Part 5
“Mont Blanc is clearly visible from Geneva, perhaps once in the week, or about sixty times in the year. When he is visible, a walk to the junction of the Arve and the Rhone, either by the way of the plains on the Genevan side, or by the hights on the side toward the south of France, affords a wonderful combination of sublimity and beauty on the earth and in the heavens. Those snowy mountain ranges, so white, so pure, so dazzling in the clear azure depths, do really look as if they belonged to another world; as if, like the faces of supernatural intelligences, they were looking sadly and steadfastly on our world, to speak to us of theirs. Some of these mountain peaks of snow you can see only through the perspective of other mountains, nearer to you, and covered with verdure, which makes the snowy pyramids appear so distant, so sharply defined, so high up, so glorious; it is indeed like the voice of great truths stirring the soul. As your eye follows the range, they lie in such glittering masses against the horizon, in such grand repose; they shoot into the sky in bright weather in such infinite clearness, so pure, so flashing; that they seem never to lose the charm of a sudden and startling revelation to the mind. Are they not sublime images of the great truths of God’s own word, that sometimes indeed are vailed with clouds, but in fair weather do carry us, as in a chariot of fire and with horses of fire, into eternity, into the presence of God? The atmosphere of our hearts is so misty and stormy, that we do not see them more than sixty times a year in their glory: if every Sabbath-day we get a view of them without clouds, we do well; but _when_ we see them as they are, then we feel their power, then we are rapt by them from earth, away, away, away, into the depths of heaven!
“In some circumstances, when we are climbing the mountains, even the mists that hang around them do add to the glory of the view; as in the rising sun, when they are so penetrated with brightness, that they softly rise over the crags as a robe of misty light, or seem like the motion of sweet Nature breathing into the atmosphere from her morning altars the incense of praise. And in the setting sun how often do they hang around the precipices, glowing with the golden and crimson hues of the west, and preventing us from clearly defining the forms of the mountains, only to make them more lovely to our view. So it is sometimes with the very clouds around God’s word, and the lights and shades upon it. There is an inscrutability of truth which sometimes increases its power, while we wait with solemn reverence for the hour when it shall be fully revealed to us; and our faith, like the setting sun, may clothe celestial mysteries with a soft and rosy-colored light, which makes them more suitable to our present existence, than if we saw them in the clear and cloudless atmosphere of a spiritual noon.
“You have a fine point for viewing Mont Blanc, without going out of the city, from the ramparts on the west side of Rousseau’s island. Here a brazen indicator is erected, with the names of the different mountain summits and ridges, so that by taking sight across the index, you can distinguish them at once. You will not mistake Mont Blanc, if you see him; but until you get accustomed to the panorama, you may easily mistake one of his court for the king, when the monarch himself is not visible.
“A still better point of view you will have at Coppet, ascending toward the Jura. In proportion as you rise from the borders of the lake, every part of the landscape becomes more beautiful, though what you wish to gain is the most commanding view of the mountains, every other object being secondary. In a bright day, nothing can be more clearly and distinctly defined than Mont Blanc, with his attendant mighty ranges, cut in dazzling snowy brightness against the clear blue sky. The sight of those glorious glittering fields and mountains of ice and snow, produces immediately a longing to be there among them. They make an impression upon the soul, of something supernatural, almost divine. Although the whole scene lying before you is so beautiful, (the lake, the verdant banks, the trees, and the lower ranges of verdure-covered mountains, constituting in themselves alone one of the loveliest pictures in the world,) yet the snowy ranges of Mont Blanc are the grand feature. Those glittering distant peaks are the only thing in the scene that takes a powerful hold upon the soul; but they do quite possess it, and tyrannize over it, with an ecstatic thralldom. One is never wearied with gazing and wondering at the glory. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help!
