HOTEL DE l'ANGLETERRE, GENEVA, June 14th. -- Yesterday morning was very fine, and we had a pretty early breakfast at Hotel Byron, preparatory to leaving it. This hotel is on a magnificent scale of height and breadth, its staircases and corridors being the most spacious I have seen; but there is a kind of meagreness in the life there, and a certain lack of heartiness, that prevented us from feeling at home. We were glad to get away, and took the steamer on our return voyage, in excellent spirits. Apparently it had been a cold night in the upper regions, for a great deal more snow was visible on some of the mountains than we had before observed: especially a mountain called "Diableries," presented a silver summit, and broad sheets and fields of snow. Nothing ever can have been more beautiful than those groups of mighty hills as we saw them then, with the grey rocks, the green slopes, the white snow-patches and crests, all to be seen at one glance, and the mists and fleecy clouds tumbling, rolling, hovering about their summits, filling their lofty valleys, and coming down far towards the lower world, making the skyey aspects so intimate with the earthly ones, that we hardly knew whether we were sojourning in the material or spiritual world. It was like sailing through the sky, moreover, to be borne along on such water as that of Lake Leman -- the bluest, brightest, and profoundest element, the most radiant eye that the dull earth ever opened to see heaven withal. I am writing nonsense, but it is because no sense within my mind will answer the purpose.
Some of these mountains, that looked at no such mighty distance, were at least forty or fifty miles off, and appeared as if they were near neighbours and friends of other mountains, from which they were really still farther removed. The relations into which distant points are brought, in a view of mountain scenery, symbolise the truth that we can never judge within our partial scope of vision, of the relations which we bear to our fellow-creatures and human circumstances. These mighty mountains think that they have nothing to do with one another, each deems itself its own centre, and existing for itself alone; and yet, to an eye that can take them all in, they are evidently portions of one grand and beautiful idea, which could not be consummated without the lowest and the loftiest of them. I do not express this satisfactorily, but have a genuine meaning in it nevertheless.
We passed again by Chillon, and gazed at it as long as it was distinctly visible, though the water view does no justice to its real picturesqueness, there being no towers nor projections on the side towards the lake, nothing but a wall of dingy white, with an indentation that looks something like a gateway. About an hour and a half brought us to Ouchy, the point where passengers land to take the omnibus to Lausanne. The ascent from Ouchy to Lausanne is a mile and a half, which it took the omnibus nearly half an hour to accomplish. We left our shawls and carpet bags in the salle a manger of the Hotel Faucon, and set forth to find the cathedral, the pinnacled tower of which is visible for a long distance up and down the lake. Prominent as it is, however, it is by no means very easy to find it while rambling through the intricate streets and declivities of the town itself, for Lausanne is the town, I should fancy, in all the world the most difficult to go directly from one point to another. It is built on the declivity of a hill, adown which run several valleys or ravines, and over these the contiguity of houses extends, so that the communication is kept up by means of steep streets and, sometimes, long weary stairs, which must be surmounted and descended again in accomplishing a very moderate distance. In some inscrutable way we at last arrived at the cathedral, which stands on a higher site than any other in Lausanne. It has a very venerable exterior, with all the Gothic grandeur which arched mullioned windows, deep portals, buttresses, towers, and pinnacles, grey with a thousand years, can give to architecture. After waiting awhile we obtained entrance by means of an old woman, who acted the part of sacristan, and was then showing the church to some other visitors.
The interior disappointed us; not but what it was very beautiful, but I think the excellent repair that it was in, and the puritanic neatness with which it is kept, does much towards effacing the majesty and mystery that belong to an old church. Every inch of every wall and column, and all the mouldings and tracery, and every scrap of grotesque carving, had been washed with a drab mixture. There were like wise seats all up and down the nave, made of pine wood, and looking very new and neat, just such seats as I shall see in a hundred meeting-houses (if ever I go into so many) in America. Whatever might be the reason, the stately nave, with its high-groined roof, the clustered columns and lofty pillars, the in tersecting arches of the side aisles, the choir, the armorial and knightly tombs that surround what was once the high altar, all produced far less effect than I could have thought beforehand.
