One would have wished something of a very different character.

It was near one o’clock on Thursday, the 15th of August, before the diligence left Grenoble. The road winds along the charming valley of Gresivanda, presenting the richest views over its varied scenery. It was dark before we reached the frontiers of Savoy, and as I arrived at Chamberi at midnight, and left it at three o’clock the next morning, in a heavy rain, I shall not attempt a description. We reached Geneva about seven yesterday evening, but I postpone any account of this city, till I have seen a little more of it, and shall occupy the remaining part of my letter in answering yours. You ask me if I can really see nothing but buildings and mountains in France, or if I have at any time met with such phenomena as men and women. I will reply as well as I can to the spirit of this question; there are some observations on the French character which force themselves on the attention of the traveller, some of which, notwithstanding your sneer, I have already noticed. Whether there exist any attachment to the present dynasty is a question which I must answer in the negative. The French are willing to suffer the Bourbons, because they wish for peace, and there seems to be something of affection springing up towards the present king, which does not in the least extend itself to the other members of the reigning family. There is a widely diffused, and pretty generally received opinion of the moderation and good sense of the former, but the others are nowhere well spoken of. You will have seen in the French papers, accounts of the enthusiasm with which the Duke and Duchess of Angoulême were received on their late tour. I was not present at any place where they were, but I can form a tolerably correct idea of what I have not seen, from what I have. Lest however, you should be inclined to give more credit to the public journals than they deserve, I will give you a specimen of their courage in publishing the acceptable, rather than the true. It was stated in the Moniteur, while I was at Paris, that three hundred workmen were employed in the church of the Madelaine; I went there and found about twenty, who could not do much, as they were working without any plan, and it had not been decided whether the design of the Temple of Glory, adopted by Napoleon, should be continued, or some other preferred. The same paper asserted, that five hundred men were employed at St. Geneviève. My friend, Mr. Sharp, was drawing there every day; and as he saw nobody, he applied to the architect, who resides on the spot, to know where they were, but he also was entirely ignorant of their existence: a week after this, about a dozen men were set to work to take down the sculpture of the pediment, and to erase the inscription, Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante.[[23]] After this you will not wonder if I interpret the glowing accounts of the rejoicings in the south of France, by what I observed at Arles, where vive le roi was given out from the Hotel de Ville from time to time, and repeated by the children in the crowd, who were pleased with the fireworks. It is the municipal government which says all and does all on these occasions, the people are nothing. With respect to the transactions at Nismes, concerning which you think I must have collected many particulars, I am afraid that I can give you very little satisfaction. It seems to me that the Catholics were guilty of these excesses against the Protestants from superstition, and that they endeavoured to cover themselves by the pretence of zeal for the king; that the provincial government weakly lent itself to this feeling, of which indeed the members probably participated; and that the government of France, or at least their principal agent, the Duke of Angoulême, was unwilling to repress too strongly, a spirit, which whether considered in a religious or political point of view, his own prejudices taught him to consider as resting on a meritorious foundation, though carried to a culpable excess. At the same time some political circumstances had much inflamed this religious animosity, all of which however imply the previous existence of such a sentiment. The Protestants of Nismes form a body, whose consequence and respectability is proportionally much greater than their numbers. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if under a government which made no distinctions, they should occupy a larger share of public situations, than in the eyes of the Catholics they were entitled to do. On the return of the king, therefore, the Catholics united to drive them out, and irritated by what appeared to them an act of injustice, the Protestants took the first opportunity to retaliate. Thus politics became an important part of the quarrel, but religion remains the ground-work. The prisons at Nismes are filled with Protestants, who are confined merely on a general charge of attachment to Napoleon, and in some instances, a renunciation of religion has been sufficient immediately to procure the prisoner his liberty. Now I have no authority to cite for all this; it is merely intelligence picked up on the spot, in conversation with Catholics and Protestants, and connected together as well as I could. I contend however, that it is better deserving of credit than any thing issuing from the French authorities, who are in fact some of the parties accused; better than the letter of the Duke of Wellington, who probably gave himself no trouble to investigate the circumstances, but adopted with little hesitation what those authorities were pleased to communicate. The letter of the minister, Olivia, I was not able to clear up while I was there, he having left the place, but I have since been informed by an Englishman, whom I casually met with, that he talked on the subject with Olivia himself, and that this minister expressly disclaimed the letter as it appeared in the English papers: he had written a letter to the secretary of the committee, and that he might not be subject to any imputation for so doing, he had first sent it to the Duke of Richelieu. The letter published contained some of his expressions and phrases, but the substance was materially altered.

