(November, 1822.)

Kwitzerland, or a Journal of a Tour and Residence in that Country in the Years 1817, 1818, and 1819. Followed by an Historical Sketch of the Manners and Customs of Ancient and Modern Helvetia, in which the Events of our own time are fully detailed; together with the Causes to which they may be referred. By L. SIMOND, Author of Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the Years 1810 and 1811. In 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1822.* M. SIMOND is already well known in this accordingly, in all his moral and political obcountry as the author of one of the best ac-servations at least, a constant alternation of counts of it that has ever been given to the romantic philanthropy and bitter sarcasm-of world, either by native or foreigner-the full- the most captivating views of apparent hapest certainly, and the most unprejudiced-piness and virtue, and the most relentless disand containing the most faithful descriptions closures of actual guilt and misery-of the both of the aspect of our country, and the peculiarities of our manners and character, that has yet come under our observation. There are some mistakes, and some rash judgments; but nothing can exceed the candour of the estimate, or the fairness and independence of spirit with which it is made; while the whole is pervaded by a vein of original thought, always sagacious, and not unfrequently profound. The main fault of that book, as a work of permanent interest and instruction, which it might otherwise have been, is the too great space which is alloted to the transient occurrences and discussions of the time to which it refers-most of which have already lost their interest, and not only read like old news and stale politics, but have extended their own atmosphere of repulsion to many admirable remarks and valuable suggestions, of which they happen to be the vehicles.

The work before us is marked by the same excellences, and is nearly free from the faults to which we have just alluded. In spite of this, however-perhaps even in consequence of it-we suspect it will not generally be thought so entertaining; the scene being necessarily so much narrower, and the persons of the drama fewer and less diversified. The work, however, is full of admirable description and original remark:-nor do we know any book of travels, ancient or modern, which contains, in the same compass, so many graphic and animated delineations of external objects, or so many just and vigorous observations on the moral phenomena it records. The most remarkable thing about it, however -and it occurs equally in the author's former publication-is the singular combination of enthusiasm and austerity that appears both in the descriptive, and the reasoning or ethical parts of the performance-the perpetual struggle that seems to exist between the feelings and fancy of the author, and the sterner intimations of his understanding. There is,

* I reprint a part of this paper :-partly out of love to the memory of the author, who was my connection and particular friend :-but chiefly for the sake of his remarks on our English manners, and my judgment on these remarks-which I would venture to submit to the sensitive patriots of America, as a specimen of the temperance with which the patriots of other countries can deal with the censors of their national habits and pretensions to fine breeding.

sweetest and most plausible illusions, and the most withering and chilling truths. He expatiates, for example, through many pages, on the heroic valour and devoted patriotism of the old Helvetic worthies, with the memorials of which the face of their country is covered-and then proceeds to dissect their character and manners with the most cruel particularity, and makes them out to have been most barbarous, venal, and unjust. In the same way, he bewitches his readers with seducing pictures of the peace, simplicity, independence, and honesty of the mountain villagers; and by and by takes occasion to tell us, that they are not only more stupid, but more corrupt than the inhabitants of cities. He eulogises the solid learning and domestic habits that prevail at Zurich and Geneva; and then makes it known to us that they are infested with faction and ennui. He draws a delightful picture of the white cottages and smiling pastures in which the cheerful peasants of the Engadine have their romantic habitations-and then casts us down from our elevation without the least pity, by informing us, that the best of them are those who have returned from hawking stucco parrots, sixpenny looking-glasses, and coloured sweetmeats through all the towns of Europe. He is always strong for liberty, and indignant at oppression-but cannot settle very well in what liberty consists; and seems to suspect, at last, that political rights are oftener a source of disorder than of comfort; and that if person and property are tolerably secure, it is mere quixotism to look further.

