tion upon dignity is observable in many instances-where it rests with least grace-in the persons of American travellers. Whoever makes great display of wealth, will enjoy the distinction which mere exhibition of wealth will command in every country-the close attention of the vulgar; its display may, besides secure somewhat better hôtel attendance; but whoever wears with it, or without it, an air of hauteur, whether affected or real, whether due to position or worn to cover lack of position, will find it counting him very little in the way of personal comfort, and far less towards a full observation and appreciation of the life of those among whom he travels. In such an out-of-the-way manufacturing town as Limoges, one sees the genuine commis voyageur-commercial traveller,* of France, corresponding to the bagmen of England. Not as a class so large, they rank also beneath them in respect of gentlemanly conduct. In point of general information they are perhaps superior. The French bagman ventures an occasional remark upon the public measures of the day, and sometimes with much shrewdness. He is aware that there is such a country as America, and has understood, from what he considers authentic sources, that a letter for Buenos Ayres would not be delivered by the New York postman. None know better than a thorough English commercial traveller, who has been "long upon the road," the value of a gig and a spanking bay mare, or the character of the leading houses in London or Manchester, or the quality of Woodstock gloves or Worcester whips; but as for knowing if Newfoundland be off the Bay of Biscay or in the Adriatic, the matter is too deep for him. The Frenchman, on the other hand, is most voluble on a great many subjects, all of which he seems to know much better than he really does; and he will fling you a tirade at Thiers, or give you a caricature of the king, that will make half the table lay down the mouthful they had taken up, for laughing. Modesty is not in his catalogue of virtues. He knows the best dish upon the table, and he seizes upon it without formality; if he empty the dish, he politely asks your pardon, (he would take off his hat if he had it on,) and is sorry there is not enough for you. He will help himself to the breast, thighs, and side-bones of a small chicken, dispose of a mouthful or two, then turn to the lady by his side, and say, with the most gracious smile in the world, "Mille pardons, Madame, mais vous ne mangez pas de volaille?"-but you do not eat fowl? His great pleasure, however, after eating, is in enlightening the minds of the poor provincials as to the wonders of Paris,-a topic that never grows old, and never wants for hearers: and so brilliantly does he enlarge upon the splendours of the capital, with gesticulation and emphasis sufficient for a discourse of Bossuet, that he makes his whole auditory as solicitous for one look upon Paris as ever a Mohammedan for one offering at the Mecca of his worship. A corner seat in the interior of the diligence, or the head place at a country inn table, are his posts of triumph. He makes friends of all about the inns, since his dignity does not forbid his giving a word to all; and he is as ready to coquet with the maid-of-all-work as with the landlady's niece. His hair is short and crisp; his moustache stiff and thick; * A class of men who negotiate business between town and country dealersmanufacturers and their sale agents-common to all European countries. and his hand fat and fair, with a signet-ring upon the little finger of his left. Such characters make up a large part of the table company in towns like Limoges. In running over the village, you are happily spared the plague of valets-de-place. Ten to one, if you have fallen into conversation with the commis voyageur at your side, he will offer to shew you over the famous crockery-works, for which he has the honour to be travelling agent. Thus you make a profit of what you would have been a fool to scorn. There are curious old churches, and a simple-minded, grey-haired verger to open the side chapels, and to help you to spell the names on tombs: not half so tedious will the old man prove as the automaton cathedral-shewers of England, and he spices his talk with a little wit. There are shops, not unlike those of a middle-sized town in our country; still, little air of trade, and none at all of progress. Decay seems to be stamped on nearly all the country-towns of France; unless so large as to make cities, and so have a life of their own, or so small as to serve only as market-towns for the peasantry. Country gentlemen are a race unknown in France, as they are nearly so with us. Even the towns have not their quota of wealthy inhabitants, except so many as are barely necessary to supply capital for the works of the people. There is no estate in the neighbourhood, with its park and elegantly cultivated farms and preserves; there are no little villas capping all the pretty eminences in the vicinity; and even such fine houses as are found within the limits of the town wear a deserted look, -the stucco is peeling off, the entrance-gate is barred, the owner is living at Paris. You see few men of gentlemanly bearing, unless you except the military officers and the