XVII.

A FAREWELL TO SWITZERLAND-BASLE.

Here, also,

THE first view one gets of the Rhine in leaving Switzerland from the east is on his way from Zurich to Basle. he takes his farewell look of the Alps. From the top of the Botzberg the whole range of the Bernese Alps rises on the view. Amid the scenes in which he has moved since he left their presence, the traveller almost forgot their existence, and as they here rise again on his vision, they bring back a world of associations to his heart. There they stand leaning against the distant sky, like the forms of friends he has left forever. Such were my feelings as I sat down by the road-side, under as bright a sky as ever bent over the vineyards of Italy, and looked off upon those bold peaks which had become to me objects of affection. A few days only had elasped since I was amid their terror and their beauty. I had seen the moonbeams glancing on their glaciers at midnight, and heard the music of their torrents lifting up their voices from the awful abysses. I had seen the avalanche bound from their precipices, and rush, smoking and thundering, into the gulfs below -and been wrapt in their storms and clouds. I had toiled and struggled through their snow drifts, and stood enraptured on their green pasturages, while the music of bells, the bleating of flocks, and the clear tones of the Alp-horn made it seem like a dreamland to me. A mere dwarf in comparison, I had moved and mused amid those terrific forms. Now mellowed and subdued by distance, the vast, white, irregular mass, lay like a monster dreaming in the blue mist. Clouds resting below the summit, slept here and there along the range, and all was silent and beautiful. I love nature always, but especially in these her grander and no

bler aspects. The Alps had lain along the horizon of my imag. ination from childhood up. The desire of years had at length been fulfilled, and I had wandered amid the avalanches and glaciers and snow-fields and cottages of the Oberland, and now I was taking my last look. It was with feelings of profound melancholy I turned away from St. Peters and the Duomo of Milan, feeling I should see their magnificent proportions no more. But it was with still sadder feelings I gazed my farewell on the glorious Alps.

On this route, within half a mile of Brugg, is a lunatic asylum, once the Abbey of Koenigsfelden, (King's field,) which the guide book informs you was founded in 1310, by Empress Elizabeth, and Agnes, Queen of Hungary, on the spot where the Emperor Albert, the husband of the former and father of the latter, was assassinated. Leaving his suite on the opposite bank, he had crossed the river Reuss at this point, with only the four conspirators accompanying him. The principal one, John of Swabia, was the nephew of Albert, and was incited to this deed from being kept out of his paternal inheritance by his uncle. He struck first, and sent his lance through the Emperor's throat. Bolm then pierced him through and through with his sword, while Walter von Eschenbach cleaved his skull in twain with a felling stroke. Wart, the fourth conspirator, took no part in the murder, and yet, by a singular providence, was the only one that was ever caught and executed for the deed. The others escaped, although the King's attendants were in sight. Indeed the latter was so alarmed they took to flight, leaving their master to die alone, sustained and cheered only by a poor peasant girl, who held the royal dying head upon her bosom.

"Alone she sate: from hill and wood low sunk the mournful sun;

Fast gushed the fount of noble blood; treason its worst had done.
With her long hair she vainly pressed the wounds to staunch their tide:
Unknown, on that meek humble breast imperial Albert died."

On the friends and families of these murderers the children of Albert wreaked a most bloody vengeance. The remotest relative was hunted down and slain, and every friend offered up as a victim to revenge, till one thousand is supposed to have fallen. Queen

Agnes was accustomed to witness the executions, and seemed actuated by the spirit of a fiend while the horrid butchery was go ing on. On one occasion she saw sixty-three, one after another slain, and in the midst of the bloody spectacle exclaimed, "Now I bathe in May-dew." This convent of Koenigsfelden was endowed with the confiscated property of these murdered men, and here she ended her days. But her religious seclusion, prayers and alinsgiving were powerless to wipe the blood from her conscience. The ghosts of her murdered and innocent victims rose up before her guilty spirit, and frightened peace from her bosom. Revenge had been gratified; but she forgot that after it has been glutted with victims, it always turns round and gnaws at the heart which gave it birth. When she came to die, and the vision of that terrible and just tribunal that awaited her passed before her trembling spirit, she sent for a priest to give her absolution. "Woman," he replied, "God is not to be served with bloody hands, nor by the slaughter of innocent persons, nor by convents built with the plunder of widows and orphans,-but by mercy and forgiveness of injuries." Switzerland is full of these wild tales. They meet you at every turn; and you often start to be told you are standing on the grave of a murderer.

