If the walls of London—the bill-stickers’ chosen haunt—could suddenly
find a voice to tell their own history, we might have a few curious
illustrations of the manners and customs—the fashions, fancies, and
popular idols—of the English during the last half century,—from the days
when a three feet blue bill was thought large enough to tell where
Bonaparte’s victories might be read about, to the advent acres of
flaring paper and print which announce a Bal Masque or a new Haymarket
Comedy. One of the most startling contrasts of such a confession would
refer to the announcements about means of locomotion. It is not very
long ago that “The Highflyer,” “The Tally-ho,” the Brighton “Age,” and
the Shrewsbury “Wonder” boasted, in all the glory of red letters, their
wonder-feat speed of ten miles an hour,—“York in one day;” “Manchester
in twenty-four hours;” and so on. The same wall now tells the passer-by
a different tale, for we have Excursion Trains to all sorts of pleasant
places at all sorts of low fares. “Twelve Hours to Paris” is the burden
of one placard, whilst another shows how “Cologne on the Rhine” may be
reached in twenty-four.
Nor is this marvellous change in speed—this real economy of life—the
only variation from old modes; for the cost in money of a journey has
diminished with its cost of time. The cash which a few years ago was
required to go to York, will now take the tourist to Cologne. The
Minster of the one city is now, therefore, rivalled as a point for
sight-seers by the Dom-Kirche of the other. When the South Eastern
Railway Company offers to take the traveller, who will pay them about
three pounds at London Bridge one night, and place him by the next
evening on the banks of the Rhine,—the excellent tendency is, that the
summer holiday folks will extend their notions of an excursion beyond
the Channel.
Steam, that makes the trip from London to Cologne so rapid and so cheap,
does not stop there, but is ready now to bear the traveller by railway
to Brunswick, Hanover, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna,—nay, with one short gap,
he may go all the way to Trieste, on the Adriatic, by the iron road.
Steam is ready also on the Rhine to carry him at small charge up that
stream towards Switzerland. Indeed, afloat by steamer and ashore by
railway, the tourist who leaves London Bridge on a Monday night may well
reach Basle by Thursday or Friday, seeing many things on his way,
including the best scenery of the Rhine. The beautiful portion of the
banks of that river forms but a small part of its entire length; indeed,
on reaching Cologne, the traveller is disappointed to find so little
that is remarkable in what he beholds on the banks of the famous stream.
It is not till he ascends many miles higher that he feels repaid for his
journey. _The_ scenery lies between Coblenz and Bingen, and in extent
bears some such proportion to the whole length of the river as would the
banks of the Thames from Chelsea to Richmond to the entire course of our
great river, from its rise in Gloucestershire to its junction with the
sea. In addition to the part just named, there are some few other points
where the Rhine is worth seeing,—such as the fall at Schaffhausen,—but
Switzerland may claim this as one of _its_ attractions. It is a fine
river from Basle, even down through the Dutch rushes and flats to the
sea; but, with all its reputation, there is only a morsel of the Rhine
worth going to look at, and that lies, as we have just said, between its
junction with the picturesque Moselle at Coblenz and the small town of
Bingen. Between those points it passes through hills and near mountains,
whose sides and summits boast the castles and ruins so often painted and
often sung; and these spots are now within the reach of the three pounds
first-class railway ticket, now-a-days announced by placard on the walls
and hoardings of London.
Once on a Rhine steamer, and Switzerland is within easy reach.
On our table, as we write, lies the second edition of a volume[2]
written by the physician to the Queen’s Household, Dr. Forbes, showing
how a month may be employed in Switzerland. He adopted the South Eastern
Railway plan, and, starting by a mail train at half-past eight in the
evening of the 3rd of August, found himself and companions on the next
evening looking from the window of an hotel on the Rhine. Steam and a
week placed him in Switzerland. Here railways must be no longer reckoned
on, and the tourist, if he be in search of health, may try what
pedestrian exercise will do for him. This the Doctor strongly
recommends; and, following his own prescription, we find him—though a
sexagenarian—making capital way; now as a pedestrian, anon on horseback,
and then again on foot, only adopting a carriage when there was good
reason for such assistance. He describes the country, as all do who have
been through it, as a land of large and good inns, well stored with
luxurious edibles and drinkables. Against a too free use of them, he
doctor-like gives a medical hint or two, and goes somewhat out of his
way, perhaps, to show how much better the waters of the mountains may be
than the wine. Indeed the butter, the honey, the milk, the cheese, and
the melted snows of Switzerland win his warmest praises. The bread is
less fortunate; but its inferiority, and many other small discomforts,
are overlooked and almost forgotten in his enjoying admiration of what
he found good on his way amidst the mountain valleys and breezy passes
of his route. The bracing air, the brilliant sky, the animating scenes,
the society of emulous and cheerful companions, and, above all, the
increased corporeal exercise soon produce a change in the mind and the
body, in the spirits and the stomach of the tourist.
Footnote 2:
“The Physician’s Holiday.”
