LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. Ill) 



ary has had its effect iu determining the character of institutions as 

 well as of individuals. Small tracts of country are as comj)letely sepa- 

 rated by mountains of difficult passage, as by distance, differ iu the 

 modes and facilities of life, have different interests, and consequently 

 separate organizations. The character of the topography has divided 

 the country into many small states, and has produced striking differ- 

 ences iu language and manners, in religions, social and political organ- 

 ization, in a country of not more than one-third the extent of Pennsyl- 

 vania, and with about the same population of that entire State. 



The present Swiss confederation consists of twenty-two sovereign 

 states called cantons, the division of which, according to geographical 

 position, includes also that of language.* Thus the north and middle of 

 Switzerland contains the sixteen cantons where a dialect of the German 

 is spoken, Zurich being the principal canton on the north, and Berne 

 in the middle. To the west and south' of the middle are the mixed 

 German and French cantons of Neuchatel, Friberg, and Valais ; to the 

 southeast the mixed German Romanic and Italian canton of the Grisons, 

 or gray league, subdivided into its little sovereign states. On the south- 

 west are the French cantons of Vaud and Geneva, and on the south of 

 the middle the Italian canton of Tessiu. While the language spoken 

 by these people is determined by their jiroximity to those who speak it 

 in its purity, their social, religious, and political institutions may almost 

 be said to be uninfluenced by this circumstance. These are the results 

 of other causes, many of which may be found in their history. 



A Florentine scholar relating to me unpublished anecdotes of the 

 horrors enacted by members of the far-famed family of the Medici, with 

 Italian fervor broke out into this apostrophe : " Happy your great coun- 

 try, which has not the chains of a dark history to bind it to the institu- 

 tions and manners of a by-gone age. Beware how you men of the pre- 

 sent day sully the pure page which records the actions of your forefathers, 

 of your Adams, your Franklin, your Washington." 



The condition of a country at a past day must assuredly influence its 

 present state as the summer's sun upon the snow-covered mountains of 

 the Alps increases the autumnal flow of the river whose sources lie 

 among them, or as the accumulation of the winter's snow upon the 

 mountain's peak produces the summer's avalanche. 



The history of the Swiss republics shows the circumstances which 

 prepared and the impulses which gave existence to each, and a glorious 

 history it is upon which to found progress in virtue and liberty. 



Nearly in the center of Switzerland is a mountainous district which 

 the Eomans never reached, into which the bands of Attila never pene- 

 trated, and where no ruins of feudal castles exist to show that in the 



*To wit: Zurich. Berue, Lncerue, Uri Schwyz, Unterwalden, (upper and lower,) 

 Glarus, Zug, Friburg, Solerne, Basil, (city and country,) Schaffhauseu, Appouzel, (both 

 Rhodes,) St. Gallea, Grisons, Aargan, Thurgan, Tessin, Vaud, Valais, Nouchatel, and 

 Geneva. 



