A Ride on Horseback to Florence Through France and Switzerland. Vol. 2 of 2

Ride to Chillon-Castle of La Tour du Peil-Chastellar-Chillon-Attentive gendarmes-Oubliettes-Destiny of their inhabitants-Salle de Justice-Torture room-Eating hall with its fleurs-de-lis-The dungeons-The beam-The interment in the lake-Bonnivard-His misfortunes-His prison-The first pillar having its own story-Sketches on the wall made by a captive-His escape-Drowned in the attempt two months before Bonnivard's deliverance-Alexander Dumas' name above that of Byron-The English amateur's painting-The fat gendarme-A bad Bonnivard-Our determination to inhabit Chillon-Changed by thoughts of powder-Fan

ny our conductress-Ludlow's house and tomb-Contrast between Protestant and Catholic cantons-Bulle-The bony hand holding a crucifix-The Counts of Gruyères-Fines paid for crimes perpetrated-The banner of Berne-Laws of the Simmenthal-The Bernese attacking Gruyères-Count Pierre's danger-Plague described by Boccaccio-The Flagellans-The murdered Jews-Last of the Counts of Gruyères-Leaving Bulle-Fribourg-Battle of Morat-The lime tree-A monument of the young messenger-Berthhold, founder of Fribourg-Line drawn between plebeian and noble-Bridge-Organ.

16th.

We dined at one, in company of some gentlemanly Swiss and French officers, and started at three for Chillon, passing on our way the hamlet La Tour du Peil, and catching a glimpse as we rode by of its ruined ancient castle, pillaged and burned by order of Berne, in punishment for having allowed the passage of foreign soldiers to Lausanne, where lay the camp of their foe, Charles, duke of Burgundy. Vevay suffered for the like fault, being plundered also, and of the two towns five hundred men were massacred.

There is nothing lovelier than this road, winding along the flank of the mountains, here rich with wood. We passed Clarens, beautiful as Byron's description, hiding among its own trees, and straggling up the hill side from the shore. The noble old castle of Chastellar on its solitary mound, and the peaked stone spire of Montreux seeming to lean against the forest, above which the Dent de Jaman stands, cold and barren,-all the way the lake shining below, with the stern rocks of Meillerie opposite, and the Alps closing the valley. The heat was excessive; and the small vineyard flies so tormented our horses that D--'s taste for the picturesque had well nigh vanished, when a bend in the road brought us beneath a high bank, covered with old walnut-trees, and opposite the rock on which Chillon stands, with its towers and tall keep, the most picturesque of feudal castles. We crossed the covered wooden bridge, where the gendarmes stand, smiling welcome; and the horses consigned, each to the care of two, and left in a dark stable to be dusted with walnut branches, we were sufficiently tranquil as to their comfort to follow our guide, who was the wife of the concierge. She led across two courts, and opened a heavy prison door; it was "out of the sun and into a grave." I obeyed her injunction to hold fast her hand, when, having scrambled over rubbish, and through partial darkness, she drew me to the brink of a square hole, and pointed down a depth of eighty-six feet. It was one of the fearful oubliettes, whose existence here was unknown till about fifteen months since. Grown accustomed to the dim light, we could distinguish a coarse woollen rug, now laid on the brink, but which was found below serving as shroud to a skeleton. The victim died from the fall, or was left to perish. In the same court-yard is the entrance to another, which was, at pleasure, dungeon or place of execution. Its depth is sixty and some feet; and from the top of the square opening descend three steps, the commencement of a stair which goes no farther. The condemned was lowered to the bottom, and his food administered in like manner. If death was decided on, he was forgotten, as there was no other communication with the living world.