Basle is the last town in Switzerland standing on the Rhine at the head of navigation. It contains a little over 21,000 inhabitants, and is well worth a longer stay than the thousands of travellers who yearly pass through ever give it. It was once one of the strictest of the Swiss cities in its sumptuary laws. Every person on the Sabbath, who went to church, was compelled to dress in black; no carriage could enter the town after ten at night, and the luxury of a footman was forbidden. A set of of. ficers called Unzichterherrn decided the number of dishes and the wines to be used at a dinner party, and also the cut and quality of all the clothes worn. Until fifty years ago, the time-pieces of this town were an hour in advance of all others in Europe. Tradition states that this curious custom had its origin in the deliverance of the place once from a band of conspirators by the town clock striking one instead of twelve. But the Swiss have a tradition to establish every custom. There is a curious head attached to the clock tower standing on the bridge which connects the

METHODISM IN BASLE.

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two towns. The movement of the pendulum causes a long tongue to protrude, and the eyes to roll about-" making faces," it is said, "at Little Basle on the opposite side of the river."

Since the Reformation Basle has been the principal seat of Methodism in Switzerland. Formerly the citizens exhibited their piety in odd mottoes and doggrels placed over their doors in the public streets. These, of course, no longer remain, and the people are any thing but religious. Two of these strange mottoes we give from the guide book as a specimen of the pious Methodists of that time:

"Auf Gott ich meine Hoffnung bau

Und wohne in der Alten Sau.”
In God my hope of grace I big,
And dwell within the Ancient Pig.

"Wacht auf ihr Menschen und that Buss
Ich heiss zum goldenen Rinderfuss."
Wake and repent your sins with grief,
I'm called the golden Shin of Beef.

This was a queer mode of publishing to the traveller one's religious opinions, but it shows to what ridiculous extremes fanaticism will carry a man. To the credit of the place I will say, however, that even now a carriage arriving at the gates of the town during church time on the Sabbath is compelled to wait there till service is over.

Here one begins to think of the Rhine, "the glorious Rhine." It goes rushing and foaming through Basle as if in haste to reach the vine-clad shores of Germany. The traveller, as he sees its waters darting onward, imbibes a portion of their anxiety, and is in haste to be borne along on their bosom to the shore below, so rich in associations and so marked in the history of man.

XVIII.

STRASBOURG-THE RHINE-FRANKFORT.

ONE is constantly shown choice relics in passing through Switzerland, as well as in passing over Italy. Some, doubtless, are genuine, but which are so is the trouble. Thus, at Lucerne, in the public archives, I was shown the very sword William Tell was accustomed to swing before him in battle, and the very cross-bow from which he hurled the bolt into the tyrant's bosom. Both, however, are apocryphal. I forgot to mention, by the way, that these old Swiss cross-bows are not our Indian bows, but what school-boys call cross-guns. The bow, frequently made of steel, is fastened to a stock, and the arrow is launched along a groove. The bows of many of these are so stiff that it was with difficulty I could make them spring at all with my utmost strength. I might as well have pulled on a bar of iron. The stiffest of them even the strong-limbed mountaineer could not span with his unaided strength, and was compelled to have cog wheels and a small crank attached to the stock, by winding which he was enabled to spring the bow. He thus accumulated tremendous force on the arrow, and when it was dismissed it went with the speed and power of a bullet. At Basle there is a large collection of relics, made by a private gentleman, who has sunk his fortune in it. Among other things are Bonaparte's robe worked by Josephine, in which he was crowned at Milan, and a neat rose-wood dressing case of the Empress, containing fifty secret drawers.

But not to stop here, we will away down the Rhine. The river is here shallow and bad to navigate, and so I took the rail. road to Strasbourg, the lofty spire of whose cathedral rises to