CHAPTER XIII

‘And would ask the Apollo to dance!’

In three months’ practice, and with proper tuition, Greek forms would be French, and they would be perfect!—Mademoiselles Fanny and Noblet, I kiss your hands; but I have no pardon to beg of Madame Le Gallois, for she looked like a lady (very tightly laced) in the ballet, and played like a heroine in the pantomime part ofLa Folle par Amour. There was a violent start at the first indication of her madness, that alarmed me a little, but all that followed was natural, modest, and affecting in a high degree. The French turn their Opera-stage into a mad-house; they turn their mad-houses (at least they have one constructed on this principle) into theatres of gaiety, where they rehearse ballets, operas, and plays. If dancing were an antidote to madness, one would think the French would be always in their right senses.

I was told I ought to seeNina, or La Folle par Amourat the Salle Louvois, or Italian Theatre. If I went for that purpose, it would be rather with a wish than from any hope of seeing it better done. I went however.

‘Oh for a beaker full of the warm South!’

It was to see theGazza Ladra. The house was full, the evening sultry, a hurry and bustle in the lobbies, an eagerness in the looks of the assembled crowd. The audience seemed to be in earnest, and to have imbibed an interest from the place. On the stage there were rich dresses and voices, the tones of passion, ease, nature, animation; in short, the scene had a soul in it. One wondered how one was in Paris, with their pasteboard maps of the passions, and thin-skinned, dry-lipped humour. Signora Mombelli played the humble, but interesting heroine charmingly, with truth, simplicity, and feeling. Her voice is neither rich nor sweet, but it is clear as a bell. Signor Pellegrini played the intriguing Magistrate, with a solemnity and farcical drollery, that I would not swear is much inferior to Liston. But I swear, that Brunet (whom I saw the other night, and had seen before without knowing it) is not equal to Liston. Yet he is a feeble, quaint diminutive of that original. He squeaks and gibbers oddly enough at theThéâtre des Variétés, like a mouse in the hollow of a musty cheese, his small eyes peering out, and his sharp teeth nibbling at the remains of some faded joke. The French people ofquality go to the Italian Opera, but they do not attend to it. Thetabbiesof the Court are tabbies still; and took no notice of what was passing on the stage on this occasion, till the tolling of the bell made a louder and more disagreeable noise than themselves; this they seemed to like. They behave well at their own theatres, but it would be a breach of etiquette to do so anywhere else. A girl in the gallery (an Italian by her complexion, and from her interest in the part) was crying bitterly at the story of theMaid and the Magpie, while three Frenchmen, in theTroisième Loge, were laughing at her the whole time. I said to one of them, ‘It was not a thing to laugh at, but to admire.’ He turned away, as if the remark did not come within his notions of sentiment. This did not stagger me in my theory of the French character; and when one is possessed of nothing but a theory, one is glad, not sorry to keep it, though at the expense of others.[35]

We left Paris in the Diligence, and arrived at Fontainbleau the first night. The accommodations at the inn were indifferent, and not cheap. The palace is a low straggling mass of very old buildings, having been erected by St. Louis in the 12th century, whence he used to date his Rescripts, ‘From my Deserts of Fontainbleau!’ It puts one in mind of Monkish legends, of faded splendour, of the leaden spouts and uncouth stone-cherubim of a country church-yard. It is empty or gaudy within, stiff and heavy without. HenryIV.figures on the walls with the fair Gabrielle, like the Tutelary Satyr of the place, keeping up the remembrance of old-fashioned royalty and gallantry. They here shew you the table (a plain round piece of mahogany) on which Buonaparte in 1814 signedthe abdication of the human race, in favour of the hereditary proprietors of the species. We walked forward a mile or two before the coach the next day on the road to Montargis. It presents a long, broad, and stately avenue without a turning, as far as the eye can reach, and is skirted on each side by a wild, woody, rocky scenery. The birch-trees, with their grey stems and light glittering branches, silvered over the darker back-ground, and afforded a striking contrast to the brown earth and green moss beneath. There was a stillness in the woods, which affects the mind the more inobjects whose very motion is gentleness. The day was dull, but quite mild, though in the middle of January. The situation of Fontainbleau is certainly interesting and fine. It stands in the midst of an extensive forest, intersected with craggy precipices and rugged ranges of hills; and the various roads leading to or from it are cut out of a wilderness, which a hermit might inhabit. The approach to the different towns in France has, in this respect, the advantage over ours; for, from burning wood instead of coal, they must have large woods in the neighbourhood, which clothe the country round them, and afford, as Pope expresses it,

‘In summer shade, in winter fire.’

