If the people of Marseilles do not love the Emperor of the French, they
ought to be ashamed of themselves. He has so completely changed the
aspect of that city by his improvements, that the man who knows it as it
existed in the reign of Louis Philippe, would be lost if he were to
revisit it now. The completion of the railway from Paris to Marseilles
is an inestimable advantage to the latter city, while the new port, in
magnitude and style of execution, is worthy of comparison with the
splendid docks of London and Liverpool. The flags of every civilized
nation may be seen there; and the variety of costumes and languages,
which bewilder one's eyes and ears, assure him that he is in the
commercial metropolis of the Mediterranean. The frequency of steam
communication between Marseilles and the various ports of Spain, Italy,
Africa, and the Levant, draws to it a large proportion of the travellers
in those directions. I believe that Marseilles is only celebrated for
having been colonized by the Phocaeans, or some such people, for having
several times been devastated by the plague, and for having been very
perfectly described by Dickens in his Little Dorrit. The day on which I
arrived there was very like the one described by Dickens; so if any one
would like further particulars, he had better overhaul his Little
Dorrit, and, "when found, make note of it."
The day after my arrival I saw a grand religious procession in the
streets of the city. The landlady of my hotel had told me of it, but my
expectations were not raised very high, for I thought that after the
grandeur of Rome, all other things in that way would be comparatively
tame. But I was mistaken; the procession fairly rivalled those of Rome.
There were the same gorgeous vestments, the same picturesque groupings
of black robes and snowy surplices, of mitres and crosiers and shaven
crowns, of scarlet and purple and cloth of gold, the same swinging
censers and clouds of fragrant incense, the same swelling flood of
almost supernatural music. The municipal authorities of the city, with
the staff of the garrison, joined in the procession, and the military
display was such as can hardly be seen out of France. I have often been
struck with the facility with which the Catholic religion adapts itself
to the character of every nation. I have had some opportunity of
observation; I have seen the Catholic Church on three out of the four
continents, and have every where noticed the same phenomenon.
Mahometanism could never be transplanted to the snowy regions of Russia
or Norway; it needs the soft, enervating atmosphere of Asia to keep it
alive; the veranda, the bubbling fountain, the noontide repose, are all
parts of it. Puritanism is the natural growth of a country where the sun
seldom shines, and which is shut out by a barrier of water and fog from
kindly intercourse with its neighbours. It could never thrive in the
bright south. The merry vine-dressers of Italy could never draw down
their faces to the proper length, and would be very unwilling to
exchange their blithesome _canzonetti_ for Sternhold and Hopkins's
version. But the Catholic Church, while it unites its professors in the
belief of the same inflexible creed, leaves them entirely free in all
mere externals and national peculiarities. When I see the light-hearted
Frenchman, the fiery Italian, the serious Spaniard, the cunning Greek,
the dignified Armenian, the energetic Russian, the hard-headed Dutchman,
the philosophical German, the formal and "respectable" Englishman, the
thrifty Scotchman, the careless and warm-hearted Irishman, and the
calculating, go-ahead American, all bound together by the profession of
the same faith, and yet retaining their national characteristics,--I can
compare it to nothing but to a similar phenomenon that we may notice in
the prism, which, while it is a pure and perfect crystal, is found on
examination to contain, in their perfection, all the various colours of
the rainbow.
The terminus of the Lyons and Mediterranean Railway is one of the best
things of its kind in the world. I wish that some of our American
railway directors could take a few lessons from the French. The
attention paid to securing the comfort and safety of the passengers and
the regularity of the trains would quite bewilder him. Instead of
finding the station a long, unfinished kind of shed, with two small,
beastly waiting rooms at one side, and a stand for a vender of apples,
root beer, and newspapers, he would see a fine stone structure, several
hundred feet in length, with a roof of iron and glass. He would enter a
hall which would remind him of the Doric hall of the State House in
Boston, only that it is several times larger, and is paved with marble.
