There was a Diligence next day for Turin over Mount Cenis, which went
only twice a week (stopping at night) and I was glad to secure (as I
thought) two places in the interior at seventy francs a seat, for 240
miles. The fare from Paris to Lyons, a distance of 360 miles, was only
fifty francs each, which is four times as cheap; but the difference was
accounted for to me, from there being no other conveyance, which was an
arbitrary reason, and from the number and expense of horses necessary to
drag a heavy double coach over mountainous roads. Besides, it was a
Royal Messagerie, and I was given to understand that Messrs. Bonnafoux
paid the King of Sardinia a thousand crowns a year for permission to run
a Diligence through his territories. The knave of a waiter (I found) had
cheated me; and that from Chambery there was only one place in the
interior and one in the _coupé_, which turned out to be a cabriolet, a
place in front with a leathern apron and curtains, which in winter time,
and in travelling over snowy mountains and through icy valleys, was not
a situation ‘devoutly to be wished.’ I had no other resource, however,
having paid my four pounds in advance at the over-pressing instances of
the _Garçon_, but to call him a _coquin_, (which being a Milanese was
not quite safe) to throw out broad hints (_à l’Anglais_) of a collusion
between him and the Office, and to arrange as well as I could with the
_Conducteur_, that I and my fellow-traveller should not be separated. I
would advise all English people travelling abroad to take their own
places at coach-offices, and not to trust to waiters, who will make a
point of tricking them, both as a principle and pastime; and further to
procure letters of recommendation (in case of disagreeable accidents on
the road) for it was a knowledge of this kind, namely, that I had a
letter of introduction to one of the Professors of the College at Lyons,
that procured me even the trifling concession above-mentioned, through
the influence which the landlady of the Hotel had with the _Conducteur_:
otherwise, instead of being stuck in the cabriolet, I might have mounted
on the imperial, and any signs of vexation or impatience I might have
exhibited, would have been construed into ebullitions of the national
character, and a want of _bienseance_ in Monsieur l’Anglois. The French,
and foreigners in general, (as far as I have seen) are civil, polite,
easy-tempered, obliging; but the art of keeping up plausible appearances
stands them in lieu of downright honesty. They think they have a right
to cheat you if they can (a compliment, a civil bow, a shrug, is worth
the money!) and the instant you find out the imposition or begin to
complain, they turn away from you as a disagreeable or wrong-headed
person, and you can get no redress but by main force. It is not the
original transgressor, but he who declares he is aggrieved, that is
considered as guilty of a breach of good manners, and a disturber of the
social compact. I think one is more irritated at the frequent
impositions that are practised on one abroad, because the novelty of the
scene, one’s ignorance of the ways of the world, and the momentary
excitement of the spirits and of the flush of hope, have a tendency to
renew in one’s mind the unsuspecting simplicity and credulity of youth;
and the petty tricks and shuffling behaviour we meet with on the road
are a greater baulk to our warm, sanguine, buoyant, travelling impulses.
Annoyed at the unfair way in which we had been treated, and at the idea
of being left to the mercy of the _Conducteur_, whose ‘honest, sonsie,
bawsont face’ had, however, no more of the fox in it than implied an eye
to his own interest, and might be turned to our own advantage, we took
our seats numerically in the Royal Diligence of Italy, at seven in the
evening (January 20) and for some time suffered the extreme penalties of
a French stage-coach—not indeed ‘the icy fang and season’s difference,’
but a very purgatory of heat, closeness, confinement, and bad smells.
Nothing can surpass it but the section of a slave-ship, or the
Black-hole of Calcutta. Mr. Theodore Hook or Mr. Croker should take an
airing in this way on the Continent, in order to give them a notion of,
and I should think, a distaste for the blessings of the Middle Passage.
Not only were the six places in the interior all taken, and all full,
but they had suspended a wicker basket (like a hen-coop) from the top of
the coach, stuffed with fur-caps, hats, overalls, and different parcels,
so as to make it impossible to move one way or other, and to stop every
remaining breath of air. A _negociant_ at my right-hand corner, who was
inclined to piece out a lengthened recital with a _parce que_ and a _de
sorte que_ at every word, having got upon ticklish ground, without
seeing his audience, was cut short in the flower of his oratory, by
asserting that Barcelona and St. Sebastian’s in Spain were contiguous to
each other. ‘They were at opposite sides of the country,’ exclaimed in
the same breath a French soldier and a Spaniard, who sat on the other
side of the coach, and whom he was regaling with the gallant adventures
of a friend of his in the Peninsula, and not finding the usual
excuse—‘_C’est égal_‘—applicable to a blunder in geography, was
contented to fall into the rear of the discourse for the rest of the
journey. At midnight we found that we had gone only nine miles in five
hours, as we had been climbing a gradual ascent from the time we set
out, which was our first essay in mountain-scenery, and gave us some
idea of the scale of the country we were beginning to traverse. The heat
became less insupportable as the noise and darkness subsided; and as the
morning dawned, we were anxious to remove that veil of uncertainty and
prejudice which the obscurity of night throws over a number of
passengers whom accident has huddled together in a stage-coach. I think
one seldom finds one’s-self set down in a party of this kind without a
strong feeling of repugnance and distaste, and one seldom quits it at
last without some degree of regret. It was the case in the present
instance. At day-break, the pleasant farms, the thatched cottages, and
sloping valleys of Savoy attracted our notice, and I was struck with the
resemblance to England (to some parts of Devonshire and Somersetshire in
particular) a discovery which I imparted to my fellow-travellers with a
more lively enthusiasm than it was received. An Englishman thinks he has
only to communicate his feelings to others to meet with sympathy, and is
not a little disconcerted if (after this amazing act of condescension)
he is at all repulsed. How should we laugh at a Frenchman who expected
us to be delighted with his finding out a likeness of some part of
England to France? We English are a nation of egotists, say what we
will; and so much so, that we expect others to swallow the bait of our
self-love.
At Pont Beau-Voisin, the frontier town of the King of Sardinia’s
dominions, we stopped to breakfast, and to have our passports and
luggage examined at the Barrier and Custom-house. I breakfasted with the
Spaniard, who invited himself to our tea-party, and complimented Madame
(in broken English) on the excellence of her performance. We agreed
between ourselves that the Spaniards and English were very much superior
to the French. I found he had a taste for the Fine Arts, and I spoke of
Murillo and Velasquez as two excellent Spanish painters. ‘Here was
sympathy.’ I also spoke of Don Quixote—‘Here was more sympathy.’ What a
thing it is to have produced a work that makes friends of all the world
that have read it, and that all the world have read! Mention but Don
Quixote, and who is there that does not own him for a friend,
countryman, and brother? There is no French work, at the name of which
(as at a talisman) the scales of national prejudice so completely fall
off; nay more, I must confess there is no English one. We were summoned
from our tea and patriotic effusions to attend the _Douane_. It was
striking to have to pass and repass the piquets of soldiers stationed as
a guard on bridges across narrow mountain-streams that a child might
leap over. After some slight dalliance with our great-coat pockets, and
significant gestures as if we might or might not have things of value
about us that we should not, we proceeded to the Custom-house. I had two
trunks. One contained books. When it was unlocked, it was as if the lid
of Pandora’s box flew open. There could not have been a more sudden
start or expression of surprise, had it been filled with cartridge-paper
or gun-powder. Books were the corrosive sublimate that eat out despotism
and priestcraft—the artillery that battered down castle and
dungeon-walls—the ferrets that ferreted out abuses—the lynx-eyed
guardians that tore off disguises—the scales that weighed right and
wrong—the thumping make-weight thrown into the balance that made force
and fraud, the sword and the cowl, kick the beam—the dread of knaves,
the scoff of fools—the balm and the consolation of the human mind—the
salt of the earth—the future rulers of the world! A box full of them was
a contempt of the constituted Authorities; and the names of mine were
taken down with great care and secrecy—Lord Bacon’s ‘Advancement of
Learning,’ Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost,’ De Stutt-Tracey’s ‘Ideologie,’
(which Bonaparte said ruined his Russian expedition,) Mignet’s ‘French
Revolution,’ (which wants a chapter on the English Government,) ‘Sayings
and Doings,’ with pencil notes in the margin, ‘Irving’s Orations,’ the
