of a town generally appears hand somer than the town itself.

"It was not for the sake of what is called the castle of Ferney that I came hither; I wished only to enter the place where Voltaire had lived, walked, and composed his poems; I wished to feast on the sensations which, in such a place, a susceptible fancy so easily creates. The house now belongs to a merchant whose name I do not recollect; but he shows respect for Voltaire's memory, by leaving his bedchamber exactly as it was when inhabited by the philosopher.

"There I still found his bed with the faded curtains of yellow silk; there still hung Le Kain's portrait of Frederick the Great; a piece of émbroidery of the empress Catherine, and many other articles of the same kind. In a niche was an urn, in which his heart had been inclosed, with this inscription: I am satisfied, since my heart remains among you.'

"In another room we found a billiard table on which he used to play, and a living relic, too, walks about the house, an old priest, who had lived nine years with Voltaire. I cannot find words for the peculiar melancholy cast of my feelings. You, dear madam, who are so rich in tender sentiments, perfectly understand me, even without utterance.

"Here ends my descriptive tour through Switzerland; which you will surely not tax with prolixity. Should I once make a journey on foot through these romantic regions (and this is my firm resolution) then I hope to feel still more than I shall write.

"Switzerland ought to be tra versed on foot; to travel in a carriage is extremely tedious and very expensive. If a Swiss coachman

has jogged on four or five German miles a day, with his well-fed horses, he thinks he has done wonders, and three crowns must be paid him for his two beasts, and as much for the following day, when he returns empty; at the same time, you are obliged to dine and to stop at night wherever he thinks proper, and must suffer yourself to be cheated at the expensive inns. This happened, contrary to my expectation, less frequently in the small towns than in the best inns of the great ones, which were often greatly inferior. Almost every where I found the accommodations bad; one instance will serve for many,

"At Lausanne, 1 alighted at the Golden Lion, which Reichardt, in his Guide des Voyageurs, calls the best inn. Have you any room?"" I asked the waiter, who came up to the coach door.-'Yes.'-'But,' continued I, (having been imposed upon before by such answers,) have you good accommodations?" O! yes!I want two apartments.' " They are at your ser vice.' He conducted me up three pair of filthy stairs, through a variety of dirty holes, and showed me one room. Where is the other?'-Twenty yards farther.' I wish them to be close together.' They are not to be had.'

"Well, I put up with these ; but found neither of them had a table in it. At last the tables were brought. I ordered tea, which was brought me at the expiration of an hour. At what time to-morrow morning can I have coffee? I asked. As early as you please.' At five o'clock. Very well.'

self, but-there were no bellows. At last my servant brought coffee at six o'clock. Why so late? asked I. Every body in the house is yet asleep, and the scolding cook was obliged to be drummed out of her bed.' And the waiter, who promised yesterday?" 'He is asleep.' And the porter, who is to make the fire in the stove?' He is asleep also.'

"All these neglects may be called trifles; but you must own, that they are apt to provoke, especially where, in spite of irregula rity, one is obliged to pay dear beyond example. In the same house they made me pay one frank for a wax-light; a French crown per head for a supper of three dishes; and so on in proportion.

"For a man accustomed to rise as early as I do, it is very unplea sant to find people sleep so long as in Switzerland and France. In Geneva, where I put up at the sign of the Balance, the waiter plainly told me, that he could get no coffee so early, for the Russians and English drank it much later. It is best for a person to carry every thing with him, to warm the room with his own materials, to strike a light, and boil his coffee in the chimney. "In travelling it often happens that we find things very different from what we expected. Thus, for instance, I was much afraid of the French custom-house officers, hav. ing been told that they search very strictly, throw every thing into confusion, and are extremely insolent. I found them the reverse in every respect. The custom-house officers on the frontiers were very polite, cast a glance upon my passport, merely opened my trunk, and did not detain me five minutes. The searchers took a trifle; but another officer present was almost offended,

when I was going to make him my best acknowledgments, and to put something into his hand. According to certain modern accounts, I was afraid lest I should be obliged to deposit one half of the value of my carriage; but nobody thought of asking it of me. This law applies only to carriages imported from England.

