Sketches in the Pyrenees, with Some Remarks on Languedoc, Provence and the Cornice, by the Author of 'Slight Remininiscences of the Rhine'. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837. Excerpt: ... VALLEY OF CAMPAN. 85 CHAPTER VII. VALLEY OF CAMPAN--THE CONVENT OP MEDOUX--A FOUNTAIN AND A CLOISTER--MONKS AS THEY ARE, AND AS THEY WERE--VALUE OF CERTAIN PHRASES--THE PRIORY OF BT. PAUL GENERAL ASPECT OF THE VALLEY--DEFECTS AND BEAUTIES A SPIRITED POPULATION THE BARREL-ORGAN TARBES--ROAD BETWEEN BAGNERE8 AND TARBE8--L'ELYSEE COTTIN. The regular Tempe of the Pyrenees is the valley of Campan. "O beautiful valley " writes one; "O vale of Thessaly " exclaims another; while a third likens it to the paradise of the blest; and a fourth, feeling the insufficiency of words, adores in silence. Every day appeared to me an age till I too had worshipped in this elysium of the living, which opens its page of beauty at a short distance from Bagneres. Just at its entrance reposes the village of Astd, at the foot of the enamelled Heyris, the mountain of flowers, which in the summer months realizes the fabulous beauty of the fields of Enna: 86 A FOUNTAIN AND A CLOISTER. there is no looking at it without thinking, if not talking, of Proserpine, and Dis's waggon, and other sweet poetical creeds that spring up at a touch out of the stores of memory. What a delicious frontispiece thought I; but as I did not wish to squander admiration, but rather to hoard up for the great occasion, I said nothing. Stopped at the opening of the valley to look at the fountain of Medoux, urgently recommended by guides to the notice of travellers. It beautifies the garden of what was once a convent of Capucins, now utilized into a saw-mill: the active virtues have superseded the meditative ones, and though evidences of past holiness still mildew on the walls of the refectory, manual labour has routed indolence, and piled up its implements within the cloisters. The word cloister is apt to ally i...