Geneva

Correspondence rif the Michtgn Argus. Lausa.nxe, Swiuerland, Oct. 13, 1863. We liad been puffiing up the valluy ' oí the Rhono. Ever-toiliug man hasluid the rail, where it seems as if Nature liad determined to prevent it, and the iron-horse makes the valley of the Rhone feel his tread, and tho Jura mountains re echo his thnoder. Upon each side, the dark fonns of tlie mountains had shut lis in from the World. At leDgth the valley expandid, the mountams more unsociaF and stood farther apart, tho suburbs of a city hove in ijight.rthen.its streets appeared,.presently we entered a large stone depot, and found that wehivd arrived at Geneva. Alighting from the cnrs and foïïowing the crowd from the station house, we eníerud a, 'bus and were soon at tho Hotel des Bergues. And now I began to rcalize that I was in Geneva. I had, in my boyish daySjlooked upon it as an almost demisacred city, and my imagination had piotured it as the home of lcarning and refinement. It had seemed to me to be the arena where great and woijderful men loved to cast their argumentative shafts at each other, and figbt the duels oí opinión. I regarded it as one oí the great centres, whenee have originated influences which have moved the worid. And even nnw, in my matuver days - when I take a matter-offact yiew oí men and thinga ; when thnt divinity, which once seerned to me to enshroud great men, has dwlnclled iiitO1 mere superiortty, and I no longer regard them as demi-gods, but often, alas,, often ! mere creatures of one idea, and ahvays subject to human írailty - I eanaot but honor ar.d respect tho3e men who once walked the streets of Geneva, and made it the school of reform. Yet my respect is limited ; for I remember that two classes of philosophers have made this thcir home, and two kinds of philosophy have bere found their origin - the one, Calvin and accountability ; the other, Rousseau and social lawlessness. I eniered here the eathedrai hoary with age. I ascended tiae and stood beneath the canopy that once covered John Calvin, This is the monument, thought I, to the leader of the true philosophy, and rt speaks of the man who advocated Divine supremacy, but civil freedom and liberty of conscience. And is this his only monument ? No. There are others more lasting than cathedrals to inmortalizo Calviu. Geneva, and Switzerland, aye, and America herself, with the moral and social freedom which they enjoy, are ofisprings of the principies which found po 8trong an advocate in Geneva'ssou; and they are his raonu-ments ! Upon a little island io the midst of the Shons-, which hurriei) from the lake, just in front oí my hotel, ia a monument to Rousseau. In him we find the embodyment of the false philosophy, wboee end, if carried out would corrupt all EOciety and make earth a heil ! - The infidel philosopher, alan, has other monuments. France, at the time of her Kevolution, and too much to-dav, is an exemplification oí bis social principies. It is wonderful what extremes have met in Geneva. John Knos bas walked its streets, ssnd so has Voltaire; Brnughton, who read the sentence of death to Charles I., no less than Neckeri the syoophant minister of Louis XIV., have been hero The Cbristian and the Infidel, the Eogicide atid'the Royalist, Ihe Papist and the Puritan have made this their home. Then, too, Madame De Stael was born here, and here bave lived Saussure, the naturalist, Sismondi, the historian, Lefort, the couneillor of Peter the Great, and'Eossi, the tniniater of the Pope. If you soek for wide and spacious avenaes, go not tb Geneva. The extensivo quays on both tidesof theEhone and upon the borders of the Lake, connected by elegant bridges and ornanamented with handsome buildings, are, it is trne, very fine ; but aside f rom these, the streets are irregular and crooked, aud the houses devoid of chitectural display, öwitzeiland has not the advantagos for rearing ckies oí beauty and regularity, vvhich exist ia America. Her mountaius and her hills are ill 6uited ior their foundations. - Man is compelled to conform to them, he cannot mako them conform to him. Heneo, one looks ia vain here for tbe straight and mngnifieent avenue, adorned with their arbors f trees and plats of nature's green, whieh belong to such a belle ville as Ann Arbor! The most of Swiss towns possess the greatest varifcty of up-hill and down, of serpentine and narrow streets, of wonderfully steep and inconvenient roads. With its forty thousand inhabitants; with its bnsy population ; with its manufactories, making annually a hundred thousar.d watches, and employing three thousand hands ; with its intellectual advantages, its college and theological school, and public library of forty thousand volumes ; and with the learned men and refined society which dweil here, Geneva may indeed be regarded as the metropolis of Switzerland. Nature, too, hn done everything for Geneva. Here Leman reposes amid inonntniriá ; hero " the blue watera of the arrowy Rhono1' bid adieu to the luko and basten towards tlio sea ; here is seen ülont Blune, " the monarch of moiintairip," vit!) lm crown of eternal snow ; bere " Jura answers, through ler misty sliroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who cali aloud I" here Nature's panorama presenta one with beauty, grandeur, and sublimity. Two men live here, to-day, whose names are honored in America - D'Aubigne and Malan - onc, the chronicler of Luther's ncts, and of the rolling wave of the Eeformation ; the other, tbe eseinplar of the principies of the reformers, and a soldier in the vanguard of Protestantism in Europe. - Through the kindness of Dr. .Eutonrof Hamilton Univcrsity, I was enabl'ed to visit the homes of those men, to shake thoir hands and to hear their living voices. In D'Aubigne, though sevenly, I saw the intellectual and bodily strength, the erect and well shaped forrn of a man of fifty. In Malan I saw the old man, bowed in years yet young in intellectual visión, and avvaiting in sweet conñdence the culi of the Heavenly messenger ! May Geneva be ever blessed with such men ! I lelt this city thanking Heaven for such a place, for sueh men as it has posse8sed, and for such principies as they have fought foK.