CHAPTER II 

 GENEVA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



IN the preceding chapter an attempt has been made to indicate 

 the attitude of European culture towards the Alps previous to 

 the middle of the eighteenth century and de Saussure's travels. 

 I have endeavoured to show by a few selected examples how far 

 preceding generations had carried their investigations into the 

 physical features of mountain structure and the phenomena 

 of the glacier region, and what feelings the wilder forms of 

 scenery the waste places of the world raised in their 

 minds. 



But any portrait of Horace Benedict de Saussure which 

 exhibited him only as an Alpine traveller and a diligent pursuer 

 of several branches of natural science would be sadly incomplete. 

 From the age of twenty-two this versatile patrician was busy as 

 a hard-working professor, an educational reformer, and a leader 

 in social activities, while in middle life he found himself forced 

 to take a prominent part in the stormy politics of the little 

 Republic. It seems therefore desirable to supply here as a 

 further setting to the story of his life some account of the 

 scenes in which it was lived, of the local aspect and surroundings 

 of Geneva a hundred and fifty years ago, and of the social and 

 political conditions that prevailed among its inhabitants. 



The point at which the Rhone issues from Lake Leman was 

 indicated by nature for the site of an important town. An island x 

 furnishes a convenient opportunity for bridging the impetuous 

 river at the point where its translucent flood breaks out of the 

 narrowing western horn of the great lake . A neighbouring height 



1 The present L'lle, not the little sandbank now planted and connected by 

 a bridge which stands out in the lake and has since 1835 been known as the lie 

 Rousseau. 



