In my distilling processes, I frequently precipitated the phlegma
of our earthball--its polar deserts, its Russian forests, its
icebergs--and from the sediments extracted a beautiful by-earth, a
small satellite. If we extract and regulate the charms of this old
world, we can form a delightful though minutely condensed world.
For the caves of this miniature or ditto-earth, we will take the
caves of Antiparos and of Baumann, for its plains, the Rhine
provinces--Hybla, Thabor, and Mont Blanc shall be its mountains--its
islands, the Friendly, the Holy, and the Palm isles. Wentworth's park
and Daphne's grotto, and some corner-pieces from the Paphian, we have
for its forests--for a charming valley, the Seifer's-dorfer and that of
Campan. Thus we possess, besides this dirty, weary world, the most
beautiful by or after-world--an important dessert service--an
Ante-Heaven between Ante-Hells.
I have purposely included this valley of Campan in my extract and
decoction, as I know none other in which I would rather awake, or die,
or love than in this one; if I had to command, I would not permit my
valley to be mixed up or placed beside the vale of Tempe or the Rose
Valley, perhaps with Utopia. The reader must have known this valley in
his geographical lessons, or in the works of Arthur Young, who praises
it even more than I do.[1]
I must take for granted, that in July, 1796, the Goddess of Fortune
descended from her throne to our earth, and placed in my hand--not
mammon, nor garters, nor golden sheep--nothing but her own, and led
me--by this I recognized the goddess--to the Campan vale. Truly, man
needs but look into it, and he will have--as I had--more than the Devil
_offered_ to Christ and Louis XIV., and _gave_ to the popes.
The test of enjoyment is memory. Only the paradises of the imagination
willingly remain, and are never lost, but always conquered. Poetry
alone reconciles the past to the future, and is the Orpheus's lyre
which commands these two destroying rocks to rest.[2]
As stated, in the year 1796, I made a trip through France, with my
friend H. Karlson. He is honorary master of horse in the * * * service.
The wise public cares little for true names, it always treats them as
fictitious ones, by way of literary taxation; and the existing
characters, at least those of any importance, may prefer not to be torn
over the wheel of criticism, and dragged piecemeal through libraries
and reading-clubs. At almost every milestone, I despatched the best
hourly bulletin to my friend Victor: when I had sent him the following
valley-piece, he persecuted me until I promised to grant this
illuminated portrait of nature, not alone to the letter, but also to
the printing-press. Therefore I do it. I know already, my poor Victor
sees, that in our days no green branch is left as a spinning-hut
for the man-caterpillar, and that inimical divers try to cut our
anchor-rope, sunk in the sea of death. Therefore he thinks more of the
conversations on immortality, than of the valley in which they took
place. I know this, because he calls me the counterpart of Claude
Lorraine, who only drew the landscape, while another drew the human
beings in it. Truly such a valley deserves that the mining and
sabbath-lamp of truth should be lowered into the suffocating air of the
grave, in place of our _self_, merely to see if that _self_ can breathe
at such a depth.
I have jokingly divided my letters into stations. I of course omit 500,
and commence at the 501st, wherein I appear in the valley.