CHAP. LVIII. 1809. 9. Their religious feelings sions. Superstitions, too, of a gentler and more holy kind have arisen from the devout feelings of the people, and the associations connected with the particular spots where persons of extraordinary sanctity have dwelt. In many of the farthest recesses of the mountains, on the verge of perpetual desolation, hermits in former times had fixed and imprestheir abode; and the imagination of the peasant still fancies that their spirits hover around the spots where their earthly trials were endured. Shepherds, who have passed in the gloom of the evening by the cell where the bones of a saint are laid, relate that they distinctly heard his voice, as he repeated his vesper prayers, and saw his form, as he knelt before the crucifix which the piety of succeeding ages had erected in his hermitage. The image of many a patron saint has been seen to shed tears when a reverse has happened to the Tyrolese arms; and the garlands which are hung round the crosses of the Virgin wither when the hand which raised them has fallen in battle. Peasants who have been driven by a storm to take shelter in the little chapels which are scattered over the country, have seen the crucifix bow its head, and solemn music is heard at vespers in the higher places of worship among the mountains. The distant pealing of the organ, and the chant of innumerable voices, are there dis- 1 Barth. tinctly heard; and the peasant, when returning at night 1809, 382, from the chase, often trembles when he beholds funeral 394. Perprocessions clothed in white, marching in silence through mation. the gloom of the forests, or slowly moving on the clouds that float over the summits of the mountains.1 It may easily be imagined how strongly these feelings were excited by the approach of the war of deliverance in 1809. The emissaries of Austria had long before prepared the people for revolt; foreign oppression had led led them to desire it with passionate ardour; unknown to Bavaria, the whole population were impatiently expecting the signal to rise. During this period of anxious expectation, the excited minds of the people clothed the air with an unusual number of imaginary appearances. In the gloom of the evening, endless files of visionary soldiers, clad in the Austrian uniform-cavalry, infantry, and artillery-were seen to traverse the mountain-tops. The creaking of the wheels, the tramp of the horses, the Krieg von sonal Infor 10. Omens which were observed on the approach of the war. LVIII. 1809. CHAP. heavy tread of marching columns, intermingled with wild bursts of laughter and shouts of triumph, were distinctly heard; but all was hushed, and the spectres melted into mist and vapour, when the anxiety of the spectators induced them to approach too nearly. The Tyrolese, nay, the Bavarian sentinels themselves, often beheld the Emperor's tower in the fortress of Kufstein surrounded with lambent fire; and the Austrian banners, wrapped in flames, were seen to wave at night over the towers of Sterzing. Withered arms appeared to stretch themselves from the rocks in the most secluded recesses of the mountains; vast armies of visionary soldiers, with banners flying, and all the splendour of military triumph, were seen at sunrise reflected in the lakes which lay on the Salzburg and Bavarian frontiers. When the widows and orphans of the fallen warriors knelt before the 1 Personal Virgin, the flowers and garlands placed round the image, Information. according to the amiable custom of Catholic countries, Barth. Krieg and which had remained there till they had withered, burst forth in renovated beauty, and spread their fraHofer, 17, 32. grance around the altar, as if to mark the joy of the dead for the approaching deliverance of their country.1 von 1809, 474, 482. Gesch. And. 11. Powerful religious feelings of the people. The most remarkable feature in the national character of the Tyrolese is their uniform piety: a principle which is nowhere more universally diffused than in their sequestered valleys. The most cursory view of the country is sufficient to demonstrate the strong hold which religion has taken of the minds of the peasantry. Chapels are built almost at every half mile, on the principal roads, in which the traveller may perform his devotions, or which may awaken his thoughts to a recollection of his spiritual duties. The rude efforts of art have there been exerted to portray the events of our Saviour's life; and innumerable figures, carved in wood, attest in every part of the country, both the barbarous taste of the people and the fervour of their religious impressions. Even in the higher parts of the mountains, where hardly any vestiges of human cultivation are to be found, in the depths of untrodden forests, or on the summit of seemingly inaccessible cliffs, the symbols of devotion are to be found, and the cross rises every where amidst the wilderness, as if to mark the triumph of religion over the greatest obstacles of nature. Nor is it only in the solitudes or deserts that the proofs of their devotion are to be found. In the valleys and in the cities it still preserves its ancient sway over the people. On the exterior of most houses, the legend of some favourite saint, or the sufferings of some popular martyr, are delineated; and the inhabitant deems himself secure from the greater evils of life under such heavenly guardianship. In every valley CHAP. LVIII. 