Which Make Up A Pleasant And
Refreshing Scene, After The Dusty Roads.
But, unless you would
like to dwell on an enormous plain, with jagged rows of irregular
poplars on it, that look in the distance like so many combs with
broken teeth:
And unless you would like to pass your life without
the possibility of going up-hill, or going up anything but stairs:
you would hardly approve of Chalons as a place of residence.
You would probably like it better, however, than Lyons: which you
may reach, if you will, in one of the before-mentioned steamboats,
in eight hours.
What a city Lyons is! Talk about people feeling, at certain
unlucky times, as if they had tumbled from the clouds! Here is a
whole town that is tumbled, anyhow, out of the sky; having been
first caught up, like other stones that tumble down from that
region, out of fens and barren places, dismal to behold! The two
great streets through which the two great rivers dash, and all the
little streets whose name is Legion, were scorching, blistering,
and sweltering. The houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten
as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem
the city in, these houses swarm; and the mites inside were lolling
out of the windows, and drying their ragged clothes on poles, and
crawling in and out at the doors, and coming out to pant and gasp
upon the pavement, and creeping in and out among huge piles and
bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods; and living, or rather not
dying till their time should come, in an exhausted receiver. Every
manufacturing town, melted into one, would hardly convey an
impression of Lyons as it presented itself to me: for all the
undrained, unscavengered qualities of a foreign town, seemed
grafted, there, upon the native miseries of a manufacturing one;
and it bears such fruit as I would go some miles out of my way to
avoid encountering again.
In the cool of the evening: or rather in the faded heat of the
day: we went to see the Cathedral, where divers old women, and a
few dogs, were engaged in contemplation. There was no difference,
in point of cleanliness, between its stone pavement and that of the
streets; and there was a wax saint, in a little box like a berth
aboard ship, with a glass front to it, whom Madame Tussaud would
have nothing to say to, on any terms, and which even Westminster
Abbey might be ashamed of. If you would know all about the
architecture of this church, or any other, its dates, dimensions,
endowments, and history, is it not written in Mr. Murray's Guide-
Book, and may you not read it there, with thanks to him, as I did!
For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the curious clock
in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small mistake I made, in
connection with that piece of mechanism. The keeper of the church
was very anxious it should be shown; partly for the honour of the
establishment and the town; and partly, perhaps, because of his
deriving a percentage from the additional consideration. However
that may be, it was set in motion, and thereupon a host of little
doors flew open, and innumerable little figures staggered out of
them, and jerked themselves back again, with that special
unsteadiness of purpose, and hitching in the gait, which usually
attaches to figures that are moved by clock-work. Meanwhile, the
Sacristan stood explaining these wonders, and pointing them out,
severally, with a wand. There was a centre puppet of the Virgin
Mary; and close to her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another
and a very ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I
ever saw accomplished: instantly flopping back again at sight of
her, and banging his little door violently after him. Taking this
to be emblematic of the victory over Sin and Death, and not at all
unwilling to show that I perfectly understood the subject, in
anticipation of the showman, I rashly said, 'Aha! The Evil Spirit.
To be sure. He is very soon disposed of.' 'Pardon, Monsieur,'
said the Sacristan, with a polite motion of his hand towards the
little door, as if introducing somebody--'The Angel Gabriel!'
Soon after daybreak next morning, we were steaming down the Arrowy
Rhone, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, in a very dirty vessel
full of merchandise, and with only three or four other passengers
for our companions: among whom, the most remarkable was a silly,
old, meek-faced, garlic-eating, immeasurably polite Chevalier, with
a dirty scrap of red ribbon hanging at his button-hole, as if he
had tied it there to remind himself of something; as Tom Noddy, in
the farce, ties knots in his pocket-handkerchief.
For the last two days, we had seen great sullen hills, the first
indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance. Now, we were
rushing on beside them: sometimes close beside them: sometimes
with an intervening slope, covered with vineyards. Villages and
small towns hanging in mid-air, with great woods of olives seen
through the light open towers of their churches, and clouds moving
slowly on, upon the steep acclivity behind them; ruined castles
perched on every eminence; and scattered houses in the clefts and
gullies of the hills; made it very beautiful. The great height of
these, too, making the buildings look so tiny, that they had all
the charm of elegant models; their excessive whiteness, as
contrasted with the brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull, heavy
green of the olive-tree; and the puny size, and little slow walk of
the Lilliputian men and women on the bank; made a charming picture.
There were ferries out of number, too; bridges; the famous Pont
d'Esprit, with I don't know how many arches; towns where memorable
wines are made; Vallence, where Napoleon studied; and the noble
river, bringing at every winding turn, new beauties into view.
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