Слике страница
PDF
ePub

3

splendid fault, which none but men e; genius
can commit." (pp. 403, 404.) The best ex-
planation of his success, and the best apology
for his defects as a speaker, is to be found, we
believe, in the following candid passage:—

tincture of it to such writers as Milton, Bacon, or Taylor. There is fancy and figure enough certainly in their compositions: But there is no intoxication of the fancy, and no rioting and revelling among figures-no ungoverned and ungovernable impulse-no fond dalliance with metaphors-no mad and headlong pursuit of brilliant images and passionate expressions-no lingering among tropes and melodies-no giddy bandying of antitheses and allusions-no craving, in short, for perpetual glitter, and panting after effect, till both speaker and hearer are lost in the splendid confusion, and the argument evaporates in the heat which was meant to enforce it. This is perhaps too strongly put; but there are large portions of Mr. C.'s Speeches to which we think the substance of the description will apply. Take, for instance, a passage, very much praised in the work before us, in his argument in Judge Johnson's case, an argument, it will be remembered, on a point of law, and addressed not to a Jury, but to a Judge.

The Juries among whom he was thrown, and for whom he originally formed his style, were not fastidious critics; they were more usually men abounding in rude unpolished sympathies, and who were ready to surrender the treasure, of which they scarcely knew the value, to him that offered them the most alluring toys. Whatever might have been his own better taste, as an advocate he soon discovered, that the surest way to persuade was to conciliate by amusing them. With them he found that his imagination might revel unrestrained; that, when once the work of intoxication was begun, every wayward fancy and wild expression was as acceptable and effectual as the most refined wit; and that the favour which they would have refused to the unattractive reasoner, or to the too distant and formal orator, they had not the firmness to withhold, when solicited with the gay persuasive familiarity of a companion. These careless or licentious habits, encouraged by early applause and victory, were never thrown aside; and we can observe, in almost all his productions, no matter how august the audience, or how solemn the occasion, that his mind is perpetually relapsing into its primi-struction has received the sanction of another Court,, "I am not ignorant that this extraordinary con. tive indulgences."-pp. 412, 413. nor of the surprise and dismay with which it smote The learned author closes this very able upon the general heart of the Bar. I am aware that and eloquent dissertation with some remarks I may have the mortification of being told, in anupon what he says is now denominated the foresee in what confusion I shall hang down my other country, of that unhappy decision; and I Irish school of eloquence; and seems inclined head when I am told of it. But I cherish, too, the to deny that its profusion of imagery implies consolatory hope, that I shall be able to tell them, any deficiency, or even neglect of argument. that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would As we had some share, we believe, in impo- put above all the sweepings of their Hall (no great sing this denomination, we may be pardoned compliment, we should think), who was of a different opinion-who had derived his ideas of civil for feeling some little anxiety that it should liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and of be rightly understood; and beg leave there- Rome-who had fed the youthful vigour of his fore to say, that we are as far as possible from studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their holding, that the greatest richness of imagery wisest philosophers and statesmen-and who had necessarily excludes close or accurate reason-refined that theory into the quick and exquisite ing; holding, on the contrary, that it is fre- sensibility of moral instinct, by contemplating the practice of their most illustrious examples-by quently its most appropriate vehicle and na- dwelling on the sweet-souled piety of Cimon-on tural exponent -as in Lord Bacon, Lord the anticipated Christianity of Socrates--on the Chatham, and Jeremy Taylor. But the elo-gallant and pathetic patriotism of Epaminondasquence we wished to characterise, is that on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom to move where the figures and ornaments of speech than to have pushed the sun from his course! I from his integrity would have been more difficult do interfere with its substantial object-where would add, that if he had seemed to hesitate, it fancy is not ministrant but predominant- was but for a moment-that his hesitation was like where the imagination is not merely awak- the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, ened, but intoxicated-and either overlays and hides it from the view, and does so for a mo and obscures the sense, or frolics and gambols ment hide it, by involving the spectator without even around it, to the disturbance of its march, approaching the face of the luminary. And this and the weakening of its array for the con- soothing hope I draw from the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life-from the remembrance of test :-And of this kind, we still humbly think, those attic nights, and those refections of the gods, was the eloquence of Mr. Curran. which we have spent with those admired, and respected, and beloved companions, who have gone before us; over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland have been shed. [Here Lord Avonmore could not refrain from bursting intc tears.] Yes, my good Lord. I see you do not forget them. I see their sacred forms passing in sad review before your memory. I see your pained ana softened fancy recalling those happy meetings, where the innocent enjoyment of social mirth became ex panded into the nobler warmth of social virtue, and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon of man-where the swelling heart conceived and communicated the pure and generous purpose-where my slenderer and younger taper imbibed its borrowed light from the more matured and redun. dant fountain of yours."-Vol. i. pp. 139-148.

