CHAPTER XIV
There was a Diligence next day for Turin over Mount Cenis, which went only twice a week (stopping at night) and I was glad to secure (as I thought) two places in the interior at seventy francs a seat, for 240 miles. The fare from Paris to Lyons, a distance of 360 miles, was only fifty francs each, which is four times as cheap; but the difference was accounted for to me, from there being no other conveyance, which was an arbitrary reason, and from the number and expense of horses necessary to drag a heavy double coach over mountainous roads. Besides, it was a Royal Messagerie, and I was given to understand that Messrs. Bonnafoux paid the King of Sardinia a thousand crowns a year for permission to run a Diligence through his territories. The knave of a waiter (I found) had cheated me; and that from Chambery there was only one place in the interior and one in the coupé, which turned out to be a cabriolet, a place in front with a leathern apron and curtains, which in winter time, and in travelling over snowy mountains and through icy valleys, was not a situation ‘devoutly to be wished.’ I had no other resource, however, having paid my four pounds in advance at the over-pressing instances of the Garçon, but to call him a coquin, (which being a Milanese was not quite safe) to throw out broad hints (à l’Anglais) of a collusion between him and the Office, and to arrange as well as I could with the Conducteur, that I and my fellow-traveller should not be separated. I would advise all English people travelling abroad to take their own places at coach-offices, and not to trust to waiters, who will make a point of tricking them, both as a principle and pastime; and further to procure letters of recommendation (in case of disagreeable accidents on the road) for it was a knowledge of this kind, namely, that I had a letter of introduction to one of the Professors of the College at Lyons, that procured me even the trifling concession above-mentioned, through the influence which the landlady of the Hotel had with the Conducteur: otherwise, instead of being stuck in the cabriolet, I might have mounted on the imperial, and any signs of vexation or impatience I might have exhibited, would have been construed into ebullitions of the national character, and a want of bienseance in Monsieur l’Anglois. The French, and foreigners in general, (as far as I have seen) are civil, polite, easy-tempered, obliging; but the art of keeping up plausible appearances stands them in lieu of downright honesty. They think they have a right to cheat you if they can (a compliment, a civil bow, a shrug, is worth the money!) and the instant you find out the imposition or begin to complain, they turn away from you as a disagreeable or wrong-headed person, and you can get no redress but by main force. It is not the original transgressor, but he who declares he is aggrieved, that is considered as guilty of a breach of good manners, and a disturber of the social compact. I think one is more irritated at the frequent impositions that are practised on one abroad, because the novelty of the scene, one’s ignorance of the ways of the world, and the momentary excitement of the spirits and of the flush of hope, have a tendency to renew in one’s mind the unsuspecting simplicity and credulity of youth; and the petty tricks and shuffling behaviour we meet with on the road are a greater baulk to our warm, sanguine, buoyant, travelling impulses.
Annoyed at the unfair way in which we had been treated, and at the idea of being left to the mercy of the Conducteur, whose ‘honest, sonsie, bawsont face’ had, however, no more of the fox in it than implied an eye to his own interest, and might be turned to our own advantage, we took our seats numerically in the Royal Diligence of Italy, at seven in the evening (January 20) and for some time suffered the extreme penalties of a French stage-coach—not indeed ‘the icy fang and season’s difference,’ but a very purgatory of heat, closeness, confinement, and bad smells. Nothing can surpass it but the section of a slave-ship, or the Black-hole of Calcutta. Mr. Theodore Hook or Mr. Croker should take an airing in this way on the Continent, in order to give them a notion of, and I should think, a distaste for the blessings of the Middle Passage. Not only were the six places in the interior all taken, and all full, but they had suspended a wicker basket (like a hen-coop) from the top of the coach, stuffed with fur-caps, hats, overalls, and different parcels, so as to make it impossible to move one way or other, and to stop every remaining breath of air. A negociant at my right-hand corner, who was inclined to piece out a lengthened recital with a parce que and a de sorte que at every word, having got upon ticklish ground, without seeing his audience, was cut short in the flower of his oratory, by asserting that Barcelona and St. Sebastian’s in Spain were contiguous to each other. ‘They were at opposite sides of the country,’ exclaimed in the same breath a French soldier and a Spaniard, who sat on the other side of the coach, and whom he was regaling with the gallant adventures of a friend of his in the Peninsula, and not finding the usual excuse—‘C’est égal‘—applicable to a blunder in geography, was contented to fall into the rear of the discourse for the rest of the journey. At midnight we found that we had gone only nine miles in five hours, as we had been climbing a gradual ascent from the time we set out, which was our first essay in mountain-scenery, and gave us some idea of the scale of the country we were beginning to traverse. The heat became less insupportable as the noise and darkness subsided; and as the morning dawned, we were anxious to remove that veil of uncertainty and prejudice which the obscurity of night throws over a number of passengers whom accident has huddled together in a stage-coach. I think one seldom finds one’s-self set down in a party of this kind without a strong feeling of repugnance and distaste, and one seldom quits it at last without some degree of regret. It was the case in the present instance. At day-break, the pleasant farms, the thatched cottages, and sloping valleys of Savoy attracted our notice, and I was struck with the resemblance to England (to some parts of Devonshire and Somersetshire in particular) a discovery which I imparted to my fellow-travellers with a more lively enthusiasm than it was received. An Englishman thinks he has only to communicate his feelings to others to meet with sympathy, and is not a little disconcerted if (after this amazing act of condescension) he is at all repulsed. How should we laugh at a Frenchman who expected us to be delighted with his finding out a likeness of some part of England to France? We English are a nation of egotists, say what we will; and so much so, that we expect others to swallow the bait of our self-love.