As it happened, we had more ample time and freedom to inspect this cathedral than any other that we have visited, for the old woman consented to go away and leave us there, locking the door behind her. The others, except Rosebud, sat down to sketch such portions as struck their fancy; and for myself, I looked at the monuments, of which some, being those of old knights, ladies, bishops, and a king, were curious from their antiquity; and others are interesting as bearing memorials of English people, who have died at Lausanne in comparatively recent years. Then I went up into the pulpit, and tried, without success, to get into the stone gallery that runs all round the nave; and I explored my way into various side apartments of the cathedral, which I found fitted up with seats for Sabbath-schools, perhaps, or possibly, for meeting of elders of the church. I opened the great Bible of the church, and found it to be a French version, printed at Lille some fifty years ago. There was also a liturgy, adapted, probably, to the Lutheran form of worship. In one of the side apartments I found a strong box, heavily clamped with iron, and having a contrivance, like the hopper of a mill, by which money could be turned into the top, while a double lock prevented its being abstracted again. This was to receive the avails of contributions made in the church; and there were likewise boxes, stuck on the ends of long poles, herewith the deacons could go round among the worshippers, conveniently extending the beggingbox to the remotest curmudgeon among them all. From the arrangement of the seats in the nave, and the labels pasted or painted on them, I judged that the women sat on one side and the men on the other, and the seats for various orders of magistrates, and for ecclesiastical and collegiate people, were likewise marked out.
I soon grew weary of these investigations, and so did Roebud and J----, who essayed to amuse themselves with running races together over the horizontal tombstones in the pavement of the choir, treading remorselessly over the noseless effigies of old dignitaries, who never expected to be so irreverently treated. I put a stop to their sport, and banished them to different parts of the cathedral; and by-andby, the old woman appeared again, and released us from durance . . .
While waiting for our dejeuner , we saw the people dining at the regular table d'hote of the hotel, and the idea was strongly borne in upon me, that the professional mystery of a male waiter is a very unmanly one. It is so absurd to see the solemn attentiveness with which they stand behind the chairs; the earnestness of their watch for any crisis that may demand their interposition; the gravity of their manner in performing some little office that the guest might better do for himself; their decorous and softly steps; in short, as I sat and gazed at them, they seemed to me not real men, but creatures with a clerical aspect, engendered out of a very artificial state of society. When they are waiting on myself, they do not appear so absurd ; it is necessary to stand apart in order to see them properly.
We left Lausanne which was to us a tedious and weary place before four o'clock. I should have liked well enough to see the house of Gibbon, and the garden in which he walked, after finishing "The Decline and Fall;" but it could not be done without some trouble and inquiry, and as the house did not come to see me, I determined not to go and see the house. There was, indeed, a mansion of somewhat antique respectability, near our hotel, having a garden and a shaded terrace behind it, which would have answered accurately enough to the idea of Gibbon's residence. Perhaps it was so; far more probably not.
Our former voyages had been taken in the Hirondelle; we now, after broiling for some time in the sunshine by the lake-side, got on board of the Aigle, No. 2. There were a good many passengers, the larger proportion of whom seemed to be English and American, and among the latter, a large party of talkative ladies, old and young. The voyage was pleasant while we were protected from the sun by the awning overhead, but became scarcely agreeable when the sun had descended so low as to shine in our faces or on our backs. We looked earnestly for Mont Blanc, which ought to have been visible during a large part of our course; but the clouds gathered themselves hopelessly over the portion of the sky where the great mountain lifted his white peak; and we did not see it, and probably never shall. As to the meaner mountains, there were enough of them, and beautiful enough; but we were a little weary, and feverish with the heat . . . I think I had a headache, though it is so unusual a complaint with me, that I hardly know it when it comes. We were none of us sorry, therefore, when the Eagle brought us to the quay of Geneva, only a short distance from our hotel To-day I wrote to Mr. Wilding, requesting him to secure passages for us from Liverpool on the 15th of next month, or 1st of August. It makes my heart thrill, half pleasantly, half otherwise; so much nearer does this step seem to bring that home whence I have now been absent six years, and which, when I see it again, may turn out to be not my home any longer. I likewise wrote to Bennoch, though I know not his present address; but I should deeply grieve to leave England without seeing him. He and Henry Bright are the only two men in England to whom I shall be much grieved to bid farewell; but to the island itself, I cannot bear to say that word, as a finality. I shall dreamily hope to come back again at some indefinite time ; rather foolishly perhaps, for it will tend to take the substance out of my life in my own land. But this, I suspect, is apt to be the penalty of those who stay abroad, and stay too long.