His biographer says, indeed, that it is a mistake to call it Irish, because Swift and Goldsmith had none of it-and Milton and Bacon and Chatham had much; and moreover, that Burke and Grattan and Curran had each a distinctive style of eloquence, and ought not to be classed together. How old the style may be in Ireland, we cannot undertake to say-though we think there are traces of it in Ossian. We would observe too, that, though born in Ireland, neither Swift nor Goldsmith were trained in the Irish school, or worked for the Irish market; and we have already said, that it is totally to mistake our conception of the style in question, to ascribe any

Now, we must candidly confess, that we

do not remember ever to have read any thing |--being often caught sobuing over the patho much more absurd than this-and that the of Richardson, or laughing at the humour of puerility and folly of the classical intrusions Cervantes, with an unrestrained vehemence is even less offensive, than the heap of incon- which reminds us of that of Voltaire. He gruous metaphors by which the meaning is spoke very slow, both in public and private, obscured. Does the learned author really and was remarkably scrupulous in his choice mean to contend, that the metaphors here of words: He slept very little, and, like Johnadd either force or beauty to the sentiment? son, was always averse to retire at nightor that Bacon or Milton ever wrote any thing lingering long after he arose to depart-and, in like this upon such a topic? In his happier his own house, often following one of his guests moments, and more vehement adjurations, to his chamber, and renewing the conversation Mr. C. is often beyond all question a great for an hour. He was habitually abstinent and and commanding orator; and we have no temperate; and, from his youth up, in spite of doubt was, to those who had the happiness all his vivacity, the victim of a constitutional of hearing him, a much greater orator than melancholy. His wit is said to have been ready the mere readers of his speeches have any and brilliant, and altogether without gall means of conceiving:-But we really cannot But the credit of this testimony is somewhat help repeating our protest against a style of weakened by a little selection of his bons composition which could betray its great mas- mots, with which we are furnished in a note, ter, and that very frequently, into such pas- The greater part, we own, appear to us to be sages as those we have just extracted. The rather vulgar and ordinary; as, when a man mischief is not to the master-whose genius of the name of Halfpenny was desired by the could efface all such stains, and whose splen- Judge to sit down, Mr. C. said, "I thank your did successes would sink his failures in obli- Lordship for having at last nailed that rap to vion-but to the pupils, and to the public, the counter;" or, when observing upon the whose taste that very genius is thus instru- singular pace of a Judge who was lame, he mental in corrupting. If young lawyers are said, "Don't you see that one leg goes before, taught to consider this as the style which like a tipstaff, to make room for the other? should be aimed at and encouraged, to renor, when vindicating his countrymen from der Judges benevolent,-by comparing them the charge of being naturally vicious, he said, to "the sweet-souled Cimon," and the "gal-"He had never yet heard of an Irishman being lant Epaminondas;" or to talk about their born drunk." The following, however, is own "young and slender tapers," and "the clouds and the morning sun," with what precious stuff will the Courts and the country be infested! It is not difficult to imitate the defects of such a style-and of all defects they are the most nauseous in imitation. Even in the hands of men of genius, the risk is, that the longer such a style is cultivated, the more extravagant it will grow,-just as those who deal in other means of intoxication, are tempted to strengthen the mixture as they proceed. The learned and candid author before us, testifies this to have been the progress of Mr. C. himself-and it is still more strikingly illustrated by the history of his models and imitators. Mr. Burke had much less of this extravagance than Mr. GrattanMr. Grattan much less than Mr. Curran-and Mr. Curran much less than Mr. Phillips.-It is really of some importance that the climax should be closed, somewhere.

