Swiss

“ Grandson, Morat, and Nancy stamped the Eidgenossen as the enfants gâtés of Europe, and as a nation of the highest military standing on the Continent, nay, even as an umpire in continental politics, and a guardian of the peace. Everybody lavished flattering praises on the prowess of the Swiss. Nation after nation made overtures to them—France foremost, Italy, the Pontiff, the Emperor, distant Hungary, and even England, this last desirous of breaking the French alliance. ”

“ This transition is clearly seen in the Swiss letters. In his first Swiss travels, 1775, he was only just free from Werther, and his mind was too agitated for quiet observation:
Hasten thee, Kronos!...
Over stock and stone let thy trot
Into life straightway lead....
Wide, high, glorious the view
Gazing round upon life,
While from mount unto mount
Hovers the spirit eterne,
Life eternal foreboding....
Far more significant and ripe--in fact, mature--are the letters in 1779, shewing, as they do, the attitude of a man of profound mind, in the prime of his life and time. ”

“ The Swiss, confident of success, and trusting in the help of God and the saints, as of old, drew up in battle order, their force taking a kind of wedge-shaped mass the shorter edge foremost and the bravest men occupying the front positions. The Austrians, on the other hand, relying proudly on the superiority of their high-born knights and nobles, looked disdainfully on what they believed to be a mere rabble of herdsmen. ”

“ I would not leave the impression, by the way, that the Swiss are invariably prosperous. Indeed, some of them along the lake must have been very poor just then, for the grape crop had failed two years in succession, and with many of them their vineyard is their all. But there was no outward destitution, no rags, no dirt, no begging. Whatever his privation, the Swiss does not wear his poverty on his sleeve.
Switzerland has two other official languages besides French—German and Italian. ”

“ She did not go back to Switzerland, because she very shortly married the precise young drygoods-clerk who wore the white cravat.
The Swiss are the most competent people on this globe of ours, which is round like an orange and slightly flattened at the poles. There is less illiteracy, less pauperism, less drunkenness, more general intelligence, more freedom in Switzerland than in any other country on earth. ”

“ Great was their surprise and consternation when at the junction of the Sursee and Hiltisrieden roads they came suddenly upon the Swiss force, which they had imagined to be idling away the time at Zurich. The steep hillsides crossed by brooks and hedges looked a battlefield impracticable enough for cavalry evolutions, yet the young nobles in high glee at the prospect of winning their spurs in such a spot pleaded for the place against the better reason of all men. ”

“ Switzerland has no climate, properly speaking, but an assemblage of every climate, from Italy to the Pole; the vine wild in its valleys, the ice eternal on its crags. The Swiss themselves are what we might have expected in persons dwelling in such a climate; they have no character. The sluggish nature of the air of the valleys has a malignant operation on the mind; and even the mountaineers, though generally shrewd and intellectual, have no perceptible nationality: they have no language, except a mixture of Italian and bad German; they have no peculiar turn of mind ”

“ INTO GERMANY THE little Republic of Switzerland, always one of the most interesting spots in the world, became during this war a most amazing and anomalous country. Completely surrounded by four great powers at war—and itself peopled by citizens each speaking the tongue of one or another of its neighbors and each allied by blood with one or with two or with three, or, perhaps, with all—the Swiss Confederation suffered a complex of passions, sympathies, and prejudices quite beyond possible parallel elsewhere. ”

“ Of course, the eye rests first upon the phalanx of snow-crests to the south, then down upon the lake, lying outstretched like some wriggling monster, switching its tail, and finally off to the many places where early Swiss history was made. In point of fact, you are looking at quite a large slice of Switzerland. Victor Hugo seized the meaning of this view when he wrote: "It is a serious hour, and full of meditations, when one has Switzerland thus under the eyes." ...
The physical features of a country have their counterparts in its political institutions. ”

