likely to die before a priest can be sent for, the baptism performed by a layman was preferable to that by midwives ?"

This ridiculous inquiry led to discussions of great moment. The reformed ministers refused to acknowledge any authority but that of the Holy Scriptures, while the Catholics considered the writings of the Fathers and decrees of the church as infallible; each party, thus regarding every point through a different medium, could not be prevailed on to adopt the arguments of its antagonist; and the dispute lasted seven days with little prospect of any satisfactory conclusion. A system of accommodation, however, at length ended the matter. The deputies decided, that in cases of extreme necessity, where no priest was present, either a layman or the midwives might baptize, that the former was preferable to the latter; but, what was of the greatest consequence, they inculcated, that in regard to the other controverted points of faith debated in the course of this argument, every person might safely hold that doctrine which from full conviction he was persuaded to be accordant with the word of God. This conference was productive of the most beneficial effects; for the people, who flocked thither in great numbers, were taught to consider the Holy Scriptures as the only authority in controverted questions; and within the space of twenty years, the Reformation was completely established throughout Engadine.

To return to Huldric Campel. He not only approved his father's conduct in the affair of his daughter's baptism, but became a zealous proselyte to the new doctrines. Having entered into holy orders, he undertook the care of a reformed church in the valley of the Pretigau, where he was indefatigable in the performance of his duty and the propagation of the Protestant religion. In 1550 he was drawn to Suss by the friends of the Reformation, as a person the most qualified to combat the Roman Catholic church. His labours were attended with such success, that a short time after his appearance in his native place, mass was abolished, and the Reformation publicly adopted. Nor was Suss the sole theatre of his exertions; at Cernetz, and several other places, the persuasion of his eloquence, and the force of his arguments, gained a numerous train of converts.

He passed the decline of his life at Schlins, where he was pastor, and persevered to the last period of his existence in disseminating and defending the doctrines of the reformed churches, as ably by his eloquence as he recommended them by his example. Amidst the occupation of religious duties, he found leisure to continue his history of the Grisons to 1580. He died the following year at Schlins, in an extreme old age, leaving a name highly respectable in the religious and literary annals of his country.

The road from Cernetz to Scuol is a continual ascent and descent. The small plain of Cernetz soon ends, and is succeeded by a rude assemblage of rocks and forests. Suss is situated in a narrow pass between the river Inn and a contiguous ridge of rocks a little beneath the ruins of an old castle; close to it is a small fertile plain, which agreeably diversifies the wildness of the rocks and forests.

In the whole of the Engadine, the land belongs to the peasantry, who, like the inhabitants of every other place where this state of things exists, vary greatly in the extent of their possessions. If a peasant owns from eight to fifteen cows, and land sufficient for their support, as well as for growing what is consumed in his own family, he is esteemed in good circumstances. He consumes whatever part of the produce of his dairy is needed at home; and he sells the surplus, chiefly the cheese, which he keeps till the arrival of the travelling merchant, who buys it for exportation. Generally speaking, an Engadine peasant lives entirely upon the produce of his land, with the exception of the few articles of foreign growth required in his family, such as coffee, sugar, and wine. These he finds at the house of the innkeeper, who, in the Engadine, is always a retail dealer in such articles; for there is not a shop of any description in the Lower Engadine, and only one or two in the Upper Engadine. The peasant has his

own cheese, butter, milk, eggs; and kills a pig or a cow occasionally, if he can afford this, keeping a part of it fresh, selling a little to those who are not rich enough to kill any of their stock, and salting the rest for the use of his family.

There cannot be said to be any regular markets throughout the Engadine, so that it is difficult to say what is the value of the different articles of subsistence. There is no occasion for markets, because it is nobody's interest either to sell or to buy. Sometimes, however, meat is offered for sale in small quantities; and sometimes an over-abundant, or a scanty supply of the articles of the dairy, tempts some one to sell, and forces others. to buy. Wine is at all times moderate in price throughout the Engadine, and good in quality. Of course none is grown there; it is all imported from the Valteline. The Grison of the Engadine is supplied from his own property with flax, which is grown, prepared, spun, and woven without ever leaving his house. He has, also, his own wool, which is converted into a blue coat, without passing through the hands of either the dyer or the tailor: the latter vocation is invariably exercised by the females of the house. The people set a high value on their own advantages. "How can we be otherwise than

happy and contented," said they to a traveller, "when we have ample means of living, and are dependent upon nobody for the least portion of that which contributes to our case ?" This he admitted was much; and when he hinted at the want of society, and the rigour of a nine months' winter, they made light of the latter, and immediately began to put him right in the view he took of their society. They assured him, that in winter no place was gayer than the Engadine. They said they had balls and parties every week, at which they danced merrily and long, drank freely of the good wine of the Valteline, and ate of the excellent pastry for which the Grisons have attained so high a reputation. They admitted that their winter was indeed long and rigorous; but then, of what consequence was this, when plenty of wood was to be had for nothing? Such is, in truth, the privileges enjoyed by the villages of the Engadine. Every village has a certain mountain limit, within which all the wood is free, and may be cut down and carried away by any one who chooses to take that trouble. A privilege like this, doubtless, smoothes the severities of a rigorous winter.

