“I bought, by a very singular kind of contract, of which there was no example in that country, a small estate of about sixty acres, which they sold me for about twice as much as it would have cost me at Paris; but pleasure is never too dear.  The house was pretty and commodious, and the prospect charming; it astonishes without tiring:  on one side is the lake of Geneva, and the city on the other.  The Rhone rushes from the former with vast impetuosity, forming a canal at the bottom of my garden, whence is seen the Arve descending from the Savoy mountains, and precipitating itself into the Rhone, and farther still another river.  A hundred country seats, a hundred delightful gardens, ornament the borders of the lakes and rivers.  The Alps at a great distance rise and terminate the horizon, and among their prodigious precipices, twenty leagues extent of mountain are beheld covered with eternal snows.”

Upon Voltaire’s settlement at Ferney, the country was almost a savage desert.  The village contained but fifty inhabitants, but became by the poet’s means the residence of 1,200 persons, among which were a great number of artists, principally watch makers, who established their manufacture under his auspices, and exported their labours throughout the continent.  Voltaire also invited to Ferney, and afforded protection to, the young niece of the celebrated Corneille; here she was educated, and Voltaire even carried his delicacy so far as not to suffer the establishment of Madlle.  Corneille to appear as his benefaction.  The family of Calas, likewise, came to reside in the neighbourhood, and to this circumstance may be attributed the zeal which Voltaire evinced in their ill fate.

* * * * *

DURHAM HOUSE, STRAND: 

Marriage of lady Jane Grey.

(For the Mirror.)

               Why did ye me dysseyve,

With faynyng fantzye agenst all equitie and right,
The regall powers onjustly to receyve,
To serve your tornes, I do right well perceyve;
For I was your instrument to worke your purpose by;
All was but falshed to bleere withall myn eye.

Cavendish’s Metrical Visions.

The short but eventful period between the death of the last Henry, and the succession of his bigoted and intolerant daughter Mary, presents a wide and fertile field for the inquiring mind both of the historian and philosopher.  The interest attached to the memory of the beauteous but unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, renders the slightest event of her life acceptable to every lover of English history; while her youth and intellectual acquirements, her brief reign of nine days, and finally her expiation for her innocent crime on the scaffold, combine to rouse the feelings and excite the sympathy of every sensitive heart.