The cathedral at Lausanne is much superior to that of Geneva; and indeed may fairly be esteemed both a beautiful building, and an interesting specimen of art. The nave alone is at present used, the remaining part being under repair. I have met with no history of the building; and the woman who shews it, points out the tomb of a St. Bertrand who lived in the tenth century, as that of its founder; but this is not admissible.
The style of the building, without being precisely like any thing in England, evidently classes with our early pointed architecture. It is anterior not only to tracery and trefoil heads, but to the introduction of roses in the upper part of the windows, and would with us be assigned to about the year 1200. A comparison with French buildings would induce me to place it in the first half of the twelfth century. The piers, or pillars of the nave, are very whimsical, and almost every pair is different. One pair is composed, each of two unequal columns, the little one before the other; yet the largest is only two feet four inches and a half in diameter, with a height of twenty-four feet, and the front one is no more than ten inches and a half in diameter, though as it goes up to the springing of the vault, it must be fifty feet high. In another pair, formed nearly in the same manner, modern improvers have had the courage to cut away the smaller pillar, to make room for some arrangements below. In another pair, each pier is composed of four columns, two large, and two small, entirely detached: the other piers are rectangular, but with small shafts variously attached. The original design evidently provided for two western towers, and an octagonal lantern at the intersection of the cross. One only of the western towers has been erected. The lantern has been carried above the roof, but not completed, and it is now covered with a make-shift roof of tiles, terminating in a wooden spire: the octagon was not carried down to the ground, as at Ely, but rests upon the four piers at the intersection of the cross. I regret much that this is imperfect, as I have met with no example on the continent of the original method of terminating this part, but it seems certain that our great towers, or spires, were not usual.
There is in this church a very singular rose window, composed of a capricious combination of squares and circles, which I imagined at first to be the freak of some architect of the seventeenth or eighteenth century; but my conductress assured me that it was ancient, and the painted glass favoured her assertion. The southern porch is a curious structure, which reminded me in some particulars of that of Chartres; and I think it was intended to be continued to a greater extent, and to form an open gallery, as in that building.
The western porch also exhibits some striking peculiarities, and is one of those anomalous productions to which it is difficult to fix a date; but it is certainly early Gothic: the external archway of this porch is a beautiful little addition of the fifteenth century.
LETTER XIV.
TOUR IN SWITZERLAND.
Milan, 12th October, 1816.
I left Lausanne in the diligence for Bern, on the 10th of September. A long ascent leads us to the summit of the Jorat, 1,767 feet above the Lake of Geneva; but it was night, and I lost the prospect. We breakfasted at Moudon at half past two in the morning. The day dawned beautifully among woods of fir and oak, and the same sort of scenery continued to Fribourg, a city seated partly at the bottom, and partly at the top of some sandstone cliffs, between which the river Saane takes a very winding course. Beyond Fribourg I walked up some long hills, and found the views singularly beautiful. The near ground is well varied, and rich with woods intermingled with cultivation, like some of the best parts of the weald of Kent and Sussex. Beyond this are more distant mountains, while the extensive snows of the Jung Frau, and the steep pyramid of the Schreckhorn, bound the horizon. On the other side we see the Jura; behind us are the mountains of the canton of Fribourg, and those which formed the principal objects about the Lake of Geneva. We arrived at Bern about noon. It is a regularly built city, in which the foot-paths are under low arcades, taken from the ground floor of the houses. Beneath these arches are the shops, but nothing belonging to the dwelling-house or inn, till you have mounted to the first story. There is a good table d’hôte at the Falcon, where I was fortunate enough to meet some old acquaintance, and to form some new ones, by which I profited in the thoroughly wet day which succeeded my arrival. The cathedral here is a building of the latter part of the fifteenth, or beginning of the sixteenth century; rather clumsily though richly decorated, and presenting no features of much interest; but the situation is admirable.
At the Museum at Bern are some of the best models I have seen of the Swiss mountains. I suspect however, that nothing of the sort is very exact in the mountain forms, and after all the observations which can be made, it is hardly possible to refrain from mixing up a little imagination in the details.[[27]] All of them are made with a scale of heights, different from that of lengths, which is another source of misconception. Another object well deserving attention at Bern, is the Gymnasium. The children at the public school are taught not only the exercises of the mind, but also those of the body; to swim, to jump, to climb, to ride; a plan which seems to me excellent, as giving a wholesome direction to that restless activity of boys, which so often leads them first into mischief, and then into vice. Not far from Bern is the establishment of M. Fellenberg at Hofwyl, but the children were not there when I visited it; and you may find so much better accounts of the establishment than any I could give, that I shall not obtrude upon you my hasty observations.
