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Picturesque Survey of Water, Wood, and Mountain Scenery. [386

would be thought to disfigure the finest face at St. James's.

have heard a sentence from every noble- the Londoners adopted the broad Scotch, man in England; till, after dinner, un- broad Scotch would then be considered dertaking to divide the bill, he ran thro' the standard of purity. If the Court pounds, shillings, and pence so adroitly, chose to call for winegar, every one else, and cut his figures with such commercial under pain of vulgarity, must purse up nimbleness, that I asked him by way of their mouths to the pronunciation; and a jest, whether he was not a clerk? To meeting between the teeth and lip in V, my surprize he confessed he was a banker's assistant; so, as it was now clear,he had only picked up the chit-chat of noble- It is now no more than two days since men,while they were drawing money, he I left home, and yet it appears almost declined quoting them any more. Indeed ten. When one changes on a sudden, afterwards he made an effort to re-esta- from still life to busy, the time, as it passblish his consequence, by showing that es, seems short, because novelty occupies he was upon good terms with bruisers; the mind; but on looking back at it, we and they, he assured me, were upon the fancy it long, because we measure its duvery best terms with lords. ration by the number of incidents.

Being only a few hours in London, I I shall write every week, and, as I have hitherto remarked nothing extraor- become acquainted with the town, give dinary, but the ridiculous accent of the you some account of its customs, manpeople. They too laugh at mine, not ners, and literature. Meanwhile rebecause it is, in itself, worse than their member me to friends at Sully. Say the own, but because it is not spoken where kindest things for me to dear there are a great number of houses. If tell Lion, I kiss his paw.

puss, and Adieu.

WATER, WOOD, AND MOUNTAIN SCENERY.*

Concluded.

From the New Annual Register.

"On the other hand the soldiers of

IF F towering eminences have the pow- Hannibal shrunk back with awe and er to charm and elevate men, who affright, when they arrived at the foot of are pursuing the milder occupations of the mountains, that backed the town of life, with what rapture shall they inspire Martigny. The sight of those enormous the hearts of those long encompassed rampires, whose heads, capped with with danger, who, from the top of high eternal snow, appeared to touch the heamountains, behold the goal to which vens, struck a sensible dejection on the their wishes and exertions have long been hearts of the soldiers. It was in the anxiously directed!-Zenophon affords middle of autumn: the trees were yellow a fine instance of the power of this union with the falling leaf; and a vast quantity of association and admiration over the of snow having blocked up many of the mind and heart. The Ten Thousand passes, the only objects which reminded Greeks, after encountering innumerable them of humanity, were a few miserable difficulties and dangers, in the heart of cottages, perched upon the points of inacan enemy's country, at length halted at cessible cliffs; flocks almost perished the foot of a high mountain. Arrived at with cold; and men of hairy bodies and its summit, the sea unexpectedly burst, of savage visages! On the ninth day,after in all its grandeur, on their astonished conquering difficulties without number, sight! The joy was universal; the the army reached the summit of the Alps. soldiers could not refrain from tears; The alarm, which had been circulating they embraced their generals and cap- among the troops all the way, now betains with the most extravagant delight; came so evident, that Hannibal thought they appeared already to have reached proper to notice it; and, halting on the the places of their nativity, and, in im- top of one of the mountains, from which agination, again sat beneath the vines there was a fine view of Italy, he pointed that shaded their paternal dwellings!

* See p. 158.

out to them the luxuriant plains of Piedmont, which appeared, like a large map.

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Picturesque Survey of Water, Wood, and Mountain Scenery. [388

before them. He magnified the beauty of a soldier but was alternately petrified those regions, and represented to them, with horror, or captivated with delight. how near they were of putting a final At one time feeling himself a coward, at period to their difficulties, since one or another, animated with the inspirations two battles would inevitably give them of a hero! Arrived at the summit of possession of the Roman capital. This that tremendous mountain, and anticipatspeech, filled with such promising hopes, and the effect of which was so much enforced by the sight of Italian landscapes, inspired the dejected soldiers with renewed vigour and alacrity; they sat forward, and soon after arrived in the plains, near the city of Turin.

ing nothing but a multitude of dangers and accidents in descending from those regions of perpetual snow, on a sudden turning of the road, they beheld tables, covered, as if by magic, with every kind of necessary refreshment-The monks of St. Bernard had prepared the banquet. Bending with humility and grace, those holy fathers besought the army to partake the comforts of their humble fare. The army feasted, returned tumultuous thanks to the monks, and passed on. A few days after this event, the battle of Marengo decided the fate of Italy.

