MILAN, 10th Oct.

We started from Geneva at seven in the morning of the 4th October, and in half an hour entered the Savoyard territory, of which douaniers with blue cockades (the cockade of the King of Sardinia) gave us intimation.  The road is on the South side of the lake Leman.  In Evian and Thonon, the two first villages we passed thro’, we do not find that aisance, comfort and cleanliness that is perceivable on the other side of the lake, in the delightful Canton de Vaud.  The double yoke of priestcraft and military despotism presses hard upon the unhappy Savoyard and wrings from him his hard-earned pittance, while no people are better off than the Vaudois; yet the Savoyards are to the full as deserving of liberty as the Swiss.  The Savoyard possesses honesty, fidelity and industry in a superior degree, and these qualities he seldom or ever loses, even when exposed to the temptations of a great metropolis like Paris, to which they are compelled to emigrate, as their own country is too poor to furnish the means of subsistence to all its population.  When in Paris and other large cities, the Savoyards contrive, by the most indefatigable industry and incredible frugality, to return to their native village after a certain lapse of time, with a little fortune that is amply sufficient for their comfort.  The poorest Savoyard in Paris never fails to remit something for the support of his parents.  Both Voltaire and Rousseau have rendered justice to the good qualities of this honest people.  It is a thousand pities that this country (Savoy) is not either incorporated with France, or made to form part of the Helvetic confederacy.

On passing by La Meillerie we were reminded of “La nouvelle Heloise” and the words of St Preux:  “Le rocher est escarpe:  l’eau est profonde et je suis au desespoir.”  On the opposite side of the lake is to be seen the little white town of Clarens, the supposed residence of the divine Julie.  A little beyond St Gingolph, which lies at the eastern extremity of the lake, we quit Savoy and enter into the Valais, which now forms, a component part of the Helvetic confederacy.  German is the language spoken in the Valais.  As the high road into Italy passes thro’ the whole length of this Canton, Napoleon caused it to be separated from the Helvetic union and to form a Republic apart, with the ulterior view and which he afterwards carried into execution of annexing it to the French Empire.  The Valais forms a long and exceedingly narrow valley, thro’ the whole length of which the Rhone flows and falls into the lake Leman at St Gingolph.  The breadth of this valley in its widest part is not more probably than 1,000 yards, and in most places considerably narrower, and it is enclosed on each side, or rather walled up by the immense mountains of the higher Alps which rise here very abruptly and seem to shut out this valley from the rest of the world.  The high road runs nearly parallel to the course of