pasteur took his place in the Rotonde; and when his wife told him who we were, he gave us a most cordial greeting! I regretted much our inability to converse together.

Our course is not the usual route from Paris to Switzerland, which is by the way of Lyons to Geneva; but we had no time to spend at Lyons, and hasted to reach Switzerland as soon as possible. And then, this route took us through the Franche Compte, or county of Burgundy, an old and interesting port of France. The old towns of Besancon and Pontalier are interesting from their historic associations. We stopped to try to dine at the first, an operation in which I made a great failure as while I was washing and getting ready for dinner, the operation with others was over, and I was near losing my passage. It was here that the assassination of the illustrious William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, the successful leader of the Protestant forces against the Catholic powers, was planned by the Catholics; and here was reared the fanatical assassin, Balthazar Gerard.

For an entire day we rolled along through a level and uninteresting country, and the most of the distance by a canal, whose banks were lined with rows of tall poplars, to be seen, often, for miles ahead of us. How I longed to be gliding along that canal in such a boat as I had seen on the Erie Canal, instead of lumbering on in that horrid carriage. We saw but little life on our route.

The whole

"A deathly iteration reigned around!" land seemed struck with paralysis. A few women were

occasionally seen in the fields, at work. How unlike former times, when mighty armies were thundering over these plains, and the soil was enriched with gore.

When the second morning dawned, we were winding up a valley in the Jura Alps, just commencing our ascent. I opened the window and looked out, and such a scene of magnificence and grandeur burst upon my vision as I had never before witnessed. The mountains were towering high above us on either hand; while down below us still, hundreds of feet, a little streamlet was winding its way to the valley we had left. As the ascent was such that our horses, of which we had than a walk, we called to the cocher to stop, while we could alight and walk. The morning was cool; a delicious and balmy air revived us, after being pent up for so long a time in the diligence; the sun was just beginning to gild the distant mountain tops, and all nature seemed waking to fresh life. We started off, and out-walking our team, we walked at least four miles. The road was the best I ever saw; graded, so that the ascent was regular, and so well macadamized as to be smooth as a floor. On the outer edge a hewn stone parapet was laid in cement, so that there could be no danger of running off into the valley below. By the way, every hundred rods, or so, a recess is excavated in the side of the hill, where is deposited a mass of broken stone, for repairing the road. You occasionally meet a man with a badge on his hat, who is the superintendent of the way; he makes examinations, removes

now nine, could move no faster

obstructions, and repairs damages. And all this is the work of the poor old exiled king, Louis Philippe! We passed through a fine tunnel, cut through a spur of the mountain, to shorten the distance. And now began the realization of the poet's picture

"Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise."

We were in a region of wild solitude, where nature displays her rarest magnificence. I never enjoyed such a walk; I never expect to enjoy another such. We reached the summit of the first range, and then, mounting again, rattled down into a quiet, little, old, dirty, hamlet, where, with keen appetites, we got nothing to eat but bread and coffee. We were now to leave the old diligence and take smaller coaches, or hacks, each accommodating four persons, as the roughness of the region made travelling in the diligence too slow, even for a French driver. Two young English lads, whom we had taken up somewhere, and who were going to Lausanne, were joined to us, and we were soon bestowed in a small hack, or fiacre, with one immense horse in the shafts, and one very small one by his side, for company, merely. Indeed, if a French driver had four horses, two of which matched perfectly, he would mismatch them, for the pleasure of the contrast. Our first stage brought us to the boundary of France and Switzerland; and a little plain building was standing by the way, before which we drew up for a fresh visa of our passports, which was most politely done in a few minutes. A tremendous

crack of the whip of the cocher, and we are in Switzerland. And here the valley of Lake Leman comes into view, with the long and lofty Alpine range, white with eternal snow, beyond it. It was some hours before we caught a view of the beautiful Lake Leman, or Geneva, which, at last, as we left a mountain range behind us, came out in all its placid beauty, like a mirror, spread out, that the mighty Alps might view their awful forms! Our way was down the mountains, and our new driver was either drunk or crazy, for he cracked his whip with might and main, and we went down at a fearful rate. These postilions seem to be persons of immense importance; and the poor peasantry, whom we met on the way, when they heard the terrible crack of that whip, crowded out against the wall, and gave us the whole way.

We soon came to the bottom of this fearful descent, and then came a change of carriage, again. The owner wished to pack us into a thing not large enough for two, but we told him no; and, after some scolding, he brought a fine fiacre; and our ride, of three hours, to Lausanne was very pleasant, through highly cultivated fields and splendid scenery. At three o'clock, Saturday, P. M., we rolled over the pavements of the old town of Lausanne, and put up at the Hotel Faucon, or the Falcon. Our driver dropped us, and asked no questions. Our tickets were not even looked at from the time we left Paris until we arrived here, and we have them yet.

LETTER XXIV.

FRIEND S

LAUSANNE, AUG. 12, 1850.

You have been in Switzerland, and therefore you, at least, can excuse any enthusiasm which I may manifest in my letters. We have heard, and read, so much of the Swiss of their independence, their bravery, their intelligence, their zeal for the true faith, when in possession of it, the persecutions some of them have suffered, that one naturally feels excited when among them for the first time. We happened here at a very opportune season for witnessing a display of genuine Swiss patriotism. Our landlord, who, by the way, is a German, and has laid in but a few words of American, informed us, on our arrival, that we were most fortunate in coming at this time, as the next day was a feté-day; and as the next day was the Sabbath, we, of course, supposed it some great religious festival. But we learned that it was the anniversary of the securing a Constitution, four years ago, on the tenth of August; and