Conway saw this part of the country under the most favourable circumstances: "It is certain," he says, "that I found every one contented; and in the Engadine, nothing more need be desired. It is not, indeed, in all cases a proof that a people enjoy

the greatest possible happiness, merely because we find them contented with their condition. Ignorance and superstition may make a people contented with slavery. Of this we have, unfortunately, examples among the European nations. Sloth, and a low state of moral feeling, may render men contented with beggary and wretchedness, in a land the most favoured, where plenty might reign, and luxury revel: but the Engadine is not so situated; and in place of grieving, as the patriot or the philanthropist may, at the spectacle of contentment, where contentment is indicative but of degradation, this general contentment among the Grisons of the Engadine is not to be deplored, for there is neither ignorance nor superstition, beggary nor wretchedness among them; and the Engadine is not a country where discontent could produce any advantage to its inhabitants, because nothing can change their condition. The country is incapable of greater cultivation than it has received. All has been done for it that industry and an extreme love of gain can devise. Wherever an ear of rye will ripen, there it is to be found. But in a country lying three and six thousand feet above the level of the sea (and this applies to the bottom of the valley, not to the mountain sides, which are greatly more elevated), industry wages an equal war against the elements. Summer does not begin till June, and ends early in September; and even during its continuance, the diligently cultured fields are often laid waste by a desolating storm of hail, or entirely swept away by the resist less torrents that descend from the mountains."

The road to Ardetz follows the course of the Inn, which murmurs below in a deep narrow channel, heard but not seen, "From Ardetz (over which hangs, upon a lofty rock, a ruined castle called Steinberg) I descended," says Coxe, "along a very steep craggy path to the river Inn, which I crossed, and mounted a rapid ascent, leaving on my right hand the valley of Scharla, in which there are silver mines belonging to the House of Austria. They were formerly very rich, and yielded a considerable advantage, but are now exhausted. I passed through the straggling village of Trasp, and close to a castle of the same name, situated upon the highest point of a perpendicular rock. Count Dietrichstein, as lord of the castle, is a prince of the German empire; it was given to his family by the emperor Leopold, on condition that its possessor should always vote in the dict of the empire for the House of Austria. The formality of a garrison is maintained in this castle by a single Austrian soldier.”

A very lofty chain of mountains, called the Bernina, separates the valleys of the Engadine and of Bregaglia, on the north, from Valteline on the south. They are of various elevations. They are crossed by several arduous paths, but the most frequente:l is the Bernina pass. "It is a wide path," Murray says, "practicable at its two extremities for cars, and traversed annually by seven hundred or eight hundred mules."

It is a truly pleasing incident of travel, when enjoying the scenery of such a land as that we are now about to leave, we are associated with those who sympathise with our feelings, and heartily respond to our expressions of delight. But to prevent frequent disappointment, it is well to remember, that many seem to go abroad for no such purpose: to say they have been at any place of which they hear, or they think it desirable to mention, appears to be their chief object, and only associated with another, whose claims must not, on any account, be set aside. Many a traveller might have sat for the picture which Mr. Noel has very vividly sketched :-

"On board a certain steam-boat, a traveller, while we were dining at the table d'hote, paced the deck with apparent indifference to the entertainment; but nothing was farther from his thoughts; his sagacious eye was marking some dishes which experience or an intuitive knowledge of good cooking led him to regard as promising. His choice being made, he waited patiently till the bustle of twenty voices vociferating garçon, and five or six waiters, with the rapidity of lightning, flying from point to point, had subsided into the loquacious contentment which marks that a large company have dispatched a good

dinner. And now his turn was come. The day being fine, and the scenery beautiful, every one was on deck, and the Englishman was almost as solitary in the cabin as Virgil's bird upon the sea-shore, which

"Sola in siccà secum spatiatur arenă.'

But the Englishman did not mean to waste his time by strutting like the bird: the air had made his appetite keen; a purple rotundity of visage marked that he was not indifferent to good cheer, and he was there for nothing else than to feed. There was remarkable deliberation and order in the proceedings; which were thus opened :"Waiter, garçon, bring me some dinner: comprenez:'

"Very well, sir.'

66 6

Cutlets, pommes de terre au maitre d'hotel, and sliced carrots.'

