Charles James Lever

“ Here I am at Dallas, in the Tyrol, a wild and lonely glen, with a deep and rushing river foaming through it. The mountain in front of me is speckled with wooden chalets, some of them perched on lofty cliffs, not distinct from realms of never-melting snow.
All is poverty on every side; even in the little church, where Piety would deck its shrine at any sacrifice, the altar is bare of ornament. The Cure’s house, too, is humble enough for him who is working yonder in his garden, an old and white-haired man, too feeble and frail for such labour ”

“ Oh! if he had been a man to stand beside his father in the day of battle, or if even now he could hope to see the time when he should be strong of limb as he was of heart... a burst of tears was the ever-present interruption to utterings which, in the eagerness of his devotion, he could not resist from making aloud.
These thoughts now took entire possession of his mind. If the clatter of horses’ hoofs was heard unusually loud over the wooden bridge in the valley, Hans would start up and cry, “Here they are!—the cavalry picquets are upon us!” ”

“ What a road is that from Landeck to Meran!—at once the most beautiful and the grandest of all the Tyrol passes. The gorge is so narrow, that it seems rather like a deep channel cut by the river itself; where, on either side, hundreds of feet in height, rise the rocks—not straight, but actually impending above the head, leaving, in some places, the ravine narrower above than beneath.
Escarped in this rock, the road winds on, protected by a little parapet along the edge of the precipice. ”

“ How brilliant is every thing!—the cloudless sky, the sparkling water, the emerald grass, the foliage in every tint of beauty, the orange-trees and the cactus along the terraces, where lounging parties come and go; and then the measured step of princely equipages, in all the panoply of tasteful wealth! Truly, Vice wears its holiday suit in Baden, and the fairness of this lovely valley seems to throw a softened light over a scene where, as in a sea, the stormy waves of every bad passion are warring. ”

“ I want to be away—afar—from the gorgeous glitter of this splendid capital. Something nigh to misanthropy creeps over me at the sight of pleasures in which I am no more to take a part, and I would not that a feeling thus ungenerous should be my travelling companion. I do not experience the inordinate love of life which, we are told, ever accompanies my malady. If I have a wish to live, it is to frame a different kind of existence from what I have hitherto followed, and I believe most sick people’s love of life is the desire of dwelling longer amid the pursuits they have followed. ”

“ How should I hear of faculties and fortune—life itself—wasted without one object, even a wish, compassed! When I reflect upon the position in life attainable by one who starts with moderate abilities, a large fortune, reasonable habits of industry, and a fair share of well-wishers, and then think of what I now am, I might easily be discontented and dispirited; but if I had really reached the goal, can I say that I should be happy? can I say, that all the success within my reach could have stilled within me the tone of peaceful solitude I have ever cherished as the greatest of blessings? ”

“ Animated and cheerful as the scene is by day, alive with all the instincts and sounds of happy labour, I like bettor to look upon it by night, when all is calm and still, and nothing but the plash of the waterfall stirs the air—to see these quaint old houses, with their sculptured pinnacles and deep-shadowing eaves sleeping in the mellow moonlight—mill and miller sunk in slumber—not a footstep nor a voice to be heard, save one, the village watchman, going his nightly round, chanting his little verse of assuring comfort to the waking ear, and making the sleeper’s dream a peaceful one. ”

“ I like not merely the red-kirtled peasant knee-deep in the river, or the patient fisherman upon his rock; but I have a strong regard—I mean here, where the scene is Nature’s own, and not on canvass—a strong regard for those flitting glimpses of the gayer world, which, in the brightest tints that Fashion sanctions, are caught now, in some deep dell of the Tyrol, now, on some snow-peaked eminence of a Swiss glacier, beside the fast-rolling Danube or the sluggish Nile. ”

