The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. I, January 1860Various
General
The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. I, January 1860
Various
England -- Periodicals; English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
I had occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the little old town of
Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where lies buried that very ancient
British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,[33] who founded the Church of
St. Peter, which stands opposite the house No. 65, Cornhill. Few people
note the church now-a-days, and fewer ever heard of the saint. In the
cathedral at Chur, his statue appears surrounded by other sainted
persons of his family. With tight red breeches, a Roman habit, a curly
brown beard, and a neat little gilt crown and sceptre, he stands, a
very comely and cheerful image: and, from what I may call his peculiar
position with regard to No. 65, Cornhill, I beheld this figure of St.
Lucius with more interest than I should have bestowed upon personages
who, hierarchically, are, I daresay, his superiors.
The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the world--of
the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, and rushing railways,
and the commerce and intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the
iron road stretches away to Zürich, to Basel, to Paris, to home. From
the old southern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and
around which stretch the crumbling battlements of the ancient town,
the road bears the slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow
Rhine, through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently over the
Splügen to the shores of Como.
I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, and pastoral,
than this remote little Chur. What need have the inhabitants for walls
and ramparts, except to build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang
clothes to dry? No enemies approach the great mouldering gates: only
at morn and even, the cows come lowing past them, the village maidens
chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the ever-voluble
stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book and
satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium, and return
thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in the town, and
I see one old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no customers
seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little windows at
the single stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with baskets of
queer little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with
half a dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there is scarce
any talk or movement in the street. There’s nobody at the book-shop.
“If you will have the goodness to come again in an hour,” says the
banker, with his mouthful of dinner at one o’clock, “you can have the
money.” There is nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady, the kind
waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is in the
Protestant church--(oh! strange sight, the two confessions are here
at peace!)--nobody in the Catholic church: until the sacristan, from
his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies the traveller eyeing
the monsters and pillars before the old shark-toothed arch of his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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