From Tait's Magazine. THERE AND BACK AGAIN. Geneva and Chamberi, and Madame de Warrens and Claude Anet, became engraven ineffaceably on my mind; and with the whole, the dust, sunshine, green meadows, shady groves, sparkling streams, and melting heat of July, were inextricably associated. BY JAMES AUGUSTUS ST. JOHN, Author of "History of the Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece," " Margaret Ravenscroft," "Egypt and Mohammed Ali," &c. &c. CHAPTER 1.-THE DEPARTURE. THERE AND BACK AGAIN! Will you accompany me, reader? If you do, we shall converse by the way on many subjects besides the picturesque. The journey altogether was a strange one for me, because, not having been a great traveller, I had not, and, indeed, have not yet, learned to view men and countries as commonplace because many other persons before me had beheld them. In moving about the world, it is not always what we see, but what we feel, that is productive of most delight both to ourselves and others. Nature supplies the canvas, but we must bring along with us the col From that time to the present, Rousseau and I have been on good terms. The objections commonly made to him by others have little weight with me. Perhaps, indeed, the facts which provoke their anathemas constitute the principal reason of my preference, namely, that he was the great apostle and father of the revolution, that he wrote the "Contrat Sociale," and disturbed the political creed of all noble and imaginative minds throughout Europe. Let those persons who are really wise take all due credit for it. I make no pretensions of that sort. I came to Switzerland, as I have said, out of partiality for Jean Jacques ors, if we would call into being an original or Rousseau, fully expecting to find at Vevay and even a true picture-true, I mean, for all those Clarens the representatives, in feature and figure who have the same organization and sympathies at least, of Julie and Claire. with us. We used-my wife and I to discuss these Every man has his own peculiar motives for matters seriously, because it was a rule with us travelling, and, therefore, of course, I had mine; never to remain long in any place where the though you will probably become incredulous women were other than handsome, or at least when I endeavor to explain what they were. It tolerably pretty. This may be set down to our was not to behold lakes, glaciers, and mountains love for the picturesque; for, after all, there is no whose heads touch heaven, that I had come into combination of earth, wood, and water, which can Switzerland; it was not in search of poetical or other inspiration; neither, being perfectly well, was it with any view of improving my health, or acquiring animal spirits, with which, at the time, I was literally overflowing. I had come purely out of love for the memory of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and that I might stroll about at my ease over the scene of the Nouvelle Heloise. But why was the memory of Rousseau dear to me? Probably some one had breathed it into my ears before the dawn of memory, and rendered it familiar to me in that period of life when to be familiar is always to be loved. The day on which I first became acquainted with his writings I remember most distinctly. It was in the midst of summer, when July had covered all the roads, and sprinkled all the bushes in their vicinity, with dust. A cousin, who lived some five or six miles off, had just written to me, to say that he had got a copy of the "Confessions," which, if I would fetch them, he would lend to me. I started early, with one of my sisters as a companion, all the way amusing myself with imagining what man claim to be regarded as half so beautiful as a beautiful woman. Lakes are very magnificent, and so are forests and mountains; but if, with Milton, we were deprived of the power of beholding external things, it is the human face divine that we should most earnestly desire to look upon again. Neither sun, nor moon, nor day, nor night, would awaken within us regrets so poignant as the faces of dear friends now for us blotted out forever from the aspect of nature. Ever since our passage of the Jura, I had been visited by the suspicion that we had got among an inferior race of human beings. France, heaven knows, is not remarkable for female beauty, and yet one does occasionally in that country see lovely faces and bright eyes flitting by one, especially in Normandy, and certain provinces of the south. But in Switzerland, the imagination immediately begins to flag for lack of excitement. Rocks, and snow, and forests you have, no doubt, in abundance; and, if you can be satisfied with these, you may fancy yourself in Paradise. Nothing is wanting but a finely and delicately ner of things those "Confessions" could be. We organized humanity. It seems, however, to be walked through shady lanes, over meadows a general law, that, wherever