The Swiss have a great feeling for bright colour, and on our way from Basel to Baden we noticed one of the many instances of this in several turrets covered with brightly-coloured glazed tiles. A light green seems to be the favourite colour, and is commonly used without mixture with any other. They look best with their lower side rounded, and when of small size; and are constantly used in turrets rising out of roofs which are entirely covered with plain tiles. I remember, two years before, noticing with extreme pleasure the beauty of some dark green tiles used at Schaffhausen; and I have already had occasion to mention those on the cathedral at Basel with equal commendation. Unhappily, we have to lament that English people, in their insane hatred of bright colours, if they saw such tiles used in England, would be horrified at such a violation of the correct simplicity and uniformity of colour to which the cheapness of slate has made them accustomed. Some modern attempts, however, at introducing coloured tiles have not been so successful as could be wished; and of all, perhaps the least so is the roof of the new Maria Hilf church at Munich, on which tiles of light blue colour are used in such large masses, that at first sight it seems that half the roof is stripped, and that the pale blue sky is seen instead of roof. At ten o’clock we left our hotel by the steamer for Schmerikon at the head of the Lake of Zurich. The weather still looked doubtful, though much better than on the previous day, and our host of the Belle Vue, taking a good view of this, as is a landlord’s duty, conducted us to the boat with smiling anticipations of fine days to come. The shores of the lake are, for the greater part of its length, literally fringed with houses all painted white, and contrasting violently with the trees, vineyards, and green hills by which they are backed. On the north the shore is low and gradually shelving down to the water; on the south it is rather more precipitous, but after all not very striking. At the head of the lake heavy dark round clouds hung upon the hills, and left us in pleasant doubt as to whether or no we had fine mountains to discover when they cleared away; a doubt, as it happened, not settled, as far as we were concerned, save by certain lively and not too trustworthy representations which we afterwards met with, in the shape of advertisements of the Zurich hotels, and which showed a line of snow mountains as the ordinary horizon of their visitors.