The Swiss Republic

The first inhabitants of Switzerland, according to tradition, were fugitives from Italy, who had been driven by the Gauls from the country where now flourish the cities of Genoa and Florence, and who, 600 B.C., found an asylum in the recesses and wilderness of the valleys above which the Rhine has its source. They were known as the Rhetians, from the name of their hero Rhetus; hence the country about the source of the Rhine, embracing the Grisons, is even now called by some, Rhetia. The Canton of Schwyz claims to have been peopled by the Cimbrians, who, leaving their original habitations in Sweden, Norway, and Friesland, conquered their way over the Rhine to the cities of the Gauls, in the country which is now France. The people of Gaul implored help from Rome; a strong army was sent against them, defeating and driving them into the Helvetian mountains. Another tradition says that they were a race of Gaulic Celts, whom some unknown accident had guided from the borders of the Rhine and Main to those of the Lake of Geneva, their collective name being Helvetians, after whom the country was named in Roman times. The first authentic mention we find of these people, as a nation, is by Julius Cæsar, who, in the first book of his “Commentaries,” related the war he waged with the Helvetians, who had made an irruption into Burgundy during his government in Gaul. He defeated them, and reduced the country to the obedience of the Romans, annexing it to that part of his government which was called Gallia Celtica. They lived in subjection to the Roman government till that empire fell. Among the new kingdoms and principalities that were raised out of the ruins was the kingdom of Burgundy, composed of a Vandal race from the Oder and the Vistula. Helvetia was overrun and made a part of this kingdom in the beginning of the fifth century (409 A.D.). Then followed irruptions of Alemanni, Ostrogoths, and Franks. The division of Switzerland into German- and French-speaking races is doubtless to be ascribed to these early settlements of different tribes from Germany and Gaul. In the sixth century (550 A.D.), the Franks having subjected the other two, all Helvetia was united to the crown of France. It was lost to the kings of France during the ninth century, under the weak reign of Charles the Fat. About the year 870 there sprang up again two new kingdoms of Burgundy, one called Cis-Jurana and the other Trans-Jurana; the first, at the end of fifty years, was merged in the latter. In this kingdom was comprehended the country of Helvetia, and continued part of it till about 1032, when Rudolph, the third and last king of Burgundy, dying without children, left all his kingdom to the Emperor Conrad II., whose successors enjoyed it for two centuries, when it was broken into several petty sovereignties.

Feudalism had been rapidly growing up, and, like other parts of Europe, Helvetia fell under the rule of military chiefs and of powerful bishops and abbots. A numerous and ancient nobility divided the possession with ecclesiastical lords; of the former, conspicuous were the Dukes of Zähringen and Counts of Kyburg, Rapperswyl, and Hapsburg; and of the latter, the Bishop of Coire, the Abbot of St. Gallen, and the Abbess of Seckingen. There is no country whose history better illustrates the ambiguous relation, half property and half dominion, in which territorial aristocracy under the feudal system stood with respect to their dependants. The power under these princes, to which the country was subjected, was so limited that it might properly be said to be under their protection rather than their dominion. In the thirteenth century the race of the Dukes of Zähringen became extinct, which made way for the Counts of Hapsburg to enlarge their authority, being raised afterwards to the Austrian Duchy, and invested with the imperial dignity in Germany. The Helvetic people placed themselves under the protection of Rudolph of Hapsburg, with permission to send governors or bailiffs among them. They were governed with mildness while he lived. He died, and his son Albert did not tread in his father’s footsteps. This was the beginning of the fourteenth century, the memorable period of Rütli and William Tell. A resolution was taken to form a general insurrection in each Canton, in order to surprise and demolish all the castles and drive the governors and adherents out of the country. “They judged that a sovereign unjust towards a vassal, ceased to be himself protected by justice, and that it was lawful to employ force against him.”1

The confederates pursued so well the measures agreed on that their object was easily accomplished, and with rare examples of moderation. A few years later, a further attempt was made to bring them under the yoke of the empire, when the brave peasants routed the imperial army, under Leopold, Duke of Austria, at Morgarten, on the 15th of November, 1315. This victory confirmed the independence of the three original Cantons. Soon afterwards followed the perpetual league of Brunnen, on December the 9th of the same year; there is at Brunnen this inscription: “Hier geschah der erste Bund, Anno 1315, die Grundfeste der Schweiz” (“Here was the first perpetual league, the foundation of Switzerland”).

