The journey to Italy was undertaken by advice of Sir James Clark,reckoned the chief authority in pulmonary therapeutics;who prophesied important improvements from it,and perhaps even the possibility henceforth of living all the year in some English home.Mrs.Sterling and the children continued in a house avowedly temporary,a furnished house at Hastings,through the winter.The two friends had set off for Belgium,while the due warmth was still in the air.They traversed Belgium,looking well at pictures and such objects;ascended the Rhine;rapidly traversed Switzerland and the Alps;issuing upon Italy and Milan,with immense appetite for pictures,and time still to gratify themselves in that pursuit,and be deliberate in their approach to Rome.We will take this free-flowing sketch of their passage over the Alps;written amid "the rocks of Arona,"--Santo Borromeo's country,and poor little Mignon's!The "elder Perdonnets"are opulent Lausanne people,to whose late son Sterling had been very kind in Madeira the year before:--"_To Mrs.Sterling,Knightsbridge,London_.
"ARONA on the LAGO MAGGIORE,8th Oct.,1838.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I bring down the story of my proceedings to the present time since the 29th of September.I think it must have been after that day that I was at a great breakfast at the elder Perdonnets',with whom I had declined to dine,not choosing to go out at night....I was taken by my hostess to see several pretty pleasure-grounds and points of view in the neighborhood;and latterly Calvert was better,and able to go with us.He was in force again,and our passports were all settled so as to enable us to start on the morning of the 2d,after taking leave of our kind entertainer with thanks for her infinite kindness.
"We reached St.Maurice early that evening;having had the Dent du Midi close to us for several hours;glittering like the top of a silver teapot,far up in the sky.Our course lay along the Valley of the Rhone;which is considered one of the least beautiful parts of Switzerland,and perhaps for this reason pleased us,as we had not been prepared to expect much.We saw,before reaching the foot of the Alpine pass at Brieg,two rather celebrated Waterfalls;the one the Pissevache,which has no more beauty than any waterfall one hundred or two hundred feet high must necessarily have:the other,near Tourtemagne,is much more pleasing,having foliage round it,and being in a secluded dell.If you buy a Swiss Waterfall,choose this one.
"Our second day took us through Martigny to Sion,celebrated for its picturesque towers upon detached hills,for its strong Romanism and its population of _cretins_,--that is,maimed idiots having the _goitre_.It looked to us a more thriving place than we expected.
They are building a great deal;among other things,a new Bishop's Palace and a new Nunnery,--to inhabit either of which _ex officio_Ifeel myself very unsuitable.From Sion we came to Brieg;a little village in a nook,close under an enormous mountain and glacier,where it lies like a molehill,or something smaller,at the foot of a haystack.Here also we slept;and the next day our voiturier,who had brought us from Lausanne,started with us up the Simplon Pass;helped on by two extra horses.
"The beginning of the road was rather cheerful;having a good deal of green pasturage,and some mountain villages;but it soon becomes dreary and savage in aspect,and but for our bright sky and warm air,would have been truly dismal.However,we gained gradually a distinct and near view of several large glaciers;and reached at last the high and melancholy valleys of the Upper Alps;where even the pines become scanty,and no sound is heard but the wheels of one's carriage,except when there happens to be a storm or an avalanche,neither of which entertained us.There is,here and there,a small stream of water pouring from the snow;but this is rather a monotonous accompaniment to the general desolation than an interruption of it.The road itself is certainly very good,and impresses one with a strong notion of human power.But the common descriptions are much exaggerated;and many of what the Guide-Books call 'galleries'are merely parts of the road supported by a wall built against the rock,and have nothing like a roof above them.The 'stupendous bridges,'as they are called,might be packed,a dozen together,into one arch of London Bridge;and they are seldom even very striking from the depth below.The roadway is excellent,and kept in the best order.On the whole,I am very glad to have travelled the most famous road in Europe,and to have had delightful weather for doing so,as indeed we have had ever since we left Lausanne.The Italian descent is greatly more remarkable than the other side.