Art. II. Alpine Sketches, comprised in a Short Tour through Parts of Holland, Flanders, France, Savoy, Switzerland, and Germany, during the Summer of 1814. By a Member of the University of Oxford. 8vo. pp. 312. price 9s. Longman and Co. 1814.

OBSERVING this gentleman's designation put in all the

prominence of capitals, and having always been taught to associate every possible idea of dignity, stateliness, and majestic pomp, with the University, which we thus learn would be incomplete without him, we do not see how we were to avoid the uncouth sensations excited by the commencement of his advertisement, and the commencement of his tour.

• Our Booksellers' windows are already crowded with Wanderings, Trips, Tours, Visits, Sketches, and Guides, and behold here is another, without pretensions, name, or preface, obtruded upon the public, whose intellects are insulted by such an accumulation of trash!-Who is the author?

All very true, Sir; but a preface is an awkward thing to write in these days, when every kind of apology has long since been exhausted by our scribblers, and over-ruled by our Reviewers; besides, the author of the following pages is now again upon the road to Italy, and not in the way to write one.'-Advertisement.

'CHAP. I.

"Rem tibi quam nôris aptam dimittere noli."

"With all my heart," said I, as H carelessly mentioned the idea. Some few objections were started; but by the help of a little Oxonian logic, they vanished; and when the carriage drew up to the door of the Crown, at Henley, our minds were made up, and accordingly four horses were ordered for Rotterdam.' p. 1.

"A member of the University of Oxford."-We could not help thinking what would have become of the venerable Body, the patriarch of academies, the palladium of learning, the solemn personification of wisdom, had this one of its components, by any melancholy chance, gone overboard, or had the packet gone down!

"A member of the University."-Of what rank is he there? of what standing? how much time has he actually sojourned in the shades of academic bowers? what lectures has he been attending? what books has he been studying? Is there really cause to suspect that all the influences of that revered establishment, with its hierarchy of erudite spirits, its scholastic discipline, its Grecian and Roman models of writing, its assembled tomes of the choicest literature of all subsequent ages, have left this so favoured student no better schooled, than to admire the manner of that fetid clerical baboon of literature that began a 'journey' thus:-"They manage these things better in France"?

But not to prophane the image of that august rector of minds, by references wantonly protracted, we will plainly say, we should have thought that amid classical studies, in the very focus of criticism, he might have acquired a taste that would be disgusted with all such flippancy, and feeble affectation of sprightliness; or, perhaps, it was even meant for wit. That discipline might have instructed him that could he really have made a witty beginning, a manly simplicity of introduction is, perhaps, still far better: but, at any rate, that an artificial, tricky, and vapid smartness makes a man, and especially a college-man, appear vastly like a coxcomb.

This paltry affectation at setting off rendered us little disposed to be sanguine as to the travelling resources of our companion. Nor were we at all more favourably prepossessed by the way in which he began to make use of his learning, than by that in which he was sporting his wit.

Leaving Paris with sentiments of individual gratitude, rather than of public esteem, he proceeded into Switzerland, where, following the maxim of Sallust," Quo mihi rectius videtur, quoniam vita ipsa quâ fruimur brevis est, memoriam nostri quam maxime longam efficere," he noted with feelings of peculiar delight, the romantic scenery, and simple character of the happy peasant, who builds his cabin in the delicious retirement and peaceful quiet of the Alpine vallies.'-Advertisement, p. vi.

More oddly, we thought, this sententious old Roman never had been dragged into modern gay company; more oddly, a passion for notoriety, and a delighted sympathy with the sweet obscure simplicity of the Alpine peasant's condition, had never come together; more oddly, the affectation of being actuated by momentary impulse, and the acknowledgement of deep and remote-looking design, were never let to meet in ridicule of each other. What! this flippant, random spark, who frisks into an adventure at the casual suggestion of an acquaintance, is all the while gravely considering how to make the greatest noise after he is dead, and prosecutes his freak on this calculation!

Under these first impressions of something so much akin to folly, we were likely to go forward with a very cool sobriety, to see what we should in the sequel make of our man; and we are now ready to say, that he turns out better than we expected, notwithstanding that he retains, quite through, somewhat of the cast which it has puzzled and amazed so much that he could have acquired among the sages and solemnities of Oxford. If it is among the precipices of the Alps that this modification most nearly vanishes, we are not quite certain whether he there owes the improvement to taste or to fear.

Though Holland, Flanders, France, and Germany, are taxed to

enhance the interest of the book, its leading title, Alpine Sketches, is well chosen to prevent its seeming to rest any part of its merits on its account of adventures in these countries. The slightest possible notice may suffice of our Author's movements as far as Paris. As in duty bound, he deplored the obvious and melancholy effects of the recent iron tyranny in Holland; was pleased with the faint signs, and, perhaps, not very enthusiastic hopes of a better order of things; was displeased with the regularity and formality of Dutch gardening, which gives a sameness to their villas; was enraptured by the grand organ at Haarlem; ascended the tower at Utrecht, 380 feet high; was shewn, here and there, a number of fine pictures; saw at Gorcum, and other places, the devastations of the war; admired the prodigious fortifications, grand naval works, and the lofty tower, of the cathedral at Antwerp; had infinite trouble' to find a place to sleep in at Williamstadt, and 'infinite trouble' again, a few hours afterwards, in clearing the outposts of the next sleeping place; found Brussels a better built town than those in Holland; and through Brussels found the way to Paris. He thus describes the first impression of the tumultuous crowd of living creatures in this scene of so much of the worst and most miserable human agency.

