CHAPTER XXXIII.

Morgarten, Sempach, and Arnold of Winkelried.

On our way from Schwytz to Einsiedeln, a short romantic walk from the main road, lies the battle-field of Morgarten, on the borders of the little Lake of Egeri, a spot next after Sempach famous in the heroic ages of Swiss history. We have passed the scene of a great convulsion of nature, a mountain tumbling from its base, and "rocking its Alpine brethren;" but what was this, or a hundred such avalanches, to the war of human passion? Is it not strange that we stand over the ruins of a volcano, on the grave of buried cities, or where a mountain has fallen on a hamlet, and think so much of the loss of life, and the sorrow and pain and dread of sudden death, and the universal mourning of survivors, but can visit a battle-field, where death revelled with infinitely more of horror and fury, and think of nothing but glory!. This avalanche of men at Morgarten was the death of thousands, whirled in a storm of passion out of life, with desolating anguish and ruin to thousands more; but men gaze at the scene of the conflict, and think only of the heroism of the living avalanche.

True, it was a battle against tyranny, and William Tell and Walter Furst are said to have been there; so, no wonder that the Swiss fought so terribly; but still it was war, savage, fierce, remorseless war. And war for ages was almost the habitual school of the Swiss Cantons. This great victory may well be called the Marathon of Swiss history, the conquest of twenty thousand Austrians by a band of only thirteen hundred men of the mountains, a rushing, crashing ruin like a whirlwind. It took place in the year 1315. A little commemorative chapel stands above the lake, overhung by a rocky hill, from which the scene is all before you; but it is very difficult to conceive the position of the armies. The thirteen hundred hung like a small thunder-cloud on the heights above the lake, and the twenty thou

sand were mailed and crowded along the narrow strand below. The men of Schwytz were the leaders of the patriots, joined with four hundred from Uri, and three hundred from Unterwalden, and after this day, the name of Swiss designated the confederacy and the country-SCHWYTZER-LAND.

Seventy-one years afterwards, not far from the same region, on the borders of the Lake of Sempach, against the same Austrian enemies, one man, Arnold of Winkelried, gained a like victory in 1386, by his own self-devotion, at the head of about fourteen hundred men. The poet Wordsworth has finely connected his memory with Tell's, at the shrine of patriotism and religion.

Thither, in time of adverse shocks,

Of fainting hopes and backward wills,
Did mighty Tell repair of old,—
A Hero cast in Nature's mould,
Deliverer of the steadfast rocks,
And of the ancient hills!

He too, of battle martyrs chief!
Who, to recall his daunted peers,
For victory shaped an open space,
By gathering with a wide embrace,
Into his single heart, a sheaf

Of fatal Austrian spears!"

It was indeed an amazing act of self-sacrificing courage, that has no parallel whatever in the history of battles. We will let Zschokke tell the story in prose, and then proceed upon our interrupted pilgrimage. "It was the season of harvest, when the sun darted his beams with great ardor. After a short prostration in prayer, the Swiss arose; their numbers were four hundred men from Lucerne, nine hundred from the Waldstetten, and about a hundred from Glaris and other places. Uniting now their forces, they precipitated themselves with great impetuosity upon the impregnable Austrian phalanx: but not a man yielded to the shock. The Swiss fell one after another; numbers lay bleeding on the ground; their whole force began to waver, when suddenly a voice like thunder exclaimed: 'I will open a passage to freedom; faithful and beloved confederates, protect only my wife and children!' These words of Arnold Struthan of Winkelried, a

knight of Unterwalden, were no sooner uttered, than he seized with both arms as many of the enemy's spears as he was able, buried them in his body, and sank to the ground, while the confederates rushed forward through the breach over his corpse." Nothing now could withstand the torrent; helmets, arms, all, were demolished by the blows of their clubs. Hundreds of mailed warriors and nobles went down, and Duke Leopold of Austria fell lifeless. Thousands perished in retreat, and the little band remained victorious and free, to bless the devotion of Arnold of Winkelried, and to cherish the legacy of his patriotism, and the fireside of his wife and children. Nothing like this is to be found either in ancient or modern history, and rightly pondered, what a lesson of self-sacrifice it reads to the patriot and the Christian!

