lolling tongue, obscene gestures, degraded appetites, and senseless gibberish as revolting as their aspects. The word _cretin_ is thought to be derived from the older _cretins_ of the Alps, whose name was a corruption of _Chrétien_ or _Christianus_, and who, being baptized, and idiots, were supposed to be “washed from original sin” and incapable of actual sin. Cretinism is regarded by physicians as hereditary, for it appears in the most pronounced type in successive generations of the same family. This unfortunate district borders on the most fertile and beautiful valley in Switzerland, the Emmenthal, the rich plain in the northern part of the Canton of Bern, noted for its cheese and its _schwingfeste_ (winnowing-festivals). Here the peasants are sturdy and strong of aspect, and on Sunday the men may be seen walking among their acres like lords of the soil, in their immaculate shirt sleeves of a fulness suggestive of episcopal dignity. It was the neat houses, comfortable dresses, highly-cultivated and generous soil, giving a cheerful and prosperous look to the face alike of the people and the country in this section, that caused so high an authority as Burke to write, “That he had beheld throughout Switzerland, and above all in the Canton of Bern, a people at once the happiest and the best governed on earth.” CHAPTER XX. SWITZERLAND THE SEAT OF INTERNATIONAL UNIONS. It is not a little surprising--when we consider the great and rapid advance that has been made during the last century in diplomacy, jurisprudence, statesmanship, and political economy, and, indeed, in the multifarious branches of knowledge,--that international relations, upon which depend to such an extent the most precious interests of the nations and of all mankind, should remain so long in a condition very crude, indefinite, and incomplete. The “mills of God grind slowly,” but the mills of human government seem even more tedious and rusty. Now that, in the advance of intelligence and civilization, the nations have passed from the self-subsistent stage of national life into the dependent one; now that, through the great discoveries of modern times, the nations have been brought together, compacted into one community, and the interests of all have been blended; now that “the separate threads of national prosperity have been entangled in the international skein,” publicists have found it necessary to enlarge their opinions and judgments, so as to represent, not the narrowness of local prejudice, but the breadth and depth of the whole mind of civilized mankind. This tendency has found practical expression in international treaties, with objects neither sectarian nor political; concerning not individuals alone, not nations alone, but the whole community of man. With aims the most comprehensive, desirableness and practicability manifest, they are founded in a philanthropy seeking to promote the honor and welfare of every nation, and to bring additional blessings