same, an ‘Edinburgh Review,’ some ‘Morning Chronicles,’ ‘The Literary
Examiner,’ a collection of Poetry, a Volume bound in crimson velvet, and
the Paris edition of ‘Table-talk.’ Here was some questionable matter
enough—but no notice was taken. My box was afterwards corded and
_leaded_ with equal gravity and politeness, and it was not till I
arrived at Turin that I found it was a prisoner of state, and would be
forwarded to me anywhere I chose to mention, out of his Sardinian
Majesty’s dominions. I was startled to find myself within the smooth
polished grasp of legitimate power, without suspecting it; and was glad
to recover my trunk at Florence, with no other inconvenience than the
expense of its carriage across the country.[36]
It was noon as we returned to the inn, and we first caught a full view
of the Alps over a plashy meadow, some feathery trees, and the tops of
the houses of the village in which we were. It was a magnificent sight,
and in truth a new sensation. Their summits were bright with snow and
with the midday sun; they did not seem to stand upon the earth, but to
prop the sky; they were at a considerable distance from us, and yet
appeared just over our heads. The surprise seemed to take away our
breath, and to lift us from our feet. It was drinking the empyrean. As
we could not long retain possession of our two places in the interior, I
proposed to our guide to exchange them for the cabriolet; and, after
some little chaffering and candid representations of the outside
passengers of the cold we should have to encounter, we were installed
there to our great satisfaction, and the no less contentment of those
whom we succeeded. Indeed I had no idea that we should be steeped in
these icy valleys at three o’clock in the morning, or I might have
hesitated. The view was cheering, the clear air refreshing, and I
thought we should set off each morning about seven or eight. But it is
part of the _sçavoir vivre_ in France, and one of the methods of adding
to the _agrémens_ of travelling, to set out three hours before day-break
in the depth of winter, and stop two hours about noon, in order to
arrive early in the evening. With all the disadvantages of preposterous
hours and of intense cold pouring into the cabriolet like water the two
first mornings, I cannot say I repented of my bargain. We had come a
thousand miles to see the Alps for one thing, and we _did_ see them in
perfection, which we could not have done inside. The ascent for some way
was striking and full of novelty; but on turning a corner of the road we
entered upon a narrow defile or rocky ledge, overlooking a steep valley
under our feet, with a headlong turbid stream dashing down it, and
spreading itself out into a more tranquil river below, a dark wood of
innumerable pine-trees covering the side of the valley opposite, with
broken crags, morasses, and green plots of cultivated ground, orchards,
and quiet homesteads, on which the sun glanced its farewell rays through
the openings of the mountains. On our left, a precipice of dark brown
rocks of various shapes rose abruptly at our side, or hung threatening
over the road, into which some of their huge fragments, loosened by the
winter’s flaw, had fallen, and which men and mules were employed in
removing—(the thundering crash had hardly yet subsided, as you looked up
and saw the fleecy clouds sailing among the shattered cliffs, while
another giant-mass seemed ready to quit its station in the sky)—and as
the road wound along to the other extremity of this noble pass, between
the beetling rocks and dark sloping pine-forests, frowning defiance at
each other, you caught the azure sky, the snowy ridges of the mountains,
and the peaked tops of the Grand Chartreuse, waving to the right in
solitary state and air-clad brightness.—It was a scene dazzling,
enchanting, and that stamped the long-cherished dreams of the
imagination upon the senses. Between those four crystal peaks stood the
ancient monastery of that name, hid from the sight, revealed to thought,
half-way between earth and heaven, enshrined in its cerulean atmosphere,
lifting the soul to its native home, and purifying it from mortal
grossness. I cannot wonder at the pilgrimages that are made to it, its
calm repose, its vows monastic. Life must there seem a noiseless
dream;—Death a near translation to the skies! Winter was even an
advantage to this scene. The black forests, the dark sides of the rocks
gave additional and inconceivable brightness to the glittering summits
of the lofty mountains, and received a deeper tone and a more solemn
gloom from them; while in the open spaces the unvaried sheets of snow
fatigue the eye, which requires the contrast of the green tints or
luxuriant foliage of summer or of spring. This was more particularly
perceptible as the day closed, when the golden sunset streamed in vain
over frozen valleys that imbibed no richness from it, and repelled its
smile from their polished marble surface. But in the more gloomy and
desert regions, the difference is less remarkable between summer and
winter, except in the beginning of spring, when the summits of the hoary
rocks are covered with snow, and the cleft[s] in their sides are filled
with fragrant shrubs and flowers. I hope to see this miracle when I
return.
