ITALY. REMARKS MADE IN SEVERAL VISITS CHAPTER I. Switzerland - Chamouni - Byron Shelley Schlegel Madame de Staël Bonstetten, his account of Voltaire - Departure for La Ripaille-General Duppa - Meillerie - Lago Mag- Isola Bella. IN the summer of 1816 I visited Switzerland for the first time, and remained there until early in the following October. I passed those happy days with Lord Byron, chiefly at the villa Diodati, on the Savoy side of the lake of Geneva, but, occasionally, in short journeys to some of the spots usually visited by strangers. One was to Chamouni, another to the Grindelwald. Of the latter Lord Byron recorded short notices in a journal which he sent to his sister, and which Mr. Moore published in his Life. It was on our visit to Chamouni that a circumstance occurred which has been so entirely distorted, and represented directly contrary to the fact, that I feel bound to mention it. At an inn on the road the travellers' book was put before us, and Lord Byron having written his name, pointed out to me the name of VOL. I. B Mr. Shelley, with the words atheist and philanthropist written in Greek opposite to it; and observing, “Do you not think I shall do Shelley a service by scratching this out?" he defaced the words with great care. This was the fact-the fiction afterwards printed and published was, that Lord Byron wrote the word "atheist" after his own name in that, book; and Mr. Southey, although he does not repeat that absurd story, nevertheless endeavours to make Lord Byron answerable for Mr. Shelley's inscription. During my residence at Diodati I had the satisfaction of renewing my acquaintance with Madame de Staël, and seeing her where she was best seen-at home. I have elsewhere in this volume attempted to show her in the light in which she appeared at Coppet. There, indeed, she gave full play to a disposition most engaging and unaffected. In the artificial existence of Paris and London some foibles were forced into life which were dormant in her native Switzerland. In the society of cities she was not always satisfied with waiting for the approaches of the "little people called the great," but was impatient and rather too persevering in her advances. Not so at Coppet-there she was impartially attentive to all, or, if her civilities were directed to one more than to another, they were pointed to the guest whose inferior pretensions made them the more acceptable to him. In the exercise of her polite hospitalities, she forgot former injuries; and one of the company whom we met at her table was the wife of a |