Слике страница
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

THIS is not the first poetical tribute which in our times has been paid to this beautiful City. Mr. Southey, in the "Poet's Pilgrimage," speaks of it in lines which I cannot deny myself the pleasure of connecting with my own.

"Time hath not wronged her, nor hath Ruin sought Rudely her splendid Structures to destroy,

Save in those recent days, with evil fraught,

When Mutability, in drunken joy

Triumphant, and from all restraint released,
Let loose her fierce and many-headed beast.

"But for the scars in that unhappy rage

Inflicted, firm she stands and undecayed;

Like our first Sires, a beautiful old age
Is hers in venerable years arrayed;
And yet, to her, benignant stars may bring,
What fate denies to man, - a second spring.

"When I may read of tilts in days of old,

And tourneys graced by Chieftains of renown,
Fair dames, grave citizens, and warriors bold,

If fancy would pourtray some stately town,
Which for such pomp fit theatre should be,
Fair Bruges, I shall then remember thee."

In this City are many vestiges of the splendour of the Burgundian Dukedom, and the long black mantle universally worn by the females is probably a remnant of the old Spanish connection, which, if I do not much deceive myself, is traceable in the grave deportment of its inhabitants. Bruges is comparatively little disturbed by that curious contest, or rather conflict, of Flemish with French propensities in matters of taste, so conspicuous through other parts of Flanders. The hotel to which we drove at Ghent furnished an odd instance. In the passages were paintings and statutes, after the antique, of Hebe and Apollo; and in the garden, a little pond, about a yard and half in diameter, with a weeping willow bending over it, and under the shade of that tree, in the centre of the pond, a wooden painted statue of a Dutch or Flemish boor, looking ineffably tender upon his mistress, and embracing her. A living duck, tethered at the feet of the statues, alternately tormented a miserable eel and itself with endeavours to escape from its bonds and prison. Had we chanced to espy the hostess of the hotel in this quaint rural retreat, the exhibition would have been complete. She was a true Flemish figure, in the dress of the days of Holbein, her symbol of office, a weighty bunch of keys, pendant from her portly waist. In Brussels, the modern taste in costume, architecture, &c. got the mastery; in

Ghent there is a struggle; but in Bruges old images are still paramount, and an air of monastic life among the quiet goings-on of a thinly-peopled City is inexpressibly soothing; a pensive grace seems to be cast over all, even the very children. Extract from Journal.

[blocks in formation]

See the beautiful Song in Mr. Coleridge's Tragedy "THE REMORSE." Why is the Harp of Quantock silent?

[blocks in formation]

"Not, like his great Compeers, indignantly

Doth Danube spring to life!"

Before this quarter of the Black Forest was inhabited, the source of the Danube might have suggested some of those sublime images which Armstrong has so finely described; at present, the contrast is most striking. The Spring appears in a capacious stone Basin upon the front of a Ducal palace, with a pleasure-ground opposite; then, passing under the pavement, takes the form of a little, clear, bright, black, vigorous rill, barely wide enough to tempt the agility of a child five years old to leap over it, and entering the Garden, it joins, after a course of a few hundred yards, a Stream much more considerable than itself. The copiousness of the Spring at Doneschingen must have procured for it the honour of being named the Source of the Danube.

Page 255.

"On approaching the Staub-bach."

"The Staub-bach" is a narrow Stream, which, after a long course on the heights, comes to the sharp edge of a somewhat

overhanging precipice, overleaps it with a bound, and, after a fall of 930 feet, forms again a rivulet. The vocal powers of these musical Beggars may seem to be exaggerated; but this wild and savage air was utterly unlike any sounds I had ever heard; the notes reached me from a distance, and on what occasion they were sung I could not guess, only they seemed to belong, in some way or other, to the Waterfall-and reminded me of religious services chanted to Streams and Fountains in Pagan times. Mr. Southey has thus accurately characterised the peculiarity of this music: "While we were at the Waterfall, some half-score peasants, chiefly women and girls, assembled just out of reach of the Spring, and set up,— surely, the wildest chorus that ever was heard by human ears,- a song not of articulate sounds, but in which the voice was used as a mere instrument of music, more flexible than any which art could produce, sweet, powerful, and thrilling beyond description." See Notes to "A Tale of Paraguay."

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

The Convent whose site was pointed out,

dition, in this manner, is seated at its base.

according to tra

The Architecture

of the Building is unimpressive, but the situation is worthy of the honour which the imagination of the Mountaineers has conferred upon it.

Page 276.

Linel.

"Though searching damps and many an envious flaw

Have marred this Work."

This picture of the Last Supper has not only been grievously injured by time, but parts are said to have been nainted over

again. These niceties may be left to connoisseurs, — I speak of it as I felt. The copy exhibited in London some years ago, and the engraving by Morghen, are both admirable; but in the original is a power which neither of those works has attained, or even approached.

Page 276. Line 11.

"And hand reposing on the board in ruth
Of what it utters."

"The hand

Sang with the voice, and this the argument."

Page 278. Line 22.

"Of figures human and divine."

MILTON.

The Statues ranged round the Spire and along the roof of the Cathedral of Milan, have been found fault with by Persons whose exclusive taste is unfortunate for themselves. It is true that the same expense and labour, judiciously directed to purposes more strictly architectural, might have much heightened the general effect of the building; for, seen from the ground, the Statues appear diminutive. But the coup d'œil, from the best point of view, which is half way up the Spire, must strike an unprejudiced Person with admiration; and surely the selection and arrangement of the Figures is exquisitely fitted to support the religion of the Country in the imaginations and feelings of the Spectator. It was with great pleasure that I saw, during the two ascents which we made, several Children, of different ages, tripping up and down the slender spire, and pausing to look around them, with feelings much more ani

« ПретходнаНастави »