So strong a contrast of warm feelings and cold reasonings, such animating and such despairing views of the nature and destiny of mankind, are not often to be found in the same mind-and still less frequently in the same book: And yet they amount but to an extreme case, or strong example, of the inconsistencies through which all men of generous tempera and vigorous understandings are perpetually passing, as the one or the other part of their constitution assumes the ascendant. There are many of our good feelings, we suspect, and some even of our good principles, that rest upon a sort of illusion; or cannot submit at least to be questioned by frigid reason, without being for the time a good deal dis countenanced and impaired-and this we take

to be very clearly the case with M. Simond. | of destruction-a savage enemy, speaking an ut His temperament is plainly enthusiastic, and known language, with whom no compromise could his fancy powerful: But his reason is active be made." and exacting, and his love of truth paramount The first view of the country, though no to all other considerations. His natural sym- longer new to most readers, is given with a pathies are with all fine and all lofty qualities truth, and a freshness of feeling which we but it is his honest conviction, that happi- are tempted to preserve in an extract. ness is most securely built of more vulg algar "Soon after passing the frontiers of the two materials-and that there is even something countries, the view, heretofore bounded by near ob ridiculous in investing our humble human na-jects, woods and pastures, rocks and snows, opened ture with these magnificent attributes. At all at once upon the Canton de Vaud, and upon half all events it is impossible to doubt of his sin- Switzerland! a vast extent of undulating country, cerity in both parts of the representation;-lakes; villages and towns, with their antique tow. tufted woods and fields, and silvery streams and for there is not the least appearance of a love ers, and their church-steeples shining in the sun. of paradox, or a desire to produce effect; and The lake of Neuchâtel. far below on the left, nothing can be so striking as the air of candour and those of Morat and of Vienne, like mirrors set and impartiality that prevails through the in deep frames, contrasted by the tranquillity of whole work. If any traces of prejudice may their lucid surfaces, with the dark shades and broken still be detected, they have manifestly sur-yond this vast extent of country, its villages and grounds and ridges of the various landscape. Be. vived the most strenuous efforts to efface towns, woods, lakes, and mountains; beyond all them. The strongest, we think, are against terrestrial objects-beyond the horizon itself, rose a French character and English manners-with some, perhaps, against the French Revolution, and its late Imperial consummator. He is very prone to admire Nature-but not easily satisfied with Man;-and, though most intolerant of intolerance, and most indulgent to those defects of which adventitious advantages make men most impatient, he is evidently of opinion that scarcely any thing is exactly as immutability, and duration without bounds; but it "The human mind thirsts after immensity and it should be in the present state of society-needs some tangible object from which to take its and that little more can be said for most existing habits and institutions, than that they have been, and might have been, still

worse.

He sets out for the most picturesque country of Europe, from that which is certainly the least so--and gives the first indications of his sensitiveness on these topics, by a passing critique on the ancient châteaus of France, and their former inhabitants. We may as well introduce him to our readers with this passage as with any other.

long range of aërial forms, of the softest pale pink hue: These were the high Alps, the rampart of of the Overland, and even further. Their angle Italy-from Mont Blanc in Savoy, to the glaciers of elevation seen from this distance is very small indeed. Faithfully represented in a drawing, the effect would be insignificant; but the aerial perspective amply restored the proportions lost in the mathematical perspective.

flight,-something present to lead to futurity, some thing bounded from whence to rise to the infinite. This vault of the heavens over our head, sinking all terrestrial objects into absolute nothingness, pansion in the mind: But mere space is not a permight seem best fitted to awaken this sense of exceptible object to which we can readily apply a scale, while the Alps, seen at a glance between heaven and earth-met as it were on the confines of the regions of fancy and of sober reality, are there like written characters, traced by a divine hand, and suggesting thoughts such as human lan

guage never reached.

