Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/183

160 And the whole scene brings back to you the apology of the Swiss print-seller who explained the predominance of that color in his pictures by the American demand for it:

"Il faut toujours, monsieur, beaucoup de bleu pour les Américains."

He thought, good man, that as the Americans paid most money for everything they should have their money's worth; and he did not know, perhaps, that they, of all travellers, are most struck by this peculiar blue, so different is it from the tints of our own lakes.

This lake touches the four historical cantons of Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, and Lucerne. Here is the land of William Tell, and Schiller's poem is your best guide round the lake. If "William Tell is a "myth," as the iconoclasts of history pretend, he is a myth who "preached the eternal creed of liberty," and I believe in him, and listen always with much emotion to the story of the apple. His statue at Altorf, the frescoes representing his celebrated feat with the bow, and all relating to him are genuine enough for me; and Schiller has made him true, if he were not. I grant that the three friends of Tell — Stauffacher, Melchthal, and Fürst — as you see their three figures in fresco, and particularly as they are presented in the opera, are apt to be bores. Patriotism, like all other virtues, is interesting only so long as it is not run into the ground.

But how lovely is that virtue when you see it imaged by Thorwaldsen's lion — the noble old monarch, with his wounded paws stretched over the lilies of France!

As I looked at this sculpture there came a trick of sunlight for which I felt infinitely obliged. It was a