THE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS OF GENEVA.* Nontrom is more striking among

the many points that dis- tinguish the traveller of to-day from his forerunner of, say, two generations back than the change which has come over his attitude towards Switzerland. In the days of the grand tour Geneva and the shores of Leman formed not only an important, but one of the most important items of the pro- gramme, while in these days of short trips and rapid travel- ling the majority spend at most a few hours by the historic shores on their way to the more exciting centres of the hig4 Alps. The attraction. of Geneva and its neighbourhood lingered, it is true, for some time after Madame de Steel had been laid to rest in her grave at Copped in 1817, but the taste was growing continually for wilder and more imposing scenery, and there are few nowadays whom the traditions of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Gibbon have power to attract to the scenes which they rendered for ever memorable in. history. It is this older Switzerland, the Switzerland that fascinated our fathers and grandfathers, that is presented in Mr. Gribble's pages,—the Geneva, first, of Calvin and Fare]; and Beza, of Bonivard and Marot, of Knox and the Genevan

• Lake Geneva and its Literary landmarks. By Francis Gribbin. London .A.. Constable and. Co. 1.186.1

translators; afterwards, of Milton, Evelyn, and Addison, of the Regicides and the Pietists ; later again, the Geneva of Madame de Warens and her sentimental apprentice, the famous Jean Jacques ; of Voltaire, placed by the irony of fate in such singular juxtaposition ; of the "grand tourists " ; of Gibbon and De Saussure ; lastly, of Madame de Stael, the daughter of Gibbon's early love, with her salon at Coppet, her brilliant company and Bohemian amours, besides a whole flight of birds of passage such as Madame Recamier, Madame Le Brun, Sismondi, Chateaubriand, envier, Monti, George Ticknor, De Senancour (Matthew Arnold's Obermann '), Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, " Monk " Lewis, and Hogg.

The most pleasing personality of which we get a sketch is Bonivard, the historian of Geneva and prisoner of Chinon, famous from Byron's somewhat unhistorical poem. Francois de Bonivard began life as the good-humoured and easy-living Lay Prior of St. Victor, and as a fashionable young gallant of Geneva amused himself plotting against Charles III. of Savoy, who claimed an ill-defined suzerainty over the city, which he enforced whenever he found it at once convenient and easy to do so. This happened on one occasion in 1519; Bonivard fled, but was overtaken, fleeced of his benefice, and kept in prison for two years. On his release he sought to avenge himself by carrying on a petty and rather burlesque warfare in the Duke's territory. For this Charles had him kid- napped under a safe-conduct and confined in the Castle of Chinon. During the first two years of his imprisonment he was well treated and entertained as an honoured guest by M. de Beaufort, the commander of the castle. After a visit of the Duke's, however, he was thrown into the dungeon where he remained four years,—namely, until the castle was captured by the combined forces of Geneva and Berne, Charles being at the time engaged in a war with France. On his return to Geneva Bonivard found the city changed consider- ably from what it had been in his early clays. He had then been a personage of consideration in the State, and had been consulted by the Syndics as to the advisability of adopt- ing the reformed religion, a step which he had opposed. Now Calvin reigned supreme, and a host of petty regulations fettered the actions of the citizens. This was not much to Bonivard's taste, and he was constantly getting into trouble with the Consistory, being on one occasion admonished for playing backgammon with the French poet Clement Marot, who was persecuted in France as a Calvinist, and driven from Geneva as a bon viveur. Meanwhile, however, Bonivard was working at the archives, and writing his history of the city. This he finished in 1552, but its style met with Calvin's dis- approval, and the work remained in manuscript till 1831. Calvin's judgment was wrong; not only is the work of real his- torical value, not only does it contain the account of the author's imprisonment which shows him honest, modest, simple, where it would have been easy to make much of what he had suffered and to depict himself as a martyr in his country's cause, but it is full of those racy and picturesque touches which lend savour to historical narration.

