The Hotel des Bergues stands on the Lake of Geneva, just where the “arrowy Rhone” shoots out from its bosom. This is one of the finest hotels in Europe, and with the Trois Couronnes at Vevay, may fairly challenge comparison with any other. I brought up at this house from the Vale of Chamouni. The dismal rain through which I had been riding on a chill autumn day, had increased to a storm, and the old town, that is gloomy enough at any time, was peculiarly uninviting on its first appearance. But this city I had longed to visit, even from the time that I read in CÆsar’s Commentaries, “the farthest town of the Allobroges and the nearest to the frontier of the Helvetii, is Geneva.” Julius CÆsar took possession of it, and the remains of his erections are to be seen at the present day.

The Christian religion was introduced in the fifth century, and bishops appointed by the Pope by degrees became lords temporal as well as spiritual, which they are very apt to do as fast and as far as they can get the power. The right of naming the Bishops, about the year 1400, fell into the hands of the ducal house of Savoy, and their creatures became despots of the reddest dye. Their oppressions grew to be so intolerable that the citizens rebelled. A bloody persecution ensued. The chapter of its history is among the darkest of the records of popery. The deeds of patriotic heroism which were brought out have scarcely a parallel. One citizen cut his own tongue out with a razor, lest the torture should compel him to betray his friends. Bonnivard became the chained prisoner of Chillon. But his story is not to be passed over without being told.

“In 1530, Francois Bonnivard, Prior of Saint Victor, was seized on the Jorat by a band of marauders, whose chief was the Sieur de Beaufort, Governor of Chillon, for his bitter enemy, the Duke of Savoy. As a punishment for his heroic defence of the liberty of Geneva, he was condemned by the petty tyrant to perpetual captivity in the castle. Here he remained during seven years, buried alive in a dungeon on a level with the waters of the lake, and fastened by a chain round his body to a ring still remaining on one of the pillars. Irritated to agony by sad reflections on his own and his adopted country’s slavery, he wore away the stone floor beneath his feet, by constantly pacing to and fro, like a wild beast, from end to end of its cage. At length, in 1536, the Bernese, with their allies of Geneva, effected the conquest of the Pays du Vaud. Chillon was the last place which held out for Duke Charles V. of Savoy, but the Bernese having laid siege to it by land, while the Genevese gave an assault by water, the garrison was forced to a surrender, and Bonnivard, with several other prisoners, was restored to liberty. He had left Geneva a Roman Catholic state, under the domination of the House of Savoy, he found her a free republic, openly professing the reformed religion. The citizens were by no means backward in recompensing him for past sufferings; in June, 1536, he was admitted to the highest privileges of the State, and presented with the house previously inhabited by the Roman Catholic Vice-General, besides an annual pension of two hundred crowns of gold, so long as he chose to dwell there.”

Then came the Reformation. The people, long sick of Roman despotism and disgusted with Romish wickedness, embraced the doctrines of the Reformers, and Geneva became doubly free. John Calvin came in 1536, and Protestants from other countries fled to Geneva as an asylum from persecution. His genius and austere morals, contrasted with the dissoluteness of the Romish Clergy, gave him unbounded influence in the state. He was called the Pope, and Geneva the Rome of Protestantism. John Knox was here with him, and hundreds of distinguished men whose principles made it necessary for them to fly from England, France, Spain and Italy. Through the seventeenth century the city had rest, and made great progress in arts and science; the resort of men of learning, and distinguished for the industry and thrift of its inhabitants. The eighteenth century was marked with insurrections, distractions, civil wars and revolution. The scenes of Paris were performed in Geneva. The blood of her best citizens was shed by the hands of the mob, in the name of liberty. Then the city was grafted upon France, and so remained till 1813, when with the aid of Austria, it became once more a Genevan Republic. The next year it became one of the Cantons of Switzerland, but the city held on to its aristocratic constitution. Still it flourished in peace and progress, till the contest between the radical and conservative parties broke out in 1841, and resulted in the revision of the constitution, but not in the establishment of confidence and quiet. In 1846 a fierce struggle occurred, still fresh in every memory, which ended in the establishment of the present constitution, on a democratic basis, and in giving an impulse to the attempt to overturn the thrones of despotism in Europe; a noble but abortive effort, which failed in 1848. Geneva, under John Calvin, called Europe to religious liberty in 1536, and the people heard the call. If another John Calvin had been in Geneva in 1848, we should not have been compelled to deplore the miscarriage of that struggle in Europe for Constitutional liberty, which shook every government, but eventuated in giving a charter to the people of but a single State.

