From “Sketches of Switzerland.”

THE SWISS castles, with few exceptions, are built on the breasts, or spurs, of mountains. The immediate foundation is usually a rock, and the sites were generally selected on account of the difficulties of the approach. This latter peculiarity, however, does not apply so rigidly to Blonay as to most of the other holds of the country, for the rock which forms its base serves for little else than a solid foundation. I presume one of the requisites of such a site was the difficulty or impossibility of undermining the walls, a mode of attack that existed long before gunpowder was known.

  The buildings of Blonay are neither extensive nor very elaborate. We entered by a modest gateway, in a retired corner, and found ourselves at once in a long, narrow, irregular court. On the left was a corps de batiment that contained most of the sleeping apartments, and a few of the others, with the offices; in front was a still older wing in which was the knight’s hall and one or two other considerable rooms; and on the right was the keep, an old solid tower, that was originally the nucleus and parent of all the others, as well as a wing that is now degraded to the duties of a storehouse. These buildings form the circuit of the court and complete the edifice; for the side next the mountain, or that by which we entered, had little besides the ends of the two lateral buildings and the gate. The latter was merely a sort of chivalrous back door, for there was another between the old tower and the building of the knight’s hall, of more pretension and much larger. The great gate opens on a small, elevated terrace that is beautifully shaded by fine trees, and which commands a view second, I feel persuaded, to but few on earth. I do not know that it is so perfectly exquisite as that we got from the house of Cardinal Rufo at Naples, and yet it has many admirable features that were totally wanting to the Neapolitan villa. I esteem these two views as much the best that it has ever been my good fortune to gaze at from any dwelling, though the beauties of both are, as a matter of course, more or less shared by all the houses in their respective neighborhoods. The great carriage road, as great carriage roads go on such a mountain side, comes up to this gate; though it is possible to enter also by the other.

  Blonay, originally, must have been a hold of no great importance, as neither the magnitude, strength, nor position of the older parts is sufficient to render the place one to be seriously assailed, or obstinately defended. Without knowing the fact, I infer that its present interest arises from its great antiquity, coupled with the circumstance of its having been possessed by the same family for so long a period. Admitting a new owner for each five and twenty years, the present must be somewhere about the twenty-fifth De Blonay who has lived on this spot!

  A common housemaid showed us through the building, but, unfortunately, to her it was a house whose interest depended altogether on the number of floors there were to be scrubbed and windows to be cleaned. This labor-saving sentiment destroys a great deal of excellent poetry and wholesome feeling, reducing all that is venerable and romantic to the level of soap and house-cloths. I dare say one could find many more comfortable residences than this within a league of Vevey; perhaps Mon Repos has the advantage of it in this respect: but there must be a constant, quiet, and enduring satisfaction with one whose mind is properly trained, in reflecting that he is moving, daily and hourly, through halls that have been trodden by his fathers, for near a thousand years. Hope is a livelier, and, on the whole, a more useful, because a more stimulating, feeling, than that connected with memory; but there is a solemn and pleasing interest clinging about the latter, that no buoyancy of the first can ever equal. Europe is fertile of recollections; America is pregnant with hope. I have tried hard, aided by the love which is quickened by distance, as well as by the observations that are naturally the offspring of comparison, to draw such pictures of the latter for the future as may supplant the pictures of the past that so constantly rise before the mind in this quarter of the world; but, though reasonably ingenious in castle building, I have never been able to make it out. I believe laziness lies at the bottom of the difficulty. In our moments of enjoyment we prefer being led to racking the brain for invention. The past is a fact; while, at the best, the future is only conjecture. In this case the positive prevails over the assumed, and the imagination finds both an easier duty, and all it wants, in throwing around the stores of memory the tints and embellishments that are wanting to complete the charm. I know little of the history of Blonay, beyond the fact of its great antiquity, nor is it a chateau of remarkable interest as a specimen of the architecture and usages of its time; and yet I never visited a modern palace, with half the intense pleasure with which I went through this modest abode. Fancy had a text in a few unquestionable facts and it preached copiously on their authority. At Caserta or St. Cloud we admire the staircases, friezes, salons, and marbles, but I never could do anything with your kings, who are so much mixed up with your history, as to leave little to the fancy; while here, one might imagine not only time, but all the various domestic and retired usages that time brings forth.

  The Ritter Saal, or Knight’s Hall, of Blonay has positive interest enough to excite the dullest mind. Neither the room nor its ornaments are very peculiar of themselves, the former being square, simple, and a good deal modernized, while the latter was such as properly belonged to a country gentleman of limited means. But the situation and view form its great features; for all that has just been said of the terrace can be better said of this room. Owing to the formation of the mountain, the windows are very high above the ground, and at one of them is a balcony, which, I am inclined to think, is positively without a competitor in this beautiful world of ours. Cardinal Rufo has certainly no such balcony. It is le balcon des balcons.

  I should despair of giving you a just idea of the mingled magnificence and softness of the scene that lies stretched before and beneath the balcony of Blonay. You know the elements of the view already,—for they are the same mysterious glen, or valley, the same blue lake, the same cotes, the some solemn and frowning rocks, the same groupings of towers, churches, hamlets, and castles, of which I have had such frequent occasion to speak in these letters. But the position of Blonay has about it that peculiar nicety which raises every pleasure to perfection. It is neither too high, nor too low; too retired, nor too much advanced; too distant, nor too near. I know nothing of M. de Blonay beyond the favorable opinion of the observant Jean, the boatman, but he must be made of flint, if he can daily, hourly, gaze at the works of the Deity as they are seen from this window, without their producing a sensible and lasting effect on the character of his mind. I can imagine a man so far blasé, as to pass through the crowd of mites, who are his fellows, without receiving or imparting much; but I cannot conceive of a heart, whose owner can be the constant observer of such a scene, without bending in reverence to the hand that made it. It would be just as rational to suppose one might have the Communion of St. Jerome hanging in his drawing-room, without ever thinking of Domenichino, as to believe one can be the constant witness of these natural glories without thinking of God.