July 23, 1840. 14. Between Faenza and Imola, just now, I saw a large building standing back from the road, on the right, with two places somewhat like lodges in front, on the road side. On one of them was the inscription "Labor omnia vicit," and the lines about iron working, ending" Argutæ lamina serrae." On the other were Horace's lines about drinking, without fear of "insanæ leges." Therefore, I suppose that these buildings were an iron_foundry, and a public or café; but the classical inscriptions seemed to me characteristic of that foolery of classicalism which marks the Italians, and infects those with us who are called "elegant scholars." It appears to me that in Christian Europe the only book from which quotations are always natural and good as inscriptions for all sorts of places, is the Bible; because every calling of life has its serious side, if it be not sinful; and a quotation from the Bible relating to it, is taking it on this serious side, which is at once a true side, and a most important one. But iron foundries and publics have no connection with mere book literature, which, to the people concerned most with either, is a thing utterly uncongenial. And inscriptions on such places should be for those who most frequent them: a literary man writing up something upon them, for other literary men to read, is like the impertinence of two scholars talking to each other in Latin at a coach dinner. 15. Bologna, July 23, 1840. And now this is the last night, I trust, in which I shall sleep in the Pope's dominions; for it is impossible not to be sickened with a government such as this, which discharges no one function decently. The ignorance of the people is prodigious,—how can it be otherwise? The booksellers' shops sad to behold,―the very opposite of that scribe, instructed to the kingdom of God, who was to bring out of his treasures things new and old, these scribes, not of the kingdom of God, bring out of their treasures nothing good, either new or old, but the mere rubbish of the past and the present. Other governments may see an able and energetic sovereign arise, to whom God may give a long reign, so that what he began in youth he may live to complete in old age. But here every reign must be short; for every sovereign comes to the throne an old man, and with no better education than that of a priest. Where, then, can there be hope under such a system, so contrived as it should seem for every evil end, and so necessarily exclusive of good? I could muse long and deeply on the state of this country, but it is not my business; neither do I see, humanly speaking, one gleam of hope. "1517," said Niebuhr, "must precede 1688; but where are the symptoms of 1517 here? And if one evil spirit be cast out, there are but seven others yet more evil, if it may be, ready to enter. Wherefore I have no sympathy with the so-called Liberal party here any more than has Bunsen. They are but types of the counter evil of Popery,-that is of Jacobinism. The two are obverse and reverse of the coin,-the imprinting of one type on the one side, necessarily brings out the other on the other side; and so in a perpetual series; for [Newmanism] leads to [Socialism,] and [Socialism] leads to [Newmanism.]-the eternal oscillations of the drunken mima, the varying vices and vileness of the slave, and the slave broken loose. "Half of our virtue," says Homer, "is torn away when a man becomes a slave," and the other half goes when he becomes a slave broken loose. Wherefore, may God grant us freedom from all idolatry, whether of flesh or of spirit; that fearing Him' and loving Him, we may fear and bow down before no idol, and never worshipping what ought not to be worshipped, may so escape the other evil of not worshipping what ought to be worshipped. Good night, my darlings. "He fears God thoroughly, and he fears neither man nor Devil beside," was his characteristic description of a thoroughly courageous man. July 24, 1840. 16. As we are going through this miserable state of Modena, it makes me feel most strongly what it is to be ἐλευθέρας πολέως πολίτης. What earthly thing could induce me to change the condition of an English private gentleman for any conceivable rank or fortune, or authority in Modena? How much of my nature must I surrender; how many faculties must consent to abandon their exercise before the change could be other than intolerable? Feeling this, one can understand the Spartan answer to the great King's satrap, Hadst thou known what freedom was, thou wouldst advise us to defend it not with swords, but with axes." Now there are some, Englishmen unhappily, but most unworthy to be so, who affect to talk of freedom, and a citizen's rights and duties, as things about which a Christian should not care. Like all their other doctrines, this comes out of the shallowness of their little minds, "understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm." True it is, that St. Paul, expecting that the world was shortly to end, tells a man