“ In a word, and that ere many days had elapsed, I became the reigning favourite of a city in which the love of “art” is an inheritance: for, possessed of a gallery second to none in Europe, the Dresdeners have long enjoyed and profited by the opportunity of contemplating all that is excellent in painting; and, in their enthusiastic admiration of the fine arts, thought no praise too exalted to bestow on one who had asserted the claim of a Saxon painter among the schools of Italy.
To the full and unmeasured intoxication of the flattery that beset me on every side, I now abandoned myself. ”

“ There is something sad, and almost awful, in the sight of a large and populous city bathed in the silence and sleep of night; its busy voice hushed, its streets untrodden, or echoing to the tread of a solitary passer-by. To me this was now most welcome. The dreamy melancholy of my mind felt pleasure in the death-like stillness about me, and I wandered forth to enjoy the free air and balmy breeze upon the bank of the Elbe. After some time I crossed the bridge, and continued my walk through the suburb, intending to return by a beautiful garden which lies on that side of the river. ”

“ But even here, my child, in our own poor village, let thy devotion be a treasure, to be handed down in memory to our children, that they may know how one like themselves—more helpless, too—could serve his Vaterland. Say, Hans Jörgle, will it make thy last moments happier to think that our gratitude will raise a monument to thee in the Dorf, with thy father’s name, who fell at Elchingen, above thine own? ”

“ Not a light twinkles along that vast façade, save in that distant pavilion, where a single star seems glistening—it is the apartment of the King, “The cares of Agamemnon never sleep;” and royalty is scarce more fortunate now than in the days of Homer.
Louis Philippe has a task not less arduous than had Napoleon to found a dynasty. There is little prestige any longer in the name of Bourbon; and the members of his family, brave and high-spirited though they be, are scarcely of the stuff to stand the storm that is brewing for them. ”

“ I felt as though I had been heaping up a store of care and anxiety around me for one I had never seen before, and for whom I could really take no deep interest. One husbands their affections as they grow older. The spendthrift habit of caring for people without even knowing why, or asking wherefore, which is one of the pastimes—and sometimes a right pleasant one, too—of youth, becomes rarer as we go further on in life, till at last we grow to be as grudging of our esteem as of our gold, and lend neither, save on good interest and the best security. ”

“ How I should like once more to be young of heart and limb, and able to travel these winding glens and climb these mountain steeps as once I could have done! Even now, as I sit here in this little “Wirth’s-Haus,” how the old spirit of wandering comes back ‘again as I watch the peasant, with his long staff in hand, braving the mountain side, or standing for a second on some rocky peak, to gaze down into the steep depth below—that narrow valley filled by road and river. ”

“ Now, both these symptoms are in excess, and yet, by habit and some acquired power of conforming to them, I am scarcely aware of their existence. I have learned to look on them as my normal, natural condition. My cough on awaking in the morning—my hectic as night falls—only tell of the day’s dawn and decline. I fancy that this dreamy calm, this spirit of submissive waiting that I feel, is dependent on my infirmity; for how otherwise could I, if strong in mind and body, endure the thraldom of my present life? The watchful egotism of sickness demands the mind of sickness. ”

“ In the whole phenomena of malady, nothing is more striking than the accommodation of the mind to the condition of suffering. I remember once—I was then in all the strength and confidence of youth and health—discussing this point with a friend, a physician of skill and eminence, now no more, and was greatly struck by a theory which was new, at least to me. He regarded every species of disease, from the most simple to the most complicated, as a sanatory process, an effort—not always successful, of course—on the part of Nature to restore the system to its condition of health. ”

“ Poor Chateaubriand! the man who never varied, the man that was humblest before his rightful sovereign, and prouder than the proudest Marshal in presence of the Emperor, how completely forgotten is he—standing like some ruined sign-post to point the way over a road no longer travelled! A more complete revolution was never worked in the social condition of a great kingdom than has taken place in France since the time of the Emperor. The glorious career of conquering armies had invested the soldier’s life with a species of chivalry, that brought back the old days of feudalism again. ”

