GENEVA.

Hotel d'Angleterre, June 11th.--We left Avignon on Tuesday, 7th, and took

the rail to Valence, where we arrived between four and five, and put up

at the Hotel de la Poste, an ancient house, with dirty floors and dirt

generally, but otherwise comfortable enough. . . . . Valence is a stately

old town, full of tall houses and irregular streets. We found a

cathedral there, not very large, but with a high and venerable interior,

a nave supported by tall pillars, from the height of which spring arches.

This loftiness is characteristic of French churches, as distinguished

from those of Italy. . . . . We likewise saw, close by the cathedral, a

large monument with four arched entrances meeting beneath a vaulted roof;

but, on inquiry of an old priest and other persons, we could get no

account of it, except that it was a tomb, and of unknown antiquity. The

architecture seemed classic, and yet it had some Gothic peculiarities,

and it was a reverend and beautiful object. Had I written up my journal

while the town was fresh in my remembrance, I might have found much to

describe; but a succession of other objects have obliterated most of the

impressions I have received here. Our railway ride to Valence was

intolerably hot. I have felt nothing like it since leaving America,

and that is so long ago that the terrible discomfort was just as good

as new. . . . .

We left Valence at four, and came that afternoon to Lyons, still along

the Rhone. Either the waters of this river assume a transparency in

winter which they lose in summer, or I was mistaken in thinking them

transparent on our former journey. They are now turbid; but the hue does

not suggest the idea of a running mud-puddle, as the water of the Tiber

does. No streams, however, are so beautiful in the quality of their

waters as the clear, brown rivers of New England. The scenery along this

part of the Rhone, as we have found all the way from Marseilles, is very

fine and impressive; old villages, rocky cliffs, castellated steeps,

quaint chateaux, and a thousand other interesting objects.

We arrived at Lyons at five o'clock, and went to the Hotel de l'Univers,

to which we had been recommended by our good hostess at Avignon. The day

had become showery, but J----- and I strolled about a little before

nightfall, and saw the general characteristics of the place. Lyons is a

city of very stately aspect, hardly inferior to Paris; for it has regular

streets of lofty houses, and immense squares planted with trees, and

adorned with statues and fountains. New edifices of great splendor are

in process of erection; and on the opposite side of the Rhone, where the

site rises steep and high, there are structures of older date, that have

an exceedingly picturesque effect, looking down upon the narrow town.

The next morning I went out with J----- in quest of my bankers, and of

the American Consul; and as I had forgotten the directions of the waiter

of the hotel, I of course went astray, and saw a good deal more of Lyons

than I intended. In my wanderings I crossed the Rhone, and found myself

in a portion of the city evidently much older than that with which I had

previously made acquaintance; narrow, crooked, irregular, and rudely

paved streets, full of dingy business and bustle,--the city, in short, as

it existed a century ago, and how much earlier I know not. Above rises

that lofty elevation of ground which I before noticed; and the glimpses

of its stately old buildings through the openings of the street were very

picturesque. Unless it be Edinburgh, I have not seen any other city that

has such striking features. Altogether unawares, immediately after

crossing the bridge, we came upon the cathedral; and the grand,

time-blackened Gothic front, with its deeply arched entrances, seemed to

me as good as anything I ever saw,--unexpectedly more impressive than all

the ruins of Rome. I could but merely glance at its interior; so that

its noble height and venerable space, filled with the dim, consecrated

light of pictured windows, recur to me as a vision. And it did me good

to enjoy the awfulness and sanctity of Gothic architecture again, after

so long shivering in classic porticos. . . . .

We now recrossed the river. . . . . The Frank methods and arrangements in

matters of business seem to be excellent, so far as effecting the

proposed object is concerned; but there is such an inexorable succession

of steel-wrought forms, that life is not long enough for so much

accuracy. The stranger, too, goes blindfold through all these processes,

not knowing what is to turn up next, till, when quite in despair, he

suddenly finds his business mysteriously accomplished. . . . .

We left Lyons at four o'clock, taking the railway for Geneva. The

scenery was very striking throughout the journey; but I allowed the

hills, deep valleys, high impending cliffs, and whatever else I saw along

the road, to pass from me without an ink-blot. We reached Geneva at

nearly ten o'clock. . . . . It is situated partly on low, flat ground,

bordering the lake, and behind this level space it rises by steep,

painfully paved streets, some of which can hardly be accessible by

wheeled carriages. The prosperity of the town is indicated by a good

many new and splendid edifices, for commercial and other purposes, in the

vicinity of the lake; but intermixed with these there are many quaint

buildings of a stern gray color, and in a style of architecture that I

prefer a thousand times to the monotony of Italian streets. Immensely

high, red roofs, with windows in them, produce an effect that delights

me. They are as ugly, perhaps, as can well be conceived, but very

striking and individual. At each corner of these ancient houses

frequently is a tower, the roof of which rises in a square pyramidal

form, or, if the tower be round, in a round pyramidal form. Arched

passages, gloomy and grimy, pass from one street to another. The lower

town creeps with busy life, and swarms like an ant-hill; but if you climb

the half-precipitous streets, you find yourself among ancient and stately

mansions, high roofed, with a strange aspect of grandeur about them,

looking as if they might still be tenanted by such old magnates as dwelt

in them centuries ago. There is also a cathedral, the older portion

exceedingly fine; but it has been adorned at some modern epoch with a

Grecian portico,--good in itself, but absurdly out of keeping with the

edifice which it prefaces. This being a Protestant country, the doors

were all shut,--an inhospitality that made me half a Catholic. It is

funny enough that a stranger generally profits by all that is worst for

the inhabitants of the country where he himself is merely a visitor.

Despotism makes things all the pleasanter for the stranger. Catholicism

lends itself admirably to his purposes.

There are public gardens (one, at least) in Geneva. . . . . Nothing

struck me so much, I think, as the color of the Rhone, as it flows under

the bridges in the lower town. It is absolutely miraculous, and,

beautiful as it is, suggests the idea that the tubs of a thousand dyers

have emptied their liquid indigo into the stream. When once you have

conquered and thrust out this idea, it is an inexpressible delight to

look down into this intense, brightly transparent blue, that hurries

beneath you with the speed of a race-horse.

The shops of Geneva are very tempting to a traveller, being full of such

little knick-knacks as he would be glad to carry away in memory of the

place: wonderful carvings in wood and ivory, done with exquisite taste

and skill; jewelry that seems very cheap, but is doubtless dear enough,

if you estimate it by the solid gold that goes into its manufacture;

watches, above all things else, for a third or a quarter of the price

that one pays in England, looking just as well, too, and probably

performing the whole of a watch's duty as uncriticisably. The Swiss

people are frugal and inexpensive in their own habits, I believe, plain

and simple, and careless of ornament; but they seem to reckon on other

people's spending a great deal of money for gewgaws. We bought some of

their wooden trumpery, and likewise a watch for U----. . . . . Next to

watches, jewelry, and wood-carving, I should say that cigars were one of

the principal articles of commerce in Geneva. Cigar-shops present

themselves at every step or two, and at a reasonable rate, there being no

duties, I believe, on imported goods. There was no examination of our

trunks on arrival, nor any questions asked on that score.