It is by contrast that all pleasures are heightened, and even the tour which I afterwards made amongst the Alps, did not lessen the force of that impression which the sudden appearance of this magnificent spectacle had left upon my mind.  The road down the mountain is an astonishing work, and is part of the grand line of road made by Buonaparte, to facilitate the passage of troops into Italy over the Grand Simplon.  A fountain near the road has an inscription to Napoleon the Great; in one part the road winds through an excavation in the rock.  One cannot but here exclaim with the poet,

    What cannot Art and Industry perform,
    When Science plans the progress of their toil!

At Fernay we visited the Chateau, so long celebrated as the residence of Voltaire.  It is now the property and residence of M. de Boudet, who, as we were informed, has made great improvements in the place since it has come into his possession.

The saloon and bed-chamber of Voltaire are, however, preserved in exactly the same state as when he occupied them.  There are a few portraits of his friends, and under his bust is this inscription: 

    “Son esprit est partout et son coeur est ici.”

    “His genius is every where, but his heart is here.”

His Cenotaph, as it is called, has a miserably mean appearance, and bears this inscription: 

    “Mes manes sont consoles puisque mon coeur
    “Est au milieu de vous.”

    “My manes are consoled, since my heart is with
      you.”

The formal taste in which the garden is laid out, but ill accords with the stupendous scenery which is seen on all sides.  The approach to the Chateau from the road is through a double avenue of trees.  Near the house stands the parish-church, and also a Heliconian fountain in the disguise of a pump, of excellent water, which we tasted, but without experiencing any unusual effects.  We had not leisure to prolong our researches, as it was necessary for us to reach Geneva before the closing of the gates.  If the first and distant appearance of the city of Geneva, of its beautiful lake, and of the lofty mountains by which it is surrounded, produces the strongest sensations of delight in the beholder, a nearer approach is not (as is too frequently the case) calculated to do away, or, at least, greatly to diminish the impression made by the distant view.

Having, after a long descent, at length reached the Plain, the traveller cannot fail of being delighted with the richly cultivated scene which surrounds him, with the neatness of the villages, and with the apparent ease of the inhabitants of a country where property seems pretty equally divided, and where he is not shocked (as he is unhappily too generally throughout Europe) by the melancholy contrast between the splendour of the opulent, and the extreme misery of the peasantry.  Here the peasant, as Goldsmith observes,