207 



The Museum at Bern presents probably the most complete collection 

 of primitive rude implements of human manufacture, discovered in the 

 ancient lake dwellings of Switzerland (in Ireland termed Crannogues), 

 where these had been exposed by an unusual subsidence of the water 

 levels ; the cushion of still water beneath the frozen or wind-moved 

 surface having preserved from oxygenating waste and atmospheric wear 

 and tear numerous relics of what are assumed to be successive stages of 

 well-defined progress from an aboriginal savagery to civilization ; al- 

 though, indeed, these may have existed contemporaneously under 

 diversified conditions of isolation and physical privation. However, 

 admitting the succession of epochs, they may be consistently included 

 within the historic period of Helvetia, as known to the Greeks and 

 Romans, from the pre-Christian irruptions of the Teutones and Cimbri 

 to the Gothic and Prankish invasions of the Gallo-Roman era. During 

 this stormy interval of 700 years the central highlands of southern 

 Europe, situate as it were in the very axis of revolutionary transit, 

 sustained the convergent pressure of warlike and antagonistic races. 

 The Romans unceasingly pressed upward from the south along the 

 Alpine streams and passes ; while barbarian hordes successively, or in 

 confederate bands, overflowed from north, west, and east, tracing their 

 devious paths by the great fluvial highways of those forest-covered re- 

 gions, along the courses of the Rhine, and Upper Rhone, and through 

 the valley of the Inn from the vast and populous basin of the Danube. 

 Thus the Helvetians (both aboriginal or descended from the primitive 

 replenished of that region, as well as those of mixed colonial blood of 

 Etruria and Rome) were swept by every recurrent wave of invasion 

 from their cities and settlements in the fertile intra- Alpine vales into 

 the inhospitable mountain districts ; again driving before them with 

 un sympathizing rigour, into fastnesses still more remote, the Pagani, 

 or less civilized populations on the outskirts of their respective terri- 

 tories. Mercy for the feeble is the attribute only of a long-sustained 

 moral and intellectual culture ; and these despised outcasts, hated for 

 their very harmlessness, and rifled of their weapons and all appliances 

 of industrial acquisition or improvement, hid themselves in solitary 

 caves of the rocks, or constructed in unexplored localities rude insular 

 dwellings as a frail nocturnal protection against wild beasts, with whom 

 they waged a dubious strife in the struggle for existence. Eear on their 

 part, with aversion on the part of their enemies, would tend to con- 

 tinue, as well as aggravate, this compulsory exclusion from all advan- 

 tages of civilization ; thus stereotyping, as it were, the superinduced 

 savage state, by closing every avenue to functional developement of 

 mind and body. No diligent student of human nature will den}' that 

 a persecuted and inopt race,f under incessant endurance of hunger, 



* Gen. x. 5. 



f Distinction must be made between these timid and proscribed Pariahs and the 

 early colonists of high latitudes, whose very climatal disadvantages kept them apart 

 alike from the improvements and obstructions of a dominant civilization. There is every 



