Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

forts have often been the means of saving the lives of half-frozen and famished sufferers. They have a quick scent, and are easily attracted to the spot where a human being lies. Their natural sagacity is improved by training; and they either lead their masters to the place, or, where its situation has been quite inaccessible to the monks themselves, they have frequently dragged frozen persons over the snows to their masters, by whose timely care they have been restored to life. A magnificent dog, from the St. Bernard, is preserved stuffed in the Museum at Berne, who is said to have been the means of saving the lives of twenty-eight individuals. Unhappily, these noble creatures suffer, like their masters, from the severity of their life and labours. They are short-lived, and old age soon comes upon them. A dog of seven or eight years old, the Superior informed us, is generally infirm and disabled. At the hour of supper we met all the monks in the refectory, and were presented to the Superior, an interesting man, thin in person, somewhat bowed with years, wearing the collar and cross of his dignity over the ordinary garb of the convent, and whose manners and conversation had a grace and refinement which rendered his good sense and intelligent remarks peculiarly pleasing. A long Latin grace was said before we sat down to table; the Superior leading, and the monks joining in general responses. As our visit happened unluckily on a Friday, we were not able to form a fair estimate of the convent kitchen. Soup, omelettes, and other dishes of eggs and vegetables, formed the bill of fare, which, to say truth, was not of the most satisfactory kind to travellers who had rode ten long leagues on mules, and found themselves, at the end of their journey, in a climate of a most animating rarity. An agreeable wine from the vineyards of the convent in the Vallais, called the St. Bernard wine, was a pleasant accompaniment of our lenten fare; and the conversation of the superior and his brethren agreeably enlivened our potations. About nine o'clock the Superior withdrew, and we presently retired to our chambers, situated in a vast gloomy corridor, running the whole length of the building, divided in the middle by a heavy iron grille, and adorned with old dusty pictures of a long line of superiors, priors, protecting popes, and princely benefactors of the house. My bed-room was a spacious lofty chamber, with double casements, a wainscot hung closely with fresh pictures of mitred, crosiered, and cassocked churchmen, frowning in all the stiff outlines of the sixteenth century: and a lofty bed of nearly the same date, with heavy red maroon hangings and vallances, whose oldfashioned solidity I found extremely serviceable in fencing out the cold of the apartment. A few old Latin volumes of theology were ranged on a shelf, and a fine modern telescope of Dollond's stood on a stand, which appeared from the inscription to have been presented by an English general-officer to the convent. No chamber in the Castle of Otranto could possibly have been, in all respects, a more fitting scene for an encounter with a bleeding nun, or the shade of a deposed prior. As I lay down, and drew the maroon curtains very close round the bed, I could not help thinking-"If ever I am to be gratified with a spiritual visit, for which so many have sighed, this is certainly the time and place-Seven thousand feet nearer heaven than my friends in England-many leagues from the abode of man-under a roof which has weathered the Alpine blast and the avalanche for three centuries-grey

friars and pale nuns in effigy all round me, and perhaps the troubled spirits of the poor beings who bleach on the rocks without sepulture, flitting about in the winds which moan against the casement. If I see no ghost here, I am certainly ghost-proof." That I did see none, that I slept soundly, undisturbed even by any ominous rattling of the casement, or rustling of the old pictures (which must infallibly have occurred to a German student, or a young lady well-read in Mrs. Radcliffe,) I can only ascribe in part to bodily fatigue, and in part to that provoking scepticism which has hitherto marred all my efforts to see a ghost.

The next morning the Sommelier of the convent awoke me early, and I went to mass in the chapel situated at one end of the long corridor. It is a neat handsome little building, with a decent organ-one of the monks performed mass, and several others attended. Three Valaisanne girls, dressed in the singular costume of the canton, attended the service, having come up to the convent for a day to see a relation among the monks, and to gratify their curiosity as to this wonder of the neighbourhood. On one side of the chapel is placed a simple and elegant marble monument to the memory of General Dessaix-a singular place of repose for the ashes of a French republican General and bosom-friend of Napoleon.-Dessaix fell at Marengo, at the head of the victorious army which he and Napoleon had just conducted over the St. Bernard. The army consisted of 50,000 men, with fifty-eight pieces of cannon. On commencing the ascent, every soldier was provided with a supply of biscuit for three days, and each man received a draught of wine in passing the convent. At St. Pierre the cannon were dismounted and drawn on sledges: it being impossible to use horses, forty-four men were employed in dragging each piece to the summit of the passage. Napoleon and his staff passed one night at the convent. The monks described their sufferings during the constant passage of the armies as beyond all conception. For one year, a garrison of one hundred and eighty men was constantly stationed in the convent; and sometimes not less than eight hundred men were crammed into the cells and chambers for several days together.