46

Coming down the Jura, a long descent brought us to what appeared a plain, but which proved a "A few comfortable residences, scattered about varied country with hills and dales, divided into neat the country, have lately put us in mind how very enclosures of hawthorn in full bloom, and large rare they are in general: Instead of them, you meet, hedge-row trees, mostly walnut, oak. and ash. It not unfrequently, some ten or twenty miserable had altogether very much the appearance of the hovels, crowded together round what was formerly most beautiful parts of England, although the enthe stronghold of the lord of the manor; a narrow, closures were on a smaller scale, and the cottages dark, prison-like building, with small grated win- less neat and ornamented. They differed entirely dows, embattled walls, and turrets peeping over from France, where the dwellings are always colthatched roofs. The lonely cluster seems uncon- lected in villages, the fields all open, and without nected with the rest of the country, and may be said trees. Numerous streams of the clearest water to represent the feudal system, as plants in a hortus crossed the road, and watered very fine meadows. siccus do the vegetable. Long before the Revolu- The houses, built of stone, low, broad, and massy. tion, these châteaux had been mostly forsaken by either thatched or covered with heavy wooden shintheir seigneurs, for the nearest country town; wheregles, and shaded with magnificent walnut trees, Monsieur le Compte, or Monsieur le Marquis, deco- might all have furnished studies to an artist." rated with the cross of St. Louis, made shift to live on his paltry seigniorial dues, and rents ill paid by a starving peasantry; spending his time in reminiscences of gallantry with the old dowagers of the place, who rouged and wore patches, dressed in hoops and high-heeled shoes, full four inches, and long pointed elbow-ruffles, balanced with lead. Not one individual of this good company knew any thing of what was passing in the world, or suspected that any change had taken place since the days of Louis XIV. No book found its way there; no one read, not even a newspaper. When the Revolution burst upon this inferior nobility of the provinces, it appeared to them like Attila and the Huns to the people of the fifth century-the Scourge of God, coming nobody knew whence, for the mere purpose

Vol. i. pp. 25-27.

The following, however, is more characteristic of the author's vigorous and familiar, but somewhat quaint and abrupt, style of description.

"Leaving our equipages at Ballaigne, we proceeded to the falls of the Orbe, through a hanging wood of fine old oaks, and came, after a long descent, to a place where the Orbe breaks through a great mass of ruins, which, at some very remote period, have fallen from the mountain, and entirely obstructed its channel. All the earth, and all the smaller fragments, having long since disappeared and the water now works its way, with great noise

serve in their intercourse with the people, are not | In short, the friends of Geneva, among ott ne by any means at variance with the assertion; for that external simplicity and affability to interiors is one of the characteristics of the aristocratic government; all assumption of superiority being carefully avoided when real authority is not in question. Zurich suggests the idea of a municipal aristocracy; Berne of a warlike one: there, we think we see citizens of a town transformed into nobility; here nobles who have made themselves citizens.' Vol. i. pp. 213-217.*

English travellers, are not numerous though are select. These last distinguished the during the late hard winter by their bounty wa poor-not the poor of Geneva, who were sufficer assisted by their richer countrymen, but the i Savoy, who were literally starving. If Enge travellers no longer appear in the same light a merly, it is because it is not the same class of pa ple who go abroad, but all classes, and not the in of all classes, either. They know this too, mia mous numbers, and of the absurd conduct of mus it themselves; they feel the ridicule of their of them. They are ashamed and provoked; desc it with the most pointed irony, and tell many as morous story against themselves. Formerly, a travelling class was composed of young man i after leaving the University, went the tour of good family and fortune, just coming of age, va Continent under the guidance of a learned tam often a very distinguished man, or of mea d same class, at a more advanced age, wh be families, who, after many years spent in profesion duties at home, came to visit again the cours they had seen in their youth, and the friends had known there. In those better times, when y Englishman left his country either to seek his i tune, to save money, or to hide himself; we travellers of that nation were all very rich ar learned; of high birth, yet liberal principles; a bounded in their generosity, and with means en to the inclination, their high standing in the wid might well be accounted for; and it is a grey they should have lost it. Were I an Englishm I would not set out on my travels until the fashion were over."-Vol. i. pp. 356-359.

