To speak the truth, however, I have drawn this comparison between these two places solely with the view of being comprehensible (perhaps at the same time agreeable) to the Swiss generally, and particularly to the people of Bern. For in reality, Kuhschnappel rejoices in a much more perfect and aristocratic constitution than Bern, such as was to be found in a measure in Ulm and Nürnberg, though the stormy weather of the revolution has rather kept them back than brought them forward. A short time since, Nürnberg and Ulm were as fortunate as Kuhschnappel is now, inasmuch as they were governed, not by the common, working classes, but by people of family only, so that no mere citizen could meddle with the matter in the least degree either in person or by deputy. Now, unfortunately, it appears to be the case in both towns that the cask of the state has had to be fresh tapped just about an inch or so above the thick dregs of the common herd, because what came from the tap _nearer the top_ proved sour. However, it is impossible for me to go on until I have cleared out of the way a much too prevalent error respecting large towns. The Behemoths and Condors among towns--Petersburg, London, Vienna--might, if they chose, establish universal equality of liberty and liberty of equality; very few statisticians have been struck by this idea, although it is so very clear. For a capital which it takes two hours and a quarter to go round is, as it were, an Ætna-crater of equivalent circumference for an entire country, and benefits the neighbourhood of it as the volcano does, not only by what it _ejects_ (its eruptive matter), but by what it swallows up. It clears the country in the first place of villages, and next of country towns--which are primarily the outhouses and office-buildings of capital cities--inasmuch as it pushes itself outwards in all directions year by year, and gets grown over, fringed round, and walled about with the villages. London, we know, has converted the neighbouring villages into streets of itself; but in the lapse of centuries the long, constantly extending arms of all great towns must enfold not only the villages, but also the country towns, converting them into suburbs. Now, in this process, the roads, fields and meadows which lie between the giant city and the villages get covered over like a river-bed with a deposit of stone-paving; and consequently the operations of agriculture can no longer be carried on otherwise than in flower-pots in the windows. Where there is no agriculture, I cannot see what the agricultural population can become but unemployed idlers, such as no state allows within its boundaries; and, prevention being better than cure, the state will have to clear this agricultural population out of the way before it sinks into this condition of idling, either by means of letters inhibitory directed against the increase of population, or by extermination, or by ennobling them into soldiery and domestics. In