August 20.—My plan for to-day was to walk over the Fluela Pass from Süs in the Engadin to Davos Dörfli, a little place at the head of the Davosthal, just below the summit of the ridge, which in nature separates the Davosthal from, though by road it connects it with, the Prätigäu. I had to turn out at 4 A.M., that I might have time to get breakfast, and to walk to Tarasp for the 5.10 diligence from Schuls, which was to take me to Süs. Süs I reached at 7.40. Several villages, some of them almost little towns, were passed by the way. The combinations of mountains, woods, villages, reclaimed land, a good road often constructed in difficult places, and all the time by your side a full stream, worthy of being one of the main head waters of the Danube, were enough to maintain the interest of a drive of two hours and a half.

Now that, having left Süs, I was on the road absolutely alone—for that could not have been said of my position yesterday evening with sixty Teutons under the same roof, to dine and sup with at the same table—and alone, too, for the whole day, but, however, with something to see and to do, I was no longer disposed to feel like a lone wanderer far from home. The world seemed a home, and a glorious home, full of objects in every direction that had plenty to say, and were very good company. For the first two hours the valley is narrow, not quite of the ravine kind, but still generally with very little grass, and sometimes with none at all. When at this distance from Süs you are just getting clear of the forest, the dreariness and desolateness of the scene begin to be felt. You are high above the brawling stream; you see its foamy line, but cannot make out its movement, nor hear its brawling. Summits scarred with dark cliffs are right and left of you. Before you, and, if you look back, behind you also, are summits capped with snow. The snowy summits before you are those of Piz Vadred, from which you see descending the great Grialetsch glacier. Between that and you is a singularly dead looking grayish valley. You think that there is no indication of man’s presence here, except the road on which you are walking. A few steps, however, further on bring into sight a châlet in the bottom. The singularly dead-looking grayish valley does, then, maintain for two or three months in the year a herd of cows. You had been thinking that its produce could not go much beyond lichens and mosses. You go a little further, and come upon another châlet, that of the alpe of the next higher level, which carries you up to the summit of the Pass. But the cows and herdsmen are this day out of sight. You see nothing moving. Rocks and snow alone attract your attention. You pass a forbidding looking stream; dark, chilly, gruff. It is snarling at you, and telling you to be gone. As you get to the further end of the long lozenge-shaped amphitheatre, which conducts you to the summit of the Pass, with the Fluela Weisshorn on your right, and the Schwarzhorn on your left, the snow-patches begin to cross the road. On the actual summit the road is on a level, with a small lake on either hand. The raised viaduct separates, and their respective colours distinguish, the two. That on your left being fed by water coming direct from the near glaciers is a lake of milk. That on your right is so crystal-clear that you might take it for mountain air liquefied.

Just beyond these two contrasted lakes was a small hotel. I felt, however, no inclination to exchange the glorious day and scene outside for the interior of a small room; and so with a salute to the landlord, who was standing at his door to offer me the hospitality of his house—under such circumstances the salute seemed almost a kind of mockery—I continued my way on. The scene, as is usual on reaching the top of a Pass, was now totally different from what I had lately been noting. The immediate entourage was of a darker rock, and the mountain tops were green and rounded. The road for the first mile, or so, seemed to be along the arc of the segment of a circle. In a spirit of speculation I took to the scattered rocks along the chord of the segment. Among the rocks were many pools of water of marvellous transparency. Every stain and scratch on the rocks at the bottom of the water was as distinct as if there had been no water at all, indeed they might have been more distinct, for as seen under the water they had the appearance of having been brought out by varnish. This water, too, was so pure and fresh for drinking, that a draught of it made me think that I had never drank water before, and could not hope ever to drink it again. As I regained the road I was overtaken by the diligence, which I had left at Süs, preparing to start, three hours previously.

