saw, not only as a chef-d'oeuvre, but from the perfect and regular
beauty of the head, and the charm of the expression. It was just such
a mouth as we might suppose to have uttered his well-known reply--"_Je
l'aimerai tellement qu'elle finira par m'aimer._" Madame de Staël had
a son by this marriage, who had just been brought home by his brother,
the Baron, from a school in the neighbourhood. He is about seven years
old. If we may believe the servant, Madame de Staël did not
acknowledge this son till just before her death; and she described the
wonder of the boy on being brought home to the chateau, and desired to
call _Monsieur le Baron_ "Mon frère" and "Auguste." This part of
Madame de Staël's conduct seems incomprehensible; but her death is
recent, the circumstances little known, and it is difficult to judge
her motives. As a _woman_, as a _wife_, she might not have been able
to brave "the world's dread laugh"--but as a _mother_?----

We have also seen Ferney--a place which did not interest me much, for
I have no sympathies with Voltaire:--and some other beautiful scenes
in the neighbourhood.

The Panorama exhibited in London just before I left it, is wonderfully
correct, with one pardonable exception: the artist did not venture to
make the waters of the lake of the intense ultramarine tinged with
violet as I now see them before me;

"So darkly, deeply, beautifully blue;"

it would have shocked English eyes as an exaggeration, or rather
impossibility.

THE PANORAMA OF LAUSANNE.