There is a concluding chapter, in which Mr. C.'s skill in cross-examination, and his conversational brilliancy, are commemorated; as well as the general simplicity and affability of his manners, and his personal habits and peculiarities. He was not a profound lawyer, nor much of a general scholar, though reasonably well acquainted with all the branches of polite literature, and an eager reader of novels

good-"I can't tell you, Curran," observed an Irish nobleman, who had voted for the Union, "how frightful our old House of Commons appears to me." "Ah! my Lord,” replied the other, "it is only natural for Murderers to be afraid of Ghosts;"--and this is at least grotesque. "Being asked what an Irish gentleman, just arrived in England, could mean by perpetually putting out his tongue? Answer I suppose he's trying to catch the English accent." In his last illness, his physi cian observing in the morning that he seemed to cough with more difficulty, he answered, "that is rather surprising, as I have been practising all night.”

But these things are of little consequence. Mr. Curran was something much better than a sayer of smart sayings. He was a lover of his country-and its fearless, its devoted, and indefatigable servant. To his energy and tal ents she was perhaps indebted for some miti gation of her sufferings in the days of her ex tremity-and to these, at all events, the publi has been indebted, in a great degree, for th knowledge they now have of her wrongs; an for the feeling which that knowledge ha excited, of the necessity of granting them re dress. It is in this character that he mu have most wished to be remembered, and i which he has most deserved it.

(November, 1822.)

witzerland, or a Journal of a Tour and Residence in that Country in the Years 1817, 1818, and 1819. Followed by an Historical Sketch of the Manners and Customs of Ancient and Modern Helvetia, in which the Events of our own time are fully detailed; together with the Causes to which they may be referred. By L. SIMOND, Author of Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the Years 1810 and 1811. In 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1822.*

M. SIMOND is already well known in this accordingly, in all his moral and political obcountry as the author of one of the best ac-servations at least, a constant alternation of counts of it that has ever been given to the romantic philanthropy and bitter sarcasm-of world, either by native or foreigner-the full- the most captivating views of apparent hapest certainly, and the most unprejudiced-piness and virtue, and the most relentless disand containing the most faithful descriptions closures of actual guilt and misery-of the both of the aspect of our country, and the peculiarities of our manners and character, that has yet come under our observation. There are some mistakes, and some rash judgments; but nothing can exceed the candour of the estimate, or the fairness and independence of spirit with which it is made; while the whole is pervaded by a vein of original thought, always sagacious, and not unfrequently profound. The main fault of that book, as a work of permanent interest and instruction, which it might otherwise have been, is the too great space which is alloted to the transient occurrences and discussions of the time to which it refers-most of which have already lost their interest, and not only read like old news and stale politics, but have extended their own atmosphere of repulsion to many admirable remarks and valuable suggestions, of which they happen to be the vehicles.

sweetest and most plausible illusions, and the most withering and chilling truths. He expatiates, for example, through many pages, on the heroic valour and devoted patriotism of the old Helvetic worthies, with the memorials of which the face of their country is covered-and then proceeds to dissect their character and manners with the most cruel particularity, and makes them out to have been most barbarous, venal, and unjust. In the same way, he bewitches his readers with seducing pictures of the peace, simplicity, independence, and honesty of the mountain villagers; and by and by takes occasion to tell us, that they are not only more stupid, but more corrupt than the inhabitants of cities. He eulogises the solid learning and domestic habits that prevail at Zurich and Geneva; and then makes it known to us that they are infested with faction and ennui. He draws a delightful picture of the white cottages and smiling pastures in which the cheerful peasants of the Engadine have their romantic habitations-and then casts us down from our elevation without the least pity, by informing us, that the best of them are those who have returned from hawking stucco parrots, sixpenny looking-glasses, and coloured sweetmeats through all the towns of Europe. He is always strong for liberty, and indignant at oppression-but cannot settle very well in what liberty consists; and seems to suspect, at last, that political rights are oftener a source of disorder than of comfort; and that if person and property are tolerably secure, it is mere quixotism to look further.

The work before us is marked by the same excellences, and is nearly free from the faults to which we have just alluded. In spite of this, however-perhaps even in consequence of it-we suspect it will not generally be thought so entertaining; the scene being necessarily so much narrower, and the persons of the drama fewer and less diversified. The work, however, is full of admirable description and original remark:-nor do we know any book of travels, ancient or modern, which contains, in the same compass, so many graphic and animated delineations of external objects, or so many just and vigorous observations on the moral phenomena it records. The most remarkable thing about it, however -and it occurs equally in the author's former So strong a contrast of warm feelings and publication-is the singular combination of cold reasonings, such animating and such deenthusiasm and austerity that appears both in spairing views of the nature and destiny of the descriptive, and the reasoning or ethical mankind, are not often to be found in the same parts of the performance-the perpetual strug-mind--and still less frequently in the same gle that seems to exist between the feelings book: And yet they amount but to an extreme and fancy of the author, and the sterner in-case, or strong example, of the inconsistencies timations of his understanding. There is,

