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happens that one is lost. Thus, this library is not only public but popular. This taste for instruction gives to the people of Geneva a sort of gravity and comprehension truly remarkable, which is not found elsewhere. In the clock manufactories, as in the veillées of common work-people, the best reader is chosen, and the audience agree to do his or her share of work so long as thus employed. In this manner that intellectual life, that esteem for the efforts of the mind and of thought, which, with all our means of publicity and all our literary agitation, are so little known in France, are much more widely disseminated at Geneva. I remember that I had the good fortune to meet M. de Chaleaubriand there, who had come from Lausanne to pass two days at Geneva, and he was pleased, as we returned from our ride, to take me back to my inn. When I got out of the carriage I was surprised to see my hostess, generally so full of business, standing still before the door; she soon followed me, and asked if the gentleman in the carriage was not M. de Chateaubriand. I said that it was, and I showed some astonishment at her knowing M. de Chateaubriand; she sharply replied—“ Oh! sir, who does Do know M. de Chateaubriand ?" I mentioned this incident to a Genevese, who from his profession is a perfectly competent judge of the Genevese manners, and be was not the least surprised at it. He even assured me that if the passage of M. de Chateaubriand had been suspected at the time, all the street dermere je Rhône would have been crowded.

In 1826, I examined at my leisure, at the house of the late doctor Coindet, a very carious collection of autograph letters, which is at the present time in the hands of his eldest son. M. Coindet possessed, with various letters of Voltaire and Russeau, the manuscript of Emile, whop however had no doubt been rewuten from a former copy, perhaps that in the intrary of the Chamber of Deputies, wach bas many more erasures. The manuscript of M. Coindet presents rather corrections of style than any real changes, and it is well known to what an extent Rousseau laboured his works. One of

* I have since, in my travels in Corsica, disged several of Napoleon's letters, of a date pretama athens they are addressed to his family, and ate tam 10.be bands of M.- Bracciol of Ajaccio. One

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the most remarkable pieces of this collection is a letter from Rousseau's father to Madame de Warens, in which he expresses his disapprobation at his son's wasting time in literary occupations; in this letter of the old clock-maker of Geneva may be observed some rude features of his son's genius. There is the same energy, the same haughtiness, if there cannot be said to be the same elevation, of sentiment. In the collection of M. Coindet, there was also, in five folio pages, one of Calvin's doctor's bills; lavements are almost as réitérés therein as in that of M. Fleurant. Among the treasures of M. Coindet was a packet of lettres de cachet, surreptitiously taken from the Bastille when it was destroyed, documents unworthy of the signature of Louis XIV. and Colbert, as in them these great men degrade themselves to the occupation of jailers, even prescribing the visits the prisoners may receive, and the number of turns to be allowed them on the terrace.

At the house of M. Cherbuliez, a learned bookseller, I saw, in frames, a letter of Voltaire, two autograph letters of Rousseau, and one of Bonaparte, the three meu, perhaps, who have exercised the most violent influence over mankind. Voltaire's letter is only an insignificant note of the 16th of March, 1776, addressed to M. Duval de Gex; he sends to him a letter written by the fermiers-généraux to M. Trudaine, respecting a person named Chabot, whom he patronised; the letter is not in his hand, but is signed by him. Rousseau's two letters, written fron Motiers, are addressed to M. de Beauchateau; one is of the 1st of October. the other of the 17th of November, 1763; in the first he invites him to dinner in very affectionate terms and with much good nature; in the latter he speaks in a touching manner of the suffering state of his health :-" Without the hope of another life," says he, "I should have but little to say in favour of this." Bonaparte's letter is of the 29th July, 1786, and is addressed to M. Barde, the predecessor of M. Cherbulicz. It is one of the earliest of his now existing letters. The letter to M. Barde is badly spelt, but not so illegible as his writing when em

of them was written during his childhood, at th age of eleven, a sbort time after his going to Brienne.

