The magnificent slopes to this rapid river are in some places covered with turf, and supported in others by lofty terraces planted with trees.[110] It is not an easy matter to account for the first impression you receive on entering Bern; you certainly feel that you have got to an ancient and remarkable place. Passing under any of its old gate-ways for the first time, one feels as if he had strayed upon a stage conscientiously prepared for the playing of a mediæval comedy or tragedy. No town in Switzerland has been so preserved from the hands of the spoiler and the restorer; the whole town is a sort of informal museum of archæology. A small portion that has grown up around the Federal Palace, which was erected on the outskirts of the old town, when it was made the permanent capital in 1848, is modern in appearance. That which constitutes the town proper is composed of ancient houses of an early age, with curiously frescoed and carved fronts, and many remnants of ancient architecture. The main streets are broad and regular, the houses constructed of sandstone of a grayish-blue color, found in the adjoining hills; in other streets, the tall, thin houses are clustered together as if to use as little as possible of the margin which nature and industry have drawn so closely around them. These houses are six, seven, and eight stories high. Every floor, with the exception of the first, which in all probability is used for business purposes, accommodates a family, and, among the poor classes, several families. It would be difficult to find a town where every part of the house is so fully put to use and little waste or idle room. It is doubtful if a dozen families in Bern each occupy an entire house, and a very small number more than a flat of one floor. All the houses, including the most ancient, are admirably constructed for this multiform occupancy, and Swiss domestic life, as practised in Bern, is a fine art of many centuries’ growth. The walls being very thick, the front windows are made to serve the purpose of verandas. They have neat iron railings encircling them, swung on hinges, and when thrown outward are both a protection and a rest for inclining against. In all pleasant weather these are the favorite places to sit. Furnished with bright red or orange cushions, and probably those on no two floors being uniform in figure, they present from the street a novel and variegated spectacle; touching up the projecting balconies, highly worked and of a glossy black, and complementing the green Venetian shutters. These houses preserve a mediæval physiognomy; the pomp and strength of feudal Switzerland are called up before our mind when we look at the solid walls, at the buttresses which support them, and their steep peaked roofs.