Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/164

180 Cantons of Switzerland; and the city of Zürich, one of its most beautiful and most flourishing cities. Since the walls of its fortifications have been removed by order of the Grand Council, it has extended and developed itself daily in every direction, like a vigorous tree in the spring. Science, industry, benevolent institutions increase, as if in emulation of each other; and gardens and plantations encircle the increasing city with beauty. Its situation and the views of the lake and the Alps, are among the most glorious in Switzerland.

The enlightenment and education of the people seem to take the lead. Every week, during the winter, each professor of the academy delivers a lecture on his own particular branch of science, in a popular manner, suitable for the public, at the Hotel de Ville. The taste for science and art is by no means a stranger among the artisan classes. Butchers are collectors of pictures, sometimes even painters; tobacco-dealers, botanists. The wealthy M. F. Ascher, who employs several thousand work-people, at his large mechanical works—whence steamboats are sent to every lake in the republic—employs himself also, by giving them opportunities for moral and intellectual culture. The silk-looms maintain many thousand families without the workers being crowded in factories. The people work at their own homes and in the country. The looms stand in the cottages scattered about the fields of the Alps. The country people fetch from the town their orders, and the raw material, and carry back thither their shining fabrics.

The well-to-do and cheerful people, who crowd to