The Vampyre; A Tale

EXTRACT OF A LETTER

FROM GENEVA.
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"I breathe freely in the neighbourhood of this lake; the ground upon
which I tread has been subdued from the earliest ages; the principal
objects which immediately strike my eye, bring to my recollection
scenes, in which man acted the hero and was the chief object of
interest. Not to look back to earlier times of battles and sieges,
here is the bust of Rousseau--here is a house with an inscription
denoting that the Genevan philosopher first drew breath under its
roof. A little out of the town is Ferney, the residence of Voltaire;
where that wonderful, though certainly in many respects contemptible,
character, received, like the hermits of old, the visits of pilgrims,
not only from his own nation, but from the farthest boundaries of
Europe. Here too is Bonnet's abode, and, a few steps beyond, the house
of that astonishing woman Madame de Stael: perhaps the first of her
sex, who has really proved its often claimed equality with, the nobler
man. We have before had women who have written interesting-novels and
poems, in which their tact at observing drawing-room characters has
availed them; but never since the days of Heloise have those faculties
which arc peculiar to man, been developed as the possible inheritance
of woman. Though even here, as in the case of Heloise, our sex have
not been backward in alledging the existence of an Abeilard in the
person of M. Schlegel as the inspirer of her works. But to proceed:
upon the same side of the lake, Gibbon, Bonnivard, Bradshaw, and
others mark, as it were, the stages for our progress; whilst upon the
other side there is one house, built by Diodati, the friend of Milton,
which has contained within its walls, for several months, that poet
whom we have so often read together, and who--if human passions remain
the same, and human feelings, like chords, on being swept by nature's
impulses shall vibrate as before--will be placed by posterity in the
first rank of our English Poets. You must have heard, or the Third
Canto of Childe Harold will have informed you, that Lord Byron resided
many months in this neighbourhood. I went with some friends a few days
ago, after having seen Ferney, to view this mansion. I trod the floors
with the same feelings of awe and respect as we did, together, those
of Shakespeare's dwelling at Stratford. I sat down in a chair of the
saloon, and satisfied myself that I was resting on what he had made
his constant scat. I found a servant there who had lived with him;
she, however, gave me but little information. She pointed out his
bed-chamber upon the same level as the saloon and dining-room, and
informed me that he retired to rest at three, got up at two, and
employed himself a long time over his toilette; that he never went to
sleep without a pair of pistols and a dagger by his side, and that he
never eat animal food. He apparently spent some part of every day upon
the lake in an English boat. There is a balcony from the saloon which
looks upon the lake and the mountain Jura; and I imagine, that it must
have been hence, he contemplated the storm so magnificently described
in the Third Canto; for you have from here a most extensive view of
all the points he has therein depicted. I can fancy him like the
scathed pine, whilst all around was sunk to repose, still waking to
observe, what gave but a weak image of the storms which had desolated
his own breast.