Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3

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August 15. At six o'clock this morning took the diligence for Caen (some eighty miles), passing through Bayeux; visited the old churches and streets of Caen.

August 16. Took train for Paris, and arrived at my old lodgings at six o'clock; in the evening saw my friends, Hamilton Fish and family, just arrived from New York.

August 17. Visited M. Vattemare, also the Genevieve Library, which is open to the public; dined with the Fishes at the table d'hote of Meurice's Hotel.

The summary of Sumner's diary for the month is as follows: Leaving Paris August 19, he stopped a few hours at Meaux, where he visited ‘the cathedral, the palace, and the garden of Bossuet;’ passed one night at Rheims, another at Strasburg, and a day at Baden-Baden, where Mr. C. A. Bristed of New York, then renting a villa near the town, drove him in the neighborhood, and up to the Alte Schloss. Next he went to Basle, Berne, Thun, Interlachen, the Lake of Brienz, the Brunig Pass, Alpnach, and to Lucerne, where he met his old friend Theodore S. Fay, whom he had been disappointed in not finding at Berne, and the two recalled earlier days in long conversations. Then, ‘after a day of the grandest scenery’ between Lucerne and Hospenthal, he crossed St. Gothard, took the steamer on Lake Maggiore, ‘passing the Isola Bella and Lesa, the home of Manzoni,’ and went on by railway from Arona to Turin, then the capital of Piedmont, a city he had not before visited. Here he looked wistfully towards the south, but turning back, by mule or carriage, traversed the Val d'aosta, and crossed the Great St. Bernard, passing a night at the Hospice, and then by way of Martigny, Tete Noire, and Chamouni, reached Geneva, September 5. Here he was interested in the associations of Voltaire, Calvin, Rousseau, Madame de Stael, and Byron. At Lausanne he sought the garden of the Hotel Gibbon, ‘to look upon the view that Gibbon looked upon;’ the cathedral, and also the library, where he traced out the manuscripts of La Harpe prepared for his pupil the Emperor Alexander. Then, by way of Lake Neuchatel, he went on to Basle and Heidelberg, where he called on his old friends Grosch and Mittermaier, from whom he received ‘a cordial, kind, and most friendly welcome.’ To the latter he wrote as he left the town a letter warm with affectionate remembrance, closing thus: ‘I can never think of you except with gratitude for your long life filled with laborious studies and inspired by the noblest sentiments.’ From Mayence