A few steps lead to the salle de justice. The dryness of the air and thickness of the walls has so preserved all within, that the curious wooden ceiling, supported in the centre by pillars, which retain traces of paint, remains; and the planks of the floor were only exchanged for pavement, when, on the threats of France, the caissons of the Canton de Vaud were assembled here. At one end of this hall is a small room with a door, on a now closed staircase, near the wide chimney. At the other is the salle de question. A pillar of wood, to which the prisoner was bound, still stands,-as does a beam above it, pierced with holes for pulleys, and a portion of the old ropes hanging from them. A second beam, which supported a wheel on which the wretch was tortured, (tied by the arms with weights to the feet,) crumbled down a few months ago. The pillar is seared with the red-hot irons employed in the torture; that by burning being continued during three-quarters of an hour, with intervals of five minutes; if it induced confession, the private stair from the small chamber conducted the condemned to the potence in the dungeon below. The door has been walled up, on account of the vicinity of the powder magazine. Our guide led to the eating-hall, which was the kitchen also. The capitals of its pillars were ornamented with fleurs-de-lis, she said, when a count of Savoy conducted hither his bride, a daughter of France, perhaps Bonne de Bourbon, who married the green count Amedée the Sixth, about 1355. The two carved oaken chests with their curious locks, at the bottom of the room, are of the same date. The view from these windows is beautiful beyond praise, and there is "the little isle-the only one in view," lying in the lake like a floating basket of flowers. Our last visit was to the dungeons: the first is the most modern, and least sad, as its loopholes are longer and less narrow. On one of the sills they form in the thick wall sat a Swiss girl, the light falling on her picturesque dress, touching her smiling face and bare arms,-she animated the dim prison house. Between this first dungeon and that of Bonnivard, there is one smaller and darker, though light enough for its destination: for a few moments' stay allows the eye to distinguish, crossing a space between its pillars, a heavy beam, whose upper part is, in several places, deeply worn by the ropes which, upholding heavy weights, were bound round it; and a few paces behind, the steps of the narrow stair which conducts to the fatal door of the justice hall. The opposite wall, against which the lake ripples or foams in its various moods, has a square cavity, now closed with stones; the bodies of those who died unheard and unseen were cast forth there, and beneath the waves which told no tales. A narrow portal opens on the dungeon where Bonnivard lay. I think I reminded you before that he was prior of the abbey of St. Victor, a man of pure life as well as courage, who exhorted the Genevese to reform, and censuring the vices of the catholic clergy generally, as well as their bishops in particular, was betrayed by false friends to the duke of Savoy, whose anger he had above all excited, by urging an alliance between Fribourg and Geneva. One of these friends received for reward his rich priory. He was two years in prison, and set free and reinstated in his benefice by Pierre de la Baume, bishop of Geneva. He by force took possession of the property of which he had been deprived in Savoy, which, notwithstanding his affection for Geneva, was his country. The duke besieged him in his chateau of Cartigny, which, unable to defend long, he was forced to fly from, and saw himself almost wholly deprived of his revenues. The town of Geneva granted him a pension, and sustained him in his adversity; and the irritated duke, desirous only of obtaining possession of his person, granted him a safe-conduct with a view to lure him on his territory. Bonnivard, expecting no treachery, profited by the circumstance to visit his mother, sick and old, at Seyssel; and intending to go thence to Lausanne, he was seized on the Jura, and dragged to Chillon. The first two years of his detention he passed in comparative liberty; but Charles the Third visiting the castle, he was cast, by his order, into the vault below the level of the lake, where are

"The seven pillars of Gothic mould."