I had been wandering a month among the mountains of Switzerland, and had not had a line from home. The bankers closed their offices at four o’clock and it was nearly five when we arrived. Disappointed and grieved I returned to the Hotel, the more sad as to-morrow is to be the Sabbath, and I shall not be able to get my letters till Monday. It occurred to me that something might have been sent for me to the care of a venerable and well-known clergyman of Geneva, whom I should not fail to see, and I would therefore call at once upon him, without ceremony. I soon found his gate. A woman at the lodge answered the bell and took my card up to the house with a message to ask if anything had been left for me; for it was late and Saturday evening, and I would not intrude upon the pastor at such an hour. In a few moments the good man stood on the walk, under the trees, with a lantern in his hand; a tall old man, with long grey hair hanging in curls, and a countenance shining with love. He put out his hands and throwing one arm around me drew me to him, as if I were his only son, and kissed me. It was the Rev. Dr. CÆsar Malan, and a welcome such as a pilgrim in a strange land can feel. Many pleasant hours I had with his interesting family, now reduced by the frequent inroads which my countrymen have made upon it. No less than three of them have repaid this good man’s hospitality by carrying off his daughters; and the last but one had been taken but a few days before I arrived. These deeds were done by clergymen from America, and when I was asked in a social gathering of Genevan ladies, if my countrymen were obliged to go abroad for their wives, I could only say that no one would blame them for taking a wife at a venture when they come to Geneva.

The gentle Gaussen, author of an excellent work on the Inspiration of the Scriptures, charmed me with his sweet Christian spirit, and his broad-hearted charity, so happily in contrast with much of the foreign half-reformed religion, which in England and France still abounds. D’Aubigne was not at home.

Col. Tronchin has a lovely residence out of town and overlooking the lake. He sustains at his own charges an asylum for convalescing invalids, one of the most interesting charities I have ever seen. He took me through the establishment, and I felt, as I never did before, what a blessedness it is to have wealth and a heart to use it for the sake of those who are suffering. A young woman sitting at the door and enjoying the sunshine, pale and thin, but smiling with the prospect of returning health, rose, when he stopped and asked her if she was getting well, and blessed him for her comforts, with looks and words of gratitude that must have been a rich reward. This home for the poor is charmingly situated in the midst of shade-trees, with walks and beds of flowers, and furnished with everything to promote the health and comfort of the patients, who come here when discharged from the hospitals as no longer requiring medical aid, and are yet unable to labor. In the pure air of this rural abode, and surrounded with all the good things which this benevolent man has provided, twenty-five invalids are supported at his expense, and as soon as one departs, another is ready and waiting to come in. Indeed it occurred to me that many of them would be slow to get well if they must be banished from this lovely spot to a cellar or garret in a crowded street, to toil and sicken again.

Begging in the streets is forbidden, and in the whole of Switzerland you may distinguish between the Protestant and Catholic cantons, by the fact that few beggars are in the former, compared with the crowds that infest the latter, annoying and often disgusting the traveller. The morals of the two religions are as strikingly contrasted. The Catholics accuse the Genevese females of prudery, and Sismondi tells us that the young women are “pious, well brought up, prudent and good managers.”

In the cemetery I found the grave of Sir Humphrey Davy and Pictet and other distinguished men, foreigners and citizens, but no man knows where Calvin is buried. He forbade any monument to be erected to mark the spot, and so it has passed from the knowledge of man. But in the old cathedral, standing on the spot where once stood a pagan temple of Apollo, is the pulpit in which Calvin and Knox and Beza, Farel and Viret, and a long line of glorious men, have preached: and this noble building, presenting many fine specimens of architecture and sculpture of the middle ages, now wrested from the hands of Popery, is a fitting monument to the memory of the Reformers. In the public library founded by Bonnivard, the Prisoner of Chillon, I saw the manuscripts and portraits of all the Genevan Reformers, four hundred of the MSS. being Calvin’s, and a collection of literary curiosities of unrivalled interest. There is little else to see in Geneva. Its attraction lies in its historic interest, its delightful situation, and good society. In and around it, all along the borders of Lake Leman, are sites made famous by the residence of men and women of taste and letters.