Switzerland was by the peace of Westphalia entirely detached from the Empire; but the political separation had not led the German burgher life into foreign channels. The unity of mind remained, more than once have the literary men, the poets and artists of Switzerland, had an important share in the development of the German mind. Even now is this inward unity undiminished, and Germans and Swiss alike have reason to congratulate themselves on it. After the great war, the Swiss had honestly participated in the pleasures and sorrows of the German; they also had suffered by the war, and were in political troubles; a narrow-minded patrician government oppressed the country; there also, energy, public spirit and conscience, had been weakened. The following narrative paints the state of things at Baden, and equally portrays the Bath life of Germans in the interior of the Empire. Bath Life in the year 1417. The Florentine, Francis Poggio (1380-1459), one of the great Italians who spread the Humanitarian literature throughout their native country, then held the office of Papal secretary; in this capacity he was actively employed at the Council of Constance, and visited Baden from thence. He describes his impressions of travel in an elegant Latin letter to his friend, the learned Nicolo Nicoli; he himself was then an ecclesiastic. In order to understand thoroughly how much the reformation of the Church, which took place a century later, was brought about by the excited moral feeling of the people, we should pay attention to the cool, haughty freedom of tone of the following letter. Poggio was a great scholar and a prudent statesman; he was one of the most refined among the highly cultivated Italians; nay, more, he had a fierce, manly spirit, and was always exhorting his literary friends to seriousness. But with his classical literature he had also adopted the spirit of a distinguished Roman of the time of Tiberius, and it makes a disagreeable impression to find how mildly and good-humouredly the secretary of the Pope, the priest, the scholar, the offshoot of the civilization of his time, viewed the profligacy of both ecclesiastics and laity. His letter, which follows here, is abbreviated in some places:-- "Baden itself affords the mind little or no diversion; but has in all other respects such extraordinary charm, that I could often dream that Venus had come from Cypress, for whatever the world contains of beauty has assembled here, and so much do they uphold the customs of this goddess, so fully do you find again her manners and dissoluteness, that little as they may have read the speech of Heliogabalus, they appear to be perfectly instructed by Nature herself.