“Another admirable point, much farther from the lake and the city than the preceding, and at a greater elevation, is what is called the promenade of the point Sacconex. A fine engraving of this view is printed on letter-paper for correspondence; but there is not sufficient distinctness given to the outlines of Mont Blanc and the other summits of the glittering snowy range, that seems to float in the heavens like the far-off alabaster walls of Paradise. No language, nor any engraving, can convey the ravishing magnificence and splendor, the exciting sublimity and beauty of the scene. But there are days in which the air around the mountains seems itself of such a hazy whiteness, that the snow melts into the atmosphere as it were, and dies away in the heavens like the indistinct outline of a bright but partially remembered dream. There are other days in which the fleecy clouds, like vails of light over the faces of angels, do so rest upon and mingle with the snowy summits, that you can hardly tell where one begins and the other ends. Sometimes you look upon the clouds thinking they are mountains, and then again Mont Blanc himself will be revealed in such far-off, unmoving, glittering grandeur, in such wonderful distinctness, that there is no mistaking the changeful imitations of his glory for the reality. Sometimes the clouds and the mountains together are mingled in such a multitudinous and interminable array of radiances, that it seems like the white-robed armies of heaven with their floating banners, marching and countermarching in front of the domes and jeweled battlements of the celestial city. When the fog scenery (of which I shall give you a description) takes place upon the earth, and at the same time there are such revelations of the snowy summits in the heavens, and such goings on of glory among them, and you get upon the mountain to see them, it is impossible to describe the effect, as of a vast enchantment, upon the mind.
“The view of Geneva, the lake, and the Jura mountains from Coligny is much admired; and at sunset, perhaps the world can not offer a more lovely scene. It was here that Byron took up his abode; a choice which I have wondered at, for you can not see Mont Blanc from this point, and therefore the situation is inferior to many others. Ascending the hill farther to the east, when you come to Col. Tronchin’s beautiful residence, you have perhaps the finest of all the views of Mont Blanc, in or around Geneva. Go upon the top of Col. Tronchin’s tower about half an hour before sunset, and the scene is not unworthy of comparison even with the glory of the sunrise as witnessed from the summit of the Righi. It is surprising to see how long Mont Blanc retains the light of day, and how long the snow burns in the setting sun, after his orb has sunk from your own view entirely behind the green range of the Jura. Then after a succession of tints from the crimson to the cold gray, it being manifest that the sun has left the mountain to a companionship with the stars alone, you also are ready to depart, the glory of the scene being over, when suddenly and unaccountably the snowy summits redden again, as if the sun were returning upon them, the countenance of Mont Blanc is filled with rosy light, and the cold gray gives place for a few moments to a deep warm radiant pink, (as if you saw a sudden smile playing over the features of a sleeping angel,) which at length again dies in the twilight. This phenomenon is extremely beautiful, but I know not how to account for it; nor was any one of our party wiser than I; nevertheless, our ignorance of causes need never diminish, but often increases the pleasure of beautiful sights.”
“I have said I would give you a description of the ‘fog-scenery.’ In the autumn, when the fogs prevail, it is often a thick drizzling mist in Geneva, and nothing visible, while on the mountain tops the air is pure, and the sun shining. On such a day as this, when the children of the mist tell you that on the mountains it is fair weather, you must start early for the range nearest Geneva, on the way to Chamouny, the range of the Grand Saléve, the base of which is about four miles distant, prepared to spend the day upon the mountains, and you will witness one of the most singular and beautiful scenes to be enjoyed in Switzerland.
“The day I set out was so misty, that I took an umbrella, for the fog gathered and fell like rain, and I more than doubted whether I should see the sun at all. In the midst of this mist I climbed the rocky zigzag half hewn out of the face of the mountain, and half natural, and passing the village that is perched among the high rocks, which might be a refuge for the conies, began toiling up the last ascent of the mountain, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, but the thick mist, the vail of which had closed below and behind me over village, path and precipice, and still continued heavy and dark above me, so that I thought I never should get out of it. Suddenly my head rose above the level of the fog into the clear air, and the heavens were shining, and Mont Blanc, with the whole illimitable range of snowy mountain tops around him, was throwing back the sun! An ocean of mist, as smooth as a chalcedony, as soft and white as the down of the eider-duck’s breast, lay over the whole lower world; and as I rose above it, and ascended the mountain to its overhanging verge, it seemed an infinite abyss of vapor, where only the mountain tops were visible, on the Jura range like verdant wooded islands, on the Mont Blanc range as glittering surges and pyramids of ice and snow. No language can describe the extraordinary sublimity and beauty of the view. A level sea of white mist in every direction, as far as the eye could extend, with a continent of mighty icebergs on the one side floating in it, and on the other a forest promontory, with a slight undulating swell in the bosom of the sea, like the long, smooth undulations of the ocean in a calm.
