augment his stock, but often became himself the purchaser of land. Sufficiently an egotist to take every possible advantage of circumstances, at the same time that he disbursed his rent in paper, he sold his corn only for money; while the starving proprietor of land was compelled, like Belvidera, "to part with the ancient ornament of massy plate" to buy the wheat which grew on his own ground for the support of himself and family. With the return of money, the landlord, indeed, has been secured from poverty, by receiving his revenue in solid coin; which the farmers, immensely enriched by the reign of paper, are well enabled to pay. They at present form a bold, independent class of yeomanry, a class till now unknown in this country; and their once bare-legged wives and daughters proudly display their white stockings, rich-laced caps, shining pendants, and golden crosses, which, in the country, still continue to be worn as a badge of their faith, as well as a decoration of their persons. What is remarkable enough in this celebrated land of freedom, where the poet tells us, that

Even the peasant boasts his rights to scan,

"And learns to venerate himself as man,"

all the peasantry in the canton of Basil, with only the exception of the little town Liestal, which enjoys a few municipal privileges, are literally serfs, and annexed to the soil. In the feudal times, these people, who belong to their respective chief, were successively sold, with the possession on which they were found, to the city of Basil, then an imperial city. These gothic prerogatives, however, have long since been prudently thrown into the back ground, and are now less likely than ever to be revived, at the distance of half a mile from the shouts of equality, fraternity, and the rights of man.

In speaking of Basil, I should have obeserved the impropriety of drawing lots to fill up the vacant seats at the university. Those superior endowments of mind, which give the right of presiding over the researches of seience, are in all ages and nations dispens

ed with parsimony, and at Basil are probably, for the most part, dispensed in vain; since, no doubt, chance often bids dulness mount the throne, while black-balled genius "wastes its talents on the desert air." Of this there is a remarkable instance on the records of the university, where those ornaments of their country, the illustrious mathematicians, the Bernouillis, who would have been the ornaments of any country, after frequent rejections of black-balls, obtained at length the chairs of professors of rhetoric and Botany.

It may, indeed, be now alleged, in justification of this practice, that there is little to teach since there are few to learn the colleges are without pupils, and the professorships are merely sinecures. Yet Basil was once the centre of science, the chosen residence of the great Erasmus, and possessed an university, the professors of which were composed of the most enlightened men of the age, and on which the Eulers and Bohmens conferred celebrity: and we are told by Mr. Cox, that he found shop-keepers in this city reading Virgil, Horace, and Plutarch; from which he was, no doubt, well authorized to draw his conclusion, that there is no country in the world where the people are so happy. But whatever were the halcyon days of taste and learning at the period of Mr. Cox's visit, it is a melancholy fact, that this literary spirit has entirely evaporated since his departure. These lettered triumphs, the "tales of other times," are buried in tenfold gloom : the Swiss themselves admit, that Basil is the Boeotia of their country; and Horace, Virgil, and Plutarch, are now in general disrepute, not only among shop-keepers, but even among the wholesale dealers of this once classic city.

Science is in few countries the certain road to wealth, but the modern rulers of Basil seem to have determined, that it shall there be the sure path to poverty; since, while those citizens, whose knowledge extends only to the rules of arithmetic, who read nothing but their ledgers and understand nothing but the course of exchange, enjoy all the lavish luxuries of affluence, the

illfated wight, whom the love of learning, or the impulse of genius, leads to the professorship of a college, is forced to content himself with that narrow stipend, which, instead of keeping pace with the increase of wealth, remains, amidst its flowing tide, an antique monument of the few and simple wants of early times.

But to have annexed poverty to letters, appears not to have been thought sufficient by that portion of the praise-worthy Helvetic body, which presides over the destinies of Basil. They have stamped a mark of disgrace on the brow of science; and whilst the tailor, the fisherman, the shoe-maker, the boatman, all men but the men of letters, can assert their claims, as burghers, to the public honours and dignities of the state"And saving ignorance enthrones by law;"

the professors of the university are excluded. Genius is treated like other strangers in the city of Basil, and refused all participation in the rights and immunities of its privileged burghers.

