BY WILLIAM PRESTON, On the lamented and untimely death of his son, William Preston the younger, who was killed at the battle of Delhi, in the twenty-first year of his age. With every tide, with every wind, Beholds his current choak'd with slain, What airy phantoms had Ichac'd! The fair endowments that I view'd, - With judgment ripe beyond his age Scarce conscious where, I listless range, Ev'n objects dearest to my heart, The tear shall glisten in my eyes, The Season naturally inspires a wish to celebrate its character, particularly when we can obtain a clas sical encomium upon the most enchanting portion of the year. ODE TO SPRING, Imitated from Horace, Lib. I. Ode 4. From cloudless skies on Zephyr's wing Returns, in smiles, enchanting spring, And smooths the brow of care; By yon refulgent orb serene, They form the spritely dance. Now is it meet in myrtle bowers, With unpolluted hand. Time swiftly flies: resistless fate, To murmur at our lot: Since Death, on rude impartial feet, Explores alike the monarch's seat As yon secluded cot. And lo! arriv'd at Pluto's cell, No more shall Bacchus hold the bowl, Or beauty's power delight. SONG. A plague of these musty old lubbers, The rules of the schools, The old folks would have all of 'em swigg'd it, And swore there was nothing like grog. My father, when last I from Guinea, health, So I pass'd round the stuff, and he twigg'd it, And it set the old codger agog : And I swigg'd, and all of us swigg'd it, One day when the Chaplain was preach. ing, Behind him I cautiously shrunk, And while he our duty was teaching, As how we should never get drunk ; I tipped him the stuff, and he twigg'd it, Which soon set his Reverence agog, And he swigg'd, and Nick swigg'd, And Ben swigg'd, and Dick swigg'd, And I swigg'd, and all of us swigg'd it And swore there was nothing like grog. The price of The Port Folio is Six Dollars per annum, to be paid in advance. Printed and Published, for the Editor, by SMITH & MAXWELL, NO. 28, NORTH SECOND-STREET. Various, that the mind of desultory man, studious of change and pleased with novelty, may be indulged-Cowp. Vol. V. Philadelphia, Saturday, May 14, 1808. No. 20. ORIGINAL PAPERS. For The Port Folio. TRAVELS. LETTERS FROM GENEVA AND FRANCE. Written during a residence of between two and three years in different parts of those countries, and addressed to a lady in Virginia. (Continued from page 291.) My dear E WE got to Montelimar on the evening of the 5th of October, exactly one hundred and thirty years, to a day, since Madame de Sevigne stopt there for the night, on her way from Grignan: after all you have heard me say in commendation of that celebrated personage, whose letters I have more than once pressed you not only to read, but to study, you will be surprised that I should pass within a few miles of her daughter's residence without going there, and that I should miss an opportunity of contemplating the Royal Castle of the Adhemars, and the town of Grignan, and the grotto of Roche Courbière; but I had learned, upon inquiry, that the violence and cruelty of the Revolu tion had been exhibited with every circumstance of impious destruction at Grignan; that the Castle had been destroyed, and the burying-place of the family violated; and that the remains of Madame de Sevignè, after having been exposed to publick view, had been deprived of the coffin, which was of lead, and of the burial dress, to which some ornaments of silver had been annexed. The celebrated Monsieur de Saussure, whe travelled through this country some years ago with his lady, had the satisfaction of passing an evening in the Castle of Grignan, and Madame de Saussure found her, self, for the night, in possession of Madame de Sevigne's bedcham ber. an enormous The Castle was building, situated as Monticello is, the great changes which our globe has undergone, and the poor animals, of either sort, have taken refuge deep in the mud as the water ran off; the mud retaining the impression of the body committed to it, has hardened and become stone in the lapse of many ages, and the beholder is thus astonished with a form, which he could so little have expected in such a place. with an extensive court closed by may have been alternately covered iron gates in front, and surround-by the ocean or by some lake, in ed by a terrace, which commands a view of barren plains, and washed hill-sides, with here and there a few live oaks, or a clump of olive trees. It is not to be wondered at, that Madame de Sevignè was not partial to such a place, exposed too, as it was, to all the violence of the Bise, which was so great at times as to break the castle windows with the gravel of the terrace. The pictures of the mother and the daughter were still hanging up, the latter, it seems, was a handsome woman, of regular features, but of rather a languid countenance: the mother was fair, had blue eyes, a round face, and light hair, with by no means that vivacity expressed in her features, which the reader of her letters might expect to find there. The whole of the hill the Castle stood on, is a confused mass of various sea-shells in fragments, a circumstance which I believe on the authority of M. de