The first column has a story of its own, for a wall of separation, now thrown down, divided it and a space of twelve feet square from the prior's prison, forming one which enclosed a young man, his companion. On the walls are a few figures, in the costume of the time, rude but spirited sketches, the work of his long leisure; they are fresh still. Attached to the pillar is the portion of the broken ring which held his chain, and an iron bar of his loophole was sawed through, to allow room for the passage of a human body. Long toil, and the use of some instrument left him inadvertently, severed the fetters and opened the path; but he reckoned on his powers of swimming, forgetting they were paralyzed by the space and air of a dungeon-he plunged into the lake, and rose no more alive. Bonnivard was delivered two months later; it was in March, 1536. Chillon remained the last possession of Savoy in the Pays de Vaud. Confiding in its strength, her garrison's boats insulted all who were not subjects of Duke Charles, and haughtily rejected the truce proposed to the Bernese by the emperor's ambassador. The Bernese army besieged it on the land side; the troops and artillery of Geneva armed barks on the lake; the garrison was forced to surrender, and Bonnivard set free. His pillar, retaining its iron ring, is the second in order; the floor of rock round, worn by the uneasy pacing of four years: on the column, among more perishing names, is that of Byron. I noticed that of Alexander Dumas, so high above, that to engrave its enormous letters he must have mounted a ladder. The space on either side the range of columns which support the roof's groined arches, forms a sombre aisle, the inner wall left as nature made it, irregular masses of living rock; that towards the lake intersected with a few narrow loopholes high from the ground, which are rather slits in the stone, so small that in the morning it is a dark vault, and only when the beams shine low they come "creeping over the floor." At sunset, however, "the imprisoned ray" is not "dull:" for, as if it acquired force from its concentration, it falls like a streak of fire on the pillars and blocks of stone. As we saw it, the effect was splendid, but partial, as at the extreme end an artist was sketching by the light of candles, being otherwise in perfect obscurity. It is to carry his materials that the young Swiss, whom we saw as we passed again, comes daily. Last summer, an amateur, an English gentleman, visited Chillon with the intention of painting not only the dungeon, but Bonnivard! for this purpose he chose a gendarme of spare habit, having a long beard and sallow face, chained him to the pillar, and commenced his work, saying, "vous bon Bonnivard." He could not, as you may suppose from the specimen, explain himself in French; but Monsieur Chéri (a strange name for a captive prior) understood his signs made with money, and submitted with fortitude to lie robed and fettered on the rocky floor. One day, unfortunately, a feeling of pity came over his comrade in the court-yard above, and he descended to relieve him, thinking to divide the duty, and that one might do as well as the other, seeing both were gendarmes. The new comer was a healthy, very young man, stout and beardless, unlike the studious prior, who had eaten black bread in small quantities, and probably abstained from shaving six years. The pallid gendarme feeling, like him he represented, the blessing of freedom, sprang up in delight; and the amateur, in despair, when the fat man assumed the chain, could only hold his first prisoner fast, stamp his foot and shake his head at the other, and repeat all the French he knew, "Lui, bon Bonnivard, rester; vous aller, pas bon Bonnivard!" He grew at last so angry that my conductress, who had, she said, almost expired with laughter, interfered, and Chéri once more cast himself at the foot of his pillar. As we went out, she mentioned the circumstance of having two English ladies "en pension."

D-- looked up in intense delight, the horses were in a good stable, the gendarmes would make admirable grooms. Our best fare might be fresh eggs, it was true, but what signified our dinner compared with the advantages of a view of the lake, with the "Isle's tall trees;" of walking from the oubliettes to the torture chamber, and resting under the potence, and in Bonnivard's dungeon, a lodging of three chambers, looking on the lake, which we should hear "ripple night and day." We told her we would come in the spring, when we should have repassed the mountains, and she looked rather surprised and very much pleased at the sudden wandering of our senses.

Arrived at the stable, we were confirmed in our resolve, by seeing the gendarmes obeying orders; one holding a horse's head, another shaking a bough, in the places where we had left them, like the warriors in the Belle au Bois dormant. As I mounted Fanny, the chatelaine asked permission to touch my hand, and unaccustomed, I suppose, to see ladies on horseback, said it would be "amusant" to have us there; so we rode away.

Arrived on the brow of the hill, we looked down on the romantic castle, and my eye lighted on the chapel roof. "Dear me," said I, looking at D--, "the powder magazine!"

"Humph," said D--, looking down in turn.

"Is there any danger?"

"There might be;" and thereupon we both commenced enumerating all our memories held of powder mishaps; till at last I began to think I might fear to order dinner, from dread of some mischance in the chimney, and to ride Fanny, lest her shoes should strike fire against the stones of the court-yard. We talked the pour and the contre the whole way, and arrived at the most perfect indecision.

We had a splendid view of a stormy sunset, of golden lake and blackening mountains, and when we reached Vevay, night had completely closed, and we, who had never seen the road till that afternoon, were puzzled. Fanny was not so; she assumed her wisest manner, wound through the crooked streets, and stopped at the stable of the Trois Couronnes.

17th.

Rain all day, detaining us within doors; we hope to leave the 20th for Berne and Fribourg.

