Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

PLATES XXV.-XXVI.

A SWISS COTTAGE.

"Above me are the Alps,

The palaces of Nature-whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps
And throned Eternity in icy halls,

Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
The avalanche-the thunderbolt of snow!

All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
Gather around these summits, as to show

How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below."

BYRON'S Childe Harold, Canto iii.

THE annexed design in the style of the cottages in Switzerland, is adapted for such situations as Torquay, Babbicombe, Linton, and Ilfracombe, in Devonshire, where all the scenery is in the Swiss character. The châteaux in Switzerland are of larger dimensions than the cottages, and have round staircase-towers, with conical roofs attached to them, and are for the most part romantically situated, perhaps, few equal to that of Coppet, near Geneva, once the dwelling of the celebrated Madame de Staël. The Swiss cottages are generally based on a stone plateau or terrace, from which the most enchanting views are obtained of mountain and glen; the superstructure or upper floors are wholly constructed of wood, (usually larch) hewn smoothly, and joined closely together: they have great projecting roofs on brackets. The basement floor is a kind of store-house or cellar, and seldom inhabited, as the winter snows fall so deeply as to rise to the level of more than five or six feet. A gallery outside usually surrounds the upper or bedroom story, canopied, or protected by the overhanging roof above; the ascent to this gallery is by a step-ladder, likewise on the outside. The external studd-work walls and roof are covered with very small wood-shingles, which in appearance when laid on, resemble the scales of a coat of mail. Each house has a large stove, contrived to diffuse warmth around, and to answer all the purposes of cooking. Near this stove, in some cottages, which is generally handsome, and always kept bright, is a small staircase leading to the second floor. The windows extend in horizontal length along nearly all the breadth of the end walls, and occasionally so in the front walls; they are formed of small, square quarries of glass set in wood

casements.

Thus, where there are fine woods, the architecture of the houses is not only ingenious but fancifully picturesque. In the canton of Glarus, the houses are built of wood on stone terraces, large, solid, and compact, with great penthouse roofs, hanging very low, and projecting from six to eight feet beyond the foundations, supported on carved brackets, and covered with oak shingles. They have each a gallery and staircase on the outside, or rather step-ladders to ascend to the upper story. The peculiar structure of these roofs is of use to keep off the snow, which, though Switzerland is a mild country, yet it lies constantly upon the tops of the glaciers, and at times rushes down the mountains in a frightful and terrific manner.*

* Of the Swiss towns, Schaffhausen is one of the most ancient; the site is healthy, the streets mostly broad, and the houses have polygonal projecting bay-windows; the fronts are also ornamented on the outside with paintings, and have in addition, as well as the name of the proprietor, that of the architect, and date when built. At Lucerne, the mill bridge, which is a covered structure, built in 1403, is very remarkable; here are thirty-six paintings, representing the Dance of Death, copied by Melager. Chapel Bridge, sixteen hundred feet long, and built in 1303, is ornamented with one hundred and fifty-four paintings, nine of which are historical, the others pretend to relate to passages in the lives of St. Leger and St. Maurice, the patrons of the town. And the Hof-Bridge, fourteen hundred feet long, also covered and decorated with two hundred and thirty-eight paintings of subjects from the Old and New Testament.-(My Note Book.)

The chalets are small huts among the Alps, which frequently appear on the hills, erected for the cowherds and their families, and as nightly shelter for the cattle. The walls are of rough stone, and about four feet high; the superstructure is of fir-poles and feather-edge boards; some are constructed wholly of poles, laid on each other horizontally, and fastened at the ends. The interior is divided into two apartments, one for the family, and the other for the cattle; but all the partition between them is a cratch, raised about eighteen inches only from the ground. To this the cows are tied, and over them they thrust their heads into the room where the family are sitting, in order to share their fire, and to partake of their society. Such fellowship has man with beast in a pastoral state, and so accustomed does the beast become to the domestic life of man, as to occasion the Poet to observe"Men mix with beasts, joint-tenants of the shade."-GOLDSMITH's Traveller.

