We had a pleasant walk the next morning along the side of the lake under the grey cliffs, the green hills and azure sky; now passing under the open gateway of some dilapidated watch-tower that had in former times connected the rocky barrier with the water, now watching the sails of a boat slowly making its way among the trees on the banks of the Rhone, like butterflies expanding their wings in the breeze, or the snowy ridges that seemed close to us at Vevey receding farther into a kind of lofty back-ground as we advanced. The speculation of Bishop Berkeley, or some other philosopher, that distance is measured by motion and not by the sight, is verified here at every step. After going on for hours, and perceiving no alteration in the form or appearance of the object before you, you begin to be convinced that it is out of ordinary calculation, or, in the language of the Fancy, an ‘ugly customer;’ and our curiosity once excited, is ready to magnify every circumstance relating to it to an indefinite extent. The literal impression being discarded as insufficient, the imagination takes out an unlimited letter of credit for all that is possible or wonderful, and what the eye sees is considered thenceforward merely as an imperfect hint, to be amplified and filled up on a colossal scale by the understanding and rules of proportion. To say the truth, you also suffer a change, feel like Lilliputians, and can fancy yourselves transported to a different world, where the dimensions and relations of things are regulated by some unknown law. The inn where we stopped at Vionnax is bad. Beyond this place, the hills at the eastern end of the lake form into an irregular and stupendous amphitheatre; and you pass through long and apparently endless vistas of tall flourishing trees, without being conscious of making much progress. There is a glass-manufactory at Vionnax, which I did not go to see; others who have more curiosity may. It will be there (I dare say) next year for those who choose to visit it: I liked neither its glare nor its heat. The cold icy crags that hang suspended over it have been there a thousand years, and will be there a thousand years to come. Short-lived as we are, let us attach ourselves to the immortal, and scale (assisted by earth’s giant brood) the empyrean of pure thought! But the English abroad turn out of their way to see every pettifogging, huckstering object that they could see better at home, and are as fussy and fidgetty, with their smoke-jacks and mechanical inventions among the Alps, as if they had brought Manchester and Sheffield in their pockets! The finest effect along this road is the view of the bridge as you come near St. Maurice. The mountains on either side here descend nearly to a point, boldly and abruptly; the river flows rapidly through the tall arch of the bridge, on one side of which you see an old fantastic turret, and beyond it the hill called the Sugar-loaf, rising up in the centre of immense ranges of mountains, and with fertile and variously-marked plains stretching out in the intervening space. The landscape painter has only to go there, and make a picture of it. It is already framed by nature to his hand! I mention this the more, because that kind of grouping of objects which is essential to the picturesque, is not always to be found in the most sublime or even beautiful scenes. Nature (so to speak) uses a larger canvass than man, and where she is greatest and most prodigal of her wealth, often neglects that principle of concentration and contrast which is an indispensable preliminary before she can be translated with effect into the circumscribed language of art. We supped at Martigny, at the Hotel de la Poste (formerly a convent), and the next morning proceeded by the Valley of Trie and the Col de Peaume to Chamouni.
We left the great St. Bernard, and the road by which Buonaparte passed to Marengo, on our left, and Martigny and the Valley of the Simplon directly behind us. These last were also soon at an immeasurable depth below us; but the summits of the mountains that environed us on all sides, seemed to ascend with us, and to add our elevation to their own. Crags, of which we could only before discern the jutting tops, gradually reared their full stature at our side; and icy masses, one by one, came in sight, emerging from their lofty recesses, like clouds floating in mid-air. All this while a green valley kept us company by the road-side, watered with gushing rills, interspersed with cottages and well-stocked farms: fine elms and ash grew on the sides of the hills, under the shade of one of which we saw an old peasant asleep. The road, however, was long, rough, and steep; and from the heat of the sun, and the continual interruption of loose stones and the straggling roots of trees, I felt myself exceedingly exhausted. We had a mule, a driver, and a guide. I was advised, by all means, to lessen the fatigue of the ascent by taking hold of the queue of Monsieur le Mulet, a mode of travelling partaking as little of the sublime as possible, and to which I reluctantly acceded. We at last reached the top, and looked down on the Valley of Trie, bedded in rocks, with a few wooden huts in it, a mountain-stream traversing it from the Glacier at one end, and with an appearance as if summer could never gain a footing there, before it would be driven out by winter. In the midst of this almost inaccessible and desolate spot, we found a little inn or booth, with refreshments of wine, bread, and fruit, and a whole drove of English travellers, mounted or on foot.