“Standing on the overhanging crags, I could hear the chime of bells, the hum of busy labor, and the lowing of cattle, buried in the mist, and faintly coming up to you from the fields and villages. Now and then a bird darted up out of the mist into the clear sun and air, and sailed in playful circles, and then dived and disappeared again below the surface. By and by the wind began to agitate the cloudy sea, and more and more of the mountains became visible. Sometimes you have a bright sunset athwart this sea of cloud, which then rolls in waves burnished and tipped with fire. When you go down into the mist again, and leave behind you the beautiful sky, a clear, bracing atmosphere, the bright sun and the snow-shining mountains, it is like passing from heaven to earth, from the brightness and serenity of the one, to the darkness and cares of the other. The whole scene is a leaf in nature’s book, which but few turn over; but how rich it is in beauty and glory, and in food for meditation, none can tell but those who have witnessed it. This is a
## scene in Cloud-land, which hath its mysteries of beauty, that defy the
skill of the painter and engraver.
“The poet Wordsworth has given two very vivid descriptions of these mist phenomena, under different aspects from that in which I witnessed them. The first is contained in his descriptive sketches of a pedestrian tour among the Alps.
“‘’Tis morn: with gold the verdant mountain glows, More high, the snowy peaks with hues of rose. Far stretched beneath the many-tinted hills A mighty waste of mist the valley fills, A solemn sea! whose vales and mountains round Stand motionless, to awful silence bound. A gulf of gloomy blue, that opens wide And bottomless, divides the midway tide. Like leaning masts of stranded ships appear The pines, that near the coast their summits rear. Of cabins, woods and lawns a pleasant shore Bounds calm and clear the chaos still and hoar. Loud through that midway gulf ascending, sound, Unnumbered streams with hollow roar profound. Mount through the nearer mist the chant of birds, And talking voices, and the low of herds, The bark of dogs, the drowsy tinkling bell, And wild-wood mountain lutes of saddest swell.’
“But this extract is not to be compared for power to the following from the same poem, describing an Alpine sunset after a day of mist and storm upon the mountains.
“‘’Tis storm, and hid in mist from hour to hour, All day the floods a deepening murmur pour. The sky is vailed, and every cheerful sight, Dark is the region as with coming night, But what a sudden burst of overpowering light Triumphant on the bosom of the storm Glances the fire-clad eagle’s wheeling form. Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine The wood-crowned cliffs, that o’er the lake recline. Wide o’er the Alps a hundred streams unfold, At once to pillars turned, that flame with gold. Behind his sail the peasant tries to shun The west, that burns like one dilated sun, Where in a mighty crucible expire The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire!’
“There was a time during the middle ages, when Chamouny was inhabited by monks. The reigning lord of the country made a present of the whole valley to a convent of Benedictine friars, in the eleventh century. Two English travelers, Messrs. Pococke and Windham, drew attention to its wonderful scenery in 1741, and now it is a grand highway of summer travel, visited annually by three or four thousand people. A visit to Mont Blanc has become a pilgrimage of fashion. Fashion does some good things in her day; and it is a great thing to have the steps of men directed into this grand temple of nature, who would otherwise be dawdling the summer perhaps at immoral watering-places. A man can hardly pass through the vale of Chamouny, before the awful face of Mont Blanc, and not feel that he is an immortal being. The great mountain looks with an eye, and speaks with a voice, that does something to wake the soul out of its slumbers.
“The sublime hymn by Coleridge, in the vale before sunrise, is the concentrated expression of all the inspiring and heaven-directing influences of the scenery. The poem is as remarkably distinguished above the whole range of poetry in our language, for its sublimity, as the mountain itself among all the great ranges of the Alps. I am determined to quote it in full, for that and the tour of Mont Blanc ought to go together; and I will present along with it the German original of the poem in twenty lines, nearly as translated by Coleridge’s admiring and affectionate relative. I am not aware that Coleridge himself ever visited the vale of Chamouny; and if not, then that wonderful hymn to Mont Blanc was the work of imagination solely, building on the basis of the original lines in German. This was a grand and noble foundation, it is true; but the hymn by Coleridge was a perfect transfiguration of the piece, an inspiration of it with a higher soul, and an investiture of it with garments that shine like the sun. It was the greatest work of the poet’s great and powerful imagination, combined with the deep worshiping sense of spiritual things in his soul.
