Swing, and the wingA"d foot scarce gives a touch to the floor.
Say, is it shadows that flit unclogg'd by the load of the body?
Say, is it elves that weave fairy-wings under the moon?
So rolls the curling smoke through air on the breath of the zephyr;
So sways the light canoe borne on the silvery lake.
--Bounds the well-taught foot on the sweet-flowing wave of the measure;
Whispering musical strains buoy up the aA"ry forms.
Now, as if in its rush it would break the chain of the dancers,
Dives an adventurous pair into the thick of the throng.
Quick before them a pathway is formed, and closes behind them;
As by a magical hand, open'd and shut is the way.
Now it is lost to the eye; into wild confusion resolvA"d--
Lo! that revolving world loses its orderly frame.
No! from the mass there it gaily emerges and glides from the tangle;
Order resumes her sway, only with alterA"d charm.
Vanishing still, it still reappears, the revolving creation,
And, deep-working, a law governs the aspects of change.
Say, how is it that forms ever passing are ever restorA"d?
How still fixity stays, even where motion most reigns?
How each, master and free, by his own heart shaping his pathway,
Finds in the hurrying maze simply the path that he seeks?
This thou would'st know? 'Tis the might divine of harmony's empire;
She in the social dance governs the motions of each.
She, like the Goddess[5] Severe, with the golden bridle of order,
Tames and guides at her will wild and tumultuous strength.
And around thee in vain the word its harmonies utters
If thy heart be not swept on in the stream of the strain,
--Not by the measure of life which beats through all beings around
thee,
--Not by the whirl of the dance, which through the vacant abyss
Launches the blazing suns in the spacious sweeps of their orbits.
Order rules in thy sports: so let it rule in thy acts.
M. L.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] Nemesis.
A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.
AT MOULINS.
"I DON'T think so," said the lady; and, pulling up the window of the
calA"che, she sank back on her seat: the postilion gave another crack
with his whip, another _sacre_ to his beasts, and they rolled on towards
Moulins.
It's an insolent unfeeling world this: when any one is rich enough to
ride in a calA"che, the poorer man, who can only go in a cabriolet, is
despised. Not but that a cabriolet is a good vehicle of its sort: I know
of few more comfortable. And then, again, for mine, why I have a kind of
affection for it. 'Tis an honest unpretending vehicle: it has served me
all the way from Calais, and I will not discard it. What though Maurice
wanted to persuade me at Paris that I had better take a britska, as more
fashionable? I resisted the temptation; there was virtue in that very
deed--'tis so rare that one resists; and I am still here in my
cabriolet: and when I leave thee, honest cab, may I----
"_A l'HA'tel de l'Europe?_" asked the driver; "'tis an excellent house,
and if Monsieur intends remaining there, he will find _une table
merveilleuse_."
Why to the Hotel de l'Europe? said I to myself. I hate these
cosmopolitic terms. Am I not in France--gay, delightful
France--partaking of the kindness and civility of the country? "A
l'Hotel de France!" was my reply.
The driver hereupon pulled up his horses short;--it was no difficult
task: the poor beasts had come far: there had been no horses at
Villeneuve, and we had come on all the way from St Imbert, six weary
leagues. "_Connais pas_," said the man: "Monsieur is mistaken; besides,
madame is so obliging. If there were an Hotel de France, it would be
another affair: add to this, that the voiture which has just passed us
is going to the hotel."
"Enough--I will go there too;" and, so saying, we got through the
BarriA"re of Moulins.
Now, I know not how it is, but, despite of the fellow's honest air, I
had a misgiving that he intended to cheat me. He was leading me to some
exorbitant monster of the road, where the unsuspecting traveller would
be flayed alive: he was his accomplice--his jackall; I was to be the
victim. Had he argued for an hour about the excellence of mine host's
table, I had been proof: my Franco-mania and my wish to be independent
had certainly taken me to some other hotel. But he said something about
the voiture: _it_ was going there. What was that to me? I hate people in
great carriages when I am not in them myself. But then, the lady! I had
seen nothing but her face, and for an instant. She said "she did not
think so." Think what? _Mais ses yeux!_
Reader, bear with me a while. There is a fascination in serpents, and
there is one far more deadly--who has not felt it?--in woman's eyes.