‘Nor Alps nor Apennines can keep them out,
Nor fortified redoubt!’
As we mounted the steep wood on the other side of the valley, we met several mules returning, with their drivers only, and looking extremely picturesque, as they were perched above our heads among the jagged pine-trees, and cautiously felt their perilous way over the edges of projecting rocks and stumps of trees, down the zigzag pathway. The view here is precipitous, extensive, and truly appalling, both from the size of the objects and their rugged wildness. The smell of the pine-trees, the clear air, and the golden sunshine gleaming through the dark foliage refreshed me; and the fatigue from which I had suffered in the morning completely wore off. I had concluded that when we got to the top of the wood that hung over our heads, we should have mastered our difficulties; but they only then began. We emerged into a barren heath or morass of a most toilsome ascent, lengthening as we advanced, with herds of swine, sheep, and cattle feeding on it, and a bed of half-melted snow marking the summit over which we had to pass. We turned aside, half-way up this dreary wilderness, to stop at a chalet, where a boy, who tended the straggling cattle, was fast asleep in the middle of the day; and being waked up, procured us a draught of most delicious water from a fountain. We at length reached the Col de Peaume, and saw Mont Blanc, the King of Mountains, stretching away to the left, with clouds circling round its sides, and snows forever resting on its head. It was an image of immensity and eternity. Earth had heaved it from its bosom; the ‘vast cerulean’ had touched it with its breath. It was a meeting of earth and sky. Other peaked cliffs rose perpendicularly by its side, and a range of rocks, of red granite, fronted it to the north; but Mont-Blanc itself was round, bald, shining, ample, and equal in its swelling proportions—a huge dumb heap of matter. The valley below was bare, without an object—no ornament, no contrast to set it off—it reposed in silence and in solitude, a world within itself.
‘Retire, the world shut out, thy thoughts call home.’
There is an end here of vanity and littleness, and all transitory jarring interests. You stand, as it were, in the presence of the Spirit of the Universe, before the majesty of Nature, with her chief elements about you; cloud and air, and rock, and stream, and mountain are brought into immediate contact with primeval Chaos and the great First Cause. The mind hovers over mysteries deeper than the abysses at our feet; its speculations soar to a height beyond the visible forms it sees around it. As we descended the path on foot (for our muleteer was obliged to return at the barrier between the two states of Savoy and Switzerland marked by a solitary unhewn stone,) we saw before us the shingled roofs of a hamlet, situated on a patch of verdure near inaccessible columns of granite, and could hear the tinkling bells of a number of cattle pasturing below (an image of patriarchal times!)—we also met one or two peasants returning home with loads of fern, and still farther down, found the ripe harvests of wheat and barley growing close up to the feet of the glaciers (those huge masses of ice arrested in their passage from the mountains, and collected by a thousand winters,) and the violet and gilliflower nestling in the cliffs of the hardest rocks. There are four of these glaciers, that pour their solid floods into the valley, with rivulets issuing from them into the Arbe. The one next to Chamouni is, I think, the finest. It faces you like a broad sheet of congealed snow and water about half-way up the lofty precipice, and then spreads out its arms on each side into seeming batteries and fortifications of undistinguishable rock and ice, as though winter had here ‘built a fortress for itself,’ seated in stern state, and amidst frowning horrors. As we advanced into the plain, and before it became dusk, we could discern at a distance the dark wood that skirts the glaciers of Mont-Blanc, the spire of Chamouni, and the bridges that cross the stream. We also discovered, a little way on before us, stragglers on mules, and a cabriolet, that was returning from the valley of Trie, by taking a more circuitous route. As the day closed in and was followed by the moonlight, the mountains on our right hung over us like a dark pall, and the glaciers gleamed like gigantic shrouds opposite. We might have fancied ourselves inclosed in a vast tomb, but for the sounding cataracts and the light clouds that flitted over our heads. We arrived at Chamouni at last, and found the three inns crowded with English. The entrance to that to which we had been recommended, or rather were conducted by our guide (the Hotel de Londres,) was besieged by English loungers, like a bazaar, or an hotel at some fashionable watering-place, and we were glad to secure a small but comfortable room for the night.
