Transcriber's Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
HISTORY
OF
A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
THROUGH
A PART OF FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, GERMANY, AND HOLLAND:
WITH LETTERS
DESCRIPTIVE OF
A SAIL ROUND THE LAKE OF GENEVA, AND OF THE GLACIERS OF CHAMOUNI.
PREFACE.
Nothing can be more unpresumingthan this little volume. It containsthe account of some desultory visitsby a party of young people to sceneswhich are now so familiar to our countrymen,that few facts relating to themcan be expected to have escaped themany more experienced and exact observers,who have sent their journalsto the press. In fact, they have donelittle else than arrange the few materialsivwhich an imperfect journal, andtwo or three letters to their friends inEngland afforded. They regret, sincetheir little History is to be offered tothe public, that these materials werenot more copious and complete. Thisis a just topic of censure to thosewho are less inclined to be amusedthan to condemn. Those whose youthhas been past as theirs (with whatsuccess it imports not) in pursuing,like the swallow, the inconstant summerof delight and beauty which investsthis visible world, will perhapsfind some entertainment in followingthe author, with her husband andsister, on foot, through part of Franceand Switzerland, and in sailing withvher down the castled Rhine, throughscenes beautiful in themselves, butwhich, since she visited them, a greatPoet has clothed with the freshness ofa diviner nature. They will be interestedto hear of one who has visitedMellerie, and Clarens, and Chillon, andVevai—classic ground, peopled withtender and glorious imaginations of thepresent and the past.
They have perhaps never talked withone who has beheld in the enthusiasmof youth the glaciers, and the lakes,and the forests, and the fountains ofthe mighty Alps. Such will perhapsforgive the imperfections of their narrativefor the sympathy which theadventures and feelings which it recounts,viand a curiosity respectingscenes already rendered interesting andillustrious, may excite.
The Poem, entitled “Mont Blanc,”is written by the author of the two lettersfrom Chamouni and Vevai. It wascomposed under the immediate impressionof the deep and powerful feelingsexcited by the objects which it attemptsto describe; and as an undisciplinedoverflowing of the soul, rests its claimto approbation on an attempt to imitatethe untameable wildness and inaccessiblesolemnity from which those feelingssprang.
HISTORY
OF
A SIX WEEKS' TOUR.
1It is now nearly three years since thisJourney too