Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/41

Rh are we Sworn-Confederates, if not in those which are united in our banner:

Vulleimin turns, after this, to the Swiss people, whom he admonishes to the development of a higher life in church and state. He encourages them to hold public meetings, and festivals, in the exercises and the sports of which, all the Cantons might give each other “rendezvous.”

“I would wish,” says he, “that the arts, together with the sciences, should be represented there; they who cultivate the earth, as well as they who enlighten our steps upon it; the industrial arts, which multiply our means, as well as the fine arts, which beautify our everyday life. All are benefactors of the fatherland. All are the sons of freedom. As it attains to a new age, it will attain to a new worship. Its idea has extended itself—let us extend our hearts.”

“But,” continues this noble friend of freedom, “let us be careful not to confound freedom with that which often assumes her name. Few nations love her as we do; and few, also, have done her such bloody wrong.

“Here a people, proud of its poverty, believes itself to be the noblest on the earth, whilst it dreads slavery, and is the slave of blind prejudice. There a popular assembly believes it has conserved the public good when it has voted a sum for the purposes of higher education, or has humiliated some man, the honor of his country.

“When did jealous mediocrity believe itself free until it had dragged all down to its own medium stature!

“In this Alpine valley there are few laws, but also