One welcomes the return of the first trees. It is good to be in the zone above the trees. It is good also to find yourself returning to the zone of trees. The first you come upon tell you they have a hard time of it. You interpret their stunted form and irregular growth, and their crooked, broken branches as so many accusations brought against the cold long winters, and the cruel storms, and the summer frosts, whose assaults they have had to sustain. They are maimed, and scarred veterans who from their youth up have lived in the midst of war’s alarms and injuries, but who will not yet be driven from the field. Their reappearance, too, reminds you that, in respect of the effects of the landscape, they stand in the same relation to the grassy turf that the mountains do to the plains. They feed the eye of man, and furnish his mind with ideas and images. Without them vegetation would have no more interest than the earth’s surface would have without the mountains. Each, too, has its place in the working arrangements of the general scheme; the mountains in those of the world-organism, and the trees in those of organized life.

With these thoughts I passed the little inn of Tschuggen, five miles below the summit. About a mile and a quarter below Tschuggen, and a little above the inn of the Alpen Rose, I called my midday halt. I took my position among some clean slabs and fragments of a slaty-coloured glistening rock, a few paces above the road, and on the right side of it. I was here sheltered by a wood of larch from the north wind, which was cold at midday. As I looked towards Tschuggen, up the way I had been descending, a snow-topped pyramid, perhaps the Schwarzhorn, bounded the view. Then looking across, instead of up, the road, the mountain of the opposite side rose near and steeply. It was a big mountain, but not of the naked rocky order, for its flank, full in view before me, was pretty well covered with a vestment of vegetation. In this, the predominant element was a sedum now profusely in flower, which made yellow the predominant colour of the vestment. Just below me, on the other side of the road, and somewhat below the road, was a châlet, surrounded by little grass patches, wherever the land could be levelled, from the road down to the valley bottom, out of which rose, immediately beyond the little stream of the valley, the yellow-vested mountain. The family, that lived in the châlet, were alertly at work spreading, or carrying, their little parcels of hay. Old and young, all appeared to be together in the field. As I watched the labours of this busily employed family I thought their position not unlike that of the first trees I had just seen some miles above. Like them, and from the same causes, they had to sustain the struggle for life against great difficulties. In the contemplation, however, of their industry there was something to suggest the thought that their hard days were not rendered additionally hard by the discontent and the vice, which are seen and felt wherever life is maintained on easier conditions.

From this halt an hour and a half of pleasant walking brought me to Davos Dörfli, a well situated village in a broad expanse of grass land at the foot of the Davoser see. It is only a mile and a half from Davos am Platz, at which I had dined on my descent from the Strela seventeen days back. My way then lay to the south. I had since made a round I was disposed to think worth the time. To-morrow I was to set my face north for the Prätigäu.

When you are walking, and the more so if you are alone, you are disposed to note the changing aspects of the weather. Here, then, are the observations that were made on this day. At 4 A.M. at Tarasp there was an unbroken canopy of cloud: but it was not low down the mountain sides. At 6 the summits that were lofty enough for snow were standing clear; but the lesser summits were still shrouded with clouds. At 8 most of these had disappeared. From 9 till 12 only thin streaks and flecks of cloud high above all the summits. The definition of every mountain ridge and pinnacle against the deep blue was now very remarkable. At 12 clouds began to form on the tops of the mountains, and spreading widely to a considerable extent obscured the blue. At 4 these formed solid masses, and the sky was much more obscured. At 6 the clouds sunk low down on the mountain sides, so as to shut out the view. The wind was northerly all day. In the early morning it had been so cold from Tarasp to Süs as to make the banquette of the diligence not altogether pleasant. Near Süs I saw potato-patches by the road side that had been blackened at the extremities of the haulm by frost. Throughout the day, even when for some hours I was walking up hill with the sun on the road, the air was fresh and crisp. I have already mentioned that on the previous evening at Tarasp it had been disagreeably cold. This evening at Davos Dörfli I again saw potato haulm that had been injured by frost. Not, then, taking this day as a sample of the climate, for its merits were too much above the average for that, but taking it as a sample of a fine day, almost the best kind of day the climate has to show, we may say that in summer on some days, for some hours, the climate is pleasant. The mornings and evenings, when the weather is fine, that is to say when the wind is from the north, are too cold. In the fine hours of the fine days the sense of enjoyment from a sense of penetrating freshness, and of penetrating warmth, is very delightful.

