LETTERS OF A CONTINENTAL TOURIST. 371 



commemoration of the victims of the massacre after the siege of 

 Lyons in the time of the first revolution, but it is infinitely inferior in 

 my opinion to the cenotaph at Paris, built on the spot where the 

 bones of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were found, which is the 

 only sepulchral monument I have seen in France which, both as re- 

 gards internal and external decoration and arrangement, as a whole 

 and in detail, perfectly corresponds to the mournful idea it is meant 

 to represent. 



The population of Lyons amounts to more than 130,000, of whom 

 a large number are occupied in the manufacture of silks, to which the 

 town principally owes its prosperity. In the upper town, indeed, the 

 ears are deafened by the continual clatter of the treddle* of the loom. 

 However, the greater part of the produce of their industry, I might 

 perhaps say the whole, is sent to illumine the gay shops in Paris and 

 London, leaving nothing behind but coarse printed cottons and dingy 

 silk scarfs, to give a mock lustre to the little corners where they are 

 exposed for sale. I did not enter any of the factories, but such of the 

 operatives as I saw, though not adorned with the brown cheeks and 

 sturdy aspect of the out-door labourer, neither betrayed misery nor 

 poverty, sickness nor deformity, in their outward appearance, like the 

 miserable denizens of Spitalfields and Manchester. 



The sun here is powerful and the heat excessive, but the people 



fenerally not so dark as 1 expected to find them. The men are a 

 erce-looking race, bearing in their aspect outward and visible signs 

 of their turbulent character; and, judging from the placards on the 

 walls, their favourite amusements are of no very gentle character. 

 Those which attracted most attention held forth promise of savage, 

 bulls and bears, and more savage wolves, who were to enter the lists 

 with dogs of noted ferocity. These announcements were evidently 

 perused with especial gusto. I must not forget to mention the beer 

 of Lyons, which is in great repute, and is excellent, strong, but not 

 heavy, well-flavoured, and refreshing. 



To sum up my impression of Lyons in a few words ; it is a busy, 

 filthy, useful, ill-contrived, badly paved, horribly stinking, commer- 

 cial, manufacturing town, and I was delighted to leave it at two 

 o'clock in the afternoon of the 23d for Geneva. We jogged on at 

 the rate of five miles an hour, through a most uninteresting country, 

 till night came on. When morning broke we were traversing a pass 

 of the Jura mountains. The road winds along the surface of an in- 

 clined plane, which forms one face of a ravine, at an immense distance 

 both from the top and the bottom, so that the Rhone which winds 

 along beneath, though really a great river, looks like a narrow water- 

 course. Its colour was blue. A fortress defends the path ; and, if not 

 of much importance in a military point of view, it is highly so as an 

 object in the landscape. The rugged mountain above, below, and 

 opposite, gives an air of grandeur to the scene ; while the Lillipu- 

 tian appearance of the objects gliding along the thread of white road 

 that divides the mountain's side, by furnishing means of comparison, 

 gives a magnificent idea of nature as compared with the works of man. 

 After the usual annoying formalities about passports, we entered 

 the Genevese territory, and at length I found myself on the soil of 

 Switzerland. 



