Couronne, a very good house, recently rebuilt, and also facing the lake, capital cuisine; a room on the second floor, fronting the lake, cost only 3 fr. a day;-L'Ecu de Genève, a new house, rivalling in size and accommodation the H. des Bergues; La Balance. At Sècheron, about 1 mile from Geneva, on the road to Lausanne, is the Hotel d'Angleterre, kept by Dejean, and nearer to the town on the same side the Hotel des Etrangers, which is well spoken of). 141 site bank by the sight of this modern rival. The unsightly houses which lined the margin of the lake have been refaced and beautified, while a broad belt of land has been gained from the water to form a Quai: This is connected with the Quai des Bergues by two handsome bridges, thrown across the lake, and united with a small island, formerly a part of the fortifications, now occupied by a very inferior statue of Rousseau. Geneva is still surrounded with ramparts and bastions, erected in the middle of the last century by the aristocratic magistracy of that period. It is divided into the upper and lower town; and this distinction, arising from the uneven nature of the ground, is perpetuated in the rank and condition of the inhabitants of the two divisions. The upper town consists almost entirely of the large and Geneva, though capital of the smallest of the Swiss cantons, except Zug, is the most populous town in the Confederation, since it contains 29,960 inhabitants. It is well situated, at the W. extremity of the lake of Geneva, at the point where "the blue waters of the arrowy Rhone" issue out of it. The river divides the town into two parts, and the in-handsome hotels of the burgher aristensely blue colour of its waters, al- tocracy, heretofore the senators and luded to by Byron, is certainly very magistrates of the republic. The remarkable, and resembles nothing so lower town is the seat of trade and of much as the discharge of indigo from democracy: its streets are narrow, a dyer's vat. The cause of it has not its houses lofty, and it has something been satisfactorily explained. Sir of the air of the old town of EdinHumphry Davy attributed it to the presence of iodine. The extreme purity lasts but for a short space, since a mile below the town it is polluted by the admixture of the waters of the turbid Arve, and retains the same dingy hue all the way to the sea. Geneva, if approached from the lake, now presents a very imposing appearance, in consequence of improvements recently completed, for which it is indebted, in no slight de. gree, to the circulation of the gold of English travellers among its inhabitants. An entirely new quarter has started up on the rt. bank of the Rhone, called Quartier des Bergues, and displays a handsome front of tall houses, among which is the Hotel des Bergues, lined with a broad quay, towards the lake. A spirit of emulation has been excited on the oppo burgh. A few of the older buildings are furnished with a shed or penthouse, called here, "Dome,” projecting from the roof over the street, and supported by wooden props, reaching from the pavement to the roof. About 25 years ago they were almost universal, but their number, of late, has diminished, and the whole row which lined the houses in the Rue Basse has been taken down by order of the government. The feuds arising between the high and low town were not few, nor void of interest; indeed, they would fill a long and amusing historical chapter : they often led to bloodshed; but the democrats below generally brought their exalted neighbours to reason by the simple expedient of cutting off the water-pipes, taking especial care to guard the hydraulic machine which furnished the supply to the upper 142 Route 53. Geneva - Rath Museum Library. town, and which is situated in their | among them the ferra, the lotte, and quarter. a trout weighing 43 lbs from the lake of Geneva. Although Geneva is a great focus of attraction for travellers of all nations, 30,000 being the number which is calculated to pass through the town annually, it possesses few objects of interest to the passing stranger. As a town, it is not very prepossessing; it has no fine public buildings, and scarcely any sights. It is owing to its beautiful environs, to its vicinity to Chamouni, to the charming scenery of its lake, and to its position on the high road from Paris to Italy, that it has become a place of so much resort. The Cathedral, or Church of St. Pierre, is of an extreme simplicity of architecture. Its fine Corinthian portico added on the outside is a blemish where it is placed, but its interior possesses interest as a very early and