Any one acquainted with the history of Switzerland knows what ties of relationship, of agreement in their manners and mode of living, and neighborly intercourse existed from the most ancient times, between the inhabitants of Obwalden and those of the Haslithal and a part of the Bernese Oberland. Their friendship was kept alive by popular festivals celebrated in common, and also by the reverence which was paid, especially in the interior of Switzerland, to Saint Beatus, who, as the first promulgator of Christianity in that region, dwelt in a cave on the shore of lake Thun, called by his name, and received canonization. Numerous pilgrimages were made thither from the Five Cantons. The rumor, that the relics of the saint, exhibited there on such occasions, had been cast into the lake by order of the Bernese government, awakened universal indignation. But this was not true. Two deputies of the Council had taken possession of them in order to carry them to Interlachen and bury them afterward. In complaints against the abolition of their pilgrimages, the inhabitants of the Bernese Oberland joined with their neighbors of Unterwalden. Pastoral races are very tenacious of old customs. If these be taken away their respect for law is often shaken at the same time. The government of Bern had to experience this. Between the two lakes of Thun and Brienz lay, under the lordly supervision of Bern, the wealthy Augustinian cloister of Interlachen. Its domain extended over a great part of the surrounding country and through the mountain-valleys of Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald. The monks of that period were in good repute neither for their learning nor their morals. The Provost himself Nicholas Trachsel, was destitute both of external and internal dignity. And when the doctrines in regard to the uselessness of monkery, the unscripturalness of spiritual lordship, and the rights of Christian liberty now began to spread among the people subject to the foundation, they immediately applied them to deliverance from all dependence; from the duty of paying rents and tithes. If the one, said they, is an invention of man, so is the other. If we are to receive the Gospel, which teaches liberty among brethren, then will we also become our own masters, an independent canton like Unterwalden and Uri. The Provost, who did not know how to resist them, fled with a few friends to Bern, where, for a decent maintenance, he surrendered the monastery along with its domains and privileges into the hands of the Council. Under sanction of the Great Council, an agreement was quickly made by the government with the assembled convent; its seal, documents, revenues and jewels were brought to Bern; an officer was sent thither, and the whole converted into a bailiwick. But the people belonging to the monastery, who asserted that they ought to have had a voice in the change, at once preferred a complaint. When the government tried to postpone