killed. In a plain the bear has the advantage ; among rocks and trees the bull. (I .should have thought just the reverse.) Once, in the Canton of Uri, a bull went in })ursuit of a bear, and did not return. After searching for him three successive days he was found motionless, squeezing against a rock his enemy, which had been long dead, was quite stiff and cold, and almost crushed to })ieces by the })ressure : such had been the eflbils of the bull, that his leet were deep sunk into the ground." After resting two hours in the c/ialtt we pur- sued our journey lightly down hill, through woods of deciduous and other trees of noble lirowth. full of rhododendron m blossom. A bridge over thr 262 VAI.E OF HASLf. Reichenback afForded a very fine retrospect ol tht* mountains we had left, and the Glacier of Rosen- lani we had not seen yet descending majestically down the north side of the Wetterhorn. Soon after passing the bridge a very different prospect burst all at once upon us, the more striking from its being so very different from what we had been accustomed to contemplate for some days past ; a bird's eye view instead of one over-head ; a rich and smiling landscape instead of a wild and terrific one ; the vale of Hasli, in short, highly cultivated, full of villages, and scattered dwellings half hid in trees. In our situation Meyringen ap- peared like Paris or London, although the moun- tains beyond it could not well be mistaken for either Montmartre or Highgate: This valley di- vides in two at its upper extremity, each branch sup- plying a stream, forming together the Aar. One of these valleys leads to the only practicable avenue from the Oberland to Italy, by the GrimseL whence the Rhine and the Rhone flow in opposite directions *. Numerous cataracts, several of them * The Aar, which falls into the Rhine after traversing all Switzerland, has its source less than one mile from that of the Rhone, but not out of the same glacier; yet a side stream which falls into the Aar comes from the glacier of the Rhone. A pro- digious (juantity of tlie largest crystals ever known was disco- Nered in \TiO, in a cavern of ilie Grimsel ; some of these MHVIUNGEN. Ibo supLM'ior to tlie Staubbach, poured down on cither side of the valley ; one of them from the very moLintain on which we stood, and almost at our feet. It was formed by the Reichenbach, a con- siderable stream, falling for half a mile down a very precipitous declivity, through strange chan- nels and peribrations the action of the water has formed. Convenient paths lead down to the boat stations, and among others to a bridge of one arch, thrown across the fall, from one jutting point of rock to another. We are now arrived at Mcyringcn, the chiei place of this valley, after an interesting day's journey of nine hours, mostly on foot, and w^ith so little fatigue, that we immediately went to see another beautiful cataract on the opposite side of the valley from the one by which w^c came. Like most mountain torrents, it brings down such quan- tities of stones as to raise its bed considerably above the fields on each side, precariously pro- tected by walls and embankments ; the black cryslalh \\ci!:;luMl troni lour to v'lpln lunulrcd ])oun(l^, aiul the value of llic wholr was cstiinatiHl at tliirly lhou^■an(l iloriiis ; a lew more such discoverirs and tlie valuo would sink to notliiiii: at all. 'I'he ancients spoke of a crystal of thirty pounds as wonderlul. The largest of the crystals, discovered in 17'~*'j "'•'V he ^-een ni the CaJnncf, d'Histuire Nniurc.lle an .lardin ilrs Phmfcs. at Paris, nieasurini; three feel and a half by two h'lt ami atjuarter. 264 GYMNASTIC GAMES. schistous sediment deposited likewise is carried away for manure. The women of this valley have the reputation of singular beauty, and the men are supposed to be gifted with uncommon strength and courage. We saw some comely faces, less round and un- meaning than those about Berne, and fine figures both of men and women, not enough, however, to convince us, that the report is not exaggerated. These people have gymnastic games twice in the summer, at which those of the neighbouring valleys are invited. Some big boys gave us a sample of their wrestling, at which they seemed very ex- pert. Their object is to throw their adversary on his back, and for that purpose to lift him off his legs, which they endeavour to do by taking hold of the short drawers they wear for that pui'pose, when they regularly set to : or on common occa- sions by means of a handerchief tied round the thigh, which they reciprocally grasp. Although a clumsy exercise, tliere is some display ol" skill and much of strength, especially "when one oi' the wrestlers lifts the other up in the air, above his head, whirling him about to make him lose his hold and then throw him. I think it wortn while to give here the principal attitudes from the work of Mr. Wyss. which may nol be known in England. 1. 2. ^^ -.r.XfF 3. 4. ■('.-- *.iff P.'ic -ir;; CASTl.E OF HASLI. '2fi5 the consequence of attitude third is sometimes a fracture of the arm. Not far from Meyringen, towards the north, the castle of Hash stands on an insulated hill ; it was the seat ol" the very ancient and respected family of one of the leaders of their ancestors, when they emigrated from Sweden into this valley. There is an old song of the shepherds of Oberhasli, which it were to be wished was printed with a glossary, or translated : it might throw some light on tlie obscure tradition of this Swedish migra- tion. The historian of the Goths, Jordanes, who lived in the sixth century, and Paul Winifred, historian of the Lombards, about the eighth, mention these popular songs of the northern na- tions *. July 17. — The large party, (die grosse partey) as w(; have been designated here from our lumi- ber, rode this morning early down the beautiful valley of Hasli. along the infant Aar, to the Lake of Brientz, intending to take a boat there for In- terlaken ; but the wind was high and contrary, the dashing of the water prognosticated a long and disagreeable passage, and we detennined to pro- ceed by land along the shore. Thc^ u-oiuol who have the exclusive privilege of nunuiing the boats Ml. 'M'-picTb lllliitrnfw:' nf Syii^ VinCb. *2t)6 (.i:i{MAN SINGINC. on this lake, assembled at the inn ; we declined their nautical services, but wishing not to be dis- appointed of their singing, of which we had heard much, we proposed music instead of rowing. Four of them, standing in a circle, struck up at once a beautiful German air, of which we did not understand the words ; this we did not regret, as very probably they would have been a poor sub- stitute for the feelings now excited by the melody, spirited, now soft, often pathetic and affecting, which told its story better than any words, oi' rather told another and a better story. Watch- ing each other's looks, their accents seemed to meet before they were uttered in the true con- sciousness of song, with peculiar freedom, vigour, pathos, and grace, evincing a sort of musical tact and feeling, which is quite national, and grows with them from their cradle. They readily ac- cepted a glass of wine, and soon renewed their song with fresh relish, " for they had caught the measure wild," and poured their premeditated lays lor more than an hour, with unpremeditated spirit and variety. Resuming our mode of ride and tie travelling, we proceeded along the northern side of the lake of BricMitz, perfectly under shade the whole way, by a narrow road, level and smooth, enjoying the CATAHAt'l' Ol (ilKSBAClI. Ji)? Hne Views oi" woc^dv mountains on the other side of th(^ hike, which, ahhough seven or eight thou- sand feet hifi:h, were still overtopped by the glaciers of Grindelwald, many miles behind them. The Giesbach, a celebrated cataract, and several others of less note, were just perceived, and even heard, across the lake. The banks on our side, although rather precipitous, appeared thickly in- habited by substantial farmers, all proprietors of the soil they cultivate. The verdure and luxuriance of the meadows watered by innumerable springs were admirable, and the fields appeared very neatly kept: immense walnut-trees, as usual, ash. and oaks, shaded the houses. Travelling thus leisurely, we reached, in four hours, our old quarters at Interlaken, extremely well pleased with the labo- rious excursion. In the evening, we had, fnmi the inn, a most glorious view of the Jungfraw, re- tlecting a light exactly like that of the moon, and in the same manner borrowed from the sun, al- though it had been set for us for some time. July 18. — On our way to the lake of Thun. where we embarked this moriung. we stopped at Unterseen, to see the bcl/e battdierc Elizabeth, now married to a shopkeeper, who very innocently sells chamois horns to those foreign travellers, who. following the same track, call one atU^r the 268 BELLE BATTELIEUE ELIZABETH. other on Elizabeth, and write their names in the book kept for that purpose, with occasional re- marks and poetical elFusions. Turning over the last page, we observed the name of Mr. Southey, who, it seems, passed a day or two ago, and re- corded in the book his admiration of the belle, batteliere, who is, he says, like the Fornarina ; but as there are several supposed portraits of this mistress of Raphael, very different from each otlicr, he should have told us which of them Eliza- beth resembles ; at any rate, this person has cer- tainly a Madona face, regular, mild, modest, and rather insipid : her polished brow shone like ivory, she smiled prettily, looked down as conscious of our gaze, showed her child, and sold her goods. Landing at Thun, we returned to Berne the same evening, without any particular occurrence, except being put in jeopardy by a cow running away with a load of hay, the cart coming in rude contact with our vehicle. Cow^s work very well and move more briskly than oxen, and, when in modc^ration, it does not injure their milk. Berne, Juh/ 20. Hofwyl and Mr. de Fellenberg are now too well known in Europe, to make it necessary to account for our impatience to become acquainted 1)F. Fi:i.T.ENl',KIU. or UOKAV^I.. ■2(i'-l with the establishment and its founder. To Hof- wvl. then about six or seven miles distant, we drove yesterday, and it was our g-ood fortune to find Mr. de Fellenbero; walkino; about with some of his pupils, and diseni^aged, whieh is rarely the case. He had the goodness to show us the esta- blishment himself and give us much of his com- pany in the evening, for we slept in the neigh- bourhood, and did not return to Berne till the next dav. Agriculture was not our C)bie("t. and our in- quiries were mostly dir(>cted to the schools ; there- fore I shall only say, that the farm appeared in excellent order and very neatly kept : his fine meadows, only fifteen years ago, were mere bogs, which he reclaimed from their unprofitable state by means of covered drains, thirty feet undc^' ground in some places, while in others the water is made to flow freely over the surface, and serve the purpose of irrigation. His fields are ploughed up every fourth or fifth year, unusually deep, by means of a gigantic plough drawn by fourteen horses, which turns up stones at the de})tli of two feet. This process might not answer elsewhere, but it does here: there are few general rules in agriculture to which local circumstances do not form exceptions. The house of Mr. de Fellcnber»" is large Hud 270 MADAME DE FELLENliERG. regular ; when we entered it, we found assembled a great number of young men, of the high school, most of whom belong to the first families of Ger- many, Russia, and Switzerland. Madame de Fellenberg, who submits without repining to the loss of a life of mere enjoyment, to which she was born as well as her husband, and cheerfully enters into his philanthropic, but laborious undertaking, invited us so obligingly to partake of the family meal, that we sat down with them. The table, in the horse-shoe shape, held seventy or eighty young men, and several professors, besides the family ; it was abundantly furnished, and the pupils talked freely among themselves. We left Hofwyl the next day, full of the most lively interest for the success of the establish- ment. I shall collect all that has been published on the subject, in order, when I next visit this place, to be better prepared to direct my inquiries, and I shall then give a full account of the result. We staid only a few days at Berne, and as I propose returning another time, and making a much longer visit, I shall postpone giving an ac- count of this interesting place till I have col- lected better materials. On our d(^parture for Yverdun we found tlic environs of Berne on that side still more beautiful than on the others we had KNVIUON^ OF BF.HNF. -JT 1 occasion to admire before. I never saw any where such a profusion of walks and rides pro- vided at the public expense, for convenience and pleasure ; such woods, such water, and such mag;- niticent views. The country a])pears admirably cultivated ; I am told by English agriculturists that it is not exactly so, and I dare say they are right ; but I think the most desirable state for civil society, in an agricultural point of view espe- cially, is not that of stationary perfection, but rather that of gradual impro\ement. An increasing su})ply of food im})lies for the bulk of the people the possession of every other comfort : but when that supply, having reached its maximum, stops there, as it must, population soon overtaking it, turns again abundance into scarcity, ft matters little for the people that land should yield the utmost quantity ol" produce. })rovide(i each indi- vidual has a competent share of what it jiroduces. The ])eople we sec here, judging from their looks, no doubt have that com])etent share, and as loni;" as that is the case, there is no need lor them to raise better crops, best indeed they should not. 1 never saw peasantry any where appear so weahhy and independent ; yet, at a village^ wIktc we dined, near Anet. thirty-one individuals, among whom were three whole families, possessed of se- •27'2 EMIGRATION'S TO AMERICA, veral hundred louis each, liad lately gone to the United States — this must be fashion, not neces- sity. The government, and the people likewise, seem rather alarmed at these emigrations ; yet, whatever their result may be for those who go away, their going can be no subject of complaint for those who remain. At Anet we saw a Lan- caster school, where two hundred and fifty boys are taught by one master. The rest of the way to our old friendly quarters at Giez was along the western side of the Lake of Neuchatel ; the green slopes of the Jura, and its woody recesses on our right, the lake and distant Alps on our left, ap- peared as beautiful as the first time we saw them, and gave us even more pleasure this second time, but this would not be the case with a second de- scription. August 4. — We left Giez this morning for the lake of Geneva, crossing a hilly country to Vevay, with magnificent retrospective views towards the Jura, About five miles north of Vevay is a wild little lake, called Lac dc Bre, or Bro, on the banks of which a town, designated in the itinerary of Antoninus by the name of Bromagus, is supposed to have stood ; the hike itself bearing the same name in several docu- ments of the middle ages. Not a vestige of the town has ever been discovered, but tlie tradition is LAKE OF GENEVA. -273 that its site is now under water Cattle arc apt to stick in its slimy bottom, and are sometimes drowned, as well as bathers. The first grand burst of view, over the lake of Geneva from the hill above Vevay, did not strike us as much as we expected. The Meillerie shore on the opposite side, sufficiently high to intercept the Savoy Alps, does not make up for the loss altogether, although beautiful in itself; we had been spoiled lately by the lake of Wallen- stadt and the lake of the Waldstetten, the banks of which are higher, more precipitous and broken, with a greater variety of green slopes and woods, the accidents of the strata more extraordinary, more beautiful, in short, than the Meillerie side of the lake of Geneva, in the only sense in which Meillerie can be deemed benutiful, — romantic wildness, and savage grandeur. The lake f)f Geneva, seven or eiglit miles wide in this narrow part, is more than twice as wide as the lake of Waldstetten, which is all in favour of the latter, for the extent of water is nothing in itself without a scale to mark it ; having no means of judging of the height of the Meillerie shore, or its distance, we suppose it less, and nearer than it is. The (lent LtOche, its highest summit, is live thousand six hundred and ilfty-five feet above the lake of Geneva, being full as much as any of the heights above the lakes of VVallenstadt or the Vol I t 274 LAKE OF GENEVA. Waldstetteii. The head of the lake of Geneva, as that of all lakes, is the most beautiful part of it, and our two favourite ones can scarcely boast of any thing superior to the opening into the Valais, the snowy head of the St. Gothard above it in the distance, with the Meillerie and the de7it de Jaman in profile on the fore-ground. Another striking difference between this and the German lakes is the innumerable cataracts of the latter, in which the former is wholly deficient. As we came down towards its immediate banks, the disappointment was still greater ; it was a uniform slope of vine- yards divided into small enclosures by means of stone walls, with narrow dusty roads between, without a tree or a blade of grass. Such was the first impression the celebrated lake of Geneva made upon us, seen from its best point of view — I give it just such as it was recorded in my Journal at the time — yet I must in justice say, that, having seen it since under different circumstances of the atmo- sphere, it made a much more favourable impression; for on the various effects of light depends all the charm of mountain scenery. When we came here the weather was sultry, a white glare of light and vapour, without a glow, uniformly spread over the landscape, confounding light and shade together, and destroying aerial perspective. LTDLOW. THE REGICIDE 275 Vevay itself is rather a pretty little town, famous for having been the residence of Ludlow the regi- cide during thirty years ; he died there in 1690, much respected, and his tomb is shewn in the cathe- dral, as well as the house where he lived, over the door of which is the following inscription : Omne solum ford patria est, quia Patria. We intended to see both, but did not. Taking a boat for chateau Chillon, we touched in our way at Clarens, a dirty village, less prettily situated than any in the neigh- bourhood, and chosen by Rousseau for no better reason than a well-sounding name, otherwise he would have chosen the beautiful village of Montreux hard by. Not a gentleman's house could we see fit to lodge the Baron de I'Etange, unless it were the chateau de Chatelard, a good deal above it. Chillon, a mile and a half beyond Clarens, is a dull heavy castle, built on a ilat rock into the water, and almost touching the shore, with which a short wooden bridge, or })latform, connects it. It is gar- risoned by a few lazy soldiers, one of whom, acting as a Cicerone, led us to the celebrated dungeon said to be under the level of the lake : comparing the height of the loop-hole grate.'i, where captives weep, above the water-edge from the outside, and above the rocky floor inside, I remained satisfied tlie latter was something above the former, })articu- l 2 27G DtTNGEON OF CIIILLON. larly when I observed a hollow place full of water, which must come from the lake, and would rise above the floor of the dungeon if it really was lower than the level of the lake. It grieves me to contradict poets, or picturesque and sentimental travellers, but really the dungeon of Chillon is not under water, and, besides, is absolutely a com- fortable sort of a dungeon enough, full forty feet long, fifteen or twenty feet wide, and fifteen feet high, with several narrow slits into the thick wall above reach, but admitting air and light, and even some rays of sun. A row of stone pillars divides this area, one of them has an iron ring fastened into it, and looks much rubbed ; it is marked by tra- dition as the place where poor Bomiivard was chained for six long years*; yet another tradition points out the track, worn into the rocky floor, by his walking to and fro all that time ; which of them is to be believed I do not know. Many travellers, mostly English, have engraved their names on this pillar, and among them Lord Biron's stands con- spicuous. Another dungeon, not more than ten feet sc^uare, opens into the large one by a breach in the wall made by a prisoner, who attempted making his escape, but could not get farther than the outer dungeon, was re-taken, and ultimately * S(r Chap. .x.NX. Vol. II. DUNGEON OF CIIILLON. 