Page images
PDF
EPUB

As I could not have published an article about Geneva in The Annual Register before next year, I sent the account I had written to the printer of The Morning Chronicle; and it has been inserted in two very long articles in that paper of last Tuesday and of this day. The account is exactly the same as when you saw it, except as to corrections of the style, which, after all, I have not had time to make other than indifferent, and except a continuation from the time when that account broke off to the present moment. I will send you both papers with

your parcel of books.

I must now leave you, for I have a great deal to say to our dear Catherine.

My dear Sister,

If my ascending the Dent d'Oche had answered no other purpose, I should not regret my excursion, since it serves sometimes to recall me to your memory, and to that of your dear little boy. Pray, when he knows his Uncle by no other description than that of the man who went up the high mountain, do not fail to assure him that I am not very much taller than Roget, lest the gigantic ideas his little imagination may form of me should be sadly disappointed when we are happy enough to meet. I hope he always talks English to you, though all his soliloquies are French.

I was very sorry to hear that you were somewhat uneasy about your future plans, whether to return to London or Geneva: you seem to think that whichever part of the alternative you embrace, it will be decisive where you will spend the re

VOL. I.

mainder of your days. If I thought so too, I should not hesitate to entreat you to return without delay to England. But why not pass one year more at Geneva or at Lausanne (for as affairs are at Geneva, I every day rejoice that you are out of it), and then with Roget's increased stock of health, come and make us all happy here? Nay, suppose you should be obliged to remain two or three years longer abroad, they will seem as nothing when we meet. Life, it must be confessed, is short enough, but at our age two or three years is no very considerable portion of it. Should it happen, which God forbid, that Roget's health should render it unsafe for him to return to England, I hope we shall both learn to endure separation with patience. I will not preach to you that the satisfaction of acting properly in every station of life into which we are thrown, and of bearing with composure every misfortune, is a pleasure to compensate every want, and to remove all the uneasiness of absence. I feel too painfully, by the concern I experience at being so far from a sister I so dearly love, that that doctrine is too sublime for me, and therefore not to be preached by me to others. But yet, my dear Kitty, when we are guided only by the emotions of our hearts, we are very often misled. Great as is the pleasure of being amidst our friends (and how great it is I believe no one knows better than myself), I fear we often magnify it much beyond the truth. Separation gives to what is absent a thousand charms which vanish on a nearer approach. Yes, I really believe that even the charms of my dear

father's society, and the pleasure of remarking continually, by a close observance, the uncommon excellence of his heart, may be exaggerated by an imagination always flying back to the paternal house, and hovering over it with habitual fondness. Let us, my dear sister, be cheerful as long as Heaven permits.

You must needs think me a very insipid traveller, for as yet I have not given you an account of any thing that I saw since I left you; but if such accounts will afford you any amusement, you have but to write me word, and we will make together a great many excursions to Paris; but we will not take Roget with us, lest, while we are gazing at its magnificent buildings, its spacious squares and extensive gardens, at the costly grandeur of Versailles, its superb gallery, and its almost animated pictures and statues, he draw us away, and exclaim in the words of our favourite Rousseau, "Prétendues grandeurs! frivoles dédommagemens de la servitude, qui ne vaudront jamais l'auguste liberté!" I know your penchant for the fine arts; but to describe all the beautiful masterpieces of the best masters, which I have seen in the collections of the Duke of Orleans and the French King, would be almost an endless, and I fear, after all, a tedious task. The living artists at Paris, in every branch except sculpture and architecture, are, I think, much below mediocrity. These two arts, indeed, are not yet on the decline; architecture, on the contrary, seems better cultivated now than it has ever been. Have you ever heard of Houdon, a famous sculptor at Paris?

he it was who carved the bust of Rousseau, which is now so common at Geneva: he is a man of great merit, I think I may say of great genius. I was particularly struck with two of his designs for sepulchral monuments. In one, Virtue with a serene and cheerful countenance, and Friendship weeping with dishevelled hair and in an agony of grief, are laying the dying man in his tomb: on one side appear Envy and Calumny, hovering aloof, and not daring to approach the grave; and on the other, the Dignities, the Pomps, and Follies of the world dissolving into air. The other is a monument for a Princess of Saxe Gotha: she is represented walking in a kind of chapel; at the end is a recess, with a curtain half lifted up by the image of Death, who has seized upon the princess, and is dragging her with an irresistible arm into his dark abode the princess seems resigned to her fate, and is turning a farewell look upon her subjects. In both these monuments the thought is noble, but they both leave in the mind a sentiment of despair; and such is the effect of what, at Paris, is called Philosophy: they boast that it has made men wiser; I am sure that it has not made them happier than they were before. I must confess I regret those times when Religion gave awful lessons from the graves of the dead; when she appeared, as on the tomb of Richelieu, mitigating the pangs of death; when the dead were seen rising from their sepulchres, as in one of the master-pieces of Roubillac, and the proud monuments of human grandeur mouldering away at the sound of the last trumpet. But I must take my leave of you;

it is with that regret which I always feel on quit

ting you.

S. R.

LETTER XVI.

Grays Inn, Jan. 24. 1782.

At last, my dear Roget, I have sent your books; Pache set out last Monday.

Has Mr. Berenger heard any thing of De Lolme? his bookseller here has had no news from him since he left Ostend, from which, and I believe some other circumstances, it is supposed that he is in the Bastille; and it is likewise supposed that the crime he is accused of is being the author of the invectives against M. de Vergennes', which appeared in the Courrier de Londres. It is true he is not the author, but no matter for that. It is the policy of an arbitrary court to make sure of all those whom they suspect; if he is guilty he deserves his fate, if innocent there is no harm done. They will be convinced of their error in some four or five years, and then, with true politesse, on lui demandera mille excuses, and set him at liberty. I was very much surprised to hear that such a zealot of liberty had set out on an errand so humiliating and so hopeless, as to sue a minister of France for permission to sell his papers in that kingdom. If it be true that he is in the Bastille, I fear he is there for a long time; for to write against a minister is, in the religion of government, the sin against the Holy Ghost.

Minister of Louis XVI.

« PreviousContinue »