Claude. Before us, high above the falls,
seeming to hang on a perpendicular chain of rocks, is a cluster of
saw-mills. It is not more the variety of form in this scene here than
the variety of colour and tone that makes it so wonderful. Everywhere
the eye rests on some different outline, colour, or combination.
Would that space permitted of a detailed account here of all else that I
saw in this ancient little bishopric in the mountains! St. Claude,
indeed, deserves a chapter, nay, a small volume to itself; there is its
history to begin with, which dates from the earliest Christian epoch in
France; then its industries, each so curious in its details; lastly, the
marvellous natural features of its position, a wholly unique little city
is this, compared by Lamartine to Zarcle in the forests of Lebanon, and
described by other Franche-Comte writers in equally glowing terms. The
famous Abbey of St. Claude was visited by Louis XI in order to fulfil a
vow still mysterious in history. This was under the _regime_ of its
eighty-sixth Abbot, Peter Morel, but, after a period of almost
unequalled glory and magnificence, fire, pillage, and other misfortunes
visited it from time to time, till the suppression of the Abbey in 1798.
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