On The Dismemberment Of The Empire Of Napoleon, Geneva Was Agrege To The Helvetic Confederation, As An Independent Canton Of Which There Are Now Twenty-Two.

Three, viz.

Geneva, Vaud, and Neufchatel, are French in language and manners. One, the Tessino, is Italian, and the remaining eighteen are all German. It is a great advantage to Geneva to belong to the Helvetic Confederacy, as formerly, when she was an isolated independent state, she was in continual dread of being swallowed up by one or other of her two powerful neighbours, France and the King of Sardinia, and only existed by their forbearance and mutual jealousy.

I walked out one morning to Ferney in order to visit the chateau of Voltaire and to do hommage to the memory of that great man, the benefactor of the human race. It was he who gave the mortal blow to superstition and to the power of the clergy. It is the fashion for priests, Ultras and Tories to rail against him, but I judge him by his works and the effect of his works. His memory is held in reverence by the inhabitants of Ferney as their father and benefactor. He spent his whole fortune in acts of the most disinterested charity; he saved entire families from ruin and portioned off many a young woman who was deprived of the gifts of fortune and enabled them to form happy matrimonial connections; in short, doing good seems to have been one of the most ardent passions of his soul. In three memorable instances he shewed his hatred of cruelty and injustice, and unmasked triumphantly ecclesiastical imposture and fanaticism. He has been reproached with vanity, but surely that may be pardoned in a man who received the hommage of the whole literary world, who was considered as an oracle, and whose every sentence was recorded; whose talent was so universal, that he excelled in every branch of litterature that he undertook.

Ferney, which was only a miserable village when Voltaire first took up his residence there, is now a large flourishing and opulent town.

I found Voltaire's Chateau occupied by a fat heavy Swiss Officer who was on duty there, Ferney being at this moment occupied by the troops of the Swiss confederation. He was at breakfast, but on my stating to him that I was come to see the apartments of Voltaire he directed the housekeeper to shew them to me. On the left hand side after ascending a flight of steps, before you come into the Chateau, is a Chapel built by Voltaire with this simple inscription: "Deo erexit Voltaire." In the apartment usually occupied by him for the purpose of composition, are preserved his chair, table, inkstand and bed as sacred relics; and in the Salon are to be seen the portraits of several public characters, his contemporaries, and which were constantly appended there in his life time. Among these portraits I distinguished those of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine II of Russia, Lekain, Diderot, Alembert, Franklin, Helvetius, Marmontel and Washington, besides many others.

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