On entering Paris the first impression produced on my mind was that of comfortless misery and inextricable confusion. Horses, car riages, and carts,-men, women, and children,-Turks, Christians, Jews, Russians, Austrians, Prussians, and Cossacks, were all mingled in a chaotic mass, without comfort, without regularity, dirty, ill-dressed, fatigued, hot, and hurried. On all sides may be traced the hideous features of despotism: the dissipation, the shows and spectacles in which the people take so much delight, are but futile efforts to forget their degradation: every where is there an appearance of gilded slavery, dancing gaiety, and splendid melancholy?'

He found a private lodging. His room,' he says,

Afforded a good specimen of splendid filth:-beautiful yellow silk curtains and a dirty bed; a fine marble chimney-piece, adorned with a dial supported by golden cupids, above a hearth containing the accumulations of a winter's wooden ashes, never cleaned, and never likely to be so, elegant satin sofas and a greasy brick floor.'

He quickly addressed himself to make the tour of all the wonderments, the contemplation of which he could the better enjoy for the capacity of his faith, so finely evinced in viewing Napoleon's column in the Place Vendome, a pillar of bronze, 133 feet in height, and 12 in diameter, cast entirely out of the cannon taken at Austerlitz.'

He is not very violently given to rant, but we suppose he will

expect to stand nearly alone among the admirers of the fine arts in that rapturous excess of adoration of the Medicean Veaus, in which he pronounces every thing around it insipid,' whether in sculpture or painting, the Apollo expressly included. But perhaps this pretence of an exclusive passion is only a contrivance at once to gain credit as an amateur, and excuse himself for having been satisfied with an hour a day in the galleries of the Louvre; for that was about the allotment of time afforded to incomparably the grandest assemblage of the beauties art in the whole world. This daily allowance for a few weeks would, perhaps, nearly suffice to write down the designation of each of the great works, and the artist's name.-So happily economizing in this one branch of his expense of time, what did he do with the ample remainder ?

One small portion ofit was excellently bestowed in contemplating a widely different kind of exhibition, the celebrated catacombs, 'from 80 to 100 feet deep, under the quarter of the city towards 'Orleans,' which he describes as winding in broken galleries ' and rugged passages for the space of three leagues of three leagues' In what way does he take this measure? and on whose statement does he rely? Did he content himself, for expedition's sake, just to cut the most hardy of the falsehoods of his guides, and take half?-Allow enormity of dimension, and enormity of number may follow without exception: accordingly, the remains of two 'million eight hundred thousand bodies are here ranged in regular 'order against the walls of the cavern, in rows of alternate bones ' and skulls.' And it is but a small part of these caverns, it seems, that has, at least of late years, received its silent occupants by removal from the cemeteries in the neighbourhood. Our spritely explorer would not be displeased, perhaps, to find that a little of the fantastic had made its way before him into this region of death. Many of these bones and skulls, he says, 'are piled into the form of altars, at which, on particular days, service is performed and mass sung;' a contrivance that would probably strike as more whimsical than solemn.

It must be owing to men's having no faith in the competence of death as a teacher, or is it that their self-importance cannot endure that even that oracle should say any thing which they have not dictated to it?-that no receptacle of mortality, even though a hundred feet underground, can exclude the impertinence of their inscriptions.

On entering the portal of the cavern set apart for this melancholy purpose' (this subterraneous mass-service) the first thing you encounter over an altar of skulls is this inscription; on one side.

"On the other,

"Néant, silence êtres mortels."

• Over the door is engraved

"Has ultra metas requiescunt beatam spem expectantes." The bones being ranged in regular order, in some places they form little cells and chapels, over one of which is written,

"Hic in somno pacis requiescunt majores."

• I could gain no information respecting the origin of these excava tions. They are evidently artificial, probably a Roman work. The cemetery is nearly in the centre, to gain which we wound through almost inextricable passages, cut in a solid bed of stone for at least a mile, where a person unaccustomed to the place would infallibly lose himself; for the torches cast but a faint light through the passages which branch out in every direction; and even the guides, accustomed to traverse them continually, are obliged to leave a black mark with the smoke of their torches, that they may know where to retrace their steps. In some places water issues from the stone and forms rills; and every-where it is well ventilated and airy. Descending still deeper into the earth there is a collection of preternatural bones, and a museum of the numerous materials which compose the various strata above.' p. 39.

We should doubt whether any other vivacious adventurer (who had money in his purse') ever made out so indifferently, for gratification, in Paris. We can hardly conceive that the catacombs were exactly the scene for him; in the magnificent exhibition at the Louvre every thing was insipid but the Venus; and then for the people, hear what he says of their character, their appearance, and their disposition toward the English.

Throughout France at present, as might be expected, there is a feeling of mortified vanity in the people, and a melancholy irritability in the soldiers whenever the campaign is mentioned. Their pride has been deeply wounded, nor will they rest till they can by some means regain their own estimation. But their unconquerable vanity, which has already sapped every moral principle, will always be their ruling foible. At the first impulse they felt gratitude to Marmont, and blessed Alexander for sparing their city. Now the danger is over, they say Marmont is a traitor, and the Russians cowards. Many people wish they had been made to suffer more acutely the miseries of war: but, perhaps, it is better that they have been spared, as their vain ingratitude, and unprincipled restlessness, will thereby become more apparent to the rest of the world. Before the lapse of a century, the other nations of Europe will possibly be obliged to crush them more effectually, to ensure their own existence. All that martial politeness in the soldier, of which we have heard and read so much, no longer exists. Twenty years of rapine and murder, of tyranny and despotism, have given them a look of disciplined lawlessness and pallid depravity that makes one shudder.'