What a marvellous change it is for a smoke-dried man who for months,
perhaps years, has been “in populous cities pent,” to escape from his
thraldom, and find himself far away from his drudgeries and routines up
amongst the mountains and the lakes, and surrounded by the most
magnificent scenes in nature; where he sees in all its glory that which
a townsman seldom gets a glimpse of—a sunrise in its greatest beauty;
and where sunsets throw a light over the earth, which makes its beauties
emulate those of the heavens! Day by day, during summer in Switzerland,
such enjoyments are at hand. One traveller may choose one route, and
another another; for there are many and admirable changes to be rung
upon the roads to be taken. Dr. Forbes, for instance, went from Basle to
Schaffhausen, thence to Zurich, and, steaming over a part of the lake,
made for Zug, and thence to the Rigi. He returned to the Zurich-See, and
then went to Wallenstadt, Chur, and the Via Mala. Had he to shorten his
trip without great loss of the notable scenes, he might, having first
reached Lucerne, have left that place for Meyringen, and then pursued
his subsequent way by the line of the lakes, visiting the various
glorious points in their neighbourhood that challenged his
attention—Grindelwald, Schreckhorn, Lauterbrunnen, Unterseen, and so on
to Thun; then by the pass of the Gemmi to Leuk, and, from there, to what
is described by our author as the gem of his whole Swiss experience—the
Riffelberg, and the view at Monte Rosa:—
“Sitting there, up in mid-heaven, as it were, on the smooth, warm ledge
of our rock; in one of the sunniest noons of a summer day; amid air
cooled by the elevation and the perfect exposure to the most delicious
temperature; under a sky of the richest blue, and either cloudless, or
only here and there gemmed with those aerial and sun-bright cloudlets
which but enhance its depth; with the old field of vision, from the
valley at our feet to the horizon, filled with majestic shapes of every
variety of form, and of a purity and brilliancy of whiteness which left
all common whiteness dull;—we seemed to feel as if there could be no
other mental mood but that of an exquisite yet cheerful serenity—a sort
of delicious abstraction, or absorption of our powers, in one grand,
vague, yet most luxurious perception of Beauty and Loveliness.
“At another time—it would almost seem at the same time, so rapid was the
alternation from mood to mood—the immeasurable vastness and majesty of
the scene, the gigantic bulk of the individual mountains, the peaks
towering so far beyond the level of our daily earth, as to seem more
belonging to the sky than to it, our own elevated and isolated station
hemmed in on every side by untrodden wastes and impassable walls of
snow, and, above all, the utter silence, and the absence of every
indication of life and living things—suggesting the thought that the
foot of man had never trodden, and never would tread there: these and
other analogous ideas would excite a tone of mind entirely
different—solemn, awful, melancholy....
“I said at the time, and I still feel disposed to believe, that the
whole earth has but few scenes that can excel it in grandeur, in beauty,
and in wonderfulness of every kind. I thought then, and I here repeat my
opinion in cool blood, that had I been brought hither blindfolded from
London, had had my eyes opened but for a single hour on this astonishing
panorama, and had been led back in darkness as I came, I should have
considered the journey, with all its privations, well repaid by what I
saw.”
Having seen this crowning glory of mountain scenery, the tourist intent
only upon a short trip might adopt one of many variations for his return
to Basle. If on going out he had missed any bright spot, he should see
it on his way back. He must remember:
Interlachen, one of the sweetest spots in all Switzerland, which, though
only about four miles in extent, affords a perfect specimen of a Swiss
valley in its best form.
The Lake of Thun, inferior to that of Wallenstadt in grandeur, and to
that of Lucerne in beauty, but superior to the Lake of Zurich in both;
and in respect to the view from it, beyond all these; none of them
having any near or distant prospect comparable to that looking back,
where the snowy giants of the Oberland, with the Jungfrau, and her
silver horns, are seen over the tops of the nearer mountains.
The “show glacier” of the Rosenlaui, which is so easy of access.
The view from the Hotel of the Jungfrau on the Wengern Alp.
The lake scenery near Alpnach.
All these points should be made either out or home. They are not likely
to be forgotten by the tourist when once seen. On the pilgrimage to
these wonders of nature, the other peculiarities of the country and its
people will be observed, and amongst them the frequency of showers and
the popularity of umbrellas; the great division of landed property; the
greater number of beggars in the Romanist as compared with the
Protestant Cantons, and the better cultivation of the latter; the
numerous spots of historical interest, as Morgarten, Sempach, Naefels;
where the Swiss have fought for the liberty they enjoy (to say nothing
of the dramatic William Tell, and his defeat of the cruel Gesler); the
fruitfulness and number of Swiss orchards (which give us our grocers’
“French plums”), the excellent flavor of Alpine strawberries and cream;
the scarcity of birds; and the characteristic sounds of the Swiss horn,
the Ranz des Vaches, and the night chaunts of the watchmen.
On the map attached to Dr. Forbes’s volume are the dates, jotted down,
when our traveller entered Switzerland, at Basle, and when he left it on
his return to smoke and duty in London. He reached the land of mountains
and lakes on the 11th of August; he quitted it on the 12th of September;
four days afterwards he was being bothered at the Custom-House at
Blackwall. The last words of his book are these:—“In accordance with a
principle kept constantly in view while writing out the particulars of
the Holiday now concluded, viz. to give to those who may follow the same
or a similar track, such economical and financial details as may be
useful to them, I may here state that the total expenses of the
tour—from the moment of departure to that of return—was, as near as may
be, _One Guinea per diem_ to each of the travellers.”
The thousands of young gentlemen with some leisure and small means, who
are in the habit of getting rid of both in unhealthy amusements, need
hardly be told that a winter’s abstinence from certain modes and places
of entertainment would be more than rewarded by a single summer holiday
spent after the manner of Dr. Forbes and his younger companions. No very
heroic self-denial is necessary; and the compensation—in health, higher
and more intense enjoyment, and the best sort of mental improvement—is
incalculable.
What we have here described is an expensive proceeding compared with the
cheap contract trips which are constantly diverging from the Metropolis,
to every part of England, Ireland, Scotland, and to all attainable
places on the Continent. These, so far as we are able to learn, have
hitherto been well conducted; and although the charges for every
possible want—from the platform of the London Terminus back again to the
same spot, are marvellously moderate—the speculations, from their
frequent repetition, appear to have been remunerative to the projectors.