NAPOLEON'S WANT OF Feeling.

293

paints, however, in strong colours, the restlessness and agitation of conquerors, and the dangers that surround them. In a note on this part he makes the following curious remark: "The great error of Napoleon, if we have writ our annals true, was a continued obtrusion on mankind of his want of all community of feeling for or with them; perhaps more offensive to human vanity than the active cruelty of more trembling and suspicious tyranny. Such were his speeches to public assemblies as well as individuals; and the single expression which he is said to have used on returning to Paris, after the Russian winter had destroyed his army, rubbing his hands over a fire, This is pleasanter than Moscow,' would probably alienate more favour from his cause than the destruction and reverses which led to the remark." This is a strange censure, falling from the lips of Lord By. ron, who was himself charged with an entire want of community of feeling with or for mankind, which was the chief cause of the outcry that was raised against him. He even seems to take a pride in avowing this trait of his character, as appears from the following notice in the appendix to the "Doge of Venice :"-" The author of Sketches descriptive of Italy, &c., one of the hundred tours lately published, is extremely anxious to disclaim a possible charge of plagiarism from "Childe Harold' and 'Beppo.' He adds, that still less could this presumed coincidence arise from

294

COUNTESS BENZONI.

my conversation,' as he had repeatedly declined an introduction to me while in Italy.' Who this person may be I know not, but he must have been deceived by all or any of those who repeatedly offered to introduce him,' as I have invariably refused to receive any English with whom I was not previously acquainted, even when they had letters from England. I request this person not to sit down with the notion that he could have been introduced, since there was nothing I have so carefully avoided as any kind of intercourse with his countrymen, excepting the very few who were a considerable time resident in Venice, or had been of my previous acquaintance. Whoever made him any such offer was possessed of impudence equal to that of making such an assertion without having had it. The fact is, that I hold in utter abhorrence any contact with the travelling English, as my friend, the Consul-General Hoppner, and the Countess Benzoni (in whose house the conversazioni most frequented by them is held) could amply testify, were it worth while. I was persecuted by these tourists even to my ridingground at Lido, and reduced to the most disagree. able circuits to avoid them. At Madame Benzoni's I repeatedly refused to be introduced to them; of a thousand such presentations pressed upon me, I accepted two, and both were to Irish I should hardly have descended to speak of such trifles publicly, if the impudence of this

women.

EHRENBREITSTEIN.

295

Sketcher' had not forced me to a refutation of a disingenuous and gratuitously impertinent assertion, so meant to be; for what could it import to the reader to be told that the author had repeatedly declined an introduction, even had it been true, which, for the reasons I have above given, is scarcely possible? Except Lords Lansdowne, Jersey, and Lauderdale, Messrs. Scott, Hammond, Sir Humphrey Davy, the late Mr. Lewis, W. Bankes, Mr. Hoppner, Thomas Moore, Lord Kinnaird, his brother, Mr. Joy, and Mr. Hobhouse, I do not recollect to have exchanged a word with another Englishman since I left their country: and almost all these I had known before. The others, and, God knows, there were some hundreds, who bored me with letters or visits, I refused to have any communication with, and shall be proud and happy when that wish becomes mutual."

We are lynx-eyed to the failings of others, blind as moles to our own. Lord Byron could not mend in himself, what he could see amiss in Buonaparte !

Lord Byron next proceeds to Coblentz, in the vicinity of which stands Ehrenbreitstein, one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, dismantled and blown up by the French at the truce of Leoben. It had been, and could only be reduced by famine or treachery. It yielded to the former, aided by surprise. After having seen the fortifi

296

THE BURGUNDIANS.

cations of Gibraltar and Malta, it did not much strike by comparison, but the situation is commanding. General Marceau besieged it in vain for some time, and his Lordship slept in a room where he was shewn a window, at which he is said to have been standing, observing the progress of the siege, by moonlight, when a ball struck immediately below it.

Lord Byron goes up the Rhine to Basle, and thence to Clarens, on the Lake of Geneva, by the route of Soleure and Morat. At the latter place he visited the pyramid of bones of the Burgundians killed by the Swiss, on the 22d June 1746, in the battle which established their independence. The chapel is destroyed, and the pyramid of bones diminished to a small number by the Burgundian Legion in the service of France, who anxiously effaced this record of their ancestors' less successful invasions. A few still remain, notwithstanding the pains taken by the Burgundians for ages (all who passed that way removing a bone to their own country), and the less justifiable larcenies of the Swiss postilions, who carried them off to sell for knife handles, a purpose for which the whiteness imbibed by the bleaching of years had rendered them in great request. Of these relics, his Lordship ventured to bring away as much as might have made the quarter of a hero, for which his sole excuse was, that if he had not,

ROUSSEAU'S HELOISE.

297

the next passer-by might have perverted them to worse uses than the careful preservation which he intended for them.

The cliffs of Meillerie and the groves of Clarens rouse up of course the shade of Rousseau, and our Bard apostrophizes that amusing madman in several melodious stanzas. Here he makes some stay, and traverses the environs-the following is the account of one of his excursions :-" In July 1816, I made a voyage round the Lake of Geneva; and, as far as my own observations have led me in a not uninterested nor inattentive survey of all the scenes most celebrated by Rousseau in his Héloise, I can safely say, that in this there is no exaggeration. It would be difficult to see Clarens (with the scenes around it, Vevay, Chillon, Bôveret, St. Gingo, Meillerie, Erian, and the entrances of the Rhone), without being forcibly struck with its peculiar adaptation to the persons and events with which it has been peopled. But this is not all; the feeling with which all round Clarens, and the opposite rocks of Meillerie is invested, is of a still higher and more comprehensive order than the mere sympathy with individual passion; it is a sense of the existence of love in its most extended and sublime capacity, and of our own participation of its good and of its glory; it is the great principle of the universe, which is there more condensed, but not less manifested, and of which, though knowing ourselves