881] Alterations made in the Cell of Marie Antoinette. [882 Perhaps I have been too long secluded time to which it was erected, and the crime against the august victim,is recorded. from society, properly to appreciate its The other inscription is an extract from rights; but it seems to me that these of the letter written by the Queen to Madame nature are yet more sacred: it seems also Elizabeth, the night before her death. that even justice ought not to banish At the further end of the dungeon, in pity, that natural emotion of the soul by the place where the unfortunate Queen's which it beats and palpitates. If somebed was placed, is a full length picture of times we appear indifferent to the ills of that illustrious sufferer, in deep mourn others, it is because we have no conceping; on each side of it are two oval tion of them. What man of any feeling, frames, which seem intended to receive when informed of the physical and moral the portraits of Louis XVI. and his an- sufferings of one imprisoned for a capital gelic sister. The opening which former- crime, would not think that he had ally communicated with what was called ready suffered his punishment if found the council-hall, where the turnkeys were guilty, from the moment of his condenstationed, is now shut, and the window nation? What then must be his torments 13 enlarged and ornamented with painted if he is innocent? How can he be inglass; the melancholy reflected light demnified for those hours, those ages of from which gives a suitable tint of woe anguish, those tortures of mind and body on this mournful apartment. to which he is subjected, and which his With what sublime and yet distressing conscience, however irreproachable, will remembrances was my mind assailed in not allow him to look forward to the terthis place! How could I sufficiently mination of without trembling? pay to the memory of this distinguished These mournful reflections so naturaland unfortunate female the tribute of deep ly presented themselves to my mind at the regret that her fate demanded from every sight of the objects by which I was surheart? How could I invoke her illus- rounded, and which could not in the trious shade without fancying it attended mean time prevent my acknowledging by that multitude of heroic women who (when I think of what I have seen forhad preceded her, or succeeded to her as merly, and what I see now) that the regtemporary inhabitants of this horrible pri- ulations of prisons in general, and parson, to which they were dragged by the ticularly that of the Conciergerie, have sa ne demon of civil discord? I see, at once undergone some very good reformations; the heroic Charlotte Corday, the coura- that the progress of reason and humanity geous wife of the imbecile minister Ro- which belongs to an enlightened age, disland; the young and beautiful Princess plays itself in many instances; the most of Monaco; the venerable Marechale de shocking abuses have been destroyed, Mouchy; the virtuous sister of the and justice shows itself in less horrible bookseller Gatey, that model of devotion forms, while its most subordinate agents to brotherly love; the charming wife of themselves do not make use of that brutak the fiery Camille Desmoulins; the inter- ferocity in the discharge of their office as estingCecilia Renaud; the adorable fami- formerly. But here, as in every thing ly of the immortalMalesherbe; mesdames else, there yet remains much to be done; Sénoson, Rosambeau, and Chateaubriant; and it will be done: what one century and so many other women who are an begins another finishes. If human ineternal honour to a sex, who deserve the stitutions are in a way to become perfect, admiration of the world, but to whom while manners are only changing, it is Frenchmen owe eternal gratitude. because the former have the advantage of time on their side. In continuing to wander with my guide through this den, where any one I have read somewhere, that- The who has a permit may ramble with im- misfortunes attendant upon virtue and punity, he shewed me the door of one of the success of vice, serve only to prove those dungeons, known by the name of the shortness of life: give but sufficient the Great Cesar, and which, after the de- time to the virtuous man, or the villain, scription of it can only be compared to and each would receive, even on this the box of Pandora, for hope alone re- earth, his recompence or his punishment. mains behind. THE HERMIT DE LA GUYANNE. 883] Uncontected Sketches of Swiss Scenery. (884 From the Monthly Magazine. RECENT SKETCHES OF SWISS SCENERY. My dear Madam, WH HEN we entered Bex, the even Martigny; Sept. 16, 1816. satisfaction. Yet it appears to me that Valley of the Rhone. the era is approaching when the researches of geologists, whose progress during the last twenty years has been ing had so far advanced as to veil gigantic, will have arrived at an ultimum ; the delightful scenery of its environs en- and when the rays of human perspitirely from our view. I do not now regret cacity will penetrate those dark regions this-an unclouded atmosphere presented in which the mysterious operations of to us this morning a profusion of en- Nature lie concealed. What an interchanting objects. The Rhone was be- minable source of wonder is presented to fore us; on its opposite banks rose la the imagination of him who