At Pont Beau-Voisin, the frontier town of the King of Sardinia’s dominions, we stopped to breakfast, and to have our passports and luggage examined at the Barrier and Custom-house. I breakfasted with the Spaniard, who invited himself to our tea-party, and complimented Madame (in broken English) on the excellence of her performance. We agreed between ourselves that the Spaniards and English were very much superior to the French. I found he had a taste for the Fine Arts, and I spoke of Murillo and Velasquez as two excellent Spanish painters. ‘Here was sympathy.’ I also spoke of Don Quixote—‘Here was more sympathy.’ What a thing it is to have produced a work that makes friends of all the world that have read it, and that all the world have read! Mention but Don Quixote, and who is there that does not own him for a friend, countryman, and brother? There is no French work, at the name of which (as at a talisman) the scales of national prejudice so completely fall off; nay more, I must confess there is no English one. We were summoned from our tea and patriotic effusions to attend the Douane. It was striking to have to pass and repass the piquets of soldiers stationed as a guard on bridges across narrow mountain-streams that a child might leap over. After some slight dalliance with our great-coat pockets, and significant gestures as if we might or might not have things of value about us that we should not, we proceeded to the Custom-house. I had two trunks. One contained books. When it was unlocked, it was as if the lid of Pandora’s box flew open. There could not have been a more sudden start or expression of surprise, had it been filled with cartridge-paper or gun-powder. Books were the corrosive sublimate that eat out despotism and priestcraft—the artillery that battered down castle and dungeon-walls—the ferrets that ferreted out abuses—the lynx-eyed guardians that tore off disguises—the scales that weighed right and wrong—the thumping make-weight thrown into the balance that made force and fraud, the sword and the cowl, kick the beam—the dread of knaves, the scoff of fools—the balm and the consolation of the human mind—the salt of the earth—the future rulers of the world! A box full of them was a contempt of the constituted Authorities; and the names of mine were taken down with great care and secrecy—Lord Bacon’s ‘Advancement of Learning,’ Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost,’ De Stutt-Tracey’s ‘Ideologie,’ (which Bonaparte said ruined his Russian expedition,) Mignet’s ‘French Revolution,’ (which wants a chapter on the English Government,) ‘Sayings and Doings,’ with pencil notes in the margin, ‘Irving’s Orations,’ the same, an ‘Edinburgh Review,’ some ‘Morning Chronicles,’ ‘The Literary Examiner,’ a collection of Poetry, a Volume bound in crimson velvet, and the Paris edition of ‘Table-talk.’ Here was some questionable matter enough—but no notice was taken. My box was afterwards corded and leaded with equal gravity and politeness, and it was not till I arrived at Turin that I found it was a prisoner of state, and would be forwarded to me anywhere I chose to mention, out of his Sardinian Majesty’s dominions. I was startled to find myself within the smooth polished grasp of legitimate power, without suspecting it; and was glad to recover my trunk at Florence, with no other inconvenience than the expense of its carriage across the country.[[36]]
