图书图片
PDF
ePub

approbation, and with assurances of giving satisfaction, through the dark passage, past his truckle bed, into an open gallery, looking down into a stable yard: having placed me close to the door of a detestable Cabinet d'Aisance, to which men and wo

men resorted, though the door was formed of open rail-work; he exclaimed Voilà, Monsieur !' He then informed me that I only had to hallow Garçon, down into the yard, which cry they were very likely to hear, provided they did not happen to be out of the way! This explanation failed to give the satifaction, upon which he had so confidently reckoned. We declared ourselves bent on trying the Hotel de France opposite. He reiterated and ejaculated his assurances, that we would find every article commodious and clean, and him and his companion attentive. Nothing can go beyond the persuasion and confidence of their talking: they seem so perfectly at case as to the strict veracity of their declarations; they are so sure of gaining their point; so certain of commanding satisfaction, that they persuade you against the evidence of your senses. They have also a persuasive tone of candour in the midst of their earnestness, and an attitude and expression of astonishment that they should have their words for a moment doubted, that seem dictated by the very simplicity of truth. Moved by the waiter's asseverations, and shrinking from the unpleasantness of leaving a house that we had once fairly entered, and the trouble of moving our things, we consented to stop where we were, and it is but doing the men justice to say, that they did all they could to fulfil what they had promised. They were always on the alert, and neglected all other business to be in almost perpetual attendance at our door. This, however, rarely follows such assurances; you are usually left, as a matter of course, to bewail your credulity. At the conclusion of our stay in the Hôtel des Voyageurs, the dirtiest waiter, who took an evident ascendancy over the other, acting on all occasions as spokesman and director, came up to us with looks of conscious triumph, and said, Have you not been well served?' We confessed we had been agrecably disappointed. He thought this an excellent opportunity of giving a blow to the rival establishment opposite: Ah,' said he, how lucky you are in not having gone to the Hótel de la France! you would have had no attendance there, and would have been half poisoned with their cookery: besides, they are great Buonapartists, and belonged to his Federés.' I asked if the town was a Buonaparte town? • We have not many Buonapartists,' he replied; but such as we have, are very pp. 61-65.

Italy to make him in love with his own great and free country; and, on nothing does he felicitate her so much mania that desolated France, and left as in having escaped the revolutionary in every town, village, and hamlet, melancholy and discernible traces of its dreadful fury.

"Every where in France the effects of this terrible convulsion are seen in destruction, outrage, and brutality: few, indeed, by comparison, are those amendments of public condition, which would afford the lover of his species consolation for the coarseness of the means employed to bring them about. The French people, at that time, seem to have been animated by no feeling but a desire of general destruction. With all that existed, existence was a capital crime, sufficient to condemn it to live no longer. Their animosity was that of a vain, ignorant people, against all that had not been done by themselves: they could not bear to be beholden to their an cestors; they felt no pride in the past, because they had no hand in it. The fine sensations of the heart, that arise in the better specimens of human nature, when we contemplate the root from whence they have sprung, are not felt by a Frenchman. This is another proof that he is totally ig norant of the ideal, and that he can relish and understand only what is grossly material. He cannot see or feel what is not under his hand: he must touch to become acquainted-he must be personally concerned, to have any personal interest." pp. 71-72.

In visiting the castle of Vitré he again recurs to the same subject.

"We went to see the fine castle of Videstroyed in the Revolution; but the walls tré. It is in ruins, the rooms having been and towers are magnificent. Its ditch is tion of rock, and looks down upon the large and deep; it stands upon an elevaview it affords of the country is highly lower town from a great height; while the beautiful. The elegant salon had been entered by a flight of stairs. There was a large and fine suit of rooms below the leing out upon the lower town; the stairs to vel of the castle-yard, with windows lookthe salon were destroyed; its gilded walls supported its floor had tumbled into the were blackened with fire; the beams that rooms below, or hung over them in a broken and threatening state. Even the towers of stupendous strength had suffered. The walls they could not hurt; but the stone floors were broken in, and fire had been used here; so that the undertaking of ascending to the top of these grand Mr Scott saw much in France and buildings was attended with considerable

bad.'"