He would choose out of the three ticket offices of the three classes,
where he would ride, and he would be served with a promptness and
politeness that would remind him of Mr. Child in the palmy days of the
old Tremont Theatre, while he would notice that an officer stood by each
ticket office to see that every purchaser got his ticket and the proper
change, and to give all necessary information. Having booked his
luggage, he would be ushered into one of the three waiting rooms, all of
them furnished in a style of neatness and elegance that would greatly
astonish him. He might employ the interval in the study of geography,
assisted by a map painted on one side of the room, giving the entire
south of France and Piedmont, with the railways, &c., and executed in
such a style that the names of the towns are legible at a distance of
fifteen or twenty feet. Two or three minutes before the hour fixed for
the starting of the train, the door would be opened, and he would take
his seat in the train with the other passengers. The whole affair would
go on so systematically, with such an absence of noise and excitement,
that he would doubt whether he had been in a railway station at all,
until he found himself spinning along at a rapid rate, through long
tunnels, and past the beautiful panorama of Provencal landscape.
The sun was as bright as it always is in fair Provence, the sky as blue.
The white dusty roads wound around over the green landscape, like great
serpents seeking to hide their folds amid those hills. The almond, the
lemon, and the fig attracted the attention of the traveller from the
north, before all other trees,--not to forget however, the pale foliage
of that tree which used to furnish wreaths for Minerva's brow, but now
supplies us with oil for our salads. Arles, with its old amphitheatre (a
broken shadow of the Coliseum) looming up above it, lay stifled with
dust and broiling in the sun, as we hurried on towards Avignon. It does
not take much time to see that old city, which, from being so long the
abode of the exiled popes, seems to have caught and retained something
of the quiet dignity and repose of Rome itself. That gloomy old palace
of the popes, with its lofty turrets, seems to brood over the town, and
weigh it down as with sorrow for its departed greatness. Centuries have
passed, America has been discovered, the whole face of Europe has
changed, since a pontiff occupied those halls; and yet there it stands,
a monument commemorating a mere episode in the history of the see of St.
Peter.
Arriving at Lyons, I found another palatial station, on even a grander
scale than that of Marseilles. The architect has worked the coats of
arms of the different cities of France into the stone work of the
exterior in a very effective manner. Lyons bears witness, no less than
Marseilles, to the genius of the wonderful man who now governs France.
It is a popular notion in England and America, that the enterprise of
Napoleon III. has been confined to the improvement of Paris. If persons
who labour under this error would extend their journeyings a little
beyond the ordinary track of a summer excursion, they would find that
there is scarcely a town in the empire that has not felt the influence
of his skill as a statesman and political economist. The _Rue Imperiale_
of Lyons is a monument of which any sovereign might be justly proud. The
activity of Lyons, the new buildings rising on every side, and its look
of prosperity, would lead one to suppose that it was some place that had
just been settled, instead of a city with twenty centuries of history.
The Sunday, I was glad to see, was well observed; perhaps not exactly in
the style which Aminadab Sleek would commend, but in a very rational,
Christian, un-Jewish manner. The shops were, for the most part, closed,
the churches were crowded with people, and in the afternoon and evening
the entire population was abroad enjoying itself--and a cleaner,
better-behaved, happier-looking set of people I never saw. The excessive
heat still continues. It is now more than two months since I opened my
umbrella; the prospects of the harvest are good, but they are praying
hard in the churches for a little rain. During my stay at Lyons, I lived
almost entirely on fresh figs, and plums and ices. How full the _cafes_
were those sultry evenings! How busy must the freezers have been in the
cellars below! I read through all the newspapers I could lay my hands
on, and then amused myself with watching the gay, chattering throng
around me. How my mind flew across the ocean that evening to a quiet
back parlour at the South End! I could see the venerable Baron receiving
a guest on such a night as that, and making the weather seem cool by
contrast with the warmth of his hospitality. I could see him offering to
his perspiring visitor a release from the slavery of broadcloth, in the
loan of a nankeen jacket, and then busying himself in the preparation of
a compound of old Cochituate, (I had almost said old Jamaica,) of ice,
of sugar, yea, of lemons, and commending the grateful chalice to the
parched lips of his guest. Such an evening in the Baron's back parlour
is the very ecstasy of hospitality. It is many months since that old
nankeen jacket folded me in its all-embracing arms, but the very thought
of it awakes a thrill of pleasure in my heart. When I last saw it,
"decay's effacing fingers" had meddled with the buttons thereof, and it
was growing a trifle consumptive in the vicinity of the elbows; but I
hope that it is good for many a year of usefulness yet, before the
epitaph writer shall commence the recital of its merits with those
melancholy words, _Hic jacet!_ Pardon me, dear reader, for this
digression from the recital of my wanderings; but this jacket, the
remembrance of which is so dear to me, is not the trifle it may seem to
you. It is, I believe, the only institution in the world of the same age
and importance, which has not been apostrophized in verse by that gifted
bard, Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper. If this be not celebrity, what is it?
