may possibly, in some cases, impress a distinguishing mark on the countenance; but that a certain cast of features constantly denotes certain passions, and that by contemplating the countenance we can infallibly discover also the mental qualities, is an hypothesis liable to so many exceptions, as render it impossible to establish a general and uniform system. Nevertheless, Mr. Lavater, like a true enthusiast, carries his theory much further for he not only pretends to discover the character and passions by the features, by the complexion, by the form of the head, and by the motion of the arms, but he also draws some inferences of the same kind even from the hand-writing. And indeed his system is formed upon such universal principles, that he applies the same rules to all animated nature, extending them, not only to brutes, but even to insects. That the temper of a horse may be discovered by its countenance, will not, perhaps, strike you as absurd; but did you ever hear before that any quality could be inferred from the physiognomy of a bee, an ant, or a cockchafer? While I give my opinion thus freely concerning Mr. Lavater's notions, you will readily perceive that I am not one of those who are initiated into the mysteries of his art.

"Mr. Lavater has not merely confined himself to physiognomy. He has composed sacred hymns and national songs, which are much esteemed for their simplicity. He has also given to the public numerous works on sacred subjects. I am concerned to add, that the ingenious author extends to religion the same enthusiasm which he has employed in his researches on physiognomy, and in his poetical compositions; the warmth of his imagination hurries him on to adopt whatever is most fanciful and extraordinary; to outstep the limits of sober reason; to be an advocate for the efficacy of absolute faith; for inward illuminations; for supernatural visions; and for the miraculous effects of what is called animal magnetism in the cure of disorders.

"The insinuating address of Mr. Lavater, the vivacity of his conversation, the amenity of his manners, together with the singularity and animation of his style, have contributed more to diffuse his system and principles, than sound arguments or deep learning, which are not to be found in his lively but desultory compositions."

Another name specially deserving remembrance is that of John Jacob Bodmer, a native of Zurich. The romantic character of the district in which he passed his early years impressed itself so forcibly on his memory, that in a letter written at the age of eighty, he paints it circumstantially and in lively colours. His father, finding that he had a strong reluctance to become a clergyman, and an equally strong love for literature, to which he does not appear to have been very favourably disposed, sent him, in 1718, to Geneva, and afterwards to Lugano, to learn the manufacture of silk.

He now travelled to various parts of Italy, studied its poets, wrote sonnets, and convinced his employers that he would never make a merchant. It was not long, therefore, before he returned home, where he spent the chief portion of his time in literary pursuits. General literature was then at a very low ebb in Germany; the learned wrote in Latin; and the public were contented with spiritless, servile imitations of foreign models. Bodmer became ambitious of developing the natural genius and taste, and says, in writing to a friend, "I should like to improve the German taste, if possible;" and accordingly, with Hagenbuch and Breitinger, he established a weekly periodical, the "Painter of Manners," a faithful imitation of "the Spectator," but, of course, without its polish.

Some years after, Bodmer and Breitinger published at Leipsic and Frankfort a remarkable work, "On the influence and use of the Imagination towards the Improvement of Taste." In this, they distinguished the then fashionable bombast from true sublimity, censured the prevalent artificial and laboured style, condemned the pedantic and ridiculous use of foreign words, and recommended the classics and English writers as models, instead of the affectations of the Italian poets, who were then in favour with the

Germans. Their own style was yet far from perfect, but the good sense of this appeal from the artificial to the natural was evident at once, and productive of important results.

In 1725 Bodmer was appointed to the chair of history at Zurich; he became, too, a partner in a printing and bookselling business, in which great projects were contemplated; and also the author of a long series of works. They contain much that is valuable, but he did not accomplish as a poet all he supposed. It is amusing to read the following passage from one of his letters, written in his seventy-eighth year: "In the bloom of my years poetry was not yet in existence. Then she stood on the isthmus of the Saturnine age. Hagedorn, Glecin, Klopstock came, and with them the silver times; then the spring of a golden period. No summer follows this spring. We are falling back into iron days, in which, however, it is true, mild and gently powerful rays break forth, like sunbeams in winter." Schlegel has compared the sensations produced by his poem of "Noah," which its author regarded with great complacency, to those felt by a person when travelling on a very rough road in a carriage without springs. But to Bodmer the merit is due of pointing out to the Germans their forgotton treasures of national poetry, and of zealously vindicating the taste of the English classics against the frigidity of Gottsched. He held the professorship of history for fifty years, and resigned the chair to one of his most beloved pupils, Henry Fuessli. In Bodmer's correspondence with Zellweger, Gulzer, and Schinz, there is a rich store of materials for the literary history of the time, and especially for that of the progress of theology and general science at Zurich.