[ocr errors]

danger. The yard of the castle bears the most imposing look of antiquity. It has the profound draw-well, the arched gateway, the watch-tower-all the finest old style. The Prussians had bivouacked here, and occupied the few lower apartments that are still defended from the weather. An old woman resides in a small porter's lodge, close to the drawbridge, who shews the ruin to strangers. She was moved to tears when she described the place in its pride and splendour, which she had seen. She was on the establishment of the castle in her youth, and recounted the horrors of its fall with strong emotion. The destroyed rooms were converted into a revolutionary prison; and the kitchen was destined for those condemned to die. Some of the unfortunate family to whom it belonged were here held in captivity, and from hence were taken to the place of death. While our guide was describing these things, she spoke in a solemn whisper, as if surrounded by the state of past days, and overheard by the spirits of her murdered masters. In one strong room, near the outer gate, the police confined a mischievous madman; and his howling execrations, directed against the visitors, whom he heard near him, mingled themselves with the old woman's sad story, delivered in a low tone of voice, thus producing an indescribably awful effect. It brought the contrast between the present and the past with almost overpowering force on our feelings. We left the place, very much struck with what we had seen and listened to. Among other things, we were told, that some part of the family, now re-established at Paris, was suspected to have lately visited the ruins of the superb possession incogniti. They walked through the decayed salons, and stumbled over the fragments of their glory, with looks of melancholy grief; and, on going away, a young man gave a handsome donation to the aged porteress. She has since had good reason to believe, that this was the lord whose infancy she had nursed. She wept bitterly as she told us this; and declared she would have died consoled for all the past if she had but known him, and could have kissed his hand. It is in feelings and sentiments such as these that our nature shews its richness. In striving to rise above them as weaknesses, what do we but fall back into poverty and blunders? Man is made for his sphere, and cannot ascend above it, but to be precipitated to its very bottom. The French have stripped their country of its finest ornaments, and most grateful invitations to reflection. Its cathedrals are dismantled, its castles demolished, its châteaux outraged: society has been reversed without being improved; and, if errors have been exploded, crimes have unfortunately taken their place The

French Revolution will be to all ages a vast blot, and a hurtful influence in human history. It began in wanton violence, which was succeeded by insanity, and ended in chains. Its remembrance will impede the progress of improvement, by alarming some and irritating others, against trying experiments that may have such calamitous and wicked results. Yet the people against whom this serious charge lies have caught neither modesty nor caution from their disgraces; they are still as light, as confident, as insolent, and as rash as ever. To reduce them to their proper low level is really a moral duty; for this alone can reduce the hurtfulness of their example, and, in some measure, obliterate the stain they have affixed on the character of mankind." pp. 77-81.

At the present moment we cannot refuse a place to Mr Scott's character of the Buonapartists-a character drawn, as the reader must perceive, by an impartial hand, and calculated to afford materials for deep and serious reflecthe insane partiality for revolutionary tion. How finely this contrasts with ruffians and military despotism, which reigns throughout the formidable tomes of poor bewildered Lady Morgan!

"One felt pleased to find a town, so distinguishable from other French places in the externals of decency and good order, equally superior in those moral qualities that have at bottom a close connection with the perfection of the social condition. Throughout our journeying in France, we invariably observed that the moderate royalists were persons of amiable manners, and excellent character, and that, on the other side, the zealous Buonapartists were men of discontented, vicious minds, or of desperate eircumstances. The fiercest enemy to the king, in one of the towns through which we passed, was a woman who beat her husband, cheated his creditors, and starved his children. To this rule, it would be illiberal to deny, there are exceptions; but the respective systems of the two governments recommend them separately to different casts of dispositions. The peaceful, the kind, and the religious, have, generally speaking, an abhorrence of that government, the chief fruits of which have been war, murder, and impiety. The needy, the fierce, and the restless, naturally cling to it with zealous attachment. Buonaparte, it may safely be said, is not regretted by onc honest man in France: it is an error peculiar to England to connect his name with any thing desirable in the state of mankind. It is very certain that men of excellent in,