According to the Swiss historian, Planta,2 the Helvetic union, as founded by the three forest Cantons, called Waldstätten, composed of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, bears date from the most remote periods of their existence, and was framed long before they knew how to commit it to writing. In 1291 this league was reduced to writing; the first covenant is in Latin, and begins, “In nomine Domini, Amen,”3 and this form was followed in the several later covenants at Rütli, 1307, and Brunnen, 1315. Each Canton obligated itself to assist and succor the others, with its utmost force, and at its own expense, against all persons or states that should assault or molest any of them; that neither of the Cantons should submit to receive any new sovereign without the knowledge and consent of the others; that none should enter into any alliance or engagement with any other prince or state without the said consent; and that if any difference should arise between any two of these confederated Cantons, the third should be the arbitrator, and obliged to assist that Canton which submitted to its arbitration against the other that should refuse it. The express purpose of this league was for self-defence against all who should attack or trouble them.

The constitution of each Canton was purely democratic; the supreme power was vested in the people at large; all males of fourteen years old in Uri, of fifteen in Schwyz and Unterwalden, having a voice. Though deputies were chosen to represent the people in the Council of Regency, and a Landammann, or chief magistrate,4 was also appointed, yet the supreme power was exercised by a general assembly held in the open air. In 1332 Luzern joined the three Cantons, and thus arose the federation of the Four Forest Cantons, Vierwaldstätten. Zurich came in in 1351, Zug and Glarus in 1352, and Bern in 1353. These eight Cantons continued until 1481, or a hundred and twenty-eight years, without increasing their number, and are distinguished by the name of the Eight Old Cantons. For a long time these Cantons possessed many distinctive privileges. This league upheld its independence in 1386 against Duke Leopold III., of Austria, in the battle of Sempach, when the most heroic courage was shown. This resulted in the decree of Sempach, whereby the eight Cantons agreed to preserve peace among themselves; to uphold each other; and in war to unite their banners against the common enemy. The last remnant of ancient Helvetic territories in Aargau was wrested in 1417 from Frederic, Count of Tyrol. Though still comprehended within the nominal sovereignty of the empire, encroachments upon their territory or their political liberties were no longer dreaded. They were henceforth free from external control and from contributions imposed by the Germanic Diet. In 1444 followed the defeat of the Dauphin Louis of France at St. Jacob, and the defeat of the Burgundians at Morat and Nancy in 1477. In 1481 Solothurn and Freiburg were admitted. The Cantons then bound themselves under a treaty effected at Stantz, Canton of Unterwalden, in December of that year, to two additional articles:

1. That all the Cantons oblige themselves to succor one another in the support of the form of government then established in each of them.5

2. That a body of military laws therein referred to should be received throughout the whole nation, and the observation of them enjoined.

The Emperor Maximilian I. determined to force the Swiss to join the Suabian League; hence resulted the Suabian war, which was concluded after the Swiss had gained six victories, by the peace of Basel in 1499. In 1501 Basel and Schaffhausen acceded to the league. In 1512, by the Milanese war, the Swiss obtained from Milan the territory which at present forms the Canton of Ticino. In 1515, after losing the battle of Marignano,6 an advantageous peace was concluded with France, which was followed by the first formal alliance with that kingdom in 1521; and the two countries enjoyed an almost uninterrupted amity for nearly three hundred years.

Such was the political state of Switzerland in the beginning of the sixteenth century; it was an independent federal republic, renowned in war and distinguished for its ancient political institutions. In the Thirty Years’ War the Confederates maintained a prudent neutrality, and the Peace Congress of Münster in 1648, through the mediation of France, solemnly acknowledged the complete renunciation of Switzerland’s nominal allegiance to the German empire. From this time until the outbreak of the French Revolution, in 1789, the history of Switzerland presents few events of general importance. Appenzell had been united to the league in 1573, making the number of Cantons thirteen. The thirteen Cantons took the name of Eidgenossen, a word signifying confederates, because they bound themselves together as comrades by oath. This endured without a further change of actual members until 1803. From the peace of Aarau, in 1712 (generally credited to 1718, since the Abbot of St. Gallen did not accede to it until six years after its agreement), down to 1798, the Cantons enjoyed the blessings of seventy-nine years of comparative quiet. The tranquillity enjoyed was favorable to the progress of commerce, agriculture, the arts, and sciences. The French Revolution, which disturbed the peace and unsettled the political institutions of every country in Europe, convulsed Switzerland with civil war and anarchy. In January, 1798, a French army entered Switzerland to assist the Pays de Vaud, which had declared its independence against the Bernese; Bern was taken and the Swiss Confederation converted into the “Helvetic Republic, one and indivisible.”