In one of the narrow streets of Lyons I found a barber named Melnotte.
He was a man somewhat advanced in life, and I feel sure that he
addressed a good-looking woman in a snowy white cap, who looked in from
a back room while I was having my hair cut, as Pauline. Be that as it
may, when he had finished his work, and I walked up to the mirror to
inspect it, he addressed to me the language of Bulwer's hero, "Do you
like the picture?" or words to that effect. I cannot help mistrusting
that Sir Edward may have misled us concerning the ultimate history of
the Lady of Lyons and her husband. But the heat was too intolerable for
human endurance; so I packed up, and leaving that fair city, with its
numerous graceful bridges, and busy looms whose fabrics brighten the
eyes of the beauties of Europe and America, and lighten the purses of
their chivalry,--leaving Our Lady of Fourvieres looking down with
outstretched hands from the dome of her lofty shrine, and watching over
her faithful Lyonnese,--I turned my face towards the Alpine regions.
The Alps have always been to me what Australia was to the late Mr.
Micawber--"the bright dream of my youth, and the fallacious aspiration
of my riper years." I remember when I was young, long before the days of
railways and steamers, in the times when a man who had travelled in
Europe was invested with a sort of awful dignity--I remember hearing a
travelled uncle of mine tell about the Alps, and I resolved, with all
the enthusiasm of boyhood, thenceforward to "save up" all my Fourth of
July and Artillery Election money, until I should be able to go and see
one. When the Rev. James Sheridan Knowles (he was a wicked playactor in
those days) produced his drama of William Tell, how it fed the flame of
my ambition! How I longed to stand with the hero once again among his
native hills! How I loved the glaciers! How I doted on the avalanches!
But age has cooled the longings of my heart for mountain excursions, and
robbed my legs of all their climbing powers, so that if it depends upon
my own bodily exertions, the Vale of Chamouni will be entirely
unavailable for me, and every mount will be to me a blank. The scenery
along the line of railway from Amberieu to Culoz on the Rhone is very
grand. The ride reminded me of the ride over the Atlantic and St.
Lawrence road through the White Mountains, only it is finer. The
boldness of the cliffs and precipices was something to make one's heart
beat quick, and cause him to wonder how the peasants could work so
industriously, and the cattle feed so constantly, without stopping to
look up at the magnificence that hemmed them in.
At Culoz I went on board one of those peculiar steamers of the
Rhone--about one hundred and fifty feet in length by ten or twelve in
width. Our way lay through a narrow and circuitous branch of the river
for several miles. The windings of the river were such that men were
obliged to turn the boat about by means of cables, which they made fast
to posts fixed in the banks on either side for that purpose. The scenery
along the banks was like a dream of Paradise. To say that the country
was smiling with flowers and verdure does not express it--it was
bursting into a broad grin of fertility. Such vineyards! Not like the
grape vine in your back yard, dear reader, nailed up against a brick
wall, but large, luxuriant vines, seeming at a loss what to do with
themselves, and festooned from tree to tree, just as you see them in the
scenery of Fra Diavolo. And then there were groups of people in costumes
of picturesque negligence, and women in large straw hats, and dresses of
brilliant colours, just like the chorus of an opera. The deep, rich hue
of the foliage particularly attracted my notice. It was as different
from the foliage of New England as Winship's Gardens are from an invoice
of palm-leaf hats. Beyond the immediate vicinity of the river rose up
beautiful hills and cliffs like the Palisades of the Hudson. Let those
who will, prefer the wild grandeur of our American mountain scenery;
there is a great charm for me in the union of nature and art. The
careful cultivation of the fields seems to set off and render more grand
and austere the gray, jagged cliffs that overlook them. As the elder
Pliny most justly remarks, (lib. iv. cap. xi. 24,) "It requires the
lemon as well as the sugar to make the punch."
