The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and
Instruction, by Various

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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.

* * * * *

[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