At Schaffhausen, again, he observes,

But we must now hasten from the Physical wonders of this country to some of the author's Moral observations; and we are tempted to give the first place to his unsparing but dispassionate remarks on the character of modern English travellers. At Geneva, he observes, "English travellers swarm here, as everywhere else; but they do not mix with the society of the country more than they do elsewhere, and seem to like it even less. The people of Geneva, on the other hand, say, 'Their former friends, the English, are so changed they scarcely know them again. They used to be a plain downright race, in whom a certain degree of sauvagerie (oddity and shyness) only served to set off the advantages of a highly cultivated understanding, of a liberal mind, and generous temper, which characterised them in general. Their young men were often rather wild, but soon reformed, and became like their fathers. Instead of this, we now see (they say) a mixed assem. blage, of whom lamentably few possess any of those qualities we were wont to admire in their predecessors. Their former shyness and reserve is changed to disdain and rudeness. If you seek these modern English, they keep aloof, do not mix in conversation, and seem to laugh at you. Their conduct, "There were other admirers here besides onstill more strange and unaccountable in regard to selves; some English, and more Germans, to each other, is indicative of contempt or suspicion. furnished us with an opportunity of comparing te Studiously avoiding to exchange a word with their difference of national manners. The former, divid countrymen, one would suppose they expected to into groups, carefully avoiding any communication find a sharper in every individual of their own na- with each other still more than with the foregis tion, not particularly introduced,-or at best a per- never exchanged a word, and scarcely a look, wi son beneath them. Accordingly you cannot vex or any but the legitimate interlocutors of their own st displease them more than by inviting other English women adhering more particularly to the ruletravellers to meet them, whom they may be com- native reserve and timidity, full as much as in pelled afterwards to acknowledge. If they do not pride or from extreme good breeding. Some of find a crowd, they are tired. If you speak of the ladies here might be Scotch; at least they wore to old English you formerly knew, that was before the national colours, and we overheard them drag Flood! If you talk of books, it is pedantry, and comparisons between what we had under our ey they yawn; of politics, they run wild about Bona- and Coralyn; giving justly enough, the preferen parte! Dancing is the only thing which is sure to to the Clyde; but, at any rate, they behared i please them. At the sound of the fiddle, the think-l'Anglaise. The German ladies, on the contrary, ing nation starts up at once. Their young people are adepts in the art; and take pains to become so, spending half their time with the dancing master You may know the houses where they live by the scraping of the fiddle, and shaking of the floor, which disturbs their neighbours. Few bring letters; and yet they complain they are neglected by the good company, and cheated by innkeepers. The latter, accustomed to the Milords Anglais of former times, or at least having heard of them, think they may charge accordingly; but only find des Anglais pour rire, who bargain at the door, before they venture to come in, for the leg of mutton and bottle of wine, on which they mean to dine!'

contrived to lier conversation in indifferent Freadi With genuine simplicity, wholly unconscious of kewardness, although it might undoubtedly have bee so qualified in England, they begged of my fread to let them hear a few words in English, just to know the sound, to which they were strangers. Il we are to judge of the respective merits of these opposite manners, by the impression they leave. I think the question is already decided by the English against themselves. Yet, at the same time that they blame and deride their own proud reserve, and would depart from it if they well knew how, but few have the courage to venture:-and I really be lieve they are the best bred, who thus allow then selves to be good-humoured and vulgar."

Vol. i. pp. 94, 95.

"Placed as I am between the two parties, I hear young Englishmen repeat, what they have heard in France, that the Genevans are cold, selfish, and interested, and their women des précieuses ridicules, the very milliners and mantua-makers giving them selves airs of modesty and deep reading! that there is no opera, nor théâtre des variétés; in short, that Geneva is the dullest place in the world. Some say it is but a bad copy of England, a sham republic; and a scientific, no less than a political, counterfeit. Many travelling details, and particular de-able persons who once almost monopolised scriptions, are here omitted. the advantages of foreign travel, is of course

We have not much to say in defence of our countrymen-but what may be said truly, ought not to be suppressed. That our travel. lers are now generally of a lower rank than formerly, and that not very many of them are fitted, either by their wealth or breeding, to uphold the character of the noble and honour.

