On a Stone.

I have been toiling up this long steep road, under that broiling sun, for more than an hour; my cabriolet is I know not where. The last time I saw it was at the turn of the road, full half-a-mile behind me, and the lean postilion trying to put something comfortable into that lanky carcase of his at the auberge. "IÇi on loge À pied et À cheval;" so said the sign: why did not I, who was literally À pied, stop and enjoy myself a little? whereas I stalked proudly by: and now that rogue of the big boots and the powdered queue, and the short jacket and the noisy whip, is getting still more and more slowness out of his sorry horses, and is the man À cheval, treated by the busy little woman of the house as her worthiest customer. The Marquis will be at least two hours in advance of me: I shall not see Madame till night: positively I will run down the hill again and pull that rascal off his horse. Am I not paying for the accommodation of posting? have I not a right to get on? do I not fee him like a prince? I'll try a shout at him.

"Hilloa! hilloa! come along there!"—I might as well shout in the middle of the Atlantic; and as for running back again, why, I shall have to come over the same ground once more: the tariff shall be his fate: not a liard more: and I'll write him down in the post-book; I will crush the reptile: I'll annihilate him!

Here, sit thee down, man: art thou not come hither to enjoy thyself? why this impatience? why this anxiety to go over ground in a hurry which, a few hours ago, thou wouldst have given many a crown to visit at thy leisure? Sit thee down and look around thee: hurry no man's cattle, and fret not thyself out of thy propriety.

And, truly, 'tis a wondrous spot! what a wide extent of grassy slopes and barren rocky wastes! how white and hard and rough the road; how smooth the hill-side; how blue the distant landscape; how more than blue the cloudless sky! Look onwards towards the distant east; why, you can see almost across France to the Jura: what endless ridges of mountains, one above the other, like the billows of the green sea: what boundless plains between! But turn, for a moment, to the hills on either side of you; look at those wild copses of fir and stunted oak making good their 'vantage ground wherever the scanty vegetation will allow them; and above, look at the little round clumps of box-trees, dotting the mountain-breast with their shadows, and relieving the dull uniformity of its surface. So dark are they that you might take them for black cattle at a distance; but that, ever and anon, the sun brings out from them a bright green tint, and dispels the illusion.

Here, then, on this stone, am I resting, hundreds of miles away from my dull fatherland; where I have left behind me nought but pride and ennui, and heart-corroding cares, and soul-harrowing occupations. I have quitted that dense, black, throng of men, whose minds, pent up in the narrow circle of their insular limits, are intent on one thing only—and that thing, money! Thou land of the rich and the poor; of the lord and the slave; of the noble and the upstart; chosen home of labour and never-ending care; I have bid thee adieu: my face is to the world; my lot is on the waters of boundless life; and I am free to choose my dwelling wherever the clime suits my fancy, and my wishes tally with the clime. In this dry and barren valley, amidst those lofty hills, where once fire and sulphur and burning rocks poured forth as the only elements, and where the melted lava flowed along the face of the earth like an unloosed torrent; in this lonely spot, where few living beings are seen, and yet where the vast reproductive energies of the world have been so widely developed—even here, let me commune a while with nature and with myself.