August 21.—Had been assured last night that coffee would be ready at 5 this morning. This promise was a case of deception prepense, for there had been no intention of letting me have it till half an hour later, when eight or ten Germans, who were to leave at 6, would have their breakfast served. On these occasions it is of no manner of use to complain, or to give yourself the trouble of showing in any way your dissatisfaction; or rather it is better not to allow yourself to feel any dissatisfaction at all. The master of the hotel is master of the situation. And in a place like Davos Dörfli, where there is only one moderately good hotel, the rule of its master is a despotism, untempered by any effectual competition. Here again, as at Tarasp, I found the hotel full of Germans, and of German-speaking Swiss; and, as a consequence, the table well supplied, and the charges moderate. At both of these places I had been reminded of three portions of cold meat I had ordered at Pontresina. To give the particulars—they consisted of six circular pieces, each of them of the diameter of a florin, and no thicker than a well-worn three-penny. For this the charge was about equal to the weight of the pieces in francs. Such doings would be impossible at Tarasp, or at the Dörfli of Davos, or at the Platz of that ilk.

At 5.45, then, I got under weigh. My road for the Prätigäu lay at first along the level shore of the Davoser see for about a mile, and then for about a mile or so more up a gentle rise of some hundred or two feet in all to the Davoser Kulm, which from this side seems rather to connect than to separate the two valleys. Though, indeed, you afterwards find that the one you are bound for is a considerable way down on the opposite side. About a mile below the summit I descended into a cloud, and walked in it for about five miles, that is down to Klosters. I heard a stream at times, but did not see it; and the books say that I passed a lake, but I know no more of it than what is said in the books. All that I saw was the road, and the mist-shrouded trees by the roadside, from which abundant drops were falling. Not a breath was stirring, and it was very chilly. The altitudes were from 5,300 feet on the Kulm to 4,000 at Klosters. I might as well have been on a November morning in the Essex marshes, or in the Lincolnshire fens. Just above Klosters, without any intimation of the coming change, I stepped out of the cloud. There before me, a little below, were the four villages that form the commune. Many of their houses were goodly structures of stone. Around the villages was a large expanse of good land. This first glimpse of the Prätigäu was worthy of its reputation of being one of the best cultivated valleys in Switzerland, which, arising out of, and taken in connexion with, their system of land tenure, is what accounts for its large population of 10,000 souls. It was for the sake of the contrasts its high cultivation and its populousness would offer to what I had seen in the valleys I had lately been wandering through, that I was here to-day. The altitude and climate of most of them restricted the industry of the inhabitants to the cultivation of grass; and this in its turn was a great restriction on the number of the inhabitants.

From the first to the second village the road reascended a little. This brought me again almost to the level of the cloud, and here the position of the road placed a long reach of the valley before me. The effect was strange, and such as I do not recollect ever to have seen elsewhere. The stratum of cloud just roofed the valley. To the eye it was a flat roof, both on the upper, and on the lower, sides. As I looked forward the eye traversed the valley, below the roof, just as it might a long gallery. The cloud-roof was at an uniform level, resting on the mountains right and left, but of course the valley below it fell away as it advanced in its descent. I cannot say how many miles I saw down the valley under this roof. Though from my point of view it appeared perfectly continuous, and without holes or fissures, such could not have been the case, as was evident from there being several patches of sunlight in the valley. These patches of sunlight were poured in through fissures or holes in the cloud-roof, that is to say through skylights in it, and they not only gave a strange and unwonted effect of light and shade in the valley—the unlighted, which was the greater part, showing of a dark gloomy green, and the lighted patches of a bright golden green—but also enabled one to see under the roof to a great distance.