We dig our fuel out of the bowels of the earth, and have a greater portion of its surface left at our disposal, which we devote not to ornament, but use. A copse-wood or an avenue of trees however, makes a greater addition to the beauty of a town than a coal-pit or a steam-engine in its vicinity.

When the Diligence came up, and we took our seats in thecoupé(which is that part of a French stage-coach which resembles an old shattered post-chaise, placed in front of the main body of it) we found a French lady occupying the third place in it, whose delight at our entrance was as great as if we had joined her on some desert island, and whose mortification was distressing when she learnt we were not going the whole way with her. She complained of the cold of the night air; but this she seemed to dread less than the want of company. She said she had been deceived, for she had been told the coach was full, and was in despair that she should not have a soul to speak to all the way to Lyons. We got out, notwithstanding, at the inn at Montargis, where we met with a very tolerable reception, and were waited on at supper by one of those Maritorneses that perfectly astonish an English traveller. Her joy at our arrival was as extreme as if her whole fortune depended on it. She laughed, danced, sung, fairly sprung into the air, bounced into the room, nearly overset the table, hallooed and talked as loud as if she had been alternately ostler and chamber-maid. She was as rough and boisterous as any country bumpkin at a wake or statute-fair; and yet so full of rude health and animal spirits, that you were pleased instead of being offended. In England, a girl with such boorish manners would not be borne; but her good-humour kept pace with her coarseness, and she was as incapable of giving as of feeling pain. There is something in the air in France that carries off theblue devils!

The mistress of the inn, however, was a little peaking, piningwoman, with her face wrapped up in flannel, and not quite so inaccessible to nervous impressions; and when I asked the girl, ‘What made her speak so loud?’ she answered for her, ‘To make people deaf!’ This side-reproof did not in the least moderate the brazen tones of her help-mate, but rather gave a new fillip to her spirits; though she was less on the alert than the night before, and appeared to the full as much bent on arranging her curls in the looking-glass when she came into the room, as on arranging the breakfast things on the tea-board.