277 put to death here, after a long confinement ! He must have been a man of education, judging from his drawings on the wall, much in the style of Raphael's age — these are horrors for poets, which may, I trust, make up for those of which I have attempted to deprive them. Our whiskered Cice- rone could not give us any more particulars about the tragical end of tlie prisoner, nor say who he was, nor tell his name ; but when we inquired about the time, he boldly said. Monsieur, il y a milk am! Another soldier, who held the candle, observing our look of incredulity, corrected his companion, and said, Ha! que non : 11 y a cinq cent am! — therefore the story is not quite clear yet for historians, although for poets it may do. On the wall outside of the chatc!au, towards the lake, the words hibertc ct Palric were inscribed in »2:iirantic letters, with the date 1815, instead of the Bernese arms, which were tlierc before the Revolution. — Somehow I always suspect, when Uberly and country are thus ostentatiously thrust forward, that thcTc is very little of the one, and that the other is in con- siderable danger ; yet I believe it does not apply to the Canton de Vaud, and that the inscription is only a flourish, in imitation of the old revolutionary style in France ; at any rate I was sorry to see the style of \l\y,\ in so recent an inscription. The boat 278 LAKE OF LAUSANNE. men, listening to our conversation about Julie and St. Preux, and the latter seeing from Meillerie, by means of a spy-glass, what was doing at Clarens, an old man at the oar exclaimed that this St. Preux must have been the biggest liar that ever was, for sure he could see no such thing from Meillerie ! We went from Vevay to Lausanne in three hours by an excellent road, but so narrow, that it is not without difficulty two carriages can pass each other, and the land is so valuable, that it is not very pro- bable the defect will soon be amended. An arpent of vineyard, forty thousand square feet, sells for six hundred pounds sterling — this is the district of the viji de la Vaud, of course there is not a tree, nor any thing green, but the vines, protected by stone walls against intruders. Lausanne is high above the lake, and therefore enjoys a fine prospect; otherwise, as far as a transient view of it allowed us to form an opinion, it is hideous enough. I should have supposed the country about it insignificant, yet I have found it since far otherwise ; as soon as you leave the region of the vineyards along the lake, and penetrate into the interior of the country — for the cultivation of the vines, wherever it prevails, is fatal to all picturesque beauty. The Gothic cathe- dral of Lausanne is very fine, and its terrace affords the finest imaginable prospect, not of the opposite ENVIRONS OV LALSANNi:. 279 shore only, but of the high Alps beyond — that is under a more favourable state of the atmosphere than it was our fortune to enjoy, although much im- proved since yesterday ; for to the colourless glare of which we complained, a dark lowering sky had succeeded, threatening a storm, and the opposite shore, instead of a poorish grey tinge, was now jet black, with a streak of snow on the top. It rained in torrents last night, and we expected it would clear the air, but the same sort of iinpic- turesque haze still hunf^; over the landscape, and prevented our enjoying the very celebrated point of view from the signal, a high spot behind the town, and above one thousand two hundred feet above the lake: distant objects being veiled at present, we only saw the lake south of us, and towards the west a level tract of rich country chequered with enclosures, and many a red tile roof: close to the signal is an extensive wood of fine trees, where you may walk under a boundless contiguity of shade, with occasional glimpses of the prospect ; w^e shall see the environs of Lausanne more at leisure another time.' Gibbon's house is one of the main sights Lau- sanne affords ; the family who occupies it is rather annoyed with the increasing multitude of curious travellers, yet availing ourselves of an introduction, 280 HOUSE OF GIBBON. we visited the premises. The principal rooms arc now used as a counting-house ; the few trees on the terrace have been cut down, and the grounds below are very littery and planted with shabby fruit trees, but were, no doubt, better in Gibbon's time, yet it could never have been any great things : you go down to this terrace by a long flight of narrow stone stairs inside the house, as if to a cellar ; the terrace itself is a mere slip, seventy or eighty yards long, by ten in width, with a low parapet wall towards the prospect— an old-fashioned arbour of cut char- mille (dwarf beech) at the end of the terrace encloses the petit cabinet, where Gibbon says he wrote the last lines of his " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" — it is itself declining and falling into ruin ; in short, every thing has been done to diseiicharit the place. The people of the house are much di- verted at many of the visiters picking up a little of the earth to carry away. Gibbon has not left here a pleasing remembrance of himself; whimsically particular about his hours, very selfish, disgusting in his appearance, an English traveller published an account of him and of his mode of life, absurd and rather offensive : yet a gross mistake he had com- mitted, was so gratifying to Gibbon, that he forgave all the rest — he said that the historian rode on horse- back every morning. JOSEPH RUONAPAUTE. 281 Wg left Lausanne by an avenue of enormous lime-trees, on the banks of the lake, where the old Lausanne, Lousonnc, stood, under the Romans, about one mile west of the modern town. It was swallowed up, nearly thirteen hundred years ago, by a sudden swell of the lake, in consequence of a fall of rocks into the water on the Meillirie side, which sent such a w^ave across the lake, although fourteen miles distant in a straight line, as over- whelmed and destroyed, not Louso?me alone, where only four or five houses remained standing, as the antiquarian Loys de Bochat tells us, but all the other towns and villages along the shore. The foundations of buildings, medals, and small bronze statues, have often been discovered on the site of the old town, From Lausanne to Merges and the river of Aubonne, the banks of the lake, lower, more fer- tile, and less fitted to the cultivation of the vine, are so far pleasanter. . We can say nothing of the prospect, said to be very fine, but invisible to us. The chateau of Prangin, between Morges and Nion, was formerly inhabited by, and is still the property of Joseph Buonaparte. Its high terraces and broad front with wings give it, at a distance, rather a princely appearance ; but, on near inspec- tion, every thing about it appears in very indiffer- 282 M. NECKER. ent taste : rectilinear plantations of cut trees — a formal parterre of gaudy flowers in compartments before the windows — every inch of the ground besides covered with vines, except the park, on a low part of the shore, filled with young planta- tions, which have no effect yet. The inside of the chateau is cut up by endless passages leading to blind rooms. From what I heard in the neigh- bourhood, I should judge the morals of the court of Grangin not to have been in better taste. At Copet, we visited a spot henceforth conse- crated, many years the residence of Mr. Necker and his celebrated daughter: it is become their common tomb. Not to intrude upon the family so soon after their irreparable loss, we merely de- sired to be permitted to see the grounds, and ad- mired a walk, conducted with much taste along a lively little stream, shaded with fine old trees of natural growth and forestish appearance : the rest is nothing. The death of Madame de Stael seems, for the present, to have disarmed her numerous political enemies: and the tongue of slander is silent. Her warm, generous, forgiving temper, her roman- tic enthusiasm, her unrivalled powers of conversa- tion, her genius, are alone remembered. The place of this extraordinary woman is marked MADAME DE STAEL. 283 among the most eloquent writers of any age ; among the best delineators of human feelings and passions ; among the truest historians of the heart. She might not possess much positive knowledge ; sometimes she spoke of things she did not thoroughly understand ; her imagination often took the lead of her judgment, but her errors were invariably on the generous side, and still bespoke greatness of mind and elevated senti- ments. I had seen Madame de Stael a child ; and I saw her again on her death-bed. The inter- mediate years were spent in another hemisphere, as far as possible from the scenes in which she lived. Mixing again, not many months since, with a world in which I am a stranger, and feel I shall remain so, I just saw this celebrated woman, and heard, as it were, her last words, as I had read her works before, uninfluenced by any local bias. Perhaps the impressions of a man, thus dropped from another world into this one, may be deemed something like those of posterity. The main defect of Madame de Stael's mode of composition, perhaps the only one, is an ex- cessive ambition of eloquence. The mind finds no rest any where ; every sentence is replete with meaning, fully freighted with philosophy and with 284 MADAME DE STAEL, wit, sometimes, indeed, overladen ; no careless ex- pression ever escapes her ; no redundancy, amidst so much exuberance ; and if you had to make an abstract of what she wrote, although you might wish to render it clearer and simpler, you would scarcely know what to strike off, or how to clothe the thoughts in more compendious language ; so harmonious and so strong hers is. Yet she could compose in company, and write while conversing. You are told, in France, that the style of Madame de Stael is not thoroughly French, and no doubt it must appear so to those whose language, like an old coin too long in circulation, has lost its stamp, and is worn smooth into a perfect blank ; to those who have banished originality of thought and of expression from their literature, as completely as nature from their gardens ; whose style, trim as their parterres, never strays beyond the box border and sandy walk ; and who, in despair of ever pro- ducing any thing original themselves, with those shackles in which they have been taught to pace, feed on translations. It is strange that a people, whose boast has been for years to set forms and precedents at defiance, in matters of law and government, should thus be the willing slaves of forms and precedents in matters of taste, and per- versely fetter genius with a preposterous sort of MADAME DE STAEL. 285 kgilimac^, while political legitimacy, is their scorn. Madame de Stael lived for conversation; she was not happy out of a large circle, and a French circle, where she could be heard in her own lan- guage to the best advantage. Her extravagant admiration of the Paris society was neither more nor less than genuine admiration of herself; it was the best mirror she could get, and that was all. Ambitious of all sorts of notoriety, she would have given the world to have been born noble and a beauty ; yet there was in this excessive vanity so much honesty and frankness, it was so entirely void of affectation and trick, she made so fair and so irresistible an appeal to your own sense of her worth, that what would have been laughable in any one else, was almost respectable in her. That ambition of eloquence, so conspicuous in her writings, was much less observable in her conver- sation ; there was more abandon in what she said, than in what she wrote ; while speaking, the spon- taneous inspiration was no labour, but all pleasure ; conscious of extraordinary powers, she gave her- self up to the present enjoyment of the good things and the deep things flowing in a full stream from her own well-stored mind and luxuriant fancy. Th(^ inspiration was pleasure- — the pleasure was 286 MADAME DE STAEL. inspiration ; and without precisely intending it, she was, every evening of her life, in a circle of com- pany, the very Corinne she had depicted ; although in her attempts to personify that Corinne in her book, and make her speak in print, she utterly failed; the labour of the pen extinguishing the fancy. It must not be supposed that, engrossed by her own self-gratification, Madame de Stael was inat- tentive to the feelings of others ; she listened very willingly, enjoyed, and applauded ; she did more, often provoking a reply, and endeavouring to place her hearers in a situation to have their turn. " Qii'en penses vous?'' she would say, with eager good-nature, in the very middle of her triumph, that you also might have yours. Wholly unfit, by nature and inclination, myself for such a display, and unpractised in a weapon laid by for thirty years, once or twice the kind invitation was di- rected to me, but directed in vain. Upon the whole, Madame de Stael's bon homrnie was still more striking than her talents. Many are the old stories, raked up from her early youth, about her native awkwardness — the mistakes her defect of sight, and still more her un- suspecting and warm temper, led her into — the tricks practised upon her, in consequence of the MADAME DK STAEL. 287 discovery of her foibles. Envy, party spirit, the strong temptation to be witty at the expense of such a person, have multiplied ill-natured anec- dotes, eagerly circulated even by those who courted her society, and whom she believed to be her friends ; thus giving, without intending it, the measure of their own inferiority, by the exclusive notice they took of such peculiarities of character as happened to be nearest their own level. It is a common aphorism, and a wise one, as all apho- risms are, that " there is no hero for his valet-de- chambrc ;" but then, it is full as much because the valet is never a hero, as because the hero is not always himself! While at Coppet, an anecdote told us by an in- timate friend of the family (Mr. de Bonstetten) recurred to me. He was then five and twenty ; she a sprightly child, five or six years old ; and walking about the grounds, as we were then doing, he was struck with a switch from behind a tree ; turning round, he observed the little rogue laugh- ing : Maman vent, she called out, que je me serve de la main gauche, et fessaj/ois ! She stood in great awe of her mother, and was very familiar wath her father, as well as dotingly fond of him. One day, after dinner, as the former rose first and left the room, the littler girl, till then 288 MADAME DE STAEL. on her good behaviour, all at once seizing her napkin, threw it across the table, in a fit of mad spirits, at her father's head ; then ran round to him, and hanging about his neck, allowed him no opportunity for a reproof. Thirty years after this, and when a competitor for fame, with Buonaparte himself, in his own capital, he under the terror of her conversation, and she of an exile from Paris, Mr, Necker used to receive, once or twice a week, long letters from his daughter (how they were transmitted I omitted to inquire — not by the mail I should suppose), and as regularly committed them to the flames after perusal. Mr. de Bonstctten, who read all these letters, says they were written with more spirit, case, eloquence, and acuteness of observation, than any thing of hers ever published, and regrets, at this day, the excessive caution of her father. Mr. Necker was, no one would have guessed it from his writings, full of humour, and apt to see things in a ludicrous point of view. He did not hold forth as Madame de Stael was wont to do ; he was even rather silent, but made sly remarks and sharp repartees. He wrote several witty plays, as Mr. de Bonstetten, who saw them, assured me ; but when appointed a Minister of State, thinking it against the bienseancG of l.KNF.VA. -,^89 the situation to publish any thing but a comply rendu, or grave works of morality, and afraid of being drawn into temptation, he burnt his plays. Geneva, August 10. A night spent at the Hotel des Balances did not furnish materials quite sufficient to give an idea of Geneva. Its first appearance, from the side w^e entered it, is not prepossessing. We left it this morning for Chamouni, and are come to sleep at Bonneville, four leagues of beautiful country, being a rich level valley with a rough boundary of mountains, and watered by the Arve, a torrent often very mischievous. Bonneville is rather a good-looking little town. August 11. — The country, as far as St. Martin, is more beautiful than even that we saw yester- day, and we passed several very fine falls of water, such as the Nant dOrti, the Natit d'Arpenas ; the latter down the perpendicular face of rocks, the strata of which are bent and twisted in a very extraordinary manner. The vehicles which had brought us were left at St. Martin, and we mounted chars-a-banc for the rest of the journey, under the plea of safety, but, in fact, to answer the purposes of the people of the place, who hire them out ; and if you insisted on })roceeding any \'ol.. 1. L' 290 UGLINESS OF THF, PEOPLE. Other way, they would contrive to make it incon- venient to you in the end. The land seems in good cultivation, and the houses not much inferior to those of Switzerland ; yet the people look wretched, dwarfish, sallow, and have large goitres. It was market-day at one of the places we passed, and such an assemblage of ugliness and squalid po- verty I never beheld any where before. Children, however, appeared in good health and lively ; it seems as if the principle of ugliness and of po- verty fully developed in regard to the parents, at least was not innate in the species, which leaves some hopes. We should have had to-day fine views of Mont Blanc, but it was hid in clouds. Alp hunting, like other sports, is subject to dis- appointments. Near Servoz we traversed an im- mense track of ruins, the wrecks of a mountain, which fell about