Thou mysterious power of expansion, whatever thou art, whether some igneous form existing within the womb of Earth, and demonstrating thyself ere our tiny planet revolved in its present orb—or whether some product of the combination of chemical fluids originating flames, and melting this prison-house with fervent heat—say when didst thou convulse this fair land, and raise up from the circumjacent plains these mountain-masses that now tower over my head? For I see around me the traces not of one, but of four separate convulsions; and I can pursue in fancy the long lapse of ages which have served to modify the crude forms of thy products, and to change the various classes of animated life which have lived and died at the feet of these vast steeps. First come thy granitic ebullitions, slow, lumpy, and amorphous—partly incandescent, yet glowing with heat that cooled not for ages;—and then, when these rude ribs of the earth had been worn and channeled by atmospheric action, through time too vast to be reckoned, they split again with a mighty rending up of their innermost frame, and thy power, fell spirit of destruction! thrust forth the great chain of the Monts Dor, and the Cantal. There thou raisedst them stratum above stratum of volcanic rock; and scoriÆ and boiling mud, and lava, and porphyry, and basalt, and light pumice, tier above tier, till the seven-thousandth foot above Old Ocean's level had been reached; and then thou restedst from thy labours awhile, rejoicing in thy force, and proud of the chaos thou hadst occasioned. But not to slumber long; for, glad to have made a new mineral combination, thou didst thrust forth at the northern point of thy work the great trachytic mass of the Puy de DÔme: there it stands with its solid hump of felspathic crystals, a vast watch-tower of creation—white and purple within, glassy-green without. And then burst out the full hubbub of this mischief—twenty vast craters vomiting forth molten rocks and cinders and the deep lava-stream, and throwing their products leagues upon leagues, afar into the fair country:—twenty Etnas thundering away at the same time, and answered by twenty more in the Vivaraix, and the infernal chorus kept up by as many in the Cantal:—all the batteries of the Plutonic artillery launching forth destruction at once from the summits of their primÆval bastions. Well was it for man that he existed not when this Titanic warfare was going on, and when these hills, like those of ancient Thessaly, were heaped, each upon each, up to heaven's portal! If Europe then existed, it must have been shaken to its furthest bounds:—Hecla must have answered to the distant roar; and even the old Ural must have heaved its unwieldy sides.

And now, what see we? A sea of volcanic waves; dark lava-currents—rough, black, and fresh as though vomited but yesterday:—vast chasms, red and burnt, and cinders, as though the fire which raised them were not yet extinguished. Why, from the Puy de Parion I could swear that smoke must rise at times, and that sulphurous vapours must still keep it in perpetual desolation. Yes, though winter's rains and snows visit this volcanic chain full sharply, and though the gigantic sawing force of frost disintegrates the softer portions of this, the Fire-king's Home, yet there they stand—and so they shall stand, till nature be again convulsed, the imperishable monuments, the stupendous demonstrations, of the Creator's illimitable energy. Yes, let the Almighty but touch these hills again, and they shall smoke!

Thou dull, senseless stone, with thy numberless crystals variegating and glittering on the hard resting-place that I have chosen, whence came those minerals that combined to form thee? Did they exist, pell-mell, beneath, in the vast Tartaric depths, ready to assimilate themselves on the first signal of eruption? or did they arise suddenly, instantaneously, on the first darting of the electric current that summoned their different atoms into new forms of existence? Whence came this green olivine?—whence this plate of specular iron?—whence this quartz and felspar; and all these other minerals I see around me? Thou rude product of the great infernal Foundery, thy very existence is a problem—much more the formation of thy component parts.

Stone! thou art not more varied in thy aspect—not less intelligible in thy constitution—not harder, not more unfeeling, than the heart of man! I would sooner have thee for my companion and my bosom friend, than any of that melancholy, solemn-faced crowd of hypocrites I have left behind me. Refuse me not thy rough welcome: thou art, for the time being, my couch: thou art even warmed by my contact: hast thou, then, some sympathy with the wanderer? Thou dull, crystallised block, I will think of thee, and will remember thy solid virtues, when the uncongenial offices of man shall plague me no more!

The Philosopher.

"Monsieur!" said the postilion: "Monsieur!" he repeated; and he looked round wistfully to see if any one was at hand. Now, I hate to be interrupted in a reverie; and, indeed, I was so absorbed in the wheelings of a kite over my head, that I was thinking of any thing but of my lazy guide and my rolling wheels. A loud clack—clack—slap—tap—crack—crack of the whip, flourished over his head with all the gusto and the savoir-craquer of a true postilion, brought me to myself. "Monsieur, I have been waiting your orders here for half an hour."