It was noon as we returned to the inn, and we first caught a full view of the Alps over a plashy meadow, some feathery trees, and the tops of the houses of the village in which we were. It was a magnificent sight, and in truth a new sensation. Their summits were bright with snow and with the midday sun; they did not seem to stand upon the earth, but to prop the sky; they were at a considerable distance from us, and yet appeared just over our heads. The surprise seemed to take away our breath, and to lift us from our feet. It was drinking the empyrean. As we could not long retain possession of our two places in the interior, I proposed to our guide to exchange them for the cabriolet; and, after some little chaffering and candid representations of the outside passengers of the cold we should have to encounter, we were installed there to our great satisfaction, and the no less contentment of those whom we succeeded. Indeed I had no idea that we should be steeped in these icy valleys at three o’clock in the morning, or I might have hesitated. The view was cheering, the clear air refreshing, and I thought we should set off each morning about seven or eight. But it is part of the sçavoir vivre in France, and one of the methods of adding to the agrémens of travelling, to set out three hours before day-break in the depth of winter, and stop two hours about noon, in order to arrive early in the evening. With all the disadvantages of preposterous hours and of intense cold pouring into the cabriolet like water the two first mornings, I cannot say I repented of my bargain. We had come a thousand miles to see the Alps for one thing, and we did see them in perfection, which we could not have done inside. The ascent for some way was striking and full of novelty; but on turning a corner of the road we entered upon a narrow defile or rocky ledge, overlooking a steep valley under our feet, with a headlong turbid stream dashing down it, and spreading itself out into a more tranquil river below, a dark wood of innumerable pine-trees covering the side of the valley opposite, with broken crags, morasses, and green plots of cultivated ground, orchards, and quiet homesteads, on which the sun glanced its farewell rays through the openings of the mountains. On our left, a precipice of dark brown rocks of various shapes rose abruptly at our side, or hung threatening over the road, into which some of their huge fragments, loosened by the winter’s flaw, had fallen, and which men and mules were employed in removing—(the thundering crash had hardly yet subsided, as you looked up and saw the fleecy clouds sailing among the shattered cliffs, while another giant-mass seemed ready to quit its station in the sky)—and as the road wound along to the other extremity of this noble pass, between the beetling rocks and dark sloping pine-forests, frowning defiance at each other, you caught the azure sky, the snowy ridges of the mountains, and the peaked tops of the Grand Chartreuse, waving to the right in solitary state and air-clad brightness.—It was a scene dazzling, enchanting, and that stamped the long-cherished dreams of the imagination upon the senses. Between those four crystal peaks stood the ancient monastery of that name, hid from the sight, revealed to thought, half-way between earth and heaven, enshrined in its cerulean atmosphere, lifting the soul to its native home, and purifying it from mortal grossness. I cannot wonder at the pilgrimages that are made to it, its calm repose, its vows monastic. Life must there seem a noiseless dream;—Death a near translation to the skies! Winter was even an advantage to this scene. The black forests, the dark sides of the rocks gave additional and inconceivable brightness to the glittering summits of the lofty mountains, and received a deeper tone and a more solemn gloom from them; while in the open spaces the unvaried sheets of snow fatigue the eye, which requires the contrast of the green tints or luxuriant foliage of summer or of spring. This was more particularly perceptible as the day closed, when the golden sunset streamed in vain over frozen valleys that imbibed no richness from it, and repelled its smile from their polished marble surface. But in the more gloomy and desert regions, the difference is less remarkable between summer and winter, except in the beginning of spring, when the summits of the hoary rocks are covered with snow, and the cleft in their sides are filled with fragrant shrubs and flowers. I hope to see this miracle when I return.
