At Chamberry our route underwent a change. Beauty now gave place to grandeur; but still a grandeur blended with scenes of exquisite loveliness. These I cannot stay to describe at length. The whole day was passed in winding and climbing among the hills. We toiled slowly to rise above the plains we had left, and to approach the region where winter spreads out her boundless sea of ice and snow. We followed the magnificent road which we owe to the genius of Napoleon. The fruits of Marengo are gone. Austerlitz is but a name. But the passes of the Alps remain. "When will it be ready for the transport of the cannon?" enquired Napoleon respecting the Simplon road. War is a rough pioneer; but without such a pioneer to clear the way the world would stand still. Look back. What do you see throughout the successive ages? War, with his red eye, his iron feet, and his gleaming brand, marching in the van; and commerce, and arts, and Christianity, following in the wake of this blood-besmeared Anakim. Such has ever been the order of procession. Mankind in the mass are a sluggish race, and will march only when the word of command is sounded from iron-throated, hoarse-voiced war. Look at the Alps. What do you see? A gigantic form, busy amid the blinding tempests and the eternal ice of their summits. With herculean might he rends the rocks and levels the mountains. Who is he, and what does he there? That is war, in the person of Napoleon, hewing a path through rocks and glaciers, for the passage of the Bible and the missionary. Under the reign of the Mediator the promise to Christianity is, All is yours. War is yours, and Peace is yours.
As we passed on, innumerable nooks of beauty opened to the eye, and romantic peaks ever and anon shot up before us. Now the path led along a meadow, with its large bright flowers; and now along the brink of an Alpine river, with its worn bed and tumultuous floods. Now it rounded the shoulder of a hill; and now it lost itself in some frightful gorge, where the overhanging mountain, with its drapery of pine forests, made it dark as midnight almost. You emerge into daylight again, and begin the same succession of green meadow, pine-clad hill, foaming torrent, and black gorge. Thus you go onward and upward. At length white Alps begin to look down upon you, and give you warning that you are nearing those central regions where eternal winter holds his seat amid pinnacles of ice and wastes of snow.
Let us take an individual picture. The road has made a sudden turn; and a valley, hitherto concealed by the mountains, opens unexpectedly. It is some three or four miles long; and the road traverses it straight as the arrow's flight, till it loses itself amid the rocks and foliage at the bottom of the mountain which you see lying across the valley. On this hand is a stream of water, clear as crystal; on that is the ridgy, wavy, lofty mass of a purple Alp. The bright air and light incorporate, as it were, with the substance of the mountain, and spiritualize it, so that it looks of mould intermediate betwixt the earth and the firmament. The path is bordered with the most delicious verdure, fresh and soft as a carpet, and freckled with the dancing shadows of the trees. On this hand is a chalet, with a vine climbing its wall and mantling its doorway; on that is a verdant knoll, planted a-top with chestnut trees; and from amidst their rich, massy foliage, the little spire of the church, with its glittering vane, looks forth. Near it is the curé's house, buried amidst flower-blossoms, the foliage of vines, and the shadows of the sycamore and chestnut. There is not a spot in the little valley which beauty has not clothed and decked with the most painstaking care; while grandeur has built up a wall all round, as if to keep out the storms that sometimes rage here. It looks so quiet and tranquil, and is so shut in from the great world outside, that one thinks of it as a spot which happy beings from another sphere might come to visit, and where he might list the melody of their voices, as they walk at even-tide amid the bowers of this earthly Eden.
The road makes another turn, and the scene is changed in a moment—in the twinkling of an eye. The happy valley is gone—it has vanished like a dream; and a scene of stern, savage, overpowering sublimity rises before you. Alp is piled upon Alp, chasms yawn, torrents growl, jutting rocks threaten; and far over head is the dark pine forest, amid which you can descry, perhaps, the frozen billows of the glacier, or have glimpses of those still higher and drearier regions where winter sits on her eternal throne, and holds undivided sway. Your farther progress is completely barred. So it looks. A cyclopean wall rises from earth to heaven. The gate of rock by which you entered seems to have closed its ponderous jaws behind you, and shut you in—there to remain till some supernatural power rend the mountains and give you egress. The mood of mind changes with the scene. The beauty soothed and softened you; now you grow impulsive and stern. The awful forms around you blend with the soul, as it were, and impart something of their own vastness to it. You feel yourself carried into the very presence of that Power which sank the foundations of the mountains in the depths of the earth, and built up their giant masses above the clouds; which hung the avalanche on their brow, clove their unfathomable abysses, poured the river at their feet, and taught the forked lightning to play around their awful icy steeps. You seem to hear the sound of the Almighty's footsteps still echoing amid these hills. There passes before you the shadow of Omnipotence; and a great voice seems to proclaim the Godhead of Him "who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance."
The road was comparatively solitary. We passed at times a waggoner, who was conveying the produce of the plains to some village among the mountains; and then a couple of pedestrians, with the air of tradesmen, on their way perhaps to a Swiss town to seek employment; and next a cowherd, driving home his herds from the glades of the forest; and now an occasional gendarme would present himself, and force you to remember, what you would willingly have forgotten amid such scenes, that there were such things as armies in the world; and sometimes the long, dark figure of the curé, reading his breviary to economize time, might be seen gliding along before you, representative of the murky superstition that still fills these valleys, and which, indeed, you can read in the stolid face of the Savoyard, as he sits listlessly under the broad easings of his cottage roof.
Anon the evening came, walking noiselessly upon the mountains, and shedding on the spirit a not unpleasant melancholy. The Alps seemed to grow taller. Deep masses of shade were projected from summit to summit. Pine forest, and green vale, and dashing torrent, and quiet hamlet, all retired from view, as if they wished to go to sleep beneath the friendly shadows. A deep and reverent silence stole over the Alps, as if the stillness of the firmament had descended upon them. Over all nature was shed this spirit of quiet and profound tranquillity. Every tree was motionless. The murmur of the brook, the wing of the bird, the creak of our diligence, the voices of the postilion and conducteur, all felt the softening influence of the hour.
But mark! what glory is this which begins to burn upon the crest of the snowy Alps? First there comes a flood of rosy light, and then a deep bright crimson, like the ruby's flash or the sapphire's blaze, and then a circlet of flaming peaks studs the horizon. It looks as if a great conflagration were about to begin. But suddenly the light fades, and piles of cold, pale white rise above you. You can scarce believe them to be the same mountains. But, quick as the lightning, the flash comes again. A flood of glory rolls once more along their summits. It is a last and mighty blaze. You feel as if it were a struggle for life—as if it were a war waged by the spirits of darkness against these celestial forms. The struggle is over: the darkness has prevailed. These mighty mountain torches are extinguished one after one; and cold, ghastly piles, of sepulchral hue, which you shiver to look up at, and which remind you of the dead, rise still and calm in the firmament above you. You feel relieved when darkness interposes its veil betwixt you and them. The night sets in deep, and calm, and beautiful, with troops of stars overhead. The voice of streams, all night long, fills the silent hills with melodious echoes.
We now threaded the black gorge of the Arc, passing, unperceived in the darkness, Fort Lesseillon, which, erecting its tiers of batteries above this tremendous natural fosse, looks like a mailed warrior guarding the entrance to Italy. It was eleven o'clock, and we were toiling up the mountain. We had left all human habitations far below, as we thought, when suddenly we were startled by a peal of village bells. Never had bells sounded sweeter