peror; its style is very ordinary, and affords little presage of the great man; it relates to the purchase of certain histories of the island of Corsica and the pretended Memoirs of Madame de Warens and Claude Anet, as a sequel to the confessions of J.-J. Rousseau. '—"J'ENTENDT votre réponse," writes Bonaparte. pour vous envoyer l'argent à quoi cela montera." He directs M. Barde to address his answer to M. de Buonaparte, officer of artillery in the regiment of La Fère in garrison at Valence. However little the interest of this piece, it is impossible not to feel some emotion on sceing obscurely exposed, in the corner of a bookseller's shop, and bearing the marks of its ancient classification among other business letters, this letter whose characters were traced by a hand so powerful, which was one day to give so many other signatures so widely differing, from the treaties dictated in the capitals of Europe, to the abdication accepted at Fontainebleau and the will of Saint Helena.

mind the divers literary judgments of Bonaparte, his letters, and his proclamations, one might be tempted to think on the contrary, that, with the exception of chronology, his memory was rather detrimental to him, as being the source of all that is false and exaggerated in them. His instinct was better than his learning, and the gifts of nature than his acquirements. He could appreciate Corneille, Molière, Racine, and the great writers of the age of Louis XIV.; save some partial errors on Fenelon, La Fontaine, Lesage, and madame de Sévigné, and he was perhaps too much shocked with the tinsel of some of Voltaire's pieces. His military eloquence was brilliant, but nearly always imitated and too highly coloured; the historical and sentimental common-places that he mixed with it were sometimes very ludicrous. Some of bis letters addressed to his wife, soon after their marriage, have recently appeared; notwithstanding the depth of his feelings, they are written in the very worst style of novels. 3 The litera.y taste of Bonaparte was correct, but not of a high order; in the plan of a portable library of a thousand volumes which he sent to M. Barbier, his librarian, Emile is formally excluded, while I have remarked on one of his travelling catalogues, the Lettres à Emilie sur la mytho

Bonaparte's stay at Valence is the subject of a very pretty anecdote related in the Memoirs of a contemporary. At the period of the journey to Erfurth, Napoleon, having at his table the emperor Alexander and the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, corrected an error which the prince primate made respect-logie, and the poems in prose of Florian; ing the date of the Golden Bull. "When I was a simple second lieutenant of artillery," said he, on beginning his phrase, and on remarking a movement of interest and surprise on the part of his guests :— "When I had the honour," he resumed, "of being a simple second lieutenant of artillery, I remained three years in garrison at Valence. I was not fond of company and lived very retired. Fortunately I lived near a bookseller; I read over and over again all the books in his library during those three years, and I have forgotten nothing." If one calls to

1 These memoirs had just appeared at Chambery ; the first are the work of M. Doppet, then a physician, and subsequently an indifferent general replaced at the siege of Toulon by Dugommier: he was the author of Political and Military Memoirs, and died in 1800; the latter were by his brother, a barrister. * Memoirs of M. de Bausset, vol. i. p. 324. 3 Bonaparte was a great novel-reader; one of his most Illustrious generals, a most veracious man, has related, that when he was called Into his presence at Martigny, at the moment of passing the Great Saint Bernard, he caught a glance of the book

in the section of epic poets in the plan of this portable library, Napoleon had ordered Lucan and the Henriade, without thinking of Virgil, Camoens, or Milton. The tales and romances of Marmontel were among the books that he carried into the East with him, the catalogue of which he himself made out. He had an equal antipathy for Rousseau and Voltaire. When he passed through Geneva in 1800, and showed much politeness to its citizens, after making complaisant inquiries about Saussure, Bonnet, and Senebier, he said nothing of Jean-Jacques. Elo

that Bonaparte had in his band when he entered the room; it was the Adventures of Guzman d'Alfarache.