The Cantons of Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, Glarus, and Appenzell declared that they would not accept the laws which had been forced upon them, and leagued together to resist. These refractory Cantons were overpowered and coerced, but so gallantly did they maintain their ground that the French general declared, “that every Swiss soldier fought like a Cæsar.” It was then ordained by the French that an oath of allegiance to the new government should be taken in every Canton. Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, and Zug refused obedience to this ordinance. It was forced upon them and upheld by a costly army, which practised intolerable exactions and haughty and insolent domination. Geneva at this time was annexed to France. Lavater styled this epoch “the first year of Swiss slavery.” The atrocities of the French invasion of Switzerland excited great indignation in Europe. All that tyranny the most oppressive, rapine the most insatiate, cruelty the most sanguinary, and lust the most unbridled, could inflict did that devoted country experience. The effect on the friends of freedom may be judged of from the following indignant lines of Coleridge, once an ardent supporter of the Revolution, in his “Ode to Freedom,” written in 1798:

When Switzerland became the battle-field of French and Austrian armies, by the treaty of Lunéville, between the Emperor of Austria and the French Republic, the independence of the Helvetic Republic, and the right of the people to adopt whatever form of government they pleased, were guaranteed; but the irreconcilable dissensions of the French and National Swiss parties prevented the adoption of any constitution generally acceptable to the people.

The withdrawal of the French troops in 1802 led at once to a revolution in almost every Canton. Again Napoleon, First Consul of the French Republic, in contravention of the treaty, interfered, and subdued the movement. Forty thousand French troops took military occupation of Switzerland. Deputies were ordered to assemble at Paris, and after long discussion with them, Napoleon, on the 2d of February, 1803, transmitted to Switzerland what is known as the Act of Mediation, under which he assumed the title of “Mediator of Switzerland.” In some cases, what had been subject lands were incorporated into the league, and to the thirteen old Cantons six new ones were added,—St. Gallen, the Grisons, Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino, and Vaud.

The downfall of the arbitrary “Mediator” was for the Swiss, as for the greater part of Europe, the signal of a happy deliverance. The apparent interest taken by Bonaparte in the welfare of Switzerland, and his anxious desire to suit its civil institutions to the local prejudices and habits of each small community, were wholly military and political. He looked upon Switzerland as a watch-tower between the three great divisions of Europe, of which the Act of Mediation secured possession to him, without the trouble of a garrison. Soon after his defeat at Leipsic in 1813, the Allies invaded Switzerland, and in December of that year the Swiss Diet met at Zurich and formally annulled the Act of Mediation. A general council was assembled, and new articles of confederation agreed upon, known as the Federal Pact, in September, 1814. This Confederacy was acknowledged by the Congress of Vienna, November 20, 1815; by which the eight powers, Austria, Russia, France, England, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden, proclaimed the neutrality of Switzerland and the inviolability of its soil. It must in justice be said that at that epoch of sweeping annexations and unblushing bartering of countries, Switzerland was better treated than she had reason to expect,—Russia and England were her steadfast friends.

The nineteen Cantons were increased to twenty-two by the addition of Geneva, which had been annexed to France under the Directory in 1798, and Neuchâtel7 (a Prussian possession), and the Valais. The greater Cantons demanded a return to the old status and their ante-revolutionary supremacy. The relapse would have been worse, had it not been for the Allied Powers, who would guarantee neutrality only on the condition that the new Cantons be maintained free.

In 1817 Switzerland, upon the invitation of the Emperor Alexander of Russia, joined the Holy Alliance. The restoration of peace to Europe, and the securities obtained for the neutrality and independence of Switzerland at the Congress of Vienna, gave great encouragement to the intellectual and material progress of the country, wealth increased, and industry prospered. Public works of great utility were undertaken, including noble roads over the passes of the St. Gothard, the St. Bernard, and the Splügen. In July, 1830, the peace of the country was suddenly disturbed by the French Revolution. Violent political agitation broke out in riots and insurrection. Political wrongs were rudely redressed; but life and property were respected. The general aim of this movement was to wrest from the aristocratic class and the capital towns the exclusive privileges which they had gradually recovered since the beginning of the century, and to increase the power of the people. The Cantons were forced to reorganize their constitutions on a more liberal and democratic basis. This movement naturally drifted into a plan for revising the federal constitution; but the effort to do this in 1832 was defeated by a popular vote.

