Title:  The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831

Author:  Various

Release Date:  June 9, 2004 [EBook #12568]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

Vol.  XVII, no. 477.] Saturday, February 19, 1831. [Price 2d.

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[Illustration:  Mount st. Michael, Normandy.]

MOUNT ST. MICHAEL, NORMANDY.

The interest attached to this extraordinary place is of so popular a character as fully to justify its introduction to our pages.  It is situate at the southern extremity of the ancient province of Normandy, a district of considerable importance in the early histories of France and England.  The “Mount” is likewise one of the most stupendous of Nature’s curiosities, it being one mass of granite, and referred to by geologists as a fine specimen of that primary or primitive rock; or, to speak untechnically, of that rock “which is most widely spread over the globe in the lowest relative situation,” and which contains no remains of a former world.[1] St. Michael’s therefore stands pre-eminently in the sublime philosophy of Nature.  It figures also in the page of man’s history:  its early celebrity is recognised in the chronicles of olden France and England; and it promises note in the history of our own times; since to this monastic spot will the political balance of France, in all probability, exile the person of the ambitious Polignac, ex-minister of France.  The reader will perhaps suspect the political concatenation of Lulworth Castle, the Hotel de Ville, and the Palais Royal in our last volume; and the Prison of Vincennes and Mount St. Michael in the present.  Instead of catching “the manners living as they rise,” we appear to be looking out for crowns and ministers headlong as they fall.

St. Michael’s is in that portion of Normandy which is not often visited by English tourists.  One of its recent visitors was Mrs. Charles Stothard, wife of the distinguished artist, who, in 1820, published a narrative of her journey in, the autumn of 1818.  Mrs. Stothard’s description of the “Mount” is dated from Avranches, a coast town of some consequence, not far from Caen.  Speaking of the delightfully situated town of Avranches, the fair correspondent says,