Dôle reminded me of a pleasing inci- | dent, related in the interesting Memoirs of Brienne; it is a battle scene in which French honour and bravery are beautifully displayed. "At the period of the king's conquest of Franche-Comté," says Brienne, "the great Condé standing with Villeroi on the bank of the ditch of Dôle, where their fathers in the preceding wars had not been very successful, this prince said to Villeroi-Marquis, we must here retrieve the honour of your father and of mine.' The ditch was wide and dry, and the passage consequently very dangerous. The attack was fierce and bloody. The marquis, who commanded the Lyonnese regiment, passed first, and gained the top of the bastion; he effected a lodgment there, and cried out from afar: Prince, my father is satisfied; what says yours? We will endeavour to content him,' said the prince laughing in the midst of the fire, and in a moment after he was on the rampart."

On this road to Italy are Montbar, Genis, Dijon, Coppet, Ferney, Geneva, places with which are associated the names and reminiscences of some of the brightest ornaments of literature, and which seem naturally placed in the way to such a country.

The sudden appearance of the lake and the Alps from the height of Saint Cergues, at three leagues from Geneva, is one of the finest views of nature that I have ever seen. It is impossible not to be dazzled by the magnificence, brilliancy, and grandeur of such a spectacle. At times long lines of clouds overtop the mountains, of which they have the form and almost the colour, seeming like other Alps suspended, extending and surmounting them.

CHAPTER II.

Geneva; its merit and distinction.

I had intended only to pass through Geneva, but I was induced to stay; for I found in that city literary acquaintance,

The estate from which Madame de Genlis took her name is in Picardy, near Noyon; the chateau is now demolished.

It is proved by the passport returns that twentyfive thousand foreigners pass through Geneva every year.

3 Within the last ten years the aspect of Geneva has been almost entirely renovated. The city has

a relish of civilisation, a kind of moral dignity and general good sense, in short, a certain gravity that pleased me. loved its public spirit without pride, its patriotism without hatred, and even its stiff originality of character in the midst of such crowds of foreigners. *

The town is small, black, old, and indifferently built; the population is only twenty-eight thousand souls, yet I could not perceive the slightest trace of provincialism in tone or manner. 3

This singular attraction of Geneva, combined with the beauties of its position, appears moreover to have been felt by persons whose pursuits and destinies were widely different: fallen princesses, sons of kings, powerful ministers, court ladies overcome by ennui, and men noted for success in courts, have successively sojourned at Geneva. I myself have met elegant women there who might have occupied some of the grand mansions of the Maine or Normandy, and who preferred to live at an inn or hire apartments at Geneva, disregarding the smallness of the rooms, the simplicity of the furniture, the absence of an antechamber, and the horrors of the staircase. This distinguishing feature, this indisputable superiority of Geneva, proceeds, in my opinion, from its being placed in the centre of the most polished nations, from its being a kind of European thoroughfare for the travellers who visit them, and from its social state. This scientific, commercial, and manufacturing city must naturally escape the disagreeables of small towns: neither the same aristocratic haughtiness, nor the equally noisome self-importance of wealth can exist there; and the upstart vanity of our authorities would be difficult in a state where the civil list granted to the chief does not exceed a hundred louis d'or. This first magistrate of the republic is chosen from the citizens indiscriminately, and the admirable example of professor Delarive has been pointed out to me, who, a short time after having been first syndic, gave a gratuitous course

been enlarged in the interior by two suburbs reclaimed from the lake: the houses have risen three or four stories; and there are some of seven or eight which overtop the chapels and steeples. The population has increased to thirty-one thousand inhabitants, a great number of whom are intruders and foreigners who have corrupted the national character and even the accent.

alone were advocated from its pulpits. The preaching of the present day, prudently abstaining from the controversies with which it was formerly entangled, invigorated by sentiments of religion, the desideratum of the enlightened minds and generous hearts of our epoch, is perfectly evangelical. The sermons of M. Touron, like the Discours familiers d'un pasteur de campagne, by M. Cellerier, would be excellent parish lectures. The latter, in which the imitation of Massillon is very perceptible, possess all the unction and spirituality of which protestantism is capable.

The services of the reformed church did not seem to me destitute of dignity or devoid of charms: the excommunication, pronounced by the minister from the puipit azainst those who communicate unworthily, was full of awe; the singing of the psalms and the simple music with which they are accompanied have a touching effect, and if the verses are bad, habit and piety, that sweet preoccupation of the soul in its aspirings after God, would scarcely perceive it or find fault with them.

CHAPTER V.

Palace of Clotilde.-Calvin.-Scalade.

In my researches into the past of Geneva, leven went to examine the Gothic arcade of the Bourg-du-Four, one of the city gates, through which every body passes without noticing it; it is said to be the gate of the palace of Clotilde, the daughter of Chilperic, king of Burgundy, and the wife of Clovis. It was there that seated with her sister, she was exereis ng hospitality to travellers, when the received from the Gaul Aurelian, disguised as a beggar, the ring of the Ang of the Franks and his first proposals of marriage. It is strange to find this tradition of the woman who converted the Franks to Christianity in the city of Calvin, as if it were destined to be the source of religious revolutions of the most opposite character.

in a little square I saw the hall, now orcupied by the Consistory, in which Calvin assembled his first disciples, when he was only a poor wandering fugitive,

