Yet, yet Hope is not dead! All is not lost below, While yet the gods have pity on our woe. Heaven lends support to those Who on its care in duteous trust repose. Let our submissive prayer in choral notes arise! Pray! bow the knee, and pray! What other task have mortals, born to tears, Jove, Jove! enthroned immortally on high, Nor plunge in bitterest woes Him, who no footstep moves, nor lifts his eye, Its Father to revere. VEVEY AND CLARENS. BY J. A. ST. JOHN, ESQ. "Clarens! sweet Clarens, birth-place of deep love! The very glaciers have his colours caught, And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought By rays which sleep there lovingly; the rocks, The permanent crags, tell here of Love, who sought In them a refuge from the worldly shocks Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, then mocks." LORD BYRON, in his Notes to the third canto of "Childe Harold," compliments Rousseau on the taste and judgment he has displayed in selecting the scene of the "Nouvelle Heloise;" remarking, however, that the scene itself derives no additional interest from the novel. "If Rousseau had never written, nor lived," observes his lorship," the same associations would not less have belonged to such scenes. He has added to the interest of his works by their adoption; he has shown his sense of their beauty by the selection; but they have done that for him which no human being could do for them." But, perhaps, this view of the matter is unphilosophical. The virgin forests and vast savannahs of America, however grand or beautiful in themselves, have never, so far as I have been able to discover, inspired any man with a delight or enthusiasm similar in kind or equal in intensity to that which is felt among the stunted olive trees or sun-burnt brushwood on the banks of the Ilyssus. Undoubtedly nature everywhere possesses sufficient beauty to captivate the poetical imagination; but this beauty never bursts with such force and rapture on the heart, as when it happens to be associated with historical or romantic traditions, suggesting ideas of man's heroic fortitude or of woman's love. Therefore, although the world perhaps contains few spots to which nature has been more bounteous than the neighbourhood of Vevey, the pleasure derived from the landscape would probably have been inferior, and less intense, had not Rousseau peopled its woodland recesses and rocky solitary shores with the shadows of beings beautiful, but erring, yet deriving from the very imperfection of their characters no small portion of the power by which they fascinate the imagination. Who that has ever set foot in Switzerland can have omitted to go in pilgrimage to Vevey? The heart throbs, the pulse beats quicker, the eyes are spontaneously suffused with a delicious dew, as we draw near the spot which has been rendered, by a powerful master of the passions, sacred to womanhood and to love! Existence, while we remain there, resembles an agreeable dream. Everything which presents itself to the eyehuman nature excepted-is surpassing beautiful: the rushing streams, the snow-clad mountains, the broad, blue, placid expanse of waters forming a mirror at their feet, and reflecting, with additional softness, all the loveliness of their forms, all the inimitable brilliance of their tints. I have resided at Vevey, I have passed through it in various moods of mind-sad and sorrowful, on my way to more distant lands; joyous, elate, triumphant, on my return-but the spell cast over it by the creations of genius never lost one iota of its power. This spell, however, it would perhaps be impossible to translate into words. The fields, the trees, the waters, nay, the whole atmosphere, seems perfumed and hallowed by the presence of her whom we love. It is not, we appear to imagine, the creation of a novelist that forms the connecting link between the external scene and our heart. We seem, on the contrary, to be visiting a spot recently trodden by one well known and beloved in former years, but now snatched from us by death, yet still beloved, and whose mere memory suffices to render sacred in our eyes the spots which, when living, she honoured with her preference. I But the people, as Rousseau has taken care to observe, appear at eternal odds with the scene. Coarse, worldlyminded, repulsive in features and character, they seem like so many excrescences in the landscape-rude aliens, who, by force or fraud, have intruded themselves into a land designed for the reception of their betters. entered Vevey in the evening, and on the morrow it was market-day. In small country towns, both in France and Switzerland, it is customary for women of all ranks to repair, on these occasions, to the market-place, accompanied by their maids, in order to purchase the necessary provisions for their household. Here, therefore, as in the bazaars of the East, or the opera-houses of great capitals, the whole beauty and fashion of the neighbourhood are generally to be met with; not, indeed, decked with jewels, or arrayed in gorgeous costumes, but dressed neatly, and with the evident intention of displaying to the best advantage whatever charms, natural or artificial, they may happen to possess. Accordingly, notwith standing the caution of Rousseau, I still expected to behold, among the crowd, some youthful representative of Julia or Clara, some face lighted up with sentiment, or bearing the mark and impress of passionate love. Wandering, however, from group to group, and stealing, as I passed, a glimpse of each fair countenance, I discovered with horror that nearly every third woman, young and old, rich and poor, was afflicted with goitre, confirmed or incipient. Descending from thence to the beach, I observed numerous boats, laden with rural produce, from the Valais and Savoy, and thronged with young women, approaching the shore. Here, again, deformity and ugliness had usurped the place of beauty, for, though differing widely from their neighbours both in costume and features, the girls who landed from these picturesque barks exhihited the same swelling in the neck, the same uncouth exterior, and a still more striking absence, perhaps, of that physical manifestation of intellectual beauty which had shocked me in the youthful Vaudoises. A much greater simplicity, however, was observable in their manners. The want of beauty had evidently not soured their temper. Indeed, had they possessed the matchless charms of Helen herself, they could scarcely have laughed more heartily, or appeared on better terms with themselves. Contentment, arising from a fortunate incapacity to institute comparisons between themselves and the few Englishwomen whom they had beheld, constituted their happiness, by freeing them from the stings of envy. In the midst of this unsightly multitude, whose appearance and manners were the very antipodes of romance, a few young women of more prepossessing contour might, occasionally, be seen. But these, I was told, were |