reflects on dent du midi: on the Bex side, and to the structure of the earth, and of those our left, our attention was directed, more external traces which indicate the deepparticularly, to a mountain called the est internal convulsion! to the mind of Morcle, which we had scarcely noticed him who loves Nature, and worships her before it is not so lofty as the midi mysteries! He endeavours to picture to mountain, but is more remarkable in its his mind immense caverns of sub-marine form, for its highest part seems to shoot and subterraneous fire: the war of ele perpendicularly into the atmosphere, in ments-of fire with earth-earth with the form of a tower: this, as well as la ocean-ocean with tempest and hurrident du midi, is capped with snow and cane; each disputing the sovereignty! ice, which have, perhaps, never dissolved In pursuing his conjectures on the ope since its formation. The bases of these, rations of this "wreck of matter," he eneach of which has its accompanying deavours to present to his mind a suspenchain, seem to descend into the waters sion of the rotatory motion of the earth; of the Rhone, and to close the country the destruction of the perpendicularity of before us. Between Bex and the river, the poles; perhaps the earth's assigned the scenery is luxuriant in flowers, mea- revolution round the sun on the verge of dows, copses, and trees of the brightest yielding to an excess of centripetal or verdure, particularly the chesnut; add centrifugal force; the earth, a being, as to these, the sound and sparkling of it were, of the solar system, stretched on numerous rivulets, and the Avencon, the rack of universal convulsion, and its which flows through Bex; and I am led bones, as the mountain-rocks have been to believe that the most fertile and rest- emphatically called, broken and disless imagination will find no object to placed! sigh for. Such, we have reason to believe, were the effects of three mundane revolutions, which geologists have traced, and as they are exhibited by the primitive, the secondary rocks, and alluvial deposits; but to give these convulsions an habitation, even in the "mind's eye,"-to place in idea the sublime appearances of From a mountain in a neighbouring bailiwick, was taken, in a fossil state, a lobster, which is still, I believe, in De Luc's cabinet at Geneva. This circumstance arrests attention in the most forcible manner-it challenges reflection; and, surrounded as I am by objects whose forms and magnitude are as won- universal earthquake, universal hurri derful as they are vast, I pause, and my mind turns involuntary upon itself. I endeavour to recal the theories of terrestrial convulsion and of deluge, and can rest on none with entire confidence and [* See Ath. Vol. I. p. 706.] 3L Eng. Mag. Vol. E cane, and universal deluge, is beyond the power of the most sublimated imagination! The theories of Newton and La Place have conducted us through infinite space: the laws and operations of the whole frame of the universe are embraced by our transported imaginations, 885] Sketches of Swiss Scenery, by a late Traveller. [886 yet is the theory of the earth a profound this legion, Maurice. Writers have enmystery, for we are as well satisfied with deavoured to invalidate the whole story, the fanciful hypothesis of Kirwan, who because the valley between Martigny informs us that Noah's house was built and St. Maurice is not, they say, suffion one of the Andes, or elsewhere on ciently large to contain 6000 men, the the borders of the Pacific Ocean, from number of the legion, and the army of whence he saw the great abyss, or south Maximian that murdered them. Yet, sea, open; as with the sagacity of Bishop let it be remembered that the event was Burnet, who imagines that the earth was a massacre, and not a battle; that an a large ball of water, enclosed in a crust army, which would suffer itself to be of granite; and that the bursting of this twice decimated without insurrection, ball was the opening of the great deep! might be massacred by a small number. Perhaps it may be conjectured, that, so But that this story is a fiction rests on long as philosophers think it necessary satisfactory grounds, for we may reasonto reconcile the theory of the earth with ably presume that the whole was a pia the Mosaic account of the deluge, so long fraus of Eucherius, a bishop of Lyons, must a succession of opake solutions The knowledge of this extensive masemanate from their imaginations. Let sacre did not, it appears, transpire at the the inquiring mind throw off the tram- time; it was not heard of until three mels of sect and system, and submit to generations of bishops (who must have the test of reason and experience: I consigned it to each other as a profound speak of entire freedom in application to the pursuit of science. There always has been, and I fear there always must continue to be, an esoteric and an exotiric doctrine: the frame of society would be disorganised without it. On proceeding towards the bridge which connects the Pays de Vaud with the Valais, our progress was arrested by two or three gendarmes, who desired to examine our passports: this was the first application of the kind which had been made to us since we passed the frontier near Pontarlier. The view from the bridge of St. Maurice, which is said to have been built by the Romans, while