pro

124 Sketches of Society in tentions have committed this blunder in England, and that he has more admirers and advocates in that country than in any other of the world. This may arise from the earnestness of political feeling, and the energy of political debating, in Great Britain. Where these prevail, men are fastly wedded to extreme opinions, and the strength of their minds precipitates them far beyond the mark. This, however, is a better fault than the stagnation of think ing on such subjects; an over-activity indicates the briskness of life, although it is necessary to guard against the excesses committed in this boisterousness. That there should be any now foolish enough to believe that purposes of moral and political improvement could in any way be moted by the continuance of Buonaparte's sway, is certainly one of the strongest proofs of the blindness of party that has ever been afforded the world; but it becomes less surprising when one reflects that this attachment is but the consequence of self-love. This is always heightened by opposition; and as the cause, to the success of which our reputation for discernment and talent is connected, becomes more and more lost, our egotistical sensations drive us to uphold it with increased pertinacity. It may be observed that those in England, who have, through the whole course of the Revolution, considered the cause of human freedom dependent on its triumph, and who have not shaken off this idea, even under the tyranny and guide of the imperial despotism, are men of strong but egotistical minds, whose reasoning is acute, but always paradoxical, who think better than they art, and who take a pride in seeing qualities in things that no one else can see, or rather that are entirely opposite to those which the experience of mankind has proved to belong to them. Persons open to conviction, that is to say, persons whose self-love is not the highest consideration in their minds, have gradually withdrawn themselves from so disgraced a cause, and this has been falsely charged upon them as inconsistency and treachery. Others, who have founded their original opinions in moderation, and who have since been advancing into a bigotted and prejudiced opposition, are egotists of another description. These have not found sufficient consolation for their shallow vanity, in abiding by the general experience and interests of their fellowcreatures, and their miserable weakness hinders them from seeing how the real dig nity of our nature consists chiefly in those affections which make improvement an hereditary descent from the past. The poverty of their minds renders them dead to what Burke describes as an honourable submission; they would raise their individual importance by sneering at all that

France and Italy, &c.

[Aug.

ral, and in which they, as individuals, is to be traced to the human race in genehave had nothing to do. That estrange ment from natural affections, which Mr general moral justice, they have effected by Godwin at one time thought conducive to the inordinacy of their self-esteem. They are not only first, but sole, in their own eyes. Godwin's error was a great one, had a lofty source: the blunder of the and he has since acknowledged it; but it others is as low in its origin as mischiev ous in its consequences." pp. 101–105.

ed with the splendid advances in the The following remarks, as connectmathematics, for which the French nation has, of late years, been distinguished, are too curious to be passed another reason, too apparent to be over. They deserve to be quoted for mistaken.

students; they pursue laborious investiga "The French are in general excellent tion with extreme patience, and their natu ral shrewdness enables them quickly and cleverly to draw results from investigation. If genius could come from reading, or truth from systematizing, the chief abode of both would be in France; but this, un

fortunately for the French, is not the case. Perpetual building upon the works of others is repeating over again the folly of the tower of Babel. You may reach to a great height, but to what purpose? As have just as little chance, as when laying you rise you lose sight of the earth, and however, we must repeat our eulogium on the first brick, of gaining heaven. Still, the wise public spirit in France that provides these noble libraries for the delight dom favours enough to enable them to furand assistance of those whom fortune selEngland deserves to be told of her shamenish themselves very fully in this respect. ful deficiency on this main point, in the warmest language. The locked doors of the porter who shows the books for half-aa college-room, which are only opened by crown, or the guarded gates of a mighty museum, to get within which tickets must be sought and granted, are all she possesses in this way. These invite not the poor and naked, the hungry and the thirsty, but the graduated, the known, and the wealthy. reach these guarded treasures; and if he A student with a shabby coat can scarcely pulsive air would greet his entrance, and should be fortunate enough to do so, a rethe liveried attendants would deem themselves degraded if called upon to wait on credit be it said, the distinction between so humble a reader. In France, to her known in scientific and literary society. the well-dressed and the ill-dressed is not The internal qualifications alone settle the degree of difference here." pp. 131-133.