We walked this evening up the steep road which leads to the church of St. Martin, as its terrace has a view no one should fail to see before quitting Vevay. The church is simple and pretty, of the thirteenth century. Ludlow's monument, raised by his widow, is within it, built against the wall; Broughton's tombstone forms part of the pavement near. The former's memoirs, in which he so prides himself on his crime as regicide, were first published at Vevay, where he lived under the protection of the magistrates of Berne.

When William the Third ascended the throne, he returned to England, and to London, but finding it possible that he might still be held there in the light of an assassin, he thought it more prudent to return to Vevay. He was seventy-three when he died; his house is still shown, and the inscription he engraved above its doorway,

"Omne solum forti patria,"

was effaced but a short time since.

18th August.

We left Vevay late, taking the road which passes through Bulle to Fribourg, being counselled against that by Romont. Even this is far from a good one for horses, being for a considerable distance a painful succession of hills, paved and steep, but from which the views are beautiful, back to Vevay and the lake, and down the precipices to the valley, where the Vevayse flows between deep and wild banks.

Arrived at the Chatel St. Denis, with its old castle on the mound, we could observe the contrast between the Protestant and Catholic cantons, even between the habitations which lie on either side the frontier, scarce a stone's throw apart. This is the first village of the canton Fribourg, and for the first time we saw heaps of manure piled before the cottage doors, with the tame pig rooting in them. As it was a holiday, the peasants who passed us were in their gayest costume, the men with their full coloured waistcoat sleeves, the young girls with their hair braided across their brows, and the black riband dividing it from the enormous mass behind, for they wear their own tresses plaited over a foundation of wool, which gives them an unnatural bulk; but as they are commonly fresh and good-looking, not absolutely unbecoming. A few ancient ladies, dressed after this fashion, looked far less well. With all this attention to toilette, the poverty and dirt of the dwellings whence they issued was melancholy. They have here a character more entirely Swiss, as the lodging of the family and the cow stable are under the same roof, and the warmth of the cattle being necessary to the poor, to whom it often supplies the place of fuel, only the richer proprietors run a partition between. It is seldom that even the first few feet from the ground are built in stone. Fire, when it occurs, is awfully destructive, their roofs, chimneys, and walls all wood, and that intended for fuel piled against the planks outside, probably for the sake of warmth, as the wind whistles through every cranny.

The plain which extends from the top of the long hill to Bulle is covered with rich pasture, stretching thence up the mountains, and dotted with chalets.

It is a most picturesque town; the old brick building, with its high tower, and small turrets with pointed roofs, is the castle of Bulle, now the prefet's residence. The Cheval Blanc, where we stopped, is a good inn, and the view from the windows lovely, even in Switzerland. There was nearly opposite, a little to the left, the castle tower and its heavy walls, gilded by the sunset,-the road below, which wound on towards Gruyères; its cottages with their galleries and jutting roofs, and outside stair, advancing or retreating on either side, and between green trees, their background a mountain range, whose pine forests were blue in the distance; beyond a copse in the plain, (shining in the sun also,) the town and ancient castle of Gruyères crowned one hill to the right; a second rose abruptly behind it, wooded and in shadow; and stretching darkly and far away behind and beyond them, the mountains, which peak above peak shut in the valley of the Simmenthal.

While D-- was employed in superintending the evening comforts of Grizzle and Fanny, the good-natured fille d'auberge was my guide through the streets to the chapel of the Capucin convent, which has a strange altar, I think of gilt crockery, and a pulpit whose effect is peculiarly horrid, as out from it projects a solitary arm, in a Capucin sleeve, whose bony fingers hold a crucifix.

While our dinner was preparing, for nine o'clock to-night, (those who ride a journey keeping irregular hours,) D-- and myself strolled towards Gruyères, along the winding road as far as the wooden bridge which crosses the torrent of Trême, near the tower which bears the same name, and was an outpost of the lords of Gruyères. The castle is interesting from its age and extraordinary preservation.

The precise origin of the Comtes de Gruyères is unknown; but Müller says they were rich and powerful even in the eleventh century. The mountain which rises behind the castle is called La Tine, and the Saarine foams and roars among the dark pines of its defiles. Its early possessors depended for their revenues on agriculture only; their wars were with the wolves, and their proudest conquests the cultivation of a desert. The younger branches of their house owned as their inheritance the forest-castle of Mont Salvans, and a few mountain pastures: they lived in company of their knights among their herdsmen, and with a simplicity resembling theirs; and from the height on which their chateau of ?x still stands watched over and protected their vassals.