Cerdon.-I was most agreeably surprised on my way from Geneva hither. I was ignorant that I should see such districts as leave every thing I saw in Switzerland far behind them. Every one who traverses that country has something to say concerning it; thinking he has been admiring the most splendid scenes which nature exhibits; but most travellers would, like me, be amazed, were they but to continue their route to Lyons,-winding their way through fort L'Ecluse, where, between the rushing Rhone and the towering rocks, the way seems closed even to the sliding lizard; were they to see the wild, the awfully romantic and rugged cliffs, from which, at small distances of scarcely one hundred yards, the water sometimes furiously precipitates itself, sometimes trickles down, but often only oozes through the stones, and decks whole mountains with a glistening brilliancy.

waves, deep in the bosom of the earth, is overarched with excavated rocks. In the rainy season, the tomb which swallows up the Rhone and vomits it forth again, is too small to receive the whole volume of its waters. They then flow partly over the surface, and thus two rivers run, side by side, separated only by a slight partition

of rocks.

"Proceeding farther, you every moment expect to behold the end of your journey; but yonder, where the rocks seem to close, the path suddenly winds between them, and a new romantic world opens to your astonished sight. Here a small lake, there steep shelving rocks, with winding footpaths. Between huge masses of fantastically towering stones, you behold a vineyard, extorted, as it were, from nature; here again are lonely mills, supported by rugged cliffs, from which cascades seem to pour on the roofs of the houses beneath.

"Held in uninterrupted amazement, you thus move forwards to the environs of Nantua, where you enter a valley, which I feel tempted to call the Valley of Despair. Any thing so wildly awful I never beheld. The lonely scattered houses seem to have been built by some Crusoe, who was wrecked in the great world. Here, as in Nova Zembla, the sun is never seen in winter; the black and naked rocks wind into dungeons; the songs of birds are not mingled with the murmur of the streams, as they foam down the crags; but the scanty fields, which man with laborious industry has stolen from frowning nature, are surrounded by cold marshes.

"The road again winds; you are presently in the middle of Nantua, a gay little town, in spite of

the rocks which rear their crags. above all the houses. No sooner have you passed this place, than you are again surrounded by scenery wildly picturesque. It is no longer composed of wavy ridges of mountains, but is formed by stones of extraordinary figures, which stand upright, and which some revolution of the earth, in the dark ages of antiquity, has placed in their present situation-figures, which you are sometimes ready to swear are gigantic statues, the workmanship of some barbarous period. Beyond Nantua to the right, for instance, you see the figure of a giant on a cliff, who, like the king of the country, has surveyed, perhaps for thousands of years, the surrounding districts.

"You then discover, here and there, ruins of old castles, cliffs, and caverns; to reach which it is necessary to be drawn up with ropes; deeply furrowed rocks, ploughed for centuries by showers of rain, interspersed with vineyards and new crosses, the evidences of industry and returning piety. You at length reach a very narrow, cold valley, shaded by gloomy pine-trees. It is closed at the extremity by rugged rocks; and behind this craggy wall, nature, enthroned in all her majesty, has reserved for you the most enchanting spectacle.

"Stepping as from behind a scene, you suddenly behold a narrow, smiling dale; you see on the left cascades, great and small, precipitating themselves from higher or lower ranges of rocks; large and small brooks, murmuring down and uniting at the bottom, meander through the verdant meadows. Behind rises a decayed castle, on a cliff, almost entirely excavated by the water; and farther on to the left are the ruins of another castle, to

which the watch-tower, on a more distant ridge, and still in good preservation, no longer affords protection. On the right you discover steep detached rocks, resembling a wall of freestone, and at top forming a menacing vault, beneath which the traveller steals with horror; for here and there detached masses of stone which have fallen down, seem to warn him of the danger.

"Yet beneath this terrific vault the blue fruit of the vine is still seen to sparkle, and close to its brink stands a new house, raised high into the air by the projecting stones: the back ground of this divinely beautiful valley is closed by the little town of Cerdon, and its hospi

table white houses.

