This is an annotated version of the book1. contains an updated biography of the author at the end of the book for a better understanding of the text.2. This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errors"I breathe freely in the neighbourhood of this lake; the ground uponwhich I tread has been subdued from the earliest ages; the principalobjects which immediately strike my eye, bring to my recollectionscenes, in which man acted the hero and was the chief object ofinterest. Not to look back to earlier times of battles and sieges,here is the bust of Rousseau--here is a house with an inscriptiondenoting that the Genevan philosopher first drew breath under itsroof. A little out of the town is Ferney, the residence of Voltaire;where that wonderful, though certainly in many respects contemptible,character, received, like the hermits of old, the visits of pilgrims,not only from his own nation, but from the farthest boundaries ofEurope. Here too is Bonnet's abode, and, a few steps beyond, the houseof that astonishing woman Madame de Stael: perhaps the first of hersex, who has really proved its often claimed equality with, the noblerman. We have before had women who have written interesting novels andpoems, in which their tact at observing drawing-room characters hasavailed them; but never since the days of Heloise have those facultieswhich are peculiar to man, been developed as the possible inheritanceof woman.

Though even here, as in the case of Heloise, our sex havenot been backward in alledging the existence of an Abeilard in theperson of M. Schlegel as the inspirer of her works. But to proceed:upon the same side of the lake, Gibbon, Bonnivard, Bradshaw, andothers mark, as it were, the stages for our progress; whilst upon theother side there is one house, built by Diodati, the friend of Milton,which has contained within its walls, for several months, that poetwhom we have so often read together, and who--if human passions remainthe same, and human feelings, like chords, on being swept by nature'simpulses shall vibrate as before--will be placed by posterity in thefirst rank of our English Poets. You must have heard, or the ThirdCanto of Childe Harold will have informed you, that Lord Byron residedmany months in this neighbourhood. I went with some friends a few daysago, after having seen Ferney, to view this mansion. I trod the floorswith the same feelings of awe and respect as we did, together, thoseof Shakespeare's dwelling at Stratford. I sat down in a chair of thesaloon, and satisfied myself that I was resting on what he had madehis constant seat. I found a servant there who had lived with him;she, however, gave me but little information.

She pointed out hisbed-chamber upon the same level as the saloon and dining-room, andinformed me that he retired to rest at three, got up at two, andemployed himself a long time over his toilette; that he never went tosleep without a pair of pistols and a dagger by his side, and that henever ate animal food. He apparently spent some part of every day uponthe lake in an English boat. There is a balcony from the saloon whichlooks upon the lake and the mountain Jura; and I imagine, that it musthave been hence, he contemplated the storm so magnificently describedin the Third Canto; for you have from here a most extensive view ofall the points he has therein depicted. I can fancy him like thescathed pine, whilst all around was sunk to repose, still waking toobserve, what gave but a weak image of the storms which had desolatedhis own breast. The sky is changed!--and such a change; Oh, night! And storm and darkness, ye are wond'rous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the lire thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue,.