LETTER CCXXI. FROM LORD HOLLAND TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.*

My dear General,

Geneva, 17th Sept. 1814.

It is not, I assure you, every one of my countrymen whom I think worthy of being introduced to so consistent and warm a friend of rational liberty as yourself, but I cannot deny my intimate friend, Mr. Horner, that pleasure, because I know he has both sense and principles to value such an advantage as it deserves. He is, indeed, one of the most promising men in our Parliament, as well as in his profession of the law, the duties of which oblige him to return sooner than he otherwise would wish, to England. In principle he has always proved himself firmly attached to my uncle's politics, though his career began as my uncle's was unfortunately closing, and he consequently knew, and but barely knew, him personally. As he feels, however, so much satisfaction in having known him, I am convinced that I cannot procure him a greater pleasure in France than by introducing him to the acquaintance of his friend, who under yet more difficult and trying circumstances than we have experienced in England, has practised and upheld the principles which guided him through life, so nobly and so consistently. My anxiety to please him, perhaps my vanity, has made me venture to assure him, that, if you are not at Paris, you will allow him the satisfaction of seeing you at La Grange.

Lady Holland begs to be kindly remembered, and I cannot close my letter without repeating once more to

*Mr. Horner had no opportunity of delivering this letter; it was found among his papers with the seal unbroken; I insert it with Lady Holland's consent.-ED.

you the pleasure it gave me to find you so well, and to assure you of the respect and gratitude which your public conduct and personal kindness have inspired in your Sincere and obliged Friend,

VASSALL HOLLAND.

LETTER CCXXII. TO HIS SISTER, MISS ANNE HORNER. Milan, 19th Sept. 1814.

My dear Nancy,

In a letter to Fanny, which I think I wrote from Geneva, I said I should give you some account of our journey to that town by the Jura; but all those scenes, which pleased us very much at the time, have been so surpassed by what we have seen since, that they are not very fresh in my memory at the present moment, and I will therefore leave that part of our travels to be described some other time, when repose from this perpetual succession of new objects shall have allowed me to look back at leisure on all that we have gone through. You will be surprised to see this dated from Milan; three days ago it was not our intention to come so far, as you would learn from a short letter I wrote to my mother from Brieg. But the temptations from one thing to another are so strong, that you will have reason to think our resistance to them very virtuous, when you find, that being so far in Italy, we can turn our back upon all those famous places which we have been reading of all our lives. From Geneva we all set out on Sunday the 11th for the usual tour to Chamouny, and we all met again on the following Tuesday in the evening at Martigny, and thence by Sion, the capital of the Valais, to Brieg; last Friday was spent in crossing the Alps by Napoleon's road, the Simplon, from Brieg to Domo d'Ossola; on Saturday, after a short drive by Vogogna to

Baveno, upon the Lago Maggiore, we went upon the water, visited the Boromean islands, and were rowed down in a lovely evening to Arona; yesterday we crossed the Ticino, the ancient boundary of Piedmont and Lombardy, at a place called Sesto, and arrived in the middle of the day, at this capital of the late kingdom of Italy. I have written to Anne a long letter about Chamouny and the Valais; after I had finished it, I saw a little more of Brieg. It is a rude country town, at the head of Le Valais, where the Rhone is lost in a narrow ravine, and is joined by a torrent called La Saltine, which comes down from the side of Simplon. I was told there by a person who must know the country very well, that the people of the mountains are much more lively as well as more robust than those of the plain. The same person confirmed to me, what I had heard from others less likely to be well informed on such a point, that cretinism is not so frequent now as it used to be; and, what is very curious, that at all times it was the children of foreigners newly settled in the country that were most liable to it.

We left Brieg early in the morning, and in fourteen hours reached Domo d'Ossola, by a road over one of the great heights of the Alps; but so well conducted, that in the ascent there is scarcely a single pull that would bring one of our postchaises to a halt; and the descent is a good trot all the way: it is made so smooth and is so handsomely finished, as to look more like the approach to a gentleman's house than a tract over a mountain district to connect distant nations. An appendage of this noble design, which is but half finished, is a triumphal arch of white marble, erected where the road enters Milan : we passed this as we came into the town, and have been again to see it. On our way from

the Simplon there was lying by the road-side a pillar of white marble, in one piece, more than 32 feet long, wrought, but not polished, which was one of eight of the same size that had been cut in an adjacent quarry, and were to be carried down to Milan for this arch. The work is at present suspended. The successors of him who designed it could not do better than to inscribe upon it, that it was commenced by Napoleon, and finished by them, whoever they may be; but there would be a sort of magnanimity in that mode of proclaiming their own glory, of which, perhaps, they will not be found capable. Already, since the destruction of the French power, this past summer has broke down some of the side walls and railings which as yet only spoil in a few places the neatness and finish of the road; but one little bridge, carried away by an avalanche, and left unrepaired, would make it wholly unpassable. The line traced upon the mountains will remain for ever one of the most lasting (it is to be hoped) of the many impressions which this marvellous adventurer has made. upon the surface of Europe. It is more like a work of the old Romans than any thing that has been executed since their days. The magnitude of this effort of human art almost prevented us from enjoying the grandeur of the natural scenery through which it passes. In mounting from Brieg, the road winds, in view of the country which I have described round that town, and gains in the ascent more and more extensive prospects of the Valais, the Rhone flowing through it, and the lofty crags and glaciers which bound it upon the north. From this you will readily imagine, better indeed than with my unpicturesque eyes I could even see, what scenes were continually presented to us, and continually shifting, as we mounted the sides of the great ridge; and in the

winding course of our road were conducted sometimes to a projecting precipice, which laid the whole open, and sometimes had narrow landscapes as we looked outwards from the close and deep defiles. This way of describing it seems like sameness; but there was much variety. Our progress through the different regions of vegetation, in the course of the day, was to me one of the newest impressions that I felt we left maize, and vines, and walnut trees; passed through forests of pine and larch, which were less vigorous as we approached the summits. Near the Hospice nothing is to be seen but stunted rhododendrons; in descending, the order is just reversed, but is more delightful; it was like going from spring into summer all in one day, and to a brighter summer and richer vegetation than we had ever seen before. The gradual approach to the luxuriance of Italy is for several miles through a deep dark chasm, not much wider than the torrent which has cut it; and by the side of which the road descends, the cliffs on both sides being of great height and very savage. After a few miles of this narrow defile, we came to a very handsome one of two lofty arches, which terminate the Simplon road, at the extremity of the glen, which leads to the town of Domo d'Ossola, situated near the end of a flat alluvial plain, about a league wide and six long, on all sides of which are lofty alps, some of them topped with snow. We were now in Italy: according to the old and present political geography, in Piedmont, which goes to the Ticino: according to Napoleon's geography, in the kingdom of Italy; but by the language, and the houses painted in fresco, and the thick brilliant vegetation, and the market-place covered with large baskets of macaroni, in Italy. Our drive next morning to the lake was through a country