The public walks are crowded by all degrees of people in their best dresses.—The different societies, and what they call circles, assemble in the houses and gardens of individuals.—They play at cards and at bowls, and have parties upon the lake with music. There is one custom universal here, and, as far as I know, peculiar to this place: The parents form societies for their children at a very early period of their lives. These societies consist of ten, a dozen, or more children of the same sex, and nearly of the same age and situation in life. They assemble once a week in the houses of the different parents, who entertain the company by turns with tea, coffee, biscuits and fruit; and then leave the young assembly to the freedom of their own conversation. This connection is strictly kept up through life, whatever alterations may take place in the situations or circumstances of the individuals. And although they should afterwards form new or preferable intimacies, they never entirely abandon this society; but to the latest period of their lives continue to pass a few evenings every year with the companions of their youth and their earliest friends. The richer class of the citizens have country-houses adjacent to the town, where they pass one half of the year. These houses are all of them neat, and some of them splendid. One piece of magnificence they possess in greater perfection than the most superb villa of the greatest lord in any other part of the world can boast, I mean the prospect which almost all of them command.—The gardens and vineyards of the republic,—the Païs de Vaux;—Geneva with its lake;—innumerable country-seats;—castles, and little towns around the lake;—the vallies of Savoy, and the loftiest mountains of the Alps, all within one sweep of the eye. Those whose fortunes or employments do not permit them to pass the summer in the country, make frequent parties of pleasure upon the lake, and dine and spend the evening at some of the villages in the environs, where they amuse themselves with music and dancing.