Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845

I would not paint it all couleur de rose. The sun is not always shining.

There is tempest and foul weather, fatigue and cold, and abundant moisture to be occasionally encountered. There is something to endure. But if you prayed to Heaven for perpetual fair weather, and your prayer were granted, it would be the most unfortunate petition you could put up. Why, there are some of the sublimest aspects, the noblest moods and tempers of the great scene, which you would utterly forfeit by this miserable immunity. He who loves the mountain, will love it in the tempest as well as in the sunshine. To be enveloped in driving mist or cloud that obscures every thing from view – to be made aware of the neighbouring precipice only by the sound of the torrent that rushes unseen beneath you – how low down you can only guess – this, too, has its excitement. Besides, while you are in this total blank, the wind will suddenly drive the whole mass of cloud and thick vapour from the scene around you, and leave the most glorious spectacle for some moments exposed to view. Nothing can exceed these moments of sudden and partial revelation. The glittering summits of the mountains appear as by enchantment where there had long been nothing but dense dark vapour. And how beautiful the wild disorder of the clouds, whose array has been broken up, and who are seen flying, huddled together in tumultuous retreat! But the veering wind rallies them again, and again they sweep back over the vast expanse, and hill and valley, earth and sky, are obliterated in a second.

He who would ponder what man is, should journey amongst the mountains. What men are, is best learnt in the city.

How, to a museful spirit, the heart and soul of man is reflected in the shows of nature! I cannot see this torrent battling for ever along its rocky path, and not animate it with human passions, and torture it with a human fate. Can it have so much turmoil and restlessness, and not be allied to humanity?

But all are not images of violence or lessons of despondency. Mark the Yungfrau, how she lifts her slight and virgin snows fearlessly to the blazing sun! She is so high, she feels no reflected heat.

How well the simple architecture of the low-roofed buildings of Switzerland accords with its magnificent scenery! What were lofty steeples beside Mont Blanc, or turreted castles beside her pinnacles of granite? Elsewhere, in the level plain, I love the cathedral. I had lately stood enraptured in the choir of that of Cologne, gazing up at those tall windows which spring where other loftiest buildings terminate – windows so high that God only can look in upon the worshipper.

But here – what need of the stately edifice, when there is a church whose buttresses are mountains, whose roof and towers are above the clouds, verily in the heavens? What need of artificial reminiscences of the Great King, here where he has built for himself? The plain, it is man's nature – given to man's wants; there stands his corn, there flow his milk and honey. But the mountain, it is God's nature – his stationary tabernacle – reserved for the eye only of man and the communing of his spirit. If meant to subserve the wants of his earthly nature, meant still more expressly to kindle other wants. Do they not indeed lead to Heaven, these mountains? At least I know they lead beyond this earth.

There is a little church stands in the valley of Chamouni. It was open, as is customary in Catholic countries, to receive the visits and the prayers of the faithful; but there was no service, no priest, nor indeed a single person in the building. It was evening – and a solitary lamp hung suspended from the ceiling, just before the altar. Allured by the mysterious appearance of this lamp burning in solitude, I entered, and remained in it some time, making out, in the dim light, the wondrous figures of virgins and saints generally found in such edifices. When I emerged from the church, there stood Mont Blanc before me, reflecting the last tints of the setting sun. I am habitually tolerant of Catholic devices and ceremonies; but at this moment how inexpressibly strange, how very little, how poor, contemptible, and like an infant's toy, seemed all the implements of worship I had just left!

And yet the tall, simple, wooden cross that stands in the open air on the platform before the church, this was well. This was a symbol that might well stand, even in the presence of Mont Blanc. Symbol of suffering and of love, where is it out of place? On no spot on earth, on no spot where a human heart is beating.

Mont Blanc and this wooden cross, are they not the two greatest symbols that the world can show? They are wisely placed opposite each other.