through which all men of generous tempers and vigorous understandings are perpetually *I reprint a part of this paper :-partly out of love passing, as the one or the other part of their to the memory of the author, who was my connec- constitution assumes the ascendant. There tion and particular friend :-but chiefly for the sake are many of our good feelings, we suspect, of his remarks on our English manners, and my and some even of our good principles, that judgment on these remarks-which I would ven- rest upon a sort of illusion; or cannot submit ture to submit to the sensitive patriots of America, at least to be questioned by frigid reason, as a specimen of the temperance with which the patriots of other countries can deal with the censors of without being for the time a good deal dis their national habits and pretensions to fine breeding.countenanced and impaired-and this we take

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

be made."

The first view of the country, though no longer new to most readers, is given with a truth, and a freshness of feeling which we are tempted to preserve in an extract.

to be very clearly the case with M. Simond. | of destruction—a savage enemy, speaking an un His temperament is plainly enthusiastic, and known language, with whom no compromise could his fancy powerful: But his reason is active and exacting, and his love of truth paramount to all other considerations. His natural sympathies are with all fine and all lofty qualities but it is his honest conviction, that happiness is most securely built of more vulgar "Soon after passing the frontiers of the two materials and that there is even something countries, the view, heretofore bounded by near ob ridiculous in investing our humble human na-jects, woods and pastures, rocks and snows, opened ture with these magnificent attributes. At all at once upon the Canton de Vaud, and upon half all events it is impossible to doubt of his sin- Switzerland! a vast extent of undulating country, cerity in both parts of the representation;-lakes; villages and towns, with their antique tow. tufted woods and fields, and silvery streams and for there is not the least appearance of a love of paradox, or a desire to produce effect; anders, and their church-steeples shining in the sun. nothing can be so striking as the air of candour and impartiality that prevails through the whole work. If any traces of prejudice may still be detected, they have manifestly survived the most strenuous efforts to efface them. The strongest, we think, are against French character and English manners-with some, perhaps, against the French Revolution, and its late Imperial consummator. He is very prone to admire Nature-but not easily satisfied with Man; and, though most intolerant of intolerance, and most indulgent to those defects of which adventitious advantages make men most impatient, he is evidently of opinion that scarcely any thing is exactly as "The human mind thirsts after immensity and immutability, and duration without bounds; but it it should be in the present state of society-needs some tangible object from which to take its and that little more can be said for most flight,-something present to lead to futurity, some existing habits and institutions, than that thing bounded from whence to rise to the infinite. they have been, and might have been, still This vault of the heavens over our head, sinking all terrestrial objects into absolute nothingness, pansion in the mind: But mere space is not a permight seem best fitted to awaken this sense of exceptible object to which we can readily apply a scale, while the Alps, seen at a glance between heaven and earth-met as it were on the confines of the regions of fancy and of sober reality, are hand, and suggesting thoughts such as human lanthere like written characters, traced by a divine guage never reached.

worse.

He sets out for the most picturesque country of Europe, from that which is certainly the least so and gives the first indications of his sensitiveness on these topics, by a passing critique on the ancient châteaus of France, and their former inhabitants. We may as well introduce him to our readers with this passage as with any other.

"A few comfortable residences, scattered about the country, have lately put us in mind how very rare they are in general: Instead of them, you meet, not unfrequently, some ten or twenty miserable hovels, crowded together round what was formerly the stronghold of the lord of the manor; a narrow, dark, prison-like building, with small grated windows, embattled walls, and turrets peeping over thatched roofs. The lonely cluster seems unconnected with the rest of the country, and may be said to represent the feudal system, as plants in a hortus siccus do the vegetable. Long before the Revolution, these châteaux had been mostly forsaken by their seigneurs, for the nearest country town; where Monsieur le Compte, or Monsieur le Marquis, deco

rated with the cross of St. Louis, made shift to live on his paltry seigniorial dues, and rents ill paid by a starving peasantry; spending his time in reminis cences of gallantry with the old dowagers of the place, who rouged and wore patches, dressed in hoops and high-heeled shoes, full four inches, and long pointed elbow-ruffles, balanced with lead. Not one individual of this good company knew any thing of what was passing in the world, or suspected that any change had taken place since the days of Louis XIV. No book found its way there; no one read, not even a newspaper. When the Revolution burst upon this inferior nobility of the provinces, it appeared to them like Attila and the Huns to the people of the fifth century-the Scourge of God, coming nobody knew whence, for the mere purpose