The history of Zurich, however, presents before us a galaxy of celebrated names, associated with the physical sciences, philosophical and political studies, history, philology, geography, literature, poetry, music, and painting.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE LAKE OF WALLENSTADT GLARUS-KLÖNTHAL-THE BATHS OF PFEFFERS-THE VIA MALA.

THE lake of Wallenstadt is about twelve miles in length and two in breadth; it is entirely bounded by high mountains, except to the east and west. From this situation a breeze generally blows from those two quarters, beginning at break of day, and continuing for some hours, then changes from west to east till sunset: this breeze is very convenient for the transportation of the merchandise. Sometimes, however, a violent north wind rushes down from the mountains, and renders the navigation dangerous. Terrible tales are told of the tempests on this lake, as indeed on all the lakes enclosed, as this is, by mountains; government has, therefore, thought proper to interfere for the safety of ignorant or rash travellers, forbidding the boatmen to venture out at all under certain circumstances of weather, obliging them, in more dubious cases, to keep close along the southern shore, where there are harbours, and allowing no boat to remain more than three years in use. The most dangerous is supposed to be the north wind, which, falling vertically, furrows the surface of the water into deep short waves that are said to suck in every floating thing. The lake is, however, seldom more than two miles across, so that sail where you will you cannot lose sight of either bank.

The scenery of the lake is exceedingly wild and picturesque, and affords a perpetual variety of beautiful and romantic scenes. On the side of Glarus, the mountains, which form its borders, are chiefly cultivated, enriched with wood or fine meadows, and studded with cottages, churches, and small villages; the Alps of Glarus rising behind, their tops covered with snow. On the other side, for the most part, the rocks are grotesque, craggy, inaccessible, and perpendicular; but here and there a few cultivated necks of land are formed at the very edge of the lake, and at the bottom of these very rocks, exhibiting a beautiful contrast to the barrenness above and around them. Numberless waterfalls, occasioned by the melting of the snows, fall down the sides of the mountains from a very considerable height, and with an almost inconceivable variety; some of them seeming to glide gently in circular directions; others forming vast torrents, and rushing into the lake with noise and violence; all of them changing their form and their position as the traveller approaches or recedes from them. The lake is exceedingly clear, deep, and cold, and is said never to be frozen.

This part of the country has always been subject to earthquakes. Thirty-three are on record as having happened in the seventeenth century, and eighty-seven in the eighteenth; that is, thirty-seven between August, 1701, and February, 1702; fifty between September, 1763, and May, 1764; "but," "but," says Coxe, says Coxe," the geological revolutions, indicated by the general appearances of this district, are far beyond the power of common earthquakes, which are, indeed, more likely to have been an effect than a cause; for the vast vacuities left between and among the fragments of the old earth's

crust, when they settled into their present positions, would naturally become so many gasometers, occasionally filling with an elastic fluid, the sudden expansion, rarefaction, or possibly inflammation of which now heaves, at times, their ponderous coverings, and communicates to the surface of our earth those undulations, denominated earthquakes, which spread terror and dismay among its inhabitants.

"Geology is certainly no mean auxiliary of the picturesque, for imagination will ever follow with peculiar delight the traces of a former world. It is roused to mighty contemplation at the sight of piles and rocks, as high as the clouds, recumbent on a bed of fern, and at finding the remains of animals, that once sported on the summits of other Alps, now buried beneath the very base and foundations of ours. In the course of our voyage, approaching sometimes the northern, but oftener the southern shore, which is rent in several places from top to bottom, we happened to pass close by one of these great fissures. It was dark as night itself; invisible torrents roared down its precipices; nothing human could climb their sides, or breathe in their eternal mist; as the eye

