Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 2).djvu/185

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LETTER III.

To T. P. Esq.

MEILLERIE—CLARENS—CHILLON[1]—VEVAI—LAUSANNE.


Montalegre, near Coligni, Geneva,

July 12th.


It is nearly a fortnight since I have returned from Vevai. This journey has been on every account delightful, but most especially, because then I first knew the divine beauty of Rousseau's imagination, as it exhibits itself in Julie. It is inconceivable what an enchantment the scene itself lends to those delineations, from which its own most touching charm arises. But I will give you an abstract of our voyage, which lasted eight days, and if you have a map of Switzerland, you can follow me.

We left Montalegre at half past two on the 23d of June. The lake was 23 June, 1816.calm, and after three hours or rowing we arrived at Hermance, a

  1. In Shelley's edition these three names appear, doubtless through a printer's error, as MELLTERIE—CLAREN—SCHILLON. Elsewhere in the book Clarens and Chillon are given correctly; but Meillerie, which Mrs. Shelley set to rights in 1840, is uniformly spelt Mellerie in the 1817 volume.