"The lake of Neuchâtel, far below on the left, and those of Morat and of Vienne, like mirrors set in deep frames, contrasted by the tranquillity of grounds and ridges of the various landscape. Be their lucid surfaces, with the dark shades and broken yond this vast extent of country, its villages and towns, woods, lakes, and mountains; beyond all terrestrial objects-beyond the horizon itself, rose a long range of aerial forms, of the softest pale pink hue: These were the high Alps, the rampart of Italy-from Mont Blanc in Savoy, to the glaciers of the Overland, and even further. Their angle of elevation seen from this distance is very small indeed. Faithfully represented in a drawing, the effect would be insignificant; but the aerial per spective amply restored the proportions lost in the mathematical perspective.

"Coming down the Jura, a long descent brought us to what appeared a plain, but which proved a varied country with hills and dales. divided into neat enclosures of hawthorn in full bloom, and large hedge-row trees, mostly walnut, oak. and ash. It had altogether very much the appearance of the most beautiful parts of England, although the enclosures were on a smaller scale, and the cottages less neat and ornamented. They differed entirely from France, where the dwellings are always col lected in villages, the fields all open, and without trees. Numerous streams of the clearest water crossed the road, and watered very fine meadows. The houses, built of stone, low, broad, and massy, either thatched or covered with heavy wooden shin. gles, and shaded with magnificent walnut trees, might all have furnished studies to an artist."

Vol. i. pp. 25-27.

The following, however, is more characteristic of the author's vigorous and familiar, but somewhat quaint and abrupt, style of description.

"Leaving our equipages at Ballaigne, we proceeded to the falls of the Orbe, through a hanging wood of fine old oaks, and came, after a long descent, to a place where the Orbe breaks through a great mass of ruins, which, at some very remote period, have fallen from the mountain, and entirely obstructed its channel. All the earth, and all the smaller fragments, having long since disappeared and the water now works its way, with great noise

and fury, among the larger fragments, and falls above the height of eighty feet, in the very best style. The blocks, many of them as large as a good-sized three-story house, are heaped up most Strangely, jammed in by their angles-in equilibrium on a point, or forming perilous bridges, over which you may, with proper precaution, pick your way to the other side. The quarry from which the materials of the bridge came is just above your head, and the miners are still at work-air, water, frost, weight, and time! The strata of limestone are evidently breaking down; their deep rents are widening, and enormous masses, already loosened from the mountain, and suspended on their precarious bases, seem only waiting for the last effort of the great lever of nature to take the horrid leap, and bury under some hundred feet of new chaotic ruins, the trees, the verdant lawn-and yourself, who are looking on and foretelling the catastrophe! We left this scene at last reluctantly, and proceeded towards the dent-de-vaulion, at the base of which we arrived in two hours, and in two hours more reached the summit, which is four thousand four hundred and seventy-six feet above the sea, and three thousand three hundred and forty-two feet above the lake of Geneva. Our path lay over smooth turf, sufficiently steep to make it difficult to climb. At the top we found a narrow ridge, not more than one hundred yards wide. The south view, a most magnificent one, was unfortunately too like that at our entrance into Switzerland to

bear a second description; the other side of the ridge can scarcely be approached without terror, being almost perpendicular. Crawling, therefore, on our hands and knees, we ventured, in this modest attitude, to look out of the window at the hundred and fiftieth story (at least two thousand feet), and see what was doing in the street. Herds of cattle in the infiniment petit were grazing on the verdant lawn of a narrow vale; on the other side of which, a mountain, overgrown with dark pines, marked the boundary of France. Towards the west, we saw a piece of water, which appeared like a mere fishpond. It was the lake of Joux, two leagues in length, and half a league in breadth. We were to look for our night's lodgings in the village on its banks."- Vol. i. pp. 33-36.

