130 LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. 



or college and a boardicg-scliool, iu tlie capital. The clergy liave not 

 abandoned the claim, thongli deprived of the power to direct the secular 

 instruction of t!ie people, to license and displace their teachers. The 

 struggles of these parties and inliuences keep up a constant political 

 excitement. 



It is difficult for a stranger vrho approaches tlie town of Friburg 

 from the French cantons, on a da^' when the weekly fair is held, to be- 

 lieve that a scene of real life is before him. The old battlemented walls, 

 with their towers, carry us back to the days of arquebusses and culverins, 

 or even to those of cross bows and catapults. The collection of peasants 

 in the square, clad in the varied and picturesque costumes of the adjoin- 

 ing districts, keeps np the illusion. It is easy to realize that such look- 

 ing people should sing and dance, but that they should buy and sell in 

 earnest is not so easily credited. There is some poetry left yet iu the 

 exterior of life, at least in these countries. This thought was again 

 awakened on finding myself in the cell of a monk in the convent of the 

 Cordeliers. The vaulted ceiling, grated door, bare vvalls, the pallet bed 

 and rude table, vv'itli missal and crucifix, the occupant clothed in coarse 

 black serge, the cord of his order passing around his waist, produced a 

 most singular efiect. There was riotliing in the manners and conversa- 

 tion of the venerable Father Gir;ird to disjiel any illusion created by 

 the circumstances ijround him, unless the faintest possible tinge of the 

 world, such as he may have got while superintending the schools of his 

 canton just ;>iter the revolution of 1814. Hoping to dull the edge of 

 party sj)irit vv^hich he supposed attacked the schools because a Cordelier 

 was at the head of them, he retired into voluntary exile for ten years, 

 and returned, at the age of seveutj^-two, to die, as he said, at home, 

 when his years would be an aj)ology for not mingling in public affairs, 

 lie had returned to find his schools in incompetent hands, almost in 

 decay, and his normal school, from a similar cause, on the point of 

 being abolished. Imbued with the spirit of Pestalozzi, Father Girard 

 gives to the languages as instruments for intellectual training the part 

 which the great master assigned to the sciences j for economy's sake he 

 adopted the monitorial system, but hoped to see the time when it might 

 give place to a better. In his retire;nent his influence with the intelligent 

 men of Switzerland was very great, and was exercised to forward the intel- 

 lectual progress of his country. '' I love all men with Christian hearts, 

 thougli they may not be orthodox iu formulary ; such is my profession of 

 faith,'' was the catholic sentiment of this truly good man, reminding 

 me of the beautiful lines of Wordsworth, written at Friburg : 



" Dooni'd as wo are our uativc dust 

 To wet willi many a Litter shower, 



It ill beiiis us to disdain 



Tho altar, to deride the faun 

 Where patient sufferers bend, in trust, 

 To win a happier hour. 