We had an excellent supper, the materials of which we understood came from Geneva. We proceeded the next morning to Saleges, on our way to this capital. If the entrance to the valley of Chamouni is grand and simple, the route from it towards Geneva unites the picturesque to the sublime in the most remarkable degree. For two or three miles you pass along under Mont-Blanc, looking up at it with awe and wonder, derived from a knowledge of its height. The interest, the pleasure you take in it is from conviction and reflection; but turn a corner in the road at a homely village and a little bridge, and it shoots up into the sky of its own accord, like a fantastic vision. Its height is incredible, its brightness dazzling, and you notice the snow crusted upon its surface into round hillocks, with pellucid shadows like shining pavilions for the spirits of the upper regions of the air. Why is the effect so different from its former desolate and lumpish appearance? Tall rocks rise from the roadside with dark waving pine-trees shooting from them, over the highest top of which, as you look up, you see Mont-Blanc; a ruined tower serves as a foil to the serene smiler in the clouds that mocks at the defences of art, or the encroachments of time. Another mountain opposite, part bare, part clothed with wood, intercepts the view to the left, giving effect to what is seen, and leaving more to the imagination; and the impetuous torrent roars at your feet, a hundred fathoms below, with the bright red clusters of the mountain-ash and loose fragments of rock bending over it, and into which a single step would precipitate you. One of the mightiest objects in nature is set off by the most appropriate and striking accidents; and the impression is of the most romantic and enchanting kind. The scene has an intoxicating effect; you are relieved from the toil of wishing to admire, and the imagination is delighted to follow the lead of the senses. We passed this part of the road in a bright morning, incessantly turning back to admire, and finding fresh cause of pleasure and wonder at every step or pause, loth to leave it, and yet urged onward by continual displays of new and endless beauties. Chamouni seems to lie low enough; but we found that the river and the road along with it winds and tumbles for miles over steep banks or sloping ground; and as you revert your eye, you find that which was a flat converted into a table-land; the objects which were lately beneath you now raised above you, and forming an intermediate stage between the spot where you are and the more distant elevations; and the last snow-crowned summits reflected in translucent pools of water by the roadside, with spots of the brightest azure in them (denoting mineral springs); the luxuriant branches of the ash, willow, and acacia waving over them, and the scarlet flowers of the geranium, or the water-lilies, ‘all silver white,’ stuck like gems in the girdle of old winter, and offering a sparkling foreground to the retiring range of icebergs and avalanches. This rapid and whirling descent continued almost to Saleges, about twenty miles from Chamouni. Here we dined, and proceeded that night to Bonneville, on nearly level ground; but still with the same character the whole way of a road winding through the most cultivated and smiling country, full of pastures, orchards, vineyards, cottages, villas, refreshing streams, long avenues of trees, and every kind of natural and artificial beauty, flanked with rocks and precipices (on each side) of the most abrupt and terrific appearance, and on which, from the beginning of time, the hand of man has made no impression, except that here and there you see a patch of verdure, a cottage, a flock of sheep, at a height which the eye can hardly reach, and which you think no foot could tread. I have seen no country where I have been more tempted to stop and enjoy myself, where I thought the inhabitants had more reason to be satisfied, and where, if you could not find happiness, it seemed in vain to seek farther for it. You have every kind and degree of enjoyment; the extremes of luxury and wildness, gigantic sublimity at a distance or over your head, elegance and comfort at your feet; you may gaze at the air-drawn Alps, or shut out the prospect by a flowering shrub, or by a well-clipped hedge, or neatly-wainscoted parlour: and you may vary all these as you please, ‘with kindliest interchange.’ Perhaps one of these days I may try the experiment, and turn my back on sea-coal fires, and old English friends! The inn at Bonneville was dirty, ill-provided, and as it generally happens in such cases, the people were inattentive, and the charges high. We were, however, indemnified by the reception we met with at Geneva, where the living was luxurious, and the expence comparatively trifling. I shall not dwell on this subject, lest I should be thought an epicure, though indeed I rather ‘live a man forbid,’ being forced to deny myself almost all those good things which I recommend to others. Geneva is, I think, a very neat and picturesque town, not equal to some others we had seen, but very well for a Calvinistic capital. It stands on a rising ground, at the end of the lake, with the purple Rhone running by it, and Mont-Blanc and the Savoy Alps seen on one side, and the Jura on the other. I was struck with the fine forms of many of the women here. Though I was pleased with my fare, I was not altogether delighted with the manners and appearance of the inhabitants. Their looks may be said to be moulded on the republican maxim, that ‘you are no better than they,’ and on the natural inference from it, that ‘they are better than you.’ They pass you with that kind of scrutinizing and captious air, as if some controversy was depending between you as to the form of religion or government. I here saw Rousseau’s house, and also read the Edinburgh Review for May. The next day we passed along in the Diligence through scenery of exquisite beauty and perfect cultivation—vineyards and farms, and villas and hamlets of the most enviable description, succeeding each other in uninterrupted connexion, by the smooth margin of the silver lake. We saw Lausanne by moonlight. Its situation, as far as I could judge, and the environs were superb. We arrived that night at Vevey, after a week’s absence and an exceedingly delightful tour.
