his memory, as to that of a public benefactor. But, vain as well as ambitious, accessible to fulsome and profane flattery though deaf to the voice of truth and conscience, it was his aim to figure in Courts as well as in Camps; to shine in the circle of Princes no less than at the head of Armies. In the fierce pride of a victorious soldier, with the over-weening insolence of a successful usurper, he copied the pompous etiquette, in allying himself to the lofty stock, of hereditary greatness; whilst on the people, from whose ranks he had sprung, he scrupled not to inflict the cruel visitations of fiscal rapine, and the iron yoke of military oppression. Though half the civilized world had become subject to his sway and obedient to his commands; yet, without religion, without honour, without pity or remorse, he continued to squander treasures after treasures, and sacrifice unnumbered lives, to win the name of-universal conqueror; reckless if, in reference to a career so preposterously unsuited to the age in which he lived, the pen of History should couple it with the more effectively earned appellation of-universal scourge. -For however the imagination may be excited, or the feelings conciliated, by some of the monuments and acts of Napoleon; nevertheless before the tribunal of sober reflection and untainted judgment, the real benefits of which he was the instrument, shrink into worthless insignificance when compared with those which, possessing amply the power, he wanted either the will to obtain, or the prudence to secure, for mankind. They were indeed mere specks of good scattered over a mass of evil deeds: deeds whose criminality and injurious consequences are the more sensibly felt, as the little that was meritorious and valuable in his proceedings has already been almost wholly destroyed by the storm of re-action, which his insatiate tyranny and presumption raised to consummate his "mortal overthrow." Well and truly has the POET in his "Pilgrimage to WATERLOO," said of the despot, whose cause and the world's were weighed, in that field of British glory and of retributive justice: "Not led away by circumstance he erred, "But from the wicked heart his error came? “T' enslave, degrade, and brutalize mankind.” At the foot of hills, that welcomely yet too feebly oppose the verdure of their foliaged sides to the frosts of encompassing mountains, immeasurably vast and "insufferably bright"-in such a spot, amidst meadows and woods, stands the little town of Brieg.* We dined there, at the inn of La Croix, and soon afterwards began our journey through the Valais, on a very indifferent road, but along a fertile country to Visp, or Viege. This place is built under immensely high cliffs, whence a torrent has its source which rushes through the village to the Rhone. *It is worth while to compare the present passage of the Simplon from Domo d' Ossola to Brieg, with the nature of the journey in 1646, when Mr. Evelyn crossed this part of the Alps, on his way from Italy to Geneva :— "At Duomo (says he) we hired a guide and mules, and were brought at night through very steep, craggy, and dangerous passages, to a village called Vedra, where we had a very infamous wretched lodging. The next morning we mounted again through strange, horrid, and fearful craggs and tracts, abounding in pine trees, and only inhabited by bears, wolves, and wild goats; nor could we see any where above a pistol shot before us, the horizon being terminated with rocks and mountains, some of which were but one entire stone. Through their clefts now and then precipitated great cataracts of melted snow and other waters; and these waters in some Beyond Visp a great valley opens to our left hand, at the furthest extremity of which we see the vast chain, of which the summits of Mount Moro, Mount Fee, and Mount Rose form parts, and half round which our course had brought us, from south-east to north-west. We proceed along the left bank of the Rhone, which though here so near its source (the foot of the Furca) is already a considerable river. The meadows on each side, would, with only common attention to draining and banking, become very valuable; but the cultivator leaves them to the mercy of a rude stream, that ruins his lands by the immense quantity of stones, gravel, and rubbish which it brings in its inundations. Reaching Turtman (Turtig) at six o'clock, we walked about half a mile to the left of the high road, on which the village stands, to see a cascade; and we found it well worth the visit. It is in a very retired situation, to which the approach proves sufficiently intricate to make the places breaking in the fall wet us, as if we had passed through a mist, so that we could neither see nor hear one another; but trusting to our honest mules we jogged on our way. The narrow bridges, in some places made only by felling huge fir trees and laying them athwart from mountain to mountain over cataracts of stupendons depth, are very dangerous; and so are the passages and edges made by cutting away the main rock; others in steps; and in some places we pass between mountains that have been broken and fallen on one another which is very terrible. This night, we came in prospect of Mons Sempronius, now Mount Sampion, which has on its summit a few huts and a chapel. Our journey the next morning was through a way always covered with snow. We pass several tall masts set up to guide travellers, and standing for many miles in ken of one another like our beacons. Our descent towards night brought us into a larger way, through vast woods of pines which clothe the middle parts of these rocks. Passing several cascades of dissolved snow, we got late at night to a town called Briga (Brieg) at the foot of the Alps in the Valtoline (Valais.)”— See Evelyn's Diary pp. 218 to 222. little guides of the hamlet serviceable in bringing us by the nearest path to this natural curiosity. The water, descending from a lofty mountain in a slender stream, appears to fill a hollow cavern half way down, and issuing thence falls, in a diffusive torrent and with corresponding loudness of sound, between a hundred and a hundred and fifty feet before it touches the rocks at the bottom: then spreading itself, it rolls down a gentle declivity of stony soil covered with underwood, in its way to the Rhone, which it enters a little below the village.-In our continued course we had a view, on the right hand, over inferior ridges, of the Gemmi's snows. It was indeed with increasing astonishment that we surveyed the surrounding wonders of Alpine scenery. On each side a chain of mountains of every form and height, bounding the wide and elongated valley of the Rhone, continually presents objects, that strike no less forcibly by their melancholy wildness, than by their transcendant sublimity. On arriving at Leuck, we learnt that we should have to wait an hour for fresh horses (the first deficiency in relays that had occurred to us since we left Paris). And as it was then eight o'clock in the evening, and our intended place of repose, Sion, was two posts and a quarter further on, we deemed it best to accept what entertainment the Soleil could afford. The people of the inn were well-behaved, attentive, and moderate in their charges; and the accommodation for the night was much better than what we had found at some larger and more expensive places. In relating the incidents of our progress through Savoy, occasion has been taken to notice an instance of prompt restitution on the part of an inn-keeper, in the valley of Dd Maurienne. At the foot of the Simplon a circumstance equally creditable to the Valaisan character also occurred to us. I inadvertently left a diamond-pin in my chamber at Brieg, and, discovering my loss not long after our hurried departure from that place, wrote from Leuck to the Aubergiste of La Croix stating the circumstance, and requesting that the article might be forwarded to a named address at Geneva. It was not long before the lost jewel was safely restored to my possession. As a fact of no intrinsic importance and exclusively of a personal nature I should not think of mentioning it; but that, like the occurrence which preceded it, such a result is satisfactory in a moral point of view: it evinces respect for the rights of property and for the just claims of strangers, on the part of a class of people, among whom if we find the prevalence of an honest principle, we may safely infer it to be a national virtue. |