We walked over the celebrated wooden bridge at Schaffhaufen, of which the bold and fimple construction is confidered as an extraordinary effort of genius in the architect. Being altogether unqualified to judge of, or to defcribe its merit, I fhall only observe, that nature feems to have given the Swifs, together with their rapid rivers, and

their

true of remote times. I have been affured that the height of the cataract, in these circumstances, is not less than eighty feet. A ftranger can scarcely, without temerity, judge from his fimple obfervation, and if he does fo, he will be fure to be below the truth. I have afcertained, and Mr. Cox himfelf makes the same remark, that it requires the eye of a Swifs to judge of certain dimensions, which, exceeding all we have before seen, find no model of proportion in the mind. Those who have travelled for the first time in Switzerland, have often found, to their great surprise, that instead of exaggerating the heights and the diftances, they have diminished them one-half, or twothirds, till long habit taught them to expand their ideas, by furnishing them with fit objects of comparifon."

their torrent streams, an extraordinary genius for erecting bridges, of fuch daring defign, hung upon the cliff, and fufpended over the gulph, that we are not surprised to find superstition has fometimes attributed them to fupernatural agency.

Part of our company being furnished only with French passports, we left Schaffhaufen and returned to Zuric, without having vifited the Lake of Conftance, or its renowned and ancient city, which, at that period, was peopled by multitudes who had left France without paffports.

CHAP.

CHAP. V.

Lavater.-Fall of I filelity, and Triumph of the Religion of our Fathers.-Fefhionable Devotees.-La Harpe -Lectures on Religion at Ilalia.-Desertion of the Profelytes.-Theophilanthropifm.

WE ftaid long enough at Zuric- to visit

its first literary ornament, Lavater. It being known that he is willing to receive ftrangers, no traveller of any lettered curiofity paffes through the town, without paying him the homage of a visit.

He received us in his library, which was hung thick with portraits and engravings, of which he has a confiderable collection, forming a complete ftudy of the ever varying expreffion of the human face divine. fome very wife men, who admit of no scope to that faculty of the mind called imagination, and are for ever bringing

every theory to the square and the compass, confider his system of phyfiognomy as the fantastic vifion of an heated brain; but though it may be difficult, it is furely ingenious and interesting to attempt reducing to rules a science, which feems to be founded in nature. It is furely curious to analyze what it is so easy to feel, the charm of that expreffion, which is the emanation of moral qualities; that undefinable grace which is not beauty, but fomething more; without which its enchantments lofe their power of fascination, and which can shed an animated glow, a fpark of divinity over the features of deformity:

"Mind, mind alone, bear witness earth, and heaven, "The living fountain in itself contains "Of beauteous and fublime."

Lavater is a venerable looking old man, with a sharp long face, high features, and a wrinkled brow: he is tall, thin, and interesting

F

interesting in his figure; when ferious he has a look of melancholy, almost of inquietude; but when he fmiles, his countenance becomes lighted up with an expreffion of sweetness and intelligence.

There is a fimple eloquence in his converfation, an effufion of the heart extremely attractive: he fpeaks French with fome difficulty, and whenever he is at a loss for an expreffion has recourfe to German, which I in vain begged a Swifs gentleman, who was of our party, to tranflate for me: he told me, that for the moft part the German words Lavater employed were compoundepithets of his own framing, which had peculiar energy as he used them, but which would be quite vapid and spiritless in translation.

1

The great rule of moral conduct, Lavater faid, in his opinion was, next to God, to respect