Government is, in general, favourable to emulation. The roads are badly kept up, and the country wants outlets, which might be easily procured.

The Government, with incredible indifference, has tolerated and even favoured the emigration of many families, which deprives the country of many of its most useful inhabitants. The Canton of Friburgh alone furnished nearly half the number of the Swiss, who emigrated from Switzerland, and established themselves in Brazil, and yet the want of population is, in no part of the Helvetic Confederation, more sensibly felt than in Friburgh.

According to our author, this agricultural and commercial langour arises from the want of a more extended public credit. The want of a Mortgage Bank deprives capitalists of all security in their speculations, and their funds either remain unemployed, or increase the prosperity of other Cantons, instead of enriching their own. This establishment has been several times proposed in the Council, and rejected by a timid majority.

It would, however, be unjust, says the author, not to acknowledge, that the Administration has, in some respects, improved the state of this Canton, and shewn a little more public spirit. The Opposition, which shows itself in the Little Council and among the citizens, may become useful to the Republic, in contributing to the creation of establishments, the very hope of which proves their importance. An example of this it has recently afforded, in the foundation of a Primary School. May it still continue to procure for its country new resources and knowledge, as the author judiciously observes; and may petty animosities be silenced by the voice of public gratitude!

The resources of the State of Friburgh are very few, and direct taxes are unknown. Every peasant enjoys the entire produce of the fields he has sown, and the vines he has planted. The resources of the Government consist in a few indirect and very small taxes, and these consist in duties on foreign productions, encouraged by an unshackled trade; in hunting-grants; in duties on timEur. Mag. Vol. 83.

ber and mutation; and this last has been nearly all redeemed.

With such few resources, the Government could not defray the most indispensable expenses, not even those for which the taxes are levied, without the aid of the revenues, arising from the public demesnes, which are entirely under the management of a Committee of Finance, established in the State Council; which has the care of this national property, and appoints the collectors of the public money, and defrays all State expenses, rendering an account to the Great Council.

Independently of these resources, the city of Friburgh has common property of its own; and its Municipal Council expends the revenue at their discretion, after having obtained the consent of the Council of State, and the approbation of the citizens, to whom, also, all the accounts are submitted.

The author here observes, that in all Switzerland there is not a city, town, or petty hamlet, that has not some common property, which is used for the general benefit. From this circumstance arises that spirit of union and independence which constitutes the prosperity of the Helvetic Republics. The common property of the city of Friburgh is very great: that of Neufchatel may be said to be immense; and these revenues are always employed for the public good. The building of the Primary School at Friburgh, and all the expenses of the establishment, have been defrayed out of the common property, without any aid from the Great or Little Council, except their consent.

The city of Friburgh has no other guard than one troop, of about a hundred men, taken from amongst the inhabitants, and paid by the State: about the same number of soldiers are stationed on the frontiers of the Republic; this is the only military force of a State which produces, perhaps, more soldiers than several of the Swiss Cantons united. The mountains of Gruyères, so renowned for cheese, are not less celebrated for the fine and vigorous race of men which inhabits them; nearly a third of the Swiss living in France are natives of these mountains.

2 Q

The boundary, that divides the Cantons of Friburgh and Berne, is nearly half way between the two capitals. Berne is a delightful city'; not so much in itself, as for its situation and the beautiful country which surrounds it. The city consists of one street of extreme length and proportionate width, with smaller streets crossing it at right angles. On both sides are rows of houses built on the same plan, raised upon large arcades, with a space between them and the public road, covered by porticoes, so that foot passengers are sheltered from the sun and rain: this advantage is obscured by the dulness resulting from the uniformity of such buildings, and their heavy and gothic appearance. A canal of fresh water flows through the middle of the streets, intercepted at regular distances by fountains, which are not, as is generally the case, vain and superfluous ornaments, but objects of utility, administering to the wants of a numerous population, and productive of general sa lubrity: so that, perhaps, there is no city in the world so clean as Berne. In general, the 'author judiciously remarks, the salutary luxury of fountains is no where greater, nor conducted with less expense than in Switzerland: the number of springs which run from the glaciers and mountains, furnish the natural means of distributing fresh water every where. Berne possesses few monuments adapted to flatter the pride of the citizens, or to excite the vain curiosity of travellers. The Cathe dral, a gothic edifice of the twelfth century, offers nothing remarkable, but that austere simplicity which pervades the city: the gates alone, originally built by the Duke of Zeringhen, founder of Berne, and rebuilt towards the middle of the last century, are quite in the modern taste: all the other edifices in Berne are impressed with the same character of public utility, and noble and severe simplicity: the buildings, containing specimens of natural history and the arts, are constructed with great solidity; which, however, does not altogether exclude elegance; the interior ornaments, especially, are of exquisite taste. The public library is not numerous, but is well chosen;

and the museum of natural history is rich in Swiss productions; almost all the Alpine quadrupeds, as well as minerals, are collected there; the author, nevertheless, thinks that the Parisian museum possesses a still larger quantity of these Helvetic wonders. The botanical garden, laid out some years ago by M. Wittenbach, will still less bear a comparison with the royal garden at Paris. Berne póssesses an academy, which was new modelled on a more extensive scale, at the beginning of the present century; M. Schoel is the professor of history and common law: theological studies are cultivated with great success; but the study of the belles lettres does not prevail much with the government or the people of Berne.