The coolness with which the fellow lied, disarmed me of my wrath in a minute: I had else docked him of his pigtail, or broken the wooden sides of his boots for him. But he had such an imperturbable air of self-satisfaction, and he thrust his thumb so knowingly into his little black pipe, and this again he plunged with such nonchalance into his pocket, that I saw he was a philosopher of the true school—and I profited by his example.

"Fellow," said I, "dost know that I have promised myself the pleasure of passing half an hour with M. de Montlosier on my road to the baths: and that at the rate thou takest me at, I shall not see Mont Dor till to-morrow?"

"Don't be afraid, Monsieur: I know the Count's house well: we are not more than an hour's drive from it: I go there with some one or other every week; and as for Mont-Dor-les-bains, why—that depends on Monsieur: if you get there by dark it will do, I suppose—the provisions will not all be eaten, nor the beds filled!"

Lucky fellow to live in a world where no greater stimulus to labour exists than here! why should we toil and wear ourselves to death as we do in England for the mere means of living—and forget the lapse of life itself? So, pocketing my dignity, and also pocketing sundry specimens of my mute companions the stones, I mounted into the cabriolet—and lost myself once more in my thoughts till I arrived at the Ferme de Randan.

Just where the Puy de Vache circles round with two other red hollow craters, and at the end of a black sea of lava, stood the philosopher's house: a plain low building: half farm half cottage: with a few trees and enclosures shutting it in, and two or three acres of garden-ground bringing up the rear. There was an air of simplicity about the whole exceedingly striking, and the more so if one thought of the simple-minded man who dwelt within. My name was announced: my letters of introduction presented: and the Comte de Montlosier welcomed me to his mountain home.

"You see me here, sir," he said, "quite a farmer; I am tired of the busy world: who would not be, after having lived in it so long, and after having seen such events? I can here give myself up to my books: I can speculate on the wonders of this remarkable district, I can attend to my little property—for I have not much remaining—and I can receive my friends. You would not believe it, but Dr D—— of Oxford was with me last week: he came to look at our volcanoes, and he stayed with me several days: a charming little man, sir, and very active in climbing over hills. You will excuse me, perhaps, if I do not offer to accompany you to the summit of the Puy de Vache: but my servants are at your orders: had I as few years over my head as when I first visited Arthur's Seat, I would be at your side in all your mountain rambles; but age and ease are fond of keeping company."

"Ah, Monsieur le Comte, I came to make your acquaintance; your hills I will see at another time."

"Young man, you are wrong: these volcanic mountains are worthy of your deepest study; for myself, I am nothing but a broken-down old man. I have nothing here attractive to my friends. The spot is full of charms for myself, but not for others. I have so many old associations connected with it: 'tis my paternal estate: I had to fly from it during those terrible days, and I never thought to see it again: but now that I find myself once more restored to it, my unwillingness to quit the place increases every day. After all, you can learn more about Auvergne from your learned countryman, Poulett Scrope, than from me; my little work, by the way, is at your service if you will accept it: I am as a lamp going out, you find me flickering, and when next you pass this way, the light may be extinguished."

"True, sir; and it is from these expiring flames that the brightest sparks may be sometimes derived: at any rate I would know from you wherewith to trim my own lamp for future days."

"Alas," replied the Count, "the present generation are not willing to give credit to the last for all they have witnessed, for all they have undergone. Had you, like me, seen all the phases of the Revolution, from the time when I was sent as a deputy to the States-General from Auvergne, to the Reign of Terror, and then the time of exile, and if you could have felt the joys of returning to your longlost home again, you might indeed look back on your life with emotion—let me say with gratitude."

"Did you know many members of the literary and scientific world previous to the Revolution?"

