132 LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. 



use of artillery Berne was a place of great strength, tliesiteliaving been 

 vselected in the twelfth century for its military jiroperties, by Berthold, 

 of Ziihringen, the founder of the city. The fronts of the houses in the 

 imncipal streets, as in the Italian towns of the Middle Ages, rest uj)on 

 arcades, wliich form covered wallas for passengers. The heavy piers of 

 the arcades render the shops dark, bat this inconvenience is more than 

 counterbalanced by the protection from the winter's snow in a town 

 almost among the Alps, and at an elevation of sixteen hundred feet 

 above the sea. The streets are provided at intervals with fountains of 

 curious devices and rude execution, in which, besides the figure of the 

 bear in various " armor and attitude," are warriors and goddesses, and 

 remarkable above all, the terror of children, the great Kinder-fresser, or 

 ogre, Vv'ho, with the head and shoulders of one poor innocent in his gap- 

 ing mouth, in the very act of swallowing, has a bag fullof similar choice 

 mouthfuls about his neck, apparentl}^ struggling to escape the fate of 

 their comrade. In one of the towers is the famous clock of kindred 

 taste with the ogre. Before each hour a cock Ihips his wings and crows 

 a warning. A figure representing Father Time reverses his hour glass, 

 •and opens his mouth as if to cry aloud to the careless. At noon is the 

 grand procession of the bears, who, marshaled by knights and soldiers, 

 issue to the sound of music and pass before tlie figure of Time first on 

 all fours, then half erect, and finally rampant, figuring thus the differ- 

 ent conditions of the town of which they are the patrons. The figure 

 now raises a wand and strikes the hour upon a mimic bell, keeping time 

 with the striking of the clock ; the cock again flaps his wings, and for 

 twenty-four hours the bears have rest. The regard for bruin in Berne 

 has been the growth of ages. The accidental killing of a bear by the Dnke 

 of Ziihringen on the day of founding the city placed the efQgj" upon the 

 coat of arms, and i^erhaps gave name to the infant city, for Berne sig- 

 nifies bear in the Swabiau dialect. The effigy of the bear was connected 

 with the conquests of the warlike burghers, ajid the living animal kept 

 to anuise the people by his antics. A whimsical old lady left a hand- 

 some estate to the town to maintain a family of bears, forever, and in 

 1798 the animal became associated with the misfortunes of t'le canton 

 as it had been v»ith its rise and prosperity. The savings from the estate 

 of the bears shared the fate of those of the canton, when the French 

 armies appropriated the thirty millions of specie in the vaults of the 

 treasury. The bears themselves were removed from their ditch and 

 transported to Paris, the huge cage containing the father of the family 

 having upon it the insulting inscription, not j'et forgotten by the people, 

 of Avoyer (President) of Berne. One only lived to return to his home 

 at the general restoration of the spoils of Europe, but the bears of the 

 present generation appear to have forgiven or forgotten the sorrows of 

 their parents, and, all unconscious of their own present dependent state, 

 are as diligent in climbing i^oles, and as active in begging and quarrel- 

 ing for nuts and gingerbread as if the present bear-ditch had always 



