Chamberry.
We made so short a stay at Turin that I did not think of writing from
thence. I shall now give you a sketch of our progress since my last.
We left Milan at midnight, and arrived the next evening at Turin
before the shutting of the gates. All the approaches to that city are
magnificent. It is situated at the bottom of the Alps, in a fine plain
watered by the Po. Most of the streets are well built, uniform, clean,
straight, and terminating on some agreeable object. The Strada di Po,
leading to the palace, the finest and largest in the city, is adorned
with porticoes equally beautiful and convenient. The four gates are also
highly ornamental. There can be no more agreeable walk than that around
the ramparts. The fortifications are regular and in good repair, and the
citadel is reckoned one of the strongest in Europe. The royal palace and
the gardens are admired by some. The apartments display neatness, rather
than magnificence. The rooms are small, but numerous. The furniture is
rich and elegant; even the floors attract attention, and must peculiarly
strike strangers who come from Rome and Bologna; they are curiously
inlaid with various kinds of wood, and kept always in a state of shining
brightness. The pictures, statues, and antiquities in the palace are of
great value; of the former there are some by the greatest masters, but
those of the Flemish school predominate.
No royal family in Europe are more rigid observers of the laws of
etiquette, than that of Sardinia; all their movements are uniform and
invariable. The hour of rising, of going to mass, of taking the air;
every thing is regulated like clock-work. Those illustrious persons must
have a vast fund of natural good-humour, to enable them to persevere
in such a wearisome routine, and support their spirits under such a
continued weight of oppressive formality.
We had the satisfaction of seeing them all at mass; but as the D—— of
H—— grows more impatient to get to England the nearer we approach it, he
declined being presented at court, and we left Turin two days after our
arrival.
We stopped a few hours, during the heat of the day, at a small village,
called St. Ambrose, two or three posts from Turin. I never experienced
more intense heat than during this day, while we were tantalized with
a view of the snow on the top of the Alps, which seem to overhang
this place, though, in reality, they are some leagues distant. While
we remained at St. Ambrose there was a grand procession. All the men,
women, and children, who were able to crawl, attended; several old women
carried crucifixes, others pictures of the saint, or flags fixed to the
ends of long poles; they seemed to have some difficulty in wielding them,
yet the good old women tottered along as happy as so many young ensigns
the first time they bend under the regimental colours. Four men, carrying
a box upon their shoulders, walked before the rest. I asked what the
box contained, and was informed by a sagacious looking old man, that it
contained the bones of St. John. I enquired if all the Saint’s bones
were there; he assured me, that not even a joint of his little finger
was wanting; “Because,” continued I, “I have seen a considerable number
of bones in different parts of Italy, which are said to be the bones of
St. John.” He smiled at my simplicity, and said the world was full of
imposition; but nothing could be more certain, than that those in the box
were the true bones of the Saint; he had remembered them ever since he
was a child—and his father, when on his death-bed, had told him, on the
_word of a dying man_, That they belonged to St. John and no other body.
At Novalezza, a village at the bottom of Mount Cenis, our carriages were
taken to pieces, and delivered to Muleteers to be carried to Lanebourg. I
had bargained with the Vitturino, before we left Turin, for our passage
over the mountain in the chairs commonly used on such occasions. The
fellow had informed us there was no possibility of going in any other
manner; but when we came to this place, I saw no difficulty in being
carried up by mules, which we all preferred, to the great satisfaction
of our knavish conductor, who thereby saved the expence of one half the
chairmen, for whose labour he was already paid.
We rode up this mountain, which has been described in such formidable
terms, with great ease. At the top there is a fine verdant plain of five
or six miles in length, we halted at an Inn, called Santa Croce, where
Piedmont ends and Savoy begins. Here we were regaled with fried trout,
catched in a large lake within sight, from which the river Doria arises,
which runs to Turin in conjunction with the Po. Though we ascend no
higher than this plain, which is the summit of Mount Cenis, the mountains
around are much higher; in passing the plain we felt the air so keen,
that we were glad to have recourse to our great-coats; which, at the
bottom of the hill, we had considered as a very superfluous part of our
baggage. I had a great deal of conversation in passing the mountain with
a poor boy, who accompanied us from Novalezza to take back the mules; he
told me he could neither read nor write, and had never been farther than
Suza on one side of the mountain, and Lanebourg on the other. He spoke
four languages, Piedmontese, which is his native language; this is a
kind of Patois very different from Italian; the Patois of the peasants
of Savoy, which is equally different from French; he also spoke Italian
and French wonderfully well; the second he had learnt from the Savoyard
chairmen, and the two last from Italian and French travellers whom he
has accompanied over Mount Cenis, where he has passed his life hitherto,
and which he seems to have no desire of leaving. If you chance to be
consulted by any parent who inclines to send their sons abroad merely
that they may be removed from London, and acquire modern languages in the
most œconomical manner, you now know what place to recommend. In none
where opportunities for this branch of education are equal, is living
cheaper than at Mount Cenis, and I know nothing in which it has any
resemblance to London, except that it stands on much the same quantity
of ground. I asked this boy, why he did not learn English.—He had all
the inclination in the world.—“Why don’t you learn it then as well as
French?” “On attrape le François, Monsieur, bon gré, mal gré,” answered
he, “mais Messieurs les Anglois parlent peu.”