not to care even if he were in a state of personal slavery. That is an endurable evil which will shortly cease, not in itself only, but in its consequences. But even for the few years during which he supposed the world would exist, he says, "if thou mayest be made free, use it rather." For true it is that a great part of the virtues of human nature can scarcely be developed in a state of slavery, whether personal or political. The passive virtues may exist, but the active ones suffer. Truth, too, suffers especially; if a man may not declare his convictions when he wishes to do so, he learns to conceal them also for his own convenience; from being obliged to play the hypocrite, for others, he learns to lie on his own account. And as the ceasing to lie is mentioned by St. Paul, as one of the first marks of the renewed nature, so the learning to lie is one of the surest marks of nature unrenewed. . True it is, that the first Christians lived under a despotism, and yet that truth and the active virtues were admirably developed in them. But the first manifestation of Christianity was in all respects of a character so extraordinary as abundantly to make up for the absence of more ordinary instruments for the elevation of the human mind. It is more to the purpose to observe, that immediately after the Apostolic times, the total absence of all civil self-government was one great cause which ruined the government of the Church also, and prepared men for the abominations of the priestly dominion; while on the other hand Guizot has well shown that one great cause of the superiority of the Church to the heathen world, was because in the Church alone there was a degree of freedom and a semblance of political activity; the great bishops, Athanasius and Augustine, although subjects of a despotic ruler in the State, were themselves free citizens and rulers of a great society, in the management of which all the political faculties of the human mind found sufficient exercise. But when the Church is lost in the weakness and falsehood of a Priesthood, it can no longer furnish such a field, and there is the greater need therefore of political freedom. But the only perfect and entirely wholesome freedom, is where the Church and the State are both free, and both one. Then, indeed, there is Civitas Dei, then there is ἀρίστη και τελειοτάτη πολιτεια. And now this discussion has brought me nearly half through this Duchy of Modena, for we must be more than half way from Rubbiera to Reggio. July 28, 1840. 17. Left Amsteg, 6.50. The beauty of the lower part of this valley is perfect. The morning is fine, so that we see the tops of the mountains, which rise 9000 feet above the sea directly from the valley. Huge precipices, crowned with pines, rising out of pines, and with pines between them, succeed below to the crags and glaciers. Then in the valley itself, green hows, with walnuts and pears, and wild cherries, and the gardens of these picturesque Swiss cottages, scattered about over them; and the roaring Reuss, the only inharmonious element where he is,—yet he himself not incapable of being made harmonious, if taken in a certain point of view, at the very bottom of all. This is the Canton Uri, one of the Wald Staaten, or Forest Cantons, which were the original germ of the Swiss Confederacy. But Uri, like Sparta, has to answer the question, what has mankind gained over and above the ever precious example of noble deeds, from Murgarten, Sempach, or Thermopyla. What the world has gained by Salamis and Platea, and by Zama, is on the other hand no question, any more than it ought to be a question what the world has gained by the defeat of Philip's armada, or by Trafalgar and Waterloo. But if a nation only does great deeds that it may live, and does not show some worthy object for which it has lived, and Uri and Switzerland have shown but too little of any such, then our sympathy with the great deeds of their history can hardly go beyond the generation by which those deeds were performed; and I cannot help thinking of the mercenary Swiss of Novara and Marignano, and of the oppression exercised over the Italian bailiwicks and the Pays de Vaud, and all the tyrannical exclusiveness of these little barren oligarchies, as much as of the heroic deeds of the three men, Tell and his comrades, or of the self-devotion of my namesake of Winkelried, when at Sempach he received into his breast 66 a sheaf of Austrian spears." Steamer on the Lake of Luzern, July 29, 1840. 