We staid here till one o’clock on Sunday (the 16th,) waiting the arrival of the Lyonnais, in which we had taken our places forward, and which I thought would never arrive. Let no man trust to a placard stuck on the walls of Paris, advertising the cheapest and most expeditious mode of conveyance to all parts of the world. It may be no better than a snare to the unwary. The Lyonnais, I thought from the advertisement, was theSwift-sureof Diligences. It was to arrive ten hours before any other Diligence; it was the most compact, the most elegant of modern vehicles. From the description and the print of it, it seemed ‘a thing of life,’ a minion of the fancy. To see it stand in a state of disencumbered abstraction, it appeared a self-impelling machine; or if it needed aid, was horsed, unlike your Paris Diligences, by nimble, airy Pegasuses. To look at thefac-simileof it that was put into your hand, you would say it might run or fly—might traverse the earth, or whirl you through the air, without let or impediment, so light was it to outward appearance in structure ‘fit for speed succinct’—a chariot forPuckorArielto ride in! This was the account I had (or something like it) from Messieurs the Proprietors at theCour des Fontaines. ‘Mark how a plain tale shall put them down.’ Those gentlemen came to me after I had paid for two places as far as Nevers, to ask me to resign them in favour of two Englishmen, who wished to go the whole way, and to re-engage them for the following evening. I said I could not do that; but as I had a dislike to travelling at night, I would go on to Montargis by some other conveyance, and proceed by the Lyonnais, which would arrive there at eight or nine on Sunday morning, as far as I could that night. I set out on the faith of this understanding. I had some difficulty in finding the Officesur la place, to which I had been directed, and which was something between a stable, a kitchen, and a cook-shop. I was led to it by a shabbydoubleor counterpart of the Lyonnais, which stood before the door, empty, dirty, bare of luggage, waiting the Paris one, which had not yet arrived. It drove into town four hours afterwards, with three founderedhacks, with the postilion andConducteurfor its complement of passengers, the last occupying the left hand corner of thecoupéin solitary state, with a whisp of straw thrust through a broken pane of one of the front windows, and a tassel of blue and yellow fringe hanging out of the other; and with that mixture of despondency andfiertéin his face, which long and uninterrupted pondering on the state of the way-bill naturally produces in such circumstances. He seized upon me and my trunks as lawful prize; he afterwards insisted on my going forward in the middle of the night to Lyons, (contrary to my agreement,) and I was obliged to comply, or to sleep upon trusses of straw in a kind of out-house. We quarrelled incessantly, but I could not help laughing, for he sometimes looked like my old acquaintance, Dr. S., and sometimes like my friend, A—— H——, of Edinburgh. He said we should reach Lyons the next evening, and we got there twenty-four hours after the time. He told me for my comfort, the reason of his being so late was, that two of his horses had fallen down dead on the road. He had to raise relays of horses all the way, as if we were travelling through a hostile country; quarrelled with all the postilions about an abatement of a few sous; and once our horses were arrested in the middle of the night by a farmer who refused to trust him; and he had to go before the Mayor, as soon as day broke. We were quizzed by the post-boys, the innkeepers, the peasants all along the road, as a shabby concern; ourConducteurbore it all, like anotherCandide. We stopped at all the worst inns in the outskirts of the towns, where nothing was ready; or when it was, was not eatable. The second morning we were to breakfast at Moulins; when we alighted, our guide told us it was eleven: the clock in the kitchen pointed to three. As he laughed in my face when I complained of his misleading me, I told him that he was ‘un impudent,’ and this epithet sobered him the rest of the way. As we left Moulins, the crimson clouds of evening streaked the west, and I had time to think of Sterne’sMaria. The people at the inn, I suspect, had never heard of her. There was no trace of romance about the house. Certainly, mine was not a Sentimental Journey. Is it not provoking to come to a place, that has been consecrated by ‘famous poet’s pen,’ as a breath, a name, a fairy-scene, and find it a dull, dirty town? Let us leave the realities to shift for themselves, and think only of those bright tracts that have been reclaimed for us by the fancy, where the perfume, the sound, the vision, and the joy still linger, like the soft light of evening skies! Is the story of Maria the worse, because I am travelling a dirty road in a rascally Diligence? Or is it an injury done us by the author to haveinvented for us what we should not have met with in reality? Has it not been read with pleasure by thousands of readers, though the people at the inn had never heard of it? Yet Sterne would have been vexed to find that the fame of his Maria had never reached the little town of Moulins. We are always dissatisfied with the good we have, and always punished for our unreasonableness.

