family traditions
are jealously cherished as a part of the national history, and where
every family has its importance and its well-defined place, the memory
of distinguished men cannot perish, but is handed down from father to
son, as a portion of the state patrimony. Every little boy, as he plays
in the street, feels that he has reason to be proud that he is a
Genevese. It was with such sentiments and under such auspices that
Toepffer glided through the years of childhood. He drank deep at the
fountain of inspiration unawares, and manhood found him ready to follow
those who beckoned to him from the pages of history.

Rodolphe Toepffer was born at Geneva on the seventeenth day of February,
1799. As his name indicates, he was of German descent; but his family
had resided so many years in French Switzerland that he could no longer
be claimed by the land of Schiller and Goethe, though it was said that
one of his most distinctive literary characteristics was like that of
Mozart in music,--that he blended the deep, warm feeling of Germany with
the light and elegant graces of Southern Europe.

Americans who have visited the public Gallery of Art, known in Geneva as
the Musee Rath, will perhaps recall a small, but very spirited,
winter-scene, painted in oil, and which bears the name of Toepffer. This
picture is by the father of Rodolphe. M. Toepffer _le pere_ was the first
of that long list of Swiss painters who became devoted students of
Nature. The names of Calame, Diday, (Calame's master,) and Hubert are
now known throughout the world; and that of Calame stands among the
first in the rank of eminent living landscape painters. They are worthy
successors of the father of Rodolphe Toepffer, who was peculiarly happy
in rendering the mountain-scenes of Savoy, and in portraying those
picturesque and attractive episodes of peasant-life entitled "The
Village Wedding," "The Fair in Winter," etc., etc.

There are but few incidents to record of Toepffer _fils_. It is in his
writings mostly that he is to be found. Elsewhere he is only passing by;
but _there_ he dwells and shines in full radiance. His life was so
quietly modest, so tranquil and far removed from the tumultuous
preoccupations which belong to a fashionable society, it was so simple
and pure, that the biographer is at a loss to find any striking event
that may give it an outward coloring. When only a child, as he so
charmingly tells us in his inimitable pages of the "Pr