proffered mediation of the great powers, have settled their own matters among themselves; and the Italians seem inclined to _laver leur linge sale en famille_, as Napoleon used to recommend people to do when the operation was of a more than usually unpleasant nature, without saying "by your leave, or with your leave," to any of the barbarians that dwell on the northern sides of the Alps. Austria and France are equally balked in their views upon Switzerland and Italy; and the only power that seems likely to gain any thing by these events will be, in spite of herself, "the perfidious Albion." As usual, however, with English diplomatists, but still more as usual with Whig officials, and with the gaping good-natured multitude of the British Islands, those advantages that may accrue to our country will come, not through any astuteness of the government, or its servants, but through the sheer force of events urging themselves on in their inevitable course, and filling up the series of secondary causes and effects that compose the history of the world. To any one contemplating the enviable position and the natural advantages of Switzerland, and still more to any one looking at the fundamental character of the Swiss people, it would seem one of the most difficult political problems to find any cause for internal quarrel and disunion, much less for civil war. Blessed as they are with a country that necessitates all the skill and industry of man to bring forth its full powers, but which, when man tills its bosom, and pours the sweat of his brow into its lap, yields him the sweet return of abundant competence and varied riches, the Swiss have long been looked up to with justice as one of the most truly prosperous and thriving people of Europe. They have not been tempted to throw aside the agricultural occupations of their country for the dangerous and transitory fluctuations of commerce; they have remained strong in their national and natural simplicity; rich, and more than rich, in the produce of their lands, raised by the labour of their arms; and, amid the many changes of other states, when once the fever of the revolutionary malady had left them, tranquil and contented, and objects of envy to all surrounding people. Thus national ambition was of necessity limited; external aggrandisement and colonial extension they could know nothing about; their territory was safe from foreign aggression, or was supposed so, and their energies could only expend themselves on the affairs of their own country. Switzerland remained till within the last few years, as it had always been, the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes" to all Europe; and scarcely a traveller ever wandered amidst its vales and mountains, but sighed after a dwelling in that fairy land, and longed for it as his country by adoption next after the land of his birth. Of all people in the world, the Swiss, to external spectators at least, seemed to have the least to wish for,