Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone: Made During the Year 1819Hughes, John
History
Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone: Made During the Year 1819
Hughes, John
Provence (France) -- Description and travel; Rhône River (Switzerland and France)
clusters of grapes, olives, figs, and pomegranates with the accuracy of
a miniature, and in a free and natural style. One of the pomegranates
was represented as ripe and cracking, and every seed distinctly
expressed. The mausoleum is, I should venture to say, a building
perfectly unique in its way, as a remnant of antiquity; and therefore
more difficult to describe by a recurrence to any known work of art. I
cannot better, however, describe its effect on the mind than by saying,
that it ought to be removed to Pompeii in company with the arch. It is
certainly superior, as a work of art, to any thing yet discovered in
that singular place; while it possesses the same indescribable domestic
character which seems to bring you back to the business and bosoms of
the ancients, in a manner which nothing at Rome can do. As far as I
could judge by the eye, it is from forty to fifty feet in height. An
open circular lanthorn of ten Corinthian pillars, surmounted by a
conical roof of stone, and containing two standing figures, rests on a
square base, presenting an open arch on each side, which is in its turn
supported by a solid pedestal, exhibiting on each of its four sides a
bas relief corresponding to the respective arch. There is great spirit
and fine grouping in the bas reliefs, which represent battles of cavalry
and infantry. The standing figures before-mentioned, to whose honour the
mausoleum may be supposed to have been erected, are in the civil garb:
and there is an ease and repose in their attitudes, corresponding with
the grave, calm expression of the heads, of which necessary appendage
the merciless French Itineraire has guillotined them without warrant.
The colour of the freestone of which it is built is as fresh as that of
the castle of Tarascon. The building is constructed with a thorough
knowledge of what the human eye requires, tapering and becoming more
light towards its conical top. It is also of size sufficient for all
purposes of effect, though not too large for a private monument. The
situation in which these relics stand is sufficient to add beauty to
objects of less merit. They are placed, as I mentioned, on a cultivated
rising ground, at the foot of the wild gray rocks which ran parallel to
the former day's route, and which assume from this spot a more
castellated appearance than when viewed from the road. On the other side
a fine and boundless view opens into the great plain of Avignon and the
Rhone, almost perplexing to the eye by its variety and number of
objects: in which we distinguished Avignon itself, and Mont Ventou many
leagues behind it, rising in height apparently undiminished, with light
hazy clouds sailing along its middle, and backed by the wild Dauphine
mountains, near Chateau Grignan. We could also distinguish Beaucaire,
Tarascon, and a large part of the former day's route, to the extreme
left; and the right opened into various vistas of the hilly country
which we had to cross in our road to Marseilles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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