"Oh yes, I was acquainted with Condorcet, Lavoisier, and many others of that stamp. Who shall say that, in the deaths of those great men, France did not lose more than she gained by all her boasted freedom? Ah yes, the men of those days were giants in intellect! there was a force of originality in them, a vividness of thought and expression, which we shall never witness again: and, allow me to say, there was a dignity surrounding them, and accompanying them, which, with all our pretended liberality and respect for science, we are far from attributing to their followers now. Those of us, the actors in some of those tremendous scenes who still survive, are but as the blasted oaks of the forest after the hurricane has swept by. Some few remain erect; but withered, scorched, and leafless: all the rest are prostrate, snapped off at the root—many in the full vigour of vegetation: all now rotting on the ground. It was a national tempest—a tornado—an earthquake; it was like an eruption from the very volcano in whose bosom we are now sitting and talking. The world never has seen, and perhaps never shall see, any thing half so terrible as our Revolution. My young friend, excuse me; perhaps you are a politician—and you are newly arrived in France: things are tending to something ominous even at the present day. M. de Polignac has just been summoned to office: the king is an easy good man—a perfect gentleman—and an honest one, too; but there are people near the throne who would be glad to see it tottering, and who are ready to take advantage of the least false step. Mark my words, sir, another year will produce something decisive in the history of France."

"But surely, M. le Comte, every thing is too much consolidated since the Restoration of Louis XVIII. to allow of any fresh changes—the French nation have all the liberty they can desire."

"Much more, my dear sir, than they either understand or can enjoy properly. I am ashamed to say it, but my fellow countrymen are children in constitutional matters: every thing depends on the personal character of our governors for the time being. And again, we are too ambitious; every body wants to rise—by fair means or by foul; but rise he must: and every body expects to be a gainer by change. We are, and I am afraid we always shall be, fond of playing at revolutions."

"Permit me to think better of the French, sir. I am delighted with their country, and I wish them all the happiness that the possession of so fine a territory can cause."

"You are right: it is a fine territory: it might be the first agricultural country in Europe: there is hardly a square league of ground in it that is not suitable to some useful vegetable production. We have none of the cold clays nor barren heathtracts of Great Britain; our mountains all admit of pasturage to their tops, or are productive of wood; and our climate is so genial that even the bare limestone rocks of Provence yield, as you are aware, the finest grapes. Here, in the midst of the Monts Dor, you will come upon those vast primÆval forests of the silver-fir which have never been disturbed from the time of their erection, and you will judge for yourself how rich even this district really is. Look at our rivers: at our boundless plains, covered with corn and wine, and oil: and yet allowed to stand fallow one year in three. My good friends in Scotland—for, believe me, I shall ever remember with gratitude my stay in Edinburgh—do not farm their lands in our slovenly fashion. France, depend upon it, might be made, and I believe it will ultimately become, one of the richest and most prosperous countries of Europe. The wealth of England is fleeting: when you come to lose India and others of your colonies—and 'twill be your fate sooner or later, your power will, with your trade, fall to the ground: and, like your predecessors in a similar career, the Portuguese and the Dutch, you must infallibly become a second or third-rate power. France is solid and compact: her wealth lies in her land: you cannot break up that: she exists now, and is great without any colony worthy of mention: and she cannot but increase. Even Spain, from her mere geographical size and position, has a better chance of political longevity than England."

"And yet Spain is rather decrepid at present, you will admit, M. le Comte."

"True; but a century, you know, is nothing in the life of a nation:—England, to speak the truth, was only a second-rate power until the reign of George the Second. She has still her social revolution to go through: and whatever has been effected for the benefit of this country would have come without the Revolution: and it was paying rather dear to destroy the whole framework of society for what we should certainly have attained by easy and more natural means. It is a fearful catastrophe to break up all the old ideas and feelings of a people, merely to substitute in their place something new—you know not what: better or worse—and most probably the latter. Add to this, that the results of the Revolution have fully borne out what I maintain: we are neither better nor happier than we should have been had we gone on as usual: other countries which have not been revolutionised are just as happy and prosperous as we are."

"But then the more equal distribution of property, M. le Comte; has not this effected some good?"

