Page images
PDF
EPUB

23

CHAPTER III.

The Lyonnois―Mont-de-l'Hopital-Saint Symphorien-Pain Bou

chain--Mont Tarare--Architecture and Costume-LYONIts remarkable situation and striking appearance-Quay of the Rhone-Cathedral-Churches of St. Paul and St. Irenaus-Hotel de Ville-Palais des Arts-Place Louis le Grand-Silk Manufactory-Mont de Fourvière-The Calvary-Church of Notre Dame-Grand views—A Mono-dramatic Scene.

THIS day, the 16th, we were en route at the sweet hour of prime. We now entered a country calculated by its mountain scenery to prepare us for the sublimities of Savoy and Switzerland. The ascent of Mont de l'Hopital gave us the salutary exercise of walking, of which the heat of the lowlands had deprived us; it afforded us also some very grand and interesting points of view. At half-past four our renewed course of early action was rewarded with the sight of the Sun climbing the distant hills on our left. What words can describe the splendour of his array, the gorgeous colours that precede his appearance, and the ineffable brightness of his rising !

Finely situated on one of the woody ridges below our road stands a large chateau, formerly belonging to Cardinal Fesch (given to him when he was Archbishop of Lyon, by his nephew Napoleon), now a convent of Benedictine Nuns. At Saint Symphorien we took each a dish of excellent milk, with fresh baked bread, supplied to us by the civil mistress of the post house, the upper windows of

24

PAIN BOUCHAIN.-MONT TARARE.

whose apartments command a delightful view of this highly picturesque spot. And

[ocr errors][merged small]

"Who would not doff his cap at once

"In extacy, when bold and new

"Bursts on his sight a mountain view."

We passed over the lofty hills to Pain Bouchain by a new and well-constructed road, every turn of which presents some new beauty. This extensive chain is cultivated to the very tops; and the corn having here had the advantage of rain to nourish it, and check the progress of premature ripening, looked healthy and thick on the ground. We continued on the descent as far as the village of La Fontaine, and then ascended the mountain of Tarare, which, though it opposes not by any means so difficult a passage as travellers formerly complained of, is nevertheless only now to be crossed by a very steep road. The village of Tarare, and the few last that we passed through, offer to our regards, as well in the dress of the inhabitants as in the stile of ecclesiastical and domestic architecture, many points of similitude to what pictorial representations have hitherto taught us to associate with ideas of Italian costume and scenery. There is certainly a marked difference between the towns in the south and those in the north of France, in the structure of their houses and churches: there is too an air of striking peculiarity in the Lyonnaise women, whose deeply tinged complexions and expressive features are shaded beneath very broad brimmed hats of straw.

"When (as Sterne says) you have gained the top of Mount Taurira you run presently down to Lyon." It was through a smiling region brown with harvests, luxuriant

in vegetation, adorned with the mingled foliage of poplars, elms, willows, oaks, and firs, enriched with orchards and coteaux of vines, and embellished with a succession of handsome pleasure-houses and fine gardens, that we rapidly approached the suburbs of that noble city. As we entered the avenue leading to the Quai du Rhone, our attention was perpetually claimed by a variety of truly interesting objects. The wide and rapid river there passes between two ranges of hills, on whose steep aclivities building rises above building, terrace above terrace, grove above grove, to summits crowned by the mouldering walls of an ancient fort, the extensive enclosure of some secularized monastery, or the pinnacled steeples of churches and chapels.

The view from the windows of our apartment at the Hotel-de-l'Europe, nearly in front of the new and handsome bridge over the Saone, and looking towards the Quai de l'Archvêché, exhibited another but not less striking quarter of Lyon: the cathedral and the palace of the primate, situated on the western side of the river, stand at the foot of the Montagne de Fourvières, whose thickly planted sides, studded with habitations, form a bold and vivid back-ground to the venerable church; whilst the fane of Notre Dame de St. Thomas and other religious edifices decorate the highest points of this verdant eminence.

A call at our banker's made us better acquainted with the grandeur of the Quay of the Rhone; the finest building on which is the Great Hospital. It did not however impress us with the most favourable idea of the interior economy of this vast establishment to observe that the ground floor in front was let off for shops and

E

manufactories in such noisy kinds of business as those of carriage-makers, braziers, and carpenters! It struck us also as evidence of a disposition on the part of le haut commerce in this place to take things easy, during the very warm weather at least, that although our first call at the house of the respectable firm to which Messrs. Herries and Farquhar's Letter of Order (in identification of their Circular Exchange Notes) referred us, was made at high noon-day, we were requested by the porter to call again, as nobody was yet come to the bureau !

In our too hasty survey of the curiosities of this ancient and justly celebrated city, we began with the cathedral, in the western façade of which the architect appears to have been as studious of unembellished uniformity, as those of Rouen and Amiens were of ornamental variety. What little statuary it once possessed was destroyed during the frenzied moments of the Revolution. There is a building, that adjoins the west front, now used as a dwelling by some of the ecclesiastics, which is of much earlier date than the greater part of the church, as the zig-zag mouldings of the short pilasters and little circular arcades indubitably testify. The interior of the cathedral is dreary and dark; its architecture is pointed, and plain as the outside, with details somewhat bordering on the Saracenic. A clock, made by Lippius of Basil, is a curious piece of workmanship; and one or two of the chapels are well worthy of notice. The church of St. Paul, built by St. Sacerdos, towards the middle of the sixth century, contains a fine altar painting by Le Brun. But of all the remaining religious edifices, (for the Revolution made great devastation among them), that which most interested me was the one dedicated to

St. Irenæus, the disciple of Polycarp, who in the second century preached the gospel to this then Roman colony. The stile of the building seems to refer it to the age of Charlemagne; the pillars of the nave are round, and the capitals ornamented with foliage of the acanthus: over the western entrance, which, if met with in England, we should call Saxon Gothic, are some curiously sculptured relievos.

Our next visit was to the Hotel de Ville (in the Place des Terraux), a very magnificent building, of the Grecian order, and of a quadrangular form. The portico is superb. In the hall of entrance they preserve the ancient table of brass which was found in 1528, by some workmen who were digging in one of the hills that overlook the city, and on which is engraved the speech delivered by the Emperor Claudius (then only Censor), before the Roman Senate in favour of the inhabitants of Lyon. The walls of the grand stair-case are covered with fresco paintings, allusive to the conflagration which is recorded to have laid this place in ashes, during the reign of Nero. The first apartment to which this stair-case leads is a large saloon, where a short time ago the municipality entertained the Duke d'Angouleme, on his return from Spain. There is not a nation upon earth that "gets up" a fête with such expedition and eclât as the French.By no means nice about the matériel of their occasional displays, they have however a slight fault: they forget to clear away the ephemeral trumpery after the occasion for it no longer exists. The dining table, for example, at which his Royal Highness and all the great folks partook the splendid banquet, was, whatever might at the time have been the costliness of its covering, quite

« PreviousContinue »