nature puts on strewed with wild flowers, crossing many a brook gigantic dimensions, man is intellectually dwarfed, by the aid of a plank or small rustic bridge, and for mountainous regions have seldom or never valleys, like those of Great Britain, Italy, and Greece. at length reached the house in which the treasure lay. All else connected with this circumstance has faded from my memory but the book and my sister, and the way in which I read as we returned home. I sat on stiles, I reclined on green banks, beneath the chequered shade of oaks and elms; I devoured the "Confessions." The names of given birth to great minds, or stamped a poetical character on their inhabitants. A seaport town, embosomed in low hills, and a flat wool-combing place, on a sluggish river, have produced the two greatest poets that ever lived; and if we traverse the whole earth in search of beauty, we shall find it chiefly on plains, or in modest hills and It was night when we arrived at Vevay, and, therefore, we were compelled to defer till morning our search for the Julies and the Claires. Seine. But an invisible link of brotherhood binds them together still; and, doubtless, there are moments when, from the most distant parts of the world, the minds of all revert to that beautiful spot where, in days of unmingled happiness, they Then, however, it being market-day, on which laughed and sported before me in the shadow, as economical habits bring out nearly the whole female population, we went forth early, in the hope of realizing Rousseau's delightful vision. But let me not dwell upon the sequel. Goitres and cretins, swollen necks and hideous idiotic faces-some from Savoy, who had crossed the lake in boats, others from the surrounding villages of the Pays de Vaud met our eyes on all sides, it were, of Mont Blanc. It is an exclamation of Byron, "O that I could wreak my thoughts upon expression!” I have a thousand times uttered a similar wish; not that my ideas are too big for language, but that I have never yet had the courage to turn them out of the spiritual into the visible world. Many and many are the thoughts that crowd and with here and there a woman of passable aspect, nestle about our hearts, and exist only for ourbut nothing like beauty, delicacy, or grace. We selves. Perhaps we love them the more, because were disgusted with Vevay at once; nevertheless, they are exclusively ours, and would seem to lose in consideration of the exquisite scenery, the walks up the slopes of Mount Chardonn, the views from the chalet at the summit, the meadows along the banks of the Veveyse, the stroll to the Chateau de Blonay, the rocks of Meillerie, the Dent de Jaman, and the vast amphitheatrical sweep of grandeur from Clarens to St. Gingoulph, we pro their maiden purity and beauty, if exposed in indifferent drapery to the public. I wish, however, to be somewhat frank in this place, and to reveal a little of what passed in my mind when about to quit Europe for Africa. Nothing can be further from me than the desire to impart undue importance to a journey which many had per longed our visit to a month, after which we re-formed before, and some without encountering turned to Lausanne, where the Swiss seemed more tolerable in appearance. This place we for some time made our home, and I selected it to be the home of my family during my absence in the east. If you have been at Lausanne, you will remember, a little way out of the town, on the road to Berne, a fine house on the right hand, called Johinont, standing in the midst of a beautiful shrubbery and gardens. There it was we lived; and there, in the evening, as I watched my children playing upon the terrace, or appearing and disappearing among the trees and plantations below, I used to enjoy the prospect of the Alps, terminating with the summit of Mont Blanc, relieved like a pale spectral cloud against the blue sky. Poets talk freely, and without offence, of their children, wives, and mistresses; and why may not prose writers take the same liberty? Mothers any very formidable obstacles or dangers. But the question was one of prudence or imprudence. All my fortunes were mysteriously bound up in my gray goose quill, which, to the seven urchins before me, stood altogether in the place of Aladdin's lamp. Heaven, for aught they knew, rained cakes and bread and butter upon them from the sky, and would continue to do so, whether I happened to be on the shores of the Leman lake, or in the Mountains of the Moon. But my faith was not quite so boundless, and therefore my almost irrepressible buoyancy of spirit sometimes flagged a little when I reflected that the poke of an Arab spear, or Moggrebin dagger, might turn the world into a wilderness for those joyous little ones, and leave my bones bleaching among those of camels in the Libyan or Arabian Desert. However, in the sphere of parentship there are two human providences; and, therefore, it