Such a face! such features, and such expression! She might have been
five-and-twenty--nay, more: girlhood was past with her: that quiet look
of self-possession which makes woman bear man's gaze, showed that she
knew the pains, perhaps the joys, of wedded life. And yet the fire of
youthful imagination was not yet extinct: the spirit of poetry had not
yet left her: there was hope, and gaiety, and love in that bright black
eye: and there was beauty, witching beauty, in every lineament of her
face. Her voice was of the softest--there was music in its tone: and her
hand told of other symmetry that could not but be in exquisite harmony.
"She did not think so:" why should she have taken the trouble to look
out of the carriage window at me as she said these words? Was I known to
her--or fancied to be so? As she did not think so, I was determined to
know why. "We will go to the Hotel de l'Europe, if you press it;" and
away the cabriolet joggled over the roughly paved street.
Moulins is any thing but one of the most remarkable towns in France: it
is large, and yet it is not important: as a centre of communication,
nothing: little trade: few manufactures: the houses are low, rather than
high; the streets wide, rather than narrow: you can breathe in Moulins,
though you may be stifled in Rouen. It is the quiet _chef lieu_ of the
Allier, and was once the capital of the Bourbonnais. An air of departing
elegance, and even of stateliness, still lingers over it: the streets
have the houses of the _ancienne noblesse_ still lining their sides:
high walls; that is to say, with a handsome gateway in the middle, and
the _corps-de-logis_ just peering above. Retired in their own dignity,
and shunning the vulgar world, the old masters of the province here
congregated in former days for the winter months; Moulins was then a gay
and stirring town; _piquet_ and _Boston_ kept many an old lady and
complaisant marquis alive through the long nights of winter; there was a
sociable circle formed in many a saloon; the harpsichord was sounded,
the minuet was danced, and the _petit souper_ discussed. The president
of the court, or the knight of Malta, or M. l'AbbA(C), came in; or perhaps
a gallant gentleman of the regiment of Bourbon or Auvergne joined the
circle; and conversation assumed that style of piquant brilliancy
tempered with exquisite politeness which existed nowhere but in ancient
France, and shall never be met with again. Sad was the day when the
Revolution broke over Moulins! all the ancient properties of the country
destroyed; blood flowing on many a scaffold; the deserving and the good
thrust aside or trampled under foot; the unprincipled and the base
pushed into places of power abused, and wealth ill-gotten but worse
spent. That bad time has passed away, and Moulins has settled down, like
an aged invalid of shattered constitution, the ghost of what it was,
into a dull country-town. Yet it is not without its redeeming qualities
of literary and even scientific excellence; somewhat of the ancient
spirit of disinterested gaiety still remains behind; and it is a place
where the traveller may well sojourn for many days.
In the court-yard of the hotel was standing the voiture, which had come
in some twenty minutes before us. The femme-de-chambre was carrying up
the last package: the postilion had got out of his boots, and had placed
them to lean against the wall. The good lady of the house came out to
welcome me, and the garASec.on was ready at the step. It's very true; the
freshness, if not the sincerity, of an inn welcome, makes one of the
amenities of life: it compensates for the wearisomeness of the road: it
is something to look forward to at the end of a fatiguing day; and, what
is best, you can have just as much or as little of it as you like. There
is no keeping on of your buckram when once you are seated in your
inn,--no stiffening up for dinner when you had infinitely rather be
quite at your ease. What you want you ask for, without saying, "by your
leave," or, "if you please;" and what you ask for, if you are a
reasonable man, you get. Let no traveller go to a friend's house if he
wants to be comfortable. Let him keep to an inn: he is there, _pro
tempore_, at home.
"I shall stop here to-night, Madame."
"As Monsieur pleases: and to-morrow--?"
"I will resume my route to Clermont."
"Monsieur is going to the baths of Mont Dor, no doubt?"
"Just so."
"Then, sir, you will have excellent company, and you have done well to
come here; Monsieur le Marquis is going on thither to-morrow: and if
Monsieur would be so obliging,--but I will run up and ask him and
Madame, the sweetest lady in the world,--they will be glad to have you
at dinner with them: you are all going to Mont Dor. You will be
enchanted: excuse me, I will be back in an instant."