The old religious jealousy of the Catholic and Protestant Cantons now revived with increased violence. These troubles were attributed by many to the influence of the Jesuits, and an active agitation was commenced for obtaining their expulsion. Under the claim that religion was in danger, delegates from seven Catholic Cantons assembled at Rothen, in the Canton of Luzern, and formed a separate League, called the Sonderbund, or separate confederation. In violation of the Federal Pact of 1815, these Cantons engaged to defend each other by an armed force, and appointed a council of war to take all necessary steps. The Federal Diet, in session at Bern in July, 1847, realized that prompt action must be taken to suppress a movement which was threatening the country with a civil war. Friendly negotiation having failed, the Diet declared the League to be dissolved, and at once hostilities broke out. A sharp, decisive contest of only eighteen days’ duration brought the strife to an end; the seceding Cantons were overwhelmed and forced back to their allegiance.

The strength of the Confederation being so decisively proved, it was regarded an opportune time to revive the effort for a thorough reformation of the federal system. This was accomplished the following year by the constitution of 1848.

Swiss history is largely the history of the drawing together of parts of three adjoining nations for common defence against a common foe, little by little winning their independence.

“A liberty that sprang to life in Greece; gilded next the early and the middle age of Italy; then reposed in the hallowed breast of the Alps, and descended at length on the coast of North America, and set the stars of glory there. At every stage of its course, at every reappearance, it was guarded by some new security; it was embodied in some new element of order; it was fertile in some larger good; it glowed with a more exceeding beauty.”8

The name “Swiss” and “Switzerland,” German “Schweiz,” French “La Suisse,” supposed to be derived from the Canton of Schwyz, though long in familiar use, did not form the official style of the Confederation until 1803. Schwyz, according to Gatschet, signifies “clearing the ground by fire;” and, again, it is derived from “Sweiter” and “Swen,” two brothers who are said to have founded it; and these family names, common in Sweden, are now heard in the valleys of Schwyz.

Switzerland is triangular in shape, and occupies an almost imperceptible space upon an ordinary map of the world. Voltaire used to say he “shook his wig and powdered the republic.” It is bounded on the north and east by Germany, on the south by Italy, and on the west by France; and is situated between latitude 45° 50′ and 47° 50′ north, and longitude 6° and 10° 25′ east. Its greatest length from east to west measures two hundred and sixteen miles; its greatest breadth north and south is one hundred and fifty-six miles. Nearly its entire boundary is formed by rivers, lakes, and mountains. The Rhine constitutes almost two sides of its boundary, from the point where the various streams from the glaciers of the Grisons have met to form a river into the Lake of Constance, and from its exit thence to where the Jura Mountains turn its course to the Northern Ocean. The Jura separates it from France; and with merely an outlet for the Rhone, the Alps take up the line, dividing its rugged regions from the plains of Northern Italy. On the eastern side is an entangled mass of mountains; on the western side is a succession of parallel ridges, separated from each other by longitudinal valleys. The elevation varies from six hundred and forty-six feet, at Lake Maggiore, to fifteen thousand two hundred and seventeen feet on Monte Rosa. Only two per cent. has an altitude less than one thousand feet, and six per cent. of the whole surface is covered with snow-fields and glaciers. Two-thirds of its surface consist of lofty mountain chains and valleys; the remainder a plain thirteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. That portion which lies to the east of the Rhine rises from a platform no less than three thousand two hundred feet in height, even in the valleys. All of Switzerland, with Savoy, and indeed the Tyrol and other adjoining countries, lie on a huge mountain. They all have their valleys, it is true, but their valleys are more elevated than even the hills of the lower regions. Two of the mightiest European rivers, the Rhine and Rhone, have their sources in Switzerland. Their head-waters are separated only by the tangled mass between the Pizzo Rotondo and the Oberalp Pass,—the Rhine running towards the east and the Rhone towards the west. The St. Gothard may be regarded as the central point of the country, and from its sides these two rivers take their rise in a great transversal valley of the Central Alps. On the east, the Rhine, springing from the glaciers, flows through the Grisons to the north and loses itself in the Lake of Constance, issues from it at Stein, and flows to the westward as far as Basel, where it commences its perpendicular course towards the German Ocean. On the west, the Rhone, rising in the blue and glittering glacier of the same name, descends through the long channel of the Valais, expands into the Lake of Geneva, and takes its rapid course to the Mediterranean. Both of these rivers purify their waters in a large lake; and in their passage through the same Jurassic range of mountains they both form cataracts and waterfalls, though separated by that time by an interval of one hundred and eighty miles. Nine-tenths of the central table-lands of Switzerland belong to the Rhine system, and only one-tenth to the Rhone. In addition to these, two great rivers on the north of the St. Gothard, the Reuss and the Aar, descend in parallel ravines through rugged mountains, feeding the Lakes of Luzern, Thun, and Brienz; while on the south its snows nourish the impetuous torrents of the Ticino, which swells out into Lake Maggiore, and loses itself in the waves of the Po.

