Of those beautiful descriptions of nature which lend so great a charm to Miss Bremer's fiction we find but few examples in her work on the United States. Unfortunately she travelled as a philosopher, not as an observer of nature; engaged in the study of social questions, she seems to have had neither the leisure nor the inclination to survey the magnificent scenery through which she passed. The area she traversed was very considerable; from New York she crossed the continent to New Orleans; she visited Canada, the lakes, the valley of the Mississippi, and made an excursion to Cuba; but of all the landscapes, sublime, beautiful, and picturesque that met her gaze, she says little or nothing. Even the mighty Niagara has scarcely power to move her; the rolling prairies make no impression on her imagination. From her book, therefore, we can offer no quotations. In a country like America social questions change their aspects with so much rapidity that Miss Bremer's opinions upon them are already antiquated. It is Nature only that preserves her character. The relations of the North to the South, of the slave-holder to the negro, or of the Democratic party to the Republican, may undergo, in twenty or thirty years a complete transformation; but Niagara still pours its flood of waters into the St. Lawrence, and leagues upon leagues of grassy savannahs are still untrodden by the foot of man.
The defect which we have indicated in Miss Bremer's "Homes of the New World" does not appear in the later work, "Two Years in Switzerland and Italy." Here we find that warm sympathy with Nature, that vivid appreciation of the beautiful, which we might reasonably expect from one who had the poet's feeling and fancy, though not endowed with the poet's faculty of expression.[12] In the opening chapter or "station," as she prefers to call it, we come upon a picture full of power and colour, in which the artist uses her pencil with equal grace and freedom. It is the valley of Lauterbrunnen, or "Laughing Waters":—
"From Steinbock the valley becomes ever narrower, between ever higher mountain walls; louder and louder roar the becks and the streams, which, now swollen by the rains, are hurled from the glaciers down towards the valley and the river. Here falls the Staubbach, thrown like silver rain, driven hither and thither by the wind over the field which it keeps green below; here rushes down the strong Trummelsbach, foaming from the embrace of the cliffs; there the still stronger Rosenbach, which the Jungfrau pours out of her silver horn. On all sides, near and afar off, there is a rushing and roaring and foaming, on the right hand and on the left, above me, below me, and before, out of a hundred hidden fountains, and even wilder beside me rushes on the Lutschine, with still increasing waters. It is too much, I cannot bear even my own thoughts. I am in the bosom of a wild Undine, who drowns her admirers while she embraces them—and the Titans are growing ever loftier and broader, and the valley ever narrower, gloomier, and more desolate. I felt depressed, and as it were, overwhelmed, but, nevertheless, I went forward. It is melancholy scenery, but, at the same time, grand and powerful. And scenery of this character exercises a strong attractive power, even when it astonishes. The shades of evening fell darkly over the valley, where I saw before me, in its gloomy depth, a broad, grey-white, immense wall of water, like dust hurled thundering down from a lofty mountain. It seemed to shut up the valley. That is enough. I salute the giantess, the great Schmadribach, the mother of the Lutschine river, and return. No, it is not good to be here, and the society of the Titans is more agreeable for a simple mortal at a greater distance!...
"On my return to Interlachen the Titans presented me with a glorious spectacle, and it was not without joyful admiration that I parted from their immediate neighbourhood. The great spirits which terrify can also enchant. In the light of the descending sun the white peaks and fields of the Alps stood out in the most brilliant colouring; the lofty Jungfrau clothed herself in rose-tint, the blue glaciers shone transparently, and the lower the sun sank the higher and clearer gleamed the Alpine pinnacles....
"Later still, new astonishment awaited me from the camp of the giants. The head of the Jungfrau was surrounded with a soft glory of light, which increased in beauty and brightness, till at length the moon, shining in full splendour, slowly advancing above, crowned the Titaness with beauty."[13]
Apart from its picturesque descriptions, however, Miss Bremer's book on Switzerland and Italy is hardly a success. She had not the qualifications of a Madame de Staël, and her observations, therefore, are frequently superficial. Moreover, she seems to have suffered in self-appreciation. In Sweden she shone as a great star in the literary firmament; and she appears to have been under an impression that her fame would have preceded her into other countries, and ensured her a triumphal reception in any town she entered; but Germany showed her very little attention, and hence she sees it in a very unfavourable light. So in Switzerland: she was caught up in the stream of tourists; her name, inscribed in the visitors' books of the hotels, received but a fugitive notice; and she who had created in her fancy an ideal Switzerland, prepared to welcome with open arms the champion of freedom generally, and the freedom of women in particular—discovered only a nation of good housekeepers, who were thinking of everything in the world but emancipation.
Miss Bremer visited the valleys of the High Alps and the Forest Cantons; spent a Sunday on the Righi; journeyed to Basle; passed into Belgium and Flanders, surveying the antiquities of the old historic cities of Ghent, Bruges, and Antwerp; proceeded to Paris; returning to Switzerland, spent the winter at Lausanne; in the following year crossed the Alps into Italy, and through Piedmont travelled to the Eternal City; thence to Naples, where she saw an eruption of Vesuvius and the buried city of Pompeii; and, finally, explored the fair landscapes of Sicily. This vast variety of scenes she sketches always with a quick and dexterous pencil.
In the course of her two years' travel she met with several illustrious men—with some who have made, or helped to make, the history of our time—and her record of their conversations is full of interest. As might be expected, she excels in portraiture. This is her portrait of the late Cardinal Antonelli:—