“ And there is Switzerland always within reach. Happy mortals, who can reach the Alps within forty-eight hours, and with only a narrow, though proverbially nasty, bit of water to cross! But what we hope to gain from this upturning is to see you over here. When Mr. Horner returns (we have heard nothing since they vanished in the West) he will tell you it is no formidable matter even to cross the continent. At least you can come and see us, make us a long visit, and be as quiet here as in a Swiss wayside inn, and sally forth upon an excursion when you like. ”

“ Behold, then, what the Swiss have in common, from the Rhine to the Rhone, from Geneva to the wild valleys of ———.
“The annals of Switzerland have shown their vocation for independence.
“ ‘Helvetia,’ said our fathers, ‘is a confusion which God regulates.’ They taught us not to doubt God; their history, never to despair of our native land. The great nations subsist by their masses, we, by our faith and love. ”

“ The Swiss succumbed in the last unfortunate struggle, because the feeling of duty, the lofty faith in their country and its fortunes, had become chilled in the bosoms of the many, and because the democratical cantons thought of none but themselves. ”

“ There are few principles of action which are more immediately beneficial to society, and which have received more assiduous cultivation, than love of country. The Swiss regards his country with the tenderness of filial affection, and, like the undiscerning lover, fondly gazes without discrimination upon its beauties and its deformities.13 Enamored of their rocks, ice, and snow, they look on milder climates and more fruitful plains without one envious emotion. ”

“ Chapter XVII SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS
Now, when one has reached Switzerland, his inclination is not to go on traveling, for a time at least, but to linger and enjoy certain advantages. First, of course, there is the scenery; the lakes, the terraced hills, and the snow-capped mountains; the châteaux, chalets, and mossy villages; the old inns and brand-new, heaven-climbing hotels. And then Switzerland is the land of the three F's—French, Food, and Freedom, all attractive things. For Switzerland is the model republic, without graft and without greed ”

“ Nothing in the whole study of historical geography is more necessary than to root out the notion that there has always been a country of Switzerland, as there has always been a country of Germany, Gaul, or Italy. And it is no less needful to root out the notion that the Swiss of the original cantons in any way represent the Helvetii of Cæsar. ”

“ Then we shall be able to practise levitation. It will be perfectly easy, perfectly feasible to leap from one peak to another.”
I am sure I felt stirring within me the impulse to leap into the air with the certainty that I should land on top of the Jungfrau or of Mont Blanc. It was a cumulative attraction. Every day it grew more intense. I got from the library every book I could find about Switzerland. I soaked myself in Swiss history. I began to know Switzerland as familiarly as if I had already been there. ”

“ His own speeches showed an intimate acquaintance with Swiss matters, and whilst full of practical wisdom, also evidenced his real interest and sympathy with the little republic. He pointed out that Switzerland was quite unlike any other country in its history, its geographical position, in its inclusion of three nationalities and three tongues. The characteristics and the advancement of three nations had, in fact, to be considered and maintained. Nature itself had clearly intended that it should be a federal state. ”

“ Their nation is in a sense an artificial one. Its cementing bond is an hereditary instinct, nourished among the peasants of these mountain pastures, to keep the mountain slopes free.
The town life of the Swiss, affected a good deal as it must be by the hotel life of the tourists, is not so admirable as the village life. It is in some aspects irritatingly petty-minded; in others invitingly well-educated. The Swiss are interested only in the Swiss, and (in a strictly commercial way) the strangers who come to visit and enrich Switzerland. ”

“ Not only is the Swiss determined by the peculiarities of his geographical position to lead a pastoral life, but the climate, and mountain scenery, and bracing atmosphere inspire him with the love of liberty. ”

“ And though there are countless tourists who know the Swiss hotels and mountain railroads, numerous villa people well versed in the tennis and golf facilities of Montreux or Lucerne, and a goodly company of Alpinists who can tell you all about guides and ropes and the ascent of the Matterhorn, there never was anybody who got out of a Swiss summer precisely what we did, or who, in fact, knows our own particular private Switzerland at all. ”

“ Its columns are filled with long accounts of the doings of Swiss shooting clubs and gymnastic societies. Yet Swiss trading and professional people are, in the general rule, astonishingly well versed in foreign languages and foreign literature. Offering asylum as it does to political and social rebels of all countries, Switzerland is a kind of international clearing-house94 for thought. The Gallic, the Teutonic, the Slavonic new thought of the day—all are understood and discussed in Switzerland, and the Swiss book-shops are the most cosmopolitan and representative in the world. ”

“ But it is to be noted that all these exceptional cases were outside the limits of the Swiss Confederation up to 1798. Putting them aside, the physical geography of Switzerland may thus be described:—
1. On the south runs the main chain of the Alps (q.v.) which is joined, at the Mont Dolent (12,543 ft.) in the chain of Mont Blanc, by the lower ranges that rise south of the Lake of Geneva, and which continues partly Swiss till close to the Stelvio Pass on the east. ”

“ The history of a country often includes the history of many peoples, for history is a stage on which nations and peoples figure like individual characters, playing their parts and making their exits, others stepping into their places. And so the Swiss soil has been trodden by many possessors—Celts, Rhætians, Alamanni, Burgundians, Franks. ”

“ HERO OF SWITZERLAND WILLIAM TELL ADAPTED BY H.E. MARSHALL I GESSLER'S TYRANNY
Far away in the heart of Europe there lies a little country called Switzerland. It seems wonderful that when great and powerful kings and princes swept over the world, fighting and conquering, little Switzerland should not have been conquered and swallowed up by one or other of the great countries which lay around. But the Swiss have always been a brave and fearless people. ”

“ When one speaks of Switzerland one instinctively thinks of Mont Blanc, and it seems an unfair advantage which France has taken to keep possession of Savoy, which used to belong to Switzerland, and the crown of the Swiss Alps. History has made strange partitions of territories; but the more one sees of Switzerland [Pg 167] the more one wonders that it could have ever become a united country, composed as it is of isolated valleys, separated by lofty mountain-walls, intercommunicable only by treacherous passes. ”

“ Is it that the living among these stupendous surroundings has somehow dwarfed the people, or has Nature, by one of her inimitable contrasts, made the human part of Switzerland so insignificant in order to set off the vastness of peak and snowfield? Certainly the glib commonplace that national character is influenced and formed by national surroundings is here gloriously contradicted, since, as far as I am aware, no Swiss has ever attained to eminence in anything. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that in Switzerland about seventy per cent of the people speak German, twenty-three per cent, French, and seven per cent, Italian. Many of the German-speaking Swiss, of course, sympathise with Germany. ”

“ What the Swiss system, true to its object, sets itself to teach is the languages that will be useful in business, arithmetic, mathematics, the principles of the useful arts, and the elements of the sciences. All this is just what will enable the Swiss to get on in the careers that will be open to them. They are an intensely practical people ”

“ It has been my pleasure this summer to meet in social life among the Swiss some of the pleasantest, most intelligent, and agreeable women and men that will be found in any country. Their manners and minds, as well as their persons, would grace any assembly, and they appeared to be only the fitting representatives of the best circles of society in this remarkable land. ”

“ The Swiss peasants may not shine by brilliant qualities or seductive manners, but they are strongly framed, broad-chested, powerful, calm in countenance, frank and open in expression, with bright eyes, and largely sculptured features, but of rather heavy gait. ”

“ The history of French Switzerland has not yet been touched upon, and that for good reasons. It is difficult to realize that down even to the sixteenth century the French Swiss were still languishing under the ancient forms of feudalism, and this at a time when their German brethren had long been enjoying the blessings of national independence, and had filled the world with their military renown. But, in truth, the French were slow to awaken to republican freedom, and looked to East Switzerland rather than to themselves for deliverance from political bondage. ”