At Palisseau (the road is rich in melodramatic recollections) it became pitch-dark; you could not see your hand; I entreated to have the lamp lighted; ourConducteursaid it was broken (cassé). With much persuasion, and the ordering a bottle of their best wine, which went round among the people at the inn, we got a lantern with a rushlight in it, but the wind soon blew it out, and we went on our way darkling; the road lay over a high hill, with a loose muddy bottom between two hedges, and as we did not attempt to trot or gallop, we came safe to the level ground on the other side. We breakfasted at Rouane, where we were first shewn into the kitchen, while they were heating a suffocating stove in a squalidsalle à manger. There, while I was sitting half dead with cold and fatigue, a boy came and scraped a wooden dresser close at my ear, with a noise to split one’s brain, and with true Frenchnonchalance; and a portly landlady, who had risen just as we had done breakfasting, ushered us to our carriage with the airs and graces of a Madame Maintenon. In France you meet with the court address in a stable-yard. In other countries you may find grace in a cottage or a wilderness; but it is simple, unconscious grace, without the full-blown pride and strut ofmanneredconfidence and presumption. A woman in France is graceful by going out of her sphere; not by keeping within it.—In crossing the bridge at Rouane, the sun shone brightly on the river and shipping, which had a busy cheerful aspect; and we began to ascend the Bourbonnois under more flattering auspices. We got out and walked slowly up the sounding road. I found that the morning air refreshed and braced my spirits; and that even the continued fatigue of the journey, which I had dreaded as a hazardous experiment, was a kind of seasoning to me. I was less exhausted than the first day. I will venture to say, that for an invalid, sitting up all night is better than lying in bed all day. Hardships, however dreadful to nervous apprehensions, by degrees give us strength and resolution to endure them: whereas effeminacy softens and renders us less and less capable of encountering pain or difficulty. It is the love of indulgence, or the shock of the first privation or effort, that confirms almost all the weaknesses of body or mind. As we loitered up the long, winding ascent of theroad from Rouane, we occasionally approached the brink of some Alpine declivity tufted with pine trees, and noticed the white villas, clustering [or] scattered, which in all directions spotted the very summits of that vast and gradual amphitheatre of hills which overlooked the neighbouring town. The Bourbonnois is the first large chain of hills piled one upon another, and extending range beyond range, that you come to on the route to Italy, and that occupy a wide-spread district, like a mighty conqueror, with uniform and growing magnificence. To those who have chiefly seen detached mountains or abrupt precipices rising from the level surface of the ground, the effect is exceedingly imposing and grand. The descent on the other side into Tarare is more sudden and dangerous; and you avoid passing over the top of the mountain (along which the road formerly ran) by one of those fine, broad, firmly-cemented roads with galleries and bridges, which bespeak at once the master-hand that raised them. Tarare is a neat little town, famous for the manufacture of serges and calicoes. We had to stop here for three-quarters of an hour, waiting for fresh horses; and as we sat in thecoupéin this helpless state, the horses taken out, the sun shining in, and the wind piercing through every cranny of the broken panes and rattling sash-windows, the postilion came up and demanded to know if we were English, as there were two English gentlemen who would be glad to see us. I excused myself from getting out, but said I should be happy to speak to them. Accordingly, my informant beckoned to a young man in black, who was standing at a little distance in a state of anxious expectation, and who coming to the coach-door said, he presumed we were from London, and that he had taken the liberty to pay his respects to us. His friend, he said, who was staying with him, was ill in bed, or he would have done himself the same pleasure. He had on a pair of wooden clogs, turned up and pointed at the toes in the manner of the country (which he recommended to me as useful for climbing the hills if ever I should come into those parts) warm worsted mittens, and had a thin, genteel, shivering aspect. I expected every moment he would tell me his name or business; but all I learnt was that he and his friend had been here some time, and that they could not get away till spring, that there were no entertainments, that trade was flat, and that the French seemed to him a very different people from the English. The fact is, he found himself quite at a loss in a French country-town, and had no other resource or way of amusing himself, than by looking out for the Diligences as they passed, and trying to hear news from England. He stood at his own door, and waved his hand with a melancholy air as we rode by, and no doubtinstantly went up stairs to communicate to his sick friend, that he had conversed with two English people.

