report perhaps of some solitary, well-fed, English grumbler, affixed a libel to the name of this landlord, which is sure to prejudice every traveller against him beforehand.

Well it is for the poor man, that travellers who have passed the Gemmi have a sharp appetite, and cannot eat fossils, and that there is no other inn but his in the desolate pass of the mountain. This being the case, they eat, and afterwards survey the character of the landlord in better humor, and then, having got ready to be cheated, it is a most agreeable surprise to find that there is no cheat at all, though 7000 feet above the level of the sea might almost justify it, for who could be expected to keep such an inn without some inordinate compensation? There is nothing that travellers ought to pay more cheerfully, than high charges in such places; but from the manner in which John Bull sometimes complains, you would think he was a very poor man, close upon the verge of his last farthing. I have seen an Englishman in a storm of rage for a charge in Switzerland, which would have been three times as high in his own country, besides that there he would have been obliged to pay the servants in addition, no little proportion of what here the meal itself cost him.

CHAPTER XI.

Canton Berne. Scripture on the houses. Truth a good talisman.

SOON after quitting the inn, the pasturage vegetation commences, and you cross from the Roman Catholic Canton du Valais into the Protestant Canton Berne; it is impossible not to be struck with the great contrast between the two regions, when you enter the villages. From the poverty, filth, and ignorance in the Valley of the Rhone you pass to abodes of comfort, neatness, and intelligence. A traveller cannot shut his eyes against this contrast. He may have heard it described, and may have set it down to the score of religious prejudice exaggerating the facts; but he finds the contrast to be an undeniable reality. Neither can he tell how much of this difference arises from physical causes, the Valley of the Rhone being subject to calamities and diseases from which the Canton Berne is happily free; nor how much is owing to the contrasted system of religion and education. The fact is quite beyond controversy, that the population of the Canton Berne are far superior in thrift, intelligence, and prosperity to that of the Canton du Valais.

I cannot say that Protestant grass is any greener than Romish, or that heretical cattle are any fatter than those on the Pope's side of the mountain; but the vegetation began speedily to luxuriate as we descended, large firs began to clothe the crags, herds of cows and oxen were pasturing, and the ridges of rock so bare and perpendicular on the other side the pass, on this were hidden under thick forests. The mountains are split asunder in deep ravines, immense jagged chasms, which are fringed with rich verdure, and the shade into which you enter is so deep, that it looks like evening, though the sun has not much passed the meridian. The side-views of the Oeschinen and Gasteren valleys, one on your right, the other on your left, as you descend to

wards Kandersteg, are exceedingly impressive, both for their savage grandeur and beauty. On one side you seem to look through the torn rock-rifts of the pass, and over forest crowned projections of the mountains, into the icy palace of Winter where he reigns alone; frosted sparkling peaks, and icy-sheeted crags, and masses of pure white snow, seen through the firs, make a singular wild contrast with the verdant scenery, that rises immediately around you, and is spread out below you. On the other side, the path that takes you into the Oeschinen valley winds over green grassy slopes to introduce you to a lovely lake encircled by precipices and glaciers, at the foot of the Blumlis Alps.

And now you arrive at Kandersteg, a scattered village in the midst of a smooth grassy expanse of table land at the foot of the Gemmi, about 3300 feet above the level of the sea. The change in the aspect of the hamlets, from the region where you have been travelling, attracts your notice. Some of the villages look like New England. Nature is more kindly than in the Valley of the Rhone, and the people have endeavored to keep pace with her more equally. They are certainly better to do in the world, and under the Canton Berne, in a freer, more cheerful, less repressing government.

In place of the symbol of the cross, or the statue of the Virgin in her niche, or the picture of the Mother and Child, the traveller may see, as in some of the old houses in Edinburgh, sentences from the Scriptures piously inscribed over the doors, or across the outside walls of the cottages. It has a most pleasing effect upon the mind, although doubtless many of the inhabitants think no more of their meaning, than the Jews did of that of the scriptural inscriptions on their broad phylacteries. Yet it is pleasant to see a rim of sentences from the Word of God running round the hamlet, and sometimes a stray thought may be caught by it and made devotional. If there could be an outward talisman, making the house secure from evil, forbidding the entrance of bad spirits,

Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,"

sweetly reminding intelligent beings of duty, and making sacred things inanimate, this were it. Girt round about with Truth,

what defence could equal it? No sprinkling with holy water, no spittle of priests, no anointing with oil, no forms of exorcism, could so frighten the wandering imps of darkness. Then, too, there is no superstition connected with it; it is justified by, and in perfect accordance with, the injunctions given to the Hebrews, Thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, thou shalt teach them to thy children.

It is a curious indication, that the religion of superstition and will-worship resorts to all other talismans and symbols save the Word of God. The Romanists, so profuse of signs and rites and things pretended holy, are very sparing and cautious of this. On the other hand, the Mohammedans apply themselves to sentences from the Koran. The palace of the Alhambra in Spain is covered all over with leaves from the sayings of their prophet. The religion of the Mohammedans is not afraid of its professed books of inspiration; it never enacted a law forbidding them to be read in the vernacular tongue, or by the common people. The religion of the Romanists is afraid of the Word, and instead of teaching it, conceals it, and uses all other things but that as symbols. Here is matter for reflection.

CHAPTER XII.

Picturesque cottages, A picturesque language. Right and unright inno

vation.

SOME of the Swiss cottages are extremely picturesque, especially here in the Oberland Alps, with their galleries running round them outside, their rows of chequered windows, and their low-dropping, sheltering, hospitable roofs. Sometimes the shingles are curiously wrought with much pains-taking, and fitted like the scales of some sea-creature. But in general there is not the care for clustering shrubbery outside, which might add so much to their beauty, and which makes many a poor cot in England, when Spring has thrown its blossoming warp over them, for Summer to fill up, so rich with mossy greenness. The rows of yellow golden corn, hanging under the eaves of the Swiss cottages, might suggest to an imaginative mind a new order of architecture.

I see not why this quality of picturesqueness is not quite as desirable in buildings as it is in scenery, and also in language, in opinions, in literature, in the whole of life. There is much more of it in every way in the Old World than in America, and hence in part the romantic charm, which everything wears to the eye of a Transatlantic. Why should there be so much monotony with us? Why not more originality and variety? Is it because of the irresistible despotism of associations, which are so much and so usefully the type of modern society, breaking down and repressing, or rather hindering the development of individuality?

The desire to produce uniformity, when unaccompanied with the idea and the love of the free and the beautiful, and unchecked by a regard to the rights of others, produces despotism and monotony in the whole domain of life, as well as in the Church. Some men would push it even into the syllabic constitution of our lan