Thursday, July 14. Spent a social evening at Mrs. La V.'s, on the lake shore. Mont Blanc invisible. We met M. Merle d'Aubigne, brother of our hostess, and a few other friends. Returned home, and listened to a serenade to H. from a glee club of fifty performers, of the working men of Geneva. The songs were mostly in French, and the burden of one of them seemed to be in words like these:—

"Travaillons, travaillez,
Pour la liberte!"

Friday, July 15. Mrs. C. and her two daughters are here from Paris.
They intend to come to Madame Fazy till we leave.

Saturday, July 16. Our whole company resorted to the lake, and spent the forenoon on its tranquil waters. If this life seem idle, we remember that there must be valleys between mountains; and as, in those vales, tired mountaineers love to rest, so we, by the silver shore of summer Leman, while away the quiet hours, in this interval, between great mountain epochs Chamouni and Oberland.

Monday, July 18. Weather suspicious. Stowed ourselves and our baggage into our voiture, and bade adieu to our friends and to Geneva. Ah, how regretfully! From the market-place we carried away a basket of cherries and fruit, as a consolation. Dined at Lausanne, and visited the cathedral and picture gallery, where was an exquisite Eva. Slept at Meudon.

Tuesday, July 19. Rode through Payerne to Freyburg. Stopped at the Zahringer Hof—most romantic of inns. Our gentlemanly host ushered us forth upon a terrace overhanging the deep gorge of the SaÄrine, spanned, to the right and left of us, by two immense suspension bridges, one of which seemed to spring from the hotel itself. Ruins of ancient walls and watch towers lined the precipice.

After dinner we visited the cathedral to hear the celebrated organ. The organist performed a piece descriptive of a storm. We resigned ourselves to the illusion. Low, mysterious wailings, swelling, dying away in the distance, seeming at first exceedingly remote, drew gradually near. Fitful sighings and sobbings rose, as of gusts of wind; then low, smothered roarings. Anon came flashes of lightning, rattling hail, and driving rain, succeeded by bursts of storm, and howlings of a hurricane—fierce, furious, frightful. I felt myself lost in a snow storm in winter, on the pass of Great St. Bernard.

One note there was of strange, terrible clangor—bleak, dark, yet of a lurid fire—that seemed to prolong itself through all the uproar, like a note of doom, cutting its way to the heart as the call of the last archangel. Yes, I felt myself alone, lost in a boundless desert, beyond the abodes of man; and this was a call of terror-stern, savage, gloomy—the call as of fixed fate and absolute despair.

Then the storm died away, in faint and far-off murmurs; and we broke, as it were, from the trance, to find ourselves, not lost, but here among the living. We then drove quietly to Berne.

Wednesday, July 20. Examined, not the lions, but the bears of Berne. It is indeed a city of bears, as its name imports. There are bears on its gates, bears on its fountains, bears in its parks and gardens, bears every where. But, though Berne rejoices in a fountain adorned with an image of Saturn eating children, nevertheless, the old city—quaint, quiet, and queer—looks as if, bear-like, it had been hybernating good-naturedly for a century, and were just about to wake up.

Engaged a voiture, and drove to Thun. Dined, and drove by the shore of the lake to Interlachen, arriving just after a brilliant sunset.

Thursday, July 21. S. and G. remained at the Belvedere. W., II., and I took a guide and voiture for Lauterbrunn. Here we visited Byron's apocalyptic horse-tail waterfall, the Staubbach. This waterfall is very sublime, all except the water and the fall. Whoever has been "under the sheet" at Niagara will not be particularly impressed here. This picture is sufficiently accurate, with the exception of the cottage. People here do not build cottages under waterfalls.

[Illustration: of the waterfall and cliff rising sharply to the left of the roadway. A cabin appears to be located very near its base.]

Here we crossed the Wengern Alps to Grindelwald. The Jungfrau is right over against us—her glaciers purer, tenderer, more dazzlingly beautiful, if possible, than those of Mont Blanc. Slept at Grindelwald.