F. Barham Zincke

“ When they are completely opened, a public, free, inexhaustible supply of the purest possible water will be the first care of every community, great and small; and drinking-fountains will, everywhere, offer an alternative to the gin-palace and public-house, and in winter as well as in summer.
To the reflecting mind, the overflowing sparkling fountains of the Swiss towns are very pleasing objects. So, too, to the natural eye, and ear, are the brawling stream in every valley, and the trickling rills on every hill-side. There is water, water, everywhere; and every drop to drink. ”

“ Yet the feeble community in the valley, by their stout hearts and virtuous lives, continue to make it smile on the frowning mountains. How pleasing to the eye and to the thought, is the sight! And what enhances the charm it possesses is the sense of its thorough naturalness. There is nothing artificial about it; and so there is nothing that can to the people themselves suggest discontent. Their condition, in every particular, is the direct result of the unobstructed working of natural causes, such as they exist in man himself, and in environing circumstances. ”

“ I take it for granted that, at this moment, land can be cultivated more productively, and more economically, comparing the amount of produce with the cost of producing it, in farms of about 1,000 acres each, cultivated highly, and by steam machinery, than in any other fashion. If it be so, then the system must force its way to general adoption; and to the looker-on, practically, no question remains uncertain but that of time. If he is satisfied that it is the natural system in the era of capital, he knows that, sooner or later, it must come. ”

“ As you look at one of these modern caravansaries, you are amused at thinking how precisely everything in it is the facsimile of all that you have seen in a score of others. The Swiss believe, and act, too, on the belief, that they have reduced hotel-keeping to an exact science; among them, therefore, in this matter, there cannot be any longer two opinions about the form of, or the way of doing, any one thing whatsoever. Everywhere the building itself appears arranged, externally and internally, on the same plan. Of an hotel, as of a five-pound note, there can be but one idea. ”

“ They have no idea of not getting their pennyworth for their penny. Their philanthropy, and their love of home, the unfailing and fruitful source of so many virtues, make them desirous of giving every chance to their children; and they are interested in, and proud of, and spend their money on, their schools for their children’s sake. All this is just as it should be. It is a very good thing for them; and, as far as it goes, it would be a very good thing for us, if we had the same system at work here. ”

“ As you come down the pass, you cannot but be surprised at the boldness, ingenuity, and perseverance of those who projected, and made it. And, perhaps, your surprise will be heightened when, on getting to the bottom, and looking up at the sheer precipice of some thousands of feet of hard rock, you find that you are unable to make out a trace of the path you have just been descending. A fissure in the perpendicular face of the mountain just made it conceivable that a series of zig-zags might be carried up to the top. ”

“ The knowledge of what produces the thunder and lightning, of the laws that govern the motions of the heavenly bodies, of what originates and calms the wind, of the forces of nature, of the structure of animals and plants, are so many instruments, by which the constant quantity, the human mind, is cultivated for greater productiveness. No one dreams that we have approached the end of such knowledge, any more than that our agriculture has reached its last advance. ”

“ There are, too, higher forms of industry of which nothing can be known here—the industry of those who live laborious days, and scorn delights, from the desire to improve man’s estate, to extort the secrets of nature for his benefit, to clear away obstacles which are hindering men from seeing the truth, to add to the intellectual wealth of the race, to smoothe the path of virtue, and make virtue itself appear more attractive. ”

“ The discipline of life, such as it is in the valley, has taught them—and a very valuable lesson it is—to bide their time.
Another virtue, which comes naturally to them, is honesty. The honesty of the valley appears to an Englishman unaccountable, Arcadian, fabulous. The ripe apples and the ripe plums hang over the road without a fence, for land is too precious for fences, and within reach of the hand of the passer-by ”

“ It will enforce what it teaches with irresistible power, because it will be acting on every member of the community in precisely the same way, throughout every day of the lives of all of them, generation after generation. Such teaching there is no possibility of withstanding. And what it teaches in this undeniable fashion,—undeniable because the virtues taught are to them the very conditions of existence,—are very far from being small moralities, for they are industry, prudence, patience, frugality, honesty.
Without industry their little plots of land could not support them ”

