Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/139

Rh whilst they developed for themselves the results of their contest and victory for freedom, assumed more and more a decided position against the rulers of other countries, and even against the ruler of their own church, the Pope. They stood steadfastly upon their ancient rights, freedom, usage, and even abuse. Like the primeval mountain of their own land, they stood opposed to the advance of the enemy, and even sometimes to the advance of the cultivator. They will not tolerate any law which they have not laid down for themselves, neither any thing new which has not grown up in their own soil. And hence it is that they have remained stationary, in a high degree, both as regards good and evil. But the good has developed itself in many excellent humane institutions, in trade-industry, in cultivation and general prosperity. Towns and convents have emulated each other in the cultivation of the land, even in the most savage districts, and every hut has become a home for industrial occupation, which has placed its inmates in connection with the trade of other lands.

I was told that in the Catholic Cantons, that is in the Forest Cantons, I should find a great difference as regarded order, cultivation, and comfort, between them and those who had embraced the reformed faith. But I did not find it so. On the contrary; wherever I turn my eyes I cannot but admire the excellent and respectable appearance of every thing that belongs to the country and its people. Every thing seems well-conditioned and prosperous. I have had this morning a better opportunity of judging, and with the same result, during a longer ramble than usual into the