18. We arrived at Fluelen about half-past eight, and having had some food, and most commendable food it was, we are embarked on the Lake of Luzern and have already passed Brünnen, and are outside the region of the high Alps. It would be difficult certainly for a Swiss to admire our lakes, because he would ask, what is there here which we have not, and which we have not on a larger scale. I cannot deny that the meadows here are as green as ours, the valleys richer, the woods thicker, the cliffs grander, the mountains by measurement twice or three times higher. And if Switzerland were my home and country, the English lakes and mountains would certainly never tempt me to travel to see them, destitute as they are of all historical interest. In fact, Switzerland is to Europe what Cumberland and Westmoreland are to Lancashire and Yorkshire; the general summer touring place. But all country that is actually beautiful, is capable of affording to those who live in it the highest pleasure of scenery, which no country, however beautiful, can do to those who merely travel in it; and thus while I do not dispute the higher interest of Switzerland to a Swiss, (no Englishman ought to make another country his home, and therefore I do not speak of Englishmen,) I must still maintain that to me Fairfield is a hundred times more beautiful than the Righi, and Windermere than the Lake of the Four Cantons. Not that I think this is overvalued by travellers, it cannot be so; but most people undervalue greatly what mountains are when they form a part of our daily life, and combine not with our hours of leisure, of wandering, and of enjoyment, but with those of home life, of work and of duty. Luzern, July 29. We accomplished the passage of the lake in about three hours, and most beautiful it was all the way. And now, as in 1827, I recognize the forms of our common English country, and should be bidding adieu to mountains, and preparing merely for our Rugby lanes and banks, and Rugby work, were it not for the delightful excrescence of a tour which we hope to make to Fox How, and three or four days' enjoyment of our own mountains, hallowed by our English Church, and hallowed scarcely less by our English Law. Alas, the difference between Church and Law, and clergy and lawyers; but so in human things the concrete ever adds unworthiness to the abstract. I have been sure for many years that the subsiding of a tour, if I may so speak, is quite as delightful as its swelling; I call it its subsiding, when one passes by common things indifferently, and even great things with a fainter interest, because one is so strongly thinking of home and of the returning to ordinary relations and duties. August 6, 1840. 19. Arrived at St. Omer.-And Pavé is dead, and we have left our last French town except Calais, and all things and feelings French seem going to sleep in me,-cares of carriage-cares of passport-cares of inns-cares of postillions and of Pavé, and there revive within me the habitual cares of my life, which for the last seven weeks have slumbered. In many things the beginning and end are different, in few more so than in a tour. "Colum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt," is in my case doubly false. My mind changes twice, from my home self to my travelling self, and then to my home self back again. On this day seven weeks I travelled this very stage; its appearance in that interval is no doubt altered; flowers are gone by, and corn is yellow which was green; but I am changed even morechanged in my appetites and in my impressions; for then I craved locomotion and rest from mental work-now I desire to remain still as to place, and to set my mind to work again;-then I looked at every thing on the road with interest, drinking in eagerly a sense of the reality of foreign objectsnow I only notice our advance homeward, and foreign objects seem to be things with which I have no concern. But it is not that I feel any way tired of things and persons French, only that I do so long for things and persons English. I never felt more keenly the wish to see the peace between the two countries perpetual; never could I be more indignant at the folly and wickedness which on both sides of the water are trying to rekindle the flames of war. The one effect of the last war ought to be to excite in both nations the greatest mutual respect. France, with the aid of half Europe, could not conquer England; England, with the aid of all Europe, never could have overcome France, had France been zealous and united in Napoleon's quarrel. When Napoleon saw kings and princes bowing before him at Dresden, Wellington was advancing victoriously in Spain; when a million of men in 1815 were invading France, Napoleon engaged for three days with two armies, each singly equal to his own, and was for two days victorious. Equally and utterly false are the follies uttered by silly men of both countries, about the certainty of one beating the other. Ou nólo diapégei ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου, is especially applicable here. When Englishmen and Frenchmen meet in war, each may know that they will meet in the other all a soldier's qualities, skill, activity, and undaunted courage, with bodies able to do the bidding of the spirit either in action or in endurance. England and France may do each other incalculable mischief by going to war, both physically and morally; but they can gain for themselves, or hope to gain nothing. It were an accursed wish in either to wish to destroy the other, and happily the wish would be as utterly vain as it would be wicked. August 6, 1840. 