avoyard_, who had arrived from Frankfort, and came once more
to offer his services to conduct us to Lapland, should it be our
pleasure to travel in that direction. It would have been ungracious to
refuse so constant a suitor, and he was ordered to be in attendance next
morning, to proceed towards the lake of Geneva.

In the evening we went on the Plateforme to witness the sunset, but the
mountains were concealed by clouds. The place was crowded, and
refreshments were selling in little pavilions erected for the purpose.
We are the only Protestants who are such rigid observers of the Sabbath,
the Scotch perhaps excepted. In England there is much less restraint
than in America, and on the Continent the Protestants, though less gay
than the Catholics, very generally consider it a day of recreation,
after the services of the church are ended. I have heard some of them
maintain that we have misinterpreted the meaning of the word holy, which
obtains its true signification in the term holiday. I have never heard
any one go so far, however, as Hannah Moore says was the case with
Horace Walpole, who contended that the ten commandments were not meant
for people of quality. No one whose mind and habits have got extricated
from the fogs of provincial prejudices, will deny that we have many
odious moral deformities in America, that appear in the garb of
religious discipline and even religious doctrine, but which are no more
than the offspring of sectarian fanaticism, and which, in fact, by
annihilating charity, are so many blows given to the essential feature
of Christianity; but, apart from these, I still lean to the opinion that
we are quite as near the great truths as any other people extant.

Mr. ----, the English _charge d'affaires_, whom I had known slightly at
Paris, and Mr. ----, who had once belonged to the English legation in
Washington, were on the Plateforme. The latter told me that Carroll of
Carrolton was dead; that he had been dead a year, and that he had
written letters of condolence on the occasion. I assured him that the
old gentleman was alive on the 4th July last, for I had seen one of his
letters in the public journals. Here was a capital windfall for a
regular _diplomate_, who now, clearly, had nothing to do but to hurry
home and write letters of felicitation!

The late changes in England have produced more than the usual mutations
in her diplomatic corps, which, under ordinary circumstances, important
trusts