Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/350

366 of general utility; and as regards the duty of every man to labor for that end, which operates beneficially, and in the spirit of the highest education, upon its youth, and even upon strangers who have remained in the country any length of time. The mind of many a thoughtless young man, from other lands, has here taken a more serious direction, and he has learned to live for higher interests than hitherto. And if the governments of the different cantons would be willing to give higher salaries, and improve the outward circumstances of persons who devote themselves to the education of youth, then Switzerland would soon stand, amongst its Alps, as a high-school for the young of all nations of the Christian world, for both women and men have the most decided gifts for this noble calling.

That of which I found the want in Switzerland, even in education, is the free, and, in its highest sense, universal spirit, which I felt to be so vitalizing, so regenerative, in the United States of America; and amongst the multitudes of lectures and sermons of this country, I should have wished to hear something which extended the political and social horizon sufficiently to embrace other nations also, and the universal human interests, the great confederation of mankind! That the Swiss republic is not altogether indifferent to these, is proved, in the mean time, by its sympathy with the struggle for liberty in Greece, and its zeal for missionary labors.

The women of the educated classes stand high in religious earnestness and activity in works of human love. They are truth-loving, industrious, maternal,