[As Sir Walter Scott's new work has not reached us in time to enable us
to fill in the outline of the story in our present Number, we give a few
sketchy extracts, or portraits,--such as will increase the interest for
the appearance of the Narrative.
There are some admirable specimens of Swiss scenery, which have the
effect of sublime painting: witness the following attempt of two
travellers, father and son, who with their guide, are bewildered in the
mountains by a sudden storm. The younger attempts to scale a broken path
on the side of the precipice:]
Thus estimating the extent of his danger by the measure of sound sense
and reality, and supported by some degree of practice in such exercise,
the brave youth went forward on his awful journey, step by step, winning
his way with a caution, and fortitude, and presence of mind, which alone
could have saved him from instant destruction. At length he gained a
point where a projecting rock formed the angle of the precipice, so far
as it had been visible to him from the platform. This, therefore, was
the critical point of his undertaking; but it was also the most perilous
part of it. The rock projected more than six feet forward over the
torrent, which he heard raging at the depth of a hundred yards beneath,
with a noise like subterranean thunder. He examined the spot with the
utmost care, and was led by the existence of shrubs, grass, and even
stunted trees, to believe that this rock marked the farthest extent of
the slip, or slide of earth, and that, could he but round the angle of
which it was the termination, he might hope to attain the continuation
of the path which had been so strangely interrupted by this convulsion
of nature. But the crag jutted out so much as to afford no possibility
of passing either under or around it; and as it rose several feet above
the position which Arthur had attained, it was no easy matter to climb
over it. This was, however, the course which he chose, as the only mode
of surmounting what he hoped might prove the last obstacle to his voyage
of discovery. A projecting tree afforded him the means of raising and
swinging himself up to the top of the crag. But he had scarcely planted
himself on it, had scarcely a moment to congratulate himself, on seeing,
amid a wild chaos of cliffs and woods, the gloomy ruins of Geierstein,
with smoke arising, and indicating something like a human habitation
beside them, when, to his extreme terror, he felt the huge cliff on
which he stood tremble, stoop slowly forward, and gradually sink from
its position. Projecting as it was, and shaken as its equilibrium had
been by the recent earthquake, it lay now so insecurely poised, that its
balance was entirely destroyed, even by the addition of the young man's
weight. Aroused by the imminence of the danger, Arthur, by an
instinctive attempt at self-preservation, drew cautiously back from the
falling crag into the tree by which he had ascended, and turned his head
back as if spell-bound, to watch the descent of the fatal rock from
which he had just retreated. It tottered for two or three seconds, as if
uncertain which way to fall; and had it taken a sidelong direction, must
have dashed the adventurer from his place of refuge, or borne both the
tree and him headlong down into the river. After a moment of horrible
uncertainty, the power of gravitation determined a direct and forward
descent. Down went the huge fragment, which must have weighed at least
twenty tons, rending and splintering in its precipitate course the trees
and bushes which it encountered, and settling at length in the channel
of the torrent, with a din equal to the discharge of a hundred pieces of
artillery. The sound was re-echoed from bank to bank, from precipice to
precipice, with emulative thunders; nor was the tumult silent till it
rose into the region of eternal snows, which, equally insensible to
terrestrial sounds, and unfavourable to animal life, heard the roar in
their majestic solitude, but suffered it to die away without a
responsive voice.
The solid rock had trembled and rent beneath his footsteps; and
although, by an effort rather mechanical than voluntary, he had
withdrawn himself from the instant ruin attending its descent, he felt
as if the better part of him, his firmness of mind and strength of body,
had been rent away with the descending rock, as it fell thundering,
with clouds of dust and smoke, into the torrents and whirlpools of the
vexed gulf beneath. In fact, the seaman swept from the deck of a wrecked
vessel, drenched in the waves, and battered against the rocks on
the shore, does not differ more from the same mariner, when, at the
commencement of the gale, he stood upon the deck of his favourite
ship, proud of her strength and his own dexterity, than Arthur, when
commencing his journey, from the same Arthur, while clinging to the
decayed trunk of an old tree, from which, suspended between heaven and
earth, he saw the fall of the crag which he had so nearly accompanied.
The effects of his terror, indeed, were physical as well as moral, for
a thousand colours played before his eyes; he was attacked by a sick
dizziness, and deprived at once of the obedience of those limbs which
had hitherto served him so admirably; his arms and hands, as if no
longer at his own command, now clung to the branches of the tree, with a
cramp-like tenacity, over which he seemed to possess no power, and now
trembled in a state of such complete nervous relaxation, as led him to
fear that they were becoming unable to support him longer in his
position.
[We must leave the reader here, although in dire suspense--and we regret
to do so, because a beautiful incident follows--to give the following
exquisite sketch of the heroine--a Swiss maiden. We will endeavour to
connect these passages with our abridgment of the narrative.]
An upper vest, neither so close as to display the person--a habit
forbidden by the sumptuary laws of the canton--nor so loose as to be an
encumbrance in walking or climbing, covered a close tunic of a different
colour, and came down beneath the middle of the leg, but suffered the
ancle, in all its fine proportions, to be completely visible. The foot
was defended by a sandal, the point of which was turned upwards, and the
crossings and knots of the strings which secured it on the front of the
leg were garnished with silver rings. The upper vest was gathered round
the middle by a sash of parti-coloured silk, ornamented with twisted
threads of gold; while the tunic, open at the throat, permitted the
shape and exquisite whiteness of a well-formed neck to be visible at the
collar, and for an inch or two beneath. The small portion of the throat
and bosom thus exposed was even more brilliantly fair than was promised
by the countenance, which last bore some marks of having been freely
exposed to the sun and air--by no means in a degree to diminish its
beauty, but just so far as to show that the maiden possessed the health
which is purchased by habits of rural exercise. Her long, fair hair fell
down in a profusion of curls on each side of a face whose blue eyes,
lovely features, and dignified simplicity of expression, implied at once
a character of gentleness, and of the self-relying resolution of a mind
too virtuous to suspect evil, and too noble to fear it. Above these
locks beauty's natural and most beseeming ornament--or rather, I should
say, amongst them--was placed the small bonnet, which, from its size,
little answered the purpose of protecting the head, but served to
exercise the ingenuity of the fair wearer, who had not failed, according
to the prevailing custom of the mountain maidens, to decorate the tiny
cap with a heron's feather, and the then unusual luxury of a small and
thin chain of gold, long enough to encircle the cap four or five times,
and having the ends secured under a broad medal of the same costly
metal. I have only to add, that the stature of the young person was
something above the common size, and that the whole contour of her form,
without being in the slightest degree masculine, resembled that of
Minerva, rather than the proud beauties of Juno, or the yielding graces
of Venus. The noble brow, the well-formed and active limbs, the firm and
yet light step; above all, the total absence of any thing resembling the
consciousness of personal beauty, and the open and candid look, which
seemed desirous of knowing nothing that was hidden, and conscious that
she herself had nothing to hide, were traits not unworthy of the goddess
of wisdom and of chastity.
* * * * *