On turning round to look back in the direction by which I had reached Klosters, I saw another curious effect of cloud. The valley all about Klosters was clear and bright. Somewhat above this visible, sun-lit, lower expanse began the masses of cloud I had passed through in descending. As I was just below these clouds, and looking up at them through the opening over the neighbourhood of Klosters, in the area of which opening I was standing, they hid from me the whole mighty mass of Piz Buin—it is 10,700 feet high—except just the snowy summit. None of the supports of the summit were seen or suggested. While I looked at it, it disappeared and reappeared, again and again, as the vast stratum of cloud moved on, or rose, or sunk a little. Of course the head of Piz Buin was very far above my stratum of cloud, but as I was close to it, and looking up at it, it was enough to intercept all but the summit, which every now and then it did intercept. As the snowy summit appeared and disappeared, it seemed as if it was not the cloud but the summit that was moving; for was it not at one moment peering down into the valley, and the next moment withdrawing itself? The effect was most unnatural. The unsubstantial fleeting cloud became the solid and fixed, and the top of the mountain which stands fast for ever the floating, object.

A further acquaintance with the Prätigäu confirmed the first impression. I have nowhere seen a richer green, or more of it, or a more pleasing, I might almost say a more wonderful, combination of woodland, grass, corn, and fruit trees, or more numerous villages, or so many scattered châlets. Of course there is not much of this kind in the grassy elevated valleys I had lately been traversing; indeed, I had seen nothing of the kind since I had left Coire on the third of the month; and what you see here is far in advance of what you can see in the neighbourhood of Coire, with the exception of the vineyards. The bottom of the valley is well cultivated. As you ascend to a higher zone the fruit trees are gradually replaced by forest trees, and the garden ground by grass, the châlets, however, still continuing. When the amount of population is recalled all this can be imagined almost without its being seen. The amount of cultivable land, almost all of it made land, is of course the first condition. The next is the altitude of the valley which ranges from about 2,000 feet at Grüsch to about 4,000 at Klosters; and then its direction, which is such as to give it protection from the northerly winds, and to expose one side to the midday sun, while its length is raked both by the morning and evening sun. These physical conditions, however, would not count for much were they not accompanied by certain human conditions. Every man of these 10,000 souls, in proportion to his ability, turns to the best possible account every square foot of his land, and every ray of sunshine that falls upon it, because he and his family will get the whole benefit of his thought and labour. They clear the ground, and dig it deep, and enrich it all they can, because it is their own ground. They plant, and they tend what they plant carefully, because they, and not others, will get the fruit of what they plant and tend. Herein lies the motive of their industry.