at least will forgive me if I become a little more was not without great confidence that I deterfamiliar and communicative than is usual in a mined on my expedition. Most persons endowed formal tête-à-tête with the public. But I am with fancy have, probably, from childhood, nourfond of children, of my own especially; and hav-ished a longing to visit some distant spot, haling just then seven of them, all full of health and lowed, if I may so express myself, by early assoanimal spirits, big and little, it will readily be ciations of history, poetry, or romance. My believed that they formed the most pleasant part imagination's land of promise, divided into two of the landscape, notwithstanding that Mont Blanc, parts, lay on the banks of the Ilissus and the and the other Alps of Savoy, constituted the back- Nile, where great nations had flourished and ground. What added greatly to the interest faded-where great men had speculated on life was the consciousness that I was about to leave and death, and toiled unceasingly to unveil the them-perhaps forever. They were of all ages, mystery of this vast universe. I by no means from nine or ten years to six months; and when resembled that honest man who hoped to become their mother, with the baby on her lap, formed possessed of Epictetus' wisdom, after his death, the centre of the group, they used to circulate by purchasing his lamp. I hoped for no philoaround her in wild and never-ending gyrations of sophical or religious inspiration by visiting the delight. In my mind's eye, I see them now, birthplaces of philosophy and theology. But I though time and circumstances have distributed knew, at all events, that I could not fail to and located them far apart, from the extremities increase my experience and knowledge of manof Insular Asia to the banks of the Nile and the kind, by taking a view, however cursory, of Italy, panions is irksome, especially when their tone and manners indicate a state of mind the very antipodes Greece, and Egypt. I was, besides, desirous of solving for myself, at least one problem, namely, whether the arts of Greece were derived orig- of your own. Of course it is highly unreasonable inally from the Nilotic valley, which I could better do by studying the remaining monuments themselves than by trusting to the representations, seldom faithful, given of them by artists and travellers. With these views, I determined, about the middle of September, upon quitting Lausanne, and took my place in the diligence for Milan. My wife and children came down to the Buceau to see me off; and, though I hoped my journey would prove one of pleasure, my feelings at parting were far from enviable. Strong doubts of the wisdom, or even morality, of the step I was about to take, came over me. Around me were the proofs of my multiplied responsibilities clinging to their mother or me, and shedding such tears as only children shed. My own feelings, or hers, I shall not attempt to describe. I shall only say that, overtaking the group again as they were ascending the steep street leading up from the Place St. Francois, I felt the strongest conceivable desire to leap out of the diligence, and return home with them; but while I was revolving this thought in my mind, the vehicle attained the summit of the acclivity, and rolled on, while through the window I looked at them as long as they were visible. Presently a turn in the street hid them from my sight, and away we went, rattling and jingling over the stones, the driver cracking his whip, and the conducteur laughing to expect sympathy from strangers, especially where they are ignorant that you require any. But we, after all, are unreasonable both in our hopes and expectations; and I remember experiencing extraordinary disgust with my neighbors in the interior of the diligence for putting common-place questions to me, in the hope of drawing me into conversation, at the moment when I felt more than a Trappeist's fondness for silence. Presently, therefore, they drew their travelling-caps close over their ears, and dropped asleep, for which I was thankful. I then put my head out of the window, to gaze upon the dusky panorama around. No lake, not even that of Mœris, in the Lybian waste, is set in so rich a frame as that of Geneva-the Alps encompass it like giants, who seem at night to look down lovingly on its slumbers. They were now beginning to put on their wintry grandeur, being powdered all over with recent snows, which, in the increasing and waning light, imparted to them the strangest conceivable appearance. The smooth, level surface of the lake was thickly bedropped with the golden reflexes of the stars, which rose and sunk with that restless impulse always observed in the bosom of great waters, and reminded me of jewels heaving and trembling on the breast of beauty. A few days before my departure, the lake and its environs had exhibited a very