After the battle of Laupen, and when peace had ensued, the counts, impoverished by the wars, were constrained by their need to part with various rights and privileges. In 1341 Count Pierre mortgaged for ten years to the inhabitants of Gruyères the duties they were wont to pay on each head of cattle, those on forage, cheese, and butter, and also the receipt of the fines paid for crimes perpetrated in the forest. Three times at this period did Berne revive the feud with Gruyères.

The Count Pierre above-mentioned, deceased, left the administration in the hands of a namesake, whose connexions in the Simmenthal rendered him sufficiently powerful there to manifest the old hatred of his house to the seigneur of Weissenburg, citizen of Berne. The greater part of the Simmenthal was under the count's protection; but many of its farms and chateaux belonged to the lords of Weissenburg and others, having been built by their ancestry. Count Pierre of Gruyères marched against Weissenburg; Banneret Peter Wendschaz commanded the Bernese against him. At that spot of the Simmenthal there are heights which narrow the passage, and the Bernese, who had strayed to plunder cattle, received a sore punishment for their lack of foresight. The banneret himself, fighting with the courage of despair, surrounded and overpowered, collected his failing strength for a last effort, hurled the banner of the republic above the heads of his assailants, and died consoled, because it was unprofaned by the touch of a conqueror: the Bernese mournfully bore it within their walls.

The peasants of the Simmenthal enacted laws for their own territory; that on fines showing a chivalrous spirit which did them honour. As it was presumed that the offended might defend himself against a blow, the offender was fined one livre only; the man who uttered abuse was fined four, and he who falsely gave the lie in a judge's presence, ten livres, since it was considered most difficult to guard against slander and calumny.

Required by their allies of Fribourg to march with them against the sire of Grumingen, vassal of Gruyères, the Bernese gladly answered to the call, and seized on his castle, though he sued for peace. The count and his knightly companions were wont to pursue their chivalrous sports on the green meadows which stretch beneath the castle. The count's attendants had dispersed themselves in a wood not far distant, and in the copses which surround the Tour de Trême, when the men of Berne and Fribourg, with a force superior to his own, surprised the count himself in the oak-tree meadow. Pierre fought with the heroism of his antique race, but the numbers had well nigh overpowered him, when two of his vassals, Clarembold and Ulric Bras de fer, resolved to save him at all hazards, flung themselves before his person, favoured his retreat, and guarding the narrow defile through which he had passed, kept his enemies at bay, till the count, who had hastily sounded his war-note and gathered his scattered troop, spurred back to the charge, put the assailants to the rout, and many of them to the sword. To Clarembold and Bras de fer, who covered with blood hailed his reappearance and joined in his attack, he accorded privileges and franchises, which he extended to their posterity. Their memories are still honoured in their village of Villars sous Monts.

Soon after this, in 1349, ushered in by fearful earthquakes, broke out the plague described by Boccaccio, which desolated Europe and Asia. According to the general belief, a third of the population of Switzerland died; the churchyards were filled to overflowing, and the victims buried in unconsecrated ground, and without religious rites, which priests were wanting to perform; whole regions were left desert, and lordships abandoned and unclaimed by friend or foe. Struck with terror, men strove to avert the scourge by the various and horrid means prompted by fear and fanaticism. It was then that numerous travelling societies, the Flagellans, wandered from canton to canton, inflicting blows and torment on themselves, for the sins of the world. Where they passed, the excited people devoted to death a number of Jews, innocent of all crime; it is well known that at Kybourg, the more enlightened Duke Albert was forced against his will to deliver three hundred to the flames; that at Bale they were all driven into a wooden house, and burned with it; while at Constance and at Eslingen, in the synagogue, the despairing people inflicted death on themselves.

