384 MORE POT-POURRI 



represents — always aspiring and never satisfied, always 

 working and producing comparatively little result ? 



During my stay I was not able to see any of these 

 houses, as I had wished, and only once did I stand in 

 the town on the ever wonderful [bridge where the Rhone, 

 as blue as melted sapphires, tears through the arches. 

 In spite of endless scientific investigations, no explana- 

 tion has ever been arrived at to account for the wonder- 

 ful colour of the Rhone water. A few miles below the 

 town, as we all know, the Arve rushes down from the 

 valley of Chamounix, muddy in tone and charged with 

 solid matter, and it colours for miles the blue waters of 

 the Rhone. At length the Arve gains the mastery, and 

 the Rhone, once polluted, does not recover its purity 

 before reaching the sea. So remarkable a freak of 

 nature, however often one has heard of it, strikes one 

 afresh with its obvious allegory. 



Instead of all the things I wished to see in Geneva, 

 the one and only thing I did see was the new museum 

 with its newly planted grounds, a short drive from the 

 town, and called (goodness knows why) Ariana. The 

 building is commodious and light, and well suited for its 

 object. It is a pleasure to visit a museum with aU the 

 windows wide open ; they are generally such airless, 

 stuffy places. But one cannot help being severe on 

 modern buildings on one's return from Italy. Local 

 museums always have an interest, and one generally 

 finds something one could have seen nowhere else. In 

 this case it was a most instructive and comprehensive 

 collection of old china, very well arranged, named, and 

 dated. Several specimens and manufactories were quite 

 new to me — which is not astonishing, as I know so 

 little about china. A tea service with butterflies and 

 beetles on a white ground, catalogued ' Nyon, 1780 to 

 1800,' struck me as exceedingly pretty. Also some 