We came to Echelles, where we changed horses with great formality and preparation, as if setting out on some formidable expedition. Six large strong-boned horses with high haunches (used to ascend and descend mountains) were put to, the rope-tackle was examined and repaired, and our two postilions mounted and dismounted more than once, before they seemed willing to set off, which they did at last at a hand-gallop, that was continued for some miles. It is nothing to see English blood-horses get over the ground with such prodigious fleetness and spirit, but it is really curious to see the huge cart-horses, that they use for Diligences abroad, lumbering along and making the miles disappear behind them with their ponderous strength and persevering activity. The road for some way rattled under their heavy hoofs, and the heavy wheels that they dragged or whirled along at a thundering pace; the postilions cracked their whips, and the one in front (a dark, swarthy, short-set fellow) flourished his, shouted and hallooed, and turned back to vociferate his instructions to his companion with the robust energy and wildness of expression of a smuggler or a leader of banditti, carrying off a rich booty from a troop of soldiers. There was something in the scenery to favour this idea. Night was falling as we entered the superb tunnel cut through the mountain at La Grotte (a work attributed to Victor-Emanuel, with the same truth that Falstaff took to himself the merit of the death of Hotspur), and its iron floor rang, the whips cracked, and the roof echoed to the clear voice of our intrepid postilion as we dashed through it. Our path then wound among romantic defiles, where huge masses of snow and the gathering gloom threatened continually to bar our way; but it seemed cleared by the lively shout of our guide, and the carriage-wheels, clogged with ice, rolled after the heavy tramp of the horses. In this manner we rode on through a country full of wild grandeur and shadowy fears, till we had nearly reached the end of our day’s journey, when we dismissed our two fore-horses and their rider, to whom I presented a trifling douceur ‘for the sake of his good voice and cheerful countenance.’ The descent into Chambery was the most dangerous part of the road, and our horses were nearly thrown on their haunches several times. The road was narrow and slippery; there were a number of market-carts returning from the town, and there was a declivity on one side, which, though not a precipice, was quite sufficient to have dashed us to pieces in a common-place way. We arrived at Chambery in the dusk of the evening; and there is surely a charm in the name, and in that of the Charmettes near it (where he who relished all more sharply than his fellows, and made them feel for him as for themselves, alone felt peace or hope), which even the Magdalen Muse of Mr. Moore has not been able to unsing! We alighted at the inn fatigued enough, and were delighted on being shewn to a room to find the floor of wood, and English teacups and saucers. We were in Savoy.
We set out early the next morning, and it was the most trying part of our whole journey. The wind cut like a scythe through the valleys, and a cold, icy feeling struck from the sides of the snowy precipices that surrounded us, so that we seemed enclosed in a huge well of mountains. We got to St. Jean de Maurienne to breakfast about noon, where the only point agreed upon appeared to be to have nothing ready to receive us. This was the most tedious day of all; nor did we meet with any thing to repay us for our uncomfortable setting out. We travelled through a scene of desolation, were chilled in sunless valleys or dazzled by sunny mountain-tops, passed frozen streams or gloomy cavities, that might be transformed into the scene of some Gothic wizard’s spell, or reminded one of some German novel. Let no one imagine that the crossing the Alps is the work of a moment, or done by a single heroic effort—that they are a huge but detached chain of hills, or like the dotted line we find in the map. They are a sea or an entire kingdom of mountains. It took us three days to traverse them in this, which is the most practicable direction, and travelling at a good round pace. We passed on as far as eye could see, and still we appeared to have made little way. Still we were in the shadow of the same enormous mass of rock and snow, by the side of the same creeping stream. Lofty mountains reared themselves in front of us—horrid abysses were scooped out under our feet. Sometimes the road wound along the side of a steep hill, overlooking some village-spire or hamlet, and as we ascended it, it only gave us a view of remoter scenes, ‘where Alps o’er Alps arise,’ tossing about their billowy tops, and tumbling their unwieldy shapes in all directions—a world of wonders!—Any one, who is much of an egotist, ought not to travel through these districts; his vanity will not find its account in them; it will be chilled, mortified, shrunk up: but they are a noble treat to those who feel themselves raised in their own thoughts and in the scale of being by the immensity of other things, and who can aggrandise and piece out their personal insignificance by the grandeur and eternal forms of nature! It gives one a vast idea of Buonaparte to think of him in these situations. He alone (the Rob Roy of the scene) seemed a match for the elements, and able to master ‘this fortress, built by nature for herself.’ Neither impeded nor turned aside by immoveable barriers, he smote the mountains with his iron glaive, and made them malleable; cut roads through them; transported armies over their ridgy steeps; and the rocks ‘nodded to him, and did him courtesies!’
We arrived at St. Michelle at night-fall (after passing through beds of ice and the infernal regions of cold), where we met with a truly hospitable reception, with wood-floors in the English fashion, and where they told us the King of England had stopped. This made no sort of difference to me.
