A CURIOUS VILLAGE.

25

submit to it except for health, that boon for which the circle of the world is made, the tortures of amputation endured, and the wealth of the millionaire squandered. The strictest decorum is preserved, and every breach of propriety punished by the worthy burgomaster with a fine of two francs or thirty-seven and a half A set of regulations is hung against the walls specifying the manner with which every patient is to conduct himself or herself. As specimens, I give articles 7 and 9, which will also be found in Mr. Murray's guide book.

cents.

"Art. 7. Personne ne peut entrer dans les bains sans être revetue d'une chemise longue, et ample, d'une étoffe grossière, sous peine de 2 fr. d'amende." “Art. 9. La même peine sera encouir par ceux qui n'en entreraient pas, ou n'en sortiraient pas d'une manière décente."

Translation. Art. 7. No one is permitted to enter these baths without being clothed in a long, ample, and thick "chemise," under the penalty of a fine of 2 francs.

Art. 9. The same penalty will be incurred by those who do not enter or depart in a becoming manner.

Great care is taken that every thing should be done " decently and in order," and there is nothing to prevent people from behaving themselves while sitting on benches under water as well as above water.

About a mile and a half from these baths is the little village of Albinen, perched on the top of the precipice that hems in the valley of Leuk on every side like a huge wall. The only direct mode of communication between the inhabitants of Leuk and this village is by a series of nearly a dozen ladders going up the face of the precipice. They are of the rudest kind, and fastened to the rock with hooked sticks. Yet the peasants ascend and descend them all times of the day and night and at all seasons of the year. The females have added to their usual dress the pantaloons of the men. This has become so universal, that in climbing the mountains around, they tuck up their dresses, and appear at a little distance like boys. Thus do these rude peasantry, following the instincts of nature and modesty, combine convenience and propriety, and retain their fashions from one generation to another. It is said that pantalets had their origin here.

VI.

THE CASTLE OF CHILLON.

GENEVA. JUNC

TION OF THE RHONE AND ARVE.

THE night after we left Martigny, we slept on the shores of Lake Geneva, in close view of Chillon. This Castle has become immortal by accident. In passing round Lake Geneva, in 1816, Byron got caught in a rain-storm, and remained two days in the little village of Ochy, in a mere hut of an inn. Having nothing else to do, he wrote in the mean time, “The Prisoner of Chillon," the characters of which poem lived only in his own imagination. At that time he was even unacquainted with the story of Bonnivard, which might have been made the basis of a very beautiful poem. When he afterwards heard of it, he wrote a sonnet on the

noble prior of Victor, in which he says:

"Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar; for 'twas trod
Until its very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God."

I regard the "Prisoner of Chillon" one of the most beautiful pieces Byron ever wrote. It has all his passion and fancy, without any of his wickedness. It is tender, touching and beautiful, and ought to make any place immortal. Yet I confess that the old castle standing on a rock in the lake did not owe its chief charm to me from this poem. I thought of the patriot Bonnivard, who suffered here for endeavouring to make Geneva free. A freeman, and loving freedom more than life, he withstood, though only Prior of St. Victor, the tyrannical Duke of Savoy and

his own heartless Bishop. Driven from Geneva, he was betrayed into the hands of the Duke, and cast into a dungeon of this castle, below the surface of the lake. Chained to a column of stone, the bold-hearted Prior passed six long years in solitary confinement. The ring still remains in the pillar to which his chain was attached, and the solid pavement is worn in, by the constant tread of his feet as he paced to and fro in his dungeon. The only music that greeted his ear, year after year, was the low dashing of the waters against his prison walls, or the shock of the waves as the tempest hurled them on the steadfast castle. Year after year he trod the self-same spot, while the iron rusted on his stiffening limbs, and hope grew fainter and fainter round his heart. He struggled to free others, and got a chain upon his own limbs. But he had one consolation, that which cheers the martyr in every age and in every noble cause: that was—

"Truth crushed to earth will rise again,

The eternal years of God are hers."

