“Something attempted, something done.” Be sure it be of many simples “composed in all parts to perfection.” See to it you fall not short of Lamb’s happy hit—only this and nothing less.
Are you ready? I am in Switzerland. Bow your head; here is a snow-cap. Crane your neck; here is a chain of the Rigi’s lightning. Now straighten to your loftiest stature; only that can wear this mantle of clouds I snatch from the shoulders of Pilatus to fling over yours. And last, here is a dazzle of sunlight to set you in—like a saint in an aureole. How do you feel? Do not be frightened. You are not ready for your apotheosis; and I am no high priestess. Besides, in a breath you will seem to yourself never to have been other than the grand creature I have made you. You know that vital quality of us mortals that makes us feel we are greater than anything that comes to us.
“We feel that we are greater than we know.”
Just to think my last letter was from Venice. How long ago that seems, eons and eons! “I have lived so much since then.” Can I ever tell you the half? Ah! me! No, no. Only this impotent—I wish, oh! how I wish I could!
I have ransacked “ancient Padua,” thinking of exiled Romeo. Saw the great wooden horse of Danatello, that stands in the largest hall in Europe; holds sixteen men and is taken to pieces, carried down into the street, and put together again and used in procession on fête occasions. “Think of that Master Brook!” It is really a splendid, spirited-looking creature. Did any of your traveled friends ever tell you about it? I saw also, besides “the thousand things” I must omit, Goethe’s palm tree, the one he made use of in his theory of the Metamorphoses of Plants. The tree remains and flourishes. The man—where is he? “Light, give us more light,” were his last words. I think he has found it. From Padua, I hastened to Verona. Such a beautiful old city! There I sought out Juliet’s tomb, in the old monastery hid away in its garden. And I found the house of the Capulets, and stood in its court and gazed with eager interest at that queer hat carved on its shield, placed above the entrance in the wall. This repeated itself on columns and in different places, giving evidence of the prominent position of the family. I was quite unprepared to find the situation of Verona so picturesque, and one feature I have not seen elsewhere, that of its innumerable mills on wheels to be run into and out of “the rapid Adige.” Just fancy a line of these queer-looking structures some distance from shore, working away with all the impetuosity that swift current can give, and as steadily as is their wont! But everything about that Shakespeare-famed city is unique and fascinating. Thence to Milan, where I lingered a week, but was not specially impressed. The Cathedral is all that descriptions and pictures make it, and the Milanese claim for it, “the eighth wonder of the world.” I climbed to its tip-top perch, and every step revealed some marvel of architecture and sculpture. The workmanship is amazing. You have read all about it, and doubtless think you have a very good idea of it; but just come and stand before it and haunt it, and you will despair of ever taking in the half of its details! No two ornaments or points are alike! I quickly gave up, and looked away from it to the everlasting hills, too far away to force me to mathematical calculations. Have you read of the Grand Victor Emanuel Gallery, that “finest arcade in the world,” in shape like a cross, with an octagon center surmounted by a dome, and paved with beautiful mosaic, where the finest shops are, and which is the fashionable promenade, lit by 2,000 gas-lights, and—goodness! if I go on, you will think I am preparing to rival Badeker and get up a guide-book. Well, I just want you to know my apartments were on it, and I was quartered equal to a queen! Everything was gold and glitter, and grandeur and gorgeousness. And I took to it as naturally as a lark to the highest regions of air! Of course, I saw all the libraries, picture galleries, strange old churches, etc., and drove at the fashionable hour on the Corso, watching the gay and festive throngs in carriages, on horseback and afoot, this last most characteristic feature, perhaps, of all I saw. The fair dames in superb toilets holding levées in their splendid equipages! I enjoyed the spectacle. Then I sped away to the Italian lakes. Guess how my heart beat at the prospect of seeing those romantic sheets of water. That was a summerland, indeed, with tideless summer seas and tropical blooms and sounds and sights! Nightingales sang there night and day. Magnolias, oleanders, mimosas and myrtles were in full bloom, and the sun shone with almost pitiless fervor. I saw them all in their length and breadth. I haunted their shores and floated over their lovely green waters. And I fell in love with that bijou, Lake Lugano. Next to our own Lake George, it is the most exquisite sheet of water I have ever seen, and I have seen so many!
