Page images
PDF
EPUB

self in another, now startled with the explosive roar of avalanches of rock, and now deafened with the thunders of crashing icebergs. Even the imagination of the poet will gather the purest elements of its food amidst these vast, grand, and beautiful solitudes. The Spirits of the air, indeed, the poet's aides-decamp, have already made the glaciers sacred to their revels and their vigils.'

"We nightly tread

The glassy ocean of the mountain ice,
We skim its rugged breakers, which put on
The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam,

Frozen in a moment-a dead whirlpool's roar.'

And assuming the diadem of snow,' and the sceptre of ice, they have seated themselves on their thrones of crystal, and presume even to give laws to the glacier and the avalanche :Around his waist are forests braced,

The avalanche in his hand;
But, ere it fall, that thundering ball
Must pause for my command.
The glacier's cold and restless mass
Moves onward day by day;
But I am he who bids it pass,
Or with its ice delay.'

But while Professor Forbes's work is thus pregnant with interest, as the record of travels through a region at once grand and picturesque, planted in the very heart of European civilization, and occupied by an active and intelligent race, enjoying the blessings of civil and religious liberty, it is entitled to take a much higher place, as a work of original and successful research, teeming with new facts and important generalizations, illustrative of those great physical events which have disturbed the climate as well as the surface of our globe, during the last period of its history. It is in this aspect chiefly that we are to examine it; and with the labours before us of those eminent men who have preceded our author in the same field of enquiry, we cannot but express the feeling of satisfaction-national it may be, but nevertheless impartial and just-that a countryman of our own should have been the first to give a true account of the structure of glaciers, and a correct theory of their descending movements.

For nearly a century the Glaciers of Switzerland have been the subject of anxious research. Travellers from every part of Europe have explored their wonders. Naturalists have plied their vocation amid and around their frozen pinnacles. The mi

right to leave off fighting when they could fight no longer to any purpose; and when the head of the family had given full proof that his sword was worth securing for the King's service; in which service it continued to be employed till its wearer was past fourscore. (At a still later period, however, at the commencement of the movements of the Fronde, this patriarch of aristocratic revolt was again on the point of taking the field against the Court, if a sufficient force had been raised for him.) So far from thinking that La Force needs excuse for dropping 'Lord Grizzle's' part, it is quite clear to us that, had he not lost his footing at court, he never would have assumed it. Editor is much less successful in excusing him (on any public grounds) for having taken up arms than for having laid them down again.

The

The Protestants should have been more than satisfied with the guarantees given them by the Edict of Nantes. By using for aggression the position which had been given them for security, they reopened the whole question of their rights with a bigoted Catholic government and community; and by provoking the collision of their weak and divided minority with the increased power of the crown, they provoked, and almost justified, the curtailment of their franchises which was the consequence. We do not speak of Louis XIV.'s final revocation of the Edict of Nantes; that was an act of sheer superstitious tyranny, adopted from superstitious motives. We speak of the abolition of the political part of the privileges accorded by Henri Quatre, which followed the rashly renewed contest of 1621-the political extinction of the reformed party, consummated by the taking of Rochelle, and the policy of Richelieu.

The accession of Richelieu to power, observes the Editor of these Memoirs, marks a new era. By extinguishing the Huguenots as a party, and humbling the great noblesse, he restored the royal power to undisputed ascendency, and was enabled to employ against foreign enemies the whole effective forces of France, which had previously been consumed amidst intestine discords. He realized the vast project of Henri Quatre, by humiliating the House of Austria. But by levelling social superiorities, abolishing privileges, and dismantling the citadels of the reformed party, he prepared future dangers for the monarchy; since, to raise it to the height of despotism, was to isolate it from its natural supports, and expose it to revolution alone.*

*Two such opposite writers as Alexander Lameth and the Marquis de Ferrières coincide in observing, that the first movements towards the French Revolution were, in their impulse, aristocratical efforts to regain the political importance destroyed by Richelieu.

ART. V.-Travels through the Alps of Savoy, and other parts of the Pennine Chain, with Observations on the Phenomena of Glaciers. By JAMES D. FORBES, F.R.S., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. 8vo. Edinburgh: 1843.

A

MONG the grand truths which, during the last fifty years, have arrested the attention of philosophers, those of Geology occupy a very distinguished place. The history of our globe had been chiefly drawn from the monuments displayed on its surface; and from the more articulate memorials which the sacred writings and human tradition had preserved. But while the historian and the divine were reckoning the world's age from the creation of their own species, the geologist was disinterring from the bowels of the earth the records of still more remote eventsthe mosaics of a pre-existing world-the wrecks of forests which man had neither planted nor cut down, and the spoils of an animal kingdom over which man had never swayed the sceptre.

We have already had occasion, in preceding articles,* to make our readers acquainted with these most interesting studies; but during the brief interval which has since elapsed, the intellectual community has been startled by the promulgation of facts and views, which promise to give us the knowledge of events on the earth's surface more recent than those to which we have referred; yet equally unchronicled in history-equally perplexing to science-and equally interesting as a portion of that scheme of creation, of which so vast an extent remains to be revealed.

In a recent article on the theory of Glaciers,† we have already introduced our readers to this important subject; and have made them acquainted with the latest works on this almost new branch of physics with the various facts which have been accumulated since the time of Gruner and Saussure, and with the different theories by which these facts have been explained. So fully, indeed, have we treated of these topics, that but for the appearance of Professor Forbes's very interesting and instructive work, we should not have been justified in resuming the subject.

The history of our globe exhibits to us three grand periods: the first or preparatory period, when it was enriched only

* See this Journal, Vol. lxii. p. 265, and Vol. lxv. p. 1.
† Ibid, Vol. lxxv. p. 49.

with vegetable life; the second, when it was under the power of the brute creation; and the third, when it was under the dominion of man. This last period is again divisible into two, the antediluvian period, and that in which we ourselves live. During this extensive portion of time, numbering 4300 years, no event has occurred of the same transcendent magnitude as the deluge; but great changes, both of a local and a general nature, have taken place on our globe. Floods of vast extent have swept over its surface; successions of mighty forests have flourished and decayed on the same spot. The seas have, in one region, quitted their ancient beds, and in another invaded and destroyed the habitations of man. Earthquakes have shaken the mountain crests, and dislocated the solid pavement of the globe. Extensive lakes have poured out their contents, and recorded upon their ancient shores the erosions of the winds and waves. Huge masses of rock have been transported from their mountain crags to vast distances in the plains below; and that element with whose desolating power we are all familiar, seems to have at one time exercised a more tremendous energy, when, in the form of glaciers, it descended our valleys with slackened pace but accumulated power-grinding the granite flanks which held it-crushing the forest trunks which stopped it-poising on its crystalline pinnacles huge blocks of stone, and carrying them along its glassy viaduct over valleys now smiling with lakes, and plains now luxuriant with vegetation.

Many of these interesting phenomena have been described in the very valuable work now before us. With the natural history and theory of glaciers, as the more immediate object of his pursuit, Professor Forbes has crossed the principal chain of the Alps twenty-seven times, and by twenty-three different passes-exploring its innermost recesses, and studying the meteorology, mineralogy, and geology of that elevated region. Combining with the ordinary functions of the traveller the patience and toil of the naturalist, and the higher qualifications of the philosopher, he has produced a work of deep and varied interest, rich in its literature, accessible in its science, and teeming with information for all classes of readers. The tourist will be conducted by our author in new paths, through the labyrinth of mountains-he will dwell with him in the glacier hut, descending while he sleeps; he will clamber with him down one face of the yawning chasm, and climb the other by steps cut with his hatchet; he will find himself perched, like the bewildered chamois, among toppling crags of ice, with a chaos of impassable chasms around and beneath him. Escaping from one icy prison, he will soon find him

self in another, now startled with the explosive roar of avalanches of rock, and now deafened with the thunders of crashing icebergs. Even the imagination of the poet will gather the purest elements of its food amidst these vast, grand, and beautiful solitudes. The Spirits of the air, indeed, the poet's aides-decamp, have already made the glaciers sacred to their revels and their vigils.'

-We nightly tread

The glassy ocean of the mountain ice,
We skim its rugged breakers, which put on
The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam,

Frozen in a moment—a dead whirlpool's roar.'

And assuming the diadem of snow,' and the sceptre of ice, they have seated themselves on their thrones of crystal, and presume even to give laws to the glacier and the avalanche :Around his waist are forests braced,

The avalanche in his hand;
But, ere it fall, that thundering ball
Must pause for my command.
The glacier's cold and restless mass
Moves onward day by day;
But I am he who bids it pass,
Or with its ice delay.'

But while Professor Forbes's work is thus pregnant with interest, as the record of travels through a region at once grand and picturesque, planted in the very heart of European civilization, and occupied by an active and intelligent race, enjoying the blessings of civil and religious liberty, it is entitled to take a much higher place, as a work of original and successful research, teeming with new facts and important generalizations, illustrative of those great physical events which have disturbed the climate as well as the surface of our globe, during the last period of its history. It is in this aspect chiefly that we are to examine it; and with the labours before us of those eminent men who have preceded our author in the same field of enquiry, we cannot but express the feeling of satisfaction-national it may be, but nevertheless impartial and just-that a countryman of our own should have been the first to give a true account of the structure of glaciers, and a correct theory of their descending movements.

For nearly a century the Glaciers of Switzerland have been the subject of anxious research. Travellers from every part of Europe have explored their wonders. Naturalists have plied their vocation amid and around their frozen pinnacles. The mi

« PreviousContinue »