"Some it may have caused undoubtedly; but much less than is imagined: the effect of it has been only to raise up an aristocracy of money, instead of one of birth: and, aristocracy for aristocracy, the former is infinitely more overbearing and tyrannical than the latter. Before the Revolution, the country was said to be in the hands of the nobles and the clergy: what has happened since? It has merely been transferred to those of the lawyers and the employÉs. Every third man you meet, holds some place or other under government: and you can hardly transact the commonest affairs of life without the aid of the notary or the advocate. We cannot boast much of our comparative improvement in morality: for in Paris, the prefect of police can inform you, from the registers of births, that one in three children now born there is always illegitimate."

"Of what good, then, has the Revolution been?"

"My young friend, ask not that question; it was one of those inscrutable arrangements of Providence, the aim and extent of which we do not yet know. You might as well ask what these puys and volcanoes have done to benefit the country, which, no doubt, they once devastated; they may even yet break out into activity again, and France may even yet have to pass through another social trial. Things have not yet found their level amongst us.—But we are getting into a long political and philosophical discussion that makes me forget my duties to my guest. I am at least of opinion that the volcanoes have done me personally some good; for they have formed this wonderful country, and they attract hither many of my friends, whom I might otherwise never have seen again. You will appreciate them when you arrive at the Baths; and, apropos of this, I am coming over there myself in a few days to consult my friend Dr Bertrand. This will give me the opportunity of introducing you to several of the visitors worth knowing. You will find a gay and gallant crowd there; and let me advise you, take care of your heart and your pockets."

"Monsieur, dinner is served," said a domestic, opening the door; so I followed the worthy Count into the salle-À-manger.

A Shandrydan.

The top of the great plateau of Auvergne looked beautiful the evening I reached it—a fine July evening, when the sun had yet three hours to go down, and I was about a dozen miles from the village of the Baths. I had been vainly flattering myself that something or other might have detained M. de Mirepoix's carriage, and that I should have the pleasure of viewing this splendid scene in company with Madame. She had so strong a taste for the picturesque, that I knew her sympathies would be expressed, and I anticipated no small pleasure from eliciting her sentiments. To see what is magnificent in the society of one whose feelings of the sublime and beautiful emulate your own in intensity, multiplies the charm, and elevates the pleasure, by the mutual communication of the effects perceived and produced. So I looked out for their carriage anxiously.

Nothing met my eye but the long undulating plain stretching like a rounded wave or swell of the ocean to the feet of the mountains, and the distant blue horizon—to the west nearly as far off as the Garonne—to the east as far as the Saone. The plateau was covered with fine grass, pastured by large herds of small dark-coloured cattle, goats, and a few sheep; wild-flowers grew here and there of fragrant smell, and the tops of the vast pine forests peeped up from the ends of the deep ravines that run far into the bosom of the still hills. The sky was without a cloud, and the sun seemed to gain double glory as he fell towards his western bed.

My spirits rose with the scene; I was excited and yet happy; the full genial warmth of nature was before me, and around me, and in me. I could have danced and sung for joy. I could have stopped there for ever, and I wanted somebody to say all this to, and who should re-echo the same to me.

There stood the postilion—dull, senseless, brutal animal—he had got off his horses, for I was once more out of the cabriolet, and was bounding over the turf to look over the edge of a precipice on my right hand: there he stood, he had lighted another pipe, and was thinking only of a good chopine of wine out of his pour-boire, when he should arrive at the village.

"A fine view, mon ami!" said I, at last, in pure despair.

He gave a shrug with his shoulders.

"Very high mountains those," I went on.

He turned round and looked at them; and then tapped his pipe against his whip.

"What splendid forests!" I added.

"Monsieur! voyez-vous! it is the most villainous road I know; and if we do not push on, we shall not get to Mont Dor before dark. I would not go over the bridge at the bottom there in the dark, no Monsieur, not if I had the honour to be carrying M. Le PrÉfet himself. They were never found, Monsieur!"

"Who were never found?"

"Why, sir, when Petit-jean was driving M. le Commandant, the last year but one—he was going to the Baths for the gout, sir—he did not get down to the bridge till near ten at night; there was no parapet then, the horses did not know the road, and over they went, roll, roll, all the way into the Dor at the bottom; thirty feet, sir, and more, and then the cascade to add to that."