After about an hour's sail upon the river, we came out upon the
beautiful Lake of Bourget. It was stirred by a gentle breeze, but it
seemed as if its bright blue surface had never reflected a cloud. All
around its borders the trees and vines seemed bending down to drink of
its pure waters. Far off in the distance rose up the mighty peaks of the
Alps--their snow-white tops contrasting with the verdure of their sides.
They seemed to be watching with pleasure over the glad scenes beneath
them, like old men whose gray hairs have been powerless to disturb the
youthful freshness and geniality of their hearts.
At St. Innocent I landed, and underwent the custom house formalities
attendant upon entrance into a new territory. The officials were very
expeditious, and equally polite. I at first supposed that the letters V.
E., which each of them bore conspicuously on his cap, meant "_very
empty_,"--but it afterwards occurred to me that they were the initials
of his majesty, the King of Sardinia. A few minutes' ride over the
"Victor Emmanuel Railway" brought me to the beautiful village of Aix. It
is situated, as my friend the Lyonnese barber would say, in "a deep vale
shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world." It possesses about 2500
inhabitants; but that number is considerably augmented at present, for
the mineral springs of Aix are very celebrated, and this is the height
of "the season." There is a great deal of what is called "society" here,
and during the morning the baths are crowded. It is as dull as all
watering places necessarily are, and twice as hot. I think that the
French manage these things better than we do in America. There is less
humbug, less display of jewelry and dress, and a vast deal more of
common sense and solid comfort than with us. The _cafes_ are like
similar establishments in all such places--an abundance of ices and
ordinary coffee, and a plentiful lack of newspapers. I have found a
companion, however, who more than makes good the latter deficiency. He
is an Englishman of some seventy years, who is here bathing for his
gout. His light hair and fresh complexion disguise his age so completely
that most people, when they see us together, judge me, from my gray
locks, to be the elder. He is one of the most entertaining persons I
have ever met--he knows the classics by heart,--is familiar with
English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish literature,--speaks nine
languages,--and has travelled all over the world. He is as familiar with
the Steppes of Tartary as with Wapping Old Stairs,--has imbibed sherbet
in Damascus and sherry cobblers in New York, and seen a lion hunt in
South Africa. But his heart is the heart of a boy--"age cannot wither
nor custom stale" its infinite geniality. He cannot pass by a beggar
without making an investment for eternity, and all the babies look over
the shoulders of their nurses to smile at him as he walks the streets. I
mention him here for the sake of recording one of his opinions, which
struck me by its truth and originality. We were sitting in a _cafe_ last
evening, and, after a long conversation, I asked him what he should give
as the result of all his reading and observation of men and things, and
all his experience, if he were to sum it up in one sentence. "Sir," said
he, removing his meerschaum from his mouth, and turning towards me as if
to give additional force to his reply, "it may all be comprised in this:
the world is composed of two classes of men--natural fools and d--d
fools; the first class are those who have never made any pretensions, or
have reached a just appreciation of the nothingness of all human
acquirements and hopes; the second are those whose belief in their own
infallibility has never been disturbed; and this class includes a vast
number of every rank, from the profound German philosopher, who thinks
that he has fathomed infinity, down to that young fop twirling his
moustache at the opposite table, and flattering himself that he is
making a great impression."
Savoy, as every body knows, was once a part of France, and it still
retains all of its original characteristics. I have not heard ten words
of Italian since I arrived here, and, judging from what I do hear and
from the tone of the newspapers, it would like to become a part of
France again. The Savoyards are a religious, steady-going people, and
they have little love either for the weak and dissolute monarch who
governs them, or for the powerful, infidel prime minister who governs
their monarch. The high-pitched roofs of the houses here are suggestive
of the snows of winter; but the heat reminds me of the coast of Africa
during a sirocco. How true is Sydney Smith's remark, "Man only lives to
shiver or perspire"! The thermometer ranges any where from 80 deg. to 90
deg.. Can this be the legitimate temperature of these mountainous
regions? I am "ill at these numbers," and nothing would be so
invigorating to my infirm and shaky frame as a sniff of the salt breezes
of Long Branch or Nantasket.