seventy years ago ; the catastrophe seems to have been more like the sinking of the U7ider cliff, on the south side of the Isle of Wight, than the fall of the Rossberg into the Vale of Gol- dau, but of much greater extent than either. A per- pendicular slice of a schistous mountain settled down into the earth, not of course without some little disturbance on the surface, which presents for several miles a chaos of black slaty fragments, among whicii tlio Nant Noir. a foanu'ng torrent, \Vu(ks iis iaboritjir- wav. VALE OF CHAMOIJM. ,>M1 After one hour's rest in the valley of Servoz we began a long ascent, mostly on foot, over the ridge which separates it from the Valley of Cha- mouni. The Arve passes through the ridge, and raging at the bottom of an abyss, is rather heard than seen. That the Valley of Chamouni was formerly a great lake before this outlet was cut through, is highly probable, and it is no less so, that the outer valley, we have just left, was the basin of another lake, closed up at the narrow strait of Cluse. Rocks are continually falling down the precipitous banks of the Arve, and ex- posed to the action of the waters, are by degrees reduced in size, impelled forward, and at last de- posited on plain ground, during its yearly over- flowings. It is a matter of surprise, when in the valleys, how the mountains can supply the mass of rubbish accumulated over them; and when in the mountains, you are tempted to ask, where all that has been carried away could find room. The ridge between the two valleys is a sweet spot, overspread with cottages, under the shade of trees, and producing very fine crops. Some children brought us baskets of cherries and straw- berries, which seem very plenty. A dust ava- lanche * destroyed one of these cottages last win- 29-2 VALLF.V OF ('HAMOUNf, ter, killing a man, his wife, and two of their children, while two more escaped. The timber and other fragments were still lying in a heap, and the track of the avalanche through the woods above, was marked by a wide gap left among the trees. The Valley of Chamouni may be compared to a street, with splendid edifices reared by the hand of Nature on either side ; they are so high, and the interval (about half a mile) comparatively so narrow, that little more is seen than the ground story. The magnificent front of Mont Blanc, rising to the height of eleven thousand seven hundred and eighty perpendi- cular feet above Chamouni, itself three thousand feet above the sea, occupies six or eight miles in length of that sort of street on the south side of it ; and over the way stands the Breven, which is Mont Blanc's nearest neighbour. Other mountains fol- low on that side as far as the Col-de-Balme, which terminates the long vista at the distance of about cighteem miles. The first evening of our arrival we merely went curiously along, looking in wonder on the buttresses, which at regular distances seem to prop up the base of Mont Blanc. They are, I believe, ah c()m])osed of the calcareous strata, turned up against the granitic mass, and less pre- cipitous than the rest of the front; they afford a footing for irees. difi:oring in species according to VALE OF CIIAMOLNI. J;7;; height : the first zone deciduous, the next com- posed of pines, then larches ; forest above forest, waving their tufty and dark shades, accessible as far as three or four thousand feet above Cha- moiini. The interval between each of these verdant buttresses is filled by a glacier ; there are six or seven of them, those of Taconay and Bos- sons, before coming to Chamouni ; and those of Montancert, Des- BoU\ D'Argeiilicre, and De la Tour beyond it ; the Glacier des Bois is the most ccjnsiderable. The cap of snow over the head of Mont Blanc, turnerl to harrl i(^e solely by the pres- sure of its own accumulating mass, covers the neck and shoulders of the giant, and hangs down to the ground, forming an irregular drapery, of which the glaciers just enumerated are the skirts. It is the quantity of snow falling u])on the top of Mont Bhuic, that is upon the upper third of its height, where it never melts : and not the intenscness of the coki, which determines the progressive en- croachments at the lower end of the glaciers, over the green fields of the valleys. Last winter, for in- stance, was remarkably mild all over Europe, but it was rainy, and as rain is always snow on the top of high mountains, the accumulation has, by its weight, pushed down the glaciers some hundred t'ect further than usual, over the vallev of Cha- ■294 VALE OF CUAMOUNI. moiini. It (Iocs not tbllow, however, that the en- croachment will be permanent, for the glacier en- countering more heat as it descends lower, the principle of dissolution will ever be found com- mensurate ; indeed, whatever may be said of en- croachments, the existence of moraines, or accu- mulation of stone, so far beyond the present limits of the glaciers, and covered with trees of several centuries' growth, can leave no doubt of their hav- ing, at various times, advanced and receded much beyond their present limits, although their pro- gress has been very mischievous of late. With slow but irresistible power, the ice pushes for- wards vast heaps of stones, bends down large trees to the earth, and gradually passes over them. It does not form a field of ice by any means, and scarcely does it present an inch of even surface ; the whole bristling over with sharp ridges, and points bent forwards like the pikes of em- battled soldiers. At the edge of the glaciers those irregular masses of ice, hollowed and undermined by heat, assume various fantastic appearances ; a cavern, the wreck of a ship, the devouring jaws of nameless monsters, wide, open, and dripping blood ; ferruginous earth, often adhering to the ice, is now washed down into red streaks. Al- though the fragments are often so dirty as to be VALL OF (IIA.MOUM. ~'Jo scarcely distinguishable from the mud and stones among which they have tumbled : yet, when broken, their fracture presents beautiful ramifications of extremely hard ice, perfectly transparent, and not porous as I expected, although divided by nume- rous interstices like those of coral. Streams of water, of a milky appearance, continually issuing from under the glacier, had formed new channels through the adjacent meadows, cut into ravines, and extending the destruction far beyond what the ice co- vered. The miserable inhabitants collected into me- lancholy groups, looked on dejectedly; but some of them, turning their misfortune to good account, told their sad story, and begged, with a certificate of the magistrates in their hand. Several dwell- ings are actually under the glaciers, and others await the same destruction. I made the guides observe how much faster the ice melted under })ine lea\'es, or any dark bodies accidentally fallen upon its surface ; and suggested, that by lighting small hres with green boughs and dead leaves to the windward of the ice, it would soon be co\ered with sooty particles, by which its fusion would be increased. This seems so obvious, and the expe- riment so easily made, that it is a matter of sur prise it has not occurred to these poor p(\)ple looking on in stupid despair. 1 make no doubt it 296 ASCENT OF THE BREVEN. would check the accidental encroachments of the glaciers, which, after all, rarely extend to one hundred feet in a season, and more commonly not to one fourth of that. The whole extent of the valley spared by the glacier is perfectly enchanting, clothed as it is in the tender green of early spring, which comes here so much later : the crops are luxuriant ; we observed peas full eight feet high, fine potatoes, grain very promising, as well as grass. The com- mon drain of all the glaciers, the Arve, is here, as at its junction with the Rhone, of a soapy colour. August 12. — The first dawn of the morning, which was very fine, found us up, and ready to storm the Breven; the ladies mounted on their mules, and the gentlemen armed with their sticks, shod with a point of iron ; an article deemed ne- cessary for a mountain expedition, and which has a knowing look about it, a certain air de glacier' which is very captivating, yet it is in general ra- ther an incumbrance, as on plain ground you have to carry it, and in difficult places you can make a better use of your hands in holding by rocks and bushes * . The mules were found more decidedly ' I afterwards found the usr of a stick in going down fields of '5iHnv, Alone the l)rink of precipices, you are taugiit by MOUNTAIN (il'lUH!?. 297 an incumbrance, being shod for the road with turned-up shoes, which mada them slip when climbing grassy slopes, and rendered them quite unsafe. They were the animals which had brought us from St. Martin : those of Chamoimi, intended for the mountain, are shod differently, a circum- stance of which we were not before aware. A traveller, a picturesque traveller at least, above all an English traveller, or supposed to be one, cannot approach Chamouni without being way -laid and beset by guides. Some leagues before we reached these classic grounds we had several on our hands, who after entering into conversation as common })easants, and interesting our curiosity by the knowledge they displayed, in- formed us they were guides, when they had be- come pretty sure that wc would not say they should not guide us, and really there is no resist- ing a Balma, a Paccard, a Cochet, a Coutet, w^hen you are at all read in Saussure, and remember his honourable mention ot" those and other names among his bold supporters up the highest summit of Mont Blanc, in IJSG, till then deemed inac- cessible. the i;uid^':^ to hold yourb.tick on Uic oppositi' side, and U^an the rc- lore tVoni the jM-ccipicc, that in case of a lalsc -^U'p, you iwdv IhU on the iale side. 298 MOUNTAIN GUIDES. In our tiscension of the Breven we had iictually three of these veterans with us, who, at the mo- derate rate of five francs a day, would climb and talk, and fight their battles over again for our in- struction and amusement. One of them, Jacques Balma, dit des dames, on account of his particular attention to ladies, climbing under his guid- ance, gave us, on our return in the evening, after so many hours of hard labour, a proof of his un- diminished strength, spirit, and, perhaps, rash- ness, at the age of sixty. A party of young men, on a botanizing excursion, spied a very fine, and, I presume, rare plant, (saxifraga pyramidalis, I think it was called,) blooming in apparent safety out of reach, on the top of an inaccessible rock. Jacques Balma considered a few minutes, then took off his shoes, and securing a foot here, a hand there, holding once by his teeth to a twig, spring- ing from a shelving place to another like a cha- mois, or writhing like a snake among stones and bushes out of sight, without once hesitating or looking back, worked himself up to the ])yrami(ial bunch of iiowers, and threw it down to the won- dering spectators. That was not enough ; another bunch of flowers, another laurel-wreath bloomed over his head, in a still more difficult and hazardous situatioji: he sprung lor il :. w(^, joined our entreaties MOINTAIN (.1 IDEs. ■2\\\i to those oi' the other guides, who warned him oi' his danger, and then turned away, not to a})peiu* to encourage the mad attempt ; a general exclama- tion induced us soon after to look again ; wc be- held him in equilibrium on his breast, plucking the hower with the toes of an outstretched leg ! How he came down I do not know, it was, perhaps, still more hazardous than going up, but in a few minutes we saw him again by our side, his load on his back, and not even out of breath. When the intrepid old fellow waited on us at supper in the evening, I felt ashamed to see him behind my chair. Jacques Balma was born a goat-herd, and is, perhaps, less well-informed than many of the other guides, but he has in him that genuine spirit, which makes heroes either for good, for indifferent, or for bad ]nu'poses. At iK^arly three thousand ieet above Chamoum" there is a chalt!t on the lircrc;;, wliere travellers may procure milk, and get some sort of shelter under the miserable roof: lor the chfdets of Savoy are vastly interior to tho;:e of Switzerland. The view of Mont Blanc is here nearly as good as from the top of the Breven, and as all the difficulty ol" the ascent is to come, there is really no reason to go farther, unless it \?-pourIa g/o/Vc like Jacques Balma. l^our Id g/oiVe.then. all thosc^ of our party, who w(;rr 300 ASCENT OF THE BREVEN. game, or at least had some little reputation that way to support, set off from the chfilet with two of the guides. There was no difficulty till we came to the first field of snow, which was very steep and very slippery ; a back-sliding might have been serious on account of the difficulty of stopping. By striking in the end of your foot at every step you take, you get a secure footing, and may anchor yourself, with your hands in the snow, when the declivity is very great, without a stick, nearly as well as with it. At the Chimney, a difficult passage at all times, the guides held a consultation, as it had not been tried yet this season ; we might have turned it, by another field of snow, but it was more precipitous than the first, therefore it was determined to makt; for the chimney — first climbing a steep rock with very little difficulty, and no danger, provided you do not look behind ; above that is the chimney, a chasm or recess full of ice, which, melting first where it touches the rock, had left a vacant space of about two feet. With your back against the snicjoth ice, and plying diligently with ieet, knees, and kmds against the rock, in the manner chimney-sweepers do, you may work yourself up, with tolerable ease and comfort, to the top, some twenty or thirty feet, in a very few minutes. There you find another field of snow-ice not at all steep, then a very steep MONT HLAN( . 301 ascent, and the last, wholly composed of broken schist, which brings yon to the signals, two rnde constructions like altars on the top of the Breven. The prospect of Mont Blanc was here very littlo different from what Ave had found it at the chalet, yet the summit of Mont Blanc, the bosne du dromc- daire, appeared now less foreshortened, and the whirlwinds of snow-dust upon it were clearly distin- guish(xl athwart the dark -blue of the sky, moving round with great violence on ]:)articular spots. Where we were, indeed, it was scarcely possible to stand the wind, and a large sheet of greasy heavy paper, which had served to wrap up our provisions, being blown off, first flew over the precipice of nearly two thousand feet, which separated us from the chalet ; then over that chalet, and in a very few minutes fell on a s]X)t it took us afterwards two hours to reach, although down-hill. The \ i(nv here was undoubtcxily a most extraor- dinary one, })laced full in front, and about mid-height of Mont Blanc, and therefore at ecjual distance be- tween the summit and the bas(,% sufficiently far to (MTibrace the whole at one glance, sufficiently near to distinguish every detail, we saw this stupendous object like a full length picture hung ui) there for our pleasure and information : when we b(\gan t() asccMid the Ih'cvcn, and hrdf way up to its vlu'iUl. we 302 SDMMTT Ol' rilF, IIRF.VEN. could not turn round and look at Mont Blanc, without experiencing the terrific sensation oi'ii& J ailing down over us ; several of our party made use of this ex- pression at the same time, averting their eyes in terror, which shows how general and how strong the impression was ; but as we ascended higher it ceased. From the summit of the Breven, Mont Druct and its glacier seemed about the same distance north of us, as Mont Blanc south ; the valleys of Cha- mouni and of Servoz, and all the space we had tra- velled the preceding day, appeared all within a stone's throw. The guide pointed to a monument near Servoz, which I could not see, erected to the memory q{ Eschen, a Dane*, who perished the 7th of August, 1800, by having, in contempt of his guide, ventured heedlessly over the glacier of Druet. Ebel tells the melancholy story thus : " Mr. Eschen (|ui ctoit toujours a quelques centaines de pas en avant disparut tout-a-coup lorsqu'ils furent arrives sur Ic glacier. Mr. Simschen (his companion) et le conducteur se haterent de rebrousser chemin pour chercher du secours et la nuit meme quatrc hommes partirentde Servos — ils trouvferentl'infortune Danois, dans une fente du glacier a cent pieds de profon- * Isnown ill CJormanv liy :i ;i'>oil ti'iuislntirin of Hov.icc in •■VVM-. ni>Cl-,NT OF Tin: lUU'.VFN. 303 (leiir — il ctoit debout, Ics bras au dcssurf do sa tcte ct enticivmcnt fi;el6." Our comini^- down frcjm tho top of the Brevon, over the fields of snow, althouuh not entirely without liazard, was at least a less laborious operation — the n'uides gave the example of sliding down, in a standing posture, holding their great stick behind them to steer by, as well as steady themselves ; thc^y thus traversed the air like winged mercuries, sea reel V fiu'rowing the snow, in tlie direction they cho<(\ with e([ual ease, swiltness. and elegance of motion. But, as this was too much for us to at- tcunpt, tliin^ gave us next an elementary lesson ol" boltom-traUin'j: ; that is, sliding down in a sitting- posture, always steering by the stick liekl behind in the snow: ahhougli this seemed very easy, several of us, friglitened at their own swiftnc^ss, or wishing to do bettt^r tlian welK ami making too violent a usc^ ol" the stick, either to stop their motion suiHenlv, or steer abruptly to the right or left, broke it short, and thus b(X'ome iingovcMmable, tlew headlong to what appeared to them impenihng d(~struction. with evcM'y variety ol" awkwardness, and expression of dismay in their gestures, yet arrived in perfect salily in the arms of the guides, a.ecustomed to thes(^ sorts of ac- c'(i(Mits. and ]^rcM)ar(xl for tluMu. T\\:^ Sa\(/\;u'([ iciiiiiiv at tin' .'hah't, wheix^ we 304 THE SAVOVAUDS. Stopped to dry ourselves a little, and take some coffee, appeared good sort of people, very religious, and morally inclined, but unfortunately very dirty, which seems the original sin of Savoy. The Savoy- ards in general like France, and hate Piedmont and Geneva ; these good people here disliked all round — the Piedmontese, because hard masters ; the Ge- nevans, because they are Huguenots, and rich into the bargain ; the French, because they ill-treated the Pope. The chalet people here pay one louis for the sea- son to the owner of each cow they hire, and six French francs to the proprietor of the mountain for the pasture, which is one-half less for the cow, and three-fourths less for the pasture, than in the Canton de Vaud, because the season is shorter here, and money more valuable : their process of cheese- making is much more slovenly than in the Canton de Vaud ; they are even so careless as to deposit their milk in the brass boiler long before it is necessary to boil it. A young goat (there are more of them than cows) had followed us, step by stej), to the top of the mountain and down again ; it evidently seemed amused with our sliding down the fields of snow, and skipped along with great spirit and glee, as one of us, but certainly much better than any of us : while an old one, with its knee slightly bound INN AT CHAMOUNl. 