CHAPTER XXV. Chamouny to Geneva. -The Bishop of Cashel Preaching in the HAVING once more visited the beautiful Cascade des Pelerines, we started for Geneva at five in the morning in what is called the diligence, being, until you get to St. Martin's, a simple char-à-banc for three. The most beautiful sight in the excursion, after the magnificent view of Mont Blanc from the bridge at St. Martin's, was that of the miniature Staubach cascades, which fall softly, like a long veil of wrought lace, over the precipices by the roadside, many hundred feet high. You catch them now before, now behind, now sideways, now in front, now beneath, where they seem dropping on you out of heaven, now among the trees, glancing in fairy jets of foam, so light, that it seems as if the air would suspend them. They are like-what are they like?— like beautiful maidens, timidly entering the gay world-like Raphael's or Murillo's pictures of the Virgin and Child-like the light of unexpected truth upon the mind-like a 'morrice band' of daisies greeting a 'traveller in the lane'—like a flock of sheep feeding among lilies-like the white doe of Rylstone-like the frost-work on the window-like an apple-tree in blossom-like the first new moon. How patiently, modestly, unconsciously, they throw themselves over the cliff, to be gazed at. They are like fairies dancing in the moonlight; like the wings of angels coming down Jacob's ladder into the world. The saddest and most dismal sight in this excursion (for where does the shadow of Mont Blanc fall, without meeting some sorrow?) was the burned town of Cluses, with the inhabitants like melancholy ghosts among the ruins. A whole village of industrious peasants devoured by fire, and only one whole house left! All their property, all their means of subsistence gone! A substantial, thriving village it was, the key of the valley, at the mouth of a romantic gorge, where there was room for only one street and the bridge, all annihilated. Just so the town of Thusis, near the pass of the Splugen, has been burned entirely within a short period; and just so, nearly the whole town of Sallenches, a few miles from Cluses, was not long ago laid in ashes. This terrible calamity desolates the Swiss villages more frequently than the overwhelming avalanche, or the tempest-driven torrents from the glaciers. Benevolence was busy, sending in her supplies ¡rom every direction, but the sight was a very sad one; the people literally sitting in sackcloth and ashes. Had the calamity fallen in the winter, the suffering would have been terrible. After this beautiful day's ride amidst the grandeur of the gorges, valleys, and castellated ridges of mountains between Chamouny and the Lake Leman, we arrived for a quiet, pleasant Sabbath, at the Hotel de l'Ecu, from which we had departed. The change from Chamouny to Geneva is from the extreme of sublimity to the highest degree of beauty. "Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, If Byron had but tasted of that spring-if he had known who it was, and what better impulse, that was whispering to him when he wrote these lines, he would have asked, and Christ would have given him, of that living Fountain, which would have been in him a well of water springing up to everlasting life. And then he would not have again returned to "earth's troubled waters;" instead of descending from the elevation of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage to the degradation of Don Juan, he would have gone up, excelsior; he would have shaken off the baser passions of humanity, and his poetry would have breathed the air of heaven. Alas! this sweet stanza of the Poet's thoughts on the lake of Geneva recalls to my mind the image of the noble-hearted companion before mentioned, of some of my rambles among the mountains (Mr. Bacon, of Connecticut), with whom I parted one bright morning on the lake, repeating that very stanza. He was just setting out on his way through the north of Switzerland, and by the Rhine, for England. There was a melancholy upon his mind, produced, in part, no doubt, by illness; but he had spoken of a beloved father, of the delight to which he looked forward in rejoining him in America, of his only earthly wish to make the declining years of his parent happy, and of the strife in his mind between the desire to spend a few months more in Europe, and his impatience to be again with those who seemed so dependent upon him for enjoyment. The Sabbath evening before we parted, Mr. Bacon had gone with me to hear the Bishop of Cashel. The service was in the dining hall of the Hotel de Bergues, a fashionable resort, where there were gathered as many of the votaries of rank and wealth from England as ordinarily are to be found in Geneva on any Sabbath. It was an unusual step for a Bishop of the English Church; a regular conventicle-a Sabbath evening extempore sermon from a Bishop in the dining hall of the Hotel! I love to record it as a pleasant example of a dignitary of the Establishment, using the influence of his rank to do good, to gather an assembly for hearing God's word, in circumstances where no one else could have commanded an audience of half a dozen persons, where, indeed, the use of the room for such a purpose, would hardly have been granted