4 Bourrienne's Memoirs, vol. 1. p. 50 et seq. M. de Bourrienne appears, however, to judge the friend of his childhood too severely when he says: -"I never knew a man more insensible to the beautiful in poetry or prose. The finest works of our literature were to him notblug more than an arrangement of sonorous words, void of sense, which, according to him, only pleased the ear.

quent reproaches have been made against Napoleon's taste for the lower kind of Iterature, but it was the consequence of his first acquaintances in the revolution, and his good sense vainly struggled to get rid of it.

Geneva appears to me deserving of reproach for an error in opinion that I will take advantage of this opportunity to mention. At the corner of every street, may be seen portraits and apotheoses of Napoleon. I remember that, on my arrival at Geneva, in pursuance of the active habits I had contracted, and to which I adbered in all my travels, I began to explore the city almost immediately on my arrival; having asked the way to the parade, a person who was going thither, it being Sunday) proposed to conduct me. After thanking him for his obliging uffer in a suitable manner, I thought proper to congratulate this citizen of Geneva on the independence of his country. He received my compliment rather coldly; and I afterwards found a similar feeling among persons of more information. This Genevese Bonapartism surprised me exceedingly. In my early youth Ibad known, under the empire, some distinguished Genevese, and I had closely observed their opposition to the proceedings of that epoch, and the dissatisfaction of the government on account of it. I have not forgotten, as one of the richest anerdites of the censorship, that a number of the Bibliothèque britannique, an excellent journal published at Geneva, was then suppressed or menaced with suppression, on account of an extract from an English life of Sir Thomas More. An allusion was found in it to the affair of the pope, and Geneva was almost censured as papist. Bonaparte abhorred Geneva and the Genevese, and his witty answer cannot have been forgotten when, on being invited to pass by Geneva, he said that he did not know rough English for that. This Gene

* Ser his Letters, so felleitously translated into French by Madame de Steck.

* Be and on the fath February 1872.
* Ose of the first hotanists in Europe.

in her of the History of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, a parilal work, but abounding m.baformation. It ought to be read, as a necesNey cat=pletbent to a voyage in Italy.

Dumont has published and rendered readthan the reveries of the Civil and penal Legislation of Jeremy Bentham he died at Milan in September

vese Bonapartism is connected with the remembrance of good administration, and some commercial advantages, but it is not the less an error. The impulse given by France towards a sort of social improvement might be useful to other nations less advanced, but could not benefit Geneva; this enlightened city has nced of no one to teach it civilisation.

CHAPTER VIII.

Society of Geneva.

During the summer the society of Geneva is pretty generally dispersed among the villas of its environs. I could only catch a glimpse of it, although favoured with the obliging attentions of M. de Bonstetten, formerly the friend and literary confidant of the youthful Muller,' at that time advanced in years, but still full offire, grace, and imagination. But I cannot recall without a pleasurable interest the evenings that I past with some of the ministers. It appeared to me that peace, union, and domestic happiness reigned there; the wives of these pastors and theologians have a kind of unpedantic gravity full of sweetness. The other ladies of Geneva whom I met with conversed well and with ease; a few commercial terms were occasionally mixed with their expressions, but I never saw any instance of that affectation of refinement with which I have heard them reproached.

In winter the society of Geneva is of a very superior kind; as it comprises such men as De Candolle, Sismondi, Dumont, Maurice, 6 Rossi, 7 Hess, Chateauvieux; such shining intellects, and sturdy combatants, that cannot be found elsewhere united within so small space. Sharp must the pains of exile be, since Madame de Staël could not be consoled or forget her sorrows in the range of such society.

Geneva is singularly placed as a con

6 Formerly professor, maitre des requèles, and prefect of France.

Professor of Roman law at the Academy of Geneva, a jurisconsult of the highest distinction, and author of the Treatise on penal law, published in 1829, be is now professor of political economy at the College of France.

