It is a strange and savage reverence which the peasants feel for the mountains. They seem to grow like each other in spirits, even as a man and wife who live in peace grow like each other year by year. With no people is the love of home and the native soil so strongly developed. To return to his village in the midst of his beloved mountains is the constant dream of his life, and to realize it he will endure every privation and bind himself to the hardest and most painful toil. One hope possesses him,--to see again the snows, the glaciers, the lakes, the great oaks, and the familiar pines of his country. It is a sentiment so human--of home, of kindred, of the accustomed locality, of country--that has fostered itself on him and binds him to the spot with a chain he has no power to break. The Almighty himself has implanted in the human breast that passionate love of country which rivets with irresistible attraction the Esquimau to his eternal snows, the Arab to his sandy desert, and the Swiss to his rugged mountains: “Cling to thy home: if there the meanest shed Yield thee a hearth and shelter for thy head, And some poor plot, with vegetables stored, Be all that Heaven allots thee for thy board, Unsavory bread and herbs that scatter’d grow Wild on the river-bank or mountain brow, Yet e’en this cheerless mansion shall provide More heart’s repose than all the world beside.” There is a quietness and a sombre severity in the lives of these peasants. In spite of occasional merry-making, pleasure-seeking is rare. They have no great sensibility or expression of joy, but a composed satisfaction, a kind of phlegmatic good humor, marks the boundary of their happiness. Many visitors to the country are disposed to complain of the plainness of their demeanor; that their speech is rough and their style hard. The simple abruptness of the peasant’s greeting is not without its charms. How far one feels from the obsequious manners of the city, from profuse and insincere compliments! Is there not to some extent in all this a philosophical basis? In general, is it not true that the members of a republic, conscious of their independence and self-importance, adhere less scrupulously to the conventional regularity of forms? Again, the extreme politeness which sometimes characterizes the subject of an arbitrary government may be the result of that policy which introduces and encourages an exterior air of civility as the mark of subordination and respect. The Swiss peasants have neither the time, disposition, nor necessity to affect these elegant improvements,--fopperies of a trifling and superficial elegance which frequently serve merely to soften the deformities of vice. They are delightfully natural human beings, human nature simple and unabashed, and manifest a courteous consideration for each other’s comforts and sensibilities. They have no occasion to assert offensively that equality of right which nobody denies, and they respect each