305 round, followed nimbly enough on three legs. The lame leg, broke by accident, had been set by the lu^rdsman, which they do readily, and with full suc- cess. We were shewn a couloir (a steep slope made smooth by avalanches) where a frightened horse, venturing lately, slid down and was killed. The inn at Chamouni was full of strangers*, English and Germans mostly, not one French, all mountain hunters, talking over their day's sport, asking news about the state of neighbouring moun- tain<, c^i'-c. and preparing for the laborious pleasures of the next day ; one was Icg-tired. the other had his foot blistered, a third was so stiff in the back he could neither sit down nor get up ; but all were otherwise extremely well in health and happy — this is a new sport, rock-hunting, plant-hunting, or pic- turesque view hunting, more justifiable in every point of view than hare or stag-hunting; more ra- tional, and e\'en attended with less danger to health or life. The next clay found us earlv up, and prepared for the Montinivcrt and the Mer de Glace ; and not- withstanding the very threatening aspect of the wea- ther, we set out, but the rain began before we had })roceeded more than two miles, and a very little way * .To-epiiine and Maria Louise visited Chamouni the same sum- mcr. a few years apo. N'oi.. I. X 306 CHAMOUNl. up the mountain. The wisest of the party, the oldest at least, and less active, took shelter in a chalet, in hopes it would turn out a passing shower, but it came on worse and worse. One of the guides, Jacques Balma himself, spoke discouragingly — we should have a slippery ascent, and then see nothing through the fogs ; we yielded, I cannot say reluc- tantly, and went home to rest ourselves, with no small hopes of having the laugh on our side, when our adventurous companions should return ; but it was on theirs against us, for they had some moments of clear weather when on the borders of the great Mer de Glace, which afforded them " short glimpses of a breast of snow," and they rested and warmed themselves in a comfortable hospice, erected there by a Monsieur Desportes, resident de France u Geneve, and repaired since by a Monsieur Doulcet Pontecoulant, prefet du departement de la Dyle. The inscription over the door, " A la Nature,'' is, I am sorry to say, a little too finical and affected, and would go a great way to make me doubt, that the real love of nature had much to do with the erection of this French temple. Our inn at Chamouni is kept by Le^i Frerts Charlet ; we were induced to ask one of them, a soldierlike-looking man, although waiting most ob- fiequiously, whether he had servi ? He said he rilE IMPKUIAL GLAUU. .iO? had served fourteen years, and had made twelve campaigns! " Any rank?" "Yes, captain!" — He did not boast at all. but went on about his business round the table, a napkin mider his arm, informing us, in answer to our questions, that he had been made a lieutenant on the held of battle, and soon after promoted to the rank of Captain in the Imperial Guard ; he was put upon half-pay in 1814. Where was he in March, 1815.' " At Chamouni," he answered, on a visit to his native place ; very fortunately for him, he added, as he would otherwise have been at Water- loo, as so many others, who cared as little about Buonaparte as himself! He returned to France on half-pay, and happened to be at Grenoble when the late disturbances broke out there : all half-pay officers were sent away to Languedoc, and quar- tered in Royalist towns, under surveillance ! — " Tired of being a sort of prisoner, I threw up my commission," he said. •' and returned to niy native valley, where I married, and have no reason to regret the military life." This man is probably a fair sample of the Imperial Army ; a brave sol- dier, considering war as a profession, indifferent as to political questions, ready to serve either side for the sake of rank and pay, easily won over by 308 DISCOVERY OF CHAMOLNI, good treatment, or turned into a citizen by marriage and an establishment. Incredible as it may seem, this valley of Cha- mouni, till then miknown, was discovered in 1741*, by two Englishmen, the celebrated traveller Pococke and a Mr. Windham : an account of their journey appeared in the Mercure de Suisse, 1743, as a great event. In 1760, Mr. de Saussure visited Cha- mouni, for the first time ; and his great work on the Alps, published about fifteen years after, together with Mr. Bourit's Description des Glaciers de la Savoie, made the country so famous, that as many as a thousand travellers used to visit it every season ; now, the number is probably not less than four or five thousand. The two first adven- turers, in 1741, went with an escort well armed, slept under tents, with fires lighted, and a watch all night. The poor name of Mont Blanc is of very late date : the highest mountain in Europe had not even a name during the first half of the eighteenth century. Mont Blanc from this place appears much narrower in proportion to its height, than when seen from Chamouni, and the granitic mass looks as if it had been thrown up through a longitudinal rent of the earth, north-east and south- * Spp Mr. Ehel, Manuel (\u Voyageur en Suisse. VIEW OF MONT BLANC 309 west. I am sorry, for the Huttonian system of the earth, fccUng a great penchant for it, that this gra- nite is stratified — a fatal blow to the theory, which would have received the most glorious confirma- tion from every other geological appearance ob- served here. These almost vertical strata, in- clining slightly south, render the front towards Italy much steeper than that towards Chamouni ; no snow can lie on its surface, and only two gla- ciers descend from the summit ; yet there is a prac- ticable, although dangerous, path down that side, by the Col du Giant, by which you may reach Cour- mai/er in five hours. This same evening, being very fine weather, we left Chamouni, on our return to Geneva. About two miles before we reached St. Martin, w^here W'C were to sleep, we had a most splendid retro- spect of Mont Blanc burning under the last rays of the setting sun : its refulgent snows illuminated the whole valley. This brightness soon faded into pale pink, then pure white, sharply defined on the darkening azure of the sky. We doubted whe- ther this view was not superior to any we had had of Mont Blanc before, owing to the accidents of light exceeding in richness and splend(uir any of the preceding days. The rocky ramparts of the vnllev. where St. Martin is situated, with their 310 .MONT BLANC. bold outline and deep indentments, appeared abso- lutely jet black, when contrasted with the western sky ; and night closed over the scene before we were able to withdraw our eyes from its enchant- ment. Yet the sight of two cretins " leering by""" in a corner of the inn -yard, and of the enormous goitres of the landlord and landlady of the Hotel du Mont Blanc, had already discoloured it a little. The uncoiled floors and thin partitions rendered us the rather unwilling partakers of the joyful mirth of another houseful of prospect-hunters : every bed was occupied, or might have been ; but they seemed more intent on pursuing the sport, even in thought and conversation, than on sleep, and were up late in the night, laughing loud, and talking in various languages ; yet caffe cm lait was, I believe, the only exhilarating liquor on the table. Early in the morning, which proved very fine, pedestrians with their knapsacks and batom ferres, and pic- turesque ladies in chars-a-bans, were seen on the road, making for their respective mountains. August 18.' — We have scarcely seen more of Geneva than we had before, and must again post- pone farther acquaintance till our return from Lyons, where we are going. The country, from Gemeva to the passage of Fort TEchiso, is perfectly beau- tiful ; cultivated, yet woody and picturesque. The LOSS OF THH RHONE. 311 Jura, on the right, is more varied in its outlines than usual, and its base is covered with farms and country-houses buried in trees : innumerable springs of the clearest water issue from it, on the left, a line plain sloping to the lake of Geneva, and be- yond it the high Alps. The passage of the Jura, at Fort I'Ecluse, is very fine, and might well appear terrific to any traveller who had not seen other mountains. The Fort itself has been dismantled, and is about to be rebuilt in a different situation. The " Loss of the" Rhone, in this very passage, has more celebrity than it is perhaps entitled to ; and when the Rhone is high, as at present, the subterranean channel being no longer sufficient, it fills an upper channel just over the lower one, and the loss of the Rhone is lost. This river, which at Geneva, and for many miles beknv, is more than two hundred feet wide, is all at once reduced, in the narrow pass of L'Ecluse, to thirty feet, and even to fifteen in some places, being, of course, proportionably deep and rapid. Large fragments of rocks, fallen from the heights, or caving in from the immediate banks, have covered over this narrow channel for the space of sixty paces, much as at Pfeffers' baths. As far as Cerdon on Pont d"Air. the road to Lyons is highly picturesque, and the little lake of Nantua 312 LYONS. Strongly recalls the Scotch scenery ; we could almost have fancied we saw the naked knees and plaided breast of Highland shepherds on the grassy slopes of its solitary banks. From Pont d'Air to Lyons, the landscape sinks rapidly into insignifi- cance, being a dull monotonous plain, without a tree, and scarcely a bush, to relieve the eye; no culture, but that of wheat, which, useful as it is, cannot boast of any beauty, particularly just after harvest. The approach of the town is enlivened by the Rhone, which there spreads majestic : how it could squeeze through the narrow gap of L'Ecluse, seems difficult to conceive. The immediate banks here are a barren sand, without trees and verdure ; yet they are airy and cheerful. The entrance of the town by the Key St. Clair is very fine, and as we did not penetrate the first evening beyond the Hotel (lit Nord, near the Comedie, nothing occurred to destroy the first impression. The following days shewed us an interior in no W'ay corresponding to the beauty of the Keys ; nothing can surpass its dirt and shabbiness. The Place of Bellccomi, which 1 remembered very magnificent, pulled down during the fury of the Revolution, has been re-built on a uniform, but not a beautiful, plan ; the two new sides look like barracks for soldiers, or cotton ma- nufactories The middle, former! v adorned with a HOSPITAL OF LVONb. 313 fine equestrian statue ot" Louis XIV., with foun- tains and grass plats, is now a bare and dirty area lilve a cattlo-marlvet. Mr. F., to whom we had a letter, an intelligent and obliging man, took us to the celebrated hospital of Lyons ; the only one in France, thirty or forty years ago, which was not in a barbarous state, but which now has many equals in Paris. We went through all the wards, in very warm weather, without meeting with the slightest offensive smell, and scarcely any offensive sight. There are annually Btiii^' (tin* Av*-i.^g»_' lime each Iiidisi'.'.iKils :iil]uitli;ii. Deaths. Death for Iiidiviiliiil stays. (,'i\il blck U.-ICO 13UU 1 1 sick ' '21 days. Military. '2,200 10,5 -22 ditto The patients, in single beds, are attended by women, socurs de la charite, who, many of them in the prime of life, and not boLmd by absolute vows, devote tliemselves for life, and die in the act of doing good ; there are, I think, one hun- dred and fifty ; they wear a uniform dress of dark worsted, and remarkably clean linen, and receive the trifiing sum of forty francs a year for pocket- money. They each sit up one night in (^ach w^eek, die following day is a day of relaxation, and the only one they have During the siege of Lyon>. when cannon-balls pas-ed through the .514 SIEGE OF LYONS. the windows, and struck the walls every moment, not one abandoned her post near the sick. The kitchen and refectory are patterns of cleanliness; the pharmacy supports itself, and brings a revenue besides, by the sale of medicines out of doors. The different wards, in the form of a cross, unite under a lofty dome, with an insulated altar in the centre, in a vast open area, paved with marble ; the effect is magnificent beyond any thing I ever saw, magnificent by the very contrast with the melancholy sight of the rows of beds, occupied by individuals, destitute and sick, without a home, without a friend to close their eyes. The lofty dome, the altar, the immense space, those angelic females, who attend night and day, all concur in impressing the mind with an idea of high protec- tion and divine superintendence ; it seems an image of Providence on earth, held up to those most in need of it, and the ray of comfort and of hope it brings, is surely worth cherishing. Notwithstanding the atrocity of firing on the hospital during the revolutionary siege, (the walls bear many a disgraceful scar,) the property of the hospital, consisting mostly of houses and farms, was not seized, and its unimpaired revenue amounts to half a million of francs a year, to which govern- ment a(kis half as much more. Twentv directors Hu-5lMiAl. OF LYONS, 315 maiiago the concerns of the institution, they serve five years each, four of them go out every year : the new members are nominated by the old, and conhrmed by government. They deposit a large sum. returned to them at the end of their time of service, and 1ANLFA( TURKS. HT teiied to their necks, to identify them at any future period. Highly praiseworthy as the object of such institutions undoubtedly is, they hold out tempta- tions too strong for unnatural parents to withstand, and defeat one of the moral checks to an excessive population. They may, indeed, prevent infanti- cide in a few cases, but cause more children to be born to an untimely grave, or never to know pa- rental love and protection. All foundling hospitals have an immoral tendency, they do a little good, and a great deal of harm. Without attempting a description of the curious manufactures we saw% I shall only observe that they are in a great degree domestic, most w^eavers working at home *, a circumstance of material im- portance. Mechanical improvements, introduced within the last twenty years, have considerably re- duced the number of assistants, superseding alto- gether th(^ tirtKses dc corde, young women formerly employed in pulling ropes under tlie direction of the weaver, who now moves these ropes by ma- chinery ; it was, from the permanently standing posture, a very unwholesome employment. I am assured that the silk manufacturers of Lyons have * This home, however, as I ain assured, is not unfrefjucntly a room twenty feet square, where two, and sometime.« three, fami- lies h\e and work. 318 FUBI.IC LlliUAHV. not shown, at any period of the Revolution, that lawless spirit, men of their cast, and women too, have elsewhere, but especially in England, of late displayed. The public library of Lyons is celebrated for its size ; I mention it on account of an ingenious ex- periment I remember having seen tried in it, many years ago, to direct a balloon ; it was of an oblong shape like a fish, with a light rod affixed under it, from end to end, and a light weight running along the rod by means of a ring. The balloon, made of oiled silk, and filled with hydrogen gas, so as to give a slight force of ascension, placed on the floor at one end of the long gallery, was suffered to ascend ; the weight was near the tail, which made the head of the balloon incline upwards, and in that posi- tion, instead of making its way vertically through the air, it shot forwards in a diagonal line, till the head striking against the ceiling, it turned down- wards, and the weight shifting towards the head, kept it in that position ; when the balloon obeying the new impulse received by the shock against the ceiling, travelled down diagonally again till it came in contact with the floor, then turned up again, and so on, tacking up and down to the end of the gal- lery. Now the weight and rod was a substitute lor a man going up with the balloon, who. bv moans of a rope fore and aft, might easily give it the in- cHned position required ; then by the usual means of parting alternately with some ballast and some gas, would ascend and descend in his progress forwards, tacking through the air like a ship, but in a vertical instead of an horizontal plane. Fourviere, a hill within the walls of the town, affords a prospect universally admired. From a private garden, on the nortli side of the hill, we had immediately under our eye an extensive field of red-tile roofs, intersected by narrow and dark streets scarcely visible ; two considerable rivers, the Rhone and the Saone, encompass this dingy area, and meet just below it : beyond the town and rivers are the plains of Dauphine, spreading like a geographical map, or rather a vast extent of patch- work of all colours, except green — corn fields, the predominating object, being at this season in their worst state. The Al])s in the eastern horizon ex- hibit their ever-changeful aspect ; often very beau- tiful, and ahhough the most prominent among them, Mont Blanc, is one hundred miles distant, in a straight line, they still appear very high. Toward the west, we had a birti's eye view of Pierre Seise, fPctra excisa.j a ruined castle, picturesc|ucly mounted on a rock, between which and the Saone the Romans chiselled out the narrow road we saw. This castle was the residence and the strong hold of the Archbishop of Lyons, at the time prelates were princes ; then many years a bastille for the profligate sons of powerful fathers, who liked the punishment, while they scorned the law. The barbarous succes- sors of these well-bred tyrants filled this castle with a hundred fold the immber of captives, and then but- chered them in cold blood. Of the four or five gen- tlemen, who had accompanied us to Foiirviere, two had been among the devoted victims of Pierre Seise, and escaped by a miracle ; you scarcely meet with any middle-aged person in France who has not been shut up at least, if not in immediate danger of his life * . The buildings about Pierre Seise are still closer packed than in the centre part of the town — stuck up against the rocks, some of them have a garden above the roof, and an entrance-door in the garret. * After the death of Robespierre, (July, IZfM,) there was at Lyons a violent re-action: some oi the judges of the bloody tri- bunal might have been expected to fall under the hands of the ex- asperated friends and relatives of their victims. But tlie re-action went further ; an association, calling itself De Jesi/s, sent aljout the country to look for feirori.sf.s, who were deliberately put to death without tiie form of a trial, and who migiit or might not be guilty of the crimes charged to tiiem. Imitating the example of these same tcrrorisf.s, they actually made another massacre of the prisons. All the prisoners oi' Roa/mr, sixty-eight in number, were slaughtered in cold bloorl bv the pretended rovali'^ts. MOI'NTAIN OF FOlfRVIEUES. ,;2l The wliole mountain of Fourvieros, like Mount Palatine at Rome, is honey-combed with aqueducts and subterranean remains of ancient baths and other buildings, as well as strewed over with mosaics, with medals, sepulchral lamps, ij-c. ; — a convent, called the Antiquailks, now a mad -house, was built some centuries ago upon the foundation, and out of the materials of the palace where the Emperor Claude was born, and the church of Four- vieros stands in the Forum Trajanl ; not a house on the hill but was built with Roman materials, for this was the site of the Roman city of Lyons, and the present town between the two rivers is com- paratively modern, yet it contains also many re- mains of antiquity. The church of Enay occupies the place of a temjole of Augustus, and its walls exhibit abundant fragments of anti(]uities. In the year \79',l the manufacturing population of Lyons sustained, behind its old walls, scarcely deserving the name of ibrtifications. a siege of two months against an army ol" one hundred thousand men. Reduced by famine, rather than tlie sword, the citizens o])ened tlieir gates, and submitted to the clemency of the victor*, but the victor sent ' Tlic Count dc Precy, who coinmaiidcd in llie town, cut his way ihrougli on tlu; inorniua of tlii.' suncndtT, (if^lh ot Ocu^bor, 17.0'',) wuh h^ss riian oiu; ihousaiid ioUoxvcr-, wlio nio^t ot ihcui Vol I V ,U2 REG ATT A ON TIIK SAONE. them to feed the reeking sheers of the guillotine, which proving too slow an instrument of death, grape-shot was employed to mow them down ew masse, on the other side of the Rhone, in a field marked by a ditch and a wooden cross. Many people were walking and playing bowls and nine- pins about the spot when we went to look at it, and it occurred to us, that most of the oldest had been actors in these tragedies ; some as execu- tioners, and others as intended victims, who had escaped with their lives. There was a regatta on the Saone while we were at Lyons ; a sort of tilting in boats, and the water- men carried flags inscribed with various most loyal devices such as the following : Toujdurs ploins de /clc ct dc ibi, Toujours au cliamp d'honneur picts ;\ servir d'cxeniple, I.es nautonniers du port du I'cinplo, Suvcnt etrc Soldals ct mourir pour leur Iloi ! Now it is not long since, that a man, well known in Europe, went through this town, and passed this very Port du Temple, on hiy^ way to Paris, with a handful of followers, for the express purpose of dethroning the king; no one dreamed of stopping jurishcd in tlu- attempt. I'hc author had a brother in this devoted lri;. .;-2.'