Though Bern is the national and cantonal capital, it has an essentially small-town, provincial system of life. There is no capital in Europe more remote from the stir and impulse of the world’s activities. Isolated by its insignificance rather than by any geographical position, free from all extraneous influences, it maintains a mummy condition, bound up in the swaddling-clothes of quaint customs and antiquated ideas. It has been within this generation that a butcher of the town made the advertisement that “all persons, without respect of religion, can have fresh meat every day.” To the stranger, life in Bern soon stagnates into a fearsome weariness. There is absolutely nothing to break the _tædium vitæ_ unless you devote yourself to the task of doing it. From the first of December to the middle of April there is an annual hibernation. Silence reigns in the streets, and the tradesmen will tell you they do not make enough to pay for their light. Amusements are few and too poor to lure one from his melancholy, and, tired with all things else, the weary heart must seek new life and joy in nature. Yet the very silence and absence of bustle, a certain stateliness and reserved demeanor in the inhabitants, showing it not to be a money-making town, imply that its importance at some time must have sprung from more solid and permanent sources than trade can afford, and that another spirit animated its inhabitants. Aristocratic pride is still excessive, and the antique simplicity of its magistrates, the plain and easy manners they uniformly preserve in their intercourse with the people, are not by any means at variance with the assertion. For that external simplicity and affability to inferiors is one of the characteristics of the aristocratic government; all assumption of superiority being carefully avoided when real authority is not in question. Zurich suggests the idea of a municipal aristocracy; Bern of an ancient one. In the one we think we see citizens of a town transformed into nobility, in the other ancient nobles who have made themselves citizens. By the side of those gigantic terraces, of those fine fountains, those massive arches and noble shades you now see none but simple and solid dwellings, yet scarcely any beggarly ones; not an equipage to be seen, but many a wagon, with a fine team of horses or oxen, well appointed in every way. The aristocracy of Bern, in times past, was distinguished by its elegant accomplishments and the splendid ornaments and furniture of its houses, heirlooms of the wall and of the cupboard, which were the pride of generations. The value of the furniture of a Bernese patrician, called Zeguti, was ascertained by his last will, A.D. 1367, to be equal to the public revenue of the city for one year. The aristocratic Bernese officials of those days had under their door-bells written: “_Ici on sonne et attend._” Bern is in the centre of one of the most beautiful