no

We have already characterised the Essay on French Literature, and we have only to remark, in addition to what we have said above, that it displays a truly English spirit. Mr Scott was not one of those vain, flimsy, and flippant "voyageurs," who are captivated with the "tout artificiel" of the writers of France. He was too intimately acquainted with the golden age of Elizabeth, and of English poetry, to allow his eye to be dazzled, or his judgment misled, by the tinsel and frippery of the fantastic Siècle de Louis Quatorze. It is undoubtedly true, that the French have poetry. So sensible are they of this fact themselves, that they have invariably and fiercely opposed every attempt to introduce blank verse into their language. The attempt, indeed, was absurd, if not impossible, as the French language is utterly destitute of poetical expression. Destroy the jingle of their bouts rimès, and what before held the rank of poetry is instantly degraded into pedestrian prose. There is not a scene of real deep passion or pathos to be found in any one of their tragedies. This will not surprise any one who reflects, that the nation is utterly devoid of feeling. A Frenchman's emotions lie all on the surface-are all a mere flash in the pan-a momentary corruscation, which embodies itself in a pun, or is sent forth in the shape of a pasquinade, but which never betrays the least knowledge of, or communion with, the hidden springs of great actions. He is gay without being animated, and grave without being serious. His constant effort is to shine; and every casual idea or association is, of course, pressed into the service of the moment. No deep impression is made, and the mind soon becomes, by habit, incapable of receiving any. The literature of a country, is the only infallible criterion of national character. So Mr Scott has demonstrated, and has given instances enow to satisfy the most sceptical.But we must have done.

HUMBOLDT'S PERSONAL NARRATIVE.* We are not quite of opinion, that the "Narrative of the Personal Travels of Humboldt" has in all respects fulfilled the expectations which were awakened by its first announcement.

* Vol. V.

We have all many splendid associa◄ tions with the scenery of the equinoctial regions of South America. With our earliest studies, we learn that, through that department of the new world, the immense chain of the Andes stretches in bolder and more picturesque forms than are assumed by any other mountains on the surface of our globe. It is in the same region, that the Oronooko and the Amazon pour those prodigious tides of water, which force even old ocean to retreat, and which colour, with their own peculiar hues, the wide bosom of the shore for many a league. It is there, too, that the loftiest and loudest volcanoes of the world pour their thunders from craters enveloped in perpetual snow; and over the whole face of the landscape we have all been early taught to believe that a more luxuriant and novel vegetation is diffused, than that which can be found in any other country.

It was in this quarter of the world, too, that the early Spanish adventurers found those many wonders, with which they astonished the ears of their Sovereigns, and of all Europe,that nations of Amazons which defied the usual dominion of man, roamed in fearless majesty, amidst forests in which no sound of the woodman's axe had ever been heard, and that a king was found (El Dorado) who was every day dusted by his subjects with powdery gold, and whose dominions it was, at that time, the supreme object of European ambition to subdue.

When a series of travels, therefore, in such a region is announced, the imagination of every reader is ready to take wing. They who delight in magnificent descriptions of external scenery, fancy that they shall be carried into regions, where every thing will be different from all that they had formerly known of beautiful or grand; the philosophical inquirer pleases himself with the idea of discoveries in the air, the water, and the earth, which could not be made amidst the monotonous uniformity of common countries; and the politician who loves to dwell on the varied forms of human

polity, imagines that, in the strange associations of roving tribes, he shall obtain a more perfect insight into the origin of those establishments, which render civilized society so rich a scene of contemplation and of wonder.