I have alluded to the sunset seen in this valley. All travellers love to talk a little of their own experience, their good or their ill fortune. The first evening I entered Chamouni, the clouds had gathered on the summits of the mountains, and a view of Mont Blanc was thought hopeless. Nevertheless I sallied forth, and planted myself in the valley, with a singular confidence in the goodness of nature towards one who was the humblest but one of the sincerest of her votaries. My confidence was rewarded. The clouds dispersed, and the roseate sunset on the mountain was seen to perfection. I had not yet learned to distinguish that summit which, in an especial manner, bears the name of Mont Blanc. There is a modesty in its greatness. It makes no ostentatious claim to be the highest in the range, and is content if for a time you give the glory of pre-eminence to others. But it reserves a convincing proof of its own superiority. I had been looking elsewhere, and in a wrong direction, for Mont Blanc, when I found that all the summits had sunk, like the clouds when day deserts them, into a cold dead white – all but one point, that still glowed with the radiance of the sun when all beside had lost it. There was the royal mountain.

What a cold, corpse-like hue it is which the snow-mountain assumes just after the sun has quitted it. There is a short interval then, when it seems the very image of death. But the moon rises, or the stars take up their place, and the mountain resumes its beauty and its life. Beauty is always life. Under the star-light how ethereal does it look!

In the landscapes of other countries, the house – the habitation of man – be it farm-house or cottage – gathers, so to speak, some of the country about itself – makes itself the centre of some circle, however small. Not so in Switzerland. The hooded chalet, which even in summer speaks so plainly of winter, and stands ever prepared with its low drooping roof to shelter its eyes and ears from the snow and the wind – these dot the landscape most charmingly, but yet are lost in it; they form no group, no central point in the scene. I am thinking more particularly of the chalets in the Oberland. There is no path apparently between one and the other; the beautiful green verdure lies untrodden around them. One would say, the inhabitants found their way to them like birds to their nests. And like enough to nests they are, both in the elevation at which they are sometimes perched, and in the manner of their distribution over the scene.

However they got there, people at all events are living in them, and the farm and the dairy are carried up into I know not what altitudes. Those beautiful little tame cattle, with their short horns, and long ears, and mouse-coloured skin, with all the agility of a goat, and all the gentleness of domesticity – you meet them feeding in places where your mule looks thoughtfully to his footing. And then follows perhaps a peasant girl in her picturesque cloak made of the undressed fur of the goat and her round hat of thickly plaited straw, calling after them in that high sing-song note, which forms the basis of what is called Swiss music. This cry heard in the mountains is delightful, the voice is sustained and yet varied – being varied, it can be sustained the longer – and the high note pierces far into the distance. As a real cry of the peasant it is delightful to hear; it is appropriate to the purpose and the place. But defend my ears against that imitation of it introduced by young ladies into the Swiss songs. Swiss music in an English drawing-room – may I escape the infliction! but the Swiss peasant chanting across the mountain defiles – may I often again halt to listen to it!

But from the mountain and the cloud we must now depart. We must wend towards the plain. One very simple and consolatory thought strikes me – though we must leave the glory of the mountain, we at least take the sun with us. And the cloud too, you will add. Alas! something too much of that.

But no murmurs. We islanders, who can see the sun set on the broad ocean – had we nothing else to boast of – can never feel deserted of nature. We have our portion of her excellent gifts. I know not yet how an Italian sky, so famed for its deep and constant azure, may affect me, but I know that we have our gorgeous melancholy sunsets, to which our island tempers become singularly attuned. The cathedral splendours – the dim religious light of our vesper skies – I doubt if I would exchange them for the unmitigated glories of a southern clime.