Within two degrees of latitude, Switzerland contains the climate of thirty-four degrees. The variety in the vertical configuration of the country naturally affects its climate, and nearly every valley and every mountain-side has a climate of its own. Besides “mathematical climate,” which is expressed by latitude, and depends on the elevation of the surface of the earth to the sun, modern science gives “physical climate.” It describes isothermal lines, which do not exactly coincide with the circles of latitude, but diverge to north or south, according as the temperature is modified by other factors, such as the height of the land above the sea, the modifying action of mountain chains, currents of wind and water, and the neighborhood of lakes and sea. The climate of Switzerland is specially modified by the influences which spring from the capricious consequences of the nearness of mountains, which are a bulwark against the periodical agitations of the atmosphere; they form a great barrier to the northward against the icy blasts sweeping down from the snow-fields of Russia and Siberia; and to the south, to the hot Libyan winds blowing across the Mediterranean. For regular isotherms, it would be idle to seek in such a broken region. The lakes, which are fed by the glacier waters, have a cooling effect on the temperature of the summer heat; the temperature of the water of Lake Brienz does not exceed from 48° to 53° Fahrenheit in the warmest days. It is a great benefit to the circulation of air which comes in contact with surfaces so relatively cold, nor do these bodies of air carry away with them any large amount of moisture, because the low temperature of the water does not favor any great evaporation. Within a short distance one may see at the same time all the seasons of the year, stand between spring and summer,—collecting snow with one hand and plucking flowers from the soil with the other. In Valais the fig and grape ripen at the foot of ice-clad mountains; while near their summits the lichen grows at the limit of the snow-line. There is a corresponding variety as regards the duration of the seasons. In Italian Switzerland, winter lasts only three months; at Glarus, four; in the Engadine, six; on the St. Gothard, eight; on the Great St. Bernard, nine; and on the Théodule Pass, always. Upon first beholding the peaks of the Alps, shrouded in their everlasting mantles of snow, one would little dream that in the valleys beneath ran musical streams of summer water, with emerald meadows spreading their velvet cloaks, dappled with clustering rose-bush, and the sun-loving flowers of the gardens of the tropics.

In ancient times writers exhausted their eloquence in painting the horrors of the climate of the Alps. Livy wrote, “and the snows almost mingling with the sky, the shapeless huts situated on the cliffs, the cattle and beasts of burden withered by the cold, the men unshorn and wildly dressed, all things, animate and inanimate, stiffened with frost, and other objects more terrible to be seen than described, renew their alarm.”9

To-day, within its habitable regions, the climate is distinguished for being generally temperate, healthful, and invigorating. It enjoys, from its geographical smallness, immunity from the penalty a vast continent pays in colossal visitations and vicissitudes of meteorological conditions.

The Föhn is a remarkable local wind in Switzerland; it is a strong southwest or south wind, very hot and dry, formerly supposed to originate in the Sahara, and flowing in towards the area of low atmospheric pressure; or to be a tropical counter-current of the trade winds. Meteorologists now hold that it is engendered by local causes. Commencing its descent in the northern valleys with a high temperature, it necessarily increases its temperature and dryness as it passes into the higher pressure of lower levels; it sweeps through certain valleys, especially in Glarus and Uri, where old laws enact that when it blows, every fire in the place, for whatever purpose used, is to be extinguished, for its violence is often extreme. It is much dreaded, yet acts beneficially by a rapid polar-like awakening of nature; it is it which melts most of the snow in the spring, and “without the Föhn,” says the peasant of the Grisons, “neither God nor the golden sun would prevail over the snow.” The Bise is the opposite of the Föhn, a cold, biting north wind, whose tooth has been sharpened by its passage over the ice-fields, bringing all the chills of Siberia, and searching one through and through, eating into the very marrow. This wind is confined within a narrow area of the country, pouring from the northeast over the Boden-See, and along the Jura to the Lake of Geneva below Lausanne; its effect is blighting on the pastures, which it sometimes visits at untimely seasons, killing even cattle exposed to it in May.

