The region extending from the Lake of Geneva to the Lake of Constance, and from the foot of the Alps to the foot of the Jura, forms only one-fourth of Switzerland, so far as area is concerned; but nearly its whole population, wealth, and industry are concentrated there. The population is settled in the plains, the hill regions, and the valleys; there are chalets nearly eight thousand feet high on the Fleck and Indre Alps, but only one town, viz., Chaux-de-Fonds, in the Jura of Neuchâtel, has been built at an elevation of more than three thousand two hundred feet; but there are villages in Alpine valleys with an elevation of four thousand to five thousand feet, and the hamlet of Juf, in the dreary valley of the Avers, has an elevation of six thousand seven hundred feet, and is the highest village in Europe permanently inhabited. In point of religion the Swiss are as sharply divided as they are in tongue and customs. It is to the increasing efforts of the clergy, during the many centuries that elapsed between the fall of the Roman empire and the revival of knowledge, that the judicious historian of Switzerland ascribes the early civilization and humane disposition of the Helvetic tribes; and invariably the first traces of order and industry appeared in the immediate neighborhood of the religious establishments. The traveller will behold with interest the crosses which frequently mark the brow of a precipice, and the little chapels hollowed out of the rock where the road is narrowed, and will consider them so many pledges of security; and he will rest assured that so long as the pious mountaineer continues to adore the “Good Shepherd” he will never cease to befriend the traveller or to discharge the duties of hospitality. That a church, or rather that churches, existed in Switzerland in the fourth century is proved by the signatures, coming down from that date, of certain bishops and elders of Geneva, Coire, and the Valais; and one century later it is known that other places besides these had been in a measure Christianized. The Fraternity of St. Bernard was founded in the latter part of the tenth century by Bernard de Menthon, an Augustinian canon of Aosta, in Piedmont, for the double purpose of extending bodily succor and administering spiritual consolation to travellers crossing the Pass of St. Bernard, where winter reigns during nine months of the year. The idea of establishing a religious community in the midst of savage rocks, and at the highest point trodden by the foot of man, was worthy of Christian self-denial and a benevolent philanthropy. The experiment succeeded in a degree commensurate with its noble intention: centuries have gone by, civilization has undergone a thousand changes, empires have been formed and overturned, and one-half of the world has been rescued from barbarism, while this piously-founded edifice still remains in its simple and respectable usefulness where it was first erected, the