Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/134

150 Cantons, which became its first home. And here, on the banks of the Lake of Lucerne, I seem to myself to be sitting beside one of the quiet, deep lakes of Dalecarlia. The resemblance is striking. The same earnest, lofty beauty; the same encircling band of mountain and woody shores around the lake; the same gay, sunny, grassy fields among the mountains; the same silence over the grand landscape, and in its bosom a people of simple manners, of pious and quiet disposition, but, at the same time, of powerful will and unconquerable love of popular right and popular freedom! There is also a similarity between the Swedish and Swiss struggle for freedom. There it was the oppression of the Danish bailiffs, here of the Austrian bailiffs, in the names of their respective masters, which armed the people and converted herdsmen into warriors. But here the resemblance ceases, without the history of either people becoming less noble or less remarkable. The Dalecarlians gave themselves a leader and Sweden a king, in Gustavus Wasa. The men of the Forest Cantons gave themselves unity and power in the Sworn-Confederacy. I now return to this.

Encouraged by his wife Margaretta, Werner Stauffacher crossed the lake into Uri, to visit his friend Waltur Fürst, of Attinghausen. With him he found young Arnold of Melchthal, who was here in concealment from the wrath of Gessler. The three imparted to each other their troubles, and resolved rather to die than tolerate any longer the humiliation of the fatherland under an unjust domination. Property and life, every thing, would they risk in order to regain the