We came to Echelles, where we changed horses with great formality and
preparation, as if setting out on some formidable expedition. Six large
strong-boned horses with high haunches (used to ascend and descend
mountains) were put to, the rope-tackle was examined and repaired, and
our two postilions mounted and dismounted more than once, before they
seemed willing to set off, which they did at last at a hand-gallop, that
was continued for some miles. It is nothing to see English blood-horses
get over the ground with such prodigious fleetness and spirit, but it is
really curious to see the huge cart-horses, that they use for Diligences
abroad, lumbering along and making the miles disappear behind them with
their ponderous strength and persevering activity. The road for some way
rattled under their heavy hoofs, and the heavy wheels that they dragged
or whirled along at a thundering pace; the postilions cracked their
whips, and the one in front (a dark, swarthy, short-set fellow)
flourished his, shouted and hallooed, and turned back to vociferate his
instructions to his companion with the robust energy and wildness of
expression of a smuggler or a leader of banditti, carrying off a rich
booty from a troop of soldiers. There was something in the scenery to
favour this idea. Night was falling as we entered the superb tunnel cut
through the mountain at La Grotte (a work attributed to Victor-Emanuel,
with the same truth that Falstaff took to himself the merit of the death
of Hotspur), and its iron floor rang, the whips cracked, and the roof
echoed to the clear voice of our intrepid postilion as we dashed through
it. Our path then wound among romantic defiles, where huge masses of
snow and the gathering gloom threatened continually to bar our way; but
it seemed cleared by the lively shout of our guide, and the
carriage-wheels, clogged with ice, rolled after the heavy tramp of the
horses. In this manner we rode on through a country full of wild
grandeur and shadowy fears, till we had nearly reached the end of our
day’s journey, when we dismissed our two fore-horses and their rider, to
whom I presented a trifling _douceur_ ‘for the sake of his good voice
and cheerful countenance.’ The descent into Chambery was the most
dangerous part of the road, and our horses were nearly thrown on their
haunches several times. The road was narrow and slippery; there were a
number of market-carts returning from the town, and there was a
declivity on one side, which, though not a precipice, was quite
sufficient to have dashed us to pieces in a common-place way. We arrived
at Chambery in the dusk of the evening; and there is surely a charm in
the name, and in that of the Charmettes near it (where he who relished
all more sharply than his fellows, and made them feel for him as for
themselves, alone felt peace or hope), which even the Magdalen Muse of
Mr. Moore has not been able to _unsing_! We alighted at the inn fatigued
enough, and were delighted on being shewn to a room to find the floor of
wood, and English teacups and saucers. We were in Savoy.
We set out early the next morning, and it was the most trying part of
our whole journey. The wind cut like a scythe through the valleys, and a
cold, icy feeling struck from the sides of the snowy precipices that
surrounded us, so that we seemed enclosed in a huge well of mountains.
We got to St. Jean de Maurienne to breakfast about noon, where the only
point agreed upon appeared to be to have nothing ready to receive us.