We breakfasted the next day (being Sunday) at Lans-le-Bourg, where I observed my friend the Spaniard busy with his tables, taking down the name of the place. The landlady was a little, round, fat, good-humoured black-eyed Italian or Savoyard, saying a number of good things to all her guests, but sparing of them otherwise. We were now at the foot of Mount Cenis, and after breakfast we set out on foot before the Diligence, which was to follow us in half an hour. We passed a melancholy-looking inn at the end of the town, professing to be kept by an Englishwoman; but there appeared to be nobody about the house, English, French, or Italian. The mistress of it (a young woman who had married an Italian) had, in fact, died a short time before of pure chagrin and disappointment in this solitary place, after having told her tale of distress to every one, till it fairly wore her out. We had leisure to look back to the town as we proceeded, and which, with its church, stone-cottages, and slated roofs, shrunk into a miniature-model of itself as we continued to advance farther and higher above it. Some straggling cottages, some vineyards planted at a great height, and another compact and well-built village, that seemed to defy the extremity of the seasons, were seen in the direction of the valley that we were pursuing. Else all around were shapeless, sightless piles of hills covered with snow, with crags or pine-trees or a foot-path peeping out, and in the appearance of which no alteration whatever was made by our advancing or receding. We gained on the mountain by a broad, winding road that continually doubles, and looks down upon the point from whence you started half an hour before. Some snow had fallen in the morning, but it was now fine, though cloudy. We found two of our fellow-travellers following our example, and they soon after overtook us. They were both French. We noticed some of the features of the scenery; and a lofty hill opposite to us being scooped out into a bed of snow, with two ridges or promontories projecting (something like an arm-chair) on each side. ‘Voilà!’ said the younger and more volatile of our companions, ‘c’est un trône, et le nuage est la gloire!‘—A white cloud indeed encircled its misty top. I complimented him on the happiness of his allusion, and said that Madame was pleased with the exactness of the resemblance. He then turned to the valley, and said, ‘C’est un berceau.’ This is the height to which the imagination of a Frenchman always soars, and it can soar no higher. Any thing that is not cast in this obvious, common-place mould, that had been used a thousand times before with applause, they think barbarous, and as they phrase it, originaire. No farther notice was taken of the scenery, any more than if we had been walking on the Boulevards at Paris, and my young Frenchman talked of other things, laughed, sung, and smoked a cigar with a gaiety and lightness of heart that I envied. ‘What has become,’ said the elder of the Frenchmen, ‘of Monsieur l’Espagnol? He does not easily quit his seat; he sits in one corner, never looks out, or if you point to any object, takes no notice of it; and when you come to the end of the stage, says—“What is the name of that place we passed by last?” takes out his pocket-book, and makes a note of it. “That is droll.”’ And what made it more so, it turned out that our Spanish friend was a painter, travelling to Rome to study the Fine Arts! All the way as we ascended, there were red posts placed at the edge of the road, ten or twelve feet in height, to point out the direction of the road in case of a heavy fall of snow, and with notches cut to shew the depth of the drifts. There were also scattered stone-hovels, erected as stations for the Gens d’armes, who were sometimes left here for several days together after a severe snow-storm, without being approached by a single human being. One of these stood near the top of the mountain, and as we were tired of the walk (which had occupied two hours) and of the uniformity of the view, we agreed to wait here for the Diligence to overtake us. We were cordially welcomed in by a young peasant (a soldier’s wife) with a complexion as fresh as the winds, and an expression as pure as the mountain-snows. The floor of this rude tenement consisted of the solid rock; and a three-legged table stood on it, on which were placed three earthen bowls filled with sparkling wine, heated on a stove with sugar. The woman stood by, and did the honours of this cheerful repast with a rustic simplicity and a pastoral grace that might have called forth the powers of Hemskirk and Raphael. I shall not soon forget the rich ruby colour of the wine, as the sun shone upon it through a low glazed window that looked out on the boundless wastes around, nor its grateful spicy smell as we sat round it. I was complaining of the trick that had been played by the waiter at Lyons in the taking of our places, when I was told by the young Frenchman, that, in case I returned to Lyons, I ought to go to the Hotel de l’Europe, or to the Hotel du Nord, ‘in which latter case he should have the honour of serving me.’ I thanked him for his information, and we set out to finish the ascent of Mount Cenis, which we did in another half-hour’s march. The traiteur of the Hotel du Nord and I had got into a brisk theatrical discussion on the comparative merits of Kean and Talma, he asserting that there was something in French acting which an English understanding could not appreciate; and I insisting loudly on bursts of passion as the forte of Talma, which was a language common to human nature; that in his Œdipus, for instance, it was not a Frenchman or an Englishman he had to represent—‘Mais c’est un homme, c’est Œdipe‘—when our cautious Spaniard brushed by us, determined to shew he could descend the mountain, if he would not ascend it on foot. His figure was characteristic enough, his motions smart and lively, and his dress composed of all the colours of the rainbow. He strutted on before us in the snow, like a flamingo or some tropical bird of variegated plumage; his dark purple cloak fluttered in the air, his Montero cap, set a little on one side, was of fawn colour; his waistcoat a bright scarlet, his coat a reddish brown, his trowsers a pea-green, and his boots a perfect yellow. He saluted us with a national politeness as he passed, and seemed bent on redeeming the sedentary sluggishness of his character by one bold and desperate effort of locomotion.
