LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. 139 



tlireatening language was spoken, "we cannot recogiiize a first-rate and 

 a second-rate national honor."' 



There is still something of the " feudalism of democracy'," as a dis- 

 tinguished author has called it, in the ceremonies of the diet, walking 

 in procession to their hall where their deliberations take place, wearing 

 cloaks embroided with the arms of their cantons, and even of more than 

 one color, received by double rows of guards, and deliberating with 

 swords by their sides. The antiquated costumes are destined to disap- 

 I)ear with many feudal forms, but the delegates from those cantons, the 

 democratic, where the least change has taken place in their institutions, 

 are wedded to their old garments as well as to the old constitution. In 

 the hall of meeting twenty-one seats are arranged about an oval table 

 for the senior representatives, the president having his seat at the one 

 extremity of the table, and the consulting deputies occupying small 

 tables in the rear. The members do not rise when addressing the chair, 

 which has an awkward effect, and must be embarrassing to the lively 

 delegates of the Italian and French cantons ; but all minor embarrass- 

 ments yield to that of the use of three different languages, the French, Ger- 

 man, and Italian, by members from the different cantons, while a major- 

 ity of the deputies understand but one. A glance at these representa- 

 tives will illustrate the difficulties of forming a Swiss union. What has 

 the man of Tessin really in common with him of Geneva '? The one is a 

 Koman Catholic, the other a Calviuist; the one a republican of the most 

 democratic school, the other an arit^tocrat by principle, and perhaps by 

 birth ; the one is from a rough pastoral or agricultural district, the other 

 from a city where the more refined mechanic arts flourish ; the one from 

 a small coramunity, all the members of which are nearly equal in the 

 means of life and in education, the other from a town where wealth and 

 education are very unequally distributed; the one in speech an Italian, 

 the other a Frenchman. Again, what has the educated and polished 

 professor of Lausanne, or the merchant and banker of Basle, in common 

 with the peasant of Appenzele or the shepherd of IXril With all these 

 diversities they are brought together in part by a sentiment — the love 

 of liberty ; in part by a necessity — that of mutual defense. The progress 

 of the cantons in education and the arts of life will doubtless draw their 

 bonds gradually closer, and to have attempted a union in 1832 is to 

 have laid the basis for it at some other time. Meanwhile the confeder- 

 ation, if it does not directly aid the cantons in their career of improve- 

 ment, at least goes far to guarantee the continuation of that peace which 

 is essential to progress. 



Let us turn our backs upon the mountains, to glance merely, for that 

 is all that can be attempted, at Zurich, one of the cantons of the plain, 

 if any part of Switzerland can be called a plain ; one of the farthest 

 advanced of all in the mechanic arts, manufactures, education, and good 

 governmeut. Here the republican change was brought about in 1830, 

 by a simijle change of administration, the council not being required to 