this town was called Agaunum, will check, for a few minutes, the progress of the traveller. The appearance of the town and of a chapel that hangs above it, is truly and singularly picturesque; St. Maurice appears to be built in a frame-work of rock, as it were, excavated from the base of la dent du Midi. Between this town and Martigny, it is said, that the Thebaan legion was twice decimated, and afterwards wholly destroyed by order of Maximian, because the soldiers refused to march against the Christians; and a speech, as remarkable for baseness of vassallage as of enthusiastic self-devotion, has been attributed to the martyred soldiery. It is pretended that this town takes its hame from that of the commander of secret,) had passed away; for this event, which is said to have taken place during the latter part of the third century, was not disclosed until the middle of the fifth; while the execution of Maximilianus, Marcellus, the centurion, and others, who were, about this period, the willing victims of their passive prejudice, or active zeal, is related with circumstantial minuteness. The order of St. Maurice, instituted by the Dukes of Savoy, and the erection and dedication of the abbey at this place by Sigismond, king of Burgundy, cannot be matters of surprise either to the sceptical or credulous of the nineteenth century, since events, which serve to increase the doubts of the phi losopher, are not calculated to render the faithful less dogmatical. The valley which we now entered, sometimes called the valley of the Pennine Alps, is the longest and widest in Switzerland; and the Rhone, from which it also take its name, is the largest and most rapid of its rivers; from its source, in a mountain called the Fourche, a few miles west of St. Gothard, to the lake of Geneva, it flows through an extent of eighty miles. This valley is one of the deepest in Helvetia, for its lowest part is scarcely raised above the level of the sea, while the mountains which command it, as Mont Rose and others, are among the loftiest elevations of the old world: it unites all climates and all seasons at the same time. The vine 887] Decision of Character. [888 yards in the vicinity of Martigny produce in the morning we can pass a track of wine of a quality strong and delicious: country where Nature languishes from here we can gaze, in the same minute, excessive heat, and in the evening we on the aloe and fig-tree of the torrid, and may cross on foot the never-dissolving the rhododendron of the frigid, zones; snows which surmount it! T. H. DECISION OF CHARACTER. From the European Magazine. THE GLEANER. NO. III. -This weak impress is as a figure Trenched in ice; which, with an hour's heat, Dissolves to water, and doth lose his form. more nor less than a firm, decisive mind, which with the eagle's eye seizes every available object, and with the giant's arm grasps it, and retains its hold, till it Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii. Sc. 2. has made it subservient to its purpose. O Na perusal of the pages of history, This it is that has effected the wonders in which we find the actions of which call forth our admiration, and promankind at different periods, and un- duced the examples of courage which der different circumstances, recorded; fire our minds and animate our hearts. or of those of biography, in which we This it is, which, when employed in a are often led to admire remarkable in- good cause, has raised those patterns of stances of individual courage, of firm- energetic zeal, the Howards and the ness of character, and decision of mind; Wilberforces of our country; and this it our feelings are not unfrequently those is also, which, when accompanied with of approbation, mingled with something a depraved will and a wicked heart, has like an inclination to envy, and accom- led the conquerors of former and modern panied with no small degree of surprise times to pursue their object through at that intellectual vigour which could fields of blood, to sacrifice every thing have supported the hero of the narrative to gratify their desires, and to break under all the difficulties that he had to through the bounds which morality and encounter, and have enabled him to rise religion would have imposed to their superior to all the impediments which it cruel and merciless ambition. was necessary he should remove. We view the action in all its different lights, and the longer we regard it, the more does our wonder increase. We feel well assured of the general weakness of human nature, and sufficiently conscious of our own individual feebleness; and are led to ask ourselves, whence he, whose exertions have been the subject of our consideration, could have obtained sufficient energy to surmount every obstacle which laid in his way, and to resist every temptation that endeavoured to lure him from his purpose: and though we know that he was nothing more than man, yet we could almost believe that he was possessed of some resources unknown to the generality of his fellow-mortals. But whilst we admire that firmness which, when employed in endeavouring to ameliorate the condition of mankind, has effected so much, we cannot help reverting to ourselves, and those around us in whose welfare we feel an interest, and on a faithful comparison of ourselves and them with those who have been the objects