The German, Burgundian, and Italian nations which joined together to form the modern Swiss nation, cast away their original nationality, and made for themselves a new one, forming a nation as real and true as if it had strictly answered to some linguistic or ethnological division. These northern and southern nations of Europe have been singularly intermingled in Switzerland, and in this respect furnish an interesting study, as a striking exception to the general idea suggested by the word “nation” as a considerable continuous part of the earth’s surface, where speakers of a single tongue are united under a single government. The long persistent division of the Swiss people into German, French, and Italian stands in marked contrast with the thorough unity of the nation. They have never been blended into one people, so far as speaking a common language is concerned. German, French, Italian, Romansch, and Ladin are spoken within the limits of the Confederacy. And even the dialects of the German differ so much as to make communication almost impossible, at times, between the different villages and towns. The census of December 1, 1888, showed the total population of Switzerland to be 2,933,612. The German-speaking element increased from 2,030,792, in 1880, to 2,092,479, which, taking into account the normal growth of the population, was no relative increase; the proportion in both cases being about seventy-one per cent. of the whole. The French, on the other hand, increased from 608,007 to 637,710, which was a relative increase of from 21.4 to 21.07 per cent., while the Italian declined actually as well as relatively, the numbers being 161,923 in 1889, and 156,482 in 1888, or 5.7 and 5.3 per cent. respectively. The decline of the Italians in Uri and Schwyz may be explained by the return home of a large number of Italian workmen engaged on the St. Gothard Railway. It is difficult to explain the large decrease of Germans in the Cantons of Bern and Neuchâtel, while the French have increased. In general, the French increase in Switzerland seems to be at the expense of the Germans, while the German element recovers its place at the expense of the Italian.