On Saturday about noon I took the diligence for Thun, a most delightful ride through a fine cultivated country, bounded by some of the most magnificent summits of the Alps. At Thun the nearer mountains rise into importance, while the more lofty ones, though partially hidden, lose nothing of their consequence. The next day I took a boat up the Thuner See to Nieuhaus, whence I walked to Unterseen. This is a delightful place; the town itself is extremely interesting, because it is completely Swiss. All the houses are of wood, with galleries and great projecting roofs. The situation is a level valley between two lakes, well cultivated and shaded with fine trees; mostly walnut. The Harder is a noble crag, rising immediately above the plain; all around are fine craggy mountains shaded with wood, the lower parts of which are sprinkled with cottages, and enlivened by cultivation; and an opening in the range, which forms the little valley of Zwey Lütschinen, exposes to the delighted eye the vast mass of the Jung Frau, the beautiful pyramid of the purest snow called the Silberhorn, and the craggy summit of the higher Mönch. The Hotel de Ville of Unterseen is in the inn. The landlord procured me a lad to act as a guide, and to carry my parcels, for thirty batzen[[28]] per diem, just half what had been previously demanded of me; but he could speak only German, at which I hammer terribly.
We set out on a fine morning for Zwey Lütschinen, and thence proceeded to Lauterbrunnen. The first part of the walk is amazingly fine; the second still finer. It seemed impossible that after this there could be any thing worth seeing in the way of mountain vallies, but I was very much mistaken. The best notion I can give you of the valley of Lauterbrunnen is, to tell you to magnify Gordale, and stretch it out into a valley six or seven miles long; put trees, hedges, and cottages below, fringe the tops of the precipices with trees, and pour down a multitude of little waterfalls. Of these the Staubbach and the Myrrenbach are the principal; the first falls 900 feet, and for two thirds of the way without touching the rock; the latter I should think quite as high, but it streams down like a lock of dishevelled hair of the purest white. The next morning I ascended to the top of the Staubbach, and to the foot of an upper fall; and here standing on a rock at the summit of the great fall, in a place however of perfect safety; I looked down into the deep contracted valley beneath, and saw one of the smaller waterfalls entirely turned into a rainbow. I had no idea of the presence of water there, except from the colours it produced. I then continued my walk to Myrrem, one of the highest villages in Europe, though not by any means the highest habitation. It is 5,156 feet above the level of the sea. The Curé of Lauterbrunnen, at whose house I have taken up my lodgings, pays it a visit every winter. I was at first surprised at his chusing this time of year to visit his parishioners; but he reminded me that in the summer, the men were dispersed in the chalets still higher on the mountains. The path in winter is very dangerous, as the little streams are frozen, and present inclined planes of ice which terminate in the precipices overhanging the valley of Lauterbrunnen. At Myrrem, the sun shines every fine day in the year; at a hamlet beneath it, they are three months without sun. Even at Lauterbrunnen in the middle of September, the sun does not appear till past eight, and sets about half past two. This walk gave me a fine view of the branch of the Alps which divides the Vallais from the Oberland of Bern, some of the highest and wildest in Switzerland; and I had the pleasure of seeing, though at a great distance, a considerable avalanche. I suppose the fall could not be of much less than 1,200 feet, and it raised a cloud of snow which at last obscured the whole mass of rock. Hardly half an hour elapsed during the whole walk, in which I did not hear some smaller ones, and I saw many; but such an exhibition as this large one is of rare occurrence. As they give no previous notice, the traveller has but little chance of seeing them, till the sound of the first fall serves to direct him, and of course the first burst is thus lost to the eye. My attention was quite on the alert, and I marked a vast body of snow and ice on the Ebene fluh which seemed almost suspended, and a dark line above indicated that a separation had already taken place. I watched for some time in hopes of seeing a most stupendous fall; for there were, I dare say, ten acres of snow and ice, and the middle of the mass was not less than 100 feet thick,—but I watched in vain. These avalanches are only from one bed of snow to another, or on to ground kept naked by frequent falls, and consequently do no harm. It is those formed of the snow of the preceding winter, and falling in the spring, on or near the cultivated ground, which do so much mischief. They destroy all the hopes of the farmer, and bury his cottage, or overturn and carry it along with them; and even sweep down the woods before them. The wind produced by them is said to be so violent, as sometimes to throw down large trees, which are not touched by the snow. Descending into the valley, I stumbled upon another waterfall; perhaps the most beautiful of any, though less astonishing. It is only about 120 feet high, and is therefore no subject of interest or admiration to the inhabitants, who see so many of much greater elevation.