priests. You wonder what resources can have built such beautiful churches; and as you stroll over their marble floors, listening to the vespers dying away along the empty aisles, you wonder who are the worshippers. Wandering out of the edge of the town of Limoges, you come upon hedges and green fields; for Limousin is the Arcadia of France. Queer old houses adorn some of the narrow streets, and women in strange head-dresses look out of the balconies that lean half-way over. But Sunday is their holiday-time, when all are in their gayest, and when the green walks encircling the town-laid upon that old line of ramparts which the Black Prince stormed-are thronged with the population. The bill at the Boule d'Or is not an extravagant one; for as strangers are not common, the trick of extortion is unknown. The waiting-maid drops a curtsey, and gives a smiling bon jour,-not, surely, unmindful of the little fee she gets, but she never disputes its amount, and seems grateful for the least. There is no "boots" or waiter to dog you over to the diligence; nay, if you are not too old or too ugly, the little girl herself insists upon taking your portmanteau, and trips across with it, and puts it in the hands of the conductor, and waits your going earnestly, and waves her hand at you, and gives you another "bon voyage," that makes your ears tingle till the houses of Limoges and its high towers have vanished, and you are a mile away down the pleasant banks of the river Vienne. SUMMER SKETCHES IN SWITZERLAND. BY MISS COSTELLO. I KNOW not why it should be, but it certainly always happens with me that any place with which I feel particularly well acquainted by means of pictures and descriptions, comes upon my eye as altogether a stranger. It was so with Venice, whose charms are far beyond all I had imagined and been led to imagine, and now I found that Chillon was as new to me as if I had not seen countless drawings of its towers, and the beautiful waters from which they rise. The castle of Chillon, like all Swiss castles, has lost a great deal of its exterior romantic beauty, having been much rebuilt to make it habitable. The heavy round towers, with their pointed roofs, are, however, not without a certain grace; the strong machicolated walls and turrets are well and firmly built, and the carved ornamental work is still sharp and fine. I crossed the slight wooden bridge over the corner of the lake, and was admitted to the court by a good-tempered lounging warder. The chief care of this officer seemed a favourite cat, whose gambols he was encouraging. He accompanied us through the chambers of the castle, and became eloquent in the right, or rather the wrong place, for his incessant information, oracularly delivered, was, it must be confessed, particularly destructive of sentimental enjoyment in the immortal dungeon where the feet of Bonivard, "Have left a trace," not less than the undying memory of the prisoner and his sons, whose individual pillar, of course, one naturally insists on recognising. The name of Byron is nearly effaced from the column on which he scratched it, it is the third of the seven; but that of the illustrious poet, Victor Hugo, is conspicuous on the fourth. in such company? "What business has it there," As the dimness of the dungeon wears away, when the eye becomes accustomed to it, a fine effect is slowly developed, which the struggling light, streaming in from the barred window, produces. The cheering rays play upon the paved floor, and twine round the finely-carved capitals of the supporting pillars; but, when captives were here confined the darkness was probably not so dispelled, for the bars were thicker, and the gloom was more intense. The chapel is in excellent repair, and parts extremely well restored; it reminded me in its form and architecture of the beautiful chapel of the Beaumanoirs, near Dinan in Brittany, so elegant are the slight pillars, and the vaulted ceiling. There is a door, now blocked up, which led, by a private stair, to the chamber of the redoubted lord of the castle in former days, Count Pierre, called Le Petit Charlemagne, who is said to have completed the building in 1238. His room is as much like a dungeon as that in which his prisoners were placed; but the great lords of those days do not appear to have been very much like "carpet knights." It assuredly required much tapestry, and a great many rushes, to make a comfortable boudoir for lord or lady out of rough stone cells, with walls twelve feet thick, and windows of extreme minuteness. We followed the guide, now reinforced by his lively young wife, who was very communicative, to a most dismal spot, which they showed as the burial-place of Count Pierre, who seemed to hold a high place in their regard. We found ourselves, after groping along several dark passages, and descending a flight of steps, in a vaulted chamber, the floor of which is much decayed, and the stones overgrown with dank grass: beneath this is a large vault, which was the receptacle of the family's dead in bygone times; and here Le Petit Charlemagne's bones were laid: whether they remain there still is probably unknown, as much so as himself or his leeds. The grande salle of the castle is a splendid chamber, with