different aspect. I had gone out with my children towards the rock of the Signal, and had reached the shelter and chatting with the outside passengers as mer- of a little wood, when there came on suddenly one rily as if we had not contemplated proceeding of those storms which appeared to draw forth and beyond the next village. It was eight o'clock in illuminate, as it were, all the hidden beauties of the evening when we quitted Lausanne. The gloom of night was congenial with the gloom of my mind, which, for a time, seemed to be completely stunned and bewildered. If there are those who can leave home without a pang, whatever amount of enjoyment they may be looking forward to, I cannot pretend to envy or congratulate them; for, being always enveloped with uncertainty, we cannot say whether or not we have looked on the old familiar faces for the last time. And how pregnant with painful meaning are those words, the last time! In them lies the chief sting of death, when, leaving the warm precincts of the cheerful day, it is the consciousness that it is for the last time that depresses, and all but annihilates, our souls. The clustering, loving faces round the bedside would lose nearly all their significance if we were merely going to sleep; but when that sleep is to know no waking -when, come what will, we can never with our mortal eyes behold those faces and those tears again the pang of parting rises to indescribable All separations of families have an infusion of this bitterness, because it is felt that what is meant to be temporary may prove eternal. agony. CHAPTER 11.-MY COMPANIONS. the Alps. "From crag to crag leaped the live thunder;" and, as night came on prematurely, perhaps from the dense clouds, the whole surface of Lake Leman was momentarily converted into a sheet of dazzling fire. Perhaps in the whole system of nature there is nothing so beautiful as lightning. It is in the physical world what irresistible passion is in the moral. It is nature emerging from her normal state, and putting forth her powers and energies visibly. Passion, too, which is the lightning of the mind, obliterates by its brightness all the littlenesses and weaknesses of the character, and enables us for a moment to soar far above the earth and everything earthly. Lightning, though a physical process, is something analogous. Gazing on it makes the heart swell, and sends up the imagination far above the visible, diurnal sphere. As I looked down, from my lofty position, upon the clouds, charged heavily with electricity, I now and then obtained glimpses into something like a new world. Immense caverns opened up a vista into the bowels of that vapory creation, laying open long, sinuous valleys, fantastic mountains, chasms, and precipices, glittering plains and heaving seas, all sheathed with the brilliancy of lightning. Then followed intense darkness, and then another fit of revelation, after When you desire to be silent, you would also which the eye descended to the lake, and beheld be glad to be solitary. The presence of com-tracks of blue light spread over it like a pattern, As the traveller to Verona is shown the tomb of Juliet, so the stranger who visits Vevay is sure to have pointed out to him the site of Julia's bosquet at Clarens-the site, I say, because the monks of the great St. Bernard, to whom the place now belongs, are said to have cut down the ties, handed each other fresh eggs and bread and butter, and conversed about what we had seen, and of passports and custom-house nuisances, the freehoped yet to see. For her part, she had beheld dom from pauperism and beggary, and the univernothing but Paris, and those tracts of country sal prevalence of that sturdy feeling of independence which lie directly between it and St. Maurice. bordering often, I confess, on rudeness, which dis quivering, palpitating, and expanding towards each other till they met, and became coëxtensive with the surface of the water, converting into one sea of flame the whole distance between Switzerland and Savoy. During a lull in the storm, I reached home with the children, after which I sat up during half the night with my wife, admiring, from an open window, the most glorious of all visible, created things, for neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, have for me half the fascination possessed by lightning, when loud thunder accompanies its birth-pangs, ushering in its short existence to the world. No contrast could be greater than that which the lake now presented. Calm and still, with something like a soft breath breathing over it, I gazed towards the rocks of Meillerie, whence St. Preux wrote one of his sweetest letters to Julie. The very rocks, in the starlight, seem still luminous with love, so completely has the genius of Rousseau amalgamated itself with nature in this neighborhood. a We halted about an hour at Vevay, which now appeared far more romantie than when we lived there, though it was probably our having lived there that imparted to it its chief interest. Everybody knows what a momentary bustle the arrival of a diligence creates in a little country inn, all the inmates of which invariably rush out in search of excitement. Everybody is full of speculation respecting the faces that appear at the window of the vehicle, and if there be any in the background dimly seen, the mystery enveloping them is, of course, greatly enhanced. A Swiss rustic inn has always something picturesque and striking about it, with its long, drooping eaves, wooden galleries, and wilderness of projections and niches, where light and darkness sport, as it were, with each other, as torch or candle passes to and fro beneath. Several of the burghers of Vevay, with pipe in mouth and tankard in hand, came out and planted themselves on seats beside the door to gaze at, or gossip with, the wayfarers, while ostlers, grooms, and stable boys, the same queer brood all over the world, developed their organic idleness, and laughed and chatted with the girls of the establishment who, now in dim light, and at a certain distance, looked quite pretty. I may here remark, by the way, that there is a small village near the chateau de Blonay, which is at once beautiful itself, and contains the most charming women in Switzerland. This I discovered accidentally during my walks, after which it alternately divided my attentions with the castle of Chillon. Some of these fair creatures occasionally take up their residence in Vevay; and it must, doubtless, have been one of them that set the imagination of Jean Jacques in a blaze. trees in order to plant a vineyard on the spot. When I once, in a tone of disapproval, mentioned this fact to a gentleman in the neighborhood, he shrugged his shoulders and observed, " Le bon vin vaut bien les associations." But though good wine is an agreeable thing, I should, upon the whole, prefer Julia's bosquet to the vineyard, no matter how it obtained the name, or whether the foot of Rousseau's fancy ever visited it or not. During our month's stay at Vevay, I used frequently to walk in the evening towards the chateau of Chillon, and as often as we did so we had to pass the house in which Edmund Ludlow, the great English republican, spent the latter portion of his life in exile. We all observed the spot as we passed, and the recollection of his stern and noble virtues may be said to impart a sort of sanctity to Vevay. He enjoyed breathing the air of liberty to the last, under that form of government which he preferred to all others. We now slowly skirted the end of the lake, passed Chillon and Villeneuve, near where " the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone" plunges into the lake. Pity that so singular a spot should be a perpetual prey to malaria and ague, which extend their influences as far as Vevay, and are almost sure to assail strangers on their arrival. We now turned sharp round towards the left, passed through Aigle and Bex, after which I fell asleep and did not wake again until we arrived at St. Maurice, the gate of the Valais. CHAPTER 111.-MADAME CARLI-THE SNOW-STORM All persons of locomotive propensities claim for themselves the privilege of describing what they eat; and it really is a very judicious practice, because it begets in the reader the firm conviction that the traveller is no "ignis fatuus," but a genuine, solid creature of flesh and blood, like himself. Besides, there are always some pleasant little associations with breakfasts and dinners, especially those you eat on a journey. The cream seems more creamy; the coffee, rolls, butter, new-laid eggs, ham, tongue, and sausages, of much finer quality than the articles which commonly pass under these names-the reason, perhaps, being that your journey has put you in good humor, and given you a keener appetite. I remember, with much pleasure, my breakfast at St. Maurice. The room, high up in the hotel, overlooked the "arrowy Rhone," from which a fresh breeze seemed to ascend, and creep in balmy and refreshing, at the opening windows. We sat, a great many of us, round a large table, and, with the true freemasonry of travellers, were acquainted with each other at once. The fact is, you make the most of your time, knowing that you have none to spare, and chat away, right and left, with man or woman that happens to be within reach. On the present occasion, there was but one lady of the party, with whom I was afterwards, by accident, nearly eloping into Italy; but of that more hereafter. For the present we only exchanged civili Her husband, who sat beside her, and held her in strict surveillance, had been long in the east, where he had acquired Turkish ideas of jealousy and suspicion. Madame Carli, however, nothing daunted by his severe looks, conversed with me unceasingly, buttered my toast, poured out my coffee, and paid me all those small attentions which none but ladies can pay. I am always helpless, that tinguishes the Swiss from all their neighbors. These things she could comprehend, but they made no impression upon her. Her husband was in the receipt of a salary from the state, as her father, I also found, was, and therefore she was disposed to accept accomplished facts and to be repugnant to all innovation. Presently the diligence started, and our converthey may have the pleasure of assisting me. Mad-sation took a new direction. There was, in the ame Carli was a pretty Frenchwoman, with large, interior, a native of Aosta, who meant to leave us dark eyes, and a profusion of raven hair. She at Martigny, for the purpose of traversing the had been well educated in the modern system, Great St. Bernard, at the exaggerated dangers of knew a good deal, and believed very little. The chief article in her creed was, that it was a man's duty to make love, and a woman's to receive it, under all circumstances, and in every place. Her which pass he laughed very heartily. Accidents, he admitted, did sometimes overtake travellers in that part of the Alps, but generally, he said, the pass of the St. Bernard was open and safe through husband thought the direct contrary, which was out the year, except during the continuance of quite natural, seeing they had already been mar-snow-storms. He had himself, a few years preried six weeks, and that he anticipated consider- viously, in another pass, the name of which I forable trouble from the development of his helpmate's theory. Madame appeared to take infinite interest in my proposed journey, and listened with as much pleasure at my account of what I hoped to see as if I had already seen it and been speaking from experience. Three things especially delighted her the Temple of Karnak, the tombs of the Theban kings, and the boundless expanse of the desert; as I expatiated on which, her eyes would kindle and flash, and she would exclaim, "Ah, how I should like to be of your party!" "Madame," I replied, "I have no party; I go alone."" Oh, mon Dieu!" said she, comme ce The get, been overtaken by one of these, in company sera triste."-" No," I replied, "I shall people weak, and the snow, for the last hour at least, had the desert with my remembrances." Our break- greatly retarded their progress. How he came to fast companions entered with more or less vivacity be in the Englishman's carriage, he did not explain. into this conversation, from which we at length I fancy our countryman had invited him out of proceeded to discuss the topography of the diligence sheer politeness. The party consisted of five in and our own places in it. To my extreme satis- all-the husband and wife, the Italian, the nurse, faction, I found that Monsieur and Madame Carli and a little baby. How it comes to pass I know were to be my companions in the interior, which not, but it generally happens that the English, was fortunate, since I had already, as it were, made when overtaken by danger, display qualities which their acquaintance. My leanings were all then astonish foreigners. On the occasion in question, towards France, in which I had lived till I had all the solicitude of the husband seemed to be conacquired something of a native's love for it. This principally it was, perhaps, that recommended me to my female friend. We spoke of Paris, of its pleasures and gayeties, of the fascination of its society, of its literature, of its soirées, and of that fierce political spirit which renders life there so piquante. On one point we differed. Madame was a royalist; but this circumstance, instead of acting between us as a repelling power, supplied an everlasting topic for discussion; and I have noticed that however centrated in the wife, while all hers was in the baby. Self seemed equally absent from the minds of both. The nurse, for her part, displayed the utmost stoicism, except that, as the cold increased, and the snow-drifts beat more and more furiously against the carriage windows, she pressed the child more closely to her breast, and protected it from the influence of the air with a greater allowance of shawls. Our friend from Aosta, who understood thoroughly the perils of the position, went violently a woman may be attached to the pomps on talking with the husband, who, while his eye and vanities of monarchy, she delights in convers- was fixed upon his wife and child, appeared calm ing with men of the most ultra-republican opinions. and collected, though, from certain thundering We were travelling through the territories of a noises above, it appeared probable that the avarepublic, and I pointed out to her the most ordinary lanches were in motion. At every ten yards, the advantages enjoyed under that form of government- carriage was stopped by the accumulated snow. such as the perfect power of locomotion, the absence "Jane," said the husband at length to his wife, |