PAINTED BY J. HARDWICKE LEWIS & MAY HARDWICKE LEWIS DESCRIBED BY FRANCIS GRIBBLE LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1909 Contents List of Illustrations...

Though Lausanne is so near Geneva, its history, in historical times, has been widely different from that of the neighbouring town. Geneva enjoyed a modified independence from an early date, and became completely independent early in the sixteenth century. Lausanne, until nearly 300 years later, endured the domination, first of Savoy, and subsequently of Berne. The early history is obscure and full of vexed questions as well as unfamiliar names; but the central fact is that the Counts of Savoy—th

Forbidden to seek careers at home, most of the aristocracy of Vaud went abroad to pursue fortune in the service of some foreign Power. There was always a good opening for them, whether as mercenary soldiers or as instructors of the young, and many of them achieved distinction and rose to high positions. Haldimand of Yverdon became a Lieutenant-General in the British Army and Governor of Canada. Réverdil of Nyon was first tutor to Christian VII. of Denmark, and afterwards his secretary. Amédée de

Voltaire belongs to Geneva rather than to Lausanne. The most distinguished of the strangers upon whom Lausanne has an exclusive claim is Gibbon. He was sent there, in the first instance, as a punishment for having embraced the Roman Catholic faith, and was lodged in the house of M. Pavilliard, a Calvinistic minister, whose instructions were to educate his pupil if possible, but to convert him at all costs. The desired conversion was effected, though it was more thorough than had been intended. G

To us, as we look backwards, Gibbon in Lausanne society figures as a Triton among the minnows, but to his contemporaries he probably seemed less important. He certainly did to his contemporaries in London. Boswell, as we all know, considered him the intellectual inferior of Dr. Johnson; and there is the story of the Duke of St. Albans accepting a presentation copy of his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' with the genial remark, 'Hallo! Another two d——d thick volumes! Always scribble, scribb

Next, though they do not become interesting until a somewhat later date, we may mention the Constants: Rosalie de Constant, the witty little hunchback whose sentimental correspondence with Bernardin de Saint-Pierre has recently been published, and her more famous cousin, Benjamin Constant de Rebecque, the story of whose love for Madame de Staël has recently been revived. [5] That is another story which will be here in its proper place. Benjamin was a man of many love-affairs; 'Constant the incon

At Lausanne, as at Geneva, the thunders of the French Revolution echoed. Gibbon heard them, and was alarmed, as if at the approach of the end of the world. The patriots of Vaud heard them, and rejoiced at the hope of a new era about to be begun. Their Excellencies of Berne felt the edifice of their dominion crumbling about their ears. The burghers of Morges began the trouble by disinterring from their archives an old charter, on the strength of which they refused to pay for the mending of the ro

Of the English colony there is not perhaps a great deal to be said, except that it fills two churches on Sundays, and at all times monopolizes the Ouchy road. It has never consisted of distinguished persons like the English colony at Florence; on the other hand, it has never included so large a proportion of disreputable persons as the English colonies at Brussels and Boulogne. Gibbon cannot be said to have belonged to it, since, in his day, it did not yet exist; and it can hardly claim Dickens,

The centre of the intellectual life was always the University. It could not be otherwise in a country in which every man is born a pedagogue. In England the view has come to prevail that literature only begins to be vital when it ceases to be academic. In the Canton of Vaud the literature is academic or nothing, and even the poets are professors, unbending in their hours of sentimental ease; while the literature of revolt is the bitter cry of professors who have forfeited their chairs on account

Lausanne, for the purposes of this volume, must be taken to include such neighbouring lake-side towns as Morges, and Rolle, and Nyon. Morges we have already seen distinguishing itself by refusing, on principle, to pay for the mending of the roads, and so paving the way for the subsequent insurrection. Nowadays it is the seat of an arsenal, and is said to have an aristocratic population, interested in literature. Rolle was the home of the Laharpes, and boasts a statue of César de Laharpe by Pradi

What strikes the holiday traveller about the French shore is that it is so much better managed than the Swiss shore. Its natural advantages are fewer—they are, in fact, very few indeed. Evian—and when one speaks of the French shore one is principally thinking of Evian—stands with its back to the high mountains instead of facing them. Consequently it has no views to compare with the views from Lausanne, Geneva, and Vevey. Its hinterland is commonplace, except for those who make a great effort and

The history of the French shore, which has only recently belonged to France, may be told in briefest outline. In the earliest times of which we need take cognizance it belonged to the Dukes of Savoy, whose domains continued for a considerable distance up the valley of the Rhone. Then came the war of 1536, of which we have spoken more than once, in which the Bernese took the territory away from them. Part of it was recovered by Duke Emanuel Philibert in 1564, and the whole was reassigned by treat

A greater figure—perhaps the greatest of all figures in the history of Savoy—is that of St. Francis de Sales. It is a little difficult to speak of him without appearing to stir the embers of theological disputation. But the effort must be made, since he is much too notable a man to be passed over; and the task may be made easier by the fact that he is a Catholic of whom Protestants speak well, even though they have to recognize in him one of the most damaging of their opponents. They respect his

St. Francis de Sales, was not only a missionary, but also a man of letters, and—especially—a patron of letters. Thirty years before Richelieu founded the French Academy, he founded the Florimontane Academy—with the motto Flores fructusque perennes —in Savoy, and thus forged one of the links between the literature of Savoy and that of France. More than one great writer, whom we carelessly class as French, was really of Savoyard origin. Vaugelas, described by Sainte-Beuve 'as the first of our corr