Botany, such as I have always considered it, and of which after my own manner I began to become passionately fond, was precisely an idle study, proper to fill up the void of my leisure, without leaving room for the delirium of imagination or the weariness of total inaction.  Carelessly wandering in the woods and the country, mechanically gathering here a flower and there a branch; eating my morsel almost by chance, observing a thousand and a thousand times the same things, and always with the same interest, because I always forgot them, were to me the means of passing an eternity without a weary moment.  However elegant, admirable, and variegated the structure of plants may be, it does not strike an ignorant eye sufficiently to fix the attention.  The constant analogy, with, at the same time, the prodigious variety which reigns in their conformation, gives pleasure to those only who have already some idea of the vegetable system.  Others at the sight of these treasures of nature feel nothing more than a stupid and monotonous admiration.  They see nothing in detail because they know not for what to look, nor do they perceive the whole, having no idea of the chain of connection and combinations which overwhelms with its wonders the mind of the observer.  I was arrived at that happy point of knowledge, and my want of memory was such as constantly to keep me there, that I knew little enough to make the whole new to me, and yet everything that was necessary to make me sensible to the beauties of all the parts.  The different soils into which the island, although little, was divided, offered a sufficient variety of plants, for the study and amusement of my whole life.  I was determined not to leave a blade of grass without analyzing it, and I began already to take measures for making, with an immense collection of observations, the ‘Flora Petrinsularis’.

I sent for Theresa, who brought with her my books and effects.  We boarded with the receiver of the island.  His wife had sisters at Nidau, who by turns came to see her, and were company for Theresa.  I here made the experiment of the agreeable life which I could have wished to continue to the end of my days, and the pleasure I found in it only served to make me feel to a greater degree the bitterness of that by which it was shortly to be succeeded.

I have ever been passionately fond of water, and the sight of it throws me into a delightful reverie, although frequently without a determinate object.

Immediately after I rose from my bed I never failed, if the weather was fine, to run to the terrace to respire the fresh and salubrious air of the morning, and glide my eye over the horizon of the lake, bounded by banks and mountains, delightful to the view.  I know no homage more worthy of the divinity than the silent admiration excited by the contemplation of his works, and which is not externally expressed.  I can easily comprehend the reason why the inhabitants