bosom of the mountains, some ore or earth-since I have observed it in many of the streams, very high up towards their sources, and especially in those that issue from the glaciers. For although these streams last mentioned have a milky ap pearance, as I have somewhere said, yet they are also distinctly tinged with green.

As we are passing a week here, my notes will adventure a step further than is usual into society.

We called yesterday upon M. Sismondi, introduced by a letter from Dr. Channing. Madame Sismondi was very ill, and we saw the celebrated historian of politics and literature but half an hour. What services our friends do us, without intending it! A miniature likeness of Miss Sedgwick, with her own autograph beneath it, hung upon the wall. It was a voice, in a far land, from my own Berkshire home. M. Sismondi is extremely interesting both in person and conversation--in both, full of dignity, intelligence, and graceful ease and kindness. I was much struck with an observation of his upon the effects of the Catholic and Protestant religions. Joining his hands together, and interlacing his fingers, he said, "There are cantons of Switzerland interlocked in this manner, and when the road carries you across the points of intersec

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tion, you might know in the darkest night, by the state of the roads, by the very smell of the country, which is Catholic and which is Protestant."

Afterward we went to see the collections, in natural history, of M. de Luc. Those things always weary me; but so did not the man. How rare it is to find such a person in America—surrounded by bones and fossils, stuffed animals and birds, skeletons and shells! By-the-by, the collections of our friends in New-Bedford could help him much, in the department of conchology; but then theirs are in elegant cabinets, and have not the learned dust upon them.

M. de Luc has a great horror of priestly domination, and gave us this pretty extraordinary fact. In St. Jervais, not far hence up among the mountains, (of Savoy, I think,) is a bathing establishment, for the use of mineral waters. The keeper of the house had collected for the entertainment of his visiters a miscellaneous library of about a thousand volumes. Last summer, in his absence, two Jesuit priests visited the establishment, looked over the library, took almost the entire body of it, and burned it on the spot.

SEPTEMBER 30. We have made some very delightful visits here, to the pasteurs, and one to Dr. Coindet, a very interesting old physician. Dr.

VOL. I.-X

C. has a great number of autographs of celebrated men; one of Francis I., one of Louis IX.-think of it also of Mirabeau, Carnot, Robespierre; of John Calvin, too, and some letters of Rousseau. I read a few of these letters, and found them to contain some of those extraordinary declarations which he was wont to make, about the Scriptures. One of them to M. Vernes, pasteur of Geneva, says, "I believe in the Gospel. It is the most interesting of all writings. When all other books weary me, I turn to it, with ever fresh delight. When the miseries of life press upon me, I resort to it for consolation." Dr. C. gave us his opinion, that goitre and critinism, those shocking diseases of some portions of the Alps-the first consisting of swellings in the neck, and the last of the whole body-were owing to the water of the country; and says that the cure of them, as well as of most scrofulous disorders, is iodine.

We have dined very pleasantly with consider able parties at M. Neville's and M. Cheneviere's, pasteurs of Geneva. Cheneviere, you know, is considered as very pre-eminent here, if not at the head of the pasteurs; but it is not easy nor agreeable to speak of distinctions, where such men are to be found as Munier and Cellerier.

I wish you could see something of these French

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manners. They are so easy, so amiable, so affectionate; so entirely free from all formality and affectation. The master and mistress are not stationed in one spot, nor do they receive company with a stiff bow or courtesy; nor at dinner are they fixtures at the table, nailed down to their chairs. For instance, M., seeing that bread is wanted, gets up and passes it around the table himself. And this not because he wants servants; but neither of the servants at the moment happened to be present. Those awkward appendages which we wear-shoulders, arms, hands, legs-they seem to use as parts of themselves-they seem to have no consciousness of them, any more than they have of their lungs.

I wish you could have seen the manner in which Madame and Madame met; the kiss and the kiss again, as if the first was not enough to satisfy the heart; and the thousand little tendernesses of behaviour that passed during the evening. I wish, too, that you could see the manners of all these people towards us, strangers as we are. They take the heart by a coup de-what shall I say?-d'œil, de main, de-everything that is irresistible. It is affection-simple, self-forgetting, allconquering affection. When shall we see such manners in America? When shall kindness-con

fiding, free, overflowing-disembarrass, unchain, disenchant society among us, from reserve, awk wardness, and suffering?

OCTOBER 1. To-day an entire change has taken place in our plans in consequence of intelligence received of the illness of Mr.'s son in London. My companions will return to London, and I shall proceed to Italy alone.

The sympathy of our Genevese friends for Mr.

is a most delightful expression of their character. All of them look and speak as if they made the disappointment and the anxiety their own. M., a fine-looking youth among the pasteurs, came in, and when he took leave of Mr., said, "I hope-your son-" and then, his knowledge of English failing-what do you think he did? Why, he just put his face to Mr. --'s, and kissed his cheek. That was the way he eked out the sentence; and it was so simple, so natural, so entirely the impulse of the heart, that it was beautiful. It was very touching; perhaps it might be said it was too much so. But, I think, in the ordinary intercourse of life, that it is the artificial, affected, overstrained expression of feeling that we dislike. I allow that there are extraordinary exigences where the truest strength and delicacy of feeling are shown in self-restraint, or