building; but the trees are felled in the same slovenly manner (though not with the same excuse of their being on the sides of steep mountains) as in Savoy and the Vallais: the land thus divested of timber, is left in a state unfit for tillage, and seemingly incapable of being replanted.

At three o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at Fribourg, entering the principal square, just as the peasantry of both sexes were proceeding in throngs to "Our Lady of the Rosary. The church above named appeared to be already in a crowded state; but the circumstance proved no impediment to such service as the good folks of this canton are taught to pay. Keeping up a line of communication with the church-doors, the women sat in ranks on the turf and benches of the public walk, whilst the men stood near them in clusters: the sound of the bell that announced the elevation of the Host, was as usual the signal for universal kneeling; it was instantly obeyed by the congregation within the sacred fane, and taken up with mechanical precision and rapidity in the open air by the assembled multitude, equally well drilled under the ingenious bead-telling system of Paters and Aves. But, alas! how ill instructed must they be in the truth of that written WORD which cautions us against " using vain repetitions as the heathen do ;" and which, whilst it inspires

* The institution of the Rosary and Crown of the Virgin is perhaps the most perfect contrivance ever devised by the genius of monkery for the regular winding up of religious machines.—"The Rosary (says Mosheim, Cent. x.) consists in fifteen repetitions of the Lord's Prayer, and a hundred and fifty salutations of the blessed Virgin; while the Crown, according to the different opinions of the learned concerning the age of the blessed Virgin, consists in six or seven repetitions of the Lord's Prayer, and six or seven times ten salutations, or Ave Marias."

us with reverence for "the blessed maid," and mother of the Lamb of God, declares, as our own truly pious HERBERT admirably expresses it, that

All worship is prerogative, and a flower

Of God's rich crown, from whom lies no appeal
At the last hour.

Therefore we dare not from his garland steal,
To make a posy for inferior power.

After taking up our quarters at the inn of Les Merciers, we lost no time in commencing our inspection of this town, which for inequality of site, and for consequent difficulty of access from one part to the other, exceeds any I ever was in. Our local guide, first of all, leading us to the principal square, made us notice the Linden Tree, said to have been planted by a soldier on the 22d of June, 1477, as he returned from the memorable field in which victory crowned his warlike brethren at Morat. The venerable timber still vegetates though feebly; and would, from the peculiar circumstances under which tradition associates its existence with achievements of "the olden time," have appeared more interesting in our eyes, if modern history could happily have furnished a page of recorded exploits equally general and persevering at leastif not equally successful, on the part of Switzerland, against the Burgundians and Franks of the 18th century: a foe not less barbarous and more perfidious than the Goths and Vandals that consummated the fall of Roman power. But whilst we read of that union and force which were the talisman of the Helvetians who conquered Charles Le Téméraire -we know too well that division, treachery, and weakness

paralysed the efforts, and surrendered the cause of the Swiss into the cruel hands of Revolutionary France.

The Linden tree stands near the Castle, which was formerly occupied by the ancient Dukes of Zæringuen;* and now serves as the Hotel-de-Ville. We entered the chapel belonging to the Convent of the Visitantines, or Nuns of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary: a handsome little building, decorated with some choice pieces of statuary in black and white marble. It was the time of service; and the sisterhood were chaunting the evening-hymn to the Virgin; they were in an oratory adjoining the chapel, and through a glazed arch, rendered still more difficult for the sight to penetrate by cross bars of iron placed before it, we saw, or fancied that we saw, the black hooded heads of the ladies. One of them sang the litany, whilst others joined in a fine chorus; and the tones of the solo vocalist were so musical, and at the same time so melancholy, that it brought instantly to my mind Sterne's pretty story of the poor encaged Starling; nor could I translate the plaintive burthen of the vesper-song, (Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis,) into any thing but the plain English of a captive's lamentation-"I can't get out I can't get out." In grave rebuke of which conceit, I shall be told by the reverend professors of Papal obedience, usque ad absurdum, (yet surely not by the advocates of any system of natural and rational restriction), that all these incarcerated females take the vow, of their own free will and unbiassed choice; and that whether young, beautiful, or rich, they none of them had

* " Fribourg was built in 1179, by Berthold the Fourth, Duke of Zæringuen who endowed it with considerable privileges."-Coxe.

ever experienced a feeling of regret at their total and perpetual sequestration from the world! To this, with deference to the sworn believers in Pope Pius the Fourth's creed, be it replied, that Nature will melt, though Superstition rave. Our conductor informed us that this community is subjected to the strictest regulations. No male person, except the Priestly Confessor, is suffered to see or to be seen by the younger Visitantines.† He had been often employed as a workman in the garden of the convent; but on such occasions, as soon as he makes his appearance at the grate, two of the elder sisters ring a bell as a signal to the junior nuns to conceal themselves within close recesses, where

"Veiling from the eye of day,

"Penance dreams her life away."

Continuing our walk through the gate of Morat, we were much pleased with the rural and romantic combinations of the landscape in that quarter, in which, situated on an eminence that commands a general view of the city,

Mrs. Marianne Baillie, in her "Letters from Portugal,” gives a highly interesting account of visits which she made to different Convents during her residence in that truly Catholic country. "One of the visitors (says she) at the Convent of the Visitation, near Lisbon, brought her child with her, an infant of six or seven months old, which was passed eagerly from one nun to the other, and almost devoured with caresses. Poor creatures, my heart ached for them. The feelings of maternal affection, which (with a few disgusting and unnatural exceptions) I believe exist in the inmost recesses of every female bosom whether married or single, spoke plainly by this conduct. How painful is it to contemplate a delusion which places the renunciation of the noblest duties of life in the light of a virtue.”— Yet this delusion is fostered and perpetuated by the Church of Rome!

The Nuns of the Visitation were instituted by Saint François de Sales, in the year 1610. They have black clothes, and a little silver cross on their breasts.

stands the house of Monsieur De Diesbach de Belle Roche, a modern edifice, and one assimilating in its architectural character more closely with that of a nobleman's or gentleman's seat in England than any I had as yet seen in this country. On our return within the town walls, we visited the Monastery of the Capuchins; entering its little chapel whilst the friars were then at their devotions: if indeed it be not too wretched a perversion of the term, when we apply it to the mere routine of crossings and bowings and genuflexions; to the tiresome re-iterations of a monotonous chant; or to the hum-drum gabbling from the breviary placed on high before the altar, and the turning over of its leaves with a stick and a string.Their monkish habits of coarse brown cloth, the extraordinary form of their capuchon or hood, their tonsured scalps, long bushy beards, bare legs and sandals, were all in strict consonance with rites so whimsically called religious. On our minds, who had just quitted an adjoining canton of the same political confederation, but under a different ecclesiastical government, where the Maker of all things and Judge of all men is worshipped more conformably to our Redeemer's injunction and the practice of his Apostles, the impression made by such mummery and corruption was strangely powerful. Catholic Fribourg is distant from Protestant Yverdun but a short day's journey: at the end of which, however, in so far as Christianity is concerned, we seemed to have travelled a thousand miles; or more properly speaking, Time itself appeared to have retrograded with us five centuries at least. A civil good-tempered Member of

• Whence this order derives its name. It was established in 1535, by Pope Paul III.