This was the most tedious day of all; nor did we meet with any thing to
repay us for our uncomfortable setting out. We travelled through a scene
of desolation, were chilled in sunless valleys or dazzled by sunny
mountain-tops, passed frozen streams or gloomy cavities, that might be
transformed into the scene of some Gothic wizard’s spell, or reminded
one of some German novel. Let no one imagine that the crossing the Alps
is the work of a moment, or done by a single heroic effort—that they are
a huge but detached chain of hills, or like the dotted line we find in
the map. They are a sea or an entire kingdom of mountains. It took us
three days to traverse them in this, which is the most practicable
direction, and travelling at a good round pace. We passed on as far as
eye could see, and still we appeared to have made little way. Still we
were in the shadow of the same enormous mass of rock and snow, by the
side of the same creeping stream. Lofty mountains reared themselves in
front of us—horrid abysses were scooped out under our feet. Sometimes
the road wound along the side of a steep hill, overlooking some
village-spire or hamlet, and as we ascended it, it only gave us a view
of remoter scenes, ‘where Alps o’er Alps arise,’ tossing about their
billowy tops, and tumbling their unwieldy shapes in all directions—a
world of wonders!—Any one, who is much of an egotist, ought not to
travel through these districts; his vanity will not find its account in
them; it will be chilled, mortified, shrunk up: but they are a noble
treat to those who feel themselves raised in their own thoughts and in
the scale of being by the immensity of other things, and who can
aggrandise and piece out their personal insignificance by the grandeur
and eternal forms of nature! It gives one a vast idea of Buonaparte to
think of him in these situations. He alone (the Rob Roy of the scene)
seemed a match for the elements, and able to master ‘this fortress,
built by nature for herself.’ Neither impeded nor turned aside by
immoveable barriers, he smote the mountains with his iron glaive, and
made them malleable; cut roads through them; transported armies over
their ridgy steeps; and the rocks ‘nodded to him, and did him
courtesies!’
We arrived at St. Michelle at night-fall (after passing through beds of
ice and the infernal regions of cold), where we met with a truly
hospitable reception, with wood-floors in the English fashion, and where
they told us the King of England had stopped. This made no sort of
difference to me.
We breakfasted the next day (being Sunday) at Lans-le-Bourg, where I
observed my friend the Spaniard busy with his tables, taking down the
name of the place. The landlady was a little, round, fat, good-humoured
black-eyed Italian or Savoyard, _saying_ a number of good things to all
her guests, but sparing of them otherwise. We were now at the foot of
Mount Cenis, and after breakfast we set out on foot before the
Diligence, which was to follow us in half an hour. We passed a
melancholy-looking inn at the end of the town, professing to be kept by
an Englishwoman; but there appeared to be nobody about the house,
English, French, or Italian. The mistress of it (a young woman who had
married an Italian) had, in fact, died a short time before of pure
chagrin and disappointment in this solitary place, after having told her
tale of distress to every one, till it fairly wore her out. We had
leisure to look back to the town as we proceeded, and which, with its
church, stone-cottages, and slated roofs, shrunk into a miniature-model
of itself as we continued to advance farther and higher above it. Some
straggling cottages, some vineyards planted at a great height, and
another compact and well-built village, that seemed to defy the
extremity of the seasons, were seen in the direction of the valley that
we were pursuing. Else all around were shapeless, sightless piles of
hills covered with snow, with crags or pine-trees or a foot-path peeping
out, and in the appearance of which no alteration whatever was made by
our advancing or receding. We gained on the mountain by a broad, winding
road that continually doubles, and looks down upon the point from whence
you started half an hour before. Some snow had fallen in the morning,
but it was now fine, though cloudy. We found two of our
fellow-travellers following our example, and they soon after overtook
us. They were both French. We noticed some of the features of the
scenery; and a lofty hill opposite to us being scooped out into a bed of
snow, with two ridges or promontories projecting (something like an
arm-chair) on each side. ‘_Voilà!_’ said the younger and more volatile
of our companions, ‘_c’est un trône, et le nuage est la gloire!_‘—A
white cloud indeed encircled its misty top. I complimented him on the
happiness of his allusion, and said that Madame was pleased with the
exactness of the resemblance. He then turned to the valley, and said,
‘_C’est un berceau_.’ This is the height to which the imagination of a
Frenchman always soars, and it can soar no higher. Any thing that is not
cast in this obvious, common-place mould, that had been used a thousand
times before with applause, they think barbarous, and as they phrase it,
_originaire_. No farther notice was taken of the scenery, any more than
if we had been walking on the Boulevards at Paris, and my young
Frenchman talked of other things, laughed, sung, and smoked a cigar with
a gaiety and lightness of heart that I envied. ‘What has become,’ said
the elder of the Frenchmen, ‘of Monsieur l’Espagnol? He does not easily
quit his seat; he sits in one corner, never looks out, or if you point
to any object, takes no notice of it; and when you come to the end of
the stage, says—“What is the name of that place we passed by last?”
