he overthrow of the
House of Capet. Albert Gallatin she gave to the United States. How
curious it is to trace the life of this son of Geneva! Graduating with
honors at his native university, he came to America in 1780, was
commander of a small fort at Machias while Maine was still
Massachusetts, was teacher in Harvard University, filled high places
under the government of Pennsylvania; elected Senator to Congress from
that State, (but vacating his seat because his residence had not been
sufficiently long to qualify him,) Secretary of the Treasury under
Jefferson, Envoy Extraordinary to sign the Treaty of Ghent, and for
seven years Minister Plenipotentiary to France. He was offered the
Secretaryship of State by Madison, a place in the Cabinet by Monroe, and
was selected by the dominant party as a candidate for the second office
in the gift of the American people. All of these last three proffered
honors he refused, and passed the remainder of his long life in the
genial pursuits of literature.

If Geneva has been the fireside of learning and of belles-lettres, it
has not been less the home of the fine arts. Petitot, the celebrated
painter on enamel, has handsomely paid his share to the
_chefs-d'oeuvres_ of the seventeenth century. While enjoying the
capricious favors of Charles I. at Whitehall, where he had his lodgings,
he worked on some of those perfect portraits which to-day have their
place in the Louvre, and which for ages must remain the triumphs of
minutely finished, expressive Art. Nor is the little Republic poor in
contemporaneous artistic talent. Pradier was born and grew up in
presence of Mont Blanc, whose sublime grandeur may well inspire the
dreams of the sculptor and ennoble him. Calame, Diday, and Hubert in
landscape painting, and Hornung in historical painting, (widely known by
his "Death of John Calvin,") are all sons of Geneva. Thalberg, the
musician, is a native of Geneva.

The habitual companionship of master minds must necessarily exert an
immediate and irresistible influence upon the rapid growth of thoughts
and ideas in the young. And it is not to be wondered at that those who
from their earliest infancy have had the readiest access to such a
companionship, and who have most fully imbibed that influence, retain
through the after-years of life a strength and a boldness of originality
essentially opposed to the hesitating timidity of less favored
individuals. In a society like that of Geneva, where