“ I should like to see Munich once more, or, at least, its gallery. The city is a poor thing, worthy of its people, and, I was going to say—no matter what! Germany, in any case, for the summer, as I am sentenced to die in Italy. I feel I am taking what the Irish call ‘a long day’ in not crossing the Alps till late in autumn!”
How many places there are which one has been near enough to have visited and somehow always neglected to see! and what a longing, craving wish to behold them comes over the heart at such a time as this? ”

“ When evening came I embarked upon the Elbe, and, after a half-hour’s rowing, reached the villa of the Count. Lights gleamed from every window, and delicious music was borne on the night wind, that blew gently along the river. Numerous servants, in gorgeous liveries, passed and repassed along the spacious veranda, which ran the entire length of the building, carrying fruit, wine, and ices to those who preferred the balmy air and starry sky without, to the heat and glitter of the crowded salon within. ”

“ There is, however, something wonderfully interesting in the picture of a royal family living en bourgeois—a King sitting with his spectacles on his forehead and his newspaper on his knee, playfully alluding to observations whose fallacy he alone can demonstrate; a Queen busily engaged amid the toils of the work-table, around which Princesses of every European royalty are seated, gaily chatting over their embroidery, or listening while an amusing book is read out by a husband or a brother: even an American would be struck by such a view of monarchy. ”

“ To me, almost alone in the world, to die suggests few sorrows or regrets; without family, without friends, save those the world’s complaisance calls such; with no direct object for exertion, nothing for hope or fear to cling to; no ambition that I could nourish, no dream of greatness or distinction to elevate me above the thought of daily suffering; life is a mere monotony—and the monotony of waiting. ”

“ It is the hour of the theatre—the Theatre, the sole great passion of the nation, the one rallying point for every grade and class. Thither, now, all repair; and for a brief interval the silent streets of the city bustle with the life and movement of the inhabitants, as, on foot or in carriages, they hasten past.
The “business of the scène” is the very least among the attractions of a theatre in Italy. The opera-box is the drawing-room, the only one of an Italian lady; it is the club-room of the men. ”

“ I believe, after all, one should be as lenient in their judgment of men’s change of fealty in France as they are indulgent to the capricious fancies of a spoiled beauty. The nation, like a coquette, had every thing its own way. The cold austerities of principle had yielded to the changeful fortunes of success for so many years, that men very naturally began to feel that instability and uncertainty were the normal state of things, and that to hold fast one set of opinions was like casting anchor in a stream when we desired to be carried along by the current. ”

“ Heaven knows whether they had strayed back to the bold days of Wallenstein, or the siege of Prague, or were now, with the stormy cataract of the Danube—at the iron gate, as it is called, the desperate scene of many a bloody meeting between Turks and Austrians.
“Hans, love, dost hear me? I say, thou canst buy a bow with arrows; thou hast long been wishing for one. But bring no more books of battles, child,” added she, more feelingly; “strife and war have cost us both dearly. If thy father had not served the Kaiser, he would not have fallen at Elchingen.” ”

“ Furnished and lighted up according to the taste and at the discretion of the owner, they present to eyes only habituated to our theatres the strangest variety, and even discordance, of aspect: some, brilliant in wax-light and gorgeous in decoration, glitter with the jewelled dresses of the gay company; others, mysteriously sombre, shew the shadowy outlines of an almost shrouded group, dimly visible in the distance.
The theatre is the very spirit and essence of life in Italy. ”

“ Few, very few persons can bring themselves by an effort to believe that they are dying—easy as it seems, often as we talk of it, frequent as the very expression becomes in a colloquialism, it is still a most difficult process; but once thoroughly felt, there is an engrossing power, in the thought that excludes all others.’
At times, indeed, Hope will triumph for a brief interval, and “tell of bright days to come.” Hope! the glorious phantom that we follow up the Rhine—through the deep glens of the Tyrol, and over the Alps!—Only content to die when we have lost it! ”