Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

dismissed, not because of their sins as against the people, but because they were carried forward, often against their own will, by the operation of public opinion upon the Reformed House of Commons, which mooted and entertained questions inimical to the usurpations of the oligarchy, and never before admitted to fall within the legitimate sphere of Parliamentary control; adverting, I say, to all these considerations, can it be believed, for a moment, by any sane mind, that the Tory Cabinet will be a Reforming Cabinet, acting upon the principles of the Reform Act, and carrying its spirit into their legislative and administrative acts?

But this is the presumption upon which the public is asked to try the Tory Cabinet. The cant of" measures and not men " is again revived, as though men whose lives have been uniformly bad, were to be chosen to achieve highly moral objects-as though men who have already resisted, almost to the death, the amelioration and improvement of the legislative and administrative government, are fit to be selected as the instruments for earrying forward and perfecting the work of national improvement.' pp. 10-13.

That the Whigs as a party are no great favourites with Mr. Carpenter, is sufficiently obvious; yet he does them justice in the following comparative view of the two opposite political parties.

The Whigs admit the authority of the public voice, and concede that political institutions should be made conformable with the spirit of the age; but their timidity, added to the direct interest they have— in common with the Tories-in existing abuses, induce them to concede only just the quantum of improvement, from time to time, which they cannot manage to withhold. The Tories, on the other hand, repudiate the maxim of vox populi vox dei; they maintain that the "clamour of the mob," as they denominate that which is the offspring of increased and increasing intelligence, should be resisted, that "the wisdom of our ancestors" is superior to the lights of our own time, and that, therefore, whatever is memorable for its age, is equally so for its perfection. The one party is for the movement, albeit, it is at a snail's pace. The other is for an absolute stand-still, and the employment of any means at its command, for the purpose of staying the progress of improvement, or the adaptation of existing institutions to the ever-growing intelligence of the people.

We may, however, safely put the question upon this issue.-Have the Whigs ever proposed a single measure, inimical to the interests of the people at large, in which they have lacked the aid of the Tories? Never. The greater part of the obnoxious changes in the law I have above enumerated, were made by the Tories themselves; and in the rest, they have coalesced with their political antagonists, to carry the changes into effect. This, I presume, disposes of the argument in favour of the New Cabinet, for the purpose of inducing the people to believe that their hostility to the Bill, in its progress through parliament, is not incompatible with their entertaining great respect for it now; and for cheating the public into the belief, that they will govern in its spirit, and legislate by its principle. pp. 18, 19.

We wish that Mr. Carpenter had not, towards the close of his pamphlet, somewhat departed from the praiseworthy calmness of temper which he has preserved throughout the main argument. The cause stands in need of no rallying word, no war-cry; and if it did, the name of any individual statesman, how high soever his character, and whatever confidence may justly be reposed in his principles and sagacity, cannot be made the rallying word of a great party, without degrading it into a faction, and affixing as it were a badge to those who submit to be designated, not by their principles, but by their leader. Besides, such watch words are more likely to produce division than union; and they are political tests which every one who values his independence should deprecate. The claims of Earl Spencer to public confidence are not less strong than those of Earl Durham, and to the former, were we to venture a prediction on the subject, we should be disposed to point as the future premier, with whom we should rejoice to see associated the noble Author of the Reform Bill, as a member of the same Cabinet.

But it is unwise to divert attention from the practical duty which now lies before all the friends of Reform and liberal government. Electors, to your duty. A solemn responsibility attaches to the discharge of your electoral trust. The Ministers have asked for a trial. They are now before the country. You have heard the evidence. It is for you to pronounce the verdict.

Art. VI. 1. The Literary Souvenir and Cabinet of Modern Art. Edited by Alaric A. Watts. New Series. 8vo. 25 Plates. Price £1 1s. in vellum.

2. Wanderings by the Seine, from Rouen to the Source. By Leitch Ritchie, Esq., Author of Heath's Picturesque Annuals, &c. With twenty Engravings from Drawings by J. M. W. Turner, Esq., R.A. Price £1 1s. in silk.

