whose name is a synonym for liberty; the Switzerland of Sempach, Morat, and Morgarten--consisted only of the thirteen German-speaking states that are clustered mostly to the north and west of the original mountain nucleus of Uri, Unterwalden, and Schwyz. With Flüelen, exactly at the head of the lake, we conclude our perambulation of the Vierwaldstättersee. I do not know that this little village has much of particular interest; but a couple of miles beyond it is the small mountain capital of Uri, where Tell is reported in the immortal legend to have shot the apple from off his boy's head, and where his statue still stands in the diminutive market-place. The vale of the Reuss at Altdorf, and indeed as far south as Amsteg, where it is blocked, as it were, by the huge pyramid of the Bristenstock, and where the floor of the valley first begins to rise in earnest towards the far-away _col_ of the St. Gothard, is merely a prolongation of the mountain basin of the Urnersee, with the substitution of flat green pasture for a pavement of crystal lake. Of the Bay of Uri itself I feel that I have said little, yet feel, with some sincerity, that there is little to be said. Its elements, though majestic, are exceedingly downright and simple, whereas those of the rest of the Lake of Lucerne are multiform, subtle, and complex. Whatever be the impression that it effects on the spectator, it is likely to accomplish this at once; it is no finer at the head than at the foot; and all that it has of grandeur (and nothing of the kind in the Alps is grander) is flashed upon us in a moment, in complete and final revelation, when first it comes into vision between the piers at Trieb and Brunnen. It varies, of course, in splendour as the day is bright or dull; but less, I imagine, than the lower reaches of the lake, which depend more for their effect on screens of mountain more remote, and are capable of assuming softer and lovelier colouring exactly because their atmospheric distances are greater. In gloom, or rain, or heat-haze, it is the one division of the lake that will fail to disappoint us, but perhaps it is also the one division that responds less readily to the vivifying influences of sunshine and blue sky. Nor is it really wild, if one may say so without paradox, in the sense in which Ennerdale is wild, or Wastdale Head, or Langstrath, among the familiar fells of Cumberland. The cliffs that drop directly to its eastern shore are indeed tremendous and unapproachable, but above them, as we know, are gentle Alpine pastures that are musical with cow-bells, and meadows that are fragrant with hay and flowers. The tops of distant snow-clad mountains, again, though visible from its waters, are really removed to immense distances, above it and beyond it, and though they ring it round in insuperable barrier, almost belong to another world. Land where you can, or will, and you find your immediate environment scarcely wilder, if wilder at