The colonel was on his way to England, but lingered at Paris for his pleasure, the invitation to which also detained me, in the company of my new acquaintance.
Leaving Paris in a dreadful diligence by way of Dijon and the golden grapes, I traversed the Jura range and entered Geneva. I stayed there too, for of course I had to set myself up in a musical box that played the “Parisienne” and the “Marseillaise,” as well as in a watch and chain, besides looking at Mont Blanc and sailing on the lake to see where the Rhone rushed in, and to visit Lausanne in memory of Gibbon. Nor did I fail to see the prison of Chillon in compliment to the poet Byron.
My jeweller at Geneva was a very earnest mechanic. He had studied the art of watchmaking in London and in Paris, he had made a chronometer to compete for some great prize and had failed, entirely to his own satisfaction, assuring himself that his work was of the best, but that it was impossible to make allowance for the wear and tear of the sun!
The journey from Geneva to the Simplon I found very romantic. The valley, in which lies Martigny, was marked by driftways that looked like roads excavated from solid snow, cut out from the heights to the level, and which, never traversed by travellers, appeared to lead to lands unknown.
At Martigny there had been a deluge, by which every house was dislocated with the exception of the church. The flood was caused by the bursting of a mountain lake; the clever priests, foreseeing what would one day happen, so constructed the church, with a prow towards the threatening lake, as to enable it to resist a torrent.
I passed over the Simplon; I saw the Borromean Islands on the other side, and, proceeding to Milan, paid their old owner, the great cardinal, a visit in the cathedral. He was lying, as so many have beheld him, in his comfortable coffin.
Milan even then was a most elegant city, and most tastefully paved. I was so fortunate as to have a letter from Sir James Clark to Dr. Ciceri, who showed me everything, and there is no guide like a native one; but I say now that all I care for in the Lombard capital is the fresco of Leonardo da Vinci.
XXVIII.
When a man begins to write and finds he can hardly spell his name, he looks at Bolingbroke for style, or at Goldsmith, and gets help from both; but woe to him if he falls in love with such rickety writers as were De Quincy, or Carlyle! Both had bandy pens. As a man gets older, if he has anything to say, he is contented with being himself, and covering his thoughts with words that exactly fit them, as the skin fits a race-horse. An affected style betrays an affected character, with its self-respect in abeyance. He finds that some long words contain his idea ready made, but he does better to shun them, and express it in his own way, and this I have done in writing these my memoirs.