Author of an interesting life of Zuinglius. 9 Author of Leitres nouvelles sur l'Italie, and of Lettres de Saint-James.

trast on the road to Italy; this city, the seat of philosophy, industry, commerce, and liberty, utterly differs from the poetic soil of Italy, the country of the arts, of historical recollections, and absolute power.

CHAPTER IX.

Ferney.

cracked stove than a tomb. Those emphatic words, so little resembling bis style, which he would never have written in his life, are still to be read thereon :— "My manes are consoled, since my heart is in the midst of you." A small detached plate, on the middle of this strange monument, bears the more generally known inscription:-"His spirit is every where; bis heart is here." On the sides of this tomb are strangely enough The visits to Ferney do not now excite placed the portraits of pope Clement XIV. the emotion, agitation, and ecstacy that and his landress, and those of the empress were the order of the day some sixty Catherine and her chimney-sweeper. years ago. The curiosity of the traveller, On the side where the bed is, are the porsometimes childish and ridiculous, has traits of Frederick, Lekain, and Madame succeeded to the ardent fervour of the du Châtelet, and near the only window pilgrims of old every body admires the of the room, are some small and very intalents and genius of Voltaire, but there is different engravings representing certain no man of sense that does not blame his illustrious characters, among whorn abuse of them. This celebrated chateau, | friendship and a community of philosothis portico of a scoffing and sceptical phi-phical sentiment have given a place to losophy, is but a small house of a style of architecture at once meagre and clumsy. On the front are represented divers emblems of philosophy and the arts, painted during the lifetime of Voltaire, with allusions to his various works. The theatre, situated in the court, was so badly built, that time has already destroyed it. The famous church opposite, which bore the scarcely religious inscription, Deo erexit Voltaire, is but a narrow chapel incapable of holding two hundred persons. The drawing-room and bed-chamber are still, as is well known, in the same state as in Voltaire's time. The There is still living at Ferney an old drawing-room is smail and ugly, and gardener who has seen Voltaire; he filled with ten arm-chairs and a little speaks of him in an interesting manner, console. The frightful daub so humo- and without the cant usual to that sort rously described by Madame de Genlis is of contemporaries. He has preserved a still there: it represents the Temple of morsel of Voltaire's dressing-gown, his Memory, and Voltaire, led by France, of-white silk cap with gold flowers, and his fering his Henriade to Apollo; the kind of toga in which Voltaire is clothed resembles a dressing-gown, and France, as to her look and dress, has an air hardly decent; the enemies of Voltaire are in a corner, overthrown and making horrible grimaces. In the bed-chamber is the earthen mausoleum, spit half through, in which Voltaire's heart was enclosed, and which from its material, colour, and degraded appearance, is more like a

The bed and window curtains of Voltaire's chamber, are almost in pieces, great numbers of travellers bearing away a shred every day unperceived.

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Marmontel, Helvetius, Diderot, and the duke of Choiseul. Close to this room was his study, which is now a servant's bed-room; and beyond that the library, now a somewhat extensive orangery. In the park is the great elm planted by the hand of Voltaire; it was struck by lightning in 1824, and its effects are still vi— sible in the dead boughs at its top. The park is flat, but presents several new and well planted avenues of an agreeable aspect, which form an effective contrast with the somewhat insignificant remains of the chateau.

great box walking-stick. Leaning on the latter, the good fellow represents in a very natural manner some of the scenes in the life of Voltaire, his passionate domestic outbreakings, his love of frightening the little boys that came in his way, etc. Voltaire was always called monseigneur, and would have taken offence if any of his people or dependants omitted doing so; he rode out every day in a carriage with four horses. In spite

whom Voltaire bought it. The present proprietor Is M. Eudé de Boissy, a descendant of the famous Guillaume Budé, whose wife, with a part of his children, retired to Geneva and embraced Cal

> Ferney has reverted to the Budé family, of vinism.