What most astonish and charm the traveller at Berne, and what are at the same time a constant source of novelty and enjoyment to its citizens, are the pleasant and magnificent public walks. The author gives a delightful description of them, to which we must refer our readers, confining ourselves to that called the Petit Bastion, which, in the evening, inspires a peculiar interest.

on .

In the large and deep ditches, which surround the eminence which the Petit Bastion is built, the Government has erected different machines to exercise the strength and agility of the young people. There the young Bernese gather together in groups, and employ the evening hours in active amusements and salutary exercise. Thus, in this Republic, a useful direction is given to infantine plays; the State providing amusement for the young, and pleasure for the old, with equal solicitude.

One thing only in the city of Berne displeased our author, because it presented a disgusting disparity to the general appearance of public prosperity: troops of male and female malefactors, yoked to a dungcart with iron chains, and employed from morning to night in clearing the streets from dirt. This afflicting spectacle of human degradation is particularly distressing amongst a free people. Is there, he adds, no other means of making them undergo the punishment due to their

crimes than in the heart of their metropolis?

The environs of Berne present some objects worthy of attention to the traveller, such as the celebrated tomb of Madame Langhans, of which the author gives a description. The author mentions the establishments of rural economy, founded by M. Fellenberg. Hofwil, the chief of these establishments, is not only a school for labourers, but their founder has united all the trades necessary to agriculture. The instruments of husbandry they make use of, most of which were invented by the founder, and amongst them a drillplough of easy and simple mechanism, which he ploughed his land with, are manufactured in their own shops. The population of Hofwil increases every day; and in a few years M. Fellenberg's establishment will be a flourishing village. An inn has been built in the neighbour hood; and, though very large, it will scarcely hold the strangers whom the reputation of M. Fellenberg attracts. Thus the industry of one man has changed entirely the face of the country. Hofwil also contains a school upon an extensive and methodical plan; there are at pre

sent a hundred boarders, most of them of the first families in Germany, Russia, and England. Thirty-five professors are attached to this school, who, in the midst of a desolate country, and a soil formerly quite uncultivated, enjoy all the pleasures an opulent city could afford. But what is still more honourable to the heart and learning of M. Fellenberg is, a free agricultural school, where thirty orphans, from the age of five years, are taken from the lowest class of people and receive an elementary and practical education, calculated to make them honest men, and excellent farmers. The quadriennial division of arable lands, and other methods adopted by M. Fellenberg, have met with many obstacles, and may, observes the author, be liable to some inconveniences; but the voice of critics, must be silent before the benedictions of the poor. M. Fellenberg has not introduced the system of mutual instruction into either of his schools; and though endowed with an inventive genius, which induced him to reform the system of rural economy, he makes innovations in nothing but agricul

ture.

(To be concluded in our next.)

::

WHETHER the souls of the departed can visit the living has been long a matter of doubt and dispute; yet the universality of the opinion seems, in some degree, to countenance it. There is a strange longing in human nature after the fearful and terrible secrets of the grave, that would fain acquire knowledge of the state we are hereafter doomed to be placed in that this curiosity should be damped with fear is not to be wondered at. The feeling of dim horror that must accompany any communication with a being, which we know to have been once as ourselves, but of which we know nothing either as to its nature, its power, or its intent: the idea of corruption, of fear, of mystery, and terror which is associated with such thoughts, lend intensity to horror, and clothe even the loathsomeness of the charnel-house in more hideous apparelling; the idea of which is abhorrence, the reality distraction. I value not the ridiculous stories and feigned proofs of Glavil, and such writers; but the doubting of such a man as Johnson may shield from contempt another, who may believe in such appear

ances.

:

My health had been greatly injured by my last adventure in the mountain; indeed so much, that I expected not, and scarce hoped to recover; the fierce, ardent spirit of Raymond was at length quelled but I longed once more ere I closed my mortal career, to view again my native Zetland: when once I had thought of this, my mind was like an electric flash darting from one object to another; all things assumed a brighter and more favorable appearance, and my heart yearned and panted for the hour when I should behold, shrouded in all its misty glory, the land of wind and storm.

Shakspeare.

As I lay on my couch, in a small Dominican Convent at Naples, to which I had been conveyed through the burning ashes of the volcano, by a poor brother of that order, I dreamed of home and of happiness; I fancied myself once more listening to the mighty weltering of the ocean, as it dashed its huge waves in defiance against the rocks of my native shore; I heard again the war of that tremendous night-wind that appals the heart of every Zetlander, as he cowers shuddering in his small habitation; deeming that the terrible king of storms is abroad, shaking his all-covering wings: and I thought I was again scaling the dizzy steps I have so often trod in quest of the eggs of sea-fowl; and beheld, from the rustling precipice, the eternal lashing and rushing of the boiling sea beneath. Terrific as these visions were in themselves, my heart felt gladdened in the idea that I was treading no foreign strand; and that if I perished, the breeze that gave life to my brethren, would receive my latest sigh.

As I passed through one of the great piazzas or squares of the city,

met my friend Rudolph Feldspar, of the Mermaid, who seemed delighted and surprised to see me; but, greatly grieved to perceive the wonderful change that the harassing cares of my wild life had made upon my constitution, I informed him of my strange adventures, and expressed to him the great desire I had to re-visit Zetland; he said that he himself was about to sail almost immediately for England, and thence, after some slight preparation, he should direct his course homeward. "But perhaps," said he," you will join me;" and as he spoke, he advanced towards me, and taking my arm we proceeded onwards.

"You