The passage of the St. Bernard, though well known, does not appear to have been early known to the Romans. Much labour and learning have been expended, to shew that the St. Bernard was the passage by which Hannibal entered Italy. But the preponderance of evidence is quite against the hypothesis, and seems to ascertain that his passage was either over the Petit St. Bernard or the Cottian Alps, either by Mont Cenis or some of the neighbouring passes. This is the direct and obvious passage from Spain into Italy; whereas it would have been a most circuitous and intricate route to have traversed Savoy or crossed the Jura, and then ascended the Lake of Geneva and the Rhone into the Vallais, to find out a passage above one thousand feet higher, and in all respects of greater difficulty. The circumstance of bronze plates with ex voto inscriptions, some bearing the words "Jovi poenino, Jovi poeno," &c. having been found on the site of the ancient temple on the St. Bernard, has been much relied on as proving that the Carthaginians had passed the St. Bernard. Some of these are preserved in the cabinet of the convent, with Roman medals and other antiquities found on the mountain-a greater number are transported to Turin. The inscrip

tion, however, has been satisfactorily explained, as being a Roman corruption of "Jupiter Penninus," the name of the deity to whom the people of the Vallais had erected the temple-a name derived from the Celtic word penn or pinn, signifying a summit-and from which this branch of the Alpine chain has been always called the Pennine Alps. The Romans, not understanding the Celtic title Penninus, which they found subscribed to the statue of Jupiter, probably converted it into Poeninus, and conceived that the temple was of Carthaginian origin. After the time of Augustus, and his foundation of the Colony at the Citéd 'Aoste, beneath the St. Bernard, the mountain formed the ordinary passage of the Roman troops into Helvetia; and since 1798, when the French occupied Switzerland, it was for several years the scene of military passages, and frequent skirmishes and engagements.

The revenues of the convent are now lamentably reduced, which is much to be regretted, as ecclesiastical revenues have seldom been applied to more pure or benevolent purposes. In the fifteenth century, the superior informed us, the convent had possessed estates in Sicily, Naples, the Low Countries, and in England. Of these it has from time to time been despoiled. The King of Sardinia was the last to strip the establishment of all its funds in his dominions; and some small property in the Vallais and the Pays de Vaud is all that now remains to support its benevolent objects and its general hospitality. Under these circumstances, it is not much to be wondered at, that the monks should have cut down the celebrated Bosquet de Julie, situated on their property at Clarens, to convert it into a profitable vineyard. This puts Lord Byron into a great passion, and he calls the poor monks "the miserable drones of an execrable superstition;" but it is rather too much to expect of these poor priests, who were in danger of starving amongst their rocks and snows, to forego a fair means of enhancing their revenues, in order to preserve to the worshippers of Rousseau the sentimental luxury of walking in a grove where an imaginary mistress takes a walk with her fictitious lover.The monks are frequently now reduced to the necessity of making quêtes for the conyent in the different parts of Italy and Switzerland; and their name and character are such powerful recommendations, that, the Superior informed us, they are frequently fraudulently made use of by impostors to extort alms from charitable Catholics.

The weather being unfavourable for a descent into Piedmont, we returned to Martigny, and lost no time in leaving its Catholic filth and bad accommodations for the beauties of the Pays de Vaud. We accordingly proceeded to Vevai, stopping in our way at the lovely village of Bex, where we had an agreeable meeting with a countryman whose character and name are too well known for me to do myself the honour of mentioning him. Thanks to his taste, and to his topographical acquaintance with every picturesque nook of this lovely scene, we enjoyed a sultry Sunday afternoon in exploring the exquisite landscapes which surround the little town. Bex stands in one of the richest and most beautiful spots on the banks of the Rhone. The river here flows through a vale of about two leagues width, with all the green luxuriant beauty of a varied garden. On each side the valley rise two of the most majestic pinnacles of the Alps (the Dent de Morcles and the Dent de Midi) to a height of between seven and eight thousand feet

above the Rhone. These gigantic and beautiful summits, with their crowns of eternal snow glittering on their rugged and inaccessible heads, are so close to each other, that they appear as if they must have been torn asunder.

Heights which appear as lovers who have parted

In hate, whose mining depths so intervene

That they can meet no more though broken-hearted.

Vineyards, orchards, forests, smoking hamlets, and white towns, are scattered at their base. The blue Rhone alternately rushes and meanders through this champaign scene, till it pours its waters into the broad basin of Lake Leman, which harmonizes the landscape with its bright glassy expanse, and allures the eye to the grey distant scenes about Lausanne and Vevai and the faint hills of the Jura. Few scenes can be found which embrace in one complete and various landscape so many features of picturesque beauty, in which the near and the distant are equally lovely-in which the eye glances in an instant over so much that is delicious to the sight, and congenial to the mind.

