House £s? Garden 
TYROLESE ARCHITECTURE. 
I. FEUDAL. 
R EACHING westward, like an arm 
of the mother country, the province 
of Austria, known as the Tyrol, lies 
among the peaks of the Eastern Alps. 
Germany, Switzerland and Italy nearly sur¬ 
round it and color the life of the outlying 
mountain-sides. Their customs in building, 
too, have partially penetrated the valleys 
which are the gateways to the district and on 
each side of the Alpine divide have given a 
local character to humble dwellings and to 
lordly castles. Having less area of meadow 
and lowland than any other country of 
Europe the land is difficult of approach and 
it is left to us almost uninjured by the in¬ 
vasion of tourists,—to many of us it is even 
quite unknown. Remote from the usual 
routes of travelers invading Europe from the 
west, it is less familiar to English-speaking 
people than its mountain rival, Switzerland. 
More primitive, more medieval and austere 
than the country of the cantons, the Tyrol 
is to-day a curious spectacle in the midst of 
progressive Europe : interesting on account 
of its ancient customs and beliefs, beautiful 
by reason of its magnificent scenery. 
A comparison of this district oi Austria 
with the only other Alpine country, Switzer¬ 
land, shows that the two countries have little 
in common except the general topography of 
their land. The love of independence and 
contempt of monarchs which the Swiss have 
always borne and which have opened their 
country in modern times as a free refuge for 
humanity do not find their counterpart in the 
Tyrolese. This hardier people has been for 
centuries stubbornly loyal to its Hapsburg 
emperors, mistrustful of strangers, extreme 
in its devotion to the church of Rome and 
inaccessible from without. In the one case, 
the face of the country is modified and life 
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