diligence left Grenoble. The road winds along the charming valley of
Gresivanda, presenting the richest views over its varied scenery. It was
dark before we reached the frontiers of Savoy, and as I arrived at
Chamberi at midnight, and left it at three o’clock the next morning, in
a heavy rain, I shall not attempt a description. We reached Geneva about
seven yesterday evening, but I postpone any account of this city, till I
have seen a little more of it, and shall occupy the remaining part of my
letter in answering yours. You ask me if I can really see nothing but
buildings and mountains in France, or if I have at any time met with
such phenomena as men and women. I will reply as well as I can to the
spirit of this question; there are some observations on the French
character which force themselves on the attention of the traveller, some
of which, notwithstanding your sneer, I have already noticed. Whether
there exist any attachment to the present dynasty is a question which I
must answer in the negative. The French are willing to suffer the
Bourbons, because they wish for peace, and there seems to be something
of affection springing up towards the present king, which does not in
the least extend itself to the other members of the reigning family.
There is a widely diffused, and pretty generally received opinion of the
moderation and good sense of the former, but the others are nowhere well
spoken of. You will have seen in the French papers, accounts of the
enthusiasm with which the Duke and Duchess of Angoulême were received on
their late tour. I was not present at any place where they were, but I
can form a tolerably correct idea of what I have not seen, from what I
have. Lest however, you should be inclined to give more credit to the
public journals than they deserve, I will give you a specimen of their
courage in publishing the acceptable, rather than the true. It was
stated in the _Moniteur_, while I was at Paris, that three hundred
workmen were employed in the church of the Madelaine; I went there and
found about twenty, who could not do much, as they were working without
any plan, and it had not been decided whether the design of the Temple
of Glory, adopted by Napoleon, should be continued, or some other
preferred. The same paper asserted, that five hundred men were employed
at St. Geneviève. My friend, Mr. Sharp, was drawing there every day; and
as he saw nobody, he applied to the architect, who resides on the spot,
to know where they were, but he also was entirely ignorant of their
existence: a week after this, about a dozen men were set to work to take
down the sculpture of the pediment, and to erase the inscription, _Aux
grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante_.[23] After this you will not
wonder if I interpret the glowing accounts of the rejoicings in the
south of France, by what I observed at Arles, where _vive le roi_ was
given out from the Hotel de Ville from time to time, and repeated by the
children in the crowd, who were pleased with the fireworks. It is the
municipal government which says all and does all on these occasions, the
people are nothing. With respect to the transactions at Nismes,
concerning which you think I must have collected many particulars, I am
afraid that I can give you very little satisfaction. It seems to me that
the Catholics were guilty of these excesses against the Protestants from
superstition, and that they endeavoured to cover themselves by the
pretence of zeal for the king; that the provincial government weakly
lent itself to this feeling, of which indeed the members probably
participated; and that the government of France, or at least their
principal agent, the Duke of Angoulême, was unwilling to repress too
strongly, a spirit, which whether considered in a religious or political
point of view, his own prejudices taught him to consider as resting on a
meritorious foundation, though carried to a culpable excess. At the same
time some political circumstances had much inflamed this religious
animosity, all of which however imply the previous existence of such a
sentiment. The Protestants of Nismes form a body, whose consequence and
respectability is proportionally much greater than their numbers. It is
not to be wondered at, therefore, if under a government which made no
distinctions, they should occupy a larger share of public situations,
than in the eyes of the Catholics they were entitled to do. On the
return of the king, therefore, the Catholics united to drive them out,
and irritated by what appeared to them an act of injustice, the
Protestants took the first opportunity to retaliate. Thus politics
became an important part of the quarrel, but religion remains the
ground-work. The prisons at Nismes are filled with Protestants, who are
confined merely on a general charge of attachment to Napoleon, and in
some instances, a renunciation of religion has been sufficient
immediately to procure the prisoner his liberty. Now I have no authority
to cite for all this; it is merely intelligence picked up on the spot,
in conversation with Catholics and Protestants, and connected together
as well as I could. I contend however, that it is better deserving of
credit than any thing issuing from the French authorities, who are in
fact some of the parties accused; better than the letter of the Duke of
Wellington, who probably gave himself no trouble to investigate the
circumstances, but adopted with little hesitation what those authorities
were pleased to communicate. The letter of the minister, Olivia, I was
not able to clear up while I was there, he having left the place, but I
have since been informed by an Englishman, whom I casually met with,
that he talked on the subject with Olivia himself, and that this
minister expressly disclaimed the letter as it appeared in the English
papers: he had written a letter to the secretary of the committee, and
that he might not be subject to any imputation for so doing, he had
first sent it to the Duke of Richelieu. The letter published contained
some of his expressions and phrases, but the substance was materially
altered.
Generally speaking, the prisons of the south of France are filled with
prisoners for political offences, or rather for political opinions, and
at Grenoble, the criminal tribunal is declared permanent. Yet, if the
French are not attached to the present government, it does not appear
that they have, in general, any aversion to it. They do not love
Napoleon, but their dislike is deeply mixed with regret for the
splendour and glory of his reign. They do not trouble their heads about
young Napoleon, yet if he should prove a man of any talents, and the
Bourbons should take any measures to excite alarm concerning the
national property, it is probably to him they would look, because there
is no other, whose claim would be readily admitted by the party opposed
to the present system. With the exception of some men of talents, who
wish to open that career of honourable ambition, which a popular
government admits more than any other, I do not think they have any
inclination for a second experiment of a republic. I hope Louis XVIII.
will live eight or ten years longer at least, for I think it would give
a chance, I fear the only chance, the French have for a constitution,
round which they will generally rally against either anarchy or
despotism. If the feeling is once[24] fully called forth, they will soon
improve their government; it may be an indifferent constitution at
present, but such a union will gradually make it a good one, and I think
it would be no small advantage to our own, to have liberty well
understood and acted upon in a great neighbouring state. We submit to
many inconveniences, and many abuses, because we fancy them inseparable
from what we love and admire; if France were free, the difference of her
prejudices and manners would show us the road in many instances, as we
show it to her in others.
LETTER XIII.
GENEVA.
_Lausanne, 8th September, 1816._
GENEVA was very full, and the difficulty of finding a lodging drove me
to a little inn, called the Hotel des Trois Maures, where I had a good
chamber, and nothing else good. The first, to me, was an important
advantage, as I wanted to revise the sketches and memoranda of the south
of France, before the subject had faded from my recollection. In fact, I
wished to disburthen my mind entirely, and transfer it to paper; which
was a great relief, for I felt a continual anxiety lest any thing should
escape me after having once been observed. On the 17th of August I
walked to Cologni, where our friend, Mr. W., has taken up his abode; he
has a beautiful spot; his grounds command, on one side, the Lake of
Geneva and the distant range of Jura; on the other, a rich valley opens
towards the Môle, a fine conical mountain, rising 4,800 feet above the
lake; the Brezon, with its ragged summit crowning the hanging woods
which creep up its sides; and beyond all, the brilliant summit of Mont
Blanc.
A few days after, I rambled over the little Saleve. The greater Saleve
is a limestone hill, with one precipitous face, very much, in character,
like some of the limestone scars near Kendal. It is about 1,800 feet
above the lake. The little Saleve is perhaps, 400 or 500 feet lower. It
presents the most magnificent views over the Lake of Geneva, the Pays de
Vaud, and of the range of Jura; and in the opposite direction, of the
valley of the Arve, and of the mountains between that and the lake, and
of the district of Chablais, famous for its wine. To the right of
Chablais appeared the rugged rock D’Enfer, streaked with snow, the point
of Agredon, the glaciers of the Siege Vert; and on the south, the Brezon
and a long range of mountains, extending towards the Lake of Annecy.
Mont Blanc only shone now and then from his throne of clouds; and even
of Mont Buet I had only a transitory glimpse.
Another excursion was to Ferney, in order to see the chateau of
Voltaire. The French government have insisted on retaining this village,
as it is said, because it was the residence of the witty philosopher.
The situation is fine, but it commands no view of the lake. The building
is composed, to use the French terminology, of three _pavillons_ and two
_corps de logis_; the extent of the front may, perhaps, be about eighty
feet. The bed-chamber, as I was told on the spot, remains just as it was
in Voltaire’s lifetime; the same bed, the same furniture, the same
prints, with the addition of one only, representing his monument; but I
was assured at Geneva that other alterations had taken place. In the
dining-room is a monumental stone, in a wooden frame, with this
inscription: “Au chantre du premier des Bourbons, et au Fondateur de
Ferney.” A wooden case, in the form of a pyramid, is put over the stone
in order to preserve it, and in this a small hole has been made through
which you are to peep. The whole has much the appearance of a showman’s
box. The stone which contained the inscription on the church, “Deo
Voltaire,” was taken down at the time of the revolution; the present
possessor wished to restore it, but the _curé_ opposes it. Returning
from Ferney, I made a diversion towards the lake, by a road which runs
on a sort of terrace, with the Alps on the right hand and Jura on the
left; and afterwards descended through a pleasant wood, adorned with the
showy flowers of _Dianthus superbus_, and the flowerless bushes of the
_Rosa pumila_, to the edge of the water.
Geneva itself is a singular city, or at least two of the principal
streets offer an arrangement, which is I believe, perfectly unique; the
roofs of the houses project ten or twelve feet beyond the walls, and are
supported across the foot ways by lofty posts. You thus walk in an open
gallery, whose height is nearly that of the whole house.
In the _Journal de Genève_, for 1789 and 1790, are some researches into
the history of the church of St. Peter, the cathedral of Geneva, by M.
Sennebier, who quotes Besson, “_Mémoires sur le Diocese de Genève_,” as
saying that Frederic II. was consecrated here in 1025; but as the
emperor Frederic II. died in 1250, there must be some mistake. Even
Frederic I. was only born in 1121. In 1025 Geneva probably belonged to
the kingdom of Arles, of which Rodolph III. (_faineant_) was then
sovereign.
In 1206 we find an order for the appropriation of the revenues of vacant
benefices to the building of St. Pierre, _till the work shall be
finished_; an expression which seems to imply that it was then in a
state of some forwardness. In 1219 we have complaints against the then
bishop, for neglecting to complete the edifice, or perhaps, only to
repair it: in 1300 the first year’s revenue of vacant benefices was
again ordered to be applied to the use of the fabric: in 1334 it was
damaged by fire, and again in 1349: in 1380 application was made to the
Pope, “_pour lui demander quelques subventions_,” in order to repair the
church. The chapel of the Maccabees was founded in 1406; in 1430 was a
terrible fire, which entirely destroyed the west front, and left the
church a heap of ruins. In 1441 Felix V. granted the first year’s
revenue of all benefices becoming vacant, for twenty years; a similar
grant of a half-year’s revenue, probably for the same term, was made by
Julius II., in 1505, principally to erect the southern tower; but this
not proving sufficient, Clement VII., in 1525, prolonged it for four
years. The west front was not restored till 1749, and it is said to be
in imitation of the portico of the Pantheon.
The building, however, of which the above is the history, was not the
original church. The period of the erection of the first edifice is
unknown, but it was destroyed by an enemy before the year 515, and
rebuilt immediately afterwards on a more magnificent scale, by
Gondebaud, king of Burgundy. A fragment of this second church is said to
be still in existence; and there are some indications in the present
church of a still older building, which some fancy was a temple of
Apollo.
Thus, then, we have a fragment of wall still existing in the present
church, built before 515.
The fragment of the second church, if it really exist, escaped my
observation.
Rejecting the consecration of some monarch in 1025, as uncertain, we may
fairly assume, that the choir, in which the style of work is decidedly
Norman, was erected before 1206.
The body of the building was probably finished not much after that time,
or about 1219. Its character much resembles that of Salisbury Cathedral.
The style of the architecture is nowhere of a later date, in any
considerable erection, except the west front, which was begun in 1749.
In all this the history and the internal evidence agree very well. There
is some pleasure in such coincidences; but at the same time, it is
saying that one has learnt nothing new from the edifice; indeed it can
hardly be said, that it affords any important confirmation of former
results, for it seems to have been long in progress, and prosecuted
without zeal or energy. The dimensions are as follows:
Feet. Inch.
Whole length internally 202 0
Length of transept 111 0
Length of nave 137 0
Width of nave 23 3
Width of side aisles 10 0
Width of nave and side aisles 64 4
Width of transept 26 0
Length of choir 39 0
Thickness of piers east to west 9 0
Thickness of piers north to south 8 6
Height of shafts to springing 45 6
Height of vaulting 63 0
Height of ditto of side aisles 35 0
The arches are mixed, some round and some pointed; all of them have
key-stones. The towers are at each end of the transept. The lower
capitals are imitations of the Corinthian, or with grotesque figures.
The bases have a deep scotia. There is some stained glass in the chevet,
but it is of little consequence; and, for modern accommodation, there is
a paltry gallery, and seats rising one above the other, instead of pews:
a much finer building would fail to be impressive with such accessories.
I attended divine service in it. There seems to be no kneeling, either
here, or in the Protestant churches in France; but at Geneva the men
take off their hats, which is not the case at Nismes.
I left Geneva on the 30th of August to walk to Chamouni, or as it is
perhaps more properly written, Chamounix. The terminal _x_ seems to
belong to a peculiarity in the dialect of Savoy and the adjacent parts
of Switzerland and France. Ferney ought to be Fernex; Gensey, Gensex;
Gex, Bex, &c. still retain it, but it is never heard in pronunciation.
The road offers a great variety of scenery; at first the views have the
comparatively mild character of the immediate neighbourhood of Geneva;
then the rocks of the Saleve grow upon you, but speedily diminish again,
as you leave them, to advance to more magnificent objects. Afterwards
the Voiron becomes a fine object; and when our back is turned upon
these, the green slopes of the Môle rise nobly in front, and the rugged
and woody precipices of the Brezon appear to close the valley, as the
traveller approaches to Bonneville. In England our high hills are
generally very naked; here they are usually woody, and the Môle, which
is bare compared with his neighbours, is more covered with wood than any
of the higher mountains of our own country: it is a conical hill, 4,730
feet above the Lake of Geneva, and retained, at this time, one patch of
last winter’s snow. The Brezon is as high, or perhaps higher than the
Môle, but it is less insulated. The summit is bare rock, with here and
there a spot of snow: the shoulders are dark with firs, below which is
an ascending slope of cultivated land mixed with wood, and the lower
precipices are mantled with deciduous trees. The Arve passes between
these two mountains, but there is also a fine romantic valley on the
east side of the Môle, and the winding road sometimes presents one
object, sometimes another; Mont Blanc, with his clouds and snows,
overtopping the whole. At Soingi, Siongy, Siongir, or Scionzier, for I
have seen it spelt all these ways, I turned out of the road to visit the
_Reposoir_, a convent of Chartreux, high among the mountains; but though
the route presents some very fine scenery, I did not, in this land of
magnificent nature, think myself repaid for the delay. After leaving
Siongy, the road continues along the valley to Cluse, whose name
indicates its situation. The valley seems so completely shut up, that I
could not imagine whence the Arve could issue. A sudden turn to the
right exhibits the pass; where the mountains, rising in high and woody
precipices on each side, leave hardly any space for cultivation on the
sides of the stream. At Cluse the character of the scene alters, and
becomes more magnificent, and more picturesque, yet still presenting
scenes of great beauty and repose. In the former part of the walk we
were coasting the mountains, we are now fairly among them. In this
neighbourhood I first saw the triangular form which water assumes in
falling from a great elevation: it flourishes off at the top in circles,
but the heavier drops falling faster than the smaller, the circle
changes into one or more parabolas; these become afterwards hyperbolas;
at last the curve is lost to the eye, and we have rectilineal angles,
not triangles, for the top line is never given, and the points rush down
with great rapidity, while the slower sides are overtaken by the points
of the succeeding portion. I am rather afraid that this appearance
cannot be rendered intelligible by description; and the incessant motion
is so essential to the effect, that the pencil is as inefficient as the
pen. The road keeps in the valley, sometimes running along the bottom,
sometimes rising over the lower eminences, while the valley itself,
occasionally almost closing upon the stream, and at other times opening
into a wide and cultivated space, presents the most varied and beautiful
landscapes. The rocky and savage mountain, its base clothed with wood,
its summit shooting into sharp points divided by tracery of snow, never
fails to stamp upon the scene the impression of its own magnificence.
The whole walk from Cluse to Les Ouches, is certainly one of the finest
in the world; and one who has seen Mont Blanc illuminated by the setting
sun, from St. Martin or Salenche, may be excused, if he thinks it
impossible for inanimate nature to produce a more sublime scene. The
instant change produced at sun-set is very striking. The moment before
every thing glows with a life and beauty, of which neither the pencil
nor the pen can give you any idea. The moment after, the vast extent of
snow, which before exhibited the richest and warmest colouring, becomes
pale and cold. It is the transition from life to death; from the
exquisite animated form to a corpse.
From Les Ouches, the valley of Chamounix begins; an immense gigantic
trough, which, though grand, and even sublime, from the immensity of its
parts, is by no means so beautiful as the scenery I had just passed.
Before reaching Chamounix I fell in with a returning guide, who
conducted me to the glacier of Bossons; and, as no description of a
glacier can be completely intelligible to those who have never seen one,
mine, like those of preceding travellers, must be very imperfect;
nevertheless it may furnish your imagination with some assistance. It is
neither a plain, nor a valley full of snow. It is not a mountain of snow
or covered with snow. It is more like a mountain of ice, or a valley
filled with ice; and if you join these two apparently inconsistent
ideas, you will have the best notion of it. Imagine some deep gill, such
as you find on a smaller scale in Yorkshire or Westmoreland, filled with
snow, and the snow half melted and frozen again, till the whole is
reduced into large masses, composed of little lumps of ice, about the
size of a pigeon’s egg; or, to speak more correctly, varying from the
size of a pea to that of a hen’s egg, perfectly transparent in
themselves, but forming a mass only imperfectly translucent. The snow,
still increasing on the mountain, and throwing additional weight on this
immense mass, pushes it bodily out of the gill, and half across the more
open valley; so that what was at first included in the hollow, being
thus forced out beyond the line of the hills, forms itself an inferior
hill, while the gill behind, is filled up with new matter of the same
sort, continually pushing forward to supply the waste below. This
advancing hill of ice presents to us cliffs of ice at top, then a slope
of fragments of ice, and below that a bank of earth, covered, here and
there, with the pieces which fall from above. The weight of snow pushes
out, not only the ice below it, but a great deal of the soil on which it
lies, grinding it, as it proceeds, to powder; and hence the streams
issuing at the foot of a glacier are always muddy, while the water on
its surface is pure and transparent. At this glacier, the trees, which
had been overturned in its progress, still lay about at its foot; but
those which were untouched by its mechanical action, did not appear to
be injured by the cold, and corn grew within a small distance. Part of
the slope was covered with sand, and many of the blocks seemed mixed
with sand. Where the ice is pure, it is shaded with the tenderest gray,
verging very little, if at all, towards green; and it reflects a vivid
blue green, or perhaps a greenish blue, from the deep hollows. I found
several men stationed at the entrance to the glacier to offer their
assistance, but I already had a guide, and wanted nothing further, for
the passage was by no means difficult. The middle is firm, and pretty
even; it is only towards the edge that the deep fissures are usually
found: the ice is not so slippery as you would imagine; and the sand, or
some little inequalities, give tolerable foot-hold, but it felt very
cold to the feet. I ascended with my back to the setting sun, and
turning to look again at the glacier, after having crossed it, enjoyed a
new spectacle, the sun shining through the upper and thinner parts of
the ice, and giving sometimes by transmitted light, the same beautiful
colour I had admired in the reflected. This green or blue, is however,
by no means general, and it is equally difficult to say why it exists at
all, and why, since it does exist, there is not more of it. I observed
here three sorts of light; the white of pure snow, the shining light,
where the surface caught the rays of the sun in a particular direction
and reflected them to my eye, and the transmitted light of the edges of
the blocks; and two series of shade, the gray and the green; independent
of that produced by impurities, and of the patches of dark sand, which
sometimes occur. The clouds appeared quite purple against the glacier,
yet that colour did not show itself amongst them in any other direction;
whence I conclude that the whole mass of the ice had somewhat of a
greenish hue.