Our delay at Tarare had deprived us of nearly an hour of daylight; and, besides, the miserable foundered jades of horses, that we had to get on with in this paragon of Diligences, were quite unequal to the task of dragging it up and down the hills on the road to Lyons, which was still twenty miles distant. The night was dark, and we had no light. I found it was quite hopeless when we should reach our journey’s end (if we did not break our necks by the way) and that both were matters of very great indifference to Mons.le Conducteur, who was only bent on saving the pockets of Messieurs his employers, and who had no wish, like me, to see the Vatican! He affected to make bargains for horses, which always failed and added to our delay; and lighted his lantern once or twice, but it always went out. At last I said that I had intended to give him a certain sum for himself, but that if we did not arrive in Lyons by ten o’clock at night, he might depend upon it I would not give him a single farthing. This had the desired effect. He got out at the next village we came to, and three stout horses were fastened to the harness. He also procured a large piece of candle (with a reserve of another piece of equal length and thickness in his lantern) and held it in his hand the whole way, only shifting it from one hand to the other, as he grew tired, and biting his lips and making wry faces at this new office of acandelabrum, which had been thrust upon him much against his will. I was not sorry, for he was one of the most disagreeable Frenchmen I ever met with, having all the indifference and self-sufficiency of his countrymen with none of their usual obligingness. He seemed to me a person out of his place (a thing you rarely discover in France)—a broken-down tradesman, or ‘one that had had misfortunes,’ and who neither liked nor was fit for his present situation ofConducteurto a Diligence without funds, without horses, and without passengers. We arrived in safety at Lyons at eleven o’clock at night, and were conducted to theHotel des Couriers, where we, with some difficulty, procured a lodging and a supper, and were attended by a brown, greasy, dark-haired, good-humoured, awkward gypsey of a wench from the south of France, who seemed just caught; stared and laughed, and forgot every thing she went for; could not help exclaiming every moment—‘Que Madame a le peau blanc!’ from the contrast to her own dingy complexion and dirty skin, took a large brass-pan of scalding milk, came and sat down by me on a bundle of wood, and drank it; said she had had no supper, for her head ached, and declared the English werebraves gens, and that the Bourbons werebons enfans, started up tolook through the key-hole, and whispered through her broad strong-set teeth, that a fine Madam was descending the staircase, who had been to dine with a great gentleman, offered to take away the supper things, left them, and called us the next morning with her head and senses in a state of even greater confusion than they were over-night. The familiarity of common servants in France surprises the English at first; but it has nothing offensive in it, any more than the good natured gambols and freedoms of a Newfoundland dog. It is quite natural.

Lyons is a fine, dirty town. The streets are good, but so high and narrow, that they look like sinks of filth and gloom. The shops are mere dungeons. Yet two noble rivers water the city, the Rhone and the Saone—the one broad and majestic, the other more confined and impetuous in its course, and join a little below the town to pour their friendly streams into the Mediterranean. The square is spacious and handsome, and the heights of St. Just, that overlook it, command a fine view of the town, the bridges, both rivers, the hills of Provence, the road to Chambery, and the Alps, with their snowy tops propping the clouds. The sight of them effectually deterred me from attempting to go by Geneva and the Simplon; and we were contented (for this time) with the humbler passage of Mount Cenis. Here is theHotel de Notre Dâme de Piété, which is shewn you as the inn where Rousseau stopped on his way to Paris, when he went to overturn the French Monarchy by the force of style. I thought of him, as we came down the mountain of Tarare, in his gold-laced hat, and with hisjet d’eauplaying. If they could but have known who was coming, how many battalions would have been sent out to meet him; what a ringing of alarm-bells, what a beating of drums, what raising of drawbridges, what barring of gates, what examination of passports, what processions of priests, what meetings of magistrates, what confusion in the towns, what a panic through the country, what telegraphic despatches to the Court of Versailles, what couriers posting to all parts of Europe, what manifestoes from armies, what a hubbub of Holy Alliances, and all for what? To prevent one man from speaking what he and every other man felt, and whose only fault was that the beatings of the human heart had found an echo in his pen! At Lyons I saw this inscription over a door:Ici on trouve le seul et unique depôt de l’encre sans pareil et incorruptible—which appeared to me to contain the whole secret of French poetry. I went into a shop to buy M. Martine’sDeath of Socrates, which I saw in the window, but they would neither let me have that copy nor get me another. The French are not ‘a nation of shopkeepers.’ They had quite as lieve see you walk out of their shops as come intothem. While I was waiting for an answer, a French servant in livery brought in four volumes of theHistory of a Foundling, an improved translation, in which it was said themorceauxomitted by M. de la Place were restored. I was pleased to see my old acquaintance Tom Jones, with his French coat on. The poetry of M. Alphonse Martine and of M. Casimir de la Vigne circulates in the provinces and in Italy, through the merit of the authors and the favour of the critics. L. H. tells me that the latter is a great Bonapartist, and talks of ‘the tombs of the brave.’ He said I might form some idea of M. Martine’s attempts to be great andunfrenchifiedby the frontispiece to one of his poems, in which a young gentleman in an heroic attitude is pointing to the sea in a storm, with his other hand round a pretty girl’s waist. I told H. this poet had lately married a lady of fortune. He said, ‘That’s the girl.’ He also said very well, I thought, that ‘the French seemed born to puzzle the Germans.’ Why are there not salt-spoons in France? In England it is a piece of barbarism to put your knife into a salt-cellar with another. But in France the distinction between grossness and refinement is done away. Every thing there is refined!

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 thecoupé, 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 theGarçon, but to call him acoquin, (which being a Milanese wasnot 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 theConducteur, 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 theConducteur: 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 ofbienseancein 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 theConducteur, 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 Hookor 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. Anegociantat my right-hand corner, who was inclined to piece out a lengthened recital with aparce queand ade sorte queat 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’sdominions, 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 theDouane. It was striking to have to pass and repass thepiquetsof 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 wassome questionable matter enough—but no notice was taken. My box was afterwards corded andleadedwith 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 fullview 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 thesçavoir vivrein France, and one of the methods of adding to theagrémensof 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 wedidsee 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 ofthe 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 sceneryto 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 triflingdouceur‘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 tounsing! 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 themap. 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,sayinga 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 lookback 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 theGens d’armes, whowere 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. Thetraiteurof 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 theforteof Talma, which was a language common to human nature; that in hisŒdipus, 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 andsteep 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 somegalleries, 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 ahuge, 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 onterra 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.

My arrival at Turin was the first and only moment of intoxication I have found in Italy. It is a city of palaces. After a change of dress (which, at the end of a long journey, is a great luxury) I walked out, and traversing several clean, spacious streets, came to a promenade outside the town, from which I saw the chain of Alps we had left behind us, rising like a range of marble pillars in the evening sky. Monte Viso and Mount Cenis resembled two pointed cones ofice, shooting up above all the rest. I could distinguish the broad and rapid Po, winding along at the other extremity of the walk, through vineyards and meadow grounds. The trees had on that deep sad foliage, which takes a mellower tinge from being prolonged into the midst of winter, and which I had only seen in pictures. A Monk was walking in a solitary grove at a little distance from the common path. The air was soft and balmy, and I felt transported to another climate—another earth—another sky. The winter was suddenly changed to spring. It was as if I had to begin my life anew. Several young Italian women were walking on the terrace, in English dresses, and with graceful downcast looks, in which you might fancy that you read the soul of the Decameron. It was a fine, serious grace, equally remote from French levity and English sullenness, but it was the last I saw of it. I have run the gauntlet of vulgar shapes and horrid faces ever since. The women in Italy (so far as I have seen hitherto) are detestably ugly. They are not even dark and swarthy, but a mixture of brown and red, coarse, marked with the small pox, with pug-features, awkward, ill-made, fierce, dirty, lazy, neither attempting nor hoping to please. Italian beauty (if there is, as I am credibly informed, such a thing) is retired, conventual, denied to the common gaze. It was and it remains a dream to me, a vision of the brain! I returned to the inn (thePension Suisse) in high spirits, and made a most luxuriant dinner. We had a wild duck equal to what we had in Paris, and the grapes were the finest I ever tasted. Afterwards we went to the Opera, and saw aballet of action(out-heroding Herod) with all the extravagance of incessant dumb-show and noise, the glittering of armour, the burning of castles, the clattering of horses on and off the stage, and heroines like furies in hysterics. Nothing at Bartholomew Fair was ever in worse taste, noisier, or finer. It was as if a whole people had buried their understandings, their imaginations, and their hearts in their senses; and as if the latter were so jaded and worn out, that they required to be inflamed, dazzled, and urged almost to a kind of frenzy-fever, to feel any thing. The house was crowded to excess, and dark, all but the stage, which shed a dim, ghastly light on the gilt boxes and the audience. Milton might easily have taken his idea of Pandemonium from the inside of an Italian Theatre, its heat, its gorgeousness, and its gloom. We were at the back of the pit, in which there was only standing room, and leaned against the first row of boxes, full of the Piedmontese Nobility, who talked fast and loud in their harsh guttural dialect, in spite of the repeated admonitions of ‘a gentle usher, Authority by name,’ who every five seconds hissed some lady of quality and high breeding whose voice was heard with anéclatabove all the rest. Nonotice whatever was taken of the acting or the singing (which was any thing but Italian, unless Italian at present means a bad imitation of the French) till a comic dance attracted all eyes, and drew forth bursts of enthusiastic approbation. I do not know the performers’ names, but a short, squat fellow (a kind ofpollardof the green-room) dressed in a brown linsey-woolsey doublet and hose, with round head, round shoulders, short arms and short legs, made love to a finedie-awaylady, dressed up in the hoops, lappets and furbelows of the last age, and stumped, nodded, pulled and tugged at his mistress with laudable perseverance, and in determined opposition to the awkward, mawkish graces of an Adonis of a rival, with flowing locks, pink ribbons, yellow kerseymere breeches, and an insipid expression of the utmost distress. It was an admirable grotesque and fantastic piece of pantomime humour. The little fellow who played the Clown, certainly entered into the part with infinite adroitness and spirit. He merited theteres et rotundusof the poet. He bounded over the stage like a foot-ball, rolled himself up like a hedge-hog, stuck his arms in his sides like fins, rolled his eyes in his head like bullets—and the involuntary plaudits of the audience witnessed the success of his efforts at once to electrify andstultifythem! The only annoyance I found at Turin was the number of beggars who are stuck against the walls like fixtures, and expose their diseased, distorted limbs, with no more remorse or feeling than if they did not belong to them, deafening you with one wearisome cry the whole day long.