Neither, however, this motive, nor the terrain nature and the course of events have placed at their disposal, would be of any avail were it not for the presence of another condition, which has been entirely overlooked by those who advocate in the press, and on the platform, the system of peasant proprietorship. This other condition is knowledge—the knowledge of all that is required for supporting a family throughout the whole of the twelve months, the knowledge of how all these things are to be produced from two or three acres of land, and the knowledge of how each article is to be kept in store, and when used to be used most advantageously. These are the particulars of what is very far from being a simple problem. It is, in fact, the most complicated form in which the problem of how life is to be sustained is submitted to any portion of the human family. In comparison with it the form in which the same problem is submitted to our agricultural labourer is simplicity itself. He has nothing to do but to take from his employer’s hand on Saturday evening the regulation wages of the neighbourhood, and to transfer them to the hand of the village shopkeeper for all that he will want during the next seven days. Add to this that the law has established for his behoof a national benefit society, which will provide for him in sickness, and in old age, and which will not forsake him even when he has shuffled off this mortal coil, for it will supply the coffin in which he will be carried to his grave;[1] and then we shall be able not quite to see, but to get a glimpse of, how completely his life is a school for the non-attainment of this knowledge. In precisely the same fashion, and to precisely the same result, domestic service will have acted on the mind of his wife. They have both been thoroughly and most efficiently trained not to have the knowledge, and the habits of mind, a peasant proprietor must have, if he is to live as a peasant proprietor. I think it may be safely asserted that out of our agricultural labourers not one in 10,000 has this knowledge, and that not one out of 1,000 is, as things now are with that class, of the mental stuff which would enable him to attain to this knowledge; for it is a kind of knowledge which is the result of the accumulated experience and training of many generations. It is not the knowledge of how to live as a market-gardener, or as a small farmer: they live by selling and buying: but the knowledge of how to produce from a little bit of land what will directly, and without the intervention of much buying and selling, support a family. The main support of the family is to be the produce of their own labour applied to their own land. This is a most special kind of knowledge. It involves a multiplicity of calculations and considerations. It is as special as, and far more complicated than, that required for enabling an Esquimaux family to live within the arctic circle. To be carried out successfully it requires the hearty single-minded devotion to the work in hand of every day of the life of every member of the family, that work varying much from day to day. If an acre or two, or two or three acres, of land were given to an English agricultural labourer, it would never occur to him to turn it to this account. He would only think of making it a petty farm, or a market-garden. This is what, whenever he chances to get hold of a bit of land, he invariably does. He has not the kind of knowledge which is requisite for enabling him to entertain the idea of peasant proprietorship, that is of maintaining his family by the direct produce of the two or three acres. That would require an amount of forethought, forbearance, hard work, helpfulness, and above all of varied knowledge, of which he is quite incapable of so much as forming any adequate conception.

Now turn your attention for a few moments to the Prätigäu peasant proprietor. He has no wages to receive. Wages in this connexion mean in one word all that is requisite for supporting life. They include everything. Nothing is omitted from them. He has to find all these requisites by another road, and in another fashion. He has no village shop to procure for him, and to keep in store for him, all the articles that he will want. Pretty nearly everything that he and his family will require for the twelve months he has to procure from his small plot of land. This will require all the ingenuity, forethought, and industry a man is capable of. Consider what it implies. He will have to produce every article himself, to keep it in store himself, and to make it go as far as contrivance and frugality can. His house, too, is his own, and he has to take the same care of it as of everything else. There is no one but himself to repair it. The same remark applies to his fuel, every stick of which represents so much of his own labour, and to his clothes, which represent so much of the labour of the family. The wife, too, must be as great an adept in this kind of knowledge as the husband. They were both brought up in its traditions, and were trained to it from their earliest years. Every day of their lives they have under the pressure of a quite inexorable necessity been perfecting themselves in its practice. All their neighbours are employed in the same way. There is nothing going on among them that diverts attention to anything else.

If these Prätigäu peasants were transferred to this country, they could do in England what they do in the Prätigäu. If 10,000 of our peasantry were transferred to the Prätigäu, and put in possession of the existing houses, and of the land, and of every appliance needed for cultivating it, the only result would be universal starvation. Simply because they would not have the knowledge, and habits of mind, requisite for enabling each family to live from its little plot of land. The land would be the same; the motives for turning it to account would be the same; but the moral and intellectual conditions would be wanting. These conditions, then, must not be omitted in answering the question of what it is that has made this valley a garden that is maintaining its 10,000 gardeners.

