"How different are these manners from ours! We put the worst construction upon everything: we find a pleasure in slander and calumny; the slightest suspicion is sufficient for us, and equivalent to a clear transgression. I often envy the composure of the people here, and curse our perversity, always restlessly seeking, and restlessly desiring. We compass heaven, earth, and ocean, to procure money, are contented with no gain, satisfied with no profit. We are continually in fear of future disaster, and are cast down by unceasing mischances and anxieties, and in order to preserve ourselves from being unhappy, we never cease to be so. But here they live for the day, contented with a little; every day is a festival, they desire no great riches, which would be of no use to them, but they enjoy what they have, and fear not the future. If they meet with misfortune they bear it with good courage. But enough, it is not my purpose to praise them and blame ourselves. I wish this letter to be lively in order that you, my distant friend, may find in it some portion of the amusement I have enjoyed at the baths." Here we have the elegant representation of the Italian statesman. The fifteenth century was truly a time of luxury and refined enjoyment, but what the foreigner relates is not so bad as the way in which he relates it. The Reformation came. It exercised an influence even on the frivolous people who visited the baths. Life became more earnest and thoughtful, and the superintendence exercised by the authorities and pastors more strict. The number of married persons became greater, for it was one of the favourite tenets of the Protestant opposition, to promote marriage and domestic discipline. Much fewer became the number of those prelates and their ladies, monks and roving women, who were not joined in lawful matrimony. Thus after the time of Luther and Zwinglius, towards the end of the sixteenth century, we have a very different description of the baths of Baden, written by an honest German, the doctor of medicine Pantaleon, a Basle man, rector of the high school and of the philosophical faculty. Here follow some characteristic fragments.