SWISS CHAIRS.

SWISS TABLE.

SWISS FURNITURE.

Swiss furniture is of two kinds, one appropriated for the cottage, the other for the château: we shall here confine our description to the latter, which has been found in the house of a celebrated character. At Morat, in Switzerland, in the chamber which Jean Jacques Rousseau occupied, there still remains the furniture as he left it; there is the bed on which he slept, the chair on which he sat, the table on which he ate, and the one on which he wrote. The chairs have wreathed backs and turned legs, with balls at the top at each side. The bedsteads are low, of the half-tester kind, and with posts turned in beach-wood, and placed in recesses, which have folding-doors to shut up by day like a cupboard. The tables are here some oblong and others round, supported with pillar and claws, others have four turned legs. At Geneva, the furniture in the inns is of the most simple form, the rooms small, and without an antechamber.-(M. Valery's Travels in Switzerland, p. 2.)

SWISS GARDENS.

"Nature," observes Hirschfeldt "has been liberal to the inhabitants of Switzerland: almost all the gardens are theatres of true beauty, without vain ornaments or artificial decorations. The château gardens excel in rustic buildings and arbours, and are for the most part a mixture of orchards on hilly surfaces, cultivated spots, and rocks. A taste for flowers is very popular in Switzerland, and which is particularly displayed on the occasion of the birth of a child. When the news is carried about to all the relations and friends of the family, the maid is dressed in her best attire, and carries a huge nosegay of the finest flowers the season affords." Botany, says Mr. Martin, (L'Hermite en Suisse) is a favourite study among the Swiss, and rearing flowers a common pursuit, and, excepting Holland, says Meinster, (a native of Zurich,) I doubt if there be elsewhere a town where rare indigenous and exotic flowers are so diligently cultivated, the Rhododendron ferrugineum thriving here in some places, but not so common as in Maryland. (See Mrs. Trollope's America.) The mountain-ash, with its clustering scarlet berries, grows on the slopes; the birch flourishes in the rocky crevices and heights of the pleasure-grounds, and the chestnut blooms beside the streams. Gardens, in which are masses of rock, over which water is seen to trickle, belts and groups of firs on the summits of the high ground, some of immense size, and in the near view graceful festoons of grapes, in the garden; cherries and other fruit-trees in the orchard; apple-trees as well as on the mountain-side: all these abound in Switzerland.

SWISS SCENERY.

A panorama more truly astonishing than Switzerland, no other part of the globe presents; it exhibits so surprising a diversity of landscape, interesting and ever new in their features. Nowhere do such extremes meet as in Switzerland, where eternal Alpine snows are fringed by green and luxuriant parterres, where enormous icebergs rise above the valleys, breathing aromatic scents, and blest with an Italian spring, and where the temperature of each zone alternately reign within two or three leagues. The Swiss scenery is allowed by all travellers to be the most diversified, the most picturesque, grand, and terrific in the world. The cloud-capt Alps, rising at several hundred feet, from which avalanches fall, rushing down the ravins, will travel from six to seven miles, burying houses, fields, and cattle; glaciers on each side, and precipices, crested with firs, and disjointed rocks, over which water is leaping downwards, and foaming into the abyss below, producing the most sublime effect on the mind of the traveller. Another traveller has sketched the Pays de Vaud in the following terms, "Nothing can surpass the glowing magnificence of a summer's evening in this fairy region. When the sun descends beyond Mount Jura, the Alpine summits reflect for a long time the bright ruddy splendour, and the quiet lake, unruffled by a breeze, assumes the appearance of liquid gold. In the distance rises the vast chain of Alps, with their seas of ice and boundless regions of snow, contrasted with the near and more pleasing objects of glowing vineyards and golden corn-fields, and interspersed with the wooded brow, the verdant and tranquil valley, with white villas, hamlets, and sparkling streams."

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]
« НазадПродовжити »