THE SECOND PANDORA

Methought Prometheus, from his rock unbound,Had with the Gods again acceptance found.Once more he seem'd his wond'rous task to ply,While all Olympus stood admiring by.To high designs his heart and hands aspire,To quicken earthly dust with heavenly fire,Won by no fraud, but lent by liberal love,To raise weak mortals to the realms above;For the bright flame remembers, even on earth,And pants to reach, the region of its birth.A female form was now the artist's care;Faultless in shape, and exquisitely fair.Of more than Parian purity, the clayHad all been leaven'd with the ethereal ray.Deep in the heart the kindling spark began,And far diffused through every fibre ran;The eyes reveal'd it, and the blooming skinGlow'd with the lovely light that shone within.The applauding Gods confess'd the matchless sight;The first Pandora was not half so bright;That beauteous mischief, formed at Jove's command,A curse to men, by Mulciber's own hand;Whose eager haste the fatal jar to know,Fill'd the wide world with all but hopeless woe.But dawn of better days arose, when He,The patient Hero, set Prometheus free,Alcides, to whose toils the joy was givenTo conquer Hell and climb the heights of Heaven.In the fair work that now the master wrought,The first-fruits of his liberty were brought;The Gods receive her as a pledge of peace,And heap their gifts and happiest auspices.Minerva to the virgin first impartsHer skill in woman's works and household arts;The needle's use, the robe's embroider'd bloom,And all the varied labours of the loom.Calm fortitude she gave, and courage strong,To cope with ill and triumph over wrong;Ingenuous prudence, with prophetic sight,And clear instinctive wisdom, ever right.Diana brought the maid her modest mien,Her love of fountains and the sylvan scene;The Hours and Seasons lent each varying rayThat gilds the rolling year or changing day.The cunning skill of Hermes nicely hung,With subtle blandishments, her sliding tongue,And train'd her eyes to stolen glances sweet,And all the wiles of innocent deceit.Phœbus attuned her ear to love the lyre,And warm'd her fancy with poetic fire.Nor this alone; but shared his healing art,And robb'd his son of all the gentler part;Taught her with soothing touch and silent treadTo hover lightly round the sick one's bed,And promised oft to show, when medicines fail,A woman's watchful tenderness prevail.Next Venus and the Graces largely shedA shower of fascinations on her head.Each line, each look, was brighten'd and refined,Each outward act, each movement of the mind,Till all her charms confess the soft control,And blend at once in one harmonious whole.But still the Eternal Sire apart remain'd,And Juno's bounty was not yet obtained.The voice of Heaven's High Queen then fill'd the ear,"A wife and mother, let the Nymph appear."The mystic change like quick enchantment shows —The slender lily blooms a blushing rose.Three gentle children now, by just degrees,Are ranged in budding beauty round her knees:Still to her lips their looks attentive turn,And drink instruction from its purest urn,While o'er their eyes soft memories seem to play,That paint a friend or father far away.A richer charm her ripen'd form displays,A halo round her shines with holier rays;And if at times, a shade of pensive gracePass like a cloud across her earnest face,Yet faithful tokens the glad truth impart,That deeper happiness pervades her heart.Jove latest spoke: "One boon remains," he said,And bent serenely his ambrosial head;"The last, best boon, which I alone bestow;"Then bade the waters of Affliction flow.The golden dream was dimm'd; a darken'd roomScarce show'd where dire disease had shed its gloom.A little child in death extended lay,Still round her linger'd the departing ray.Another pallid face appear'd, where LifeWith its fell foe maintain'd a doubtful strife.Long was the contest; changeful hopes and fearsNow sunk the Mother's soul, now dried her tears.At last a steady line of dawning lightShow'd that her son was saved, and banish'd night.Though sad her heart, of one fair pledge bereft,She sees and owns the bounties Heaven hath left.In natural drops her anguish finds relief,And leaves the Matron beautified by grief;While consolation, beaming from above,Fills her with new-felt gratitude and love.O happy He! before whose waking eyes,So bright a vision may resplendent rise —The New Pandora, by the Gods designed,Not now the bane, but blessing of Mankind!

REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD. 33

It is scarcely theoretical to say, that every century has a character of its own. The human mind is essentially progressive in Europe. The accumulations of past knowledge, experience, and impulse, are perpetually preparing changes on the face of society; and we may fairly regard every hundred years as the period maturing those changes into visible form. Thus, the fifteenth century was the age of discovery in the arts, in the powers of nature, and in the great provinces of the globe: the sixteenth exhibited the general mind under the impressions of religion – the Reformation, the German wars for liberty and faith, and the struggles of Protestantism in France. The seventeenth was the brilliant period of scientific advance, of continental literature, and of courtly pomp and power. The eighteenth was the period of politics; every court of Europe was engaged in the game of political rivalry; the European balance became the test, the labour, and the triumph of statesmanship. The negotiator was then the great instrument of public action. Diplomacy assumed a shape, and Europe was governed by despatches. The genius of Frederick the Second restored war to its early rank among the elements of national life; but brilliant as his wars were, they were subservient to the leading feature of the age. They were fought, not, like the battles of the old conquerors, for fame, but for influence – not to leave the king without an enemy, but to leave his ambassadors without an opponent – less to gain triumphs, than to ensure treaties: they all began and ended in diplomacy!

It is remarkable, that this process was exhibited in Europe alone. In the East, comprehending two-thirds of human kind, no change was made since the conquests of Mahomet. That vast convulsion, in which the nervousness of frenzy had given the effeminate spirit of the Oriental the strength of the soldier and the ambition of universal conqueror, had no sooner wrought its purpose than it passed away, leaving the general mind still more exhausted than before. The Saracen warrior sank into the peasant, and the Arab was again lost in his sands; the Turk alone survived, exhibiting splendour without wealth, and pride without power – a decaying image of Despotism, which nothing but the jealousy of the European saved from falling under the first assault. Such is the repressive strength of evil government; progress, the most salient principle of our nature, dies before it. And man, of all beings the most eager for acquirement, and the most restless under all monotony of time, place, and position, becomes like the dog or the mule, and generation after generation lives and dies with no more consciousness of the capacities of his existence, than the root which the animal devours, or the tree under which it was born.

In England, the eighteenth century was wholly political. It was a continual struggle through all the difficulties belonging to a free constitution, exposed to the full discussion of an intellectual people. Without adopting the offensive prejudice, which places the individual ability of the Englishmen in the first rank; or without doubting that nature has distributed nearly an equal share of personal ability among all European nations; we may, not unjustly, place the national mind of England in the very highest rank of general capacity – if that is the most intellectual nation, by which the public intellect is most constantly employed, in which all the great questions of society are most habitually referred to the decision of the intellect, and in which that decision is the most irresistible in its effects, no nation of Europe can stand upon equal ground with the English. For, in what other nation is the public intellect in such unwearied exercise, in such continual demand, and in such unanswerable power?

In what other nation of the world (excepting, within those few years, France; and that most imperfectly) has public opinion ever been appealed to? But, in England, to what else is there any appeal? Or, does not the foreign mind bear some resemblance to the foreign landscape – exhibiting barren though noble elevations, spots of singular though obscure beauty among its recesses, and even in its wildest scenes a capacity of culture? – while, in the mind of England, like its landscape, that culture has already laid its hand upon the soil; has crowned the hill with verdure, and clothed the vale with fertility; has run its ploughshare along the mountain side, and led the stream from its brow; has sought out every finer secret of the scene, and given the last richness of cultivation to the whole.

