Romish Canton of the Valais, a transition perceptible at once in the degradation of the inhabitants. We took a char-à-banc from St. Maurice to Martigny, about eleven miles, arriving at seven o'clock in the evening, having visited the superb cascade formerly called the Pissevache, on our way. It only wants a double volume of water to make it sublime, for it rolls out of a fissure in the mountain three hundred feet high, and makes a graceful spring, clear of all the crags, for more than a hundred and twenty feet, and then, when it has recovered, so to speak from the fright of such a fall, runs off in a clear little river to join the muddy Rhone. So, sometimes, a youth from the country, who had, at first, all the freshness and purity of home and of a mother's love about him, gets lost in the cor ruption of a great city. Our pedestrianizing this day, you perceive, was accomplished first in the steamer, second in the diligence, third in the char à-banc. For myself, having got wet with a furious cloud of spray, which the wind blew over me as I advanced too near under the water-fall, I did really walk the greater part of the way from thence to Martigny, about four miles, leaving my friend to enjoy the char-à-banc alone, and to order our supper when he arrived at the inn. This char-à-banc, so much used in Switzerland, is a hard leathern sofa for two, or at most three, in which you are placed as in the stocks, and trundled sideways upon wheels. It is a droll machine, somewhat as if a very short Broadway omnibus, being split in two lengthwise, each half provided with an additional pair of wheels, should set up for itself. It was in this conveyance that we rode, while travelling in the Canton du Valais, for no one would dream of pedestrianizing here, unless indeed along the sublime pass of the Simplon between Briegg and Domodossola. I had moreover passed through the Valley of the Rhone before into Italy, and deferred my pedestrianizing till I should come upon a new route over mountains so rough, that my companion with his mule could go no faster than I on foot. He preferred to ride always; I chose to walk, whenever the scenery was sublime enough to justify it, and the road rough enough to make it agreeable. TOWER AT MARTIGNY.. 183 The evening at Martigny was transcendently beautiful, the weather being fine, the atmosphere wildly, spiritually bright, and the moon within one night of her fulness; "the moon above the tops of the snow-shining mountains." We ascended the hill near Martigny to the picturesque old Feudal Tower by this moonlight, and rarely in my wanderings have I witnessed a scene to be compared with this. Looking down the valley, the outline is bounded by a snowy ridge of great beauty, but in the direction of the Grand St. Bernard mountains of dark verdure rise into the air like pyramidal black wedges cleaving the heavens. We are high above the village, and on one side can look down sheer into the roaring torrent, many hundred feet; it makes you dizzy to look. The ruins of the castle, the verdure around it, the village below, the silence of night, the summer softness of the air, combined with an almost autumnal brightness, the mountains in their grandeur sleeping in such awful, such solemn repose, the distant landscape, so indistinctly beautiful, the white rays of the moon falling in such sheets of misty transparence over it, and the glittering snowy peaks which lift themselves before you like gray prophets of a thousand years, yea, like messengers from Eternity, is there anything needed to make this one of the most magnificent scenes, and most impressive too, that we shall be likely to find in all Switzerland? -"A deep And solemn harmony pervades The hollow vale from steep to steep, The night is so beautiful that it is difficult to intrude upon it by going to bed; and yet, if travellers would be up betimes in the morning, they must sleep at night. But all night long methinks one could walk by such a moon, amidst such glorious mountains, and not be wearied. Some years ago we passed this same valley in a very different season, when a great part of the Swiss world was covered deep with snow, and the frost was so sharp that the trodden path creaked under our feet, and our breath almost frose into little snow-clouds in the air. The scenery then was of a savage sublimity, but now, how beautiful! CHAPTER XXVIII. ECCLESIASTICAL DESPOTISM IN THE VALAIS.-MEASURES OF THE JESUITS. WE started at six in the morning, again in a char-à-banc, for Sion and Sierre, twenty-seven miles. A party of lads from the Jesuit Seminary at Fribourg were at the door, under the care of their instructors, accoutred for the day's pedestrian excursion. They spend some weeks in this manner, attended by the priests; but learning lessons of freedom from wild na ture, drinking in the pure mountain air, and gaining elasticity of body and spirit by vigorous exercise. They were going to Chamouny. Between Martigny and Sion, our man of the char à-banc pointed out to us the scene of a recent desperate conflict between the liberalists and despotists of the Canton, part of which ille fuit, and the whole of which he saw, being on the Sion side when they burned the beautiful bridge which the fu rious torrent had so long respected. The matter has ended in the establishment of a priestal republican despotism, under which the protestant religion is proscribed, its exercise forbidden even in private, the