When we arrived at the North side of the mountain we dismissed our
mules, and had recourse to our Alpian chairs and chairmen. The chairs
are constructed in the simplest manner, and perfectly answer the purpose
for which they are intended. The chairmen are strong-made, nervous,
little fellows. One of them was betrothed to a girl at Lanebourg, and
was to be married that evening. I could not, in conscience, permit him
to have any part in carrying me, but directly appointed him to Jack’s
chair. The young fellow presented us all with ribbons, which we wore in
our hats in honour of the bride. “Are you very fond of your mistress,
friend,” said I? “Il faut que je l’aime beaucoup,” answered he, “puisque,
pauvre garçon comme me voila, je donne trente livres au prêtre pour nous
marier.” To tax matrimony, and oblige the people who _beget and maintain_
children to pay to those who _maintain_ none, seems bad policy; and it
is surprising that a prince who attends so minutely, as his Sardinian
Majesty, to the welfare of his subjects, does not remedy so great an
abuse.
As our carriers jogged zig-zag, according to the course of the road, down
the mountain, they laughed and sung all the way. “How comes it,” said I
to the D——, “that chairmen are generally merrier than those they carry?
To hear these fellows without seeing them, one would imagine that _we_
had the laborious part, while _they_ sat at their ease.” “True,” answered
he; “and the same person might conclude, on hearing the bridegroom
sing so cheerfully, that we were just going to be married and not he.”
We arrived in a short time at the Inn at Lanebourg, nothing having
surprised me so much in the passage of this mountain, the difficulty
and danger of which has been greatly exaggerated by travellers, as the
facility with which we achieved it.
As soon as the scattered members of our carriages were joined together,
we proceeded on our journey. The road is never level, but a continued
ascent and descent along the side of high mountains. We sometimes saw
villages situated at a vast height above us; at other times they were
seen with difficulty in the vales, at an immense depth below us. The
village of Modane stands in a hollow, surrounded by stupendous mountains.
It began to grow dark when we descended from a great height into this
hollow; we could only perceive the rugged summits, and sides of the
mountains which encircle the village, but not the village itself, or any
part of the plain at the bottom; we therefore seemed descending from the
surface, by a dark abyss leading to the centre of the globe. We arrived
safe at Modane, however, for the road is good in every respect, steepness
excepted. Next morning we continued our course, by a miserable place
called La Chambre, to Aiguebelle, a village of much the same description.
According to some authors, this was the road by which Hannibal led his
army into Italy. They assert, that the plain at the summit of Mount Cenis
was the place where he rested his army for four days, and from which he
showed his soldiers the fertile plains of Italy, and encouraged them to
persevere: others assert that he led his army into Italy by Mount St.
Bernard. This is a discussion into which I am not qualified to enter; but
M——r G——l M——l, a gentleman of learning, probity, and great professional
merit, in his way to Italy, where he now is, endeavoured to trace the
route of the Carthaginian army with great attention; and imagines he has
been successful in his researches. He has also ascertained the spots
on which some of the most memorable battles were fought, by carefully
comparing the description of Polybius, and other authors, with the fields
of battle, and has detected many mistakes, which have prevailed on this
curious subject; every where supporting his own hypothesis by arguments
which none but one who has carefully perused the various authors,
and examined the ground with a soldier’s eye, could adduce. The same
gentleman has likewise made some observations relating to the arms of the
ancient Romans, and their tactics in general, which are equally new and
ingenious, and which, it is hoped, he will in due time give to the public.
We arrived at the inn at Aiguebelle just in time to avoid an excessive
storm of thunder and rain, which lasted with great violence through the
whole night. Those who have never heard thunder in a very mountainous
country, can form no idea of the loudness, repetition, and length of the
peals we heard this night. Many of the inhabitants of those mountains
have never seen better houses than their own huts, or any other country
than the Alps. What a rugged, boisterous piece of work must they take
this world to be!
I fancy you have by this time had enough of mountains and vallies, so if
you please we shall skip over Montmelian to Chamberry, where we arrived
the same day on which we left Aiguebelle. To-morrow we shall sleep at
Geneva. I did not expect much sleep this night from the thoughts of it,
and therefore have sat up almost till day-break writing this letter.