uncorrupted specimen of the Gothic of the 11th century. It contains the tombs of Agrippa d'Aubigny, the friend of Henry IV., and grandfather of Mad. de Maintenon, and that of the Comte de Rohan, a leader of the French Protestants in the reign of Louis XIII. The Musée Rath, so named after its founder, General Rath, who left the reversion of his fortune to it, is a neat building, close to the Porte Neuve; it contains a collection of pictures and other works of art, of no very great merit, the greater part by native artists. Among the Genevese painters, Töpfer, Guignon, Hornung, and Calame, deserve to be mentioned. The Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, in the Grand-Rue, is chiefly interesting to the student as containing the geological collections of Saussure; the fossil plants of M. M. Brongniart and Decandolle, and the collections of M. Necker. It is principally filled with the native productions of Switzerland, and contains specimens of the chamois, of the Bouquetin, the dog of St. Bernard, of all the fishes of the rivers and lakes of this country; There is the skin of an elephant, which lived a long time in a menagerie in the town, but at length becoming unruly was shot. There is also a cabinet of antiquities; some of them found in the neighbourhood, such as a silver buckler, with fine bas reliefs, discovered in the bed of the Arve, inscribed "Largitas Valentiniani Augusti ;" some instruments of sacrifice found near the rocks of Neptune in the lake, &c. &c. Also the lantern dropped in the town ditch by one of the Savoyard soldiers engaged in the unsuccessful attempts to scale the walls in 1602 (see p. 144.) The Reading-room, in the upper story of the museum, is well supplied with the best European journals, including the Times, John Bull, Athenæum, &c. Strangers receiving a "carte d'entrée" from a member, are liberally admitted for a month. The best and most fashionable club in Geneva is that called the Cercle de la Rive. The Public Library attached to the College, a scholastic-looking building, of no architectural pretensions, behind the cathedral, founded by Calvin, contains 40,000 volumes. The following curiosities are shown to all who desire to see them:-: -394 MSS. letters of Calvin, almost illegible, but with fair transcripts (there is one addressed to Lady Jane Grey while a prisoner in the Tower); 44 vols. of his MSS. sermons between 1549 and 1560; 12 vols. of letters addressed to him, and many important documents relating to the council of Basle; several vols. of letters of Theodore Beza; the manuscript of the "Noble Leçon," a work of the ancient Waldenses; part of the account-book of the household of Philip le Bel, for 1308, written with a style upon waxed tablets, but now almost effaced; a translation of Quintus Curtius, Route 53. Geneva Calvin. 143 taken along with the baggage of Commentaries, where it is described Charles the Bold, at Morat. The as "the last fortress of the Allodiscourses of St. Augustine, a MS. broges, and nearest to the Helvetian on papyrus of the 7th century. The frontier." library is opened every day but Saturday and Sunday, from 11 to 4, and on Tuesday, to consult books, from 1 to 3. Vol ma Geneva, if looked at in an historical point of view, may be said to possess an interest for the intelligent traveller far greater than that to be derived from the individual objects of curiosity contained within its walls. The influence which she has exercised, not only over Europe but over the world, by means of her children, or those whom she has adopted as her citizens, is quite out of proportion to the limited extent of a territory which one may traverse from end to end in a morning's ride. taire ridiculed its diminutiveness by saying, "Quand je secoue perruque je poudre toute la republique;" and the Emperor Paul called the disputes of its citizens a tempest in a tumbler of water; yet from Geneva emanated those religious doctrines whence Scotland, Holland, and a large part of France, Germany, and Switzerland, derive their form of faith, and which was transported by the Pilgrim Fathers to the opposite shores of the Atlantic. Here also were sown those political opinions which bore fruit in the English revolution under Charles I., in the American and the French revolutions. Some few memorials still exist in the town serving to recall the events which have occurred in it, and the great names connected with it. On the island, in the middle of the Rhone, not far from the Hydraulic machine, traces may, it is said, be discovered of a Roman structure, supposed to be the foundations of one of the towers erected by