to any other individual. The hall was perfectly crowded. The preacher's sermon was a most simple, faithful, practical, affectionate exhibition of divine truth. It was on the subject of Paul's conversion, its steps, its marks, its results, especially the blessed temper, Lord, what will thou have me to do? He showed that every creature, who would be a Christian, must be converted, just like Paul; that the change in Paul was no extraordinary case, as it is sometimes viewed, but a case of conversion; and that they must every one be converted, and become as little children, in like manner, saying, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? A second Sabbath evening, the good Bishop, having been unexpectedly detained in Geneva, appointed a second service of the same kind. Again the hall was crowded. He took for his subject, this time, the conversion of that sinful woman, who loved much, because much was forgiven; and again it was a most unostentatious, straight-forward, practical exhibition of the truth, plain, convincing, humbling, direct to the conscience and the heart. Every person, he told his hearers, needed conversion by the grace of Christ, just as much as this woman. Without that grace, be you ever so refined, so amiable, so upright, so pure, you are just as certainly unfit for heaven, and in the way to perdition, as she was. And you must come to Christ just as she did, be as penitent for your sins as she was, and love your Saviour, like her, with all your heart. Indeed it was pleasant, it was delightful, it was heart-cheering, to hear a Bishop of the Church of England, in the midst of the prevalence of Oxfordism, the resurrection of a religion of forms, baptisms, crossings, and not of faith and conversion, take these simple themes, and go with Christ's bare truth straight to the hearts of his hearers. He must have had a unity of design in taking Paul for the first evening, and the sinful woman for the second; two extremes of society, two great sinners, high and low; and the grace of Christ equally necessary for both, and for all intermediate characters; and the grace of Christ just the same with both, and with all sinful hearts under whatever exterior ; grace, divine grace, and not form; conversion and not baptism. Among others present at these meetings, we noticed the youthful and extremely beautiful wife of M. Bodisco, the Russian Ambassador to America, our fair country woman. What can console her amidst the trials of her rank and expatriation, but that same grace, which the Bishop of Cashel commended with such affectionate earnestness to the heart of every one of us? Probably many a sermon of the same nature had she listened to in her own dear native land. May she find the pearl of great price! There were others there, who perhaps never before in all their lives listened to such plain truth. The good Bishop may reap a great reward from these two Sabbath evenings' simple labors. He had just been made Bishop of Cashel in Ireland; before, he was plain Rev. T. Daly. A Scottish clergyman of my acquaintance, who had formerly known him well, called on him in Geneva. "I hope," said he, when allusion was made to his re cent elevation, "that you will find me Thomas Daly still." Mr. Bacon was much struck with the simplicity and directness of the preaching. "Pretty well for a bishop," said he; "this is like our good, New England, practical theology." We conversed on the subject, and the next morning, when we parted, I handed him a letter, pursuing the same train of thought, knowing well that he would read it with kindness and affection. 'I often thought of him. Where was he, while I was wandering? Then I heard of his sudden death in Spain, in the lovely region of Seville, but in a land of strangers, with only the image of distant childless parents in his heart! What a destruction of the fondest hopes, on the one side and on the other! And what a veil there is between the traveller and the future! I had crossed seas, passed through the severest trial and sorrow I ever encountered, in the death of a younger brother unutterably dear, and indescribably lovely in his character; but yet I was on my way home, had been preserved in mercy amidst all dangers, and on my way took up a newspaper in my native land, to behold the record of his death in Spain, from whom I parted that bright morning on the lake of Geneva! I thought of the desolation of his home, its flower gone for ever. What a blow was that! An only son! an affliction far deeper than the mere elastic energies of our humanity can bear up under. But there is One who bindeth up the broken in heart, and healeth all their wounds. He alone, who inflicts such a blow, can mingle consolation with it; he only can support the soul beneath it. The shadow of Mont Blanc falls upon sickness, trial and suffering, as well as upon elastic frames, gay hearts, buoyant hopes and joyous spirits. And sometimes it falls upon those, whose own shadow, as they stand unawares on the brink of the grave, falls already from Time into Eternity. Would that the pilgrimage of all, who tread from year to year that wondrous circle of sublimity and glory, sometimes in shadow, sometimes in sunshine, sometimes in storm and danger, might terminate in the Light of Heaven! |