⚫ facques Gruet, beheaded; Michael Servetus. burnt Valentine Genclits condemned to die, and,

but animated by that enthusiastic religious zeal, which is the strongest of human passions. When we recollect Calvin's first arrival at Geneva, we cannot help being struck with the sudden ascendency that he acquired; this simple professor of theology, come by a mere chance, and maintained at the public expense, possesses all the authority of a master; if he retires, it is only to come back more powerful and terrible; he dictates to the magistrates the judgments they are to give, and, though the advocate of free discussion, punishes his antagonists with death. 1

In the quarter of Saint Gervais, I went to see a small enclosure made some few years since, at the extremity of which is a marble tablet attached to the outside of the church wall, bearing the names of the seventeen citizens who perished in the defence of their country during a nocturnal attack made by the duke of Savoy in 1602. A small plot of grass enclosed by an iron railing breast-high, some names inscribed against the wall, are the only monument erected to the memory of these courageous citizens, these plebeian Manlii, who had not even the geese of the Capitol for them; but this simple monument, so popular and national, is more touching than the superb equestrian statues, gilt or bronze, of the condottieri, that decorate the squares and churches of Italy. The letter which Henry IV. wrote to the Genevese on the subject of this remuement, generously offering them his protection, with that vivid, princely, and military eloquence associated the memory of the Escalade with the history of France.

of which he is the inimitable model, has

CHAPTER VI.

Museum.-Theatre.-Conservatory.

The patriotism of the Genevese has recently endowed their city with a museum; the very walls of the edifice are a present, for they were built with the money bequeathed by the Misses Rath, the daughters of the general of that name, who died in the service of Russia. Though only ten years have elapsed, it possesses already considerable riches.

after his recantatlon, to make the amende honorable Boizec, banished.

Among the paintings of the Genevese school in the Rath museum may be remarked: the portraits of Saussure and of Tronchin, by Saint-Ours; the expressive portrait of Madame d'Épinai, by Liotard, painted in 1758, when she came to Geneva an invalid; two large landscapes by Delarive; Hornung's Death of Calvin, which has effect, but is deficient in local physiognomy; two landscapes, by Huber; a winter landscape by Topfer. David victorious, in bronze, is by M. Chaponière, who, with M. Pradier, does honour to the chisel at Geneva,

In spite of Rousseau's philippic, a theatre has long existed at Geneva. A conservatory of music has been created within the last three years; it has produced some promising pupils, and Listz gave lessons there in 1836. The ancient severity of manners in the town of Calvin is daily diminishing, and this kind of Lycurgus, both writer and orator, would not see without displeasure that all the refinements of Attic taste are now succeeding to the rigorous discipline which he established.

CHAPTER VII.

Library. Reading society. - Taste for reading among the people of Geneva-Manuscripts of Dr. Coindet.-Autograph letters of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Bonaparte; literature of the latter.

I devoted several days to an examination of the public library, which contains forty thousand volumes and about five hundred manuscripts. There exists in this library a most precious work of art, Petitot's great enamel of Alexander in the tent of Darius. The building devoted to the library is a horrid place which has very much the appearance of a barn. It is well supplied with editions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but there is a deficiency of modern works; except the Description of Egypt, there are scarcely any of the best works that have appeared

The reading society has no other funds than those derived from the contributions of its subscribers; its library now contains more than thirty thousand volumes, among which, it is true, there are many sets incomplete. The number of members was three hundred and twenty in 4836; there were more than four hundred in 1831 and 1832. Foreigners are readily admitted to the reading society; in 4836, there were a hundred and seven French, a hundred and three English, fifty-two Italians, fiftyone German, twenty-two Russlaps or Poles twenty

I

during the last twenty years. The reading society is a well regulated institution; it receives the literary and scientific journals, the different reviews, and principal new publications, and is, I think, the cause of the unmerited neglect of the library. Francis de Bonnivard, the prisoner of Chillon, was the founder of this library, to which he gave his manuscripts and books in the year 1551. It was afterwards increased by the bequest of Ami Lullin, professor of ecclesiastical history, who had acquired a portion of the rare collection of counsellor Péteau, the other part of which was bought by queen Christine, who sent it to the Vatican. Thus was the library of this counsellor of the parliament of Paris strangely destined to be divided between Rome and Geneva.

I was struck with the great bulk of the loan book, and was then informed by M. Pictet Deodati, the librarian, whose attentions were truly indefatigable, that every citizen of Geneva, without exception, had a right to the use of the books in the library. I looked over this loan book with curiosity. It did not contain, like ours, the names of idlers reading at random without taste or love of study; nor were the somewhat graver fantasies enregistered there, of those restless triflers who seek in our pharmacies of the soul vain remedies for imaginary evils; nor did it contain the names of those literary sharpers, who make books from books on all subjects indifferently, nor of those editors, writers of the stall and the shop, whose talent is only a kind of handicraft, and whose long compilations do not present one original idea, nor twenty pages of their own composition; but instead of these I found the names and very legible signatures of useful citizens and artisans. These come in person one day a week to change the works they have read for others; though there are nearly two thousand volumes in circulation, it never six Americans, fifteen Dutch, and one Turk. The society seems, however, to be on the decline by the president's report made in the month of January 1837, and the expenditure has exceeded the receipts for some years past.

By a singular inadvertence, Lord Byron, instead of celebrating the captivity of that intrepid and temperate priest, Bonnivard, the real prisoner of Chillon, has sung the adventures of Imaginary heroes. See post, chap. xvi.