pretty, ancient, pointed windows in pairs, supported by slight, graceful pillars, and having in the embrasures stone seats, from one of which I looked out upon the beautiful lake glowing with burnished gold, crimson, and purple, as the magnificent sunset sent the scene through all its dolphin changes, The fireplace of this room is fine, and the groups of small pillars on each side of it very beautiful. In a lower salle, also with fine ranges of windows, is exhibited a torture-pillar, which suggests hideous imaginings. It is fearfully close to the probably daily inhabited rooms, and the groans of the sufferer must have been awfully distinct in the ears of the lords, knights, and retainers, who, "in the good times of old," were perhaps carousing close by. Tippoo Saib was accustomed at his banquets to indulge in the luxury of a sort of barrel-organ of a peculiar construction, which imitated the groans of a tiger, and the shrieks of a British soldier whom the beast was devouring as represented, the size of life, by this singular instrument of music.* Count Pierre, the lord of Chillon, was apparently content with Nature in all her unassisted force, and, as he sat at meat, enjoyed his victim's groans fully as much as the semblance of them pleased the mind of the Eastern tyrant. The roof of the hall is of fine carved wood-work, and in this spacious chamber are collected the arms of the Canton in formidable array. The garrison of the castle, for it is a military depôt, consists at present of four soldiers, whose duty does not seem very distressing, for three of them were out on business, or seeking amusement, and the hero remaining at home to guard the fortress, we found busy picking a sallad for the daily meal, as he sat on the parapet of the drawbridge, with his legs dangling over the wall, by no means in a state of hostile preparation. On our return to Vevey we met another of the garrison, heavily laden with viands which he was carrying to the castle, no doubt having duly provided for the chances of a siege. The kitchen, which once was put in requisition for a somewhat more formidable party, is a spacious place, with fine pillars, and a gigantic fire-place. * It is to be seen at the Museum of the India House. The oubliette is, of course, not forgotten: a horrible hole is still shown, which one looks cautiously down, with shuddering and loathing. It is fifty feet deep, and sufficiently secure to prevent the refractory from giving any more trouble to those who caused them to be transferred from the torture-pillar to this resting-place, where they need "Fear no more the heat of the sun." Our guide and his lively wife had a dispute, though they must have told their story often before, about the actual depth of the lake. One said it was four hundred, the other insisted upon the fact of its being eight hundred feet deep. As they were very warm on the subject, I contented myself with repeating the lines of the poet, with which I was quite satisfied, in every way. "Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls: A thousand feet in depth below From Chillon's snow-white battlement." Murray says the lake is here only two hundred and eighty feet in depth: all I cared for I beheld, that it was deep, and blue, and clear, and lovely: "A mirror and a bath for beauty's youngest daughters." The deathless island, with its "three tall trees," rose out of the transparent waters, like a beacon pointing to a spot of glory: to me it seemed that the whole scene, lake, islands, castle, mountains, shore, belong to England, through one of her most unapproachably gifted bards, before whose sun the whole host of scattered stars troop away, and are remembered only in his absence. It appears to my enthusiasm to be as useless to compare any other poet of the day, however good, with Byron and Moore, as it would be to name any of the minor mountains, splendid though they be, with Mont Blanc. Our drive back to Vevey was much more agreeable than our approach to Chillon in the bright and betraying sunlight all the villages looked vulgar, flaring, and dirty, and the hot stone walls white and weary; but now that the day was fast declining there was a soft grey tint spread over every object, and the deep shadows gave much beauty to the scene. No one in travelling should venture to judge of any appearance that meets the eye on a first view, the second appreciation is generally that which does most justice. I had thought the greatest part of the road ugly on my way, and now all seemed changed into grace and beauty. Countless stars were scattered over an intensely blue sky; flashes of harmless summer lightning revealed the distant peaks, and played over the surface of the wide calm lake; and, as it grew yet darker, the lights in the villages of the opposite shore sparkled and flickered, like glow-worms in the grass. A huge furnace at Meillerie threw up its broad flames into the gloom, and its bright red reflection cast down into the dark waters at its feet, produced a singularly wild and startling effect, as if a solemn sacrifice were going on in honour of the "spirit of the place." That night at Vevey was magnificent, and most enjoyable did I find the charming room I occupied in the finest of all possible hotels on the |