Quite a different world from the every-day world of railways and electricity; this carefully got-up world, gloved and starched, that scorns the unbought charm and the sublime simplicity, the severe and contented virtue, of the children of nature. The peasant in rags, coming out of his larch forest, brings with him a breath of wild nature; and the young girl, mounted on her donkey, fresh and rosy as the rhododendrons, is as simple and natural as they. This blue-bloused son of the soil, trained to the habits of order by centuries of freedom, understands his rights and has been taught at school his civic duties, and knows something of the laws and the constitution of his country. Inquire of him, and you will probably learn that he is a Deputy and a Communal Councillor, and may one day be President of the Confederation. There is much of all that constitutes both the good man and the good citizen distributed throughout the peasants. In their great cathedral of nature, the harsh clamor and ceaseless unrest of the outer world find but little place and less concern. Rejecting those factitious wants which luxury creates, the expense and way of living are proportioned to their small means, and every one, sooner or later, is sure of something which he enjoys in quiet and security. The very spirit of picturesqueness hovers over their mountain homes, and lingers in their peaceful vales whispering of a past fraught with quaint traditions and glorious memories; and of a present, full of self-supporting energy, reciprocal dispositions to neighborly help, a spontaneous tendency to order, forethought, plodding industry, sobriety, and contentment. “And e’en those hills that round his mansion rise Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies. Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms, And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms; And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, Clings close and closer to the mother’s breast, So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind’s roar, But bind him to his native mountains more.” CHAPTER XVII. NATURAL BEAUTIES AND ATTRACTIONS. “A wilderness of sweets: for nature here Wanton’d as in her prime, and play’d at will, Her virgin fancies pouring forth more sweet, While above rule of art, enormous bliss.” No spot in Europe can compare with Switzerland in loveliness and rural charms; in variety, boldness, and sublimity of scenery; in tonic, steel-strong air, a fine intoxicant of mental and physical joy and power. It is a land of valleys, exquisite in their loveliness, enriched by numberless streams, lakes, mountains, peak, and pass: “Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.”