How curious, thought I, that without any doings of my own, I should just
be thrown into the way of the person whom my curiosity--my impertinent,
or silly curiosity, which you will--prompted me with the desire to meet.
The superciliousness of the voiture vanished from my recollection, and
my national frigidity was doomed to be thawed into civility, if not into
amiableness.
"The Marquis de Mirepoix would be glad of the honour of Monsieur's
company at dinner, if he would be so obliging as to excuse ceremony, and
the refinements of the toilette." What a charming message! Surely there
is an innate grace in this people, notwithstanding their twenty years of
blood and revolution, that can never be worn out! Why, they did not even
know my name; and on the simple suggestion of the hostess, they consent
to sit with me at table! Truly this is the land of politeness, and of
kind accommodation: the land of ready access to the stranger, where the
ties of his home, withered, or violently snapped asunder, are replaced
by the engaging attractions of unostentatious and well-judged civility;
and where he is induced to leave his warmest inclinations, if not his
heart. Never give up this distinguishing attribute, France, thou land of
the brave and the gay! it shall compensate for much of thy waywardness:
it shall take off the rough edge of thy egotism: it shall disarm thy
ambition: it shall make thee the friend of all the world.
"Il m'a payA(C) trois francs la poste, te dis-je: c'est un gros milord: que
sais-je!"
"Diantre! for a cabriolet! Why, they only gave me the tariff and a
miserable piece of ten sous as my pour-boire, for a heavy calA"che! When
I fetched them from the chActeau this morning, I knew how it would
be--Monsieur le Marquis is so miserly, so exigeant!"
"I would not be his wife for any thing," said the fille-de-chambre, as
she came tripping down stairs, and passed between the two postilions;
"an old curmudgeon, to go on in that way with such a wife. Voyez-vous,
Pierre, elle est si belle, si douce! c'est une ange! She wants to know
who the young Englishman is; qu'en sais-tu, Jean-Marie?"
"He gave us three francs a post; that's all I know."
"Then we have two angels in the house instead of one."
I hate to be long at my toilette at any time; but to delay much in such
a matter while travelling is folly. Yet, how shall one get over the
interminable plains of France, and pass through those ever succeeding
simooms of dust which beset the high-roads of the "fair country,"
without contracting a certain dinginess of look that makes one
intolerable? Fellow-traveller, never take much luggage with thee, if
thou hast thy senses rightly awakened; leave those real "impediments" of
locomotion behind; take with thee two suits at the most; adapt them to
the climate and the land thou intendest to traverse; and, remember,
never cease to dress like a gentleman. Take with thee plenty of white
cravattes and white waistcoats; they will always make thee look clean
when thy ablutions are performed, despite of whatever else may be thy
habiliments; carry with thee some varnished boots; encourage the
laundresses to the utmost of thy power, and thou wilt always be a
suitably dressed man. By the time I had done my toilette there was a tap
at the door, and in another minute I was in the salle-A -manger.
The Marquis made me a profound salutation, which I endeavoured to return
as well as a stiff Englishman, with a poker up his back, extending right
through the spinal column into his head, could be supposed to do. To the
Lady I was conscious of stooping infinitely lower; and I even flattered
myself that the empressement which I wished to put into my reverence was
not unperceived by her. The little fluttering oscillation of the head
and form, with which a French lady acknowledges a civility, came forth
on her part with exquisite grace. Her husband might be fifty: he was a
tall, harsh-looking man; a gentleman certainly, but still not one of the
right kind; there was a sort of rouA(C) expression about his eyes that
inspired distrust, if not repulsion; his features seemed little
accustomed to a smile; the tone of his voice was dissonant, and he spoke
sharply and quickly. But his wife--his gentle, angelic wife--was the
type of what a woman should be. She surpassed not in height that best
standard of female proportion, which we give, gentle reader, at some
five feet and two inches. She was most delicately formed: her face, of
the broad rather than the long oval shape, tapered down to a most
exquisitely formed chin; while the arch expression of her mouth and
eyes, tempered as it was with an indefinable expression of true feminine
softness, gave animation and vivid intelligence to the whole. Who can
define the tones of a woman's voice? and that woman one of the most
refined and high-bred of her sex? There was a richness and smoothness,
and yet such an exquisite softness in it, as entranced the hearer, and
could keep him listening to its flow of music for hours together. I am
persuaded of it, and the more I think of it the more vividly does it
recur to my mind. 'Twas only a single glance--that first glance as I
moved upwards from bowing towards a hand which I could willingly have
kissed. There was the tale of a whole life conveyed in it; there was the
narration of much inward suffering--of thwarted hopes, of disappointed
desires--of a longing for deliverance from a weight of oppression--of a
praying for a friend and an avenger. And yet there was the timidity of
the woman, the observance of conventional forms, the respect of herself,
the dread of her master, all tending to keep down the indication of
those feelings. And again there came the still-enduring hope of
amendment or of remedy. All was in that glance. I felt it in a moment;
and the fascination--that mysterious communication of sentiment which
runs through the soul as the electric current of its vitality--was
completed.