The coach shortly after overtook us. We descended a long and steep declivity, with the highest point of Mount Cenis on our left, and a lake to the right, like a landing-place for geese. Between the two was a low, white monastery, and the barrier where we had our passports inspected, and then went forward with only two stout horses and one rider. The snow on this side of the mountain was nearly gone. I supposed myself for some time nearly on level ground, till we came in view of several black chasms or steep ravines in the side of the mountain facing us, with water oozing from it, and saw through some galleries, that is, massy stone-pillars knit together by thick rails of strong timber, guarding the road-side, a perpendicular precipice below, and other galleries beyond, diminished in a fairy perspective, and descending ‘with cautious haste and giddy cunning,’ and with innumerable windings and re-duplications to an interminable depth and distance from the height where we were. The men and horses with carts, that were labouring up the path in the hollow below, shewed like crows or flies. The road we had to pass was often immediately under that we were passing, and cut from the side of what was all but a precipice out of the solid rock by the broad, firm master-hand that traced and executed this mighty work. The share that art has in the scene is as appalling as the scene itself—the strong security against danger as sublime as the danger itself. Near the turning of one of the first galleries is a beautiful waterfall, which at this time was frozen into a sheet of green pendant ice—a magical transformation. Long after we continued to descend, now faster and now slower, and came at length to a small village at the bottom of a sweeping line of road, where the houses seemed like dove-cotes with the mountain’s back reared like a wall behind them, and which I thought the termination of our journey. But here the wonder and the greatness began: for, advancing through a grove of slender trees to another point of the road, we caught a new view of the lofty mountain to our left. It stood in front of us, with its head in the skies, covered with snow, and its bare sides stretching far away into a valley that yawned at its feet, and over which we seemed suspended in mid air. The height, the magnitude, the immovableness of the objects, the wild contrast, the deep tones, the dance and play of the landscape from the change of our direction and the interposition of other striking objects, the continued recurrence of the same huge masses, like giants following us with unseen strides, stunned the sense like a blow, and yet gave the imagination strength to contend with a force that mocked it. Here immeasurable columns of reddish granite shelved from the mountain’s sides; here they were covered and stained with furze and other shrubs; here a chalky cliff shewed a fir-grove climbing its tall sides, and that itself looked at a distance like a huge, branching pine-tree; beyond was a dark, projecting knoll, or hilly promontory, that threatened to bound the perspective—but, on drawing nearer to it, the cloudy vapour that shrouded it (as it were) retired, and opened another vista beyond, that, in its own unfathomed depth, and in the gradual obscurity of twilight, resembled the uncertain gloom of the back-ground of some fine picture. At the bottom of this valley crept a sluggish stream, and a monastery or low castle stood upon its banks. The effect was altogether grander than I had any conception of. It was not the idea of height or elevation that was obtruded upon the mind and staggered it, but we seemed to be descending into the bowels of the earth—its foundations seemed to be laid bare to the centre; and abyss after abyss, a vast, shadowy, interminable space, opened to receive us. We saw the building up and frame-work of the world—its limbs, its ponderous masses, and mighty proportions, raised stage upon stage, and we might be said to have passed into an unknown sphere, and beyond mortal limits. As we rode down our winding, circuitous path, our baggage, (which had been taken off) moved on before us; a grey horse that had got loose from the stable followed it, and as we whirled round the different turnings in this rapid, mechanical flight, at the same rate and the same distance from each other, there seemed something like witchcraft in the scene and in our progress through it. The moon had risen, and threw its gleams across the fading twilight; the snowy tops of the mountains were blended with the clouds and stars; their sides were shrouded in mysterious gloom, and it was not till we entered Susa, with its fine old drawbridge and castellated walls, that we found ourselves on terra firma, or breathed common air again. At the inn at Susa, we first perceived the difference of Italian manners; and the next day arrived at Turin, after passing over thirty miles of the straightest, flattest, and dullest road in the world. Here we stopped two days to recruit our strength and look about us.