594

SIMOND

ENTHUSIASTIC AND AUSTERE,

atmosphere of repulsion to many admirable remarks and valuable suggestions, of which they happen to be the vehicles.

The work before us is marked by the same excellences, and is nearly free from the faults to which we have just alluded. In spite of this, however-perhaps even in consequence of it - we suspect it will not generally be thought so entertaining; the scene being necessarily so much narrower, and the persons of the drama fewer and less diversified. The work, however, is full of admirable description and original remark: - nor do we know any book of travels, ancient or modern, which contains, in the same compass, so many graphic and animated delineations of external objects, or so many just and vigorous observations on the moral phenomena it records. The most remarkable thing about it, however—and it occurs equally in the author's former publication—is the singular combination of enthusiasm and austerity that appears both in the descriptive, and the reasoning or ethical parts of the performance-the perpetual struggle that seems to exist between the feelings and fancy of the author, and the sterner intimations of his understanding. There is, accordingly, in all his moral and political observations at least, a constant alternation of romantic philanthropy and bitter sarcasm-of the most captivating views of apparent happiness and virtue, and the most relentless disclosures of actual guilt and misery - of the sweetest and most plausible illusions, and the most withering and chilling truths. He expatiates, for example, through many pages, on the heroic valour and devoted patriotism of the old Helvetic worthies, with the memorials of which the face of their country is covered and then proceeds to dissect their character and manners with the most cruel particularity, and makes them out to have been most barbarous, venal, and unjust. In the same way, he bewitches his readers with seducing pictures of the peace, simplicity, independence, and honesty of the mountain villagers; and by and by takes occasion to tell us, that they are not only more stupid, but more corrupt than the inhabitants

AND THENCE APPARENTLY INCONSISTENT.

595

of cities. He eulogises the solid learning and domestic habits that prevail at Zurich and Geneva; and then makes it known to us that they are infested with faction and ennui. He draws a delightful picture of the white cottages and smiling pastures in which the cheerful peasants of the Engadine have their romantic habitations

and then casts us down from our elevation without the least pity, by informing us, that the best of them are those who have returned from hawking stucco parrots, sixpenny looking-glasses, and coloured sweetmeats through all the towns of Europe. He is always strong for liberty, and indignant at oppression - but cannot settle very well in what liberty consists; and seems to suspect, at last, that political rights are oftener a source of disorder than of comfort; and that if person and property are tolerably secure, it is mere quixotism to look further.

So strong a contrast of warm feelings and cold reasonings, such animating and such despairing views of the nature and destiny of mankind, are not often to be found in the same mind- and still less frequently in the same. book: And yet they amount but to an extreme case, or strong example, of the inconsistencies through which all men of generous tempers and vigorous understandings are perpetually passing, as the one or the other part of their constitution assumes the ascendant. There are many of our good feelings, we suspect, and some even of our good principles, that rest upon a sort of illusion; or cannot submit at least to be questioned by frigid reason, without being for the time a good deal discountenanced and impaired and this we take to be very clearly the case with M. Simond. His temperament is plainly enthusiastic, and his fancy powerful: But his reason is active and exacting, and his love of truth paramount to all other considerations. His natural sympathies are with all fine and all lofty qualities - but it is his honest conviction, that happiness is most securely built of more vulgar materials and that there is even something ridiculous in investing our humble human nature with these magnificent attributes. At all events it is impos

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sible to doubt of his sincerity in both parts of the representation; for there is not the least appearance of a love of paradox, or a desire to produce effect; and nothing can be so striking as the air of candour and impartiality that prevails through the whole work. If any traces of prejudice may still be detected, they have manifestly survived the most strenuous efforts to efface them. The strongest, we think, are against French character and English manners-with some, perhaps, against the French Revolution, and its late Imperial consummator. He is very prone to admire Naturebut not easily satisfied with Man; — and, though most intolerant of intolerance, and most indulgent to those defects of which adventitious advantages make men most impatient, he is evidently of opinion that scarcely any thing is exactly as it should be in the present state of society and that little more can be said for most existing habits and institutions, than that they have been, and might have been, still worse.

He sets out for the most picturesque country of Europe, from that which is certainly the least so:- and gives the first indications of his sensitiveness on these topics, by a passing critique on the ancient châteaus of France, and their former inhabitants. We may as well introduce him to our readers with this passage as with any other.

"A few comfortable residences, scattered about the country, have lately put us in mind how very rare they are in general: Instead of them, you meet, not unfrequently, some ten or twenty miserable hovels, crowded together round what was formerly the stronghold of the lord of the manor; a narrow, dark, prison-like building, with small grated windows, embattled walls, and turrets peeping over thatched roofs. The lonely cluster seems unconnected with the rest of the country, and may be said to represent the feudal system, as plants in a hortus siccus do the vegetable. Long before the Revolution, the châteaux had been mostly forsaken by their seigneurs, for the nearest country town; where Monsieur le Comte, or Monsieur le Marquis, decorated with the cross of St. Louis, made shift to live on his paltry seigniorial dues, and rents ill paid by a starving peasantry; spending his time in reminiscences of gallantry with the old dowagers of the place, who rouged and wore patches, dressed in hoops and highheeled shoes, full four inches, and long pointed elbow-ruffles, balanced with lead. Not one individual of this good company knew any thing

ADMIRABLE FIRST VIEW OF SWITZERLAND.

