racking the brain for invention.  The past is a fact; while, at the best, the future is only conjecture.  In this case the positive prevails over the assumed, and the imagination finds both and easier duty, and all it wants, in throwing around the stores of memory, the tints and embellishments that are wanting to complete the charm.  I know little of the history of Blonay, beyond the fact of its great antiquity, nor is it a chateau of remarkable interest as a specimen of the architecture and usages of its time; and yet, I never visited a modern palace, with half the intense pleasure with which I went through this modest abode.  Fancy had a text, in a few unquestionable facts, and it preached copiously on their authority.  At Caserta, or St. Cloud, we admire the staircases, friezes, salons, and marbles, but I never could do anything with your kings, who are so much mixed up with history, as to leave little to the fancy; while here, one might imagine not only time, but all the various domestic and retired usages that time brings forth.

The Ritter Saal, or Knight’s Hall, of Blonay has positive interest enough to excite the dullest mind.  Neither the room nor its ornaments are very peculiar of themselves, the former being square, simple, and a good deal modernized, while the latter was such as properly belonged to a country gentleman of limited means.  But the situation and view form its great features; for all that has just been said of the terrace, can be better said of this room.  Owing to the formation of the mountain, the windows are very high above the ground, and at one of them is a balcony, which, I am inclined to think, is positively without a competitor in this beautiful world of ours.  Cardinal Rufo has certainly no such balcony.  It is le balcon des balcons.

I should despair of giving you a just idea of the mingled magnificence and softness of the scene that lies stretched before and beneath the balcony of Blonay.  You know the elements of the view already,—­for they are the same mysterious glen, or valley, the same blue lake, the same cotes, the same solemn and frowning rocks, the same groupings of towers, churches, hamlets, and castles, of which I have had such frequent occasion to speak in these letters.  But the position of Blonay has about it that peculiar nicety, which raises every pleasure to perfection.  It is neither too high, nor too low; too retired, nor too much advanced; too distant, nor too near.  I know nothing of M. de Blonay beyond the favourable opinion of the observant Jean, the boatman, but he must be made of flint, if he can daily, hourly, gaze at the works of the Deity as they are seen from this window, without their producing a sensible and lasting effect on the character of his mind.  I can imagine a man so far blase, as to pass through the crowd of mites, who are his fellows, without receiving or imparting much; but I cannot conceive of a heart, whose owner can be the constant observer of such a scene, without bending in reverence to the hand that made it.  It would be just as rational to suppose one might have the Communion of St. Jerome hanging in his drawing-room, without ever thinking of Domenichino, as to believe one can be the constant witness of these natural glories without thinking of God.