Miscellanies. 375 



and carelessness which were so unusual a concomitant of these grave 

 duties. His abode at Gessenay, gave rise to a description of that 

 picturesque country ; his sojourn at Nyon is impressed on the mem- 

 ory of the present generation, by the numerous services which he 

 rendered to the persecuted of all countries, and all opinions. 



After the fall of the ancient government of Bern, De Bonstetten, 

 restored to liberty, renewed his travels for the purpose of enlightened 

 observation. He passed through Italy, and especially the province 

 of Latium, which he traversed with his Virgil in his hand, and of 

 which he published a lively and original description. He went after- 

 wards to Denmark, and the physical and moral contrast of these two 

 countries was so impressed on his mind, as to give rise to a charm- 

 ing work, U Homme du hord et Vhomme du midi, and to another less 

 known, entitled La Scandinavia et les Alpes. In the first, he com- 

 pares the north and the south, especially in their moral relations ; in 

 the second, the worth of Europe and Switzerland, chiefly in their 

 physical characters. The tendency of his mind naturally gave to 

 the first of these essays, a decided superiority. At the conclusion 

 of a journey in France, he published his Pensees sur divers ohjets de 

 bien publique. It displays that enlightened love of prudent liberty, and 

 that amiable philanthropy which directed his whole life. On his 

 return from these several journeys, he took up his abode within our 

 walls, whither he was drawn, as well by the recollections of his youth, 

 as by the great number of distinguished friends whom he found there, 

 gathered at that time around Mad. de Stael, Pictet, and many 

 others, whom we shall always regret. It was in this retreat, embel- 

 lished by friendship and the conversation of enlightened men, that 

 he wrote the works above mentioned, and his two great philosophical 

 treatises on the laws of the imagination, and on the nature of man. In 

 rendering the justice due to the real merit of these works, we, nev- 

 ertheless feel, in reading them, that the author does not shine in his 

 native brilliancy. The grace and the freedom of his style disappear 

 in this too didactic species of writing. His genuine triumph vs?as in 

 the epistolary style. He was intimately connected in his youth with 

 the celebrated historian Miiller, and there remains a collection of 

 their letters replete with judicious and striking observations. Con- 

 nected at a later period by a tender friendship with the German poet, 

 Matthisson, and with Mad, Frederique Braun, a woman of wit and 

 learning, his correspondence with these two distinguished persons, is 

 also preserved, and it is in them that we discover the flexibility of his 