Julius Cæsar, to prevent the Helvetians crossing the river. The earliest mention of Geneva occurs in his The building of the Old Prison, still called the Evêché, near St. Peter's church, was originally the palace of the bishops, who governed the city as temporal rulers, elected by the citizens, for many ages; but at length became almost nominees of the Duke of Savoy. The citizens, from the very first, enjoyed a liberty above other great towns of the empire, and showed a bold and steady resistance to the encroachments of their rulers, maintaining, against force and persuasion, the municipal prerogatives derived from their ancestors, and from the Golden Bull of the Emperor Charles IV. Thus, by a cautious and wellconducted policy, they avoided being swallowed up by their powerful neighbours, Savoy and France, or by their friends the Swiss Cantons, who, though called in as allies to protect them, were equally ambitious of incorporating Geneva in their own territory as a subject state. John Calvin, the reformer, is supposed to have lived in the house No. 116, in the rue des Chanoines, and he probably died there. It was in the year 1536 that he passed through the town a fugitive, on his way from Italy to Basle. Two years had not elapsed since the Genevese had abolished Roman Catholicism, expelled their bishop, and adopted the Reformation. Farel, who was the means of introducing it, was then preaching at Geneva, and, aware of Calvin's talents and powerful eloquence, entreated him to remain. Calvin obeyed the call, and, in a short space, the itinerant preacher and foreigner was raised to be the dictator of the republic, ruling its turbulent democracy with a sway not more mild than that of the dukes of Savoy and bishops of Geneva, under which the citizens had groaned for ages, and from which the Reformation had at length released them. From the pulpit of St. Peter's Church, which became at once the tribune and judgment-seat of the reformer, he denounced the prevailing immorality of the town with such eloquence and force that profligacy was obliged to hide its head. His hearers, running into an opposite extreme, adopted a rigorous and puritanical austerity of manners, and every transgression of Calvin's code of morals was visited with punishment of the utmost severity. But Calvin's influence was not confined to the pulpit; he was elected president of the Consistory, of which one third of the permanent members were ministers, and the remainder laymen holding office for a year only. This counsel assumed an authority far more despotic than that of the bishops it exercised the power of an inquisition, to examine into men's private lives, and into the affairs of families of whatever rank. : The sumptuary laws enacted by Calvin were severe, but were rigidly enforced by the Consistory. They contained such enactments as the following a dinner for ten persons was limited to five dishes; plush breeches were laid under interdict; violations of the sabbath were followed by a public admonition from the pulpit; adultery was punished with death; and the gamester was exposed in the pillory, with a pack of cards tied round his neck. Calvin was equally rigorous in the maintenance of orthodoxy. Servetus, condemned by him for holding antitrinitarian doctrines which, however, he did not attempt to disseminate in Geneva, was burnt at the stake in the Champ de Bourreau, the ancient place of execution outside the walls. The hole in which it was planted is now filled up, and the destination of the spot is changed. The act of the stern lawgiver admits of no palliation, as his victim was not a subject of Geneva, and therefore not amena ble to its laws. The execution of Servetus casts a stain upon Geneva and the cause of the Reformation as great as that with which the murder of Huss taints the Papist Council of Constance. Geneva, thus become the metropolis of Calvinism, and "the Rome of Protestantism," was resorted to by many foreigners, who sought refuge here from religious persecutions in their own country. Among a num ber of English and Scotch exiled by the atrocities of the reign of Bloody Mary, was John Knox. He was made a citizen of Geneva in 1558, and did not finally quit it till 1560. Calvin "died in 1564, at the age of 55, after 23 years of uninterrupted power: he was buried in the old cemetery of the Plain Palais, now abandoned; but he forbade the Genevese to mark the spot where his remains were laid with a monument, and the very site of his grave is not known with certainty. A Genevese law now limits the period of property in a grave to 15 years, after which it may be