R. Alaric A. Watts has commenced with this volume MR. of the Literary Souvenir, a new Series, in which he proposes that the Arts shall be more fairly represented, and the Artist receive more due honour and consideration than in the ordinary Annuals. Twenty-five highly finished engravings, 'from subjects selected from the finest and most characteristic specimens of the modern British and French schools of 'painting,' are here presented to the purchaser; and instead of accompanying the splendid prints with prose stories written

[ocr errors]

'to order,' a few slight sketches of the artists and their Art have been appended to them. We have, accordingly, among the contents, a notice of the works of Henry Howard, R.A., the late Thomas Stothard, R.A., Richard Westall, R.A., George Barret, and G. R. Lewis; besides a series of critical notes to a poem by the Editor, on the principal Italian and Flemish masters. There is also an unpublished discourse by the late Sir Thomas Lawrence, on the Want of Encouragement for Historical Painting in this country; and another valuable article by Sir Martin Archer Shee on the same subject. The volume may, therefore, claim to be considered as pre-eminently the Artist's own Annual. There is, however, an agreeable variety produced by poetical contributions from Miss Landon, Mary Howitt, and a Miss E. L. Montague, as well as from the pen of the Editor, and some miscellaneous prose articles. Of these, the most delightful is the 'Pedestrian Pilgrimage to the Hospice of the Grand St. Bernard, by George Agar Hansard,' from which we must indulge ourselves in an extract.

On a beautiful morning, about the middle of June, I quitted my residence on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, on a pedestrian excursion to the Hospice of the Great St. Bernard. The landscape, which nature has here embellished with all the beauteous tints of her varied and exhaustless pencil, presents a series of lofty eminences, now bare and rugged, now clothed with the richest verdure of hanging woods. From among these, dense masses of foliage, sparkling cascades, village spires, and ancient châteaux, display themselves at intervals as far as Villeneuve; near which the broad and rapid Rhone pours its troubled waters into the placid deep blue lake. The road which, hence to Martigny, is an almost uninterrupted avenue of oak and walnut trees, traverses a narrow but highly populous and fertile valley, enclosed on either side by mountains of stupendous height, and broken at their summits into every fantastic variety of form. The astonished traveller, at one moment, beholds vast hollows, many miles in extent, filled with snow, and forming the eternal glaziers of the Alps; at another, he sees boundless ranges of black pyramidical peaks, towering many thousand feet above his head; their edges indented like the teeth of a saw, or smoothly tapering with the most exquisite symmetry, until their sharp spear-like summits are lost to the eye, and mingle with the circumambient air. Down their sides streams of water, a portion of the hundred tributaries of the Rhone, descend sparkling in the sunbeams, and leaping from rock to rock. A sudden bend in the road changes the scene, with the abruptness of magic. Ranges of verdant terraces rise above each other with the most beautiful regularity, rich with cultivation, and covered with dwellings, surpassing in romantic beauty those fancied creations which embellish the scenery of the splendid melodrame. Occasionally, as in the vicinity of Bex, the view. presents a complete amphitheatre of mountains, of which the verdant plain I traversed seems to form the arena. On one side, a huge mass

of bare rocks rears itself in a series of frightful precipices, like the steps of a gigantic throne, descending on the opposite side in a similar manner; and its flat summit, over-canopied with clouds, laced with the gorgeous lines of a setting sun, tends to enhance the illusion. In another direction the Mont Bovon, covered with foliage for about twothirds of its height, shoots up its square glittering summit of naked granite, that, broken into all the picturesque representations of a turret, tower, and bastion, looks like the vast and impregnable fortress of a Rajpoot chief.

'The weather, which had been highly favourable during the commencement of my tour, now suddenly changed: violent and continued rain compelled me to pass the night in a cottage in which I had taken shelter. The loud roar of a cataract greeted me as I sallied forth from my resting-place on the following morning; and in a few minutes I found myself under the celebrated cascade of the Sallanche. Being now swollen to thrice its usual volume, it fell with a deafening noise through a deep furrow, worn in the cliff, for a distance (reckoning from the summit) of two hundred feet; though the cataract is not visible from the road for the whole of this extent. The river, alighting upon a projecting ledge of rock, and concentrating itself there, tumbles headlong in a vast unbroken torrent of about eighty feet in length, exactly resembling the continuous descent of wreaths of the purest snow. As I stood contemplating this magnificent spectacle, the sun broke forth; and its rays reflected upon the clouds of white mist that were thrown up on every side, produced a series of beautiful rainbows, that rose one above the other until they reached the summit of the fall.