of our commendation, we cannot but acknowledge how little we possess of what we can only applaud. What a contrast does the generality of men afford; and what mischief and misery are produced by the total absence of that firmness which has characterised the greatest among mankind. But without merely satisfying ourselves with assertion, it shall be our business, in the present essay, to point out some of the marks, and disAnd what is this great secret which we tressing consequences, of that mental are anxious to be put in possession of, imbecility which we would deprecate, this talisman that dissolves difficulties into and in our next to notice the advantages air, this magic wand which disperses ev- resulting from that decision of character ery opposing obstacle, and seems to com- to which we have alluded. mand surrounding events? Nothing The desire of happiness, from the very 889] Decision of Character. [890 constitution of our nature, is universal. that it is far from our intention to patEvery man, whatever may be his dispo- ronize any thing like that pertinacious sition, or however supine and inactive obstinacy which characterizes some who he may appear in the eyes of his ac- possess the weakest minds, and who never quaintance, is hoping that this will, at make any advances towards improvesome future time, be the termination of ment, because they never listen to that bis wishes. Hence we see that one sets which might promote it. Decision of before him some objects of pursuit, and character, and a patient investigation of eagerly strives after its attainment, sup- all the arguments which may be adposing that its possession will procure vanced for and against any proposed for him all that he requires, little sus- object, are perfectly reconcileable with pecting that the very exertions that he is each other; and when these are judimaking, and the anticipations in which ciously tempered, we shall see precisely he is indulging, afford him more satis- that state of mind which in every point faction than the result to which they of view is the most desirable. may eventually lead could do. As long After the attention has been directed as the hoped-for reward of his diligence by any occurrence to the contemplation is steadily kept in view, and as long as of the acquisition of some valuable athis attention is alive to it, he is really tainment, or to the possession of some experiencing something like actual hap- enviable situation; and after the opipiness; and though disappointment may nions of those who are hest able to definally cool his ardour, and produce a cide correctly, and the proper means to temporary despondence, yet, with strength be adopted for success have been coolly of mind to cheer him in difficulties, he and deliberately weighed; when every will set out anew, and pass through probable difficulty has been reflected similar anxieties and surmount similar upon, and the most proper way to avoid obstacles, in the endeavour to gain now it, or to abate its force, has been revolvwhat he lost before. This man, though ed in the mind, he acts wisely who the world may frown, though friends perseveres in his exertion, and who may affect to pity, and though foes may suffers nothing, but some occurrence scorn, tastes more of the real pleasures that was as unexpected as impossible to of life than many are willing to believe. surmount, to move him from his purThe really miserable man is he, who, pose. The great reason why we have like the other, holds forth to himself seen, and still see, so many young men some promised attainment, pleases him- fall short in their endeavours, is, their self with the thoughts of its acquisition, permitting themselves to listen to the takes a few steps in the path that might desponding predictions, or suffering ultimately lead to it, is frightened by the unexpected obstructions that impede his progress, and turns back to precisely the same situation from which he set out, with a mind more distracted and a disposition more wavering than ever. To the younger part of our readers we would now particularly address ourselves, and solicit their attention whilst we endeavour to hold out a salutary caution and instructive warning, by endeavouring to persuade them to overcome that state of mental indecision which it is our object at present to describe. themselves to be deterred by the taunts of those who are desirous of getting the better of their credulity: they want that energy of action, that determined resolution, and that unhesitating promptness, which are so essential to the overcoming of difficulties. When they began their pursuit, perhaps every thing was favourable, and they indulged in that unwise confidence which is too often the prelude of relinquishing that which was lately the very subject of it: but when some unexpected circumstance takes place, when some unlooked-for obstacle hides And before we proceed farther, we the proposed object of their pursuit from wish to be clearly understood as to what their view, they pronounce that their is meant by any observations that may strength is not equal to what they had follow in pointing out the disadvantages undertaken, they wonder how it has so and misery which are the constant attend- happened that their illfated destiny has ants upon an unsettled state of mind, marshalled all the impediments in the |