"Dreadful! and did no trace remain of the unfortunate traveller and your poor friend?"

"Oh, certainly yes! they got well wetted; but they rode the horses into the village the same evening."

"Who were lost, then?"

"Petit-jean's new boots, and 'twas the first time he had put them on."

I jumped into the cabriolet; "drive on," said I pettishly, "and go to the ——"

"Hi! hardi! SacrÉ coquin!" and crash went the whip over the off horse's flank, enough to cut a steak of his lean sides had there been any flesh to spare. In a quarter of an hour we found ourselves going down a steep rough road, such as might break the springs of the best carriage, chariot, britscha, &c., that ever came out of Long-Acre; and the thumps that I got against the sides of my own vehicle, light as it was, made me call out for a little less speed, and somewhat more care.

"Don't be afraid, Monsieur! Hi! hardi! heugh!"

I thought it was all over with me; so, holding in my breath, and firmly clenching the top of my apron, I looked straight a-head, and made up my mind for a pitch over the wall at the bottom, and down through the wood, like the commandant and Petit-jean.

Just as we got to the bottom of the hill, we turned a sharp corner, that I had not before perceived, and charged, full gallop, right into an old shandrydan, that had pulled up, and, with a single horse, was beginning to climb the ascent. Our impetus seemed to carry us over the poor animal that was straining against its load, for he fell under our two beasts, and the shafts of the cabriolet catching the shandrydan under the driver's seat, turned it completely topsy-turvy into the midst of the road.

Such a shriek, or rather such a chorus of confused cries, came forth from the dark sides of that small and closely-shut vehicle!

"Au secours!" "Jesus-Maria!" "Vite, vite!" "Relevez-nous!" "Pour l'amour de Dieu!"

They were women's voices:—

"Ah Ça, j'Étouffe!" said a deep, gruff voice, in the midst of the hubbub.

As neither the postilion nor myself were hurt, we were quickly on our legs: he trying to get the horses disentangled—for they were kicking each other to pieces—and I to aid a thin, meek-looking peasant lad, who had been driving the shandrydan, to right the crazy vehicle.

'Twas a square, black-looking thing, covered at top, with no opening whatever but a small window in the door behind. It might have been built some time in the reign of Louis le Bien-aimÉ, and its cracked leather sides and harness seemed as if they had been strangers to oil ever since. If people were not very corpulent, four might have squeezed into it—not that they would have been comfortable, but they could have got in, and would have sat on the opposite seats, without much room to spare.

Some honest old Frenchman, thought I to myself, with his wife and daughter, and perhaps their maid. Poor man! he is coming from the Baths, cured of some painful malady, and now has had the misfortune to run the risk of his life—if, indeed, his bones be not broken—and all through that Étourdi of a postilion. "If I do not report him to the maÎtre de poste!" said I to myself.

"For the love of God, messieurs," said a faint voice, "get us out!"

"The door! the door! open the door then!" said at least three other voices, one after the other and all together.

"Je meurs!" wept the bass-voice from the inmost recesses of the vehicle—or it might have been from under ground, so deep and sepulchral was its tone.

"Don't disturb yourself, monsieur," grumbled the postilion, who had now got one of his horses on its legs; "'tis nothing! Come along, you varmint!" said he to the poor young peasant, who stood wringing his hands and looking distractedly at his whip—'twas broken clean in half—"Arrive, te dis-je!—pousse bien lÀ!—lÀ bien! encore! hardi! houp!"

The door of the shandrydan burst open, and there emerged, in sadly rumpled state, a pitiable confusion of rustled petticoats and tumbled headgear, red as the roses on a summer's morn, and dewy as the grass on an autumn eve—six soeurs-de-charitÉ, all white and black like sea-fowl thrown from the shooter's bag—and after them, slowly toiling forth and writhing through the door in unwieldy porpoise-guise—M. le CurÉ!