1809, numerous spires are to be seen, rising amidst the beauty of the surrounding scene, and reminding the traveller on the eastern frontier and in the Styrian fields, by the cupola form in which they are constructed, of his approach to the regions of the East. On Sunday, the whole people flock to church in their neatest and gayest attire; and so great is the number who thus frequent these places of worship, that it is not uncommon to see the peasants kneeling on the turf in the churchyard while mass is performed, from being unable to find a place within their walls. Regularly in the evening, prayers are read in every family; and the traveller who passes through the villages at the hour of twilight, Personal often sees through their latticed windows the young and Barth. Krieg the old kneeling together round their humble fire, or is du Tyroler warned of his approach to human habitation by hearing 64, 72. their hymns stealing through the silence and solitude of the forest.1 1 Observation. Landleute, 12. Nor has their religion become corrupted by many of the errors which, in more advanced stages of civilisation, have dimmed the light or perverted the usefulness of Practical the Catholic church. Mingled, indeed, with a large inter- utility of the priests. mixture of superstition, and interwoven as it is with innumerable legends and visionary tales, it yet preserves enough of the pure spirit of its divine origin to influence, in a great degree, the conduct of their private lives. The Tyrolese have not yet learned that immorality in private may be absolved by ceremony in public, or that the profession of faith can win a dispensation from the rules of obedience. The purchase of absolution by money is almost unknown among them: and absolution is never conferred, unless application for it is accompanied, according to the true Catholic principle, by the profession at least of genuine repentance. In no part of the world are the domestic VOL. XII. X CHAP. 1809. 1 Tacitus de Mor. Germ. or conjugal duties more strictly or faithfully performed : "Nec corrumpere et corrumpi seculum vocatur.' "1* In none do the parish priests exercise a stricter or more conscientious control over the conduct of their flocks. Their influence is not weakened, as in a more advanced state of society, by a discordance of religious tenets; nor is the consideration due to their sacred function lost in the homage paid to rank, opulence, or power. Placed in the midst of a people who acknowledge no superiors, and who live almost universally on the produce of their little domains; strangers alike to the arts of luxury and the seductions of fashion, the parish priests are equally removed from temptation themselves, and relieved from the necessity of guarding against the great sources of wickedness in others. Each pastor is at once the priest and the judge of his parishioners, the infallible criterion in matters of faith, and the general umpire in the occasional disputes which occur among them. Hence has arisen that remarkable veneration for their spiritual guides by which the peasantry are distinguished; and it is to this cause that we are to ascribe the fact, common to Tyrol with La Observation. Vendée, that, while their nobles were generally absent or Barth, Krieg lukewarm in the cause, the people followed with alacrity von 1809, 24, the call of their pastors to take up arms in behalf of their religion and ancient princes.2 2 Personal 31. 13. difference in modern times. In ancient times the Alps were inhabited by fierce and barbarous tribes,-and the classical writers have exhausted Remarkable their eloquence in painting the horrors of the climate and this respect of the savage manners of the inhabitants of those unexplored ancient and regions.† Often the Roman legions were impeded in their progress, sometimes thinned in their numbers, by these cruel barbarians; and even after the mountaineers of the Rhætian Alps had been reduced to subjection by the expedition of Drusus, it was still esteemed a service of the utmost danger to deviate from the highways, and even an affair of considerable peril to traverse the passes by the great roads themselves. Almost all the inscriptions on the votive offerings which have been discovered *"Nor to corrupt and be corrupted is called the manners of the age." + " Nivesque cœlo prope immixtæ, tecta informia imposita rupibus, pecora jumentaque torrida frigore, homines intonsi et inculti, animalia inanimaque omnia rigentia gelu; cætera visu, quam dictu, fœdiora, terrorem renovârunt."-LIVY, lib. xxi. CHAP. LVIII. 1809. in such numbers around the ruins of the temple of Jupiter Penninus, on the Great St Bernard, and which come down to the latest periods of the empire, are filled with warm expressions of gratitude for having escaped the extraordinary perils of the passage. Hence the singular fact, almost incredible in modern times, that even in the days of Pliny, several hundred years after the first passage of the Alps by the Roman troops, the sources both of the Rhine and the Iser were unknown; and that the naturalist of Rome was content to state, a century subsequent to the establishment of a Roman station at Sion in the Valais, that "the Rhine took its rise in the most hidden parts of the earth, in the region of perpetual night, amidst forests for ever inaccessible to human approach." Few attempts appear to have been made by any of the Romans in later times to explore the remoter recesses of the mountains, now so familiar to every traveller; none to reclaim or humanise their inhabitants: their reduction, even by the legions, is enumerated with pride, as one of the greatest exploits of the Emperors.1 Plin. iii. 24 Magnificent highways, constructed across their summits, connected Italy with the northern provinces of the empire; but they suffered the valleys on either side to remain in their pristine state of barbarism, and the Roman colonists hastened into more distant regions to spread that cultivation of which the Alps, with their rude inhabitants, seemed to them incapable. This inability to civilise a vast amphitheatre of mountains in the heart of their empire, would appear inconceivable in so great a people as the Romans, did we not perceive the counterpart of it in the present condition of the Caucasian range, the inhabitants of which maintain a savage independence in the midst of all the civilisation and power of the Russian empire, and the predatory habits of whom are sufficiently evinced by their proverbial expressions, notwithstanding all the efforts of modern enthusiasm or credulity to represent them in more interesting colours.* * See SPENCER'S Circassia, passim. The eloquent author of these interesting travels has given a glowing account of the virtues and character of the tribes who dwell in the recesses of the Caucasus; but it is evident, even from what he says, that they are nothing better than gallant robbers. The common expression which he tells us is used by a Circassian maiden to a lover whom she |