ored for indulgence, my senses for enjoyment. I quitted the place. I threw off all restraint. Literally I let myself loose on the world. I sought the company of the young. I drank, I gamed, I was as debauched as the worst. But although with them, I was not of them. Theyonly from the effervescence of strong animal spirits did they go into excesses. What they did was without reflection, impulsive, unpremeditated. Me a calm consciousness pervaded always. Go where I would, do what I would, amidst every criminal indulgence, every noisy debauch or riotous dissipation, it always rode the storm and was present in the fury of the tempest, that fearful, awful conscious Egomet! How I wished I could commit one impulsive sin!

After three years, I was passing with a gay company through the Swiss town of In that place is the convent of the Sisterhood of Our Mother of Pity. The night I stayed there, one of the number died. I heard of it in the morning, as we were preparing to leave. From what was said in connection with the circumstance, I knew it was Eudora. I left my companions to go on by themselves. . I made my way to the convent and begged permission to look on the dead face of my wife. It was granted. She was already arrayed for the grave. I came and threw myself on the lifeless form, and cried as children cry. The fountains of my heart gave way, the sympathies of my nature were upheaved, and for two hours I wept on unrestrained. Even consciousness fled for once and left me to the luxury of grief. At length the worthy people came to me and took me from the room. I asked many questions, to which they could give me but unsatisfactory replies. They knew little of Eudora's history. She had come directly from my house to this place, and had been remarkable for her acts of untiring benevolence in ministering to the sick and the destitute. She lost her life from too great exposure in watching at the bedside of a miserable woman whom all the world seemed to

have abandoned, and who died of some malignant fever. I will not attempt to describe what I passed through. I became sincerely repentant. I saw my character in its true light. I prayed that my sins might be forgiven.

The place where Eudora died was not far from the spot where we first met. I begged the good priest who acted as her confessor to consecrate a little chapel which I should build there, and permit me to place my wife's remains in it. He consented. I caused the image of the Christ which she always wore to be carefully copied in marble and placed before the chapel, and I spent several weeks there, deploring my sins and seeking for light from above.

Af

It was not to be that I should thus easily settle the error of a lifetime. ter a while I felt the desperate gnawing of the senses inexpressible and irresistible. Satan had come again, and I was called for. And I went! There was

no escape, - there is no escape! Once more I plunged into riotous folly and excess, giving full license to my unbridled appetites, but conscious always. When the fever subsided, I was once more repentant and sorrowful, and I came here,― only to be carried off again to renew the same wretched scