_Sketches of Switzerland. By an American. Part Second. Philadelphia:
Carey, Lea and Blanchard._
The London Spectator has very justly observed of this, Mr. Cooper's
last work, that two circumstances suffice to distinguish it from the
class of sketchy tours. He has contrived to impart a _narrative_
interest to his journey; and, being an American, yet intimately
conversant with all the beauties of the Old World, he looks at
Switzerland with a more instructed eye than the mass of travellers,
and is enabled to commit its landscapes to a comparison which few of
them have the means of making—thus possessing an idiosyncracy giving
freshness to what otherwise would be faded. In our notice of Part 1,
of the work before us, we had occasion to express our full sense of
the writer's descriptive powers, refined and strengthened as they now
appear to us to be. Is it that Mr. Cooper derives vigor from spleen,
as Antæus from earth? This idea might indeed be entertained were his
improved power to-day not especially perceptible in his delineations
of the calm majesty of nature. It must be observed by all {721} who
have read the “Headsman,” and who now read the “Sketches,” that the
same scenes are frequently the subject of comment in each work. The
drawings in the former are seldom more than mediocre—in the latter we
meet with the vivid coloring of a master.
The subject of the first two volumes is Mr. Cooper's visit to
Switzerland in 1828—that of the two now published, his visit in 1832.
The four years intervening had effected changes of great moment in the
political aspect of all Europe, and produced of course a modification
of feeling, taste, and opinion in our author. In his preface he
pithily observes—“Four years in Europe are an age to the American, as
are four years in America to the European. Jefferson has somewhere
said that no American ought to be more than five years at a time out
of his own country, lest he get _behind_ it. This may be true as to
its _facts_—but the author is convinced that there is more danger of
his getting before it as to opinion. It is not improbable that this
book may furnish evidence of both these truths.” In the last sentence
there may be some little arrogance, but in the one preceding there is
even more positive truth. We are a bull-headed and prejudiced people,
and it were well if we had a few more of the stamp of Mr. Cooper who
would feel themselves at liberty to tell us so to our teeth.
The criticism alluded to in the following passage has never met our
observation. Since it is the fashion to decry the author of “the
Prairie” just now, we are astonished at no degree of malignity or
scurrility whatever on the part of the little gentlemen who are
determined to follow that fashion—but we are surprised that Mr. C.
should have thought himself _really_ suspected of any such ridiculous
“purposes.”
Some one, in criticising the First Part of Switzerland, has intimated
that the writer has a purpose to serve with the “Trades' Unions” by
the purport of some of his remarks. As this is a country in which the
avowal of a tolerably sordid and base motive seems to be
indispensable, even to safety, the writer desires to express his sense
of the critic's liberality, as it may save him from a much graver
imputation. There is really a painful humiliation in the reflection,
that a citizen of mature years, with as good natural and accidental
means for preferment as have fallen to the share of most others, may
pass his life without a _fact_ of any sort to impeach his
disinterestedness, and yet not be able to express a generous or just
sentiment in behalf of his fellow creatures, without laying himself
open to suspicions as degrading to those who entertain them, as they
are injurious to all independence of thought and manliness of
character.
The present volumes strike us as more entertaining upon the whole than
those which preceded them. They embrace a wide range of stirring
anecdote, and some details of a very singular nature indeed. As the
book will be universally read it is scarcely necessary to say more.