From the beginning of the reign of Anne, all was a contest of leading statesmen at the head of parties. Those contests exhibit great mental power, singular system, and extraordinary knowledge of the art of making vast bodies of men minister to the personal objects of avarice and ambition. But they do no honour to the moral dignity of England. All revolutions are hazardous to principle. A succession of revolutions have always extinguished even the pretence to principle. The French Revolution is not the only one which made a race of girouettes. The political life of England, from the death of Anne to the reign of George the Third, was a perpetual turning of the weathercock. Whig and Tory were the names of distinction. But their subordinates were of as many varieties of feature as the cargo of a slave-ship; the hue might be the same, but the jargon was that of Babel. It was perhaps fortunate for the imperial power of England, that while she was thus humiliating the national morality, which is the life-blood of nations; her reckless and perpetual enemy beyond the Channel had lost all means of being her antagonist. The French sceptre had fallen into the hands of a prince, who had come to the throne a debauchee; and to whom the throne seemed only a scene for the larger display of his vices. The profligacy of Louis-Quatorze had been palliated by his passion for splendour, among a dissolute people who loved splendour much, and hated profligacy little. But the vices of Louis the Fifteenth were marked by a grossness which degraded them in the eye even of popular indulgence, and prepared the nation for the overthrow of the monarchy. In this period, religion, the great purifier of national council, maintained but a struggling existence. The Puritanism of the preceding century had crushed the Church of England; and the restoration of the monarchy had given the people a saturnalia. Religion had been confounded with hypocrisy, until the people had equally confounded freedom with infidelity. The heads of the church, chosen by freethinking administrations, were chosen more for the suppleness than for the strength of their principles; and while the people were thus taught to regard churchmen as tools, and the ministers to use them as dependents, the cause of truth sank between both. The Scriptures are the life of religion. It can no more subsist in health without them, than the human frame can subsist without food; it may have the dreams of the enthusiast, or the frenzy of the monk; but, for all the substantial and safe purposes of the human heart, its life is gone for ever. It has been justly remarked, that the theological works of that day, including the sermons, might, in general, have been written if Christianity had never existed. The sermons were chiefly essays, of the dreariest kind on the most commonplace topics of morals. The habit of reading these discourses from the pulpit, a habit so fatal to all impression, speedily rendered the preachers as indifferent as their auditory; and if we were to name the period when religion had most fallen into decay in the public mind, we should pronounce it the half century which preceded the reign of George the Third.

On the subject of pulpit eloquence there are some remarks in one of the reviews of the late Sydney Smith, expressed with all the shrewdness, divested of the levity of that writer, who had keenly observed the popular sources of failure.

"The great object of modern sermons is, to hazard nothing. Their characteristic is decent debility; which alike guards their authors from ludicrous errors, and precludes them from striking beauties. Yet it is curious to consider, how a body of men so well educated as the English clergy, can distinguish themselves so little in a species of composition, to which it is their peculiar duty, as well as their ordinary habit, to attend. To solve this difficulty, it should be remembered that the eloquence of the bar and of the senate force themselves into notice, power, and wealth." He then slightly guards against the conception, that eloquence should be the sole source of preferment; or even "a common cause of preferment." But he strongly, and with great appearance of truth, attributes the want of public effect to the want of those means by which that effect is secured in every other instance.

"Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking into reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more unfortunate, than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fervour of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German text; reading the tropes and metaphors into which he is hurried by the ardour of his mind; and so affected, at a preconcerted line and page, that he is unable to proceed any further?"

This criticism was perfectly true of sermons forty years ago, when it was written. Times are changed since, and changed for the better. The pulpit is no longer ashamed of the doctrines of Christianity, as too harsh for the ears of a classic audience, or too familiar for the ears of the people. Still there are no rewards in the Church, for that great faculty, or rather that great combination of faculties, which commands all the honours of the senate and the bar. A clerical Demosthenes might find his triumph in the shillings of a charity sermon, but he must never hope for a Stall.

We now revert to the curious, inquisitive, and gossiping historian of the time. Walpole, fond of French manners, delighting in the easy sarcasm, and almost saucy levity, of French "Memoirs," and adopting, in all its extent, the confession, (then so fashionable on the Continent,) that the perfection of writing was to be formed in their lively persiflage, evidently modelled his "History" on the style of the Sevignés and St Simons. But he was altogether their superior. If he had been a chamberlain in the court of Louis XV., he might have been as frivolously witty, and as laughingly sarcastic, as any Frenchman who ever sat at the feet of a court mistress, or whoever looked for fame among the sallies of a petit souper. But England was an atmosphere which compelled him to a manlier course. The storms of party were not to be stemmed by a wing of gossamer. The writer had bold facts, strong principles, and the struggles of powerful minds to deal with, and their study gave him a strength not his own.