"In a short time the cloth was laid, and the napkin was on his knee, three dishes smoked under his nose, and his plate before him invited him to action. But before the waiter could retire, he exclaimed, 'Bring three plates.' The waiter stared. Trois assiettes, I say.' The waiter was confounded: what could he mean? Upon which the Englishman, seeing that neither his English nor his French was understood, rushed to the steward's room, seized three plates, returned to his table, followed by the waiter, whose imagination was completely baffled by this rapid movement, and, placing the three plates upon the three dishes, exclaimed, Comme ç'a; voila.'

"There was still another preliminary to be settled.

His eye glanced

"What wine, sir?' said the waiter, putting the list into his hands. over it with contempt. The most costly Burgundy, champagne mousseux, the Johannisberg, and the Hockheim solicited his palate in vain; and he replied, bottle of porter?'

"What, sir?'

“Have-you-got-a-bottle-o-porter, I say? Comprenez ?'

Have you got a

"Alas! the waiter did not comprehend one word that he said; but happily, it being a time of profound repose in the vessel, a second waiter was at hand, to whom the question was repeated.

"Why do you deceive people by putting it in the carte? Bring a bottle of ale, then. Comprenez?'

"After this the Englishman, lifting up the cover of each dish for a moment, took from it some of its smoking contents, and then closed it again as carefully as a miser would relock his hoard. Just then the waiter re-appeared with the bottle; and was in the act of inserting the corkscrew, when the Englishman, starting up, exclaimed with energetic indignation, If you draw it, I will not pay you one farthing. Comprenez If his words were unintelligible, the waiter could understand the deepening claret of his check, and the keen sparkle of his eye, and was arrested in a moment; when the other, snatching the bottle, and placing it still corked by his side, muttered something about spoiling the thing altogether.' But now his energy and decision had triumphed; and I left him in his spacious cabin, with plenty of time before him, with his hot dishes within reach, and his ale ready to foam at his command, beginning to replenish the interior void with a profound contentment, which the fine scenery through which we were rapidly gliding could not for a moment disturb."

CHAPTER XXXV.

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE-ARTS AND MANUFACTURES-FINE ARTS-INSTITUTIONS

RELIGION.

Ir is desirable, before we proceed to the north of Italy, that we should now dwell briefly on the condition of the people of Switzerland; and more particularly on those circumstances which, as yet, we have only too slightly touched, or altogether passed over. This will, therefore, be our present purpose.

Switzerland is a country of various races, and this circumstance, as well as the difference of situation and climate, and of institutions, language, and religion, contribute to give distinct moral features to the various parts of the population. Generally speaking, the western Swiss bear a certain affinity to their French neighbours of Burgundy and Franche Comté, being like them, chiefly descended from the Burgundians, whose kingdom extended on both sides of the Jura; while the eastern and northern Swis resemble their German neighbours of Suabia and Tyrol. The inhabitants of the central Alpine cantons have peculiar features, physical as well as moral, and they have remained more unmixed from foreign irruptions and immigrations than the rest.

According to Olivier, a Swiss contemporary writer, the inhabitant of the Alps is strongly attached to his native locality, firm and tenacious even to obstinacy, proud and single-minded; his feelings are deep and energetic; he is prone to enthusiasm, and to a kind of poetical abstraction. The inhabitant of the regions of the Jura is more civilised, more developed, more industrious, more progressive. In politics, liberty in the Jura is of the modern kind, the offspring of reasoning and of speculation; in the Alps it is a natural and individual sentiment.

The Swiss are generally fond of their country, and feel proud of being Swiss. Amongst all, both in the mountains and the plains, may be observed a frank, bold bearing and gait, and a freedom of sentiment which proclaim them as citizens of a free country. There is also a love of domestic comfort, propriety, and of the decencies of life among all classes, and in a greater degree than is found among the corresponding orders in France or Italy. The differences in the appearance of the country and the houses, the superior cleanliness, tidiness, and care, forcibly strike the traveller who crosses the Jura or the Alps into Switzerland. The feeling of order, the habit of reasoning and discriminating, the steady, slow perseverance, the disposition to grave and serious thoughts, the shrewdness and humour, distinct from cunning and wit-all which are qualities generally characteristic of the Teutonic nations-have been regarded as belonging in great measure also to the Swiss, who are for the most part descended from Teutonic races.

In the western part of Savoy the people are chiefly employed in agriculture, but in the great valleys, the principal of which are Faucigny, Tarentaise, and Maurienne, the rearing of cattle is the chief resource of the inhabitants.

Besides the nobility, which is numerous but not rich, there are three classes of people in Savoy. The first class consists of bourgeois, or citizens, who are freemen of the