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enhance the interest of the book, its leading title, Alpine Sketches, is well chosen to prevent its seeming to rest any part of its merits on its account of adventures in these countries. The slightest possible notice may suffice of our Author's movements as far as Paris. As in duty bound, he deplored the obvious and melancholy effects of the recent iron tyranny in Holland; was pleased with the faint signs, and, perhaps, not very enthusiastic hopes of a better order of things; was displeased with the regularity and formality of Dutch gardening, which gives a sameness to their villas; was enraptured by the grand organ at Haarlem; ascended the tower at Utrecht, 380 feet high; was shewn, here and there, a number of fine pictures; saw at Gorcum, and other places, the devastations of the war; admired the prodigious fortifications, grand naval works, and the lofty tower, of the cathedral at Antwerp; had infinite trouble' to find a place to sleep in at Williamstadt, and infinite trouble' again, a few hours afterwards, in clearing the outposts of the next sleeping place; found Brussels a better built town than those in Holland; and through Brussels found the way to Paris. He thus describes the first impression of the tumultuous crowd of living creatures in this scene of so much of the worst and most miserable human agency.

On entering Paris the first impression produced on my mind was that of comfortless misery and inextricable confusion. Horses, car riages, and carts,-men, women, and children,-Turks, Christians, Jews, Russians, Austrians, Prussians, and Cossacks, were all mingled in a chaotic mass, without comfort, without regularity, dirty, ill-dressed, fatigued, hot, and hurried. On all sides may be traced the hideous features of despotism: the dissipation, the shows and spectacles in which the people take so much delight, are but futile efforts to forget their degradation: every where is there an appearance of gilded slavery, dancing gaiety, and splendid melancholy?

He found a private lodging. His room,' he says,

Afforded a good specimen of splendid filth:-beautiful yellow silk curtains and a dirty bed; a fine marble chimney-piece, adorned with a dial supported by golden cupids, above a hearth containing the accumulations of a winter's wooden ashes, never cleaned, and never likely to be so,-elegant satin sofas and a greasy brick floor.'

He quickly addressed himself to make the tour of all the wonderments, the contemplation of which he could the better enjoy for the capacity of his faith, so finely evinced in viewing Napoleon's column in the Place Vendome, 'a pillar of bronze, '133 feet in height, and 12 in diameter, cast entirely out of the 6 cannon taken at Austerlitz.'

He is not very violently given to rant, but we suppose he will

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expect to stand nearly alone among the admirers of the fine arts in that rapturous excess of adoration of the Medicean Venus, in which he pronounces every thing around it insipid,' whether in sculpture or painting, the Apollo expressly included. But perhaps this pretence of an exclusive passion is only a contrivance at once to gain credit as an amateur, and excuse himself for having been satisfied with an hour a day in the galleries of the Louvre; for that was about the allotment of time afforded to incomparably the grandest assemblage of the beauties of art in the whole world. This daily allowance for a few weeks would, perhaps, nearly suffice to write down the designation of each of the great works, and the artist's name.So happily economizing in this one branch of his expense of time, what did he do with the ample remainder ?

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One small portion of it was excellently bestowed in contemplating a widely different kind of exhibition, the celebrated catacombs, from 80 to 100 feet deep, under the quarter of the city towards 'Orleans,' which he describes as winding in broken galleries and rugged passages for the space of three leagues' In what way does he take this measure? and on whose statement does he rely? Did he content himself, for expedition's sake, just to cut the most hardy of the falsehoods of his guides, and take half?-Allow enormity of dimension, and enormity of number may follow without exception: accordingly, the remains of two 'million eight hundred thousand bodies are here ranged in regular 'order against the walls of the cavern, in rows of alternate bones ' and skulls.' And it is but a small part of these caverns, it seems, that has, at least of late years, received its silent occupants by removal from the cemeteries in the neighbourhood. Our spritely explorer would not be displeased, perhaps, to find that a little of the fantastic had made its way before him into this region of death. Many of these bones and skulls, he says, 'are piled into the form of altars, at which, on particular days, service is per'formed and mass sung;' a contrivance that would probably strike as more whimsical than solemn.

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It must be owing to men's having no faith in the competence of death as a teacher, or is it that their self-importance cannot endure that even that oracle should say any thing which they have not dictated to it?—that no receptacle of mortality, even though a hundred feet underground, can exclude the impertinence of their inscriptions.

On entering the portal of the cavern set apart for this melancholy purpose' (this subterraneous mass-service) the first thing you encounter over an altar of skulls is this inscription; on one side, "Vaines-grandeurs, silence, eternité.”

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'On the other,

"Néant, silence êtres mortels."

Over the door is engraved

"Has ultra metas requiescunt beatam spem expectantes." "The bones being ranged in regular order, in some places they form little cells and chapels, over one of which is written,

"Hic in somno pacis requiescunt majores."

• I could gain no information respecting the origin of these excavations. They are evidently artificial, probably a Roman work. The cemetery is nearly in the centre, to gain which we wound through almost inextricable passages, cut in a solid bed of stone for at least a mile, where a person unaccustomed to the place would infallibly lose himself; for the torches cast but a faint light through the passages which branch out in every direction; and even the guides, accustomed to traverse them continually, are obliged to leave a black mark with the smoke of their torches, that they may know where to retrace their steps. In some places water issues from the stone and forms rills; and every-where it is well ventilated and airy. Descending still deeper into the earth there is a collection of preternatural bones, and a museum of the numerous materials which compose the various strata above.' p. 39.