In old times it may have been held by some half dozen mailed lords. The ruins of the castles of several of these old oppressors may still be seen in the valley. Of one we are told that the peasants took it with clubs and stakes; the wall with which the lord of another barred the lower ravine is still standing. One object of this wall was that it might enable him to levy imposts on the necessaries of life, in order that his own life might be more affluent at the cost of the poor. Such a state of things may have its picturesque side; but who would not very much prefer to see the valley as it is, the garden of 10,000 gardeners? Or in these days we can imagine its becoming a Chamois preserve. But again, I suppose most people would prefer to see it remain as it is, the garden of 10,000 gardeners. We know of nothing better in this world than men and women; and when the men and women are intelligent, industrious, honest, and can, under very difficult conditions, steer their course clear of the rocks and quicksands of pauperism, then, although they may be deficient in the refinements which culture may confer on those who have wealth and leisure, still they are in many valuable and attractive qualities far above large classes that we in this country wot of. But be this as it may, the average human heart is more pleasingly touched by the picture of their hard and humble labours than by that of the mailed Baron and his dependents, or of the Chamois preserver, and his Chamois. Probably they have as brave hearts as the Baron and his dependents had: at all events their fathers drove them off with sticks and stones, and even the women of Schiersch in 1622 showed such heroism in assisting their husbands to repel their Austrian invaders, that the men of Schiersch have since that day conceded to the women of Schiersch the honour of receiving the sacrament first. And, too, probably they are as much disposed to respect humanity, and to help those that need, and to do to others as they would that others should do to them, as the imaginary Chamois preserver would be.

A little above Kublis on the pebbly borders of a torrent, down the flank of a mountain, where it was impossible to retain soil enough for cultivation of any kind, for the occasional rushes of storm water would sweep from the surface anything soluble or tender, I found the coarse shingle dotted with hazel, and briar roses, and barberry, and much of this open thicket almost smothered with the wild clematis then in flower. This vegetation again reminded me of how completely I had this morning changed the climate. Where I had been of late nothing of this could have been seen. A few hours ago, in leaving Davos Dörfli, I had passed frost-blackened potato haulm; and for three weeks I had not had much to look upon, in the way of vegetation, besides pine woods and grass. What I now saw prepared me for the advent on the scene of the broad glazed leaf and feathery arrow of the maize.

A mile or so below Kublis the green valley is suddenly contracted into a rock-bound and wooded ravine, which has in the bottom no more space than is sufficient for the blustering Lanquart and the road. Whatever good land is hereabouts must be high above you on the top of the ravine. This ravine ends at Frederis Au, a kind of watering-place, some little way off from the road. Here you again come on good bottom land, some of it under maize. A little further on, the stream is again compressed between high rocky banks.

At Schiersch, having now done twenty-five miles, I stopped for dinner. It is a place of some size, and has many goodly stone houses; but what attracts you most is the story of the still-honoured heroism of its women. The books told me that the Lion was the chief hotel of the place. Accordingly I entered the Lion, and was shown up to the first floor. It was evident that the room into which I was shown, like the sword of Achilles which could either hack a baron of beef, or carve a Trojan, was used for two purposes. The long table and benches on one side of it showed that it was intended for travellers’ accommodation. The sofa, however, and chairs, a little work-table on the other side, together with the presence of Madame herself and four children, one asleep on the sofa, one suffering from whooping-cough, the third waiting on the invalid, and the fourth in the mother’s arms, indicated that it was also the Lady’s sitting-room, and the nursery. The guests who came and went while I was in the house were waited upon by the husband only. My successive inquiries for mutton, beef, butter, eggs, fruit, cognac, extracted from him only negative replies. What, then, did the good people of Schiersch live upon? He could let me have cheese and dried beef. I had been expecting mutton côtelettes, with a dessert of figs and peaches. In my disappointment I felt disposed to go on further. I could hardly fare worse by doing so. But after I had entered the house I felt a disinclination, by leaving it, to balk the expectations of the good people, and perhaps my own too. And so I spent half an hour at the Lion. As to the dried beef, I had ceased to think it actively bad. The wine was rather sour. Against the cheese nothing could be said.

