180 THE OUBLIETTE. of its warmth, if not a spice of its savoury odours, to the dark hearthless famine-stricken Vaults below. But if the haunch, the sirloin, the ragout, the creams, the marrow puddings, afforded visions of untasted luxury to the poor captives,-how poignant must have been the excitement heightened by the reminiscence of past banquets, to those ermined Lords, who held their High Court of Justice in the vast chamber adjoining; and who consigned the poor culprit to the savour of those viands on which they were preparing more substantially to feast. I have frequently heard of Oubliettes, and seldom without a shudder at the ominous import of the term, but I never saw one of these formidable pits till to-day, and its brief Chronicle is truly horrible. It is a broad square Tower, standing in one of the courts of Chillon, and of very moderate height; on one side of which is an arched recess, where formerly stood the altar and image of the Blessed Virgin. The Criminal (whose doom-sealed by personal enmity, or by that most inexorable of tyrants, State Policy-was concealed from his knowledge) was conducted to this tower by his guards, and directed to kneel before the altar, in order to return thanks for his deliverance. While the hapless wretch was in the rapture of adoration, the bolts of a huge trap door beneath his knees were withdrawn, and he was precipitated into an abysm of three hundred feet; of course, either dashed to pieces by the fall, or left to writhe to death with his shattered members. Well has the Bard of the Village churchyard said O! who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, But these doomed wretches had not a moment allowed to look back upon the bright sunshine they had just relinquished; nay, it was in the midst of their momentary expectation to revisit its beams that they were plucked from light and life for ever. In succeeding ages a stair was considerately introduced, and the hellish Pit divided into three floors, each provided with a sufficient lock and key, and each destined to be at once the deathchamber and grave of a man! the only difference was, that he was mercifully permitted to perish of mere hunger, instead of numbering the last hours of his agonized existence by the throbs of his lacerated limbs. A concealed current, communicating with the river, was employed to consign the mutilated and putrifying carcase to the fishes of the Rhone. At Vevay the everlasting monotony of vineyards, glowing as they are with amber and purple fruitage, and intermixed with huge golden pods 182 THE TABERNACLE OF THE FIGTREE. of Indian corn, is in great measure superseded by fine old orchards of walnut, apple, and pear; and, on a nearer approach to Chillon, wide valleys in every shade of verdure, variegated with white villages and hoary towers, and sweeping off into picturesque hills clothed to the very summit with turf and tree, and mantling with thick groves cheerily displaying the broad gables of a romantic grange, or the graceful steeple of a rustic spire, win, by the force of contrast, a degree of admiration greater perhaps than their intrinsic beauty have a right to demand. The semicircle of hills at the head of the lake border so closely on the Sublime, that you feel vexed they are not still bolder and less abundant in the luxuriance of cornfield, vineyard, turf, and wood. I noticed near Lausanne, in one of those picturesque old villages that embroider the lake, a very large fig tree, the most robust of trunk I ever saw, spreading its boughs like a trellised roof, and so planted before the door of a huge straggling Hostel, as to form a capacious Porch, under whose goodly shadow some dozen villagers might recreate both body and mind, much at their ease, and I thought this beautiful passage from Saint Chrysostom's Homilies on the destruction of the Imperial Statues at Antioch, too germane to the matter, not to tempt one to insert it. He is speaking of Abraham's Oak. THE LAKE OF MORAT. 183 "He covered not his Roof with Gold, but, fixing his Tent near the Oak, he was contented with the Shadow of its leaves. That Lodging was rudely prepared, but it was more illustrious, than the Halls of Kings. No King has ever entertained Angels, but he dwelling under that Oak, and having but pitched a Tent, was thought worthy of that honor; enjoying that benefit on account of the Magnificence of his Soul and the Wealth therein deposited." Between Payerne and Berne we coasted the beautiful and storied Lake of Morat, its surface of sleepy blue glistering by an afternoon sunlight, and its tranquil woods tinctured with just as much pallid gold as might proclaim that the magician autumn was gently hinting his intentions of dressing them in his own gaudy livery, and then stripping them altogether. Every one knows that here Charles le Temeraire or Le Hardi—which be pleased to translate Foolhardy-rehearsed his last battle; and losing all his magnificent baubles of gold and jewels, barely escaped with his life, which, by all accounts, he scarcely valued so highly. O! how much more applicable to this Bravo Prince than to the mightiest Julius is that gasconade which Shakespeare puts into Cæsar's mouth: "Danger knows full well That Cæsar is more dangerous than he: Act ii. Scene 2. 184 AUTUMN. September 24, 1844. WHY is Autumn so dear to every Lover of Nature, and to contemplative minds in general? Why, when we behold the traces of perishing loveliness in every stained leaf, and every tarnished herb, do our feelings experience a sudden revulsion, an arrest as it were of affectionate admiration, as if we had only then begun to love the beauties we were then beginning to lose? Ask the man who is parting from a Friend, whose society he has long enjoyed, whose valuable and amiable qualities he has long reverenced and loved, and whose conversation has opened up to him many a bright pure fountain of delight, yet towards whom long habitual intercourse had restrained any enthusiastic burst of affection, nay, with whom he had perhaps frequently quarrelled; ask him, I say, why he is so deeply affected at the loss of gratifications of which he had often slighted the possession,-and he will answer, "It is not that my affection for my friend was colder, when he was always near me than now when he is going from me; but that his many good qualities impress me with tenfold power now that they cast their parting light upon that dismal void, that cheerless Solitude, which will inevitably succeed his departure. It is not that I now dis |