are some good family pictures.  The furniture is ancient, but costly.  The rez de chaussee or lower part of the house, which is completely a fleur d’eau with the lake, is tastefully paved, and the walls decorated with a mosaic of shells.  One would imagine it the abode of a sea nymph.  I thought of Calypso and Galatea.  There are in these apartments a fleur d’eau two or three exquisite statues.

LAUSANNE, 11th November.

I have been now nearly three weeks at Lausanne and am much pleased both with the inhabitants, who are extremely affable and well-informed, and with the beautiful sites that environ this city, the capital of the Canton de Vaud.  The sentiments of the Vaudois, with the exception of a few absurd families among the noblesse, who from ignorance or prejudice are sticklers for the old times, are highly liberal; and as they acquired their freedom and emancipated themselves from the yoke of the Bernois, thro’ the means of the French Revolution, they are grateful to that nation and receive with hospitality those who are proscribed by the present French Government; their behaviour thus forming a noble contrast to the servility of the Genevese.  The Government of the Canton de Vaud is wholly democratic and is composed of a Landamman and grand and petty council, all bourgeois, or of the most intelligent among the agricultural class, who know the interests of their country right well, and are not likely to betray them, as the noblesse are but too often induced to do, for the sake of some foolish ribband, rank, or title.  The noblesse are in a manner self-exiled (so they say) from all participation in the legislative and executive power; for they have too much morgue to endure to share the government with those whom they regard as roturiers; but the real state of the case is that the people will not elect them, and the people are perfectly in the right, for at the glorious epoch when, without bloodshed, the burghers and plebeians upset the despotism of Bern, the conduct of the noblesse was very equivocal.  La Harpe was the leader of this beneficial Revolution, for which, however, the public mind was fully prepared and disposed; and La Harpe was a virtuous, ardent and incorruptible patriot.

This canton had been for a long period of years in a state of vassalage to that of Bern; all the posts and offices of Government were filled by Bernois and the Vaudois were excluded from all share in the government, and from all public employments of consequence.  When the Sun of Revolution, after gloriously rising in America, had shone in splendour on France, and had successfully dissipated the mists of tyranny, feudality, priestcraft and prejudice, it was natural that those states which had languished for so many years in a humiliating situation should begin to look about them and enquire into the origin of all the shackles and restraints imposed on them; and no doubt the Vaudois