Together with the above viands there was presented to me this problem. If this is all that Schiersch can set before its guests, what is the usual fare of the Schierschers themselves? Few of us as we pass through a smiling Swiss valley think, or know, how hard its inhabitants live. They, poor souls, or rather their hard-worked bodies, have neither the dried beef, nor the half sour wine, nor yet such cheese as I had. Meagre cheese, the curd that rises, on the second heating, after the first curd for the cheese has been removed, black rye-bread, polenta, and potatoes constitute, with coffee for their chief beverage, the normal fare of the inhabitants of most of these valleys. The greater part of the butter, and of the fresh meat that they produce is sent off to places, where there are hotels with many travellers to be provided for. All the fat of the land of the Prätigäu is in this way forwarded to Davos am Platz, Ragatz, and Coire. Having disposed of this question not quite satisfactorily, for I had rather that its settlement had been more in favour of the good people of Schiersch—the brave women of Schiersch at all events deserve something better; and having, too, disposed of the comestibles which had suggested it, I said my adieux to the members of the family of the Lion, and proceeded on my way, caring little, and not knowing much more, where I was going, except that there was a place two miles further on called Grüsch.

The first mile was through low wet meadows. Beyond these the torrent of the Lanquart had in times of flood, carried away all the soil, leaving behind nothing but rubbly stones. These covered a wide expanse, rather more than a mile in length. The peasants of the locality, like a community of bees, or ants, whose nest, or hive, has been disturbed, had taken in hand the repair of the whole of this damage. They had carried a dozen, or more, dikes across the valley, and crossed these again at right angles by another series of dikes. This had divided the whole of the desolated space into a considerable number of square compartments. Their plan was to fill these in succession with the muddy water of the Lanquart, hoping that the deposit from this, would in time bury the stones, and give them a surface of alluvium, capable of supporting grass. Some of the compartments were already supporting beds of reeds. If, therefore, the dikes should not be washed away by some unusually heavy flood, the time must come when soil enough will be accumulated for grass. May this precious grass one day crown and reward their labours!

At Grüsch I was well repaid for having preferred the ills I knew not of to those of which I had had experience at Schiersch. I found it in many respects an interesting little place. First it is well situated. There are points of view in the village, from which the mountains seem to stand round about it grandly, quite to come down into it. On the north side a bold ravine has been rent from some height up in the mountain just down to the level of the road. Some of the houses are old and large, and were once the residences of local grandees, of the days when Grüsch had grandees. In one of these I found my supper and bed—a supper of veal cutlets, coffee, butter, cheese, and raspberry compote. I give the particulars not only from a sense of what is due to Grüsch, but also for the sake of encouraging Schiersch to greater efforts. As to my berth for the night; I was at first shown up a stone staircase to a spacious room containing three beds. From its ornamented panelling and ceiling it must originally have been intended for a sitting-room. I was more than satisfied with it. When, however, there was no further prospect of the arrival of a family, or party, of distinction, I was informed that there was a better bedroom in the house, that it was at my disposal, and that the few things I had brought with me had been removed to it. Even after this announcement I was quite unprepared for its magnificence. It was a kind of state apartment. It was gorgeously papered. It had muslin window-curtains. The stove cased with white china, and bound with hoops of polished brass, had an imposing effect. The pillows and coverlet were edged with cotton lace. All this was overpowering, coming so close on Schiersch. And, then, the manageress was so good-natured and obliging, so anxious to know what might be wanted, and seemed to have so much pleasure in doing it—almost as much as the good man at Livigno had had, whose regard for his guests had extended even beyond this world. But the crowning grace has still to come. After breakfast to-morrow morning, I shall have to pay for this substantial fare, the splendour of my bedroom, and so much pleasing attention, only 3 francs, 30 cents: the same sum, except the 30 cents, I had paid at Schiersch for the refection of dried beef and sour wine. This will compare, too, very favourably with the bill at Livigno. That had been 30 francs, 60 cents. But then our friend at Livigno had catered for both worlds, for soul as well as for body. At parting I could not but shake hands with the young woman who had waited on me and her satisfaction at finding that her attentions and ministerings had been appreciated was alone quite worth the 3 francs, 30 cents. All this was a great deal to get for so little in this hard world.