of its treasure, which, no doubt, was one of the motives and most immediate cause of the invasion and attack. The exact amount taken was never ascertained, but by the most moderate estimate made it reached 20,000,000 francs; everything of value that could be taken away became the prey of the victors. From the date of its accession to the Confederation, in 1351, Bern has been one of the most conspicuous and influential of Swiss towns. The history of the city is the history of the Canton, and in some measure it is the history of the Confederation. From 1798 to 1815 the Federal Diet met in turns at Zurich, Bern, Luzern, Freiburg, Solothurn, and Basel. From 1815 to 1848 the three cities of Zurich, Bern, and Luzern were the seats of the government, the Diet sitting biennially in each place in turn. This system of having three capitals did not work satisfactorily, and the necessity for the country possessing one centre was generally seen. Zurich and Luzern surrendered their claims, and Bern became the central and fixed capital of the Confederation in 1848, the Canton assuming the cost of erecting the necessary public buildings. It is also the capital of the largest and most populous Canton, which has a population of 539,305, out of a total for the Confederation of 2,933,612, or nearly one-fifth. It is the most important of the sisterhood by its territory, wealth, and population, and may be called the Empire Canton of the Confederation. The city itself contains a population of about 50,000, with a superficial surface of an American village of 2500 people. No great city in Switzerland overtops the rest and draws them into moving around it by its mass and weight. Population and wealth are not concentrated in “enormous and apoplectic heads upon a bloodless body,” as great cities were designated by Mirabeau. The largest Swiss towns would be fifth-rate towns in the United States. The Swiss villages are on the declivities of the Alps; the towns either on advanced promontories or on the borders of the lakes. They are all small, and contain none of the monuments which mark the luxury of great nations. They are municipalities rather than capitals, to whom the nature of the country and the smallness of the population have denied the power of increase. Many of these towns are located with a view to the natural defence, furnished by the topography of the site, and were originally walled places of refuge. They resemble those towns of prehistoric Italy described by Virgil, as “perched on precipices of rocks, with rivers gliding beneath their antique walls.” Bern occupies a bold promontory of sandstone rock, seventeen hundred and ten feet above the sea, and its position in early times entailed great strategical advantages. It is nearly surrounded by the Aar, a bold, strong tributary of the Rhine, which rises in the southeast mountains of Bern, and carries to its mouth the waters of fourteen Cantons. A sudden bend of the stream encloses the town on all sides but one.