of his beneficent conduct to the residents on his estates, he was a lord strict enough and even hard towards poachers'. This same gardener still shows a register containing the seals of divers persons who bad written to Voltaire. These seals enabled him to refuse the letters that he did not want to receive, and which he sent back without opening to save the postage; there are epithets written by the side of them, some of which are not very flattering for these tiresome and indiscreet correspondents. Among the prints in the chamber of this gardener, is one given him by Madame Denis, representing Voltaire in various costumes; in one of these he is disguised as a woman with a round cap; the effect of this old monkeylike countenance with such a head-dress cannot be described. It is also probable that Voltaire, after corresponding with the femme de chambre of the duchess of Choiseul, had a fancy one day to take the costume.

Of all the places that have been inhabited by celebrated men, Ferney is one of those which most disappoint the expectations; ignorance of the beauties of nature has never, perhaps, been carried to such an extent: this park, at the foot of the Jura, has not a single undulation of surface, and one can hardly get a sight of the lake of Geneva or the Alps.

CHAPTER X.

Coppet.

I visited Coppet, the asylum of the faive Bayle, where he sojourned while engaged in the education of the children of count de Dhona; it was also the retreat

The following anecdote of Voltaire, which, I belarve, has never been printed, was communicated o our is a person worthy of credit who had known men permitan İy. A poacher was caught and taken before Vat.ire *The rogue must be defended,' after throwing himself back in his easyand be named Wagniere as his counsel, who gfær. „NOVer, from I know not what motive, a. Masis-Chateaurenand, then Voltaire's second væretary under the name of M. Esprit, and subse{[M® ́]+ deguty of Franche-Comté at the States-geweral was orde ed to replace him. In the ruid t of hot jetaʻa qu. M. i sprit stopped suddenly, and said ket a value to read a quotation, that this - was in the brary of M. de Voltaire, and be røv at £nd it in a moment; the high justist- skemel tom to go for it. On his return, as lea på skruing over the leaves in vain without

of Necker, and for ten years the Siberia of Madame de Staël. The chateau had just been arranged with care and simplicity; it has nothing extraordinary and is badly piaced, enjoying no view of the Alps, which is intercepted by the naked heights of the Voirons. The park is planted at the entrance with evergreens and has a dull aspect; there is, however, a very pretty rivulet which might have been turned to advantage, though it now only serves to turn a mill. This taste in preference of the useful was visible throughout the estate, as well as in the life of its proprietor, a young man worthy of respect and regret, who was attached even to the illusions of virtue, and whose conscience was a more certain guide than his doctrines, which we may be allowed to decline following, though we cannot refuse them our esteem. 3

CHAPTER XI.

Salève.-Bossey.

Salève is not a fine mountain, but this calcareous rock is to the Genevese what the Palatine or the Janiculum was to the Romans. To free nations mountains are the type, of their country: Montmartre the liveliest expression, and, as it were, might be held sacred by a moral and patriotic nation. This mountain which is so reiche, as it is termed at Geneva, on the outside, has in the interior extensive tracts of grass land, shady groves, smiling vallies, and productive pastures; it seemed to me on entering it that I could discover some analogy with the Genevese character, rough at first sight, but full of merit and sterling qualities.

speaking. Voltaire lost his patience and asked what book it was It is your Philosophical Dictionary, roolly replied M. Chateaurenaud, "I am looking for the word Humanity there, and I find you have forgotten it.' Voltaire was struck by this remark, and dismissed the poacher with a present of six francs." It is a fact that the word flumanity is not in the Philosophical Dictionary; and Voltaire might have profited by this occasion to add it.

* See the Letters of the Marchioness of Deffand. 3 Baron Augustus de Staël, who died in the autumn of 1827. A notice of his life, prefixed to his Miscellaneous Works, published at the beginning of 1827, is attributed to the Duchess de Broglie: it is interesting, and very affecting, from the elevation of thought, the noble sentiments, and that kind of fraternal piety which inspired li.

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