370 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



learning Latin, Greek, and music. Popular concerts were to be 

 provided. The final classes, destined for pupils over fifteen, were 

 to be given in French, instead of Latin as hitherto. Swimming, 

 gymnastics, and riding were to be encouraged. The pupils were 

 all to wear a simple black uniform. Three annual fetes were pro- 

 vided for, with, of course, a procession, and a good-conduct prize, 

 to be determined by the pupils' votes. There was to be in 

 addition an Administrative Council, which would exercise paternal 

 discipline, and also look after orphans and illegitimate children. 

 Calvin would seem not to have altogether expelled Cupid 1 

 Indeed, the police records provide a good deal of evidence that, 

 despite sumptuary laws and the vigilance of the Consistory, the 

 morals of the town had never been beyond reproach. 



Like other political schemes of the date, de Saussure's was 

 swept aside by the French annexation in 1798. 



Meantime, de Saussure's elder son, Theodore, unconscious of 

 the disasters impending on his family and country, was absent in 

 England, investigating the manufacturing districts, and greatly 

 enjoying himself in visits to the Isle of Wight, Stow, and Derby- 

 shire in company with Sir John Swinburne and his wife. Lady 

 Swinburne, the daughter of Mr. Bennet, his mother's cousin, 

 who lived at Beckenham, was a distant relation, and Theodore 

 in his letters home expresses the warmest admiration of her wit, 

 talent, and charm. Passing through Oxford, he records that he 

 dined, probably in one of the College Halls, with ' twenty doctors 

 in square caps.' In London he attended the meetings of the 

 Royal Society, of which he was at a later date to become a 

 Foreign Member, and his name is found in the list of guests at the 

 Society's Dining Club. 



Madame de Saussure's letters written to her son whilst he was in 

 England throw much light on the situation, political and personal. 

 In the summer of 1793 she describes the terrible heat, ' which 

 drove everyone into the lake,' while her husband and Alphonse, 

 her younger son, as members of the local militia, had to per- 

 form their military duties. The city had been scandalised by 

 a masquerade a mock procession of figures burlesquing the 

 Syndics, dressed in their time-honoured costume, crowned by 

 immense wigs, holding their staves of office, and preceded by 

 ushers in the traditional blue and purple mantles, which went 