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Pilgrimage of Einsiedeln and worship of the Virgin.

EINSIEDELN constitutes the very head-quarters of the worship of the Virgin Mary. All day long, if you come into the region as we did, nigh about the season for the great annual worshipping festival, or virginal levee, you will meet pilgrims on the roads in every direction, hurrying thither or returning from the shrine; old men and robust peasants, maidens and little children, troops of old women telling their beads and repeating their prayers, as they tramp along the wet road, as if praying for a wager. What an intense, haggard zeal is depicted in some of their countenances; their lips move, and they do not look at you, but hurry on undistracted from their great work, for they probably have a certain number of Aves to repeat, or perhaps a bead roll-of prayers so constructed, that if they miss one, they must go over the whole again from the beginning.

And is this religion? Is it taught for religion by beings who have heard of Jesus Christ, and of the Sacred Scriptures, and of the character of God? Is this the influence of the Virgin Mary upon the soul? Do men expect thus to climb to heaven? Pass on to the great building, the spacious Temple of the Virgin, and you will see. It is a vast and gaudy church within, a stately structure without, enshrining a black image of the Virgin, almost as black as ebony, which some believe came miraculously from heaven, as fully as ever the Ephesians believed in the heavendescended character of the image of their great goddess Diana. This singular shrine is frequented by multitudes of penancedoing people, who go thither at the impulse of their anxious halfawakened consciences, under guidance of their priests, to deposit their offerings, perform their prayers, and quiet their souls with the hope, by Mary's help, of escaping unscathed both Hell and Purgatory.

When

The multitude of pilgrims is sometimes prodigious. the anniversary festival of the miraculous consecration of the shrine comes on the Sabbath, it lasts fifteen days, and is a great collective jubilee. From every quarter the pilgrims flock as to the opened gate of Heaven. Here they may have pleasures by the way, commuted for by light penances, or by the pilgrimage itself, indulgences for future pleasure, and pardons, unlimited, for sin. From the year 1820 to 1840, the number of pilgrims annually has been at an average of more than 150,000. This vast concourse of strangers keeps the town and parish of Einsiedeln in a thriving business of innkeeping, merchandise, and various light manufactures for the "Star of the Sea," the "Queen of Heaven." As of old the Ephesians made silver shrines for Diana, and by her worship got their own wealth, so the Einsiedelners make images, shrines, and pictures for Mary, and by this craft maintain a thrifty state. Around the great church in front and on each side, as well as in the village, are rows of stalls or shops for the sale of books, beads, pictures, images, and a thousand knicknacks in honor of the Virgin, and as a portable Memoria Technica of her worship. The Pope's letter in her behalf makes appropriate display among all these treasures, and as it were fixes their value, just as the Pontifical stamp coins money. It makes one's heart ache to see the mournful superstition of the people. Indeed the whole Establishment of the Virgin in the Romish worship is one of the most prodigious transactions of spiritual fraud, one of the vastest pieces of forgery and speculation in the history of our race. It is a great South Sea bubble of religious superstition, by which thousands make a fortune in this world, but millions make shipwreck of their souls for ever.

The Pope and the Priesthood are joint stockholders of a great bank in Heaven, which they have reared on false capital, and of which they have appointed Mary the supreme and perpetual Directress. So the Pope and the Priests issue their bills of credit on Mary, and for the people the whole concern is turned into a sort of savings bank, where believers deposit their Ave Marias, their pilgrimages, their penances, their orisons and acts of grace, receiving now, for convenience in this world, drafts from the Pope, and expecting to receive their whole reversionary fortune