"Pardon me, if, unfaithful to my resolution, I have almost been betrayed into a description. Alas! here it was that I again, for the first

time, experienced a sensation of returning serenity. Really the beauties of the road from Geneva to Cerdon are alone worth a journey, and particularly during the vintage, when gay groupes are every where in motion, and every one confesses, laughing, that he has not vessels enough to collect the blessings of nature. You meet every moment large waggons containing open casks full of grapes, or observe barrels standing in long rows by the road side. Both old and young are occupied in pressing the fruit. If the sight of it tempt you, and you are thirsty, you need but to ask. A fair labourer immediately appears, and presents you with a basket full of picked grapes. Prenez tant que vous voudrez, says the owner of the vineyard, vous ne payerez rien. That is, take as many as you please, they will cost you nothing."

PEOPLE

EOPLE generally imagine that travellers are most strict ly searched, questioned, and watched on the frontiers of France, and afterwards in all the great towns through which they pass, not excepting the city of Paris, by customhouse officers, sentinels, and spies of the police. Whether the watching takes place, I will not pretend to say; but that the other part of the story is untrue, I can warrant. From Geneva to Paris I was never asked for a passport but once, when going through the little mountain fortress Ecluse. On my arrival in Paris, I expected nothing less than a detention of several hours in the

custom-houses, police offices, &c. I passed the barriers without being noticed by any person; I took my seat in a publicshouse without the landlord's asking me whether I had a passport or not. It was not till the following day I took it to the ambassador, who gave me a certificate to be delivered to the police office, in order to obtain a ticket of residence (permis de sejour). A ticket of this kind has the wellknown advantage that the holder, wherever any thing is to be seen, has free admission, though the doors are shut to the rest of the public. Exclusive of this, it secures him against every accident, upon pro

"The permission of residence can only be obtained by a personal application at the police office; a condition from which neither rank, nor sex, nor age, will exempt; for ladies and children are bound to make their personal appearance, because the ticket minutely describes them from head to foot, and the whole is done with amazing dispatch. The secretary in whose department this operation lies, a very polite man, and a native of Berlin, at one look surveys and conceives the whole form. He had scarcely cast a glance on me, but his pen rapidly set down the particulars. He fixed my height at one metre and seventy-six centimetres, in which he was probably mistaken, as he with equal celerity made my travelling companion, who was evidently taller than I, smaller by two centimetres. He then described, with the like exactness, our hair, eyes, shape of face, and so forth. Where a more precise definition would be too prolix, he makes shift with the word moyen, which means middling; my forehead, for instance, was moyen, my nose moyen, my mouth moyen. All this is done gratis, with the greatest politeness and dispatch, in a fine large hall, matchless in its kind in the world, being embellished all round with the busts of the most celebrated

orators and poets. On taking leave, the secretary gives you notice that it will be necessary to call again at least eight days before your departure, to fetch back the passport, and apply for a travelling pass to the grand judge.

"I would advise every traveller to dispense with this formality, as it would be attended with a consi. derable loss of time, money, and running about, of which i have precedents, and the pass may be obtained with much greater convenience and expedition. The ambassador, for instance, will grant him one twenty-four hours previ ously to his departure, which he produces to the minister for foreign affairs, Talleyrand, who puts his name to it. Thus the business is settled, and the old passport may quietly remain in the police office.

"Among the curious public advertisements, I remarked one in which somebody begged, in the name of humanity, (au nom de l'humanité) for the restitution of a lost dog. Another announces an employment for un homme de lettres, fetching 1600 livres per annum, begging at the same time from him who shall obtain it, a recompense honnête. Such a venal offering of public offices appears revolting to my feelings. A certain madame Leon offers to dye the hair black or chesnut colour, so as to become in delible for life, in a sitting of four hours.

"Let me once more be allowed the diversion of seeing the Parisian beaux pass in transitory review in my imagination, I mean on horseback; for this sort of gentry now-adays fraternize only with the Houynbams. They ride in the Bois de Boulogne, calling out to each other, Quelle superbe bête! He that has not such a beast is insignificant. A bad horseman, mounted on a lean hack, passes for an Englishman, particularly if he turns out his toes well. It is likewise fashionable to go spurred, and carry a whip, without riding. A fashionable youth salutes nobody; upon handsome la