Generally speaking, the prisons of the south of France are filled with prisoners for political offences, or rather for political opinions, and at Grenoble, the criminal tribunal is declared permanent. Yet, if the French are not attached to the present government, it does not appear that they have, in general, any aversion to it. They do not love Napoleon, but their dislike is deeply mixed with regret for the splendour and glory of his reign. They do not trouble their heads about young Napoleon, yet if he should prove a man of any talents, and the Bourbons should take any measures to excite alarm concerning the national property, it is probably to him they would look, because there is no other, whose claim would be readily admitted by the party opposed to the present system. With the exception of some men of talents, who wish to open that career of honourable ambition, which a popular government admits more than any other, I do not think they have any inclination for a second experiment of a republic. I hope Louis XVIII. will live eight or ten years longer at least, for I think it would give a chance, I fear the only chance, the French have for a constitution, round which they will generally rally against either anarchy or despotism. If the feeling is once[[24]] fully called forth, they will soon improve their government; it may be an indifferent constitution at present, but such a union will gradually make it a good one, and I think it would be no small advantage to our own, to have liberty well understood and acted upon in a great neighbouring state. We submit to many inconveniences, and many abuses, because we fancy them inseparable from what we love and admire; if France were free, the difference of her prejudices and manners would show us the road in many instances, as we show it to her in others.

LETTER XIII.
GENEVA.

Lausanne, 8th September, 1816.

Geneva was very full, and the difficulty of finding a lodging drove me to a little inn, called the Hotel des Trois Maures, where I had a good chamber, and nothing else good. The first, to me, was an important advantage, as I wanted to revise the sketches and memoranda of the south of France, before the subject had faded from my recollection. In fact, I wished to disburthen my mind entirely, and transfer it to paper; which was a great relief, for I felt a continual anxiety lest any thing should escape me after having once been observed. On the 17th of August I walked to Cologni, where our friend, Mr. W., has taken up his abode; he has a beautiful spot; his grounds command, on one side, the Lake of Geneva and the distant range of Jura; on the other, a rich valley opens towards the Môle, a fine conical mountain, rising 4,800 feet above the lake; the Brezon, with its ragged summit crowning the hanging woods which creep up its sides; and beyond all, the brilliant summit of Mont Blanc.

A few days after, I rambled over the little Saleve. The greater Saleve is a limestone hill, with one precipitous face, very much, in character, like some of the limestone scars near Kendal. It is about 1,800 feet above the lake. The little Saleve is perhaps, 400 or 500 feet lower. It presents the most magnificent views over the Lake of Geneva, the Pays de Vaud, and of the range of Jura; and in the opposite direction, of the valley of the Arve, and of the mountains between that and the lake, and of the district of Chablais, famous for its wine. To the right of Chablais appeared the rugged rock D’Enfer, streaked with snow, the point of Agredon, the glaciers of the Siege Vert; and on the south, the Brezon and a long range of mountains, extending towards the Lake of Annecy. Mont Blanc only shone now and then from his throne of clouds; and even of Mont Buet I had only a transitory glimpse.

Another excursion was to Ferney, in order to see the chateau of Voltaire. The French government have insisted on retaining this village, as it is said, because it was the residence of the witty philosopher. The situation is fine, but it commands no view of the lake. The building is composed, to use the French terminology, of three pavillons and two corps de logis; the extent of the front may, perhaps, be about eighty feet. The bed-chamber, as I was told on the spot, remains just as it was in Voltaire’s lifetime; the same bed, the same furniture, the same prints, with the addition of one only, representing his monument; but I was assured at Geneva that other alterations had taken place. In the dining-room is a monumental stone, in a wooden frame, with this inscription: “Au chantre du premier des Bourbons, et au Fondateur de Ferney.” A wooden case, in the form of a pyramid, is put over the stone in order to preserve it, and in this a small hole has been made through which you are to peep. The whole has much the appearance of a showman’s box. The stone which contained the inscription on the church, “Deo Voltaire,” was taken down at the time of the revolution; the present possessor wished to restore it, but the curé opposes it. Returning from Ferney, I made a diversion towards the lake, by a road which runs on a sort of terrace, with the Alps on the right hand and Jura on the left; and afterwards descended through a pleasant wood, adorned with the showy flowers of Dianthus superbus, and the flowerless bushes of the Rosa pumila, to the edge of the water.

Geneva itself is a singular city, or at least two of the principal streets offer an arrangement, which is I believe, perfectly unique; the roofs of the houses project ten or twelve feet beyond the walls, and are supported across the foot ways by lofty posts. You thus walk in an open gallery, whose height is nearly that of the whole house.

In the Journal de Genève, for 1789 and 1790, are some researches into the history of the church of St. Peter, the cathedral of Geneva, by M. Sennebier, who quotes Besson, “Mémoires sur le Diocese de Genève,” as saying that Frederic II. was consecrated here in 1025; but as the emperor Frederic II. died in 1250, there must be some mistake. Even Frederic I. was only born in 1121. In 1025 Geneva probably belonged to the kingdom of Arles, of which Rodolph III. (faineant) was then sovereign.