such hair-breadth escapes, more than by any other circumstance, that the extent and ferocity of the revolutionary massacres are brought home to the imagination. The appointed victims, whom the delay of a day or an hour preserved from destruction at this crisis, still survive in all parts of France, like widely-scattered land-marks, to remind one of the numbers swept away in the previous deluge of murder.
May 1.—To Rochepot twenty-one miles. We were not sorry to leave the Hôtel de Poste, at Arnay le Duc, which, with higher pretensions than the inn at Rouvray, only differs from it in the ratio of "dear and nasty" to "cheap and nasty;" and to commence a stage which promised more to the eye than any part of our former route. The country still continues to rise in this direction, and soon assumes the air of an extensive forest or chase, enlivened by half-wild herds of cattle, and opening into green glades and vistas of distant ranges of hills. At Ivry, we wound up a steep hill; the summit of which, a wide naked common, might match most parts of Dartmoor in height and bleakness. I had observed heaps of granite and micaceous stone at a much lower elevation in the course of the day before; and conclude that we were now on one of the highest inhabited points which occur in the interior of France. We had not leisure to walk to a telegraph on the right, which, to judge from the occasional glimpses which we had, must command a splendid map of the country near Autun. It had been recommended to us to take the route to Chalons through the latter town, as affording the most objects of interest; but, on the whole, I doubt whether that which we had adopted as the least circuitous, be not also preferable, as possessing the striking panoramic point to which we had climbed. After two or three more miles over an expanse of parched turf, we reached what geologists would call the bluff escarpment of the stratum. The descent before us was so precipitous, as to leave us at first at a loss to make out how the road could be conducted down it: and the prospect which burst upon us in front, had apparently no limit but the power of human vision. Beyond the foreground, which was formed by a series of rocky glens diverging from below the point on which we stood, the immense vale of the Saone extended like a bird's-eye view of the ocean, its relative distances marked by towns and villages glittering like white sails. Above the flat line of haze, which, at the first glance, appears to terminate the prospect at the distance of sixty miles, or more, we distinguished a faint blue outline of lofty mountains, which must have been the barrier separating France from Switzerland; and, as occasional gleams of sunshine broke out, the glittering and jagged lines of a barrier still more distant, and apparently hanging in mid air, became distinctly visible. Among these I recognised, at last, the features of Mont Blanc, in whose peculiar outline I could not be mistaken, and which, according to the map, cannot be less than 110 or 120 miles distant, in a direct line from the Montagne de Rochepot. It is, perhaps, not necessary to be a mountaineer, like Jean Jacques, by birth and education, in order to feel the peculiar expansion of mind, which he describes as caused by breathing mountain-air, and contemplating prospects like this of which I speak.[2] A boundless plain, and enormous mountains, such as the Alps, whether viewed individually, or contrasted with each other, are objects not physically grand alone, but affording also food for deep and enlarged reflection. The mind, while expatiating over the mass of feelings and projects, of hopes and fears, which are passing within the limits of the wide map below, feels the nothingness of the atom which it animates, and the comparative insignificance of its own joys and griefs in the scale of creation, and retires at last into itself, sobered into that calm state which is so favourable to the formation of any momentous decision, or the prosecution of a train of deep thought. A moment's glance changes the scene from culture and population to the silence and solitude of a dead icy desert; from the redundancy of animal and vegetable life to its "solemn syncope and pause." The ideas of obscurity, danger, and infinity, all powerful and acknowledged sources of the sublime, are excited at the view of a range of frozen summits, cold, fixed, and everlasting as the imaginary nature of those destinies, with whom a noble bard has peopled them; alternately glittering in sunshine, and enveloped in clouds, and from the well-known effects of haze and distance, appearing suspended in the air in their full dimensions and relative proportions. The imagination dwells upon the appalling hazards peculiar to their few accessible parts, and on the almost total extinction of life and animal powers, which is the penalty of a few hours sojourn there. And here again, too, the mind is forcibly impressed with the utter helplessness of the speck of dust which it inhabits, and that momentary dependence on Providence, which must be so convincingly felt in traversing such regions. Ascending in the scale of comparison, it may reflect, that these gigantic forms, which fill the eye at a distance at which cities and pyramids would fade into imperceptible specks, are but excrescences on the face of that earth, which itself is but an atom in the map of the universe. But I am wandering from my subject, and from the route, which, in this quarter, is somewhat precipitous. I shall, therefore, only remark what has frequently struck me as not an improbable conjecture, that Milton might have formed his splendid conception of the icy region of Pandæmonium from some of these colossal ranges of Alps with which his eye must have been familiar, seen through the vistas of a stormy sky. In the well-known passage which I shall take the liberty of quoting, one seems to recognise the deep drifts of snow, and the blue crevasses which abound in such a spot as the Mer de Glace, as well as the castellated peaks and glaciers which border on it, and the biting atmosphere which prevails among their summits.
"Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; or else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog
'Twixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air
Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire."
CHAP. II
ROCHEPOT TO LYONS.
"Mon Dieu, ma fille," says Madame de Sevigné in one of her letters to Mad. de Grignan, "que vous avez raison d'etre fatiguée de cette Montagne de Rochepot! je la hais comme la mort; que de cahots, et quelle cruauté qu'au mois de Janvier les chemins de Bourgogne soient impracticables!" Allowing this to have been the case in her days, I can hardly wonder that even Mad. de Sevigné was insensible to the magnificence of the prospect from this elevated point; and thought only of the safety of her neck. No danger however exists at present, as the road descending to Rochepot is good, and judiciously conducted down the brow of the hill; though the nature of the ground gives no very pleasing idea of what it must have been as a cross-country track. The inn also at Rochepot, situated at the junction of four roads, is clean and comfortable. A household loaf, weighing not less than thirty pounds, stood on the table to welcome us on our arrival, and we saw for the first time straw hats bearing a full proportion to it, the rim of which equalled in size a moderate umbrella.
After breakfast we visited the ruined castle of Rochepot,[3] on which we had at first looked down, but which, seen from the village, bears a strong resemblance to Harlech Castle in North Wales, both in its form, and its position upon a commanding rock. We found upon inquiry that it had been tenanted at a much later period than its appearance would have led us to suppose. M. Blancheton, the proprietor, had made it his chief residence some thirty years ago, and kept it up in a style imitating as nearly as possible its ancient feudal grandeur. At the Revolution however it was forfeited, and has since been sold twice; but though each purchaser has pulled down a part, and sold the materials, enough still remains to give a perfect idea of its former strength and massiveness. M. Blancheton now resides, as we were informed, near Beaune, regretted
