Item 1 - Peter Elmsley to his sister-in-law [Mary Hallowell?]

Geneva. Arrived 31st August, having left Brussels on 31st July. Suggests that his nieces trace his route on a map (number of nights in each town is given - Frankfurt is the only very thriving place he has seen on the continent). Description of continental roads, drivers and inns. Germans not prosperous but like fresh air (unlike the French and Italians), and the roads are good and the food is cheap. Geneva is a hole, but Switzerland is beautiful. Heidelberg a gem - wishes Blucher had put barrels of gunpowder under the Louvre in return for Louis XIV destroying the Elector's palace. Likes the Swiss - very like the Germans. French proverb - one must be either a hammer or an anvil - the French are hammers, the Germans are anvils. Country around Liege most reminded him of England. A monument at the confluence of the Moselle and Rhine - inscribed by the French on the way to Russia in 1812, and by the Russians on the way to Paris in 1814.