measured in wonder the fearful height, and dwelt on the heavenly softness of the mountain verdure seen through the opening at the top, we could scarcely believe our senses when we discovered peasants making hay quietly on the brink of such an abyss, thousands of feet above our head, on the northern shore of the lake, at the foot of its abrupt rampart, close to its tremendous cataracts, the greatest perhaps in Switzerland. On the very promontories of earth and stone, originally brought- by them, we often descried a farm-house, with its grove of umbrageous walnuts, its meadows, and husbandmen at their work. A nearer approach to what appeared a perpendicular wall of rocks, enabled us to detect some slight marks of a climbing path, where notched logs, or sticks driven into holes, or overhanging branches and withy ropes leading from one beetling shelf to another, showed that a strong hand and steady step left nothing inaccessible to the ingenuity and perseverance of man. Enormous as the mountain appeared before, such points of comparison as these swelled its dimensions at once to an oppressive excess, from which the eye turned with a sort of dread."

The villagers of Wallenstadt at the upper end of the lake, like those of Wesen on the

lower, have been boatmen and mule-drivers from time immemorial, under the Roman prefects, under the Ostrogoths, the Huns, and the Saracens; under Massena and the French army; and are now at the service of all travellers.

At so remote a period as the seventh century, a companion of Columba built a chapel consecrated to St. Hilarius, in a remote valley of the Alps, near the source of the Linth, which afterwards gave its name to the canton of Glarus, a corruption of Hilarius. The canton is, however, sometimes called Glarus. It was subsequently inhabited by serfs of the abbey of Seckingen, by strangers who farmed lands of the abbey, and a few freeholders. Twelve noble families were bound to military service for the abbey, thirty-four more paid a small fee. The mayor appointed by the abbey elected the judges, from whose sentences the appeal lay to the lady abbess, who was regarded as a mother by the people. Capital punishment could be inflicted only by the emperor, to whom two hundred livres were paid every year at Martinmas. The tenants paid fixed rents in proportion to the produce of their lands. The judicial fines also went to the abbey, and this was a great source of seignorial revenue. The mayorship of Glarus remained for three hundred years in the family of Tschudi, one of the most ancient in Switzerland, which has since given seventeen landammans to their canton, produced many warriors, and the oldest historian of the Helvetic confederacy. It is said by some, that the Tschudis were originally descended from a Scythian slave freed by the emperor Louis IV., who publicly took a denier from his hand as the price of his emancipation. The serfs of the sovereign were considered nearly as equal to freemen.

Albert, duke of Austria, repaired to Brougg, in Aargau, in the month of August, 1351, and there he assembled his forces. The city of Zurich sent a deputation to compliment him, and offer him presents. He received the deputies with apparent friendship, not manifesting his intention to them, except in as far as demanding the release of his relative, Count John of Hapsburg, who was kept prisoner in their town. But as soon as the deputies had left him, he assembled his bailiffs and vassals, and imparted to them his intention of taking a signal vengeance on the people of Zurich. He then formally demanded of the Zurichers that they should rebuild the town and castle of Rapperschwyl at their own expense, and restore the Marches, of which they had taken possession. Upon their refusal to comply with these conditions, he laid siege to Zurich with a considerable force. The Waldstatten ran to arms for the assistance of their new confederate. The duke of Austria, on his side, summoned the people of Glarus for their contingent. The latter refused, saying that "they were under the protection of the empire, and subject to the abbey of Seckingen, and bound to take up arms in defence of these, but not for the private wars of the dukes of Austria." The duke, however, in his quality of vogt or warden of the abbey, understood the matter otherwise. Besides he wished to occupy the country of Glarus, in order to check the people of Schwitz on that side, and prevent them from sending succour to Zurich. But the Schwitzers, anxious to secure their own frontiers, were beforehand with him; they occupied the country of Glarus in November of the same year, 1351, without striking a blow, and Glarus was received into the Swiss confederation, of which it formed the sixth canton. The people continued, however, with the honesty of the old Swiss, to pay their dues to the monastery of Seckingen until 1395, when the abbess allowed them to redeem themselves.

The central portion of Glarus consists of the long narrow valley of Linth, into which there is but one road; and of two small lateral valleys, to neither of which there is any access except by the principal valley. The rest of the surface is mostly covered with mountains, belonging to different ranges, which in general rise higher than those in the neighbouring cantons. The Doediberg, at its southern extremity, the loftiest summit in eastern Switzerland, is 11,765 feet in height; the Glarnish is 9,630 feet, and the Wiggis