> iiut-tfccs. and with creditable farm-houses : farther south Daupliinc becomes highly picturesque: a con- tinuation of the same agreeable landscape, enli- vened by numerous springs, the surest test of a fine country, brought us to Poiii dc Bcauvoisin, where, after some detention at the custom-house, we pro- ceeded towards the celebrated passage of Lev Eclicl/cs : a narrow but excellent road is carried, bv a very gradual ascent, along the abrupt face ol" a mountain, and in many places cut into the rock, which (j\erhangs the road on one side, while on the othiT it forms a preci})ice, guarded by a lo^v wall, the total ascent does not exceed five or six hundred feet : an e([ual descent brought us to a valley, sur- rounded by creditable looking mountains, which might have apjieared greater had we not so recently been among the Alps. The (irandc Cliaiirmst , is situatetl in one of the wildest recesses of these mountains, south-east, towards Grenoble. Tile outlet of tlu^ valley, towards Savoy, was for- merly by a natural cavern through the mountain, to attain the mouth of which the assistance of lad- ders was rec^uired, thence the name ol" Lcs Echci/cs. One hundred and forty-four years ago, the Duke of Savoy, Emanuel II.. as the traveller is iiii()rnuHl by a marble inscription on the ^■•pot, cut down tli(< rocks into a hollow road, with peri)enide~ 32() FRENCH MILITARY WORKS. to a great depth ; it is barely practicable for car- riages, by the help of additional horses or oxen. A third passage was undertaken by Buonaparte through the mountain : the gallery, nine hundred feet long, twenty -five feet high, and as much broad, is complete, all but the outside road to it: the ascent is very easy ; eighty miners worked at it night and day for three years — the view it affords, as through a huge tube, is very singular. This great work was put to a very characteristic use during the hundred days, being occupied as a mi- litary position by Marshal Suchet, to oppose the entrance of the Austrians. The road and the gal- lery were again encumbered with the original rocks tumbled down into their old places, and every thing was done to restore the former and the new passages to their wild state. The downfall of Buonaparte stopped short this work of destruction, and the road is again in a way of forwardness. 1 am sorry to say, however, that every individual Savoyard I spoke to on the subject regretted the change, and this for very cogent reasons. The roula, rather than rural or picturesque, most of them have a paved court, a walled garden, and ter- races in the French or Italian taste, with rows of exj)irnig exotics in their pots, as well as a Dutch Belvidere on the road-side, furnished with seats, of which I must say, to the credit of good taste, that the dust is not often wiped off. All this bc- lonirs to a wealthier but coarser age, gone by ; no one would now build or plant so, but many sub- mit to leave things as they are, and wear the laced coat of their grand-father, with the old-fashioned Vol.. I, Z ;338 KKMAl.E AMUSEMENTS. and tawdry ornament still on it. This, however, applies to the smaller country residences ; most of the larger ones are intended to be in the English taste. It seems an easy matter to do well in regard to gardens, for the first requisite is to do little. Good houses are few in Geneva, and although some of them are admirably situated, the rest of the town is either melancholy and dull, or mean and noisy. If the liberal party once obtained of the legitimate party access in and out of town all night, most of the nearest country-houses would be inhabited winter and summer. Three of our five letters of introduction have procured a friendly reception : our first acquaintances have led to others, and we have no reason to complain of Genevan hospitality. Elsewhere dinners are the current coin in which a debt of civility, contracted by a foreign introduction, is expected to be dis- charged, here soirees ; but the circulation of the latter medium of exchange takes place in winter only ; in this season Genevans are only visible in the country and individually, a better mode by far of seeing them. Walking does not seem to form any considerable part of female amusements. Ge- nevan ladies arc great readers and drawers ; they are musical likewise, and attend methodically to their housekeeping and the education of their Tin: LADIES or (.f.xev.n. 339 children. We were struck with the plaintive gen- tleness of their tone of \oici\ an'l the modesty of their demeanour confirms their u^eneral reputation, for scandal is scarcely known here. Such is the first impression we have received respecting the best part of the Genevan world ; pious, well- informed, good mothers of families ; the valuable qualities of Genevan ladies are undisputed ; but it is asserted that the result of all is a considerable degree of pedantry, want of ease, and warmth, e.\ce])t for their immediate friends. Disposed as I might have been to believe in these charges, I do not, on trial, find them supported ; and my verdict, if called for, wT)uld be not guiltj/. There are not many Parisiennes now-a-days, who, with- out hcinu: fe mm es satantcs, have not about as much learning as the femmes savmites of Moliere. In Mrs. Montague's time, the London ladies of her society, denominated blue stocking, might pro- bably have hesitated about attending the lectures of the British Institution, and taking notes, although ladies now are not deemed blue for doing both ; and fifty years hence, those now obnoxious to the name would be lost in the crowd of still deeper- read ladies. It is all a matter of comparison. Somebody has said, that he did not object to blue stockings, provided the petticoats- were hut long y. J 340 LITERATURE OF THE GENEVESE. enough ; and that is, in fact, the main point. When learning is generally diffused, and good morals quite common, both prudery and pedantry are ne- cessarily out of the question, for we cannot be said to affect the qualities we really possess, and we are not proud of advantages every body enjoys. I think there is here very little affectation of wit or smartness in conversation, which is much in favour of the state of society, for of all sorts of pretensions, this is the most unfortunate for him who has it, as well as for those who must endure it. But pretensions to learning having something positive for their object, are easily brought to the test. No one can long be mistaken himself as to his own qualifications, or long ex- pect to impose on others ; these people, there- fore, in confining their pursuits or conversation very much to positive knowledge, run much less risk of being ridiculous and offensive than their neighbours. Among the very many men of let- ters Geneva has produced, it is remarkable enough there scarcely is, I do not say a poet, but a ver- sifier ; for assuredly, if the lively and strong de- lineation of feelings and of facts, and the art of awakening in others the dormant faculties of the mind be poetry, few countries can boast of greater poets than J. J. Rousseau and Madame dc Stae!. MORALS OF THl'. PEOPI.i:. .J41 Undoubtedly the mother of a family, devoted to her husband and her children, may have less sen- sibility to spare for the people of her society ; but they may, in their turn, seek a compensation where she finds hers, and suffer her to remain a living contradiction of the witty, but false, apho- rism, that in this world pleasures are all either un- wholesome or sinful. The morals of Geneva, during the last half of the eighteenth century, were not by any means so unobjectionable, although purer than in most other parts of Europe : luxury and idleness exerting their usual influence, the universal relaxation had gained ground ; but the French Revolution coming towards the latter end of this wicked age, swept away together vices and virtues, property and life *. Haifa century will be necessary to rebuild Genevan fortunes ; adversity in the mean time, and serious cares, have restored the national character, not assuredly to calvinistical austerity, but to simplicity, solidity, and a preference of do- mestic enjoyments over all others. I have occa- * The city of CTCUcva had, before the Revolution, sevi'iueen niiUions a year in the Frcncli Funds, of which al)Out tuehc on their own account. They liave lost the two-thirtls (eight millions), which is about three hundred and fifty francs a-year to each indi- vidual throuf^hout the whole population ; those who had the in- come spending il, of course, among those wlio had not. 342 M. DE CANDOLK. sionally heard music executed with that facility which marks great practice ; drawing is very ge- nerally cultivated, and you meet with these accom- plishments in families, where, from all circum- stances, you might wonder there should be found time to acquire them ; this is explained, when you remark how few women above the lower ranks are seen about the streets, or any where but at home, except a few hours at night ; there arc no morning visits at all. On the subject of accompli shro.ents the follow- ing anecdote deserves mentioning : — Mr. de Can- dole, Professor of Botany, at Geneva, but whoso reputation is European, made use, in a course of lectures, of a very valuable collection of drawings of American plants, intrusted to him by a celebrated Spanish botanist, Mr. Mosino, who having occa- sion for this collection sooner than was expected, sent for it back again. Mr. de C. having com- municated the circumstances to his audience, with the expression of his regrets ; some ladies, who attended the lectures, offered to copy, with the aid of their friends, the whole collection in a week, and the task w^as actually performed. The drawings, eight hundred and sixty in number, and (illing tliirtecn folio volumes, were executed by one hundred and fourteen female artists ; one, in- FEMALE ARTISTS. ;UJ deed, of the ladies alone did forty of them. In most cases the principal parts only of each plant are coloured, the rest only traced with accuracy ; the execution, in general, very good, and in some instances quite masterly. There is not, perhaps, another town of twenty-three thousand souls, where such a number of female artists, the greater part of course amateurs, could be found. Not- withstanding the wide dispersion of the drawings, there were not any lost, and one of them having been accidentally dro})t in the street, and picked up by a girl, ten years old, was returned to Mr. de Candole, copied by the child, and is no dis- paragement to the collection. On another occa- sion, several drawings were carried to a wrong house, but there too they found artists able and willing to do their part. This taste for the arts aud for knowledge in general, is universal. I noticed a very good drawing at a watchmaker's ; that is mi/ sister's ! the man said. Old Spon lay on the table, his wife was rcadinii; it. St. Ours and de la Rive, both dead some years, wc^re painters of the hrst order. There is at the Musce dcs Arts a large picture of the former, re])resent- ing a family Hying from an earthquake, admirable in every respect. Mr. de la Rive was an excel- lent landscape painter, m the style of Ruysdale ; 344 THE REFOIIMATIOX. Mr. Topfer, a living artist, is the Hogarth of Ge- neva, and would rival Wilkie, if he caricatured less and knew how to be pathetic sometimes. It would be difficult to find portrait painters com- parable to those of which Geneva can boast, and if I do not name any of them, it is because I can- not name them all. Geneva suffered under the most cruel despo- tism, during several centuries a prey to all the vices usually generated by slavery, and to which the Reformation proved a complete cure ; but the blessings of pure morals, and a free government, as well as the glory of being the metropolis of the Reformed Church, were purchased at the expense of the most rigorous novitiate under Calvin. Po- litical disturbances resulting from an ill balanced constitution, made the little republic, during the greatest part of last century a scandal to all Eu- rope, most gratifying to the friends of arbitrary power. The political explosion in France, in 1789, could not fail being felt. At Geneva the reign of terror was established in 1794, and four years after, the Republic was swallowed up by France, and remained unwillingly united till the downfall of Buoncipart(\ The Genevans silently bore an unavoidable yoke, but their will was not subdued, and the officers of the conquerinir govern- Tin: REVOLUTION. 345 merit, treated with cold civility, never were admitted to any degree of intimacy ; there always was a complete separation between them and their mas- ters. The penance lasted fifteen years, and was not without its use, having afforded time for fac- tions to cool, and old quarrels to be forgotten. Turning over a new leaf, they now begin the Re- public anew, and it will be some time before parties acquire the same degree of violence as heretofore. There is on one side, as in France, a perverse disposition to reinstate the old abuses in hatred of the Revolution ; and a determination no less perverse on the other side, to reject every thing that is not new. The just abhorrence of the excesses of the Revolution is unjustly trans- ferred to those wholesome principles which served as a pretence to the perpetrators of horrid crimes, and which suffer for having kept such bad com- pany. This spirit is shewn in trifles, as well as in things of importance ; the hour at which the gates of the town are to be closed at night is the subject of angry debates, and because it might have been very proper to shut them carefully in former times, the practice is still continued now, when there can be no earthly reason lor it. The two parties do not agree better about the walls of the town than it> gates : but the (Uiestion oi 34H GOVEUNMENT OF GENEVA. the fortification, being of rather more importance, will be treated elsewhere. In the mean time, from the decaying state of these works, it may be, ere long, decided for them, by their opportunely tumbling down. These disputes, I must say, how- ever, are so little violent, that I should not have known of their existence, if I had not been told by Genevans themselves. The insignificance of Geneva as a power, noto- rious to its inhabitants, keeps down in some degree those extravagant notions of national importance, which prevail in other countries, and are disgust- ing to those who do not partake of them. Thus, the subjection of the Republic was felt as the plague or an earthquake might be — a public cala- mity, not an insult to be resented. The events ol" the Revolution, already become historical, are mentioned without violence ; and those even who wore actors in scenes of blood, the more known from their having been few, live unmolested, and are nearly forgotten. One of them, unable to Ibrget himself, and bear any longer the torments of re- morse, has been heard, of late years, calling out in the dead of the night on the divine vcmgeance, or for signal punishment, which is less dreadful to him in idea, than what his own conscience is ap- parently inilictiug. r.KLUiioLs c:ontu()vi:hs\ . 317 Scarcely settled quietly, and again masters at home, after their temporary subjection, the Gene- vans see their internal peace threatened by rc- lirsion : and further, that many passages respecting the lilK.ri, ATIONS OK Till. (IHIUU. .'i.") 1 by the Church of Geneva in the time of Calvin. N(jt satisfied, it is still farther said, with this dere- liction of former principles, they reciuire from their youni^ ministers, that they will iollow the same course: thus violating* the fundamental regulations of their church, to which they had subscribed. Divinity ot" Christ have been retained, i vcn those wliose authen- ticity has been suspected; 1 Tim. iii. 16, and 1 John, v. 7- * Accordins; to the church regulations of the 1st of Jiuie. 17~J, the moderator enjoined to those whom lie received into tiie holy ministry, not to discuss from the pulpit those points which miiiht tend to disturb the peace of the church ; i)ut at the same time he dictated to them the following engagement. " You ])ro- mise to hold the doctrine of the holy prophets and apostles, such as is contained in the sacred books of tlie Old and New 'I'es- tarnents, and of which doctrine we have a summary in our catechism." But then, the catechism, which is that of (^alvin, enters with- out reserve upon those very points which the young minister is to avoid. Heme the enemies of the Church of C>eneva have taken occasion to say, that the n^inisters obeyed an intimation, and broke a positive engagement. 'I'heir reply is, that lor many years they have suppressed the following words, '• of xvliich doc- trine rvc hare a sammani in our catechism ;" therefore, may now, with perfect propriety, recommend not to treat from the pulpit, e.vprcsso and polemicallv, any mysterious points upon which they are not agreed, as the discussion might disturb the peace of tlie church and lessen its dignity. 'Vhv Genevans do not impose the profession of Calvin, or that of any other person ; nor can Pro- testants arrogate to themselves an authority, which they ret'usc to the Romi'-h cliurch. 