Vol. V.

For The Port Folio.

TRAVELS.

LETTERS FROM GENEVA AND FRANCE.

Written during a residence of between two and three years in different parts of those countries, and addressed to a lady in Virginia.

(Continued from page 340.)

LETTER XIX.

My dear E

AS I may not again have occasion to mention the Vallais to you, I may as well give you some account of that country now, and of the people who inhabit it, in

addition to the information which you will find in different books of travels. The extreme length of the valley of the Rhone, which forms by far the greater part of the Vallaisan territory, is one hundred and twenty miles, and its greatest breadth about thirty; and there are several narrow recesses which lose themselves in the neighbouring mountains: there is no

No. 23.

where a more strongly marked variety of soil and climate to be met with, than in the Vallais. To fertile fields succeed uncultivated deserts, and mountains covered with eternal snow, overhang those vallies where one experiences all the evils of heat, and moisture, and stagnated air: their intercourse with the rest of the world, except by the valley of the Rhone, is at all times difficult, and in winter rendered nearly impracticable by the fall of snow; so that they have remained longer than the rest of Europe in the darkness of the middle ages, and have universally incurred the imputation of ignorance, laziness and superstition.

The

upper Vallais, which was divided into seven communities, each possessing a portion of independent sovereignty, not unlike that of our states in America, and represented in the sovereign council or congress, became proprietors of the lower Vallais by right of

conquest in a war against the Duke of Burgundy in the year one thousand four hundred and seventy-six; had they now admitted their neighbours to a fair participation of rights, and not preferred the illiberal advantage of governing as subjects, those, whom they ought to have embraced as brethren, it is probable that their remote situation, the poverty of their country, their inoffensive politicks, and the facility with which they might have gratified France in granting a passage through their territory into Italy, would have insured their tranquillity; there is no arguing, I confess, on the probable conduct of the directory of the French republick, but the plausible pretext of liberating the oppressed, would not have been afforded them. Berne was taken in March, ninety eight, and the people of the upper Vallais were shortly after made to understand, that they must free their subjects from their allegiance, and admit them to the equal enjoyment of every civil and political privilege: to this, though with some degree of reluctance they consented, and the new election districts had been already marked out, and every preparatory measure taken for the important change, when there came a new order from the directory, that the Vallais was no longer to be considered as an independent state, but as a department of the new Helvetick government, which had lately been established upon the ruins of the Swiss aristocracy: the whole of the upper Vallais flew to arms upon this indignity being offered them, nor did they yield until all the powers of resistance had been exhausted in a succession of bloody actions, in which their towns and villages were taken by

|

storm, their property destroyed, and the persons of the more helpless part of the community treated with a degree of atrocity, that human nature recoils from a description of. They have since, after another ineffectual effort, in eighteen hundred and one, and after undergoing every degree of oppression rather than request a union with France, been restored to a sort of mutilated independence, which leaves them like shipwrecked passengers upon a desert shore. The new road which is connected with Geneva on the one side, and with the Italian republick over the Simplon on the other, is carried on with very little attention to the comforts of these poor Vallaisans: it is by all accounts a stupendous work, and will save the exertions of future Hannibals and Bonapartes; but if the tide of power should ever set in a different direction, if some great potentate should ever spring up to the south of the Alps, and Italy be once more enabled, as in the time of the Romans, to avenge the insults and injuries which have been heaped up without mercy upon its ill fated inhabitants, good policy and self-defence may require, that this easy access to France should be stopped up again.

On our return from the rocks of Meillerai to Vevay, and about midway where St. Preux may be supposed to have been, when a fit of despair had almost got the better of him, the wind headed us, and the lake rose in gentle waves so as to give a representation in miniature of the appearance we had so lately been familiar with; I felt no temptation however to jump overboard with any body in my arms, but waited patiently, assisting sometimes at an oar, sometimes at the helm, until we ran

and villages are at their feet, the larger towns of the Pays de Vaud are conspicuous, the Alps terminate the view on one side, and losing itself in the Alps is seen the road to Rome; Rome, the great fountain of indulgencies and dispensations, and always in some one way or other the seat of empire; the lakes of Geneva and of Yverdun are spread out in all their grandeur and magnificence of surrounding scenery, that of Annecy in Savoy appears at a distance, and that of Joux, seems bosomed in a deep vale, for ages, according to tradition the favourite seat of innocence and simplicity, whilst that of Morat, suggests to some grayhaired peasant, that he has heard of a famous battle fought upon its banks in days of yore, when the Swiss were men indeed, and would admit of no degrading medium between liberty and death.

One would hardly suppose that this isolated plain, so far removed in appearance above the cares and evils of the world, could have been the scene of a shocking tragedy,

but the account which I have now before me, and from which I take my idea of the prospect, ends with a sad story, of a new married pair, whose fate will remind you of the lovers described in one of Gay's letters, as having been the victims of the same thunder storm: they had come up the mountain on their wedding day, followed by their nearest friends, and by the guests of the marriage feast, and having shared in the amusements of the place for sometime, had withdrawn a step or two from the company and were conversing at the edge of the plain, on that side where it ends abruptly. I am not so old, but that I can easily conceive the gay prospects of life, which

were pointing, perhaps, to the very grove, where they first exchanged mutual vows, or, to the steeple of the church, where those vows had been ratified by heaven; or sitting silent with their eyes fixed on some retired valley, some distant hill side; where their new cottage was to rise "embosomed in a peach orchard," they perhaps already enjoyed in imagination, for they were young and very unexperienced, that endless succession of days, which were to roll away in never-ceasing happiness,

"the seasons too, As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll,

Would find them happy still, the genial Spring

Would shed her rosy garland on their heads;

'Till evening came at last, serene and

mild,

When after the long vernal day of life, Together freed their kindred souls would

move

To scenes, where love and bliss immortal reign."

But heaven had ordered otherwise-suddenly the earth gave way under the feet of the bride, the husband caught her in his arms, and they were precipitated together into the abyss below; a rock which projects from the side of the precipice, full many a fathom down, remained stained with the blood of this ill-fated couple.

NEW BIOGRAPHY,

OF SALLUST.
BY THOMAS MOORE, Esq.

(Concluded from page 345.)

In the meantime the wreck of Pompey's army was collected under Cato and Scipio in Africa, and began to assume an aspect of resistance, which, though not very formidable, called for the atten