takes out his pocket-book, and makes a note of it. “That is droll.”’ And
what made it more so, it turned out that our Spanish friend was a
painter, travelling to Rome to study the Fine Arts! All the way as we
ascended, there were red posts placed at the edge of the road, ten or
twelve feet in height, to point out the direction of the road in case of
a heavy fall of snow, and with notches cut to shew the depth of the
drifts. There were also scattered stone-hovels, erected as stations for
the _Gens d’armes_, who were sometimes left here for several days
together after a severe snow-storm, without being approached by a single
human being. One of these stood near the top of the mountain, and as we
were tired of the walk (which had occupied two hours) and of the
uniformity of the view, we agreed to wait here for the Diligence to
overtake us. We were cordially welcomed in by a young peasant (a
soldier’s wife) with a complexion as fresh as the winds, and an
expression as pure as the mountain-snows. The floor of this rude
tenement consisted of the solid rock; and a three-legged table stood on
it, on which were placed three earthen bowls filled with sparkling wine,
heated on a stove with sugar. The woman stood by, and did the honours of
this cheerful repast with a rustic simplicity and a pastoral grace that
might have called forth the powers of Hemskirk and Raphael. I shall not
soon forget the rich ruby colour of the wine, as the sun shone upon it
through a low glazed window that looked out on the boundless wastes
around, nor its grateful spicy smell as we sat round it. I was
complaining of the trick that had been played by the waiter at Lyons in
the taking of our places, when I was told by the young Frenchman, that,
in case I returned to Lyons, I ought to go to the Hotel de l’Europe, or
to the Hotel du Nord, ‘in which latter case he should have the honour of
serving me.’ I thanked him for his information, and we set out to finish
the ascent of Mount Cenis, which we did in another half-hour’s march.
The _traiteur_ of the Hotel du Nord and I had got into a brisk
theatrical discussion on the comparative merits of Kean and Talma, he
asserting that there was something in French acting which an English
understanding could not appreciate; and I insisting loudly on bursts of
passion as the _forte_ of Talma, which was a language common to human
nature; that in his _Œdipus_, for instance, it was not a Frenchman or an
Englishman he had to represent—‘_Mais c’est un homme, c’est Œdipe_‘—when
our cautious Spaniard brushed by us, determined to shew he could descend
the mountain, if he would not ascend it on foot. His figure was
characteristic enough, his motions smart and lively, and his dress
composed of all the colours of the rainbow. He strutted on before us in
the snow, like a flamingo or some tropical bird of variegated plumage;
his dark purple cloak fluttered in the air, his Montero cap, set a
little on one side, was of fawn colour; his waistcoat a bright scarlet,
his coat a reddish brown, his trowsers a pea-green, and his boots a
perfect yellow. He saluted us with a national politeness as he passed,
and seemed bent on redeeming the sedentary sluggishness of his character
by one bold and desperate effort of locomotion.