The German, Burgundian, and Italian nations which joined together to form the modern Swiss nation, cast away their original nationality, and made for themselves a new one, forming a nation as real and true as if it had strictly answered to some linguistic or ethnological division. These northern and southern nations of Europe have been singularly intermingled in Switzerland, and in this respect furnish an interesting study, as a striking exception to the general idea suggested by the word “nation” as a considerable continuous part of the earth’s surface, where speakers of a single tongue are united under a single government. The long persistent division of the Swiss people into German, French, and Italian stands in marked contrast with the thorough unity of the nation. They have never been blended into one people, so far as speaking a common language is concerned. German, French, Italian, Romansch, and Ladin are spoken within the limits of the Confederacy. And even the dialects of the German differ so much as to make communication almost impossible, at times, between the different villages and towns.

The census of December 1, 1888, showed the total population of Switzerland to be 2,933,612. The German-speaking element increased from 2,030,792, in 1880, to 2,092,479, which, taking into account the normal growth of the population, was no relative increase; the proportion in both cases being about seventy-one per cent. of the whole. The French, on the other hand, increased from 608,007 to 637,710, which was a relative increase of from 21.4 to 21.07 per cent., while the Italian declined actually as well as relatively, the numbers being 161,923 in 1889, and 156,482 in 1888, or 5.7 and 5.3 per cent. respectively. The decline of the Italians in Uri and Schwyz may be explained by the return home of a large number of Italian workmen engaged on the St. Gothard Railway. It is difficult to explain the large decrease of Germans in the Cantons of Bern and Neuchâtel, while the French have increased. In general, the French increase in Switzerland seems to be at the expense of the Germans, while the German element recovers its place at the expense of the Italian.

The region extending from the Lake of Geneva to the Lake of Constance, and from the foot of the Alps to the foot of the Jura, forms only one-fourth of Switzerland, so far as area is concerned; but nearly its whole population, wealth, and industry are concentrated there. The population is settled in the plains, the hill regions, and the valleys; there are chalets nearly eight thousand feet high on the Fleck and Indre Alps, but only one town, viz., Chaux-de-Fonds, in the Jura of Neuchâtel, has been built at an elevation of more than three thousand two hundred feet; but there are villages in Alpine valleys with an elevation of four thousand to five thousand feet, and the hamlet of Juf, in the dreary valley of the Avers, has an elevation of six thousand seven hundred feet, and is the highest village in Europe permanently inhabited.

In point of religion the Swiss are as sharply divided as they are in tongue and customs. It is to the increasing efforts of the clergy, during the many centuries that elapsed between the fall of the Roman empire and the revival of knowledge, that the judicious historian of Switzerland ascribes the early civilization and humane disposition of the Helvetic tribes; and invariably the first traces of order and industry appeared in the immediate neighborhood of the religious establishments. The traveller will behold with interest the crosses which frequently mark the brow of a precipice, and the little chapels hollowed out of the rock where the road is narrowed, and will consider them so many pledges of security; and he will rest assured that so long as the pious mountaineer continues to adore the “Good Shepherd” he will never cease to befriend the traveller or to discharge the duties of hospitality. That a church, or rather that churches, existed in Switzerland in the fourth century is proved by the signatures, coming down from that date, of certain bishops and elders of Geneva, Coire, and the Valais; and one century later it is known that other places besides these had been in a measure Christianized. The Fraternity of St. Bernard was founded in the latter part of the tenth century by Bernard de Menthon, an Augustinian canon of Aosta, in Piedmont, for the double purpose of extending bodily succor and administering spiritual consolation to travellers crossing the Pass of St. Bernard, where winter reigns during nine months of the year. The idea of establishing a religious community in the midst of savage rocks, and at the highest point trodden by the foot of man, was worthy of Christian self-denial and a benevolent philanthropy. The experiment succeeded in a degree commensurate with its noble intention: centuries have gone by, civilization has undergone a thousand changes, empires have been formed and overturned, and one-half of the world has been rescued from barbarism, while this piously-founded edifice still remains in its simple and respectable usefulness where it was first erected, the refuge of the traveller and a shelter for the poor. The building, the entertainment, the brotherhood, are marked by a severe, monastic self-denial which appears to have received a character of stern simplicity from the unvarying nakedness of all that greets the eye in that region of frost and sterility. In storms, monks, helpers, and dogs all go out to search for helpless travellers; and during the severe winter of 1830 both packs of dogs had to be taken out, and nearly all perished; the names of Barry and Bruno are kept with those of departed archbishops and monks. These St. Bernard dogs are adapted, by their instincts, intelligence, and benevolence, to the charitable work in which they are engaged. The moment they scent a traveller buried in the snow they announce the fact by setting up a loud bark, but they do not wait for the arrival of their human companions, but begin at once to dig into the snow with all their strength. The pure breed is said to be extinct, but the cross variety still retains many of the good points of the genuine breed.10