Even here, however, we find a chosen few who have not bowed the knee to Baal, and who cultivate letters with the ardor of elegant minds; but their number is not sufficient to save their city from reproach; and those accomplished exceptions only serve to establish the general rule, as a solitary flower on a desert heath reminds the traveller of the surrounding barrenness. MISS WILLIAMS.

SECT. CXVI.

ALTORF-WILLIAM TELL-ASCENT TO ST. GOTHARD.

NOTWITHSTANDING our impatience to climb St. Gothard, it would have been unpardonable not to have passed a few hours in contemplating the most remarkable objects at Altorf, the capital of Uri, and the laurelled cradle of the Helvetic confederation.

Two hundred years since, the tree yet stood erect in the market place, to which the son of William Tell was bound. On this sacred spot, is built a kind of painted tower; and at some little distance, where it

is said the father stood, when he shot the apple from nis son's head, a public fountain is erected, called Tell's fountain; on which is placed the frowning statue of this generous deliverer of his country. There must surely be some defect in the heart which feels no enthusiastic glow, while we tread over the spots where those heroes have trod, who have struggled for the liberties of mankind, or bled for their rights. Yet one of that everlasting race of doubters, who wage an eternal war with all those sublime traditions, those heroic sacrifices, and those deeds of greatness, which it is delightful to believe, has destroyed, with a touch of his sterile pen, all the bright images with which imagination peoples this scene of marvels, by asserting, in a treatise published thirty years ago at Berne, that all the romantic feats of William Tell were, in far remoter times, performed by Toko, a Dane, against Harold, a king of Denmark, in the tenth century. This cold enquirer was probably not aware of all the disagreeable sensations which would be felt by enthusiastic travellers, who had been worshipping the statue of Tell, when they were informed that their homage should be addressed to Toko. It is, indeed, pretended that there is an unfortunate co-incidence of circumstances in the narration of the Danish historians, with respect to the shooting at the apple, and the speech made to the tyrant. The sovereign council of Berne, however, ordered the book to be burnt; and I feel much inclined to excuse this coercive measure of those puissant lords, since I cannot but share their resentment. Tell, is in England, as well as Switzerland, the hero of our infancy; the marvellous tale of the apple is one of our earliest lessons: and who can endure to give to Toko those trophies, which he has been taught from childhood, were the rights of Tell? The only circumstance in the Saxon's favour, or rather that of the author who cites him, is the modesty with which he delivers his doubts had he lived in our days, he would, perhaps, have allegorised William Tell and Toko himself, with as little ceremony as M. Dupuis, and his less

learned pupils in infidelity, have allegorised the most sacred characters of antiquity. The fantastic speculations of these later Pyrrhonists have indeed been treated with more severity than the fable of the historian. The political infallibility of a sovereign council may perhaps be arraigned, and Rousseau suggests that burning is not answering;" but who shall raise up the whimsical tribe of allegorists, crushed beneath the logical wit of the philosophical believer.

After leaving Altorf, we journeyed along a valley of three leagues, through which the Reuss flows with the ordinary rapidity of a Swiss river.

About six miles from Altorf, we passed by a chapel in a meadow; the façade of which was decorated with a highly coloured painting, representing a stag-hunt, which appeared to be a singular ornament for a place of religious worship. We found upon inquiry, that this meadow was one of the places of general assembly, that it was called the Jag-mat, or hunting meadow; and that, on the day of St. Mark, the whole country march to this chapel in procession.

The rocks, clothed at intervals with trees of various sorts, rose high and steep on each side of the valley, which wore a fertile and smiling appearance till we came to the village of Stag; above which the Alps first lift their majestic heads. Here we began to ascend that mass of mountains, which is rather the base than the mountain itself of St. Gothard. The road suddenly becomes so steep, that it required at first some address to keep a seat on horse-back. The river, which glided gently through the valley on its expanded bed, being now hemmed in by rocks, begins to struggle for its passage at a profound depth. The pine-clad hills rose on each side to our farthest ken, down which torrent streams were rushing, and crossed our way to mingle themselves with the Reuss, which continually presented new scenes of wonder. The mountains seemed to close upon us as we advanced sometimes but just space enough was left to admit the passage of the river foaming through the rocks, which seem obstinate