The severe discipline of Calvinism to which Geneva sub- mitted is one of the most remarkable phenomena of history The system of the regulation of manners revealed by the Register of the Consistory may appear sufficiently absurd and inquisitorial to -as, for it is a platitude nowadays that ycu cannot make mankind moral by Act of Parliament; but Calvin's success in imparting that outward and punctilious pro- priety to life which won so enthusiastic a tribute from Knox was in itself a remarkable achievement, even though there is no lack of evidence that evil was far from being eradicated. His attitude towards heresy was more open to question, and was exemplified in a pointed manner in the case of Servetus, the burning of whom was no isolated act, but part of a deliberate and consistent policy. It may, of course, with perfect justice be argued that in the part he played in the affair Calvin honestly followed his own lights, but the facts remain that he first divulged to the Roman authorities at Vienne private letters from Servetus for the express purpose of bringing his correspondent to the stake, and that later, when, having escaped from prison, Servetus passed through Geneva on his way to Italy, he was instrumental in securing his arrest, condemna- tion, and execution. Calvin may or may not have been right in acting as he did, but it must he clearly under- stood that the methods which the reformer established at Geneva were indistinguishable from those by the Holy Inquisition. Again, it may be but just to treat Calvin in relation to the standards of his da although it must be remembered that among the f most intellects of that day were some at least who did share his and Melancthon's and Fares views on

per

n tion ; but Mr. Gribble's statement that "the religiootf-al Middle Ages, whether Catholic or Protestant, • sisted in the punishment of heretics," would be a libel were it not for the ludicrous confusion o f th

ough se,440-:

expression by which Calvinism is represented in the light of a medireval institution.

A far greater charm, if less historical interest, attaches to the personality of Theodore Beza, who became Cakay, successor, and who supplied one of the most dramatic toncheg

to Genevan history by the appropriateness ofis pa b last b • e appearance, when at the age of eighty-one he came, after peacefully sleeping through the thrilling hours of the escalade, to render thanks in the Cathedral of St. Pierre for the almost miraculous deliverance of the city. It was under his pastorate, too, that Geneva, when threatened by Charles IX. of France, showed its independence by refusing the offer of a garrisa from Fribourg and Solem.e on account of the stipulation that the soldiers should be allowed to worship in Geneva according to the Roman rites.

Passing over more than a century, we come to three chapters devoted to the lives of Madame de Warren and Rousseau. Conclusive evidence exists to show that the former was by no means the saint who "abandoned great pos. sessions and a brilliant rank in her own country in order to follow the voice of the Lord," as represented in the Confessions, and there is also a strong suspicion that her character ab sinner rests on no better foundation. At best the Con- fessions is a composition of doubtful taste ; if we have further to regard the character in which Rousseau depicted his benefactress as an invention of his own morbid sentiment- ality, it will be wise to refrain from expressing our opinion in words.

In the chapter on Voltaire we find the best of the several good things quoted in the course of the book,—the inscrip- tion on the church built by the Seigneur of Ferney, Dee erexit Voltaire, which suggested Dumas's remark that "while the world was relieved to hear that God and Voltaire had been reconciled, it strongly suspected that it was Voltaire who had made the first advances." An example of Swiss wit may be quoted as a companion to this,—namely, the "Doyen" Bridel's lines on a certain Rapinat, a severe officer of the French domination:

"In bon Suisse qu'ou Emmeline Voudraii au moms qu'on decidfit

Si Rapinat vient de rapine

On rapine de Rapinat "- a neat epigram utterly misdescribed by Mr. Gribble as "a brilliant pun."

Unfortunately, this misnomer is not an isolated case, similar instances of careless expression or confused thought occurring at frequent intervals. The volume is like- wise defaced by a quite unusual number of misprints, only a few of which appear in the list of errata. A little care in the reading of proofs would have saved the author from putting forward many absurdities, such, for instance, as the state- ments that the principal buildings of Geneva stood at one period on the right bank of the Rhine, and that Bonivard was released from the dungeon of Chalon in 1336. On the whole, however, the work is readable enough, though it inevitably suggests the hardly novel reflection that of the making of many books there is no end. Gribble often seizes upon the picturesque and dramatic elements of a story, and displays a fair amount cf judgment in his criticisms of events coming within his purview, as also of common-sense and impartiality in cases of conflicting evidence, though his appreciations of character do not for the mostpar! reveal any depth of insight. The merits which the hook possesses are, however, in large measure counterbalanced by the author's laborious levity and the tawdry ornament of the style. The volume is illustrated by a number of plates,_ e among which are two nice portraits of Rousseau--one ualthnfo head in photogravure which, by the way, it is diffic.b. believe are of the same person, and a silhouette of GI bs The rest are of no interest; what appears to be a fine pen- and-ink sketch of Charles III. of Savoy, the provenance of which is not stated, and an even finer engraving of Calvin, being utterly spoilt through bad reproduction.