"To the eye and heart of the ambitious, how many subjects of inducement

"This celebrated march, performed at such an unfavourable season of the year, in a country, rendered by nature almost inaccessible, has been the admiration of every succeeding age; and many a fruitless attempt has been made to ascertain its actual route. Gen. Melville has at length settled the question. With Polybius in his hand, he traced it from the point where Hannibal is supposed and delight do mountains present! to have crossed the Rhone, up the left Who would not be proud to climb the bank of that river, across Dauphiné to the summits of the Alps, the Pyrenees, and entrance of the mountains at Les Echelles, the Andes? Is there a Sicilian, who along the vale to Chamberry, up the banks does not boast of Etna? Is there a of the Isere, by Conflans and Mouster, Scot, who does not take pride in celeover the gorge of the Alps, called the Lit- brating Ben Lomond? and is there an tle St. Bernard, and down their eastern Italian, that is not vain of the Apenslopes by Aosti and Ivrea, to the plains of nines? Who, that is alive to nature Piedmont, in the neighborhood of Turin.' and the muse, would not be delighted to "On the 6th of May, in the year wander up the sides of the Caucasus, eighteen hundred, Napoleon, then first the cone of Teneriffe, or those beautiful consul of France (gaudens viam fecisse mountains, situated on the confines of ruina,) set off from Paris to assume the three nations, so often and so justly command of the army of Italy. On the celebrated by the poets of antient thirteenth, he arrived in the neighbour- Greece? and shall our friend Colonna hood of Lausanne. Having reviewed be censured for confessing, that the his troops, he pursued his journey along proudest moments of his existence have the north banks of the lake of Geneva, been those in which he has reached the and passing through Vevey, Villeneuve, summits of the Wrekin, the Ferywn, and Aigle, arrived at Martinach, situat- and the cone of Langollen? or when ed near a fine sweep of the Rhone, near he has beheld from the tops of Carnedds its confluence with the Durance. From David, and Llewellyn, a long chain of this place the modern Hannibal, (not mountains, stretching from the north to more resembling that warrior in milita- the south, from Penmaenmawr to Cader ry talent than in perfidy,) passed through Idris? Snowdon rising in the centre, Burg, and St. Brenchier; and after his head capt with snow, and towering great toil, difficulty and danger, arrived above the clouds, while his immense with his whole army at the top of the sides, black with rugged and impending great St. Bernard. The road up this rocks, stretched in long length below! mountain is one of the most dif- 66 During his continuance on Pen-y ficult, and the scenes, which it presents, Voel, Mr. Cox, the celebrated Swiss are as magnificent as any in Switzerland. traveller, felt that extreme satisfaction, Rocks, gulphs, avalanches, or precipices, which is ever experienced when elevated presented themselves at every step. Not on the highest point of the adjacent

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[390

country. The air,' as that gentleman lian peasants, in the same manner, have justly observes from Rousseau, is more such an affection for Etna, that they bepure, the body more active, and the lieve Sicily would not be habitable mind more serene. Lifted up above without it. It keeps us warm in winthe dwellings of man, we discard all ter,' say they, and furnishes us with grovelling and earthly passions; the ice in summer.'

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thoughts assume a character of sublimi- If we except mountains, nothing has ty, proportionate to the grandeur of the so imposing an effect upon the imaginasurrounding objects: and, as the body tion, as high, impending and precipitate approaches nearer to the ethereal re- rocks; those objects, which, in so pecugions, the soul imbibes a portion of liar a manner, appear to have been formtheir unalterable purity.' In a note to ed by some vast convulsion of the earth; this passage Rousseau expresses his and I remember, my Lelius, few scenes, surprise, that a bath of the reviving air which have given me greater severity of of the mountains is not more frequently delight, than those vast crags, which rear prescribed by the physician, as well as themselves in a multitude of shapes, near by the moralist. Ogwen's Lake; at the falls of the Con"Emotions of religion are always way; at St. Gowen's Chapel in Pemthe most predominant in such elevated brokeshire, and the singular masses at regions. Mr. Adams, when employed Worm's Head, in the district of Gower. as minister plenipotentiary, from the The first of these scenes is the more enStates of America to the court of Ber- deared to my fancy, from the following lin, visited the vast mountains that sepa- Ode having been written by La Rocherate Silesia from Bohemia. Upon the fort, among its rude and sterile preciSchneegniten he beheld the celebrated pices. pits, where the snow remains unmelted for the greater part of the year: upon the Risenkoppe, the highest pinnacle in Germany, he beheld all Silesia, all Saxony, and Bohemia, stretched like a map before him. Here,' says he, my first thought was turned to the Supreme Creator, who gave existence to that immensity of objects, expanded before my view. The transition from this idea to that of my own relation, as an immortal Soul with the Author of nature, was natural and immediate; from this to the recollection of my country, my parents, and my friends.'