Einsiedeln is a very ancient and celebrated monastery in the Canton of Schwyz; it is more generally known as the Monastery of “Our Lady of the Hermits,” and is one of the most famous pilgrim resorts in the world. It was here that Meinrad, an anchorite of the house of Hohenzollern, is supposed to have retired in the ninth century, and built a cell for the worship of the Black Virgin, presented to him by the Abbess Hildegard of Zurich. He was murdered, and respect for his memory induced a religious community to establish themselves there. On the occasion of the consecration of the chapel erected by them, the Bishop, it is related, was anticipated by angels, who performed the rite to heavenly music at midnight. Leo VIII. declared this consecration to be a full and perfect one, and forbade the repetition of the rite; and Pope Benedict VIII. placed Count Meinrad in the catalogue of saints one hundred and fifty years after his death. The inscription over the church-door at Einsiedeln is “Hic est plena remissio peccatorum a culpa et a pœna” (“Here is plenary remission of sins from their guilt and from their punishment”). There is a copious fountain before the church, and another tradition has it that the Saviour visited the shrine and drank from it. This fountain has fourteen jets, carved to imitate the heads of strange beasts and birds, and the pilgrims must drink of every one to make sure that they should not miss the right one, which is said to have refreshed our Lord.

It has been disputed to whom the priority in the race of reform in Switzerland belongs, Zwingli or Luther. Zwingli himself declares that in 1516, before he had heard of Luther, he began to preach the gospel at Zurich, and to warn the people against relying upon human authority. The name of Zwingli is always associated by the Swiss with the rise of Protestantism as that of Calvin is with its triumphant progress.11 This Reformation, introduced by Zwingli and extended by Calvin, occasioned the fiercest dissensions. Early in the sixteenth century both Geneva and Zurich became cities of refuge for French, Italian, and English who were forced to flee from their native lands on account of their faith. The first edition of the English Bible was printed in Zurich in 1535. The Reformers separated themselves into Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists. It was held to be the duty of each Canton to force its own faith upon the whole body of the people; church-going was enforced by fines and corporal punishment; staying away from church on Sunday mornings, in some localities, was followed by a loss of citizenship. The latter part of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth century are crowded with controversies and bloodshed; that violence and those animosities which are found so terribly to prevail where religious zeal has been abused for the purposes of intolerance. Nowhere were the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation more ardently embraced; nowhere was the strange moral phenomenon, which is to be traced in so many quarters of Europe, more conspicuous than among the Cantons of Switzerland, the early, exact, permanent, geographical division, which was realized between the Protestant and Popish communities; a division which frequently an insignificant stream or street has been sufficient to maintain for ages. Religious parties, like glaciers, became at once frozen up in set attitudes and forms, which no subsequent events have been able to alter. In three instances controversies on the subject of religion kindled violent and bloody contests. The most memorable was the war between Bern and Zurich, on the one part, and five little Catholic Cantons on the other, in 1712. At the close of the period of the Reformation, seven of the Cantons, Luzern, Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, Freiburg, and Solothurn adhered to their ancient Catholic faith; the Cantons of Bern, Basel, Zurich, St. Gallen, and Schaffhausen adopted the reformed religion; Appenzell and Glarus recognized both forms of worship. In Geneva, over which the Duke of Savoy ruled, the effects of the Reformation were peculiarly important. Calvinism, as it existed at Geneva, was not merely a system of religious opinion, but an attempt to make the will of God, as revealed in the Bible, an authoritative guide for social and personal as well as for moral direction. Moral sins were treated after the example of the Mosaic law, as crimes to be punished by the magistrates; “elsewhere,” said Knox, speaking of Geneva, “the word of God is taught as purely, but never anywhere have I seen God obeyed as faithfully.”12