“On visiting the scene, one is apt to feel as if he could not have written it in the vale itself: the details of the picture would have been somewhat different; and, confined by the reality, one may doubt if even Coleridge’s genius could have gained that lofty ideal point of observation and conception, from which he drew the vast and glorious imagery that rose before him. Not because the poem is more glorious than the reality, for that is impossible; but because, in painting _from_ the reality, the force and sublimity of his general conceptions would have been weakened by the attempt at faithfulness in the detail, and nothing like the impression of the aerial grandeur of the scene, its despotic unity in the imagination, notwithstanding its variety, would have been conveyed to the mind.
“Yet there are parts of it which at sunrise or sunset either, the poet might have written from the very windows of his bedroom, if he had been there in the dawn and evenings of days of such extraordinary brilliancy and glory, as marked and filled the atmosphere, during our sojourn in that blessed region. A glorious region it is, much nearer heaven than our common world, and carrying a sensitive, rightly constituted mind far up in spirit toward the gates of heaven, toward God, whose glory is the light of heaven, and of whose power and majesty the mountains, ice-fields and glaciers, whether beneath the sun, moon, or stars, are a dim, though grand and glittering, symbol. ‘Fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind, fulfilling His word, mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, praise the Lord. He looketh on the earth and it trembleth; He toucheth the hills, and they smoke.’
“The following is the original German hymn, in what the translator denominates a very bald English translation, to be compared as a curiosity with its glorification in Coleridge. It occupies but five stanzas of four lines, and is entitled, ‘Chamouny at Sunrise. To Klopstock.’ I have here put it into the metrical form of the original.
“Out of the deep shade of the silent fir-grove, Trembling I survey thee, mountain-head of eternity, Dazzling (blinding) summit, from whose vast hight My dimly perceiving spirit floats into the Everlasting.
“Who sank the pillar deep in the lap of earth Which, for past centuries, fast props thy mass up? Who uptowered, high in the vault of ether, Mighty and bold, thy beaming countenance?
“Who poured you from on high, out of eternal Winter’s realm, O jagged streams, downward with thunder-noise? And who bade aloud, with the Almighty Voice, ‘Here shall rest the stiffening billows?’
“Who marks out there the path for the Morning Star? Who wreathes with blossoms the skirt of eternal Frost? To whom, wild Arveiron, in terrible harmonies, Rolls up the sound of thy tumult of billows?
“Jehovah! Jehovah! crashes in the bursting ice! Avalanche-thunders roll it in the cleft downward: Jehovah! it rustles in the bright tree-tops; It whispers murmuring in the purling silver-brooks.
“This is very grand. Who but a mighty poet, one seeing with ‘the vision and the faculty divine’—what, but a transfusing, all-conquering imagination—would have dared the attempt to compose another poem on the same subject, or to carry this to a greater hight of sublimity, by melting it down anew, so to speak, and pouring it out into a vaster, more glorious mold? The more one thinks of it, the more he will see, in the poem so produced, a proof most remarkable, of the spontaneous, deep-seated, easily exerted, and almost exhaustless power and originality of Coleridge’s genius. Now let us peruse, ‘with mute thanks and secret ecstacy,’ his own solemn and stupendous lines.
HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNY.
[Besides the rivers Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and, within a few paces of the glaciers, the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers, with its ‘flowers of loveliest blue.’]
“Hast thou a charm to stay the Morning Star In his steep course? so long he seems to pause On thy bald, awful head, O Sovran Blanc? The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above, Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black; An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from Eternity!
“O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer I worshiped the Invisible alone.
“Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, Yea, with my life, and life’s own secret joy, Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused, Into the mighty vision passing,—there, As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!
“Awake my Soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks and secret ecstacy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.
“Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale Oh, struggling with the darkness all night long, And all night visited by troops of stars, Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink! Companion of the morning star at dawn, Thyself earth’s rosy star, and of the dawn Coherald: wake, oh wake, and utter praise! Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? Who filled thy countenance with rosy light? Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
“And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, Forever shattered, and the same forever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded (and the silence came,) Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?
“Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain’s brow, Adown enormous ravines slope amain— Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once, amidst their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD! GOD! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!