Francis Henry Gribble

“ Benjamin Constant is only thirty-seven, yet he already feels himself an old man, whose powers are failing, who is no longer capable of strong emotion, or even of taking an intelligent interest in life. He writes, in fact, as if he were very tired. When something happens to remind him of his old attachment to Madame de Charrière, he writes thus:
'It is seven years since I saw her—ten since our intimacy ended. How easily I then used to break every tie that bored me! How confident I was that I could always form others when I pleased! ”

“ Nothing is ever taught in a School of Commerce that a man who has been properly educated elsewhere cannot pick up in six weeks; and the curriculum, though it may sharpen the wits, can only, at the best, produce a superior kind of bagman.
Swiss education, therefore, has its drawbacks even for a Switzer; and, for a young Englishman of the better class, it has other drawbacks in addition. It is not merely that he learns less than he would in England because an unfamiliar language is the medium of instruction. ”

“ Switzerland received them hospitably, but they were homesick. They resolved to go back; not to slink back in twos and threes, but to march back, with their flags flying, like courageous Christian soldiers. They mustered at Nyon, and thence crossed the lake under the leadership of the fighting pastor, Henri Arnaud, and marched across the mountains to effect their 'glorious re-entry.' It was a great military feat, and no less a judge than Napoleon has paid his tribute to the military genius of the commander. The returning exiles defeated the soldiers of Savoy in more than one pitched battle. ”

“ At Lausanne they can economize without feeling the pinch of poverty, and without feeling envious—or perceiving that their wives feel envious—of more prosperous neighbours. The sunshine costs nothing, and the amusements cost very little; they can go about in knickerbockers and wear out their old clothes without fearing that their solvency will be suspected. There is no need for them to learn a foreign tongue, since they form their own society, and mix very little with the Swiss who accept them, but do not pretend to like them. They live lazily, but healthily, and, on the whole, contentedly. ”

“ You will linger long and agreeably over the coffee and liqueurs, without feeling that someone else wants your seat. Nor will you be bothered, as in Geneva, by the squeaking of a futile fiddle, or by hawkers offering picture postcards. But, at the appointed hour, there will be a proper concert with a programme, and a well-behaved and well-dressed audience: beautiful French ladies looking as if they had stepped out of fashion plates; beautiful French children looking as if they had been cut out of Aunt Louisa's picture-book ”

“ She surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. ”

“ Most of these emigrants, moreover, suffered from the nostalgia which is characteristic of the Swiss. It was not enough for them to come home to die; they liked to return in middle age, and spend at home the money which they had earned abroad. And when they did return, they had, of course, no longer the homely wits of the home-keeping youths. They were men of experience, men of the world, men of polished manners and cosmopolitan culture. Their presence gave a new and a broader tone to Lausanne society. ”

“ No knickerbockered army, headed by a polyglot guide in a straw hat with a label on it, will invade your peace, but you will be free to live your lotus-eating life in your own way. You will probably live most of it in the casino, which is a proper casino, differing from the Geneva Kursaal as cheese from chalk. There is so much shade that it is always cool there, even on the hottest day. ”

“ In the matter of the classics the German scholars have always been more learned than the Swiss, and the English scholars have always been both more learned and more graceful; indeed, in the sort of scholarship which enables a man to speak and write his own language properly the Swiss have always been sadly to seek. Swiss French is atrocious, and the French of Lausanne, though a shade better than that of Fribourg, is worse than that of Geneva or Neuchâtel. ”

“ Francis can hardly escape condemnation as a maker of mischief and a stirrer-up of strife. To him, and to him alone, was due the triumph of the Counter-Reformation in Chablais. If he had declined that missionary enterprise, or failed in it, the Duke of Savoy would not have been encouraged to make the treacherous attempt upon Genevan independence known as the Escalade. That plot was actually laid at Thonon, at a meeting held to celebrate and rejoice over St. Francis de Sales' apostolic achievements. ”

“ Moore's contemporaries, but the differences between the nations still subsist; and, just as each nation has the system of education which it deserves, so it has the system of education which best prepares a man to fight the battle of life in his own country. In England, more than in any other country, success depends comparatively little upon book-learning, and very much upon character and the possession of certain qualities which, in our insular pride, we vaunt as specially 'British.' These qualities are not to be acquired in the Swiss schools. ”

“ Nyon, for instance, is by nature an earthly paradise, and they have formed a society for developing it. What they really want is a society for cleaning it, since it is the present practice of the inhabitants to empty their dustbins over their garden walls into the lake, with results appalling to the nostrils of the stranger. At Lausanne, or Vevey, or Montreux—other earthly paradises—you escape this nuisance; but even there, in the season, you have the feeling that the place is one vast hotel, and that everybody is waiting with packed boxes for the omnibus. But cross to Evian. ”

“ A greater figure—perhaps the greatest of all figures in the history of Savoy—is that of St. Francis de Sales. It is a little difficult to speak of him without appearing to stir the embers of theological disputation. But the effort must be made, since he is much too notable a man to be passed over; and the task may be made easier by the fact that he is a Catholic of whom Protestants speak well, even though they have to recognize in him one of the most damaging of their opponents. They respect his character even in the act of examining his propositions ”

“ Sainte-Beuve—of all emotion which was not either purely sensual or purely intellectual. He could not be a mystic, as he could not be a poet, because he lacked the necessary genius; and forms of religion which depended, not on intuition, but on authority, were repugnant to his sane intelligence. So he said a sad farewell to Christianity, and sought no substitute. 'I am mournfully looking on at the death of my heart,' he wrote to Vinet; and he went away and resigned himself to become a materialist, a voluptuary, and a critic. ”

“ The great names in the history of speculative thought—such names as those of Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Comte, Herbert Spencer, and T. H. Green—have been English, or German, or French, or Dutch. One does not find a single Swiss name among them. The great Swiss names, when we get away from theology, all stand for something scientific, practical, concrete. Lavater, Gesner, Saussure, Jomini—such are a few of the instances that may be cited to point our moral and lead us up to our generalization, which is as follows:
Elementary education is excellent in Switzerland ”

“ A stranger finds it difficult to converse with them, and fancies that they must be terribly bored. Perhaps they are; but perhaps, too, it is better to be bored in the sunshine than busy in a London fog. So they linger on, persuading themselves that they do so for their children's sake rather than their own, and referring the stranger, if he happens to question them, to the wonderful educational advantages of the town. ”