Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/159

Rh City. Bl din gs. GENEVA the German element, represented in 1870 by 978 l1ouse- holds, is on the increase. The city of Geneva is situated at the south—western extremity of the beautiful lake of the same name, whence the noble current of the Rhone ﬂows westward under the ﬁve bridges by which the two halves of the town com- municate with each other. To the south lies the valley of the Arve, which unites with that of the Rhone a little dis- tance further down; and behind the Arve the grey and barren rocks of the Lesser Saleve rise like a wall, which in turn is overtopped by the distant and ethereal snows of Mont Blanc. To the north—west the eye takes in the long line of the J ura, with a pleasant stretch of country between it and the lake. The actual site of the town, apart fro1n 147 the river and the lake, is not so picturesque as that of many other places in Switzerland. Though the central plateau, crowned as it is by the cathedral, gives a certain relief to the general view from the water, a large proportion of the town is built on the alluvial ﬂats along the river. But what Geneva lacks in picturesqueness it now makes up in an appearance of prosperity and comfort, ——presenting ﬁne quays, well-ordered pleasure grounds, good streets, and substantial houses, and, in the number and extent of its modern suburbs, giving evidence that its prosperity is not a thing of the past. Since the demolition of the fortiﬁcations in 1848, it has pushed eastward to Eaux Vives, and westward into Plain- palais, and an almost continuous succession of houses links it on the south with the villa.ge of Carouge beyond the Arve. LA KE 0F ‘{d(:'—:E‘NEVA Lz'_:]h 1473!”;-k W "D ' ll 1:7 am.’

r I S‘: , -“' 1 9" 5‘ I " ‘ E "T Ltstamz ff _.,,_, ‘ ’;i_iTP1t’:?»é‘ Plan of Geneva. In the strict sense of the words, Geneva is not a city of great buildings. It possesses, indeed, a great many ediﬁces, both public and private, which may ﬁttingly be described as handsome, elegant, or even beautiful, but it has almost nothing to which the memory reverts as to a masterpiece of architectural art. Being a favourite resort for wealthy foreigners from many lands, it has been enriched with a countless variety of hotels and villas, many of which are palatial in their dimensions, their construction, and their envlronment, and its principal institutions have been in- stalled in buildings not unworthy of a modern capital ; but none of these things compensate for the absence of the grander and more characteristic legacies of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The artistic blight of that Calvinism ‘ ness to be mindful of any other beauty has left indelible effects on the central city of the creed; though it is pro- bable that all the blame does not he at the door of Calv1n1sm, wh1ch certa1nly_d1d not ﬁnd 1n the Genevese a people whose aesthetic faculties had been too strongly developed in the previous periods of their history. The cathedral itself is a second—rate building ; and though, as Mr Freeman remarks, “it is an excellent specimen of a small cathedral whose style and plan are peculiarly its own, and which has undergone only very few alterations,” its main interest is moral and historical. According to a tradition, at least as likely to be true as false, it occupies the site of a timplle of A)ollo; and the wresent buildin is the third c urc of Peter which hlas been erected; on the spot. As a which was too sternly enamoured with the beauty of holi- foundation the cathedral is said to date from the middle of