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of what was passing in the world, or suspected that any change had taken place since the days of Louis XIV. No book found its way there; no one read, not even a newspaper. When the Revolution burst upon this inferior nobility of the provinces, it appeared to them like Attila and the Huns to the people of the fifth century—the Scourge of God, coming nobody knew whence, for the mere purpose of destruction- —a savage enemy, speaking an unknown language, with whom no compromise could be made."

The first view of the new country, though no longer new to most readers, is given with a truth, and a freshness of feeling which we are tempted to preserve in an

extract.

"Soon after passing the frontiers of the two countries, the view, heretofore bounded by near objects, woods and pastures, rocks and snows, opened all at once upon the Canton de Vaud, and upon half Switzerland! a vast extent of undulating country, tufted woods and fields, and silvery streams and lakes; villages and towns with their antique towers, and their church-steeples shining in the sun.

"The lake of Neuchâtel, far below on the left, and those of Morat and of Vienne, like mirrors set in deep frames, contrasted by the tranquillity of their lucid surfaces, with the dark shades and broken grounds and ridges of the various landscape. Beyond this vast extent of country, its villages and towns, woods, lakes, and mountains; beyond all terrestrial objects-beyond the horizon itself, rose a long range of aërial forms, of the softest pale pink hue: These were the high Alps, the rampart of Italy-from Mont Blanc in Savoy, to the glaciers of the Oberland, and even further. Their angle of elevation seen from this distance is very small indeed. Faithfully represented in a drawing, the effect would be insignificant; but the aërial perspective amply restored the proportions lost in the mathematical perspective.

"The human mind thirsts after immensity and immutability, and duration without bounds; but it needs some tangible object from which to take its flight,-something present to lead to futurity, something bounded from whence to rise to the infinite. This vault of the heavens over our head, sinking all terrestrial objects into absolute nothingness, might seem best fitted to awaken this sense of expansion in the mind: But mere space is not a perceptible object to which we can readily apply a scale, while the Alps, seen at a glance between heaven and earth-met as it were on the confines of the regions of fancy and of sober reality, are there like written characters, traced by a divine hand, and suggesting thoughts such as human language never reached.

"Coming down the Jura, a long descent brought us to what appeared a plain, but which proved a varied country with hills and dales, divided into neat enclosures of hawthorn in full bloom, and large hedge-row trees, mostly walnut, oak, and ash. It had altogether very much the appearance of the most beautiful parts of

598

SIMOND HIS POWERS OF DESCRIPTION.

England, although the enclosures were on a smaller scale, and the cottages less neat and ornamented. They differed entirely from France, where the dwellings are always collected in villages, the fields all open and without trees. Numerous streams of the clearest water crossed the road, and watered very fine meadows. The houses, built of stone, low, broad, and massy, either thatched or covered with heavy wooden shingles, and shaded with magnificent walnut trees, might all have furnished studies to an artist."— Vol. i. pp. 25—27.

The following, however, is more characteristic of the author's vigorous and familiar, but somewhat quaint and abrupt, style of description.

"Leaving our equipages at Ballaigne, we proceeded to the falls of the Orbe, through a hanging wood of fine old oaks, and came, after a long descent, to a place where the Orbe breaks through a great mass of ruins, which, at some very remote period, have fallen from the mountain, and entirely obstructed its channel. All the earth, and all the smaller fragments, having long since disappeared: and the water now works its way, with great noise and fury, among the larger fragments, and falls above the height of eighty feet, in the very best style. The blocks, many of them as large as a good-sized three-story house, are heaped up most strangely, jammed in by their angles-in equilibrium on a point, or forming perilous bridges, over which you may, with proper precaution, pick your way to the other side. The quarry from which the materials of the bridge came is just above your head, and the miners are still at work-air, water, frost, weight, and time! The strata of limestone are evidently breaking down; their deep rents are widening, and enormous masses, already loosened from the mountain, and suspended on their precarious bases, seem only waiting for the last effort of the great lever of nature to take the horrid leap, and bury under some hundred feet of new chaotic ruins, the trees, the verdant lawn—and yourself, who are looking on and foretelling the catastrophe! We left this scene at last reluctantly, and proceeded towards the dent-de-vaulion, at the base of which we arrived in two hours, and in two hours more reached the summit, which is four thousand four hundred and seventy-six feet above the sea, and three thousand three hundred and forty-two feet above the lake of Geneva. Our path lay over smooth turf, sufficiently steep to make it difficult to climb. At the top we found a narrow ridge, not more than one hundred yards wide. The south view, a most magnificent one, was unfortunately too like that at our entrance into Switzerland to bear a second description; the other side of the ridge can scarcely be approached without terror, being almost perpendicular. Crawling, therefore, on our hands and knees, we ventured, in this modest attitude, to look out at the window at the hundred and fiftieth story (at least two thousand feet), and see what was doing in the street. Herds of cattle in the infiniment petit were grazing on the verdant lawn of a narrow vale; on the other side of which, a mountain, overgrown with dark pines, marked the boundary of France. Towards the west,