At length, one day, as he was slowly pacing to and fro in his silent dungeon, he heard a murmur without, like the coming of a storm. The castle quivered on its strong foundations, but it could not be from the waves against its sides. He listened again ; there were human voices in the air, and the shout of a multitude shook the very rock on which he stood. A deeper paleness spread over Bonnivard's cheek, and then a sudden flush shot to his temples as hope kindled in his heart. Blows are mingled with the shouts the crash of falling timbers is heard-the outer gate is forced, and like the blast of a trumpet rings over the storm the name of "BONNIVARD! BONNIVARD!" Nothing can withstand the excited throng. Bolts and bars rend before them-the gates shake, totter and fall. At length they reach Bonnivard's dungeon, against which blows are rained like hail stones. The mas

sive gate quivers and yields and falls, and a thousand voices rend the very walls with the shout-" BONNIVARD, YOU ARE FREE!" What said the patriot then? Forgetful of himself-of his own freedom-thinking only of his country, he cried out

"And Geneva ?"

"IS FREE TOO!" came back like the roar of the sea. The

Swiss had wrested from the hands of Charles V. of Savoy the whole Pays du Vaud. Chillon held out to the last; but besieged by 7,000 Swiss by land, and the Genevese gallies by sea, it was at length taken. It was like waking up from a dream to Bonnivard. When he descended into his dungeon, Geneva was subject to the Duke of Savoy, and was a Catholic State. When he came forth, Geneva was free, a republic, and professing the reformed faith. Byron has made free use of the poet's privilege to exaggerate, in speaking of the depth of the lake. He says:

"Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls—

A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow:

Thus much the fathom line was sent,

From Chillon's snow-white battlement."

A poet should never go into statistics of this sort, for other folks can measure as well as he, though they may not write poetry. There is no place in the region of the castle more than 280 feet deep.

I will not weary one with the mere names of the beautiful places and views around this sweet lake. The sentimentalist would talk of Clarens and Rousseau and his Julie; the sceptic, of Voltaire and Ferney: but I visited neither place, having no sympathy with the morbid, sickly, and effeminate sentimentality of the one, or with the heartless scoffing wit of the other. The garden in which Gibbon finished his history of Rome is shown at Lausanne. He first conceived the idea of his history while sitting on a broken column in the Coliseum, and ended it on the banks of Lake Geneva. He says: "It was on the day or rather the night of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last line of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waves, and all nature was silent." This remarkable passage throws open the feelings of the inner man at the close of his arduous work. Is it not strange that a man of

such intellect and sentiment should see no God in history or nature? In the ruins of Rome at his feet, surmounted every where by the cross, he could see nothing but the work of human passions and human cunning. So in the placid lake, smiling in the moonlight; and in the towering Alps folding their mighty summits away on the nightly heavens, he could behold nothing but the aspect of nature. To him the world had no plan or purpose, and the busy centuries no mission or meaning. The heavens and the earth were a mere poem-the history of man a short episode— and both an accident. How a man with such views could give himself up to the contemplations Gibbon did, and escape suicide, is a mystery to me. I could not live in such a planless, aimless creation. Give me no steady centre to these mighty mutations— no stable throne amid these rocking kingdoms and shaking orbs— no clear and controlling mind to this wild chaos of ideas and passions—no great and glorious result to all this mysterious and awful preparation,-and Reason herself would become as wild and confused and aimless as they, A great mind, without a God, is to me the most melancholy thing in the universe.

Lake Geneva lies in the shape of a half-moon with the horns curved towards the South, and is the largest lake in Switzerland, being 55 miles long. It has one strange phenomenon. In different parts of it, but more frequently near Geneva, the water suddenly rises, at times, from two to five feet. It never remains in this position more than 25 minutes, when it again falls back to its original level. These are called seiches, and the only explanation given of them is the unequal pressure of the atmosphere on the surface at different times. This, however, is mere conjecture.

But the shores constitute the beauty of Lake Geneva. Sloping down to the water's edge, covered with villas, villages, and cultivated fields, and hallowed by such sweet as well as stirring associations, it seems more like a dream-land than a portion of our rough earth. There is an atmosphere, an influence, a something around it that takes the heart captive at once, and the lips will

murmur

"Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake
With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing