Moreover, for what did these one hundred and fourteen people dedicate a chapel to him thirty years and a little more after his death? And there is the Chronicle of Klingenberg, which covers the end of the fourteenth century, which tells his story; and Melchior Russ, of Lucerne, who, in compiling his book, about the year 1480, had before him a Tell-song, and the Chronicle of Eglof Etterlins, Town-Clerk of Lucerne in the first half of the fifteenth century; and since 1387, too, there has been solemn service by the people of Uri to commemorate him. So that the "Fable Danoise" of Uriel Freudenberger of Bern (1760) becomes a mere absurdity, and the indignant Canton of Uri had no less right to burn it (although to burn was not to answer it, suggests the critic,) than to honor the "Defence" by Balthasar with two medals of gold. And what has been written to establish him may be read in Zurlauben, (whose approbation is almost proof, says Müller, reverentially,) and elsewhere as undernoted.[A] [Footnote A: In Balthasar, _Déf. de Guill. Tell_ (Lucerne, 1760); Gottl. Eman. von Haller, _Vorlesung über Wilh. Tell_, etc. (Bern, 1772); Hisely, _Guill. Tell et la Révolution de_ 1307 (Delft, 1826); Ideler, _Die Sage vom Schüsse des Tell_ (Berlin, 1836); Häusser, _Die Sage vom Tell_ (Heidelberg, 1840); Schoenhuth, _Wilh. Tell, Geschichte aus der Vorzeit_ (Reutlingen, 1836); Henning, _Wilh. Tell_ (Nürnberg, 1836); and _Histoire de Guill. Tell, Libérateur de la Suisse_ (Paris, 1843).] Tell's posterity in the male line is reported to have died out with Johann Martin, in 1684; the female, with Verena, in 1720. Yet it is certainly a little surprising that the elder Swiss chroniclers, John of Winterthur, and Justinger of Bern, for instance, who were almost Tell's contemporaries, make no mention of him in relating the Revolution in the Waldstätte, and that it should be left to Tschudi and others, almost two hundred years afterwards, in the sixteenth century, to give his story that dramatic importance upon which Schiller has set the seal forever. It can be explained, perhaps, on the ground that it did not at the time possess that importance which we have been taught to give it; though roughly, thus, we do away with the poetry of it, to be sure. Let Voltaire, whose function it was to deny, enjoy his feeble sneer, that "the difficulty of pronouncing those respectable names"--to wit, _Melchtad_, and _Stauffager_, and _Valtherfurst_, to say nothing of _Grisler_--"injures their celebrity." Neither are we to conceal the fact, that it is doubted, if not denied, that there ever was any Gessler in Uri to perform all the wicked things ascribed to him, and to get that arrow through him in such dramatic and effective manner in the Hollow Way; for has not Kopp published, with edifying explanation, "Documents for the History of the Confederation," (Lucerne, 1835,) in which, in the list of Bailiffs (_Landvoigte_) at Küssnacht, we do not find the name of