We are very far from saying that

Humboldt's work is not full of much that is curious, and much that is novel. We think, on the contrary, that it will long be regarded as one of the most valuable accessions which the literature and philosophy of modern times have received, and we are confident that no reader can take the trouble of perusing the work, without coming from the perusal wiser and more imbued with the spirit of philosophical speculation than before. But still we think it equally evident that the work is by far too minute and too long, and that its effect would have been infinitely improved, if the author had fixed the attention of his readers, rather upon the grand and general features of the country, than upon all the windings of the rivers and varying vegetation of the woods, and if he had sought to make his book an allurement to the study of his purely speculative works, rather than to render it a repository of every minute speculation that happened to cross his mind.

Still we repeat, that the work is full of interest and of instruction, and that it is one of those few books which no reader ought to be unacquainted with. We proceed, therefore, without further comment, to present to our readers a few of the many wonderful observations with which the last published volumes are replete.

The first curious speculation which these volumes contain respects the black crust with which many rivers in different parts of the torrid zone are known to invest those rocks which are exposed to their influence. this subject Humboldt makes the following curious observations.

On

"We must observe, in the first place, that this phenomenon does not belong to the cataracts of the Oroonoko alone, but is found in both hemispheres. At my return from Mexico in 1807, when I showed the granites of Atures and Maypures to Mr Rozière, who had travelled over the valley of Egypt, the coasts of the Red Sea, and Mount Sinai, this learned geologist let me see, that the primitive rocks of the little cataracts of Syene display, like the rocks of the Oroonoko, a glossy surface, of a blackish grey, or almost leaden colour, and of which some of the fragments seem coated with tar. Recently, in the unfortunate expedition of Captain Tuckey, the English naturalists were struck with the same appearance in the yellatas (rapids and shoals) that obstructed the river Congo or Zaire. Dr Koenig has placed in the Bri

tish Museum, by the side of the syenites of the Congo, the granites of Atures taken from a series of rocks, which were presented by Mr Bonpland and myself to the illustrious president of the Royal Society of London. These fragments,' says Mr Koenig, alike resemble meteoric stones; in both rocks, those of the Oroonoko and of Africa, the black crust is composed, according to the analysis of Mr Children, of the oxyd of iron and manganese.' Some experiments made at Mexico, conjointly with Mr del Rio, had led me to think, that the rocks of Atures, which blacken the paper in which they are wrapped, contain, beside oxyd of manganese, carbon, and suAt the Oroonoko, percarburetted iron.

granitic masses of forty or fifty fect thick are uniformly coated with these oxyds; and, however thin these crusts may appear, they must nevertheless contain pretty considerable quantities of iron and manganese, since they occupy a space of above a league square.

"It must be observed, that all these phenomena of coloration have hitherto appeared in the torrid zone only, in rivers that have periodical overflowings, of which the habitual temperature is from twentyfour to twenty-eight centesimal degrees, and which flow, not over grit-stone, or calcareous rocks, but over granite, gneiss, and hornblende rocks. Quartz and feld

spar scarcely contain five or six thousandths of oxyd of iron and of manganese; but in mica and hornblende these oxyds, and particularly that of iron, amount, according to Klaproth and Herrmann, to fifteen or twenty parts in a hundred. The hornblende contains also some carbon, like the Lydian stone and kieselschicfer. Now, if these black crusts were formed by a slow decomposition of the granitic rock, under the double influence of humidity and the tropical sun, how is it to be conceived, that these oxyds are spread so uniformly over the whole surface of the stony masses, and are not more abundant round a crystal of mica or hornblende, than on the feldspar and milky quartz? The ferruginous sandstones, granites, and marbles, that become cinereous and sometimes brown in damp air, display an aspect altogether different. In reflecting upon the lustre and equal thickness of the crusts, we are rather inclined to think, that this matter is deposited by the Oroonoko, and that the water has penetrated even into the clefts of the rocks. Adopting this hypothesis, it may be asked, whether the river hold the oxyds suspended like sand, and other earthy substances, or they be found in a state of chemical solution. The first supposition is less admissible, on account of the homogeneity of the crusts, which contain neither grains of sand, nor spangles of mica, mixed with the oxyds. We must then recur

« 上一页继续 »