“ III. The distinguishing feature of the economical conditions of the present day, and of other conditions as far as they depend on those that are economical, is the existence of capital in the forms and proportions it has now assumed. This has modified, and is modifying, the life of all civilised communities. It is this that has built our great cities, that is peopling the new world, that has liberated the serfs of the Russian Empire. It leavens all we do, or say, or think. We are what we are, because of it. ”

“ Land will present itself to the minds of all as what it has really become; that is to say, as only one means among many for the support of life: the many others being the various forms in which capital works. The present subdivision, therefore, of the land will no longer be regarded as an obvious and undeniable necessity. It has, indeed, become only a secondary, and inferior means for supporting life. Those engaged in trade and commerce, it will be manifest, are many of them living much better lives than the petty proprietors. ”

“ The eye passes over the valley of the Rhone—that, however, is not yet visible—and rests on the long series of snowy peaks, which you know are the finials of the barrier ridges that separate Switzerland from Italy—the Michabel, the Weisshorn, the Matterhorn, the Dent d’Heréns, the Dent Blanche. ”

“ Our fellow men are the field in which He reveals to us the capacities and conditions; the strength, the weaknesses, the workings, and the aspirations of moral and of intellectual being, as conditioned in ourselves: another, and perhaps a higher, revelation of Himself; and the consciousness of which being in the individual constitutes, as far as we know, in this visible world of ours, the distinctive privilege of man; and the exercise of which, under the sense of responsibility, crowns the edifice of religion. ”

“ At Lauterbrunnen we put the blue boy on horseback, and began the ascent of the Wengern Alp. People go up this mountain for the purpose of getting the most accessible, nearest, and best view of the Jungfrau, Mönch, and Eiger. As you turn to the left to ascend the mountain, you regret that you are not going up the valley, which you see would lead you up among glaciers and snowy peaks; or that you are not taking the path to the right, which you see would carry you over, and above the Staubbach, and you know would give you grand views of the snow-world. ”

“ There is no knowledge so valuable as that of what is knowledge; nor any intellectual habit so valuable as that which disposes us in every thing to require knowledge, and to separate that which is knowledge from that which is not. Theoretically, there is no reason why either the study of language, or theology, should not be made a training for this knowledge, and for this habit. ”

“ As you trudge over the mountain, in the fresh morning air, accompanied by your guide and porter, and with your attention quickened to receive the impressions of the grandeur around you, which you know will hold a place among the most valued and abiding of your mental possessions, you feel as if you were really one of the lords of creation. This feeling would be a wee bit marred, if the eternal mountain had been presumptuously appropriated by some 125mortal molecule, for then you might be troubled with apprehensions of disturbing, or of being thought likely to disturb, his ibexes and chamois. ”

“ In such a population, the elements of life are so simple, so uniform, and so much on the surface, that there will be no difficulty in getting at the answers to our questions. There is not a single family that has the leisure needed for mental cultivation, or for any approximation to the embellishments of life. They each have just the amount of land which will enable them, with incessant labour, and much care and forethought, to keep themselves above absolute want. Subdivision might, possibly, in some cases be carried a little further, but things would then only become worse. ”

“ Attractive, then, as is the contemplation of the moral life of the inhabitants of the valley, it is not in every respect satisfactory. A higher level may be attained. After all, it is the moral life rather of an ant-hill, or of a bee-hive, than of this rich and complex world to which we belong. And even if it were somewhat more elevated than it is, still there would remain some who would be unable to accept it, as worthy of being retained without prospect of change or improvement; and their reason would be, that man does not live by, or for, morality only. ”

“ There is not such a great difference between the interest of money in France and in England, as to make the great bulk of the people of France desire, above all things, land, and the great bulk of the people of England quite indifferent about it, and even the few who have it in moderate extents desirous of getting rid of it. And, again, in the United States the interest of money is higher than it is here, and yet the ownership of land is regarded as the support, and its cultivation as the natural employment of, I suppose, four-fifths of the whole white population. ”