Reprobating and lamenting that the great reformer depended upon the use of the sword for the extirpation of heresy, let us remember that Calvin was not only the “founder of a sect, but foremost among the most efficient of modern republican legislators; and that his genius infused enduring elements into the institutions of Geneva, and made it for the modern world the impregnable fortress of popular liberty, the fertile seed-plot of democracy.” That “theological city,” called by some the Jerusalem of Switzerland, seems to be pervaded by an endemic influence inciting to religious discussion and agitation; the eager, irrepressible spirit of John Calvin walks abroad from his unknown sepulchre as the genius loci. The Reformation contributed in Switzerland to the enlightenment of the people and to the maintenance of a spirit of freedom; but in a political point of view it was the cause of the gravest evils, which continued long after the original convulsions. To differences of race and language it added divisions of religious faith and the conflict of hostile churches. For some time there was an alliance of clerical aggressiveness and ambition, with the employment of religion as a political influence. The radical government of Zurich was violently overthrown on the 6th of September, 1839, in consequence of the nomination of Dr. Strauss to a chair of theology; thousands of peasants, led by their pastors and singing hymns, armed with scythes and clubs, entered Zurich, and the government was forced to dissolve itself. As late as the war of the Sonderbund, in 1847, religious intolerance appeared to threaten the integrity of the Confederation; and by an article in the Constitution of 1848, and re-enacted in that of 1874, the Jesuits and all affiliated societies were interdicted throughout the Confederation. Hostility to the Jesuits was not regarded as hostility to the Catholic religion. The order of Jesuits, as then existing in Switzerland, could not be considered purely religious, but partly political, partly sectarian and controversial, its direct aim being to aggrandize the Church at the expense of the state, and the Catholic religion at the expense of the Protestant. From the first of these two tendencies, it was repugnant to a large portion even of the Catholic world. The whole history of the Jesuits in Switzerland betokened an organized and systematic teaching of religion, not exclusively for religious ends, but largely as a means for procuring political and social ascendency; even to the extent of reducing it to rule, craft, and professional duty. It was against this tendency, not against any matters essential to the Catholic religion, that even the Catholic world protested. The growth of the Old Catholics, after the Vatican Council of 1870, caused many disturbances in Western Switzerland, specially in the Bernese Jura. Inaugurated in the Catholic universities of Germany, it was transplanted for a complete and more vigorous growth into the soil of Geneva, and there taking on a logical, consistent, and organized form, it seemed fitted for the wide propagation and success that marked the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, to which, in its early stages, it showed curious points of undesigned coincidence.

The Swiss serve God and serve Liberty; two facts which go far to solve all the phenomena of their remarkable history. They hold with Plutarch that “a city might more easily be founded without territory than a state without belief in God.” It may be, as Professor Tyndall contends, that there is “morality in the oxygen of the mountains.” Man feels himself reduced to nonentity under the stupendous architecture of these elevated regions which carries his thoughts up to the Creator. A cultivated and pious mind may find itself stayed and soothed and carried upward, at some evening hour, by those great symbols of a duration without an end to a throne above the sky; and this impression may be deepened until the outward glory reproduces itself in the inward, and causes it to cry out:

The lives of the Swiss are in continual struggle with the elements, the visible power of the Deity; their sober habits, simple, natural, imaginative, all predispose them to believe; and the Gospel easily obtained dominion over their faith and feelings.

The sublime works of nature are equally calculated to arouse sentiments of patriotism; they are capable of a companionship with man, full of expression of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse. No race of men can dwell in Switzerland, amidst its mountains, its precipices, its rocks, glaciers, avalanches, and torrents, without being strong, brave, and resolute. Just as we recognize an elevated region by its growth of peculiar timber, whether stunted or lofty, alike in their power of resisting the tempest, and by its hardy plants characterized by their intense tenacity of life, just so a mountainous country is indicated by a courageous, athletic, close-knit population of liberty-loving, patriotic men.

“Montani semper liberi,” everywhere mountainous regions have been favorable to a free and manly spirit in the people; in every zone the mountain races are a free, a pastoral, an unchanging people, rather confirming Emerson’s hasty generalization as to snow and civil freedom. In the East the warlike hill-tribes have been less subject to despotic rule than the milder races dwelling on the plains. The varied grandeur of the mountains no less than the awful power of the ocean counts for something in the perpetuation of distinctive characteristics. But the spirit of freedom is thought to take a different color from the sea and from the mountain; in the mountain it is stubborn and resolute; by the sea it is excitable and fickle. The hill-tribes of Judea kept their covenant, the tribes of Jordan fell away; those Medes who never changed their laws descended from the Caspian Alps, those Greeks who sought new things from day to day were dwellers by the Ægean Sea. Among the vines and olives in Italian gardens men are soft, poetic, phosphorescent, no less full of fire than they are fond of change; among the pines and larches of the Swiss glaciers men are hardy, patient, dumb, as slow to fume and flash as they are hard to bend and break. The poet Wordsworth represents that it was the peculiar fortune of Switzerland to enjoy the influence of mountain and sea at once,—