which is, you must think, like a little city; for there are 100 fathers, besides 300 servants, that make their clothes, grind their corn, press their wine, and do every thing among themselves. The whole is quite orderly and simple; nothing of finery: but the wonderful decency, and the strange situation, more than supply the place of it. In the evening we descended by the same way, passing through many clouds, that were then forming themselves on the mountain's top."-And, in a letter to his friend West, he says, with his wonted enthusiasm, "In our little journey up to the Grande Chartreuse, I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an exclamation, that there was no restraining; not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief, without the help of other argument. One need not have a very fantastic imagination to see spirits at noon-day. You have death perpetually before your eyes; only so far removed, as to compose the mind without frightening it. I am well persuaded, St. Bruno was a man of no common genius, to choose such a situation for his retirement; and perhaps should have been a disciple of his, had I been born in his time." |