Some of these mountains, that looked at no such mighty distance, were at least forty or fifty miles off, and appeared as if they were near neighbours and friends of other mountains, from which they were really still farther removed. The relations into which distant points are brought, in a view of mountain scenery, symbolise the truth that we can never judge within our partial scope of vision, of the relations which we bear to our fellow-creatures and human circumstances. These mighty mountains think that they have nothing to do with one another, each deems itself its own centre, and existing for itself alone; and yet, to an eye that can take them all in, they are evidently portions of one grand and beautiful idea, which could not be consummated without the lowest and the loftiest of them. I do not express this satisfactorily, but have a genuine meaning in it nevertheless.
We passed again by Chillon, and gazed at it as long as it was distinctly visible, though the water view does no justice to its real picturesqueness, there being no towers nor projections on the side towards the lake, nothing but a wall of dingy white, with an indentation that looks something like a gateway. About an hour and a half brought us to Ouchy, the point where passengers land to take the omnibus to Lausanne. The ascent from Ouchy to Lausanne is a mile and a half, which it took the omnibus nearly half an hour to accomplish. We left our shawls and carpet bags in the salle a manger of the Hotel Faucon, and set forth to find the cathedral, the pinnacled tower of which is visible for a long distance up and down the lake. Prominent as it is, however, it is by no means very easy to find it while rambling through the intricate streets and declivities of the town itself, for Lausanne is the town, I should fancy, in all the world the most difficult to go directly from one point to another. It is built on the declivity of a hill, adown which run several valleys or ravines, and over these the contiguity of houses extends, so that the communication is kept up by means of steep streets and, sometimes, long weary stairs, which must be surmounted and descended again in accomplishing a very moderate distance. In some inscrutable way we at last arrived at the cathedral, which stands on a higher site than any other in Lausanne. It has a very venerable exterior, with all the Gothic grandeur which arched mullioned windows, deep portals, buttresses, towers, and pinnacles, grey with a thousand years, can give to architecture. After waiting awhile we obtained entrance by means of an old woman, who acted the part of sacristan, and was then showing the church to some other visitors.
The interior disappointed us; not but what it was very beautiful, but I think the excellent repair that it was in, and the puritanic neatness with which it is kept, does much towards effacing the majesty and mystery that belong to an old church. Every inch of every wall and column, and all the mouldings and tracery, and every scrap of grotesque carving, had been washed with a drab mixture. There were like wise seats all up and down the nave, made of pine wood, and looking very new and neat, just such seats as I shall see in a hundred meeting-houses (if ever I go into so many) in America. Whatever might be the reason, the stately nave, with its high-groined roof, the clustered columns and lofty pillars, the in tersecting arches of the side aisles, the choir, the armorial and knightly tombs that surround what was once the high altar, all produced far less effect than I could have thought beforehand.
