Duke of Hamilton, “You are North Britons; I am the only Scotchman amongst you born before the accursed union.”
As regards the Savoyards whom we saw at Aix and the neighbourhood, nothing could exceed their quiet, mild, and amiable manners—civility without servility. With above six thousand visitors to a small town, converted for the season into one vast lodging-house or hotel, nothing of the corruption of manners of such places seems to have taken place. You are asked in a mild, gentle voice if you want a carriage, or a boat, or a nice donkey. No pressure, no crowding, nor abuse. The peasants have the same mild manners. A family out of Aix were gathering their grapes, much cut up by the mildew and the bad season; nothing could exceed the gentlemanlike manner in which the father, assisted by wife and daughters, selected the few ripest of the red grapes to give us, saying of the white ones, “I should offer you some of those, but they are not ripe.” The very dogs are quiet and well-behaved; and there was one lame boy on crutches, just out of Chambery, with a beautiful face and a pair of gold ear-rings, who submitted himself as an object of charity by reason of his lameness, with a delicacy of manner that made Sterne’s beggar not a caricature. This had nothing in it of the Italian lady begging with fan and mantilla, or the Spanish beggar who collected from the charitable on horseback.
In writing of Aix, I may be mistaken, and possibly many more may have visited the country than I suppose. For myself, for many years during the autumn an old continental traveller, although I had more than once crossed the Mont Cenis, and passed through Chambery, it so happened I had never seen the Lac du Bourget nor Aix les Bains. There was a celebrated judge of former times much addicted to foreign travel, about the time the Continent was opened in 1814, but who, being stronger in law than geography, came back after a long vacation ramble and announced the discovery of Treves and Prague as new places in Europe, with an earnestness such as Cook or Bruce might have displayed with regard to one of their discoveries. I do not pretend, however, to have discovered Aix, but I think I may infer that it is not much frequented by the English, as, out of from six to seven thousand visitors last season, not above seven per cent. consisted of our countrymen.
Now, however, besides calling attention to a beautiful country, and a town filled with every accommodation at a reasonable price, it is probable that many who now seek overcrowded English watering-places, or who put up with the discomforts of such places abroad as Vichy, may be induced to go to Aix, seeing it is now but a short day by railroad from London to Paris, and from thence to Aix one long day; or the journey might be divided into two short days, stopping at Dijon or Maçon. Two hours after leaving the latter town, the train arrives at Amberieu. Here the traveller is transferred to the Victor Emmanuel railway (a pleasant name for the lovers of liberty), which traverses in all its windings the beautiful valley or gorge terminating at Culoz; now stopping at picturesque out-of-the-world little towns or villages, where the flying train is still an object of wonder, and now again rushing on for another two hours through the wildest scenery of uninhabited rock and mountain.
At Culoz, the Rhone is crossed, and the railway, coasting the eastern shore of the lake of Bourget in its entire length, deposits the traveller in less than an hour at the Aix station, continuing its course for another half-hour to Chambery. Nothing can be well more beautiful and sheltered than the situation of Aix, a few miles below the head of the lake, in the midst of its cultivated slopes covered with vineyards and gardens, or small woods, or clumps of trees, and enlivened with bright country houses of all sizes, and dotted about at all heights, the Swiss style of architecture, with external galleries and overhanging eaves, prevailing. The shutters both within and without all the houses, as well as the cultivation of the Indian corn, are sufficient evidence of the summer warmth of this sunny valley.
Behind all this smiling prospect is a fine backing of mountains, often from their form leading one to suppose that gigantic ruined castles crowned their heights, and which in the middle of October began to exhibit new beauties in the partially fallen snow; while, at the same time, the grander chain of mountains beyond Chambery and the head of the lake appeared like real snow mountains.
On the western shore of the lake, and opposite Aix, the scenery is of a totally different and far grander character. The cultivated plateaus, farms, and small villages, are few and at a considerable height; sometimes even the road on that side seems to disappear, and the rocky mountain sides of the Dent du Chat, nearly five thousand feet high, to come sheer down into the lake.
Although it is possible to scale the sides of the Cat, and to reach the highest pinnacle, the Tooth, it is more pleasing to dwell on the more sunny side of Aix—on the sloping protected sides of the hill and village of St. Innocent, the Provence of Savoy, where is the beautiful villa of the Baron Despine, Director of the Baths, and where the best wine, which has somewhat the character of Burgundy, is grown, as well as many trees suited to the climate of the south of France; or on the wooded hill of Treserve, which, though between 600 and 700 feet, seems, partly from the clearness of the atmosphere, but a mere sloping bank, over which the “Cat’s Tooth,” on the other side of the lake, looks towering down.
The hospitable custom is common here of leaving the gates of gardens, and even larger domains, open, and it is an understood thing that strangers may walk round the same,—indeed, sometimes they are politely invited to do so. Some of the country houses, built on the top of Treserve, have their gardens and vineyards sloping down to the lake, and some of the most beautiful views of lake and mountain are obtained from the openings in the long arboured or trellised walks.
There is nothing very peculiar in the costume of the peasants, if I except the women’s large mob-shaped cap of calico or finer material, the head-piece of which is stiffened and flattened out