The vassals of Gruyères, unflinching in battle, attached and faithful to their lords, had obtained from them so many and important privileges, either as reward for their services, or in barter for the sums of money their necessities demanded, as to become almost as free as the most democratic states of Switzerland. But for their insatiable ambition, the counts of Gruyères might have been the happiest of mortals; but they looked from their tall towers on the height, less to rejoice in their possessions than to mourn that they saw their boundary. Not being kings themselves, they strove to find consolation in rendering themselves necessary to royalty; and they led their vassals from their flocks, and mountain pastures, and calm homes, to fight in foreign quarrels, and in climates so different from their own, that those sunk victims to the change who had been spared by the sword.

Count Michel of Gruyères, who died in 1570, was the last of his line. He was one of that brotherhood of La Cuiller, who quitted their own lands to ravage those of Geneva. He had commanded their army, forced many of his vassals to serve under their banner; and also sold yearly, and for several years, five hundred men to the French armies in Italy. They had rendered good service to the king of France, but Henry the Second, under various pretences, refused to pay the immense sums he owed to Gruyères; and Michel saw his country depopulated in vain, his debts accumulating, though he had received a large loan from his neighbours and sold his subjects a portion of his lordly privilege, till at last, persecuted by his creditors, and notwithstanding his carelessness of their welfare, mourned by his devoted vassals, he abandoned the inheritance of his fathers, which he saw before his eyes divided between the two cantons, and concealed his shame and sorrow in the castle of a relative in Burgundy, where he died poor and without an heir.

19th August.

So unwell this morning as to fear durance vile at the Cheval Blanc, but, being determined to go if possible, set off at three. I had hoped our road lay beneath Gruyères, but it led through the streets of the town, and thence for a considerable distance across rich meadows, their green pastures spotted with chalets; farther on they are divided by pine forests, the road skirting or passing through them, the sunshine reposing on their verdant glades, or playing among their old trunks, or excluded where these have been felled and supplied by multitudes of young stems crowded in nature's extravagance. The hedges were gay with wild pinks and woodbine, and on the sides of the road were strips of green and rivulets for Fanny's feet. We left on the right a gorge, through which the Saarine flows, commanded by a noble looking ruin. The peasantry here are almost German, and therefore perhaps a milder and more amiable race than the French or Genevese. They issued from their cottages and ran from their work in the fields to see us pass by, but always took off their hats and wished good evening. The clouds had threatened rain, but the wind, which whistled in the firs, blew it over us and left only a fine stormy sky above the mountains, partly hiding their white heads, while the sun was brilliant in the valley. As we passed the meadows where the cows were grazing, and the little cowherd lay almost hid in the clover, we thought of Lord Byron's praise of the bells; their tones, differing and harmonizing, tinkled sweet music. Nearer Fribourg is a fair view into the gorge from the road, which hangs over it where a sweep of the Saarine makes almost an island of a tract of pine grove, and a suspension bridge has been flung from the peninsula to the shore. An avenue of fine trees leads into Fribourg, of which the first view with its dim mountains and most golden valley, is more striking than that of any town I have seen as yet, from the magnitude of the mighty chasm, over whose very edge the houses seem to hang giddily high above the torrent, and the feudal watch-towers, which guarded once, and are still ranged along the winding of its opposite shore. The far famed bridge was not visible, but we could see that now in progress, crossing the gorge of the Gotteron, which issues from the Saarine. In its present and unfinished state it hangs in an awful curve over the abyss, like a thread for a fairy rope-dancer.

The avenue passed, the road becomes precipitous, and scarcely, on a dark night, safe we crossed a bridge, and rode beneath an ancient gate to enter the old town. The houses which line the streets, narrow and ill-paved, are curious and of great age, as are the quaint fountains; at the summit of whose gilt and painted columns figure grotesque saints and Virgins. After various windings we reached this hotel, the Zahringerhof, which should be chosen for its situation and view, as it is close to the bridge and built on the very edge of the chasm.

20th August.

Stayed at Fribourg, a cold day broken by hail-storms, and passed it in walking over the town and along the narrow valley of the Gotteron. Not far from the h?tel on the Place, and opposite the town hall, which is built on the site of the palace of Duke Berthhold, is the venerable lime-tree, planted, according to tradition, the 22nd June, 1476, the day of the battle of Morat.