How is it that one instant of time should work those effects in the
human mind which are so lasting in their results! Ye unseen powers,
spirits or angels, that preside over our actions, and guide us to or
from harm, is it that ye communicate some portion of your own ethereal
essence to our duller substance at such moments, and give us perceptive
faculties which otherwise we never had enjoyed? Or is it that the soul
has some secret way of imparting its feelings to another without the
intervention of material things, otherwise than to let the immortal
spark flash from one being to the other? And oh, ye sceptics, ye dull
leaden-hearted mortals! doubt not of the language of the eyes--that
common theme of mawkish lovers--but though common, not the less true and
certain. Interrogate the looks of a young child--remember even the
all-expressive yet mute eyes of a faithful dog; and give me the bright
eloquent glance of woman in the pride and bloom of life--'tis sweeter
than all sounds, more universal than all languages.
"I am afraid, Monsieur le Marquis, that I shall be interfering with your
arrangements?"
"Ah, mon Dieu! you give us great pleasure. Madame and myself had just
been regretting that we should have to pass the evening in this
miserable hole of a town. 'Pas de spectacle; c'est embAȘtant A ne pas en
finir.'"
"And Monsieur is likely to be with us to-morrow, mon ami; for my
femme-de-chambre tells me that he is going to Mont Dor. Do you know,
Monsieur, that just as we were coming into Moulins, we remarked your
odd-looking cabriolet de poste. My husband detests them; on the
contrary, I like those carriages, for they tell me of happy--I mean to
say, of former times. He wanted to wager with me that it was some
old-fashioned sulky fellow that had got into it; but, as we passed, I
looked out at the window, satisfied myself of the contrary, and told him
so. Will you be pleased to take that chair by my side, and as we go on
with our dinner we can talk about Mont Dor."
CLERMONT.
As it had been arranged that I should take an hour's start with my
cabriolet, and bespeak horses for my companions as I went on, I set off
for Clermont early.
As you advance through the Bourbonnais, towards the south, the country
warms upon you: warms in its sunny climate, and in the glowing colours
of its landscape. Not but that France is smiling enough, even in the
north: Witness Normandy, that chosen land of green meadow, rich glebe,
stately forests, and winding streams: nor that even in Champagne, where
the eye stretches over endless plains, towards the Germanic frontier,
there are not rich valleys, and deep woodlands, and sunny glades. Do not
quarrel with the chalky ground of the Champenois--remember its
wine--think of the imprisoned spirit of the land, that quintessence of
all that is French--give it due vent; 'twill reward you for your pains.
Oh! certes, France is a gay and a pleasing land. My fastidious and
gloomy countrymen may say what they please, and may talk of the beauties
of England till they are hoarse again; but there is not less natural
beauty in Gaul than in Britain. Take all the broad tracts from London to
York, or from Paris to Lyons, France has nothing to dread from the
comparison. But, in the Bourbonnais, flat and open as it is, the scene
begins to change. The sun shines more genially, more constantly; he
shines in good earnest; and your rheumatic pains, if you have any still
creeping about your bones, ooze out at every pore, and bid you a long
adieu. That grey, cold haze of the north, which dims the horizon in the
distant prospect, here becomes warmed into a purpler, pinker tint,
borrowed from the Italian side of the Alps: the perpetual brown of the
northern soil here puts on an orange tinge: above, the sky is more blue;
and around, the passing breeze woos you more lovingly. Come hither,
poor, trembling invalid! throw off those blankets and those swathing
bandages; trust yourself to the sun, to the land, to the _waters_ of the
Bourbonnais; and renovated health, lighter spirits, pleasant days and
happy nights, shall be your reward.
