I

foot from the Clamounix valley, a supposition which is dissipated on trial. There is, in fact, a stiff climb of about 2,000 feet in order to reach the Chalet, where a good view of the glacier is obtained together with needful rest and refreshment. will not stop to describe this glacier further than to observe that a brief survey of its lateral moraine shows that the ice has here retreated to a considerable extent (perhaps 200 feet) from its former level. Along the top of the moraine large boulders are perched, ready to fall from the slightest movement. These were left when the ice reached that level; but the moraine itself is bare and destitute of vegetation, which apparently has not had time to grow upon its surface since the ice retreated; evidence of the recenticity of the shrinkage. On descending towards the valley of the Arve we passed some huge blocks of granite, left by the glacier when it reached far below its present limits. Some of these must have weighed 100 tons, and are being quarried for building.

Remarkable appearance of Mont Blanc, August 17th, 1908.— Mont Blanc under the setting sun. -When approaching Chamounix the day of our arrival we were favoured by a scene of wondrous beauty which ought not to pass unrecorded. The train was passing about sunset along the Valley of the Rhone bounded on either hand by mountainous heights, when someone exclaimed, "Look at Mont Blanc!" and casting our eyes upwards in the direction indicated we beheld a scene never to be forgotten. The great mountain dome, with some of the adjoining heights and bordering snowfields, seemed to have been converted into a mass of burnished gold, owing to the declining rays of the setting sun which were flooding the heights with their light, but were quite out of sight to us, being intercepted by the intervening heights. This gorgeous scene was fortunately visible from the railway for several minutes, so that we had time to realize its supreme beauty, which words fail to describe. The white fields of snow lit up by the setting sun reflected in all their rich beauty their own resplendent colouring. It was a rare coincidence-the splendour of the sunset, the reflection from the snows, and our own position as observers!

Geneva revisited, 1908.-We may now go back to Geneva, and note the changes which have taken place in this celebrated city within the last half-century. They have been indeed remarkable. At the time of my first visit to the city of Calvin there were no railways, nor, if I recollect, steamboats on its great lake, the only ships being the pretty double-winged

sailing boats; no tram lines through the streets, no turbines for supplying the inhabitants with water and with power for driving tramcars and turning machinery.

Now all is changed except the splendid scenery of the landscape viewed from the banks of Lake Leman, some fine hotels and houses with the cathedral, occupying a commanding position in the upper part of the town. On visiting this church, severely plain and destitute of R.C. decoration, I was startled by seeing the name of John Knox conspicuously posted on a slab in the wall, reminding the visitor that the Scotch Reformer had during those stormy times visited Geneva, and occupied for a while Calvin's pulpit; and in memory of this brotherly visit a very beautiful annex called "the Macchabees" has been erected on the south side, where Presbyterians meet to worship on the Sabbath, according to a ritual closely resembling, if not identical with, that of the Church of Scotland at the present day. "Calvin's Chair," of plain hard oak, stands beneath the elaborately carved pulpit, which replaces the original one of the sixteenth century. The chair is regarded with veneration as a monument of the Reformer. What times of religious fervour were those when the images and ornaments of the Roman worship were pulled down and destroyed, and the bishops and priests were given the choice of accepting the Protestant faith or of quitting their sanctuary for an asylum in France or Italy. In these days of "passive resistance" it is difficult to picture to ourselves the perfervid religious convictions by which Switzerland was swayed from end to end, and which resulted in bringing over to the Protestant faith the cities of Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich, Basle and Berne. But Lucerne and the seven Forest Cantons retained their attachment to the papacy-after a severe struggle between their opposing forces and those of Berne.

The great turbine installation of the Rhone.-When at my first visit I stood by the banks of the Rhone below Geneva, there was probably nothing to intercept the course of the stream as it issued forth from the lake; a pure, ever-flowing sheet of water, which had entered at the upper end of the lake brown and turgid with glacier mud. This mud had subsided in the still waters, and has within the Christian era added an extensive tract of flat alluvial soil as shown by the remains of a Roman fort which once stood on the banks of the lake about a mile above the present margin in the valley of the upper Rhone above Villeneuve. Now, however, half the volume of the river is utilized for turning a grand installation of powerful

machinery in the form of turbines, twenty in number, and each 1,000 h.p., by which the city is supplied with water, electric light and motive power, all in almost unlimited quantity.

There had existed since the year 1837 successive attempts to utilize the waters of the Lower Rhone, but from various causes they were insufficient to supply the demands of an increasing population and prosperous community. But at length, in 1882, a concession was granted by the city of Geneva to the enterprising engineers, MM. Merle d'Aubigny and Turretini, to construct the present powerful works. These turbines were specially designed for the works at Geneva, and were manufactured at Zurich, the great centre of mechanical appliances in Switzerland, by the firm of MM. Escher, Wyss and Co. The force thus obtained operates a proportionate number of powerful dynamos, and is distributed for industrial motive power, as also for lighting and for water supply by centrifugal pumps capable of throwing the water to a height of about 270 feet in the air above the surface of the lake. The total cost of these works to December, 1905, reached 9,964,728 francs (nearly £400,000), a very large sum for a population of about 106,000 souls; but having been once carried out is almost automatic, and is certainly inexpensive to keep going. Nature has given compensation to Switzerland for the absence of coal. Coal-fields are exhaustible, but the supply of water from the snowfields can never fail as long as the present order of nature lasts.

