MODERN PHILOSOPHERS. 51 Thus, then, it was his occupation, in the construction of his immortal work, and the pleasures of society, that rendered the Pays de Vaud so delightful! With the same pursuits, and the same society, he would have been happy any where-even in Bentinck-street. But look at the philosopher, when he had finished his " Decline and Fall"—and when his daily pursuits and avocations were at an end. After enumerating (in a letter to Mrs. Porter) the comforts, the beauties and the advantages of his literary retreat at Lausanne, he touchingly adds-" but I feel, and, with the decline of years, I shall more painfully feel, that I am alone in Paradise.” Let no one expect that the scenery of Switzerland or of Italy can confer any thing like lasting pleasure, without a regular avocation or pursuit. On the contrary, the stronger the impression made by these or any other countries at first-and the more sensibly their beauties are felt-the sooner will the excitement and gratification be over-and the more irksome will be the satiety which must inevitably ensue. When we get beyond the Alps I shall take up this interesting subject again, and hope to shew, that— Happiness, our being's end and aim,” may be found much nearer home than the world imagine-and that health and longevity are more conspicuous beneath the gloomy skies of old England, than in the apparently more favoured climate of Italy, which, though beautiful to the eye and pleasant to the feelings, is destructive to health. But I must bid a long adieu to the Lake of Geneva and its romantic shores, the northern and southern of which present as remarkable a contrast in physical features as in moral events. The Savoy shore holds fast its allegiance to St. Peter-the opposite side has been the abode of Mortals who sought and found, by dangerous roads, gigantic minds, who levelled the artillery of their wit, satire, and ridicule, not only against the head, but the body of the church! Voltaire, Gibbon, Rousseau, Byron! The FIRST appears to have been the most fortunate, maintaining, when an OCTOGENARIAN, his original character of “gay, grave, sage, or wild," supported by vanity, till the tide of Time had worn away almost the whole of the material fabric, leaving to the mind its Proteian powers and propensities apparently unimpaired. Our countryman of Lausanne was not so happy. He who employed the meridian of his intellectual faculties in 66 Sapping a sacred creed with solemn sneer," was unable, according to his own confession, in the "decline and fall" of life, to people the Paradise that surrounded him, even with imaginary beings! ROUSSEAU, the visionary, the vicious enthusiast—the victim of morbid sen sibilities and sensualities-the architect of a hell in his own breast, while portraying the imaginary happiness of savages-he who practised every kind of vice, and advocated every kind of virtue—had one palliative excuse for his various outrages against religion, morality, and decency-that was MADNESS! BYRON's talents and fate are too well known. We may form some idea of the good he might have done, by the mischief which he has done! What he says of Voltaire and Gibbon is peculiarly applicable to himself— Their steep aim Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame Of Heaven, again assailed, if Heaven the while, On man and man's research could deign do more than smile. ST. MAURICE. From Chillon to St. Maurice, the traveller posts rapidly over an alluvial delta, a miniature representation of that of the Nile or Ganges, but of the same nature, however small the scale. The triangular plain, with the river flowing through its centre, gradually narrows, till its apex ends in the ancient Roman Bridge, of a single arch, thrown from one precipice to the other, over the rapid and turbid Rhone. These precipices are the bases of two pointed and craggy mountains, six or seven thousand feet high, called the Dent de Morcles and Dent du Midi, united, without doubt, at some remote period, when the present Vallais was an immense sheet of water, and the Rhone, like the Rhine, leaped over a stupendous barrier at this place, precipitating itself into its sister Lake of Geneva below. The breaking away of this gigantic natural flood-gate, and the tremendous rush of waters consequent on such an event, might have furnished Lord Byron with materials for a fine poetical picture. Something of the kind must have been floating in his mind, when he likened these opposing cliffs to two lovers, suddenly and for ever separated. "Now where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between In haste, whose mining depths so intervene That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted." From the moment we cross this venerable arch, 200 feet in span, and boasting of Julius Cæsar as its founder, we enter the wild scenery of Switzerland, and become enclosed between stupendous ranges of rocks, in a narrow valley, through which the Rhone rushes along, while hundreds of mountain torrents tumble headlong from the surrounding precipices, to mingle with the master stream below. On the right hand, two or three miles before we enter Martigny, the river SALENCHE dashes, in a sheet of snowy gauze, over a perpendicular cliff, 200 feet in height, while a portion of it rises again in misty vapour, and envelopes the admiring traveller, arrested by the magnificent scene, in a halo of descending dew.* The sequestered hamlet of LAVEY, on the left of the road from St. Maurice to Martigny, has become the scene of a tale not more melancholy than true, connected with the dreadful inundation of the Dranse; and which my old fellow traveller (Mr. Roscoe) has related with great pathos in the LANDSCAPE ANNUAL for 1830. A maiden maniac is still seen daily mounting a neighbouring cliff, to hail the return of a betrothed lover. He did return-but as a lifeless corse, borne along by the torrent of the Rhone, swollen and accelerated by the fatal inundation of an auxiliary river! MARTIGNY. When I first visited this spot, (six years ago) it bore melancholy marks of the inundation of 1818, above alluded to. That event was one of those stupendous operations of Nature which are often seen, on a large scale, among the Alps. A glacier (Getroz) slipped from its perch on the side of Mont Pleurer, and falling with a tremendous crash into the narrow gorge or outlet of a valley (Torembec) blocked up the stream that issued thence, over a frightful ledge of rocks, into the Vallée de Bagnes lower down. The consequence was, that the valley was gradually converted into a lake, bounded on all sides by snow-clad cliffs and glaciers. Strange to say, the sudden diminution, or almost annihilation of the river Dranse, thus cut off from its source, did