20. Left Dover, 7.45. What am I to say of this perfect road and perfect posting; of the greenness and neatness of every thing, the delicate miniature scale of the country,-the art of the painter held in honour, and extending even to barns and railings,—of the manifest look of spring and activity and business which appears in every body's movements? The management of the Commissioner at Dover in getting the luggage through the Custom House, was a model of method and expedition, and so was the attendance at the inns. All this fills me with many thoughts, amongst which the prevailing one certainly is not pride; for with the sight of all this there instantly comes into my mind the thought of our sad plague spots, the canker worm in this beautiful and goodly fruit corrupting it within. But I will not dwell on this now, personally, I may indulge in the unspeakable delight of being once. again in our beloved country, with our English Church and English Law. August 9, 1840. 21. Left Milnthorpe, 6.21. My last day's journal, I hope, dearest, and then the faithful inkstand which has daily hung at my button-hole may retire to his deserved rest. Our tea last night was incomparable; such ham, such bread and butter, such cake, and then came this morning a charge of 4s. 6d. for our joint bed and board; when those scoundrels in Italy, whose very life is roguery, used to charge double and triple for their dog fare and filthy rooms. Bear witness Capua, and that vile Swiss Italian woman whom I could wish to have been in Capua (Casilinum) when Hannibal besieged it, and when she must either have eaten her shoes, or been eaten herself by some neighbour, if she had not been too tough and indigestible. But, dearest, there are other thoughts within me as I look out on this delicious valley (we are going down to Levens) on this Sunday morning. How calm and beautiful is every thing, and here, as we know, how little marred by any extreme poverty. And yet do these hills and valleys, any more than those of the Apennines, send up an acceptable incense? Both do as far as nature is concerned—our softer glory and that loftier glory each in their kind render their homage, and God's work so far is still very good. But with our just laws and pure faith, and here with a wholesome state of property besides, is there yet the Kingdom of God here any more than in Italy? How can there be? For the Kingdom of God is the perfect development of the Church of God: and when Priestcraft destroyed the Church, the Kingdom of God became an impossibility. We have now entered the Winster Valley, and are got precisely to our own slates again, which we left yesterday week in the Vosges. The strawberries and raspberries hang red to the sight by the road side; and the turf and flowers are more delicately beautiful than any thing which I have seen abroad. The mountains, too, are in their softest haze; I have seen Old Man and the Langdale Pikes rising behind the nearer hills most beautifully. We have just opened on Windermere, and vain it is to talk of any earthly beauty ever equalling this country in my eyes; when mingling with every form and sound and fragrance, comes the full thought of domestic affections, and of national, and of Christian; here is our own house and home-here are our own country's laws and language, and here is our English Church. No Mola di Gaeta, no valley of the Velino. no Salerno or Vietri, no Lago di Pie di Lugo can rival to me this vale of Windermere, and of the Rotha. And here it lies in the perfection of its beauty, the deep shadows on the unruffled water-the haze investing Fairfield with every thing solemn and undefined. Arrived at Bowness, 8.20. Left it at 8.31. Passing Ragrigg Gate, 8.37. On the Bowness Terrace, 8.45, Over Troutbeck Bridge, 8.51. Here is Ecclerigg, 8.58. And here Lowood Inn, 9.44. And here Waterhead and our ducking bench, 9.12. The valley opens-Ambleside, and Rydal Park, and the gallery on Loughrigg. Rotha Bridge, 9.16. And here is the poor humbled Rotha, and Mr. Brancker's cut, and the New Millar Bridge, 9.21. Alas! for the alders gone and succeeded by a stiff wall. Here is the Rotha in his own beauty, and here is poor T. Flemming's Field, and our own mended gate. Dearest children, may we meet happily. Entered FOX HOW, and the birch copse at 9.25, and here ends journal.-Walter first saw us, and gave notice of our approach. We found all our dear children well, and Fox How in such beauty, that no scene in Italy appeared in my eyes comparable to it. We breakfasted, and at a quarter before eleven, I had the happiness of once more going to an English Church, and that church our own beloved Rydal Chapel. X. TOUR IN SOUTH OF FRANCE. Between Angoulême and Bordeaux, July 7, 1841. 1. Left Barbiceaux 10.35, very rich and beautiful. It is not properly southern, for there are neither olives nor figs; nor is it northern, for the |