An Englishman travelling in France, is frequently struck with the total deficiency, even among respectable merchants and artists, of that sort of general knowledge, which might enable them decidedly to reject any fable that the government or a party leader may endeavour to impose upon their credulity. I have heard here, as a most certain and authentic piece of intelligence, from one who boasted that he had been in London, that Napoleon had escaped from St. Helena, and was about to return to France at the head of an immense army of Americans; that the latter had already declared war against England, and taken Gibraltar.
There are many beautiful spots in the neighbourhood of Lyon, and indeed the situation of the city is one which affords great variety of scene. It is placed at the junction of two rivers, one of which passes through a romantic valley, between two lofty rocks, the other coasts the hills under steep banks, leaving a rich and fertile plain on the opposite side. These hills are adorned in many parts with country houses of great variety of form, which are often very picturesque, though perhaps none of them are individually beautiful. At some distance are higher hills, or rather mountains, which by the contrast of form, and rich aerial tints, set off the cultivated plain and slopes of the immediate neighbourhood; here and there a point of the Alps appears above them, marked only by the brilliant whiteness of the snow with which it is covered, and belonging, in appearance, rather to the heaven than to the earth.
My pleasantest walk was on the bank of the Rhone. For the whole length of the town, there is a fine broad quay along the shore, and the road to Geneva continues for some miles by the side of the stream, offering fine views of the river, and of the white summits of the distant Alps. A steep gravelly hill, presenting occasionally perpendicular cliffs, bounds the road on the left, but receding from the town, the slope becomes more gradual, and coffee-houses and gardens in ascending terraces, present themselves soon after leaving the city. The most celebrated of these is the Café de Gaillet, where the Lyonnese drink beer, eat bread and cheese, or sweet cakes, and take ices. Some amuse themselves under the shade of the orange trees; others seek the shelter of a noble saloon, I suppose 150 feet long, and 40 feet broad, and ornamented with looking-glasses. If the style of decoration be French, it is certainly good of its kind; and besides, the taste for gaiety and glitter is extremely well exercised in a coffee-house. On a fine Sunday afternoon all the population of Lyon, in their gayest attire, seem to come out on this road. In London the people scatter themselves on such an occasion in all directions; in these French towns all seem to direct their steps to one point, and pains are taken by the government or the community, to make that point agreeable. This coffee-house has however at present, one disadvantage; the garden is on a terrace level with the saloon, and a row of young plane trees by the side of the road below, is just of a height to shut out the prospect from the whole range. Another coffee-house, which has its little summer houses and Chinese pavilions scattered about at different elevations, is better in this respect, but inferior in every other.
At my inn, the Quatre Nations, there is a table d’hôte rather too early for my convenience. When there, I generally find some one whom I recognize as the companion of some former portion of my journey, but unfortunately none of those who pleased me the most. Comparing the peasantry of France with that of England, I should say there is less of prompt and servile obedience, where you think you have a right to command, but greatly more attention and real politeness, where you have no such claim. In those of a class a little superior, or at least who think themselves so, the French have not the same advantage. In all classes there seems to be much more freedom of remark than in England, and sometimes such remarks as would put an Englishman out of humour. In the little intercourses of life the Frenchman has the appearance of being the most good humoured, if not the most polite. I get laughed at for my pronunciation, and frequently perhaps by those who would themselves be ridiculed at Paris. One of the guests amused himself with talking to me in bad French, just as you sometimes talk bad English to children. Another of the party found fault with this, telling him that he would be better understood by speaking correctly, but slowly, and distinctly, without saying parlier, entendier, and without using verbs instead of substantives. “But,” replied the former, “I do not say parlier, entendier, nor do I use verbs for substantives, I only make use of the participle instead of the infinitive, and I confound the genders, as this gentleman does.” I observed that these people in their conversation almost always sounded the r of the infinitive mood.
I went to the theatre at Lyon; here I first saw what I am told is common in the south of France, a pit without seats. The theatre is simple and good, because without affectation, and where the artist goes straight forward to his object, the result may not be admirable, but can never be ridiculous. The acting was respectable, but my bile was excited by some officers in the boxes, who insisted that every thing should be conducted at their good pleasure; and somewhat also by the people for submitting to their impertinence. They were furiously loyal, but it is impossible such men can be friends of a constitutional government. Liberty is out of the question, they are fit for nothing but to be the tools of a military despotism.
I have already mentioned a crypt under the church dedicated to St. Irene, which is said to be of Roman construction. At the same place I was shown an opening, now boarded up, which leads to a space containing, if you believe the tradition of the place, the bones of 19,000 martyrs, without reckoning women and children, who, as my conductress observed, must have been at least as many more. There is also a well full of relics, but I did not understand whether these were included in the previous number, or an addition to it.
South of Lyon we may begin to observe the constructions in Pisé, which I suspect would not suit a climate so wet as ours; the material seems to be gravel and clay, formed into blocks in a sort of mould on the work itself, and separated by pretty thick beds of mortar. In some districts these blocks are pretty regular parallelopipeda, about six feet long and three thick; in others, they are very irregularly shaped, like Cyclopæan masonry.
LETTER X.
SOUTH OF FRANCE.
Nismes, 27th July, 1816.
I met at Paris with a brother architect of the name of Sharp, who was going to Rome by the South of France; he left Paris a little after me, and joined me at Lyon. On the 12th we got into the packet-boat, to descend the Rhone; it was loaded with goods and passengers going to the fair at Beaucaire; and such a steam rose from the only room below deck, that I did not choose to venture into it; although a thick drizzling rain which obscured the prospect, and permitted us to see only the ghosts of beautiful scenery, would have made the shelter very acceptable. The packet-boat, or barge, is suffered nearly to drift down the stream, but the boatmen are provided with oars, to direct, rather than to accelerate the motion, as the rudder, though made very large, has of course little power. Our voyage begins upon the Saone, but we entered the Rhone a little below Lyon, and reached Vienne, a distance of nearly eighteen miles, in two hours and a half. Here we left the boat, and although the weather incommoded us all day, yet it was sufficiently fine at intervals to shew us that we were in a beautiful country, and to permit us to see some of the antiquities of the place. A magnificent quay extends along the bank of the river, but the current of the Rhone is so strong, that every thing connected with it must be of the most solid construction. One pier of a bridge is still standing; and a tower, which probably defended the end of it, remains on the opposite shore: a rocky hill rises behind the town, crowned by what appears the fragment of an old castle, but this we did not visit. Vienne is the first town I have seen, where the Roman antiquities remain in sufficient perfection to claim the study of an architect. I ran into the first church which occurred in our ramble through the city, (that of St. André le Bas) and found it a very curious old building, with many fragments of Roman antiquity, particularly two shafts of columns, and capitals upon them, but as the capitals had originally belonged to columns half as large again, the composition was not very happy. It is an edifice of great antiquity, being simply a parallelogram, with a semicircular niche at the end, which forms the choir; the vaulting is pointed, but the openings are round-headed, except three little windows in the choir. It was founded by Ancemond, Duke of Burgundy, and restored by Conrad, King of Burgundy. The latter reigned from 1033 to 1037. A little further we stumbled on an ancient temple, a good deal ruined. The spaces between the columns have been walled up, and the walls of the cell removed, in order to convert the building, first into a christian church, and afterwards into a court of justice. The edifice is not in very good taste, nor very well executed; yet the union of simplicity of form with richness of decoration, produces a pleasing effect under so many disadvantages: and the coming thus by chance upon an object with which one has so many associations, excited an emotion more easily imagined than described. Just out of the town is a slender pyramid on a square basement, perforated in each direction by an arched opening, and with a column at each angle. It is called by the vulgar the tomb of Pontius Pilate, who, according to them, put an end to his own life at this place. Its real date and destination are very uncertain. It is undoubtedly Roman, and probably a sepulchral monument, but there is no inscription. It stands in the middle of a corn-field, and cannot boast much beauty either in itself or in its situation. The finest relic, in point of taste and execution, is what is called the Arch of Triumph. Enough remains to shew with certainty, that it does not merit this appellation, but not sufficient to enable me to determine what it has been: some heads of satyrs have given rise to a conjecture that it formed part of a theatre.