We were fortunate enough to find a voiture going from Geneva to Florence, with an English lady and her niece—I bargained for the two remaining places for ten guineas, and the journey turned out pleasantly, I believe, to all parties; I am sure it did so to us. We were to be eight days on the road, and to stop two days to rest, once at Parma, and once at Bologna, to see the pictures. Having made this arrangement, I was proceeding over the bridge towards the Observatory that commands a view of the town and the whole surrounding country, and had quite forgotten that I had such a thing as a passport to take with me. I found, however, I had no fewer than four signatures to procure, besides the six that were already tacked to my passport, before I could proceed, and which I had some difficulty in obtaining in time to set out on the following morning. The hurry I was thrown into by this circumstance prevented me from seeing some fine Rembrandts, Spagnolettos and Caraccis, which I was told are to be found in the Palace of Prince Carignani and elsewhere. I received this piece of information from my friend the Spaniard, who called on me to inquire my proposed route, and to ‘testify,’ as he said, ‘his respect for the English character.’ Shall I own it? Iwho flout, rail at, and contemn the English, was more pleased with this compliment paid to me in my national character, than with any I ever received on the score of personal civility. My fellow-traveller was for Genoa and Milan; I for Florence: but we were to meet at Rome.

The next morning was clear and frosty, and the sun shone bright into the windows of the voiture, as we left Turin, and proceeded for some miles at a gentle pace along the banks of the Po. The road was level and excellent, and we met a number of market people with mules and yokes of oxen. There were some hills crowned with villas; some bits of traditional Italian scenery now and then; but in general you would not know but that you were in England, except from the greater clearness and lightness of the air. We breakfasted at the first town we came to, in two separate English groups, and I could not help being struck with the manner of our reception at an Italian inn, which had an air of indifference, insolence, and hollow swaggering about it, as much as to say, ‘Well, what do you think of us Italians? Whatever you think, we care very little about the matter!’ The French are a politer people than the Italians—the English are honester; but I may as well postpone these comparisons till my return. The room smoked, and the waiter insisted on having the windows and the door open, in spite of my remonstrances to the contrary. He flung in and out of the room as if he had a great opinion of himself, and wished to express it by abraggadocioair. The partridges, coffee, cheese and grapes, on which we breakfastedà la fourchette, were, however, excellent. I said so, but the acknowledgment seemed to be considered as superfluous by our attendant, who received five francs for his master, and one for himself, with an air of condescending patronage. In consequence of something being said about our passports, he relaxed in the solemnity of his deportment, and observed that ‘he had been once near being engaged as valet to an English gentleman, at Ostend; that he had but three hours to procure his passport, but while he was getting it, the ship sailed, and he lost his situation.’ Such was my first impression of Italian inns and waiters, and I have seen nothing since materially to alter it. They receive you with a mixture of familiarity and fierceness, and instead of expecting any great civility from them, they excite that sort of uncomfortable sensation as to the footing you are upon, that you are glad to get away without meeting with some affront. There is either a fawning sleekness, which looks like design, or an insolence, which looks as if they had you in their power. In Switzerland and Savoy you are waited on by women; in Italy by men. I cannot say I like the exchange. From Turin to Florence, only one girl entered the room, and she (not to mend thematter) was a very pretty one.—I was told at the office of Messrs. Bonnafoux at Turin, that travelling to Rome by a vetturino was highly dangerous, and that their Diligence was guarded by four carabineers, to defend it from the banditti. I saw none, nor the appearance of any thing that looked like a robber, except a bare-foot friar, who suddenly sprang out of a hedge by the road-side, with a somewhat wild and haggard appearance, which a little startled me. Instead of finding a thief concealed behind each bush, or a Salvator Rosa face scowling from a ruined hovel, or peeping from a jutting crag at every turn, there is an excellent turnpike-road all the way, three-fourths perfectly level, skirted with hedges, corn-fields, orchards and vineyards, populous with hamlets and villages, with labourers at work in the fields, and with crowds of peasants in gay, picturesque attire, and with healthy, cheerful, open, but manly countenances, passing along, either to or from the different market-towns. It was Carnival time; and as we travelled on, we were struck with the variety of rich dresses, red, yellow, and green, the high-plaited head-dresses of the women, some in the shape of helmets, with pins stuck in them like skewers, with gold crosses at their bosoms, and large muffs on their hands, who poured from the principal towns along the high-road, or turned off towards some village-spire in the distance, chequering the landscape with their gaily-tinted groups. They often turned back and laughed as we drove by them, or passed thoughtfully on without noticing us, but assuredly showed no signs of an intention to rob or murder us. Even in the Apennines, though the road is rugged and desolate, it is lined with farm-houses and towns at small distances; and there is but one house all the way that is stained by the recollection of a tragic catastrophe. How it may be farther south, I cannot say; but so far, the reports to alarm strangers are (to the best of my observation and conjecture) totally unfounded.

We had left the Alps behind us, the white tops of which we still saw scarcely distinguishable from ridges of rolling clouds, and that seemed to follow us like a formidable enemy, and almost enclose us in a semicircle; and we had the Apennines in front, that, gradually emerging from the horizon, opposed their undulating barrier to our future progress, with shadowy shapes of danger and Covigliaijo lurking in the midst of them. All the space between these two, for at least 150 miles (I should suppose) is one level cultivated plain, one continuous garden. This became more remarkably the case, as we entered the territories of Maria-Louisa (the little States of Parma and Placentia) when, for two whole days, we literally travelled through an uninterrupted succession of corn-fields, vineyards and orchards, all in the highest state of cultivation, with the hedgesneatly clipped into a kind of trellis-work, and the vines hanging in festoons from tree to tree, or clinging ‘with marriageable arms’ round the branches of each regularly planted and friendly support. It was more like passing through a number of orchard-plots or garden-grounds in the neighbourhood of some great city (such as London) than making a journey through a wide and extensive tract of country. Not a common came in sight, nor a single foot of waste or indifferent ground. It became tedious at last from the richness, the neatness, and the uniformity; for the whole was worked up to an ideal model, and so exactly a counterpart of itself, that it was like looking out of a window at the same identical spot, instead of passing on to new objects every instant. We were saturated even with beauty and comfort, and were disposed to repeat the wish—

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