We should doubt whether any other vivacious adventurer (who had money in his purse') ever made out so indifferently, for gratification, in Paris. We can hardly conceive that the catacombs were exactly the scene for him; in the magnificent exhibition at the Louvre every thing was insipid but the Venus; and then for the people, hear what he says of their character, their appearance, and their disposition toward the English.

• Throughout France at present, as might be expected, there is a feeling of mortified vanity in the people, and a melancholy irritability in the soldiers whenever the campaign is mentioned. Their pride has been deeply wounded, nor will they rest till they can by some means regain their own estimation. But their unconquerable vanity, which has already sapped every moral principle, will always be their ruling foible. At the first impulse they felt gratitude to Marmont, and blessed Alexander for sparing their city. Now the danger is over, they say Marmont is a traitor, and the Russians cowards. Many people wish they had been made to suffer more acutely the miseries of war: but, perhaps, it is better that they have been spared, as their vain ingratitude, and unprincipled restlessness, will thereby become more apparent to the rest of the world. Before the lapse of a century, the other nations of Europe will possibly be obliged to crush them more effectually, to ensure their own existence. All that martial politeness in the soldier, of which we have heard and read so much, no longer exists. Twenty years of rapine and murder, of tyranny and despotism, have given them a look of disciplined lawless. ness and pallid depravity that makes one shudder.'

It was quite time for him to go in search of another order of human beings, or of some such scenes of nature as might captivate and enlarge the mind independently of man. He took the right direction for both these objects by setting off for Geneva and the Alps. He engaged a vehicle with two poor horses which were to take him all the way to Geneva. Partly to relieve them, and partly from curiosity and love of little adventures, he performed a great part of the journey on foot, in a series of excursions nearly collateral to the main road, and ending each evening where the voiture was to stop. He saw, of course, a great deal of rural, and some romantic, and even some little passing forms of moral beauty. The melancholy effects of war were the most conspicuous about Sens, where ' the inhabitants having been plundered by three different armies, were left quite destitute, and literally starving.' Among the Jura mountains he found himself brought within that dominion of gloomy sublimity, of which he was ambitious to approach even the central majesty. The distant view of the scene he was approaching, was suddenly presented before him.

The road now began to descend from these lofty mountains (of Jura) to the vast plain in which is situated the Lake of Geneva, and passing under an arch cut through the solid rock, the whole extent of this immense expanse of water lay beneath our feet, backed by mountains and glaciers, with Mont Blanc, reigning monarch of all

around.'

He visited the Chateau de Ferney, of which he briefly describes the apartments, the characteristic decorations, and the memorials of its famous departed proprietor and inhabitant.We visited his chamber,' says the Oxonian, 'with an awe ❝ which we should not have felt before the tripod of Delphi.'Does he mean that at Delphi he should have had a less forcible impression of the reality of the suspected haunting of an evil spirit? In the slight notices and anecdotes of that personage, there is an apparent effort to magnify the little good belonging to him, and somewhat extenuate the evil. On another day he visited Delices, where Voltaire at one time resided, for the benefit of being within the Genevese territory. Here (he re'marks) we found the bench to which he was carried in his last 'illness, that he might once more contemplate the majestic beauties of the surrounding scenery before he quitted it for'ever. This appears an odd statement, when we recollect, what our Author has himself just adverted to, that Voltaire's last illness and his death took place in Paris.

Every thing relating to Geneva must be in some degree interesting, especially now when it is a place once more accessible to our countrymen. But we must not let ourselves be detained

on the subject, as we have hardly any space for even the descriptions of Alpine scenery, which form the most pleasing part of the book. Two or three short extracts will probably make most readers wish to see the whole. Our Author was, for a genteel promenader of the streets of Oxford, very laudably daring among precipices, glaciers, and torrents. Indeed he had nearly done, at one moment, a great deal more even than he dared.

In crossing one of these snow-clad precipices,* from whence a' cataract descended, an eagle, which we had disturbed from its solitary abode, hovered over our heads; I gazed up at it from the narrow ledge on which we stood. The stunning roar of the waters, the dark abyss below, and the awfulness of the situation altogether, concurred to confuse the imagination and turn the brain. When I cast my eyes down again, all swam before me, my pole dropped from my hand, and had not my attentive guide caught me at the moment, I must have followed it. P. 125.

A little afterwards he was more frightened than endangered.

We were standing and admiring the stupendous scenery around, when on a sudden the rolling of an avalanche struck our ears: we listened the noise was yet far off but grew louder, and in a few seconds a mountain of snow seemed falling over us. Like the coun try rat we fled,

"A la porte de la salle

"Ils entendirent du bruit;
"Le rat de ville détale,

"Et son compagnon le suit."

but we knew not where to go. The noise echoed, sometimes on the one side, sometimes on the other; then it seemed afar off in the distant vallies. To put an end at last to our alarms, an avalanche of snow, which caused all the confusion, rolled down with a mighty crash, and covered the rocks we had just been traversing.' p. 127.

The simile and poetry in this extract will have reminded our readers, that it is very common for persons who have, through terror, made a very sorry figure in unpleasant situations, to endeavour to recover their credit with themselves, as well as others, by affecting gayety and wit in referring to the fright.

He was tolerably safe in another magnificent scene, of which the description, like some others that he has given, does, no doubt, excite our envy.

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Having crossed the Arve, and proceeded a few hundred paces

*This scholar is continually falling into this blunder of construction, of which, indeed, we observe many writers to be habitually guilty. How could our Oxonian write this sentence without perceiving that he makes the eagle cross the snow-clad precipice?

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