The coach shortly after overtook us. We descended a long and steep
declivity, with the highest point of Mount Cenis on our left, and a lake
to the right, like a landing-place for geese. Between the two was a low,
white monastery, and the barrier where we had our passports inspected,
and then went forward with only two stout horses and one rider. The snow
on this side of the mountain was nearly gone. I supposed myself for some
time nearly on level ground, till we came in view of several black
chasms or steep ravines in the side of the mountain facing us, with
water oozing from it, and saw through some _galleries_, that is, massy
stone-pillars knit together by thick rails of strong timber, guarding
the road-side, a perpendicular precipice below, and other galleries
beyond, diminished in a fairy perspective, and descending ‘with cautious
haste and giddy cunning,’ and with innumerable windings and
re-duplications to an interminable depth and distance from the height
where we were. The men and horses with carts, that were labouring up the
path in the hollow below, shewed like crows or flies. The road we had to
pass was often immediately under that we were passing, and cut from the
side of what was all but a precipice out of the solid rock by the broad,
firm master-hand that traced and executed this mighty work. The share
that art has in the scene is as appalling as the scene itself—the strong
security against danger as sublime as the danger itself. Near the
turning of one of the first galleries is a beautiful waterfall, which at
this time was frozen into a sheet of green pendant ice—a magical
transformation. Long after we continued to descend, now faster and now
slower, and came at length to a small village at the bottom of a
sweeping line of road, where the houses seemed like dove-cotes with the
mountain’s back reared like a wall behind them, and which I thought the
termination of our journey. But here the wonder and the greatness began:
for, advancing through a grove of slender trees to another point of the
road, we caught a new view of the lofty mountain to our left. It stood
in front of us, with its head in the skies, covered with snow, and its
bare sides stretching far away into a valley that yawned at its feet,
and over which we seemed suspended in mid air. The height, the
magnitude, the immovableness of the objects, the wild contrast, the deep
tones, the dance and play of the landscape from the change of our
direction and the interposition of other striking objects, the continued
recurrence of the same huge masses, like giants following us with unseen
strides, stunned the sense like a blow, and yet gave the imagination
strength to contend with a force that mocked it. Here immeasurable
columns of reddish granite shelved from the mountain’s sides; here they
were covered and stained with furze and other shrubs; here a chalky
cliff shewed a fir-grove climbing its tall sides, and that itself looked
at a distance like a huge, branching pine-tree; beyond was a dark,
projecting knoll, or hilly promontory, that threatened to bound the
perspective—but, on drawing nearer to it, the cloudy vapour that
shrouded it (as it were) retired, and opened another vista beyond, that,
in its own unfathomed depth, and in the gradual obscurity of twilight,
resembled the uncertain gloom of the back-ground of some fine picture.
At the bottom of this valley crept a sluggish stream, and a monastery or
low castle stood upon its banks. The effect was altogether grander than
I had any conception of. It was not the idea of height or elevation that
was obtruded upon the mind and staggered it, but we seemed to be
descending into the bowels of the earth—its foundations seemed to be
laid bare to the centre; and abyss after abyss, a vast, shadowy,
interminable space, opened to receive us. We saw the building up and
frame-work of the world—its limbs, its ponderous masses, and mighty
proportions, raised stage upon stage, and we might be said to have
passed into an unknown sphere, and beyond mortal limits. As we rode down
our winding, circuitous path, our baggage, (which had been taken off)
moved on before us; a grey horse that had got loose from the stable
followed it, and as we whirled round the different turnings in this
rapid, mechanical flight, at the same rate and the same distance from
each other, there seemed something like witchcraft in the scene and in
our progress through it. The moon had risen, and threw its gleams across
the fading twilight; the snowy tops of the mountains were blended with
the clouds and stars; their sides were shrouded in mysterious gloom, and
it was not till we entered Susa, with its fine old drawbridge and
castellated walls, that we found ourselves on _terra firma_, or breathed
common air again. At the inn at Susa, we first perceived the difference
of Italian manners; and the next day arrived at Turin, after passing
over thirty miles of the straightest, flattest, and dullest road in the
world. Here we stopped two days to recruit our strength and look about
us.