As it happened, we had more ample time and freedom to inspect this cathedral than any other that we have visited, for the old woman consented to go away and leave us there, locking the door behind her. The others, except Rosebud, sat down to sketch such portions as struck their fancy; and for myself, I looked at the monuments, of which some, being those of old knights, ladies, bishops, and a king, were curious from their antiquity; and others are interesting as bearing memorials of English people, who have died at Lausanne in comparatively recent years. Then I went up into the pulpit, and tried, without success, to get into the stone gallery that runs all round the nave; and I explored my way into various side apartments of the cathedral, which I found fitted up with seats for Sabbath-schools, perhaps, or possibly, for meeting of elders of the church. I opened the great Bible of the church, and found it to be a French version, printed at Lille some fifty years ago. There was also a liturgy, adapted, probably, to the Lutheran form of worship. In one of the side apartments I found a strong box, heavily clamped with iron, and having a contrivance, like the hopper of a mill, by which money could be turned into the top, while a double lock prevented its being abstracted again. This was to receive the avails of contributions made in the church; and there were likewise boxes, stuck on the ends of long poles, herewith the deacons could go round among the worshippers, conveniently extending the beggingbox to the remotest curmudgeon among them all. From the arrangement of the seats in the nave, and the labels pasted or painted on them, I judged that the women sat on one side and the men on the other, and the seats for various orders of magistrates, and for ecclesiastical and collegiate people, were likewise marked out.
I soon grew weary of these investigations, and so did Roebud and J----, who essayed to amuse themselves with running races together over the horizontal tombstones in the pavement of the choir, treading remorselessly over the noseless effigies of old dignitaries, who never expected to be so irreverently treated. I put a stop to their sport, and banished them to different parts of the cathedral; and by-andby, the old woman appeared again, and released us from durance . . .
While waiting for our dejeuner , we saw the people dining at the regular table d'hote of the hotel, and the idea was strongly borne in upon me, that the professional mystery of a male waiter is a very unmanly one. It is so absurd to see the solemn attentiveness with which they stand behind the chairs; the earnestness of their watch for any crisis that may demand their interposition; the gravity of their manner in performing some little office that the guest might better do for himself; their decorous and softly steps; in short, as I sat and gazed at them, they seemed to me not real men, but creatures with a clerical aspect, engendered out of a very artificial state of society. When they are waiting on myself, they do not appear so absurd ; it is necessary to stand apart in order to see them properly.
We left Lausanne which was to us a tedious and weary place before four o'clock. I should have liked well enough to see the house of Gibbon, and the garden in which he walked, after finishing "The Decline and Fall;" but it could not be done without some trouble and inquiry, and as the house did not come to see me, I determined not to go and see the house. There was, indeed, a mansion of somewhat antique respectability, near our hotel, having a garden and a shaded terrace behind it, which would have answered accurately enough to the idea of Gibbon's residence. Perhaps it was so; far more probably not.
Our former voyages had been taken in the Hirondelle; we now, after broiling for some time in the sunshine by the lake-side, got on board of the Aigle, No. 2. There were a good many passengers, the larger proportion of whom seemed to be English and American, and among the latter, a large party of talkative ladies, old and young. The voyage was pleasant while we were protected from the sun by the awning overhead, but became scarcely agreeable when the sun had descended so low as to shine in our faces or on our backs. We looked earnestly for Mont Blanc, which ought to have been visible during a large part of our course; but the clouds gathered themselves hopelessly over the portion of the sky where the great mountain lifted his white peak; and we did not see it, and probably never shall. As to the meaner mountains, there were enough of them, and beautiful enough; but we were a little weary, and feverish with the heat . . . I think I had a headache, though it is so unusual a complaint with me, that I hardly know it when it comes. We were none of us sorry, therefore, when the Eagle brought us to the quay of Geneva, only a short distance from our hotel To-day I wrote to Mr. Wilding, requesting him to secure passages for us from Liverpool on the 15th of next month, or 1st of August. It makes my heart thrill, half pleasantly, half otherwise; so much nearer does this step seem to bring that home whence I have now been absent six years, and which, when I see it again, may turn out to be not my home any longer. I likewise wrote to Bennoch, though I know not his present address; but I should deeply grieve to leave England without seeing him. He and Henry Bright are the only two men in England to whom I shall be much grieved to bid farewell; but to the island itself, I cannot bear to say that word, as a finality. I shall dreamily hope to come back again at some indefinite time ; rather foolishly perhaps, for it will tend to take the substance out of my life in my own land. But this, I suspect, is apt to be the penalty of those who stay abroad, and stay too long.
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