Junction of the Rhone and Arve.-A convenient causeway has been constructed by which the visitor is enabled to stand just over the spot where the pure waters of the Rhone, issuing from the Lake of Geneva, come in contact with the turgid waters of the Arve a most impressive sight! Between lofty banks of stratified gravel, once the bed of a vast lake of post-Glacial times, these two fine streams move majestically onwards; yet do not their waters commingle. They run side by side for a long distance; but the level of those of the Rhone being somewhat higher than those of the Arve, and their force and velocity greater, the Rhone gradually pushes the Arve towards the opposite bank, and gains the mastery. The difference of level above the junction is shown by the fact that at several places the somewhat open material of which the causeway is formed allows the water of the Rhone to percolate underneath and invade that of the Arve. May we not in this case of the rivers find an illustration of the two great principles which govern mankind and which Scripture clearly unfolds to us, for instance,

in the parable of the wheat and the tares, the principles of good and evil? Like the waters of the Rhone and the Arve they move along side by side, but they refuse to commingle. They are, in fact, constantly at war, each striving for the mastery; but the forces of good and that "make for righteousness" are gaining on those of evil through the spread of Christian light throughout the world, and as we believe will ultimately prevail, when the "knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters do the sea.'

Literary coincidence between the English and Swiss "Lake Districts."—It is a somewhat curious coincidence that the City and Lake of Geneva has, like the Lake District of England, been the favourite residence of distinguished men of letters. Naturally, men of high intellectual capacity congregate where the beauties of the landscape, the mountains, the lakes and the fruitful vales tend to tranquillize their minds and inspire them with poetic imagery; and in following up this thought the names which suggest themselves at once for the English Lakes are those of Wordsworth, Southey, Ruskin, Harriet Martineau and De Quincey, and for those of Geneva, Calvin, Farel, Beza, Voltaire, Rousseau, Necker, Charpentier, De Sausseur, Agassiz, Gibbon, D'Aubigny and others; names which for good or for evil have left their memory for all time. Calvin's greatest work, Christiana Religionis Institutio, "which has shed undying lustre on his name," though issued in Basel (1535) is associated with Geneva, and to the Academy founded by Calvin in 1559 learned French, Italian, German and English emigrants flocked and rendered the city illustrious for learning. Amongst the English we find the names of Spencer, Coxe, Chambers, Bishop Hooper and other divines.*

Geneva as an asylum for persecuted Reformers.-Geneva has had the honour of offering an asylum to the persecuted Reformers of France and other countries during the troublous period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when in the time of Cromwell, the Duke of Savoy, at the instigation of the Pope, endeavoured to exterminate the Vaudois of the High Alps, which called forth the lines of Milton:

Avenge, O Lord, thy martyred saints,

Whose bones lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold."

and caused the Lord Protector to threaten the Duke of Savoy with his vengeance, by "sending his ships across the Alps"

*History of the Nations, supra cit., p. 287.

unless he withdrew his hand, which he, the Duke, did! And the next important occasion was the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day in 1572, when thousands of Protestants were ruthlessly murdered in cold blood or had to fly for their lives into Geneva, Zurich and other friendly Swiss towns on the one hand, or to England and Ireland on the other. We are fortunate in now having the details of this foul tragedy laid bare by the researches of a Roman Catholic historian of undisputed eminence. I refer to Lord Acton, late Professor of History to the University of Cambridge,* because I learn there are persons so ashamed of this event that they are inclined to deny that it ever happened; and from the efforts (related by Lord Acton) which were made by the Catholic writers of France to destroy all documents relating to this event, it is clear that they would have gladly blotted out that record from the page of history. The destruction of a million of France's most God-fearing and industrious inhabitants was a loss she has never recovered, and a gain to those countries who opened their doors to the refugees. Retribution was sure to follow, and has followed. Through Zwingli's efforts Switzerland extended the droit d'asile to all, and she henceforth followed out her mission as a neutral power. It is the protection so freely given to refugees by Geneva, Zurich, and other Swiss cities that brightens the history of the gloomy reaction period towards the close of the sixteenth century after the death of Calvin, and during the Marian persecution refugees from England found a friendly asylum in these prosperous cities.†

Such were the scenes and impressions which presented themselves during my visit to Switzerland a few weeks since, and about half a century previously. I have not included the beautiful City of Lausanne, which was the point of arrival and departure for our tour; nor the Hotel Gibbon, where the historian is said to have composed his great history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a work which is in itself a library of information regarding the times to which it refers to have done so would have unduly extended this paper.

"The Massacre of St. Bartholomew," in The History of Freedom, by Lord Acton (1907), MacMillan and Co. The Pope Gregory XIII. on hearing of the massacre, exclaimed "that it was more agreeable to him than fifty victories of Lepanto, and with his cardinals attended a Te Deum in the nearest church in Rome," p. 133-4.

+ An admirable account of these times will be found in the volume "Switzerland" of The Story of the Nations, by Lina Hug and Richard Stead (Fisher Unwin, 1890). Also, in The Huguenots, by S. Smiles (John Murray, 1869).