How can it be, that in a country where nature is so genially disposed
towards the vegetable and the mineral kingdoms of her wide empire, she
should have played the niggard so churlishly when she peopled it with
human beings? The men of the Bourbonnais are short and ordinary of
appearance, remarkable more for the absence than for the presence of
physical advantages, and the women are the ugliest in France!--mean and
uninviting in person, and repulsive in dress! They are only to be
surpassed in this unenviable distinction by those of Auvergne. Taking
the two populations together, or rather considering them as one, which
no doubt they originally were, they are at the bottom of the
physiological scale of this country. Some think them to be the
descendants of an ancient tribe that never lost their footing in this
centre of the land, when the Gauls drove out their Iberian predecessors.
They certainly are not Gauls, nor are they Celts; still less are they
Romans or Germans. Are they then autochthonous, like the Athenians? or
are they merely the offscourings, the rejected of other populations?
Decide about it, ye that are learned in the ethnographic distinctions of
our race--but heaven defend us from the Bourbonnaises!
See how those distant peaks rise serenely over the southern horizon!--is
it that we have turned towards Helvetia?--for there is snow on the tops
of some, and many are there towering in solitary majesty. No, they are
the goal of our pilgrimage; they are the ridges of the Monts Dor--the
Puys and the extinct volcanoes of ancient France. Look at the Puy de
DA'me, that grand and towering peak: what is our friend Ben Nevis to this
his Gallic brother, who out-tops him by a thousand feet! And again, look
at Mont Dor behind, that hoary giant, as much loftier than the Puy de
DA'me as this is than the monarch of the Scottish Highlands! We are
coming to the land of _real_ mountains now. Why, that long and
comparatively low table-land of granite, from whence they all protrude,
and on which they sit as a conclave of gods, is itself higher than the
most of the hills of our father-land. These hills, if we have to mount
them, shall sorely try the thews of horse and man.
There is something soothing, and yet cheering, in the southern sky,
which tells upon the spirits, and consoles the weary heart. Just where
the yellow streaks of this low white horizon tell of the intensity of
the god of day, come the blue serrated ridges of those mountains across
the sight. If I could fly, I would away to those realms of light and
warmth--far, far away in the southern clime, where the wants of the body
should be few, and where the vigour of life should be great. The
glorious south is, like the joyous time of youth, full of hope and
promise: all is sunny and bright: there, flowers bloom and birds sing
merrily. Turn we our backs to the cold gloomy north, to the wet windy
west, to the dry parching east--on to the south!
But what a magnificent plain is this we are entering upon: it is of
immense extent. Those distant hills are at least fifty miles from us;
and across it, from Auvergne to Le Forez, cannot be less than twenty;
and, in the midst, what a gorgeous show of harvests, and gardens, and
walnut groves, and all the luxuriance of the continental Flora. This is
the Limagne, the garden of France--the choicest spot of the whole
country for varied fertility and inexhaustible productiveness. Ages
back--let musty geologists tell us how long ago--'twas a lake, larger
than the Lake of Geneva. The volcanic eruptions of the mountains on the
west broke down its barriers, and let its waters flow. Now the Allier
divides it; and the astonished cultivator digs into virgin strata of
fertile loams, the lowest depths of which have never yet been revealed.
Corn fields here are not the wide and open inclosures such as we know
them in the north and west, where every thing is removed that can hinder
a stray sunbeam from shining on the grain: here they are thickly studded
with trees--majestic, wide-spread, fruit-laden, walnut-trees; where the
corn waves luxuriantly beneath its thickest shade, and closes thickly
round its stem. Bread from the grain below, and oil from the kernel
above; wine from the hills all around, and honied fruits from many a
well-stocked garden; such are the abundant and easily reared produce of
this land of promise. A Caledonian farmer, put down suddenly in the
Limagne, would think himself in fairy regions; so kindly do all things
come in it, so pure and excellent of their sort--in such variety, in
such never-failing succession. Purple mountains, red plains, dark green
woods, and a sky of pure azure--such is the combination of colours that
meets the eye on first coming into Auvergne.