[ocr errors]

I resumed my journey at an early hour on the following morning. The last traces of vegetation which had hitherto lingered upon the mountain slopes, in the form of a few withered, stunted firs, entirely ceased, on the border of a beautiful cascade, which, tumbling from a vast height, flowed near the ground, over the sloping surface of a smooth rock, in a hundred little rills, and communicated to its dark substance the appearance of variegated marble. The utmost circumspection was now requisite for discovering the road. A violent pain in my eyes and head, with oppression of the chest, and shortness of breathing, added to previous fatigue, greatly increased the confusion and uncertainty that beset me. I crossed and re-crossed the torrent a dozen times, by wading; I plunged through the fields of melting snow, sinking up to the hips at every step. The print of the mules' feet (the only guide) after continuing sufficiently distinct for a small distance, wholly ceased on the brink of some yawning chasm, and obliged me to retrace my steps. Benumbed with cold, and oppressed by symptoms of that drowsy stupor which is the constant attendant of violent exertion in elevated positions, I was suddenly roused by the appearance, at an abrupt turn of the track, of two low, gloomy-looking buildings, standing within a short distance of each other, and presenting their gable-ends to the path. In the centre of the nearest, and about three feet from the ground, was an aperture, closed by a grating of massy wooden bars, and retained in its position solely by an

iron bolt, which shot into the heavy frame-work. I had read and heard much of the manner in which the bodies of those unhappy beings are disposed of, who, fainting with toil, or overwhelmed by the thundering avalanche, annually perish upon this passage. A horrible presentiment now filled my mind, that the dreadful charnel house was before me.

[ocr errors]

‹ At length, after incredible fatigue, I reached the foot of a precipitous eminence covered with snow. The wing of an extensive lightcoloured building now attracting my attention, I instantly felt my strength and spirits renewed, and by thrusting my arms up to the elbow in the snow, contrived to scramble to the summit. When I had arrived to the middle of this ascent, (the most laborious of the whole journey,) the four majestic dogs of the establishment rushed down, and, halting at the distance of two or three yards, regarded me with unequivocal symptoms of amity and pleasure. Then, with a deepmouthed bay, that made the mountains re-echo, they darted up the steep to announce the arrival of a stranger guest.

The claustral prior, who resides continually at the convent, received me on the steps, where, panting with fatigue and benumbed with cold, I faultered forth the pro formâ request of repose and hospitality. "Donnez-vous la peine d'entrer, monsieur", was his goodhumoured and benevolent reply; and ringing a loud peal on the convent bell, he directed a domestic to shew me to an apartment, with an admonition that it was the honr of dinner, and that the soup was on the table. As this intimation was of considerable importance to a man who had been toiling for six hours, without intermission, among rocks, precipices, and fields of snow, I quickly arranged my toilet, and descended to the refectory. The brethren were all assembled together, with the English gentleman who had arrived the preceding evening, but who, overtaken by a thick fog, had been obliged to abandon his mule, and to trust for his preservation entirely to the experience of his guides.

The long black dresses, conical caps, and white scarfs of the monks, standing in silence with arms crossed upon their breasts, contrasted well with my own more varied costume, and that of my lay companion. After grace, pronounced in Latin by the prior, to which the rest of the fraternity made the necessary responses, we sat down to an excellent and substantial dinner, with good wine of Piedmont, to which we all did ample justice. The monks of St. Bernard are a cheerful race, and by no means rank silence among the vows of their order. The general topics of the day, (among which Lord Grey and the Reform Bill were not forgotten,) were discussed with a freedom and intelligence that savoured of more intercourse with the world than the inmates of the Hospice might be supposed to possess.

The refectory is a large wainscoted apartment, containing an enormous granite stone, reaching to the ceiling. Among the small Jibrary of books, I noticed "Buchan's Medicine." Two paintings decorated the walls; one the portrait of an ecclesiastic; the other, that of the Virgin, with the infant Saviour, holding a bunch of three cherries.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »