Switzerland

“ With the glorious grandeur of these wondrous hills, rising and falling playfully around the main ranges, the marvellous tree growth, the delicate contrasts of the formidable peaks and the dainty, cultivated valleys, and the face of Nature everywhere absolutely unmarred, Switzerland could in no way compare. ”

“ He thought of his old nurse and her tales of the Alpine scenery, and of the knolls and vales of his own home. It is no wonder that the Swiss are free and brave and strong. The waterfalls, cliffs, and cloud-piercing mountains fill the soul with a sense of grandeur and glory which tends toward great deeds and fervent patriotism. Who can recall the eternal snows, the towering shafts of rock, the roaring caverns, and sweetest of blue lakes, without the most thrilling emotions! If there are any travellers upon whom the memory of Switzerland brings no such feelings, they are the exceptions. ”

“ With commercial and economic disadvantages difficult to overcome, it would appear the wiser policy for Switzerland to check the rapid transformation of the beautiful and the venerable into cheap and tasteless novelties, with their cast-iron uninterestingness. Nature has done all for Switzerland, from its pure and radiant air to its mountains, lakes, and wild flowers, which spring up as though Aphrodite were still there, “to sow them with her odorous feet.” ”

“ When you travel in German Switzerland you will see pastors preaching on giddy heights, standing on rocks or rustic pulpits of the trunks of trees. A few shepherds and cheese-makers, their leather caps in their hands, and women with their heads dressed up in the costume of the canton group themselves about in picturesque attitudes; the scenery is pretty, the pastures green, or the harvest just over, cascades to the road, and flocks with their bells ringing every note on the mountain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps no country in the world, certainly no district within such a small circuit, presents so many interesting objects to a traveller as Switzerland. Be he natural historian, and geologist, drawn by habit, feeling, and taste, to the contemplation of all that is grand, romantic, and picturesque in natural scenery, or attached to the study of man in that state, in which civilization and knowledge have brought with them the least intermixture of artifice, luxury, and dissoluteness--in Switzerland, he will find an ample and rich feast. ”

“ In a few days more I had reached the heart of Switzerland; but what a contrast had I experienced in passing from one country to the other! The whole of France, with the exception of my ever happy Loire, must surely be the most monotonous and unpicturesque tract of the whole continent; while Switzerland presents, at every turn, a combination [146] of the paradisaical and of terrific sterility. Smiling patriarchal pastures, walled in by granite mountains, frowning in eternal silence and solitude, save when thundering with the awful avalanche. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Switzerland has no small influence on the affairs of Europe, as well by its situation as by its warlike genius. There is much of history, but still more political anomaly, written in the very conglomerate map of Switzerland. It is a land of unfulfilled destiny. The eye traces its great water-courses into the most important countries of civilized Europe, and recognizes the lines down which potent influences, social and political, are to descend. ”

“ Barren and uninviting is the waste of politics in Switzerland at this period of our story, and it seemed as if the republic was quietly crumbling out of active existence. But the literary and scientific renaissance runs through it all like a fertilizing stream, and saves it from utter sterility. Feeble though it was politically, Switzerland yet produced on all sides men of mark in science, in literature, in philosophy. ”

“ How can a country like Switzerland, made up of so many scores of valleys each different in characteristic and each conditioning the inhabitants,—here making them taciturn, there gay and thoughtless, here again honest and religious, there sly and untrustworthy,—how can it have any real political unity? ”

“ No one can visit the lake, the rock, the fountains, the chapel, read the story painted on wall and tower, hear the local traditions in every man’s mouth, witness the annual festivals, study the history of Switzerland, and consider the character of its people, then think of Tell as a myth, more than he would say that Switzerland and all its heroic people have been a fable since Uri’s handful of patriots rid it of Gessler’s despotism. ”

“ As you walk across the little valley which stretches down from the hills to the lake where Brunnen is, you remember that it is the town of Schwyz you come to, where dwelt once the hardy, valorous little colony which gave its name to Switzerland,—famous in the annals of this stout-hearted mountain-land for the "peculiar fire" with which they have always fought for their ancient freedom,—worthy to leave their name, in lasting token of the service they did to their fellows and to mankind. ”

“ The sight of such a herd going up the mountain invariably reminds the old people of happy summers long gone by, and while sitting on the benches in front of their stone or wooden houses8 at twilight, they entertain the younger generation with reminiscences of the joyful past, and a regretful sigh always heaves their aged breasts when they finally mention the Golden Age of Switzerland.
According to tradition, this was the time when none of the mountains—not even the highest—were ever veiled in cold mists, or covered with ice and snow. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Switzerland is a “show country”—I am more and more struck with the bearings of that truth; and its use in the world is to reassure persons of a benevolent imagination when they begin to wish for the drudging millions a greater supply of elevating amusement. Here is amusement for a thousand years, and as elevating certainly as mountains three miles high can make it. I expect to live to see the summit of Monte Rosa heated by steam-tubes and adorned with a hotel setting three tables d’hôte a day. ”

“ Switzerland is indeed mighty; and its great mountains, its lakes and valleys, make us cry out, in truth, ‘Great is Thy firmament, O Lord, and wonderful the works of Thy hand!’ Martigny is a small village in the valley, where we are to spend the night. ”

“ I would gladly oblige you in this respect, for I myself long to go there; but I must beseech of you to have patience with me yet a moment, and to hear what I have to tell you about Switzerland, and you will then acknowledge that the contemplation of the life and condition of a Confederate State of high development, is not unnecessary for the forming a correct judgment on one which is strong, after such a state of development; in a word, the perfect knowledge of life in Switzerland affords an insight into the Italian question, in its deepest significance—the human. ”

“ Switzerland meanwhile is an unmitigated blessing, from the mountains down to the bread and butter and the beds. The people, the arrangements, the earth, the air and the sky, are satisfactory to a degree hard to imagine beforehand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Switzerland alone, with her institutions, maintains, like an everlasting flower, her place in the light of the sun.
“This is a remarkable fact, especially for those who understand Switzerland. Diverse races, languages, manners, the most dissimilar interests—it would be thought impossible to form a body-politic out of these varied nationalities. In the heart of the Alps, the people are the old Goths and Rhetians; on the plains the Allemanni; in the west Burgundians mingled with Romans. On the banks of the Aar the German tongue prevails, around Lake Leman the Romande. ”

“ But Switzerland itself is an exceptional country. It has no fair chance in the world as a nation; and so large a part of its surface is impracticable for the use of man, and it has become so great a resort for foreign tourists, they are expected to spend all the money they can afford in the works of art which the natives produce.
Walking out with a young German friend, who did not understand a word of the English language, I saw at a little distance an enclosure, neat gravel walks and shrubbery, with flowers showing through the iron railing that surrounded it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For many reasons, some of which are obvious to the least thoughtful, the history of Switzerland is peculiarly interesting, and not least so to English-speaking peoples. In the first place, the "playground of Europe" is every year visited by large numbers of British and Americans, some of whom indeed are familiar with almost every corner of it. Then to the Anglo-Saxon race the grand spectacle of a handful of freemen nobly struggling for and maintaining their freedom, often amidst enormous difficulties, and against appalling odds, cannot but be heart-stirring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”