not awaken the torpid inhabitants of the subjacent valleys, through which it ran, to a sense of their danger, till the waters had accumulated in the Valley of Torembec to some hundred feet in depth! Every effort, indeed, was then made to cut galleries through the icy barrier, or fallen glacier, and thus let off the prodigious reservoir of water, snow, and fragments of ice that im * No one can pass the town of St. Maurice, without being horrified at the idea of six thousand Christian soldiers being massacred there, by order of his Pagan Majesty Maximian, the amiable colleague of Diocletian, as stated on the authority of Madame Starke, and all other travellers' oracles, though contrary to Eusebius. It may allay the horror and indignation of our minds, to be informed by one of the greatest historians which the world ever produced, that—" the story was first published about the middle of the fifth century (Maximian bore sway in the early part of the fourth) by Eucherius, Bishop of Lyons, who received it from certain persons, who received it from Isaac, Bishop of Geneva, who is said to have received it from Theodore, Bishop of Octodurum."-GIBBON. pended over the numerous villages of the Vallée de Bagnes-but with very partial success. Signals were then established-sentinels posted-and alarum fires kept lighted in the night, to warn the inhabitants should the flood-gate give way. "At length, late one afternoon, a thundering explosion was heard! Reverberating through the surrounding hills, it bore the fearful tidings to an immense distance, scattering dismay and terror amongst the trembling inhabitants. The dyke had burst; and the gigantic lakes of imprisoned water rushed from their confinement with headlong fury, forming a prodigious torrent a hundred feet deep, and sweeping along at the rate of twenty miles an hour. A huge forest which lay across its track was not proof against the strength of the waters-large trees were rooted up as though they had been osier wands, and were borne away like floating branches on its tide."* In this manner the stupendous mass of waters, combined with all the ruins which it had gathered in its progress-forests, rocks, houses, cattle, and immense blocks of ice-rushed, an overwhelming deluge, and with a noise louder than the heaviest peals of thunder, down towards the ill-fated Martigny! The scene of destruction was awful beyond the power of conception! Half the town was immediately swept away; and the other half was covered with ruins. The terrific inundation proceeded in its destructive course till it mingled with the Rhone, and was ultimately lost in the peaceful but affrighted Lake of Geneva ! The Inn (La Tour) where these memoranda were written, has a black line, (some seven or eight feet above the ground) marked on its walls, shewing the height of the inundation. The destined bridegroom of the unhappy maniac, alluded to in the preceding section, was lost (with many others) in this dreadful catastrophe, having come, the day before his intended marriage to MARTIGNY, from his native village of LAVEY-probably to purchase paraphernalia for that ceremony which was to consign himself to a watery tomb, and his more unfortunate bride to the ten thousand horrors of reminiscent insanity! Tragic and terrific as was the above scene, it was probably but a miniature representation of what happened, in some remote and unrecorded period, near the same place. When the stupendous barrier of rock at St. Maurice was first rent asunder, by the violence of subterranean fires, or the pressure of superincumbent fluids, and the congregated waters of the Rhone rushed through the yawning abyss, the phenomenon must have been one of the most awful and sublime spectacles ever presented to human eye. Perhaps no living being witnesssed this tremendous crash, except the ibex browsing on the * Roscoe. neighbouring mountains, or the eagle, startled from its eyrie on the inaccessible cliffs of the Dent de Morcles. In the geological history of the earth's present surface, there must have been a period, however early, when the now hoary heads of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, first became blanched with descending snows, and their shoulders spangled with glittering icicles. The daily and annual revolutions of the sun dissolved a portion of these, which trickled in currents along the most indented fissures of the declivities, and still form the channels of mountain torrents. The crusts of snow and ice increased every year in thickness, while the descending streams accumulated in the valleys and formed lakes. After a time, the agglomerated snows and icicles began to fall in avalanches into the hollows of the mountains' sides, and thus to form what are now termed "Mers de Glace" or 66 Glaciers," the current underneath still preserving its wonted channel, and forming a receptacle for the drippings that fell through the various fissures. The annual descent of snow and ice from the higher peaks of cliffs and mountains, caused the glaciers themselves to move slowly downwards towards the valleys, where they fell in masses into the current below, and were dissolved by the Summer's heat. This slow and almost imperceptible motion of the Glaciers did not escape the notice of Byron, who characterizes them as solid rivers, moving along majestically by the law of gravitation. Meantime the accumulated waters in the valleys rose till they found some outlet, and then descended by circuitous routes to the ocean, in the form of rivers. Thus, for instance, the Vallais became one vast lake, till the waters found an issue over the stony barrier at St. Maurice, and when this barrier gave way, the lake rushed with tremendous velocity into the valley, now the Lake of Geneva! A contemplation of the formation of glaciers, lakes, and rivers, in this romantic country, is extremely interesting, and should occupy a portion of the traveller's time and attention while wandering among the Alps. SION. CRETINISM. We are now in the centre of the Vallais-the head-quarters of goitre and cretinism. There are few portions of the earth's surface, in these temperate climes, better calculated for the deterioration, if not the destruction of life, than the Valley of the Rhone. It is bounded on each side by steep mountains, four or five thousand feet in height—and the intermediate ground contains all the elements that are found to operate against human health. The valley consists, in some places, of a rich, flat, alluvial earth, covered with corn, fruit trees, and gardens-in others, it presents swamps and meadows-then, again, jungle and woods-vineyards-pine forests, &c. while brawling brooks intersect it in all directions, and often inundate it, in their precipitous course |