implied in the fact of their having become | after this period, ccnfined to the children of vastly more numerous, without supposing the gentry; and a certain parade in equipage any actual degeneracy in the nation itself. and dress, which could not be easily assumed At a very popular point of M. Simond's jour- but by the opulent, nor naturally carried but ney, it appeared from a register which he by those who had been long accustomed to consulted, that the proportion of travellers it, threw additional difficulties in the way from different countries, was twenty-eight of those who wished to push themselves forEnglish to four Prussians, two Dutch, five ward in society, and rendered any other bulFrench, one Italian, and three Americans.- warks unnecessary for the protection of the That some of this great crowd of emigrants | sanctuary of fashion. might not be suitable associates for some From the time of Sir Robert Walpole, howothers, may easily be conjectured-and that ever, the communication between the higher the better sort may not have been very wil- and the lower orders became far more open ling to fraternise with those who did least and easy. Commercial wealth and enterprise honour to their common country, could scarce- were prodigiously extended-literature and ly be imputed to them as a fault. But these intelligence spread with unprecedented ra considerations, we fear, will go but a little way pidity among the body of the people; and to explain the phenomenon; or to account for the increased intercourse between the differthe "Morgue Aristocratique," as Bonaparte ent parts of the country, naturally produced called it, of the English gentry-the sort of a greater mixture of the different classes of sulky and contemptuous reserve with which, the people. This was followed by a general. both at home and abroad, almost all who have relaxation in those costly external observances, any pretensions to bon ton seem to think it by which persons of condition had till then necessary to defend those pretensions. The been distinguished. Ladies laid aside their thing has undoubtedly been carried, of late hoops, trains, and elaborate head-dresses; and years, to an excess that is both ludicrous and gentlemen their swords, periwigs, and emoffensive-and is, in its own nature, unques-broidery ;-and at the same time that it thus tionably a blemish and a misfortune: But it does not arise, we are persuaded, from any thing intrinsically haughty or dull in our temperament-but is a natural consequence, and, it must be admitted, a considerable drawback from two very proud peculiarities in our condition the freedom of our constitution, and the rapid progress of wealth and intelligence in the body of the nation.

became quite practicable for an attorney's clerk or a mercer's apprentice to assume the exterior of a nobleman, it happened also, both that many persons of that condition had the education that fitted them for a higher rank— and that several had actually won their way to it by talents and activity, which had not formerly been looked for in that quarter.— Their success was well merited undoubtedly, In most of the other countries of Europe, and honourable both to themselves and their if a man was not born in high and polished country; but its occasional occurrence, even society, he had scarcely any other means of more than the discontinuance of aristocratical gaining admission to it—and honour and dig- forms or the popular spirit of the Government, nity, it was supposed, belonged, by inheri- tended strongly to encourage the pretensions tance, to a very limited class of the people. of others, who had little qualification for sucWithin that circle, therefore, there could be no cess, beyond an eager desire to obtain it.— derogation-and, from without it, there could So many persons now raised themselves by be no intrusion. But, in this country, persons their own exertions, that every one thought of every condition have been long entitled to himself entitled to rise; and very few proaspire to every situation-and, from the nature portionally were contented to remain in the of our political constitution, any one who had rank to which they were barn; and as vanity individual influence, by talent, wealth, or ac- is a still more active principle than ambition, tivity, became at once of consequence in the the effects of this aspiring spirit were more community, and was classed as the open rival conspicuously seen in the invasion which it or necessary auxiliary of those who had the prompted on the prerogatives of polite society, strongest hereditary claims to importance. than in its more serious occupations; and a But though the circle of Society was in this herd of uncomfortable and unsuitable comway at all times larger than in the Conti-panions beset all the approaches to good comnental nations, and embraced more persons pany, and seemed determined to force all its of dissimilar training and habits, it does not barriers. appear to have given a tone of repulsion to the manners of those who affected the superiority, till a period comparatively remote. In the days of the Tudors and Stuarts there was a wide pale of separation between the landed Aristocracy and the rest of the population; and accordingly, down at least to the end of Charles the Second's reign, there seems to have been none of this dull and frozen arrogance in the habits of good company. The true reason of this, however, was, that though the competition was constitutionally open, good education was, in fact, till

We think we have now stated the true causes of this phenomenon-but, at all events, the fact we believe to be incontrovertible, that within the last fifty years there has been an incredible increase of forwardness and solid impudence among the half-bred and halfeducated classes of this country-and that there was consequently some apology for the assumption of more distant and forbidding manners towards strangers, on the part o those who were already satisfied with the extent of their society. It was evidently easier and more prudent to reject the overtures of