opened for a fresh occupant. The Duke of Savoy, whose authority within the town had been destroyed by the expulsion of the bishop, was unwilling, notwithstanding, to abandon his claim to the possession of it. For many years after that event, he was engaged in repeated open contests with the citizens; nor did he omit to maintain within the walls, spies, and secret partisans, in the hopes of gaining possession of it by surprise. The street called Corraterie, at the period in question, A. D. 1602, the town ditch, was the scene of the most memorable of these attempts, known in Swiss history as the Escalade. The inhabitants, lulled to security by a display of pacific intentions on the part of the reigning Duke Charles Emanuel, had neglected all precautions to guard against an attack, even though warnings had been given them of approaching danger. On the Route 53. Geneva · Rousseau · Botanic Garden. night of Dec. 20th, the townsfolk were aroused from sleep by the firing of musketry, and an alarm that the enemy was already in possession. It appeared that a sentinel, in going his rounds with a lantern, had fallen among a party of armed men, who had quickly despatched him, but not before his cries and the report of his matchlock had alarmed the rest of the guard. It was quickly discovered that a party of Savoyards, 200 strong, detached from a still larger force of 2000 men, who had approached the city in the darkness, and were posted on the Plain Palais, a little distance beyond the walls, had descended into the fosse of Corraterie, and by the aid of scaling-ladders, painted black, in order that they might not be seen, had surmounted the ramparts, were proceeding in small parties to burst open the Porte Neuve, and thus admit their associates on the outside. The Savoyards had already despatched a messenger announcing to their commander the capture of the town; but the citizens, though completely taken by surprise, were by no means seized with the panic which such an occurrence was likely to produce. Every man, armed as he might be, issued out into the streets; the small body of Savoyards who had gained the ramparts were quickly overpowered; the first gun fired from the walls, by a chance shot, swept away three of the scalingladders; and the enemy on the outside, on approaching the Porte Neuve, found that, instead of being blown up, it was strongly guarded, with the portcullis down. Many anecdotes are told of the prowess of the townspeople on that night, and an iron saucepan, with which an old woman knocked down a soldier, still preserved in the arsenal along with a piece of the scaling-ladders. The storming party thus unexpectedly attacked, and at the same time cut off from their friends, were quickly killed or made prisoners. Those who Switz. 145 fell alive into the hands of the Genevese were hung next day as housebreakers: 67 heads were planted along the ramparts; but many more than these fell in the ditch and outside the town. In the cemetery of St. Gervais, on the right bank of the Rhone, a monumental epitaph was set up to commemorate the names of 17 Genevese who were killed on the occasion; and the venerable Theodore Beza, at that time 80 years old, gave out from the pulpit next day the 124th Psalm, which has been sung ever since on the anniversary of the Escalade. Jean Jacques Rousseau, son of a watchmaker of Geneva, first saw the light in a street of the Quartier St. Gervais, since named after him (Rue de Rousseau), and in the house No. 69. It is no longer in its original condition, having been altered and partly rebuilt. His book, the Emile, was burnt, in conformity with an order of the Council of Geneva, by the common hangman, in front of the Hôtel de Ville, in 1762. The instigators of this act were Voltaire and the Council of the Sorbonne, who, by a singular coincidence, in this instance, acted in unison. The Council at the same time issued a warrant for the arrest of the author. The Botanic Garden behind the theatre, and near the Porte Neuve, deserves mention, as having been laid out under the direction of the eminent botanist Decandolle; but the funds are so limited that the collection of plants is of no great importance. The ground it occupies has also painful historical associations. Geneva, for ages the nursery of republicanism and democratic opinions, became "a principle of explosion to revolutionary France, placed at its extremity, as the fuse is on the surface of the bomb," but she likewise reaped the fruits of the seed sown by her in the establishment of a tribunal of blood, and the enactment of a reign of terror; a humble imitation H |