Saussure, but which I should have been glad to have had occular demonstration of. I could, indeed, have passed several days very agreeably and advantageously, had I been differently situated, in the neighbouring mountains, and in those below Avignon, with such a guide as the Voyage dans les Alpes, and should have been particularly glad to have visited those quarries, in which fish of various sorts have been found petrified, or have left their impression as distinctly marked out as if done by an engraver; leaves of various trees and plants are discernible in the same manner. It is singular, that fish of various climates, and of salt and fresh water should be found intermingled; the same space, perhaps, I observed, at the first post from Montelimar, the spot where Madame de Sevigne advises her daughter to be upon her guard against the danger of the road: it must certainly, in former times, and when the river was high, have been dangerous to go along there, but the road has been since carried higher up the hill, which overhangs the low grounds, and the heart of the tenderest mother might be at rest. The road was now open for several miles, a handsome terrace, hanging over the Rhone; on our right, was a steep hill, with here and there a small vineyard, wherever it was possible for art to come to the assistance of nature; on our left was the Rhone, and, on the other side, were meadows at the feet of hills, which appeared everywhere culti vated and inhabited, with now and then the remains of a castle, or a castle entire on some pinnacle, which in former times was deemed inaccessible: these hills were the continuation of the Cevennes, which I had first seen from the place du Peyron at Montpellier. On our arrival at the Isore we found a ferry, where the attendance was as bad as in South Carolina, and we were some time crossing it. It was not disagreeable, however, to be detained near the spot where Hannibal must have halted, before he directed his course towards the Alps, and where Marius was encamped before he had as yet accustomed his soldiers to the appearance of the barbarians of the North. Read the passage of Plutarch, and figure to yourself, that we must have been within a few steps of where those ferocious warriours stood, when they called to the Romans and asked in derision, if they had any message to send to their wives in Italy? The Consul Fabius also, though ill of a fever at the time, and carried in a litter, as Charles XII was at Pultowa, has illustrated this neighbourhood by a great victory over the Gauls; history tells us, that the agitation of mind, which he underwent upon the occasion, performed a cure; it was probably a thirdday fever, such as they have so much of in the neighbourhood of York in Virginia, and for the cure of which, so many idle spells and charms have been invented by the superstition of mankind, but of all cures surely none was ever so glorious as that of the Consul Fabius. We next passed through the country of the celebrated Hermitage wine, and stopped for the night at Saint Vallier: the master of the house here, most bitterly regretted the war which had again taken place between England and France after so short a peace, and repeated the names of several British noblemen and gentlemen, who had drank deeply of his wine, and had given him large orders for it. The country had risen for the last two or three posts into hills a little lower than those of the south west; the Rhone ran rapidly at their base as.if struggling to get free, and their sides, except now and then a little slip of meadow, were entirely covered with vineyards, the grapes of which were now in their utmost perfection: figure to yourself what the mountains in your neighbourhood would be under this mode of cultivation, and, at the same time, very thickly inhabited. We were now within a day's journey of Lyons, and hurried on as fast as the roads, which are not so good as in the south, permitted us. We stopped for about an hour at Vienne, which in the days of Julius Cæsar, was a place of some importance, and contained, for some centuries after, several Roman buildings of great magnificence; of these not a vestige remains but one solitary monument; it is about forty feet high, and is on the road side to the south of the town: the probability is, that this memorial of some unknown person existed, as it now does, at least five hundred years before Clovis established himself in France, and yet has it outlasted the monarchy itself, and may, perhaps, survive the Republick. The town is irregularly built between the foot of a steep | hill and the side of the Rhone, and must, from its situation in so fertile a country, be a place of considerable trade. We now ascended for some time, and beheld, from the eminence which overhangs Vienne on the north, a country not unlike that which I described to you, the day we first left the valley of the Garonne. The night and rain came upon us soon after; I will not therefore attempt any further description of the country; I will only add that we arrived at Lyons about eight, after a length of suburbs which exceeded in ex tent all that I could have imagined, and were received in very |