Presently, almost before I knew, it was “time to move on.” That is a hardship sometimes. But it was Switzerland that was awaiting me, and a brand-new experience. You know how it must have been—the heart-breaking at the leaving, and yet springing forward with a bound of eagerness to the unknown. You must have experienced that mixed feeling! What have I not seen and felt in this wonderland! Unspeakable Switzerland! Every place has its own special exceeding beauty or grandeur, or both. I came into it from Chiavenna, by the Val Bregaglia and Maloja Pass, my first halt being at San Moritz, in the Upper Engadine. This is a fashionable watering-place, in the midst of the most glorious mountain and lake scenery, and is a good point from which to make excursions. I think I shall only tell you of the one I am the proudest of. It was my grand climb. First, a drive of seventeen miles to the Bernina Hospice, among the Bernina Alps, and from there a walk of two and a quarter hours, up, up, to heights far above the tree line, into the vast solitudes of barren rock and eternal snows—7,800 feet high. Behold me, with alpenstock, giving all my energy and enthusiasm to it; sometimes by pretty lakes and prettier tarns—“those wee lakes that looked like tears dropped in the clefts of lofty mountains;” over bridges spanning turbulent streams; across narrow ledges of rock and snow; up cliffs that made me wish I was a kid or a chamois; and ever upward, till my breath was mere gasping! At last I was there, at the Sassal Massone, perched on a shelf in the mountain-side, looking on such a spectacle as I may never see again—the Palu Glacier, sweeping down between two immense mountains, on my right; opposite, mountains; to the left, a lovely valley, clothed in the richest, tenderest verdure, and holding an exquisite lake in its bosom. I gazed and shut my eyes, and gazed and shut them again and again. This Sassal Massone is a little refreshment-house cut into the solid rock on a shelf or terrace, with a seat for the weary climber to rest on while taking in the sublime views.
Thus sitting, a chance turn of my head showed rows of the edelweiss, that lovely, downy, little Alpine flower, just back and a little above me, growing right out of the snow. I sprang up to look at them, and then went to the keeper of the rude hostelry to buy some. He said they were not for sale; that he kept them for tourists to see; but that he would provide me a guide to take me to great fields of them not so very far away. The guide came—the most loutish, stupid-looking creature a mission ever was intrusted to. We tramped through the snow, kept to our feet by our alpenstocks and to the goal by our excitement. It was indeed a vast field of snow, unbroken but by the quantities of the curious little flowers, which seemed cut out of felt—white, but not snow-white; just the tinge of common felt. The petals radiated from a pretty center, a cluster of delicate, palish-gold-colored flowers. The guide looked from them to us and from us to them, then smiled, stepped back and bowed—awkwardly, to be sure—for us to pluck for ourselves. He was instantaneously transformed from the stolid clodhopper I had thought him to be—not to a god, but a mortal with a beautiful soul.
I gathered to my heart’s content—all that I could carry on the return tramp. If only I could have brought away the mountain-side with them! The mere thought made me gasp. With hands full and head and heart fuller, full to their utmost, I turned away and “came down from the mountains.” I saw three grand glaciers that day; walked to the foot of one, and stood gazing in fascination on its fissured walls of ice and its dangerously beautiful grotto, from which “a glacier torrent” was pouring forth. Everywhere, except at the very highest points, multitudes of the loveliest wild flowers were blooming! Is not that a day to be set apart in one’s life? I am sure I shall never recall it without feeling myself a grander creature.
From San Moritz to Thusis by the Julier and Schyn Passes. All the routes have been planned to take in the finest if not most familiarly known scenery. These passes were another experience of the most varied wildness, grandeur, bareness and loveliness. First, the slow zigzag of the diligence into the bleakest regions of grey cloven rocks, piled into “Alps upon Alps,” till they towered far up above the snow line; then great tortuous windings down into the heart of such luxuriant vegetation as is not surpassed, hardly equaled, by that of Ohio’s fertile valleys and hills. Then—I would lend you my eyes if I could, just to have you realize what a panorama of sublime beauty Switzerland can give, but I have no words to picture it. Thusis is situated at the entrance of the Via Mala, the famous gorge through which that impetuous stripling, the young Rhine, rushes with such headlong recklessness. A wide and long-extended valley, surrounded by every kind of mountain and height, from knolls to snow peaks; two rivers tearing in at one end, uniting and hurrying onward as the Rhine right through the center, and twenty towns dotting the distances, with castles and churches perched in every romantic spot. Why, it seemed to me the earth was growing more beautiful and wonderful every moment.
The ruins of the oldest castle in Switzerland, on the summit of a spur of the Muttnerhorn, a lofty, rounded mass of rock, partly covered with trees and grass and flowers, partly showing only sheer rifts of limestone, rose just in front of my windows. I sat on my balcony and saw the moon rise among its crumbling towers, sail slowly across and above them, and mount to the highest heavens; while below me a fine band played such music as was in perfect harmony with that enchanting spectacle and my own mood. Next forenoon I drove the length of the Via Mala, and on my return left the carriage and climbed to that seductive height all alone, my companion begging off. No, not quite alone. I had some goats and kids for companions, and am gregarious enough to own I was glad of even them. They just looked at me with a mild curiosity, and nibbled on or clambered ahead or waited to let me pass. Perhaps—who knows?—a biped innovation was as pleasant to them as they were to her! The view at the top was all I thought it could be. And that is my description in full. Is it not satisfactory?