The young soldier who brought the tidings was a native of Fribourg; he had been wounded in the conflict, and feeling he grew weaker as he approached the town from fatigue and loss of blood, and that his shout of victory waxed too feeble to be heard, he gathered a bough as he passed, and waved it over his head in token of rejoicing. Arrived at this place, where the townsmen were assembled, he faltered forth his news and sunk down to die. They planted on the very spot his lime-tree branch, and it lived and grew his monument, and is now so old, that the decaying branches are rested on the four stone pillars and wooden trellis-work which surround it; there is an express order to tie no animal near, but it is dying of extreme age, and will hardly outlive another winter.

Berthhold, duke of Zahringen, was imperial governor of Zurich, landgrave of Burgundy, and lieutentant of ?chtland and Lausanne. By his command ancient villages were surrounded by walls and free towns built, behind whose fortifications the peasants of the empire, who united themselves to the inhabitants, might rest in peace and security. The love of change, the hope of gain, but above all of liberty, quiet, and order, aided in peopling these towns. The duke, as hereditary governor, and because the high roads and bridges were everywhere property of the feudal lord, taxed each house, and levied a duty on all merchandise; and also, when a subject died without heirs, inherited a third of his possessions. The citizens were tried by twelve or twenty-four of their own body, presided, over by an "avoyer" elected yearly, and sentence pronounced in accordance with the facts proved by a sufficient number of witnesses. Each townsman was, during his life, master of his own property, and it fell to his widow in case of his demise. The whole town took care of the orphans. The feudal lord could neither force a man to become a citizen, nor prevent an inhabitant of his town from departing if so pleased him; but freemen and serfs sought therefore the more willingly within it a safeguard from the dangers consequent on dispersion; and the serfs were considered free if during the first year their master failed to claim them and prove their servitude by the affirmation of seven relatives. When the lord of the city required their presence, they were bound only to journey to a distance whence they might return to sleep in their own homes.

In the year 1178, Berthhold the Fourth, whose father and uncle had set the example of encouraging these establishments, chose the village built along the precipices of the Saarine, and founded his town of Fribourg partly on a territory belonging to the abbey of Payerne, but mostly on his own land, and with the aid and counsel of various barons. It became inhabited; boasting freedom, but certainly not equality, for the nobles, as yet unused to citizenship, kept the line of demarcation so strongly marked as even to fix on a separate place of burial, and, in consequence of this, six hundred years passed without so confounding distinctions, as to give one language to the town on the shore, and that on the crags above it-German being the dialect most in use among the inhabitants of the former, while their fellow-citizens spoke French only. This is no longer the case, but in 1794, when Müller wrote, many who lived in the one spot were unintelligible to the other.

Taking one of the steep streets, which is paved in steps as a stair, we walked to the massy roofed wooden bridge, across which the diligence to Berne travelled before the new one was built, the descent and ascent occupying about an hour. From between its heavy wooden work you have a good view of the suspension bridge, 174 feet above the bed of the torrent, and which, though so much longer than the Menai, for its length is 905 feet, appears of so much lighter construction; from this spot the Zahringen h?tel seems a real castle in the air. We crossed the Saarine, and turned to the left, and under an old archway of Duke Berthhold's time, which forms the entrance to the gorge of the Gotteron. It is a lonely and beautiful glen, sunk deep between wooded crags which barely allow room for a path way beside the stream, which bounds brightly on, flashing in the sun, while it turns the heavy wheels of rustic mills, as if glad of its own usefulness; and farther, where the valley is less narrow, winding through the small green meadow, and among the picturesque wooden cottages, as if seeking repose near those it has toiled for. In the spring, the quiet river becomes at times a destructive torrent, uprooting tree and dwelling. About Fribourg cretinism exists, and among the elder peasantry the goitre is common-we saw in the glen one poor idiot, who howled and gibbered as we went by.

Dined in company of a French family-the elder hope just issued from the Jesuits' college, a disagreeable specimen of their training, with large black hands and unpleasant habits. In the evening went to the cathedral, which in itself is only gaudy, but whose organ and organ player are most wonderful. Listening to the higher tones, it was difficult to persuade myself that I did not hear a chorus of sweet voices, and its "storm" did not resemble an earthly instrument touched by a mortal hand; it was like "nothing but thunder," and solemn and awful, as it rolled along the aisle's dusk in the evening.