CHAPTER XXVII
We returned down the Rhine through Holland. I was willing to see the contrast between flat and lofty, and between Venice and Amsterdam. We left Vevey on the 20th of September, and arrived in England on the 16th of October. It was at first exceedingly hot; we encountered several days of severe cold on the road, and it afterwards became mild and pleasant again. We hired a char-aux-bancs from Vevey to Basle, and it took us four days to reach this latter place; the expense of the conveyance was twenty-four francs a day, besides the driver. The first part of our journey, as we ascended from the Lake on the way to Moudon, was like an aërial voyage, from the elevation and the clearness of the atmosphere; yet still through the most lovely country imaginable, and with glimpses of the grand objects behind us (seen over delicious pastures, and through glittering foliage) that were truly magical. The combinations of language, however, answer but ill to the varieties of nature, and by repeating these descriptions so often, I am afraid of becoming tiresome. My excuse must be, that I have little to relate but what I saw. After mounting to a considerable height, we descended to Moudon, a small town situated in a most romantic valley. The accommodations at the inn here were by no means good, though it is a place of some pretensions. In proportion to the size of the house and the massiveness of the furniture, the provisions of the kitchen appeared to be slender, and the attendance slack. The freshness of the air the next morning, and the striking beauty and rapid changes of the scenery, soon made us forget any disappointment we had experienced in this respect. As we ascended a steep hill on this side of Moudon, and looked back, first at the green dewy valley under our feet, with the dusky town and the blue smoke rising from it, then at the road we had traversed the preceding evening, winding among thick groves of trees, and last at the Savoy Alps on the other side of the Lake of Geneva (with which we had been familiar for four months, and which seemed to have no mind to quit us) I perceived a bright speck close to the top of one of these—I was delighted, and said it was Mont Blanc. Our driver was of a different opinion, was positive it was only a cloud, and I accordingly supposed I had taken a sudden fancy for a reality. I began in secret to take myself to task, and to lecture myself for my proneness to build theories on the foundation of my conjectures and wishes. On turning round occasionally, however, I observed that this cloud remained in the same place, and I noticed the circumstance to our guide, as favouring my first suggestion; for clouds do not usually remain long in the same place. We disputed the point for half a day, and it was not till the afternoon when we had reached the other side of the lake of Neufchatel, that this same cloud rising like a canopy over the point where it had hovered, ‘in shape and station proudly eminent,’ he acknowledged it to be Mont Blanc. We were then at a distance of about forty miles from Vevey, and eighty or ninety from Chamouni. This will give the reader some idea of the scale and nature of this wonderful scenery. We dined at Iverdun (a pretty town), at the head of the lake, and passed on to Neufchatel, along its enchanting and almost unrivalled borders, having the long unaspiring range of the Jura on our left (from the top of which St. Preux, on his return from his wanderings round the world, first greeted that country, where ‘torrents of delight had poured into his heart,’ and, indeed, we could distinguish the Dent de Jamant right over Clarens almost the whole way), and on our right was the rippling lake, its low cultivated banks on the other side, then a brown rocky ridge of mountains, and the calm golden peaks of the snowy passes of the Simplon, the Great St. Bernard, and (as I was fain to believe) of Monteroso rising into the evening sky at intervals beyond. Meanwhile we rode on through a country abounding in farms and vineyards and every kind of comfort, and deserving the epithets, ‘verd et riant.’ Sometimes a tall rock rose by the road side; or a ruinous turret or a well-compacted villa attracted our attention. Neufchatel is larger and handsomer than Iverdun, and is remarkable for a number of those genteel and quiet-looking habitations, where people seem to have retired (in the midst of society) to spend the rest of their lives in ease and comfort: they are not for shew, nor are they very striking from situation; they are neither fashionable nor romantic; but the decency and sober ornaments of their exterior evidently indicate fireside enjoyments and cultivated taste within. This kind of retreat, where there is nothing to surprise, nothing to disgust, nothing to draw the attention out of itself, uniting the advantages of society and solitude, of simplicity and elegance, and where the mind can indulge in a sort of habitual and self-centred satisfaction, is the only one which I should never feel a wish to quit. The golden mean is, indeed, an exact description of the mode of life I should like to lead—of the style I should like to write; but alas! I am afraid I shall never succeed in either object of my ambition!