or in some of the shaded walks, which clasp, like
loving arms of Beauty, that bright little city of Central Europe. His
tall, commanding figure gave him an air of dignity and patrician
distinction; which latter was his by right. When he looked at you from
under the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat, you felt in that gaze there
was power,--a something which dropped from his eye into your very heart,
and made its home there.

But allow me to make a _detour_, and call attention to that city where
Toepffer was born, and where society had such an influence upon his
creative mind.

No spot in all Europe has more intrinsic importance than Switzerland.
Perched, as it is, amid inaccessible summits of intellectual and of
geographical elevation, it remains the magnetic centre, towards which,
from every part of the world, the sympathies of people most naturally
converge. And Geneva--the proud, miniature Republic--is to-day what she
has been for three long centuries, the Mecca of Switzerland, a luminous
altar of freedom of thought and of intellectual independence, from which
bold opinions have sprung and radiated, and around which every son of
Liberty has rallied. The Republic of Geneva stands alone in her
celebrity. So small a country that one morning's drive embraces the
whole of its territory, it can yet boast of a nationality so deeply
rooted, and of an individuality so strongly marked, that no foreign
invasion and no foreign contact have ever been able to impair them.

It is impossible, even for the most superficial reader of history, to
overlook that great array of names which made the last years of the
eighteenth century so illustrious in Europe. Among them it is equally
impossible not to recognize those which Geneva so proudly furnished.
Theology, Natural Science, Philology, Morals, Intellectual Philosophy,
and Belles-Lettres,--all these branches are admirably represented, and
bend down with their luxuriant weight of fruit. The native land of such
men as Bonnet, De Saussure, De Candolle, Calandrini, Hubert, Rousseau,
Sismondi, Necker, has nothing to covet from other countries. Still
Geneva became the foster-mother of many great men. Calvin she took from
his own Picardy. Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, the grandfather of Madame
de Maintenon, and ancestor of Merle d'Aubigne, the truest friend of
Henry IV., Geneva honored as if her own son. Voltaire so loved Geneva
that there he had a residence as well as at Ferney, and sang with