6

"It is highly interesting to observe, what pride a mountaineer takes in his country. Mr. Coxe, travelling near Munster, was requested by a peasant to inform him what he thought of his country; and pointing to the mountains with rapture, he exclaimed, behold our walls and bulwarks, even Constantinople is not so strongly fortified.' And Colonna never reflects, but with pleasure, on the self-evident satisfaction with which a farmer, residing in one of the most inaccessible cliffs, near Ffestiniog, replied to his assertion, that England was the finest and best country in the world, ah! but you have no mountains, sir; you've got no mountains!'-The Sici

ODE.
I.

To th' Oak, that near my cottage grew,
I gave a lingering, sad adieu;
I left my Zenophelia true

To love's fine power-
I felt the tear my cheek bedew
In that sad hour.---
II.

Upon the mountain's side I stood,
Capt with Rothsay's arching wood;
And, as I view'd the mimic flood,

So smooth and sti!!,

I listen'd---gaz'd in pensive mood---
Then climb'd the hill:
III.

Adieu, thou wood-embosom'd spire,
• No longer shall my rustic lyre
In tender simple notes respire

Thy tombs among;

No longer will it sooth thy choir
With funeral song.
IV.

"The world before me ;---I must rove
• Through vice's glittering, vain alcove;
'Alas! as 'mid the world I move,

'Shall I have time

To tremble at the name of love,
'And speak in rhyme. ?”
V.
Five years are past, since this I sigh'd,
Since to the world without a guide,
My fortunes I oppos'd to pride ;---

391]

On the Disposal of the Dead.

Oh! time mispent !--

My pains are lost---my talents tried--

With punishment!

VI.

Now to my hamlet I'll retire,

Cur'd of every vain desire ;
And burning with the sacred fire,

That charm'd my youth;

To love I'll dedicate my lyre,

And heaven-born truth.

[392

chitecture of man. Sometimes they rear themselves into vast natural amphitheatres; at other times into rampires, with all the regularity of immense walls; and with no herbage, no hanging masses of shrubs, no ivy adorning their crevices, they surprise, without delighting us. For, as the same elegant writer truly observes, no object receives so much beauty from contrast as the rock. "When rocks are scattered among Some objects,' says he, are beautiful woods, covered with ivy, and peopled in themselves; the eye is pleased with with animals, as in the celebrated pass the tuftings of a tree; it is amused at Undercliff, nothing can be more em with pursuing the eddying of a stream; bellishing to scenery, and nothing fasci- or it rests with delight on the broken nates the imagination in a more vivid arches of a gothic ruin. Such objects, and impressive manner. Of all the independent of composition, are beautirocks, which this island can boast, few ful in themselves. But the rock, bleak, can compare with those that alternately naked and unadorned, seems scarcely to form the sides, the front screens, and the deserve a place among them. Tint it back grounds of the Wye. There,' with mosses and lichens of various hues, says Mr. Gilpin, who has described the and you give it a degree of beauty; general character of this unequalled river adorn it with shrubs and hanging herwith the skill and judgment of a painter, bage, and you make it still more picturand with all the taste and genius of a esque; connect it with wood, water, and poet, the rocks are continually starting broken ground, and you make it in the through the woods, and are generally highest degree interesting. Its colour simple and grand; rarely formal or fan- and its form are so accommodating, that tastic. Sometimes they project in those it generally blends into one of the most beautiful square masses, yet broken and beautiful appendages of landscape.' shattered in every line, which is characteristic of the most majestic species of rook. Sometimes they slant obliquely from the eye in shelving diagonal strata ; and sometimes they appear in large masses of smooth stone, detached from each other and half buried in the soil.' These masses of smooth rock are those objects of nature, which most resemble the ar

SIR,

IT

where high rocks, o'er ocean's dashing floods,

Wave high in air, their panoply of woods,
Admiring taste delights to stray beneath
With eye uplifted, and forgets to breathe ;
Or, as aloft his daring footsteps climb,
Crests their high suminits with his arm sub-
lime.

