The Sun.
London, England, 1849-03-10 00:00:00

ITALY.

The Neap,,litan troops have invaded the Roman
territory, an.d a slight skirmish, leading to no result,
has occurred between the invaders and the soldiers of
the Roman P;epublic.
The C 072 stitutionale Romano, of the 27th of
February, states that the advanced.guard of the Nea-
politan army had appeared on the Roman frontier,
and that a Wight collision between the outposts and
those of the .Roman army took place on the 25th, at
Epilafio. The same paper says that some of the Nea-
politan troops had passed the Roman frontiers, and
shown themselves at Ceprano.

BUII-FORD'S PANORAMA.

(THIS DAY.)

SWITZERLAND.

Enterprise is certainly becoming übiquitous—it is
penetrating, not only into the counting house of the
merchant, but into the atelier of the painter, its de-
votees are not merely pacing the tesselated pavements
of the Exchange, but are clambering up to the sum-
mit of Mount Righi. The proprietor of the establish-
ment in the corner of Leicester-square, long renowned
for his panoramic views, has this morning afforded a
private view of an immense and remarkable oil paint-
ing of the most picturesque country on the European
continent. Mr. Robert Burford is his own artist—
assisted in the present instance by Mr. 11. C. Selous.
In producing the extraordinary work of art to which
we are alluding he has evidently striven to surpass
all his former compositions. The mere labour of
manipulation—to say nothing of the intellectual
tension required in transferring so vividly to canvass
the magnificent beauties of Nature—is something
marvellous. In the panoramic landscape of Switzer-
land, taken by the artist in 1848, from the Righi
Kulm—the Queen of Mountains or Reginum Mon-
tium, situated at an elevation of 5,676 feet above the
Mediterranean—there are discernable no less than three
hundred and forty-eight distinct localities—moun-
tains, passes, castles, villages, roads, lakes, and cata-
racts. The eye is almost deceived when the sunlight,
gushing over the view, reveals more distinctly than
before the Alpine pinnacles on the horizon glittering
with snow, the waters of the Lowerzer, or of Zurich,
or of Pfaffikon, " navell'd in the woods," the mists
floating over the valleys, the waterfalls flashing down
from the brink of the precipices, the rivers rolling
through the clefts of the rocks or along the plains,
the carriage-roads winding among the gorges and
the footpaths trodden only by the foot of the chamois
hunter. To produce a more than usually good effect
in the illumination of the new panorama, the pro-
prietor has, at considerable outlay, enlarged
the skylight, which is effectually concealed
from view by the overhanging canopy ; and
the labour of improvement has certainly not been
thrown away. On first looking at the Panorama the
attention is irresistibly drawn to the enormous but
graceful slope of Mount Rossberg, occasioned by a
landslip or avalanche—" the thunderbolt of snow !"
—which in the September of 1806 descended, bury-
ing under its ruins several of the surrounding vil-
lages, 7,000 acres of fruitful land, two churches,
111 houses, 200 barns and stables, 325 head of
cattle, 444 human beings, exclusive of sixteen
strangers who were prowling about on a pleasure ex-
cursion. In the distance you—who are familiar with
the scene, or are aided by the hand-book—recognise
the gloom of the black forest where Moreau made his
glorious retreat ; in another the pass of St. Gotthard,
where Suwarrow marched 25,000 Russians over the
Devil's Bridge ; in another the chasm among the
ridges—

"--"
where the swift stream cleaves its way between
Heights which appear as lovers who have parted,"
(a metaphor, by the way, which Byron has borrowed
from a matchless passage in " Christabel "); or again
look upwards to the acclivities of

" the Alps,
Th,se palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And throned Eternity in icy halls."
The Panorama of Switzerland, indeed, in addi-
tion to the wonderful character of its scenery,
is rendered worthy of long contemplation by the
multiplicity and variety of its associations—martial
associations and poetical associations, thoughts of the
lugubrious Rana des Vaches blown on their cow-
horns by the cottagers, recollections of Gibbon at
Lausanne, and Voltaire at Ferney, and Byron at
Geneva, and Napoleon at the Hospice, remembrances
of history and literature from the age of the Romans
to the civil conflict about the Sonderbund, from the
travels of Addison down to the pilgrimages of Brock-
endon. And, above all, the ancient memories con-
nected with Tell and his brother democrats, united
together

" in one attaching maze,
The Eriiliant, fair, and soft—the glories of old days."
Added to this the grandeur and diversity of the land-
scape, the scene is without any parallel on the surface
of the globe :
" The negligently grand, the fruitrul bloom
Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen,
The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom,
The forest's growth, and gothic walls between."
It is such a spectacle that Mr. Burford has here en-
deavoured to realise for our northern imaginations.
Upon his canvass are represented the heights, and
depths, and distances, which are visible from the top
of Mount Righi—a view embracing an uninterrupted
circumference of at least three hundred miles—giving
Jura in the west, Glaurus in the east, La Vallais
on the south, and Basle on the north—present-
ing in succession the cantons of Lucerne, of
Zug, of Uri, of Unterwalden, of Schwyz, of
Zurich, and of Aargau, of Appenzal, of Grissons, of
Tessin, of Berne, of the Vosges, and of Neuchatel—
pourtraying, in fact, altogether, about three-fourths
of Switzerland. Nothing, in fine, could afford a more
agreeable or a more surprising contrast to the two
panoramas already familiar to the public in this ex-
hibition, the panoramas of Paris and of Pompeii.