Lyons is celebrated in Ecclesiastical History as the see of Saint Irenæus, the second Bishop of the diocese, one of the most important of the early writers of the Church, who is said to have suffered martyrdom, with eight thousand fellow-Christians, in the reign of Severus. This Emperor is supposed to have treated the Christians of Lyons with especial rigor, in consequence of some affront which he had received while living there; a tradition which strangely corresponds with the anecdote told of Collot d'Herbois,—that his inhuman cruelties toward the inhabitants of this devoted city in the French Revolution, were in revenge for having been hissed by them, when he appeared in their theatre as a fourth-rate actor. A former persecution under Marcus Aurelius is famous as that in which the gentle Blandina, (a name which has acquired a happier and let us hope a not less permanent celebrity in our own country and day, for a noble act of enlightened liberality,)* trod the thorny path of martyrdom.

The skepticism of the last century, under the guidance of Gibbon, was disposed to view with distrust the accounts transmitted to us by the Historians of the Church, of those wholesale butcheries, the famous ten Persecutions. It is not necessary to contend too anxiously for this precise numerical arrangement of the sufferings inflicted upon the confessors of the new faith, under the reign of the predecessors of Constantine. But historical monuments of undoubted authenticity prove that the early Christians were subjected to the most cruel treatment, and often paid with their lives for their rejection of the religion of the State. Whatever doubts may have existed as to the wholesale butcheries in question, as transcending in the number of their victims all credible measures of brutal tyranny, have been but too sadly removed, by the atrocities practised, at this very city of Lyons, after its seige and capture by the army of the Convention in 1793.

* The endowment of the Observatory at Albany, by Mrs. Blandina Dudley.

There is nothing in the ten Persecutions which, either for the number of the sufferers or the diabolical rage and malignity with which they were consigned to their fate, exceeds the records of the revolutionary tribunals at Lyons, under Couthon, Fouché, and Collot d'Herbois. We have but to read the account in the third volume of Alison, or what on this subject may seem a safer authority, though they draw from the same sources, Lamartine's history of the Girondins. I could scarcely believe, in traversing the Brotteaux in 1818, that twenty-five years only had elapsed, since it was the scene. of the unimagined horrors practised under those monsters. Finding the guillotine too slow to satiate their thirst for blood, they filled the square with the best citizens of Lyons, their hands tied behind them, to be swept down by grape shot, ranging along a cable to which they were secured, and then bayonetted them at leisure, as they lay mutilated and gasping on the reeking ground. Nothing in the legends of the church need be disbelieved after reading that, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, the ruling power of France decreed that the second city under their government should be razed from the face of the earth; its inhabitants exiled or put to death; its name blotted from the catalogue of cities; and that three and a half millions of dollars should have been expended in tearing down the houses that lined its finest streets and squares!

Among the heroic defenders of Lyons, who happily escaped these sanguinary horrors, and lived to reap in peace. the reward of his marvellous ingenuity, was the modest and patient Jacquard. This wonderful man, the inventor of the loom which bears his name, and which has given a new character to the art of weaving in figured and raised patterns, throughout the world, was the son of a common weaver of Lyons. He was reduced so low, even in middle life, but behe had succeeded in bringing his loom into working con, that he was compelled to support himself by aiding

his wife in the preparation of the straw, which she braided for the hats worn by the peasantry. Although, in consequence of his invention, the number of weavers has been increased a hundred, not to say a thousand fold, they were so incensed against him, when his looms were first constructed, that he narrowly escaped being thrown by a mob into the Rhone! Napoleon, by an imperial decree at Berlin in 1806, granted him fifty francs (about ten dollars) on every loom constructed on his pattern. It was all he asked, and Napoleon, astonished at his moderation, exclaimed, as he put his name to the decree : "Here's a man who is content with a little!" If all the Berlin decrees had been as harmless in their purport, the war of 1812, between the United States and Great Britain, would not have been fought. If Napoleon himself had been also. "content with a little," Jacquard's epitaph might have been written on his monument, "A man of virtue and genius, he died at home."*

* Homme de bien et de génie, mort à Oullins, dans sa maison, 7 Août, 1834.

16*

NUMBER FORTY-ONE.

FROM LYONS TO GENEVA.

Silk fabrics of Lyons-First glimpse of mountain scenery-Nantua-Bellegarde-Ingenious smuggling-Pert du Rhone-Cæsar's description of the defile-Ancient Switzerland compared to Michigan and Wisconsin-First appearance of the Helvetii or ancient Swiss in history-Emigration of the entire people into FranceOvertaken and defeated with great loss by Cæsar, and the survivors compelled to return to Switzerland-A muster-roll in Greek characters discovered in their camp which gives their numbers-Caesar's great career begins with the conquest of the Helvetii-beautiful prospects on the way from Fort l'Ecluse to Geneva.

AFTER a sojourn of three days we left Lyons with regret, for it contains objects which might occupy the time of the observant traveller not unprofitably for weeks and months. The silk fabrics, especially, are well worthy attention; the contrast between the brilliant colors, taseteful figures, and rich materials of the brocades and the dingy and dreary aspect of the rooms, machinery, and I may add, operatives employed in their manufacture, was very striking. They are carried through the loom and come out, without a spot or blemish, from apartments, through which it is not easy to pass without getting your clothes soiled. We were told that some of the richest tissues were destined for the markets of the East. It shows the hopeless inferiority of the Asiatic civilization, that the luxury of those regions, where a species of refinement has existed for at least four thousand years, should be tributary to the Celtic forests, or what were Celtic forests in the days of Xerxes and Darius,-for their richest adornments. In fabrics wholly wrought by hand, the East, it

is true, still maintains her superiority. France has striven in vain to rival the shawls and muslins of India; which is, however, but another proof at how low a price human labor and time can there be commanded,—itself an indication of social and political wretchedness and degradation. The remarkable copies of Stuart's Washington, recently produced in the looms of Lyons, and introduced into this country by Mr. Goodrich, resembling, at a very moderate distance, a fine engraving, show to what perfection the textile arts have been carried in Lyons.

There is nothing of much interest on the road from Lyons to Geneva till you reach the Jura mountains. The Rhone flows through an extensive plain unmarked by any attractive features; but from the time you reach the region where it bursts through the mountains, till you have made the tour of Switzerland and have descended the Alps on the Italian side, all is picturesque beauty and wild sublimity. At Cerdon the road begins to rise, and here most travellers from the Atlantic States of America or from England will get their first impressions of genuine mountain scenery. Though they may have seen greater elevations, they will probably not have seen detached summits ascending so abruptly and boldly and sepa rated by such yawning chasms, or roads winding at such alarming heights along their sides. The landscape as you begin to ascend after passing Cerdon, is beautifully variegated by the winding of the stream, by a tumbling cascade, and several ruined castles. Of these last I did not learn their history if they have any. They belong I suppose, to that period in the annals of medieval Europe, when every commanding eminence or narrow defile was the site of a fortress, and every robber count and petty baron went to war on his own authority. Europe is full of the ruins of these strongholds, and they form the most striking point of contrast with American scenery.

We passed the night at Nantua, a quiet little place, em