'I'liis would be. to have a Tope, and, what 352 ROISSEAU. Rousseau, after having taken upon himself the defence of the pastors of Geneva, in his celebrated letter to D'Alembert, aimed a terrible blow at them in his Letters from the Mountain. " On demande," he says, " aux ministres de I'Eglise de Geneve, si Jesus Christ est Dieu ? lis n'osent r^pondre. Un philosophe jette sur eux un rapide coup-d'oeuil. 11 les pen^tre, il les voit Ariens, Sociniens, Deistes, il le dit et pense leur faire honneur! Aussitot alarm6s, effray^s, ils s'assemblent, ils discutent, ils s'agitent, ils ne savant a quel saint se vouer, et apr^s force consultations, deliberations, confe- rences, le tout aboutit a un amphigouri ! Ou Ton ne dit ni oui ni non. Oh Ge^nevois ! ce sont en v^rite de singulieres gens que Messeurs vos Minis- tres ! On ne salt ce qu'ils croyent, ou ce qu'ils ne croyent pas. On ne sait meme pas ce qu'ils font is worse, a dead Pope, who never could alter his opinion. Paley, in speaking of the celebrated thirty-nine Articles, has somewhere said, that they were Articles of Peace, rather than Articles of Faith. With at least as much ixason this might be said of the regulations of Geneva. In the mean time, it would be better to abstain from any profession of faith, even a negative one. A unity of doctrine in the same church may be necessary ; but Protes- tants have no right to prevent separate churches from being established : for they also were Separatists, not only at the time of the Reformation, but also when, in the last century, they abandoned the rigorous principles of Calvin, and reformed the Reformation itself. ClirUCIl OF GENEVA. semblant de croire, leur seule manierc d'etablir leur foi. est d'attaquer celle des autres. Whatever may have been the reply of the pastors of those days, that which they make at present is clear and decided. " The evangelical church of Geneva," they say, " acknowledges no other guide for its rule of faith than the sacred wTitings them- selves, and positively rejects every human inter- pretation, simply advising its ministers to avoid the discussion of certain dogmas, or doctrines, which have been the cause of endless disputes ever since the fourth century. The dogmas in question are the nature and divinity of Jesus Christ, and the unity of the Father and the Son; grace: predestination ; ori- ginal sin. When they mention these subjects in their sermons, they confine themselves to simply citing the text of Scripture without the least commentary. All the ministers, except one, have conformed themselves to this regulation." Those readers who are versed in the ecclesiastical history of the times of Arius and Athanasius, of the Councils of Nice, of Syr- mium, Constantinople, Carthage, t^-c. ^c, as well as in the history of the Reformation, know what storms the discussion of these points have given rise to. These are the very disputes which it is attempted to renew, and which the Genevan niJui.-Lcrs u isli lo rje- cline, after fourteen centuries oi iruitless *a*:-atr Vol. I -: A 3.54 Till- clliJKCll. " It does not appear," they say, " that Jesus Christ, or his disciples, ever examined those whom they baptized upon the tenets in question ; the precise in- terpretation of them is not essential to our moral conduct, nor indispensable to us as Christians ; in short, if we must yield to any human interpreta- tions, we shall find English theologians to oppose to these same English missionaries, who pretend to dictate a creed to us. Paley, Locke, Clarke, Lard- ner, and many others, do not hold the same opi- nions as they do." The ministers of the church of Geneva state as explicitly what they undertake to teach, as wliat they do not. The dogmas which they are not averse to discussing from the pulpit are those of divine pro- vidence, of the resurrection from the dead, of the last judgment, and of a future state. They teach that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah, and the Redeemer of mankind ; they explain the terms and conditions of this redemption ; they insist upon the insufficiency of human reason, and upon the neces- sity of a divine revelation ; at the same time they lay before^ th(nr readers the natural evidences of the existence of a Supreme Being, as well as the re- vealed proofs, both derived from the same source. They think that none of the avenues to the human heart and understanding should be neglected, antl FRF.E-TIIIXKFRS. 33IJ that the great object and end of theology is to make revealed religion accord with natural religion. I think I perceive, in the generation now coming forward, a disposition the reverse of the esprit fort so prevalent in the last century, when a sneer was deemed an argument, and when indiscriminate con- tempt for all that men had been accustomed to be- lieve and revere, having become the test of a supe- rior understanding, the weak and the vain all set up for free-thinkers and for rakes, which is an affecta- tion fully as base as hypocrisy in morality and reli- gion, and decidedly more ridiculous ; a considera- tion well worthy the serious notice of those who so much dread being laughed at. The people of Geneva are generally well disposed in favour of the English, the religion they profess, the government under which they live, the moral habits peculiar to their respective countries, present many points of contact and pledges of union ; to all which, we may add, that they are not immediate neighbours — a necessary condition, it seems, to friendly feelings between nations. Formerly a great number of English received a part of their education at Geneva, and formed con- nexions of friendship which lasted their whole lives. Many more Gene\'ans went o\'cv to England in })ur- suit of wc^alth or science ; most people of education 356 ENGLISH TRAVELLERS. amongst them understood English. " Les Geiievoit," said Buonaparte, who did not like them, parlent trop Men Anglois pour moi! Who would not have supposed that when, after a separation of twenty or twenty -five years, the English again appeared among the Genevans, they would have been the best friends in the world ? yet it is not so. English travellers swarm here, as every- where else ; but they do not mix with the society of the country more than they do elsewhere, and seem to like it even less. The people of Geneva, on the other hand, say, " their former friends, the English, are so changed they scarcely know them again. They used to be a plain downright race, in whom a certain degree of sauvagej^ie (oddity and shyness) only served to set off the advantages of a highly- cultivated understanding, of a liberal mind, and generous temper, which characterized them in ge- neral : their young men were often rather wild, but soon reformed, and became like their fathers. In- stead of this we see (they say) a mixed assemblage, of whom lamentably few possess any of those qua- lities we were wont to admire in their predecessors ; their former shyness and reserve is changed to dis- dain and rudeness. If you seek these modern Eng- lish they keep aloof, do not mix in conversation, and seem to laugh at you : their conduct, still more ENGLISH TllAVELLEUS. 5)7 strange and unaccountable, in regard to each other, is indicative of contempt or suspicion : studiously avoiding to exchange a word, one would suppose they expect to find an adventurer in every indivi- dual of their own country not particularly intro- duced, or at best a person beneath them. You cannot vex or displease them more than by inviting others to meet them whom they may be compelled to acknowledge afterwards. If they do not find a crowd they are tired ; if you speak of the old Eng- lish you formerly knew, that was before the Flood ; if you talk of books, it is pedantry, and they yawn ; of politics, they run wild about Buonaparte*! Dancing is the only thing which is sure to please them ; at the sound of the fiddle, the thinking na- tion starts up at once ; their young people are adepts in the art, and take pains to become so, spending half their time with the dancing-master — you may know the houses where they live by the scraping of the fiddle, and shaking of the floor, which disturb their neighbours. Few bring letters, they complain they are neglected by the good company, and cheated by inn-keepers. The latter, accustomed to the Milords Anglais of former times, or at least having heard of them, think they may charge accordingly, but only find des Anglais pour rirc, who bargain at ♦ This Wiib four yoai'i dgo — Buonaparte i'^ no longer the idol. 356 ENGLISH TRAVELLERS. the door, before they venture to come in, lor the leg of mutton and bottle of wine, on which they mean to dine. Placed as I am between the two parties, I hear young Englishmen repeat what they have heard in France, that the Genevans are cold, selfish, and interested, and their women des precieuses ridi- cules, the very milliners and mantua-makers giving themselves airs of modesty and deep reading ! that there is no opera, nor theatre des VariHes ; in short, that Geneva is the dullest place in the world. Some say it is but a bad copy of England, a sham republic, and a scientific, no less than a political, counterfeit. In short, the friends of Geneva, among our modern English travellers, are not numerous, but they are select. These last distinguished them- selves during the late hard w^inter by their bounty to the poor — not the poor of Geneva, who were suf- ficiently assisted by their richer countrymen, but those of Savoy, who were literally starving. If English travellers no longer appear in the same light as formerly, it is because they are not the same class of people who go abroad, but all classes, and not the best of all classes either. They know it, and say it themselves, they feel the ridicule of their multitude, and of their conduct ; they are ashamed and provoked; describe it with the most pointed irony, and tell many a humorous story against them- sehes. Formerly the travelling class was composed of young men of good family and fortune, just of age, who after leaving the university went the tour of the continent under the guidance of a learned tutor, often a very distinguished man, or of men of the same class, at a more advanced age, with their families, who, after many years spent in ])rofessional duties at home, come to visit again the countries they had seen in tlieir youth, and the friends they had known there. When no Englishman left his country either to seek his fortune, to save money, or to hide himself; when travellers of that nation were all very rich, or very learned : of high birth, yet liberal principles ; unbounded in their genero- sity, and with means equal to the incliiKition ; their high standing in the world might well be accounted for, and it is a great pity they should have lost it. Were, I an Englishman, I would not set out on my travels until the fashion were over. Geneva, Juij/, I81S. Just return cfl from a tour into Italy, wc are for the present settled on the least frequented side of the lake, where, to the heat and dust of the high roads of Italy ; to the tumultuous clamour and the rags of the people ; to the dirt of the houses, and the swarm of noisome insects in them : to galle;pecitic lightness, diminishing its thickness towards the hike, while tlie current, as it tiowed from the gallery, wore away this same barrier on the ()p})osite side, and threatened a sudden rupture. The danger increasing, the engineer sent, from time to time, to warn the inhabitants to be on their guard. As the water began to make its way un- der the ice, the crisis appeared inevitable, and not far distant : at half ])ast four in the evening a terrible explosion announced the breaking up of the dyke, and the waters of the lake rushing through, all at once formed a torrent, one humh'ed feet in depth, which traversed the first eighteen mile< in the space of forty minutes, carrving awav one hundred and thirty c/takts, a whole f.rc^st. and an immense quantity oi' earth and stone. When it reached Bagnc. the ruins of all descrip tion carric^d along with it. fornunl a moving moun- tain, three; hundred feet high, from whicli a co- lumn of thick vajxnir arose. lik(^ the smoke of a great tire. An Englisli traveller. accompanicMl bv a young artist, Mr. P. ol" Lausiuuie, and a gui(l(\ had been visiting tlu; works, and on his return was approaching Bagne, when turning round by chance, he saw the frightful object just described cominii- down, xhc distant noise of wliicli h;id been \uM in th(^ tUNU'er vour of die Drnnse: he claj^t 368 INUNDATION OF RAGNE. spurs to his horse to warn his companion, as well as three other travellers who had joined them ; all dismounting, scrambled up the mountain pre- cipitately, and arrived in safety beyond the reach of the deluge, which, in an instant, filled the val- ley beneath ; however Mr. P. was no longer to be found ; during several hours they believed him lost, but they learned afterwards that his restive mule, turning at the sight of an uprooted tree, perceived all at once a still more threatening sight, and dashing at once up the mountain, had carried him beyond the reach of danger. From Bagne the inundation reached Martigny, four leagues, in fifty minutes, bearing away in that space thirty- five houses, eight windmills, ninety-five barns, but only nine persons, and very few cattle ; most of the inhabitants having been on their guard. The village of Beauvernier was saved by a pro- jecting rock, which diverted the torrent, it was seen passing like an arrow by the side of the vil- lage, without touching it, though much higher than the roofs of the houses. The fragments of rocks and stones deposited before reaching Martigny, entirely covered a vast extent of meadows and fields. Here it was divided, but eighty buildings of this town were destroyed, and many were in- jured : the streets were filled with trees and rub- INIXDATION OF BAGNE. 369 bish, but only tliirty-four persons appear to have lost their lives at Martigny, the inhabitants having retired to the mountains. Below Martigny the inundation spreading wide, deposited a quantity of slime and mud, so considerable, as it is hoped, will redeem an extensive swamp. The Rhone re- ceived it by degrees, and at different points, with- out overflowing, till it reached the Lake of Geneva at eleven o'clock at night, and was lost in its vast expanse, having- gone over eigliteen Swiss leagues in six hours and a half, with a gradually retarded movement. The bridges having been carried away, all intercourse was interrupted during se- veral days between the inhabitants of the opposite banks of the Dranse, whose only means of convey- ing intelligence of their misfortunes to one another, was by throwing letters fastened to stones. This is not the first accident of the kind ; there are traces of others, and one is supposed to have taken place in the year 1.395, a beam in the ceil- ing of a house at Martigny, bears the following initial inscription :— M. O. F. F. hYJo, L Q B F I P L G D G, of which the following ingenious explana- tion was given : — Maurice olliot fit faire, 159.5, lors- que bagne fut inondc par le Glacier do Getroz. It is somewhat remarkable that an old man, ninety-two years of age, saved himself by ascend- Voi. I 2 n •370 INUNDATION OF BAGNK. iiig a mound, supposed to have been formed by the former inundation, the present one pursued him to the summit, where he maintained himself by the aid of a tree, which was not carried away. Mr. Escher calculated at eight hundred millions of cubic feet the mass of water at the moment it began to escape by the gallery. This mass was reduced to five hundred and thirty miUions the three following days, and the level of the lake lowered forty -five feet. If the gallery had not been made, the lake would, on the contrary, have risen fifty feet higher, and the mass of water would then have been one thousand seven hundred and fifty millions of cubic feet ; at the moment of flowing over the dyke, instead of nine hundred and thirty millions, to which it was reduced when it began to pass through the gallery, and would have extended its ravages to the whole of the lower Valais. The dyke is not entirely destroyed, and but for the gap w^ould be entire ; therefore, if next winter should be severe, or even not extremely mild, this gap filling up again, the same accident might be re- newed. The engineer proposes to pierce a gallery through the rock at the foot of the mountain, opposite the glacier, beginning somewhat above the reach of avalanches, and finishing below it, so that the entrance and the exit of the waters of tlic Dranse IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERV. 371 may not be shut. It appears to me that this ope- ration requiring several years, a canal of wood or stone, constructed under ground, at the place left bare, through the dyke, by the last accident, would immediately accomplish the object, and at a comparatively trifling expense. A learned professor of the academy of Geneva, just returned from England, gave us an account of several late improvements in machinery, and ap- plication of the steam-engine to new purposes, very ingenious in themselves, and tending to in- crease the produce of manufactures, but, as he told us, pernicious in their consequences. Switzerland being now a manufacturing country, the assertion could not fail of exciting much interest, and the meeting seemed to expect the learned professor would explain himself, which, however, he did not. It would be superfluous to show, that almost no- thing is done without the assistance of machines : from the sewing needle to the magnetic needle, from the wheelbarrow to the steam-engine, scarcely any manual operation, without a tool, or, in other words, a machine ; and before the simplest had been invented, it were difficult to say how man could exist. No leisure, of course, and therefore no cultivation of mind, without machines ; cer- tainly, no learned professors, and the members of '2 li ■: 372 T'SE OF MACHINERY. this polite meeting might have gone to loggerheads for the trout on their table, had it been possible to catch a fish without hook, line, or net. Should we ever see shoes and stockings, shirts and suits of clothes, drop ready-made from a machine, in as great abundance as leaves from the trees in autumn, I am not aware that mankind would be at all the worse for it, but the contrary ; for the poorer class might then be as well clad as the rich are now, and new objects of comfort or luxury would still keep the latter as much in advance of the former, as they are at this time. Since stocking-frames have superseded knitting, there are ten persons employed in manufacturing hosiery to one there was before, because more people can now dispense with going bare-legged. Since the art of printing has made the calligraphic art in so much less request, those employed in the mechani- cal part of the production of books are perhaps one thousand times more numerous than they were, because the number of readers has increased in proportion to the greater facility of acquiring the produce of the press. The use of machines does not lead to idleness, but affords leisure, that is, it affords the means of higher pursuits than the mere earning of the necessaries of life. The use of machines enhances the rate of wages in the end : MR. OWEN. OF LANARK. .'373 for labourers become conductor.- of machines, in- stead of being machines themselves. Nor does it reduce the demand for labour, as is proved by the fact of the increased rate of population since the extended application of machinery : new branches of industry, which increase the demand for labour, keeping pace w4th the new application of machines which supersede labour. But as the morality and happiness of mankind are not to be estimated solely by the (|uantity of material produce, and as there are higher considerations than even the wealth of nations. I would lay down as a general rule, that wherever the introduction of machines has a tendency to break up great assemblages of men on one spot, their utility is liable to fewest inconveniencies : and rice versa, where they super- cede home manufactures. The celebrat(Hl Mr. Owen, of Lanark, appeared in this assembly, and with the assistance of an in- terpreter communicated soine inttn^esting informa- tion res})ecting the improved dis('i])line of manuiac- tories, to which he lias the merit of having con- tributed essentially. He next expatiated on liis favourite Utopian sclunne of communities in }-)ara]- lelograms, of one thousand acres and one thou- sand inhabitants, by means of which he purj)oses providing for the poor for ever. The learned Hel- 374 MR. OWEN, OF LANARK. vetians listened to all this, and much more, with exemplary patience, mixed, as I could see, with some astonishment. He was told, that his thousand parallelogramians becoming in time two thousand, would look out for another parallelogram, but find- ing their neighbours increased as well as them- selves, and all the parallelograms already taken up, they would get out of temper and quarrel among themselves ; all their morality not being proof against starvation. But Mr. Owen obviated the consequences, by denying facts ; he would not admit, for instance, that the population of the United States had increased from three millions and a half it was in 1789, to ten millions now! There is corn enough in England, and in Europe, to feed the poor, but there is not sufficient demand for their labour just 'now, to enable them to pay for the corn ; and admitting, that by dividing all the waste land into parallelograms, and for the use of the poor without work, they might raise food on it, releasing them at least, if not their posterity : the consequence must be, that just as much land, and better land too, now cultivated, would be thrown out of cultivation, and just as many la- bourers thrown out of employment as had been relieved before ; and so forth, until the w^hole po- pulation had in turn become paupers first, parallclo- MR. OWE.V's PLAN. 37.') gramians next, and ultimately, as was first stated, quarrelling for want of room. Mr. Owen's plan miii-ht possibly be a palliative, but certainly not the specific remedy he believes. He gives, indeed, some hints of another remedy, by exhibiting cer- tain tin canisters he carries with him by way of illustration, representing the different orders or classes of society, as constituted at present. They are nine in number, of very unequal sizes ; the smallest, painted black, which he holds up between his finger and thumb, representing, I believe, the aristocracy of the country ; and to be sure, it makes but a poor figure as to size, compared to the other typical tin canisters, and especially that of the labouring class. I did not understand what Mr. Owen meant by this tangible demonstration, there- fore will not hazard misrepresenting his object by explaining it further. The difference of opinion, religious and political, as w^ell as that of language, between the members of this meeting, did not seem to diminish the cor- diality of social intercourse ; they all dined toge- ther, and those to whom a pipe and a bottle were a necessary accompaniment of ccmversation, met to- gether again in the evening, while the rest mixed in the society of Lausanne. As 1 abused without scruple th*^^ land'^rape 376 ENVIRONS OF LAUSANNE. along the banks of the lake, disfigured as it is by endless vineyards, I was advised to explore the environs of Lausanne, at some distance from those banks, and found them really very beautiful, pre- senting hills and dales, woods and meadows, and running springs ; the soil is good, and vegetation luxuriant ; no vines at all, and here and there mag- nificent scenery ; such country-houses as I saw were in excellent taste. Of the places I visited, I shall name only St. Laurent, La Chabliere, Le Desert, Le Bois de Cery, Mezery, Vernen, Benens, Le Vols de Vaud, S^c. Meadows in the neigh- bourhood of Lausanne sell for the exorbitant price of two hundred pounds sterling a po.se, which here is about equal to the three-fourths of an English acre: some vineyards bear three times that price. Land about Geneva being very poor, and only valuable for country-houses, is much lower ; and in Savoy, close to Geneva, land of good quality falls greatly in value. I have seen here a kneading-machine, so simple and eftcctual, as to make it deserving notice. A deal box, two feet long, one foot high, and one wide, turning on its long axle (it does not run through the box, but is screwed on each end,) by means of a crank at the end, which a child may turn : one side opens on hinges, the inside is divided by A FvNi:ai)in(; maciiini;. 377 means of one or two moveable partitions for dif- ferent sorts of bread at one time. Tlie lump of doufrh is thrown in, and the crank turned in the manner of a coffee-roaster. No hooks or bars or any thing inside ; a hissing noise, occasioned by the carbonic gas escaping, indicates the working of the dough : and in about half an hour (less in warm weather) it is fit for the oven. The fault, if any, is that the bread is too much raised : I need not say that this is a much cleaner process of bread-making tlian the common one. This ma- chine, neatly executed, with its stand, iron fasten- ings, (^'c, costs, at Lausanne, ibrty shillings ster- ling ; one might be made any where, and, however coarsely, it would answer the same purpose. Wishing to see more at leisure some parts of Switzerland I had visited already, and visit others vet unknown to me : meditating even a pedestrian tour into the most mountainous part of the coun- try, if favoured by the w^eath(M% I set out alone from Geneva in the beginning of October, 18 IS. Mont Blanc, which is seen to such advantage near Geneva, is lost behind the Voiruns before you reach Copet : but tlu^ immediate banks of the lake improve, and at Celigny, four miles beyond Copet, you meet with some very pretty country, fireen and woodv, and watered with runnincr 378 MOUNTAIN SCENEHV . springs. The prospect is very line, but Mont Blanc still hid. At Nion, it re-appears in all its glory. The chateau de Nion, over the town, is a fine object. At Prangin, the promontory of Meil- lerie, and a distant view of the entrance of the Valais, which begins here, abundantly compensate for the absence of Mont Blanc from the scene. At Merges, the route to Yverdun turns from the water, and ascends the Jorat, whence you have a magnificent bird's-eye view of the whole lake, fifteen miles wide and forty-five miles long. It was, at the moment I saw it, of the deepest blue, like the sea between the tropics, and passing to emerald green near the banks, with singular white streaks across the whole breadth ; but these efibcts of light vary continually. The houses on the Savoy side of the lake appeared like small white dots on the dark green of the banks ; behind this, the Alps rose in blue haze, distinguishable from the sky only by the lines of snow sweeping irregularly along their summits. The silvery head of Mont Blanc seemed like the moon just rising, far behind the whole range of mountains, yet overtopping them all. The whole way from Merges to La Sarra affords a very fine prospect, over the great valley to the right, towards Lausanne, and the towers of its cathedral makc^. a very picturesque si HTKUUANF.AN MILLS. 37*) termination on that side. At La Sarra the waters Iknv nortli and south, through the lakes of Neu- chatel and of Geneva, towards the ocean on the one side, and the Mediterranean on the other. The Alps, lost here, are not seen again till you have passed Yverdun. At St. Juiien, they re-ap- pear, with half Switzerland displayed in the inter- mediate space. Thence the road ascends continu- ally, in an easy sweep, into the heart of the Jura, among woods and parterres watered by abounding springs. I observed at a distance, and recognised, that singular excavation of the creux du van, de- scribed last year. Arriving early at the Locle, I immediately proceeded with a guide to see some curious subterraneous mills in the neighbourhood. I have formerly observed, that the Jura, so uni- form in its external aspect, presents internally the most various and extraordinary sites. Here the \ ertical strata appear to have slid down one within another ; some of them standing up like huge walls, not more than twenty or thirty feet apart, and others forming valleys of considerable extent ; frequently the order is all at once reversed, so cs to transform valleys into high ridges, and ridges into valleys. This inextricable labyrinth is far from presenting a ruinous aspect, for the heaps of rubbish formed at the base of the upright strata 380 REGION OF THE JURA. on each side, sloping down gently into the middle, the whole perfectly smooth and tufted over, you see nothing but verdure and sweeping lines. Not a tree nor a bush grov/s naturally in this elevated region, where winter lasts seven months, and snow rises sometimes to thirty feet : it is a landscape of the north of Scotland. Each little valley has its springs, yet the water disappears sometimes sud- denly through certain fissures or cracks in the soil, corresponding to the interstices of the vertical strata under it. Notwithstanding these natural drains, the valley of the Locle was formerly ex- posed to inundations, when the snow melted ; this has been obviated by a horizontal gallery of nine hundred and fifty feet, pierced through a screen of rocks by which the valley is encojnpassed. This would have been, for the Romans, a work of far more labour than their celebrated emlssario, made to drain lake Albano, which is, indeed, about eight times as long, but is cut through volcanic sub- stances soft enough to yield to the pickaxe and the spade ; while this modern emlssario is carried through a rock scarcely penetrable without the assistance of gunpowder ; and I question whether, even with the assistance of gunpowder, this is not a more la,borious work than the cniissario. Very near this magnificent drain is a natural one, such ,) ACyrES DROZ. 381 as I have already described, sinking verticall}' into the heart of the mountain, and in this abyss mills have been constructed ' You go down flights of broken and slippery stairs, cut into the rock, to these mills, placed one under another, in very frightful situations, undoubtedly, but rendered more so to the imagination of the beholder, by the circumstances of darkness and ignorance of the means by which tlie works arc secured, by the noise, the unfathomed dc^pth below, (j-c. The Lov/c is an assemblau'e of neat houses, not looking like a country village, having nothing agricultural about it: nor like a town, being too much scat- tered : but rather, like a cluster of country-houses, collected on a lawn of vast extent. The inhabi- tants are employed in domestic manufactures, each workinu; at home, and mostly on his own account ; the men are watchmakers and mathematical instru- ment-makers, the women weave laces. The cele- brated Jac([ues Droz, whose automatons were ad- mired all over Euro].)e, was of this valley. The number of watchmakers is said to be six thousand ; a few merchants attend to the execution of orders, and of late the United States of America have been among their best customers. Great sim- plicity of manners, with a considerable degree of cuhivation of mind, prevail among these people. ;J82 OHFH\N ESTABLISHMENT. who are much united among themselves. Having observed a great number of young women at work in one of the houses, I found, on inquiry, they were orphans, to the number of sixty ; an esta- blishment formed four years ago, and supported by subscription. The ladies directresses were so good as to send me their yearly report, by which I saw that the expense comes to about four pounds ten shillings sterling a year for each of the girls, who are taught to read and write, and do various kinds of needle-work. Among the subscriptions, an anonymous one appeared for ten pounds, a very considerable sum for this place. The distresses of the two preceding years are nearly over : a day-labourer receives one shilling sterling, a woman seven-pence ; the best bread is worth three halfpence a pound ; beef, four-pence ; veal, only two-pence halfpenny. The inhabitants are tolerably satisfied with their heterogeneous government — subjects of a foreign prince, yet members of the Helvetic League, and Republicans. The King of Prussia draws from them annually about four thousand pounds, which is the only way his sovereignty is felt. They all agree, Berthier's government, in Buonaparte's time, was unexcep- tionable. The Doubs, a little river, separates the Swiss FAL!.-:- OF THK DdIB-,, :]X'>, and the French terriloricc, the Catholics and the Protestants; yet there are two Catholic hamlets on this side, and a church common to both commu- nions, which agree perfectly well together. I set off very early in the morning from the Locle, for the Lac des Bunntts and the falls of the Doubs, which I reached before sun-rise, and where I saw its first rays glancing on the tender green of the mountain pastures ; this place strongly recalled to my mind others far distant: the Prato Fiorito in the mountains of Lucca, and the Highlands of Scot- land ; while the neat white houses, scattered about the wildest parts of the landscape, gave it something of a Welch look. The Doubs finds its way through one of the frightful gaps which divide the Jura, and proclaim extraordinary geological revolutions. Some large fragments tumbled down, by damming up the stream, form what is called the Lake of Brennets. Evident traces of the wearing of the water, left on the rock one hundred feet above the present level, shew the stream to have worn its bed much lower than it originally w^as, althouiih it certainly never formed the whole depth of it. The calcareous strata are in several places bent and twisted in the most extraordinary manner, although preserving their oriirinal parallelism- a ])henomenon whicli. 384 PORENTRUI, although recurring so often, never fails to excite new wonder. The water, being very low, had left a great quantity of fish caught in holes of the rock, where the people were busily employed in taking them with their hands : I observed trout and craw- fish together in some of them. Partly in a boat, partly on foot, I performed a very pleasing, although rather fatiguing, tour of six hours, which brought me to the Chaux-de-fond, another mountain town, resembling the Locle, but more considerable ; my landlady strongly recommended my staying a day or two to see the moultns-sous-terrc and Jacques Droz's automatons returned to their native moun- tains, after many years spent in foreign parts ; but I assured her that I had seen the first yesterday, and the latter five-and-thirty years ago, and remem- bered both equally well. From the Chaux-de-fond, my char-a-banc driver, missing his way, went through Pierre-pertuis and Val St. Imier, along the Suze, instead of following the valley of the Doubs : we reached very late a small village, (Groviller,) where, however, I was well accommodated. Porentrui is a ])retty little town, the capital of the ci-devant ^vcch6 de Bale, which the Congress of Vienna gave to Berne, to make up in some mea- sure for not having reinstated that legitimate sove- i)lMNIONS OF r,L ONAPAUTE, .]85 roifi'ii, on the day of rcstoraliom, in the possessions \vr(>ste(l from it by the Revolution. The inhabit- ants, good Catholics, beheve the fall of Buonaparte was owing to his having been secretly excommu- nicat(Ki ; yet they regret a little the French govern- ment, not assuredly from any lurking liberality, of which not a particle seems to have tinctured their minds-'', but simply because /c commerce nc va pus bicn ! which of course they ascribe to the change of go\ernmeiit. The passage from war to peace, when hostilities have lasted many years, disturbs that order of things by which a great number of people were accustcmied to earn their bread, for war feeds many more people than it destroys. It may be caUed an un})roductive branch of industry un- doubtedly, althcjugh not jnore so than many others, but it answers the {)urpose of a multitude of people, who receive in the sha])e of a salary, or otherwise \\\v sums levied on the richer class in the shape of taxes and ol" loans. Dc^tinitive treaties of peace arc but preliminaries till ratilied by a higher power — time; and the nations of Europe have not as yet obtained that hist sanction. This ci-devant evcchc * '\'\\v cnsigiionciit idutiulX I'ouiul not in very <;()o(l repute with the clerL;}' of Poreiitrui, because the /o/innrii/.r n'li hmi f-'fi . were one thousaiKJ six hundred and ninety-tive ; births, two thousand two hundred and thirty-eight ; marriages, five hundred and ten. A Bernese bailli unites all possible powers m his own person, issuing writs for the apprehension of persons, and eonducting tlic^ prosecution as attorney- general : — with tw(^ assessors on the bencii, (cre- ditable countrymcni selected Wyr tin; purpose,) he tries his prisoner, yet cnnnot hang him. without the sanction oi" the Council of Berne, lo whom the sentence is submitted, and usup.lly ap])roved. The legal proceedings are carried on in <(.»crei, although witnesses are examined in presence of the })ri- soner ; his counsc^I is introduccvl to hear the sen- tence pronounced- and is ulhjwtHl to make objc^c- tions to it, but of Ibrm only, hnving nothing to do with the evidence, or with tiie merits oi" tlu; case. The tortmx^ is never ap))lied. T!i(> Bernese^ bailli is commander-in-chief of the militia, and collector of the revenue ; he makes laws and executes them ; he is the arbitrary, yet gentle, censor of the press, no one indcMxl publishing. Tlu^ prison of Porentrui, which serves for the whole new territory, is among the best I ever saw ; the prisoners have plenty of space, a large garden, and employment ; a part of the proceeds of their labour is reserved for their use when they are restoied to freedom. There weri-^ .•;8S DESCENT OF THE JURA. seventy individuals confined (not one for debt) on a population of seventy thousand souls, and more, some of the prisoners having been sent from Berne. Five or six miles from Porentrui, on the road to Delemont, I observed a monument, respecting which tradition is silent. It is a large flat stone standing upright like a wall, nine feet high above ground, of the same breadth, and two or three feet thick, with a small hole in the middle of it, at a conve- nient height to look through. Nothing can be finer than this road from Poren- trui to Delemont, along a sort of natural causeway of green turf, with magnificent oaks scattered along it ; to the right and left are valleys equally green and shady, over which herds of cattle range in liberty, shaking their musical bells as they graze: high mountains on all sides leave you in doubt about the issue of the verdant maze in which you are engaged. The descent of" the Jura, is every where magnifi- cent ; the boundless view it presents, melting into an harmonious distance, is particularly striking, after the broken, wild, and generally confined aspect of the interior parts of the chain. I was favoured by the weather, and state of the light over the land- scape, while coming down by the passage of the Suze to Bicnne in the evening, and slept at Ar- b(Tg. REMAIXS OF AVENTICUM. 