The dwellings of men of any wealth or rank were very curiously planned, elaborately ornamented, richly painted, and adorned with magnificent tapestry. The tables were covered with vessels of wrought silver, in which Sylvius confesses that the Bâlois surpassed even the skilful and profuse Italians. Fountains, those sources of fantastic and ever-changing beauty, were numerous,--so numerous, says our afterward-to-be-infallible authority, that the town of Viterbo, in Tuscany, had not so many,--and Viterbo was noted for its beauty, and for being surrounded with the villas of wealthy Italians, who have always used water freely in the way of fountains. Bâle, although it then--four hundred and twenty years ago--acknowledged the Emperor for its sovereign, was a free town, as it is now; that is, it had no local lord to favor or oppress it at his pleasure, but was governed by laws enacted by representatives of the people. The spirit of a noble independence pervaded the little Canton of which it was and is the capital. Though it was fortified, its stone defences were not strong; but when Sylvius tells us that the Bâlois thought that the strength of their city consisted in the union of its inhabitants, who preferred death to loss of liberty, we see what stuff its men were made of, and why the town was free. Among its peculiarities, Bâle had no lawyers,--this happy and united Bâle. The Bâlois did not trouble themselves about the Imperial law, says Sylvius; but when disputes or accusations were brought before the magistrates, they were decided according to custom and the equity of each case. They were nevertheless inexorably severe in administering justice. A criminal could not be saved either by gold, or by intercession, or by the authority and influence of his family. He who was guilty must be punished; and the punishments were terrible. Criminals were banished, hung, beheaded, broken on the wheel, drowned in the Rhine, (a bad use to which to put that "excellent river,") left to starve on a gradually diminished supply of bread and water. To compel confessions, tortures inconceivably horrible were used, to which the alternative of death would have been a boon; and yet there were not wanting those among the Bâlois who would endure these torments rather than utter their own condemnation. They were devoted to religion, and held in great reverence the pictures and images of the Saints; but not on account of any admiration of the skill of painter or sculptor; for they cared little for the arts, and were so ignorant of literature that "no one of them had ever heard of Cicero or of any other orator."