Philos. of Nature.

ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD.

From the Monthly Magazine.

There is a class of animals [Vermes] T seems to have been the favourite which forms the connecting link beobject of most ages and countries to twixt animal and vegetable life; through preserve from putrefaction the bodies of this medium the bodies of dead animals those who, in life, had been beloved or are transformed into new life in vegetarespected. The Egyptians have suc- bles. Instead, therefore of incasing the ceeded in their mummies, and the Ro- corpse in lead or oak coffins, or embalmmans in burning and collecting th ashes ing to preserve it a little longer from the of the dead; but the more natural and worms, it is surely more rational, and rational process has seldom been consi- more according to the laws of nature, dered, viz. that of speedily incorporating to bury it in such thin or perishable mawith the earth all that remains of orga- terials as may most speedily promote its nized matter. dissolution; and, if the surface of the

393]

A Trip to Paris.

[394

ground were covered with flowering fumed essence of all that now remains plants, the grave, instead of an object of of what was in life most dear to us. disgust and horror, might be converted into a pleasing record of our past affections.

How delightful is the thought, that while we are inhaling the fragrance of a rose or violet, growing in the mould composed of our ancestors or friends, we may be breathing the pure and per

I

If all our church-yards were flowergardens, and every grave a bed of roses, we should learn to look on the mansions of the dead with hope and joy, and not with dread and disgust; and the good Christian should follow his Lord's example, whose burial-place was in a garden. H. R.

A TRIP TO PARIS.

Continued.

BELIEVE I have not as yet so as to the wants of cleanliness in the hosmuch as mentioned the Palais Royal, pitals here, receive any confirmation from and shall for the present postpone any what they now exhibit in that respect. notice of it, having still objects of great. The poor and sick must therefore someer interest to consider. Among these I how be provided for, though not in reckon the hospitals of Paris. If the such mansions as, what the French call, French nation are possessed of charity the English hospitals of luxury; where in the same degree as the people of Eng- a great part of the funds are diverted land, it must be admitted that either from their legitimate object, and expendthey are averse to making a public dis- ed in large salaries for the officers, and play of it, or that some other cause di- in splendid buildings. There are, I beverts it from that course which it takes live, twenty-two hospitals, if not more, in England; where the meetings of nu- in Paris, the management of the whole merous societies, voluntarily united for of which is vested in a committee of some charitable purpose or other, are as government, and therefore liable to all frequent and regular as the rising of the the defects of such an administration. sun, and innumerable edifices for these The funds of these hospitals consist in purposes are constructed at the expense what little property the Revolution has of private individuals, whilst their archi- left them; but the greatest part of the tecture serves at the same time to ornament the places where they are erected. Little or nothing of all this is to be met with in the metropolis of France if you except that truly grand and imposing structure the Hotel des Invalides, erected by a warlike monarch, having uncontroled command over the revenues of the whole nation; and the institution The Hotel des Invalides distinguishfor foundlings, which is upon a very ex- es itself in a view of Paris by its gilt cutensive scale. But here, as in all other pola, an unusual object in European matters which concern the public, one architecture, proclaiming, as it were, to may see the effect of an absolute gov- the spectator, that the comfortable reernment, upon which the individuals of treat of the disabled soldier is the princiale nation idly lean having neither au- pal object of the care of the nation and thority nor inclination to take the busi-s chief, A winged lion, a trophy torn ness of the community into their own from the impotent republic of Venice, hands. stands on a high pedestal at the entrance of the avenue leading to the gate and iron balustrade.* The building pre

The streets of Paris, however, do not at present by any means exhibit that state of mendicity which must have existed formerly, if the accounts of travellers are correct; nor do these accounts E Eng. Mag. Vol. I.

expense is supplied by the government. It is perhaps a plan deserving of imitation, to keep patients under different diseases, as they do here, separated in different hospitals, by which the nature of such diseases is likely to become more perfectly understood by the medical men attached to these hospitals.

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reader, that this trophy has since been re*It is scarcely necessary to remind the stored to the city from which it was brought by the universal plunderers.- EDITOR.

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