We arrived at Vevai late in the evening, having walked along the upper bank of the lake, by the Castle of Chillon, as the sun set in rosy magnificence over the scenes at the farther extremity. The inn at Vevai was almost entirely occupied by a travelling pension of young ladies, in number twenty-two, who were spending the holidays in making a tour with the mistress. Their travelling equipage was a large coach with seats round the interior, drawn by four horses. These itinerant establishments are not uncommon, I hear, in Switzerland.

Instead of removing the mountains and snows, according to the suggestion of a tasteful traveller, who thought them too sauvage and cold, Vevai would be much improved by getting rid of one half of its vineyards, and all its stone walls, which have entirely usurped the place of the woods, groves, pastures, orchards, which are infinitely more pleasing in a landscape. A vineyard is connected with ideas of sultry suns, luxuriant soil, teeming plenty, and pastoral happiness, and has, time out of mind, held a place in poetical description; but in reality, it is hardly more picturesque than a bed of dwarf gooseberry bushes-its stunted regular ranks and monotonous green are bad substitutes for the beautiful variety of cornfields, hedgerows, and umbrageous groves and orchards. Vevai is, however, a lovely spot-its deep blue lake, with all its bays and graceful sinuosities, its sloping hills, its chateaux, hamlets, and châlets, its amphitheatre of green forest-covered mountains, with an upper range of snowy pinnacles-on one side, all the grace and softened beauty of cultivated fields and vineyards washed by the gentle lake; and on the other, the severe sublimity of the Alpine chain, with its rocks and glaciers in their varied forms of rugged grandeur-the massy turreted castle of Chillon on the left -Meillerie and its rocks immediately opposite-the blue hills of the Jura in the far distance to the right-and immediately around, a scene of smiling plenty and happiness, which soothes and softens the feelings, and combines with the grander objects to produce the most irresistible and pleasing impressions on the mind.

At Vevai we enjoyed two days of delightful indolence after our journeyings in the mountains on mules, among rocks, snows, and preci

VOL. IV. No. 20.-1822.

U

pices. This repose and change of scene were not less refreshing to the mind than the body. An open champaign scene of vineyard, meadow, and lake, was not less congenial to the eye and the mind, after being cooped in by ice-crags and impending granites, than a calêche and a good road were consolatory to our limbs after the bonesetting fatigues of mule excursions. Much as we had heard and read of Vevai, its scenes in no degree disappointed our expectations. Even Rousseau's impassioned eloquence has hardly overcoloured its beauties. Its variety is endless-there is no kind or shade of picturesque charm which an exploring traveller does not find in its precincts, from the pretty simple home view, full of peace and love, and rustic repose, to the wildest magnificence of overpowering Alpine nature. Its scenes are scenes not merely to be visited and wondered at, but to be dwelt upon, contemplated, and inhabited. The feelings become "tinctured with their every hue." The coldest and hardest of hearts would in vain seek to resist the softening and expanding influence of their rich and diversified beauty; and if there is a scene where the world and all its vanities and strifes might be supposed to have no place, where Nature's lovely influence must be felt in every thought and action of life, where a man might spend his days in a flow of pure and exquisite enjoyments, and close them in innocent repose, surely this is such a scene. It is singular to see how indifferent either habit or phlegmatic temperament, or both, frequently render the Swiss to its charms, and indeed to those of their country in general. They appear to me to have singularly little enthusiasm. You scarcely find one person in twenty among the cultivated classes, who has explored much of his own country, or who takes any warm interest in its curiosities and beauties. A German, from his dull sandy plains, and certainly an Englishman who never saw a mountain higher than the Brighton Downs, is far more alive to grandeur of scenery than these born mountaineers. I cannot think that habit and use make the difference. A Highlander has none of this phlegm: he loves his mountains and glens for their own beauties, as well as because they are the home of him and his ancestors: he is proud to shew off his crags and lakes to foreigners, and feels a poetical and enthusiastic attachment to every wild scene of his native land. I have seldom seen any of this glow and romance in an inhabitant of Switzerland. He is a good patriot, and attached to his Canton and the Confederacy; but it is a staid, phlegmatic, and calculating feeling, connected with little romantic love of its alps, and lakes, and mountain-circled valleys, but built upon the sober basis of home and its comforts his snug cottage and châlet, his independence, small taxes, paternal government, and his consequence in the Canton Council. Certainly there cannot be better or surer foundations for patriotism than these-and it would be absurd to expect any people to forget these excellent reasons for loving their country, and to doat upon it only for its barren rocks and frozen mountains; but the Swiss appear to love its comforts alone, and to have no soul for its beauties. You find persons who have passed their lives within fifty miles of Mont Blanc, and have never visited Chamounix; and half the people of Berne have never taken the trouble to travel forty miles to see the Glaciers of Grindelwald and the Jungfrau. The mal du pays which affects a Swiss when out of his country in so remarkable a manner, ap

« AnteriorContinuar »