"Bienne struck us as more Swiss than any thing we had yet seen, or rather as if we were entering Switzerland for the first time; every thing looked and sounded so foreign: And yet to see the curiosity we excited the moment we landed and entered the streets, we might have supposed it was ourselves who looked rather outlandish. The women wore their hair plaited down to their heels, while the full petticoat did not descend near so far. Several groups of them, sitting at their doors, sung in parts, with an accuracy of ear and taste innate among the Germans. Gateways fortified with towers intersect the streets, which are composed of strange. looking houses built on arcades, like those of bridges, and variously painted, blue with yellow borders, red with white, or purple and grey; projecting iron balconies, highly worked and of a glossy black, with bright green window frames. The luxury of fountains and of running water is be tempted to quench your thirst in the kennel, it still greater here than at Neuchâtel; and you might runs so clear and pure. Morning and evening, goats, in immense droves, conducted to or from the mountain, traverse the streets, and stop of them selves, each at its own door. In the interior of the houses, most articles of furniture are quaintly shaped and ornamented; old-looking, but rubbed bright, and in good preservation; from the nut-cracker, curiously carved, to the double-necked cruet, pouring oil and vinegar out of the same bottle. The accommodations at the inn are homely, but not uncomfortable; substantially good, though not elegant."-Vol. i. pp. 65, 66.

We may add the following, which is in the same style.

"It rained all day yesterday, and we remained shut up in our room at a German inn in Waldshut, enjoying a day's rest with our books, and observing men and manners in Germany, through the smal round panes of our casements. The projecting roofs of houses afford so much shelter on both sides of the streets, that the beau sex of Waldshut were out all day long in their Sunday clothes, as if it had been fine weather; their long yellow hair in a sin. gle plait hung down to their heels, along a back made very strait by the habit of carrying pails of milk and water on the head; their snow-white shiftsleeves, rolled up to the shoulder, exposed to view a sinewy, sun-burnt arm; the dark red stays were laced with black in front, and a petticoat scarcely longer than the Scotch kilt, hid nothing of the lower limb, nor of a perfectly neat stocking, well stretched by red garters full in sight. The aged among them, generally frightful, looked like withered little old men in disguise."-Vol. i. pp. 87, 88.

Of all the Swiss cities, he seems to have been most struck with Berne; and the impression made by its majestic exterior, has even made him a little too partial, we think, to its aristocratic constitution. His description of its appearance is given with equal spirit and precision.

"These fine woods extend almost to the very gates of Berne, where you arrive under an avenue There are seats by the side of the road, for the conof limes, which, in this season, perfume the air. venience of foot-passengers, especially women going to market, with a shelf above, at the height of person standing, for the purpose of receiving their baskets while they rest themselves on the bench: you meet also with fountains at regular distances. The whole country has the appearance of English pleasure-grounds. The town itself stands on the elevated banks of a rapid river, the Aar, to which the Rhine is indebted for one half of its waters. A sudden bend of the stream encloses, on all sides but one, the promontory on which the town is built; the magnificent slope is in some places covered with turf, supported in others by lofty terraces planted with trees, and commanding wonderful views over the surrounding rich country, and the high Alps beyond it.

[ocr errors]

"It is not an easy matter to account for the first impression you receive upon entering Berne. You certainly feel that you have got to an ancient and a great city: Yet, before the eleventh century, it had not a name, and its present population does not exceed twelve thousand souls. It is a republic; ye; it looks kingly. Something of Roman majesty ap pears in its lofty terraces; in those massy arches on each side of the streets; in the abundance of water flowing night and day into gigantic basins in the magnificent avenues of trees. The very silence, and absence of bustle, a certain stateliness and reserved demeanour in the inhabitants, by showing it to be not a money-making town, implies that its wealth springs from more solid and permanent sources than trade can afford, and that Berne, that of its being a Roman town would be another spirit animates its inhabitants. In short, of all the first-sight impressions and guesses about nearer right than any other. Circumstances. in some respects similar, have produced like results in the Alps, and on the plains of Latium, at the interval of twenty centuries. Luxury at Berne seems wholly directed to objects of public utility. By the side of those gigantic terraces, of those fine foun tains, and noble shades, you see none but simple and solid dwellings, yet scarcely any beggarly ones; not an equipage to be seen, but many a country wagon, coming to market, with a capital team of horses, or oxen, well appointed every way.

Aristocratic pride is said to be excessive at Berne; and the antique simplicity of its magistrates, the plain and easy manners they uniformly pro

« ПретходнаНастави »