protestant schools are broken up, and intolerance to the heart's content of Romanism forms the political and religious régime of the Canton. The Bishop or Archbishop of Sion, which is the chief town of the Canton du Valais, presides over the general assembly. Here is an opportunity of instruction for impartial observers, which they ought not to let pass. It is always interesting to see a fair experiment, on a questioned subject, either in chemistry or morals. You must have a large laboratory, good retorts, furnaces, crucibles, blowpipes, and so forth, and let the chemical agents work without hindrance. This Canton in Switzerland is a grand laboratory, where the Jesuits, unimpeded, have just demonstrated the nature of their system. They have played out the play, and all who please may satisfy themselves as to the residuum. In point of oppression, it is remarked abroad, they have run beyond all that can be imagined of the DESPOTISM IN THE VALAIS. 185 most exorbitant despotism, not stopping contented with the laws of Louis XIV, but dragging from the mould of ages the legislation even of Louis IX. I shall draw a description of their freaks from a Parisian Journal before me, 1 which answers the question, How the Jesuits govern the Canton du Valais. The Grand Council of the Canton, under direction of Jesuit Priests, have adopted a law respecting illegal assemblies, and condemnable discussions and conversations, of which the first article runs as follows: Those who hold conversations tending to scandalize the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion, or contrary to good morals, shall be punished with a fine of from 20 to 200 francs, and imprisonment from a month to two years. Also those who introduce, affix, expose, lend, distribute, or keep secretly and without authorization, writings or bad books, or caricatures which attack directly or indirectly the Holy Religion of the State and its Ministers. The objects designated shall be confiscated, and in case of a second offence, the highest amount of fine and imprisonment shall be doubled. Blasphemers are to be punished according to the criminal laws. Here are two classes of crime noted; scandalous and blasphemous conversations, and having bad books in your library. A Valaisan may chance to say that such or such a miracle published, by the Reverend Fathers, appears to him somewhat Apocryphal; the opinion is scandalous against the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Romish religion, and he shall undergo fine and imprisonment for his enormous crime. He dares to pretend that certain priests do not set the best possible example; the opinion is thrice scandalous, for which he shall suffer the highest amount of fine and imprisonment. He goes even a little farther; possibly he discusses the claim of the Virgin Mary to the adoration of the faithful, and maintains that on this point the Romish Church is contrary to the New Testament. This is worse than a mere scandalous opinion or proposition; it is blasphemy; and blasphemy is a crime for criminal law to punish. If the hardy Valaisan shall dare affirm that the morality 1 The Semeur. of the Jesuits is possibly very immoral, this is blasphemy in the first degree, and must be punished with the highest infamy. It is almost incredible that a law of this nature can have been promulgated in 1845, upon the frontiers of France and Italy, under notice of the public press, when the Jesuits have so many reasons for making men believe that their system is not incompatible with some degree of liberty. But it is a fair experiment fully played out. It would scarcely have been believed that they would have dared offer to Europe a spectacle of such drunkenness of despotism. In France, the people were full of indig nation against the law of sacrilege in that nation, and after the Revolution of July, they utterly abolished it. But that law, in comparison with this of the Canton du Valais, concerning scandalous opinions and propositions, was sweetness and benevolence itself. It was necessary at least to have actually committed the offence in some place of worship, during the religious exercises, or to have directly attacked some minister of the church. But in the Canton du Valais it is enough to have simply expressed a scandalous opinion, in the street, or the tavern, or in one's own house in presence of a neighbour! Did the Inquisition ever go farther than this? We should have thought that the laws of the eleventh century commanding to pierce the tongues of blasphemers and hereties with a hot iron, existed now only in history, as monuments of an atrocious barbarity. But it is a great mistake. The Je suits suffer nothing of cruelty and infamy to perish. They keep it concealed for a season; they shut up their arsenal when the popular storm thunders; but so soon as the sun shines, they bring up again their chains, their pitiless axes and instruments of torture. Again by this law men shall be fined and imprisoned, not only for having written bad books, or drawn wicked caricatures against the holy religion of the State, not only for having introduced into the Canton, or exposed, or distributed, or lent, such books or writings, but even for having knowingly or without authorization kept them in their libraries. An inhabitant of the Valais, for example, has among his books the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, or even the new writings pro |