It may on these accounts be thought highly prudent, to allow a large proportion of them to exhaust, in some foreign service, the fiery and restless years of youth, which at home might have been spent in faction and dangerous intrigues. Very probably the states would incline to permit the officers to go, while they retained the private men at home; but are under a necessity of allowing the latter also, because without them the officers could not be raised to those distinguished situations in foreign services which are their greatest inducements to leave their own country. After having served a certain time, almost all of them return to Switzerland. Some, because they are tired of dissipation; others to inherit a paternal estate; and many with pensions from the Princes they have served.—The heat of youth is then most probably over.—They begin to aspire to those offices in their own country to which their birth gives them a claim, and which they now prefer to the lustre of military rank. They wish to support those laws, and that government, which they find so partial to their families; or they desire to pass the remainder of life in ease and retirement on their paternal estates. It is remarkable, that the Swiss officers, who return from foreign services, particularly that of France, instead of importing French manners to their native mountains, and infecting their countrymen with the luxuries and fopperies of that nation, throw off all foreign airs with their uniform, and immediately resume the plain and frugal style of life which prevails in their own country. LETTER XXXVII. Basil. Having, on a former occasion, made a more extensive tour through Switzerland, we determined not to deviate from the direct road to Strasbourg. In pursuance of this resolution, H——y and I, when we left Bern, passed by Soleurre, the capital of the canton of the same name. Soleurre is an agreeable little town situated on the river Aar. The houses are neatly built, and not inelegant; the meanest of them have a cleanly appearance. The common people seem to be in easier circumstances, and have a greater air of content, than in any Roman Catholic country I have ever visited. The inn where we lodged has the comfortable look of an English one. The French ambassador to the cantons has his residence in this town. One of the churches of Soleurre is the most magnificent modern building in Switzerland. The arsenal is stored with arms in proportion to the number of inhabitants in the canton; and there are trophies, and other monuments of the valour of their ancestors, as in the arsenal of Bern. In the middle of the hall there are thirteen figures of men in complete armour, representing the thirteen Swiss cantons.