tion is an ugly black doll, dressed in gold brocade, and glittering with jewels. The walls of the church are covered with votive offerings-rude paintings, wax figures, crutches-suspended in fulfilment of vows, or in acknowledgment of deliverance. An inscription offers a plenary indulgence to the pilgrim-Hic est plena remissio peccatorum à culpâ et à pœnâ. In the great square in front of the church is a fountain, with fourteen jets, at which, as the superstitious multitude believe, our Lord himself drank; how, or when, they make no attempt to explain. Many of the worshippers drink from each of the jets, in order to be quite sure that they have the right one. Dr. Cheever shrewdly remarks, "A flock of geese were drinking from the same fountain, but with more wit than the unfeathered bipeds engaged in the same task, they saved themselves the trouble of going the whole circuit by dipping their bills into the basin into which the jets fell, being sure that the contents of the sacred stream must be there." It was here, in the midst of dense superstition and blind idolatry, that Zwingle began his ministry, and startled the crowds of pilgrims by declaring that "Christ alone saves, and he saves everywhere." "Do not imagine," he said, "that God is in this temple more than in any part of creation. Whatever be the country in which you dwell, God is around you, and hears you, as well as at our Lady's of Einsiedelen. Jesus Christ is the only oblation, the only sacrifice, the only way."

Intimately associated with Zurich in the history of the Reformation was Basle. Here Erasmus waged war with the papacy, "sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer." Here Zwingle, Ecolampadius, and their companions constantly met for consultation and mutual encouragement. Here the restless Farel, driven out from France, found a refuge from persecution, and waged a ceaseless and fiery war against the papal Antichrist. Hither, too, many of the Marian exiles fled

"Scattering, like birds escaped the fowler's net,
They seek with timely flight a foreign strand;
Most happy, reassembled in a land

By dauntless Luther freed, could they forget
Their country's woes."

Basle has always held an important place in the religious history of Switzerland. As a centre of evangelical and missionary activity, its praise is in all the churches. Some of the most faithful, diligent, and successful labourers for Christ amongst the heathen, have been sent out from Basle.

At Basle we part from the noble river, whose course we have traced "from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in the sands of Holland." Here, as everywhere, the Rhine is beautiful. If it lacks the picturesque beauty of its course between Mayence and Bonn, or the wild savage grandeur-the glaciers and the snow-peaks-of its birthplace and early career, or the grand fury with which it plunges over the falls at Schaffhausen, it has yet a charm of its own. Standing upon the bridge, or at the windows of the Trois Rois, and looking down into the deep, broad stream as it rushes past, one gains an impressive sense of resistless strength and exhaustless fulness.

In no other part of its course does it fill an ampler channel or roll along with more impetuous rapidity. It enters the Lake of Constance turbid with the impurities of the glacier torrents which feed it. It emerges crystalline in purity, and deliciously green in colour. Well may Longfellow exclaim: "O the pride of the German heart in this noble river! And right it is, for of all the rivers of this beautiful earth there is none so beautiful as this. There is hardly a league of its whole course which boasts not of its peculiar charms. But I will not attempt to describe the Rhine; it would make this chapter too long; and to do it well one should write like a king, and his language should flow onward royally with breaks and dashes like the waters of that royal river, and antique, quaint, and Gothic times be reflected

in it."