389 The direct road from Arbcrg to Berne is by Frienisberg, celebrated for a fine prospect, which I gave up to see Avenche. Very little remains above ground of the Roman city of Avcnticiim, the ancient capital of Helvetia*. A vast circumference of walls seems to mark its extent, but there are reasons to suppose that these walls, comparatively modern, were constructed by the Burgundians, with the ma- terials of the old ones, and round a smaller area. This area has been for centuries the quarry from which building-materials have been procured, and the proprietor of a single acre sold not long ago stones from it to the value of one hundred pounds sterling ; it is true there was among them a block of marble which it took thirty horses to draw away. After a drought, the foundations of" buildings ranged in streets are distinguishable on the surface of the ground, by the burnt appearauce of" the grass over them. Of" all tlie mosaic pavements, discovered at different times, there are but three visible, and only one of which any care is taken; none of them have any thing to recommend them but their anticjuity. I was shewn a walnut-tree, under the roots of which * The Roman milc-stoiu-s found in Switzerland ;>lu'\v that dis- tances were all calculated iVoni Aventicum ; therelore it was the principal city ol" Helvetia, but the llomans liad not pi-operly any capitaN in the provinces — the i^cnernmeiit was not stationary. ■ iUO UKMAlNs OK AVENTICl ,M. lies another mosaic, quite iiid at present. Most ol' them belonged to baths, and the aqueducts, by means of which they were supplied, traverse the plain under ground, in various directions. The most striking object is the corner of an edifice, probably large and magnificent ; the part which remains stand- ing consists of a Corinthian column in half relief, four feet eight inches in diameter on one side of the angle, and a pilaster on the other side. The wall, the co- lumn, and pilaster together, are formed of thirteen huge blocks of marble, one upon the top of another, each eight feet and a half long, five feet and a half broad, and two feet thick, besides the foundation above ground, and a large shapeless block at top : I estimated the height of the whole at about thirty- seven feet. The great solidity of this construction made it survive the ravages of time, and those of ancient and modern barbarians. One hundred yards to the west of this a cornice of white marble is lying reversed, most beautifully carved, and in a state of high preservation although so exposed ; it is made of a single block, nine feet long, four feet wide, and three feet in thickness. The walls of the ancient port of Aventicum, on the lake of Morat, are in part standing, and the iron fastening for boats were still in them but a few years ago. The oaken piles of the foundations appear in some places, and are in a SADDLK (JF gUEF.N UKHTHA. \[)\ State i)f great preservation, very black and hard, and still combustible : but the lake has receded about one mile, leaving a great extent of fine meadows. The new town of Avenche hard by. and built of the materials of the old city, contains some ruins, an amphitheatre, buried indeed under a sufficient depth of soil for grass to grow over, and an orchard, yet the oval shape and the rows of seats are discernible. The circumference at the top is above eight hundred and sixty feet, the depth about thirty i'eet ; at one of the extremities of the oval there is an under- ground room about twenty feet square, antique cer- tainly, but the square tower over it is evidently mo- dern, pieces of ruin appearing worked in its walls. Large bk^cks of white marble, which have been the cornices of spknidid edifices, are also worked in the walls of th(> gates of the tovrn and of the church, all u})si(i(^ down : basso-relievos and inscriptions are seen ev(M'v win re. built up in walls. The Romans got tlieir coarser materials from a (juarry close by, which is still worked. The saddle of the excellent Queen Bertha, of spinning memciry. is seen at Payerne, six miles from Avenche, suspended, rather irreverently, at the inn. It is as strong as wood and iron could make it. and has on either side two very spacious cvlitidrical ^orf nfthinirs, like :i p;iir . fo 392 SADDLE OF QUEEN BEUTIIA. all appearance destined to receive and protect the limbs of her majesty when astride. Once fixed there, she could not possibly be unhorsed ; but how she contrived to slide into them is not so easily un- derstood. It is very unlikely that any male rider should ever have made use of such a contrivance, therefore it is the saddle of a woman — of a woman of quality of course, and probably of Queen Bertha, for there is a place to receive the end of her distaff. Her remains, discovered a few years ago, have been deposited under a marble monument, in the cathe- dral she herself built with materials drawn from Aventicum. Without stopping at Berne more than two days. the persons I wished to see not being in town, I set off for my intended tour with very fine weather. Aarau, October 10. The tract of country from Berne to this place is probably the best cultivated in Switzerland, the system of irrigation being particularly well under- stood. It is thickly inhabited, and the neatness and good ordc^r of the numerous farms, scattered about the country, as well as the fine races of ani- mals, put me in mind of English farming ; yet the Mislicasscr filled the air with a fragrance quite Hel- VDMIVISTRATION OF THE CANTONS. ;59.1 vetiaii, nnd the appearance of the women, at hard hibour in the fields, was not British. Aarau. the capital of a new canton, is in itself an odious little place ; yet outside the walls there arc; a few rows of modern neat houses. Havin^i;' a letter for Mr. R , and I could not have a more useful introduction, I saw several well-informed persons here. Conversin<^ with them, respectinii; the ])ower conferred on the executive council in most of" the Swiss cantons to o^'erlook and direct the administration of justice, vvhich appears so con- trary to the princi])les of the inde]xmdence of judges, and leading to a sort of judiciary anarchy, I was told that it was something like what the grand jury did in England ; but although a grand jury may impeach a judge, it cannot meddle with his othcial duties — a distinction not understood properly here. Among the new cantons, this is supposed to have most of the democratic, and the canton of Vaud most of the aristocratic, bias; yd the latter is certaiuly in a more; improving state than the other. I found ihc^re were few prisoners in the gaol at Aarau, and not any for debt. Of the births, three out of every hundred are illc^gitimate. The consistory, or niatr'nnonial cnini, inquires into noto- rious irregularities of married people, and has power to interfere when the father of a family is 394 CilATEAl" OF llAl'SBOlJKCi, dissipating- his fortune. These are strange inquisi- torial powers; yet I found the opinion of very Ube- rally indined persons quite favourable to this insti- tution. The establishments for education are, 1. Primary schools in various parts of the canton, where children learn to read and write. 2. Schools for the dead languages principally, for children from eight years old to fourteen. 3. Cantonal schools, where the higher sciences are taught. The chateau of Hapsbourg, the birth-place of the Austrian family, is situated twelve miles to the north-east of Aarau, on a low insulated ridge, in the middle of a plain. All that remains of it is a square tower, solidly built of rough stones, only thirty feet square on the outside, and eighteen in- side, the walls being six feet thick : the height is about seventy feet. A trap-door on the ground floor opens into a dungeon — a necessary appendage to a feudal edifice. The house adjoining, although old, does not seem to have been a part of the castle, which must, however, have extended beyond the tower; the grounds about have been made very neat, and a pretty walk carried round them. From the tower the eye takes in at a glance the whole of Ihe inheritance of the house of Austria five hun- fired years ago. The ruins of the abbey of Kcenigs- feklon arc seen, about one mile distant, in h KKMAINS OK \ INDONISSA. .iOo nortli-oast direction, near the junction of the Reuss and the Aar. The whole intermediate space was occupied by the tow^n and Roman camp of Vindo- nissa, of which the mihtary works, extending not k^ss than twelve miles from north to south, were the strongest of any in that age, and the chief de- pendence of the Romans on this frontier of their empire. Scarcely any thing remains above-ground of the numerous edifices of Vindonissa, and only some traces of its amphitheatre, of its aqueducts, and baths ; but a vast number of inscriptions, as w^ell as medals, and remains of Roman art of all sorts, found from time to time, attest its former greatness. The origin of the abbey of Koenigsfelden may be seen in the historical part of this work. (Chap. ix. Vol. II.) The cell of its implacable foundress, the Princess Aiiiies. where she lived fifty-seven years, anddicfl''-, is still seen — a low^ room on the ground- tloor. about twenty-five feet square, and the only pi(H'(^ of furniture in it is the ponderous chest she caused to be made of the trunk of the tree under which tlu^ Emperor Albert, her father, was killed : it grew on the very spot where she erected the great altar of the church — this piece of furniture, * When Agues, at the point of death, received ihv rxfirmr itnction, ihe said to tlie ]H'ople about lier, " Now the mirror ol" niv Miul IS cleansed from all stain I" 396 ABBEY OF KCENIGSFELDEN. five hundred years old, does not do much credit to the art of cabinet-making in those days ; it seems hol- lowed out of the square log, and is overloaded with iron-work ; to lift the lid requires some effort. In the church, round the main altar just mentioned, are seen, arranged about the ruined walls, a series of kneeling knights, as large as life, and carved in stone ; they are figures of the principal warriors who perished at Sempach*. The marble tomb in the choir formerly contained the remains of Agnes, of Leopold of Austria her cousin, killed in this battle, and of seven other princes of that house ; but you learn, from a Latin inscription on the spot, that these imperial remains were carried away to the Austrian dominion in the year 1770. The body of Albert, assassinated here, had been carried to the collegial church of Spire ; and when, at the time of the devastation of the Palatinate under Louis XlVth, the tombs of the emperors were opened, and their remains dispersed, his head was known by the deep wound inflicted by the sword of Eschenbach f . After crossing the Rcuss at Koenigsfcldcn you find, three miles further, on the Limmat, the town of Baden and its baths, which were of celebrity * See Chap. XV. Vol. H. t Chap. ix. Vol. 11. AHBKY OF FvCEMGbFELDEN. 397 even in the time of tlie Romans *. Some ruins, and a <^reat number of medals, and utensils of all kinds, found anion*;- them, bear witness to the former splendour of the place. Much curiosity has been excited respecting the vast quantity of common playing dice, found at various times, during more than two hundred years, about the fields near Baden, a little way under the surface, as if they had been purposely scattered, but principally at a place called, from that circumstance, Wlirffdl Wiescn, (the dice meadow); they are made of bone, not of Roman manufacture, and the marks on them are disposed as at this day, opposite faces making together always seven. We have a ] earned dissertation on the subject by a Swiss, in 1717. and several others since. The Duke Henry, of Rohan, who died in 1().'3S, had collected a great number of these dice : but Tschudi, (the his- torian i, who was Bailli of Baden. ( I5.3'i^ — 1549), makes no mention of the circumstance. Baden did not suffer less than Aventicum from the fury of Cecina, and the legion Rapax •(-. * Chap. ii. Vol. II. + No monuments of Nci'o'.i rrigii have ever been found in Swit- zerland, whore it seems they were destroyed after tlw death of the imperial monster. It is, however, known, that the twcnty-hrst iLgion was then as well as under ^'itel!ius, (]iiariered iu Vindo- nissa ; ninetem inscriptions, fi.uiul at Ktotrii, 40'2 SOCIETY IN ZURICH. words ; except when playing cards you rarely see men sit down; and three or four chairs are deemed a fair allowance for a company of twelve or fif- teen gentlemen, generally walking to and fro in small groups, with their pipes in their mouths, or gathering round any one who brings news, or tells a good story." The author of the V 01/ age of Zurich a Zurich, who lived twenty years in Paris, at the period when Fesprit de societe flourished most, knows what it is ; but although regretting for himself the loss of it, he seems decidedly of opinion, that to the absence of that sort of society the most valuable qualities his countrymen possess are due, their indefatigable application and perse- verance, their domestic habits, the steadiness and warmth of their attachments, and the variety, ori- ginality, and often depth, observable in their mode of thinking. Each temper and each mind has a turn peculiar to itself, which can rarely be brought to the standard of others, and these dissidences are attempted to be disguised under a certain ce- remonious demeanour, through which traits of na- ivety and ingenuous simplicity frequently escape. " The principle of political equality is esta- blished among us," our author observes, '* by the constitution, yet individual superiority always gets the better of democratic cheicks. anri creates here- ( 1:LT1\ ATION OK MlSlC. 403 'iitary distinction. A state of things thus in (ii- rect contradiction with itself, requires prudent ma- nairement and much circumspection, to preserve that degree of influence necessary to the purposes of our little republican ambition ; thence another check on social intercourse, which, re-acting on our feelings and passions, gives them additional intenseness. Under a reserved and rather cold de- meanour, my countrymen hide uncommon ardouf, and stubborn constancy in the pursuit of a favourite object." Music and drawing are much cultivated at Zu- rich, but principally the former, and with great success. Dr. Gall, indeed, declared, that he never had met any where the characteristic bump of the ton-sin ; the precious organ of sound so marked and well defined as among the people of this town. This faculty is rendered more striking from the contrast with their language, the least harmonious and most uncouth that ever was, they cannot speak it without making faces. Harlem excepted, there is not a town where more attention was ever paid to fine flowers : all the new importations in Europe, the Uurttusia, the Volkameria, S'c ds'c, are here seen in perfccticm ; and that taste is particularly dis])laycd on the 404 DOMESTIC Cl'STOMS. occasion of the birth of a child, when the news is carried about to all the relations and friends of the family, by the prettiest maid-servant in the house, dressed in her best for the occasion, and carrying a huge nosegay of the finest flowers the season affords. Probably a mode of life so entirely domestic would tempt few strangers, and in France particu- larly it would appear quite intolerable ; yet people may feel least lonely when most alone, and most tired when they pursue amusement only. Walk- ing occasionally the whole length of the interior Boulevards of Paris, on a summer evening, 1 have generally observed on my return, at the interval of one or two hours, the very same figures sitting just where I had left them ; mostly isolated middle- aged men, established for the evening on three chairs, one for the elbow, another for the extended leg, a third for the centre of gravity; with vacant looks and a muddy complexion, appearing discon- tented with themselves and others, and profoundly tired. Afcmteuil in a saloji, for the passive hearer of the talk of others, is worse than the three chairs on the Boulevard ; the theatre, seen again and again, can have no great charms, nor is it every one who has money to spare for the one, or free access to the HABITS OF Tin: PARISIANS. 40.3 other; therefore, an immense number of people arc driven to the Boulevard as a last resource. As to home it is no resource at all ; no one thinks of the possibility of employing his time there, either by himself or with liis family. Upon the whole, I do not believe there is a country in the world where you see so many long faces, care-worn and cross, as among the very people w^ho are deemed, and believe themselves, the merriest in the world. A man of rank, who has spent many years in the Crimea, who employed himself diligently and use- fully when tliere, and w' o naturally likes a country where he has done much good, praising it to a friend, has been heard to remark, as the main objection to a residence otherwise delightful, — " Mais on est oblige de s' aller coucher tons les soir, ;\ sept hsueres parcequ'en Crimce on ne sait pas ou aller passer la soiree."" This remark at Paris excites no surprise, every one feels there is no alternative, some })lace, not home, to spend your evenings in, or to bed at seven o'clock. It puts on(^ in mind of the gentleman, who hesitated about marrying a hidy. whose company he I'lkcj] very much, " for," as he observed, " where then shall I spend my evenings .'" Zurich, notwithstanding its five centuries of lite- rary illustration, has not made much progress in 406 ADMINISTRATION OK JUSTICE. its judiciary administration *, of which, being purely arbitrary, it is not very easy to give an account. The proceedings are carried on in secret, without any check as to the extent of punishment inflicted, but the conscience of the judge, or what is worse still, a company of judges. The youngest judge inquires into the case and reports on it ; his de- cision, upon which the rank of the prisoner, his con- nexions, and the solicitations of his friends, are not without their influence, is generally adopted. Corruption here is never venal, and this is the most you can say in favour of their administration of justice. The torture (flogging) was, till very lately, ap- plied ad libitum, to extort the confession of the prisoner, which was deemed necessary to convict him ; but in consequence of a late law passed in council, a special order of the court is now required in each particular case, prescribing the number of lashes ! It certainly seems very strange in this age to see a Republic, first in rank in the Helvetic body, and deemed the Athens of Switzerland, * " It is not more than half a century," Mr. de Bonstetten said, in his Pcnsecs sur Dkcrs Oljcis, " since one of the most en- lightened and most moral men of Zurich suflered capital punish- ment for having, in a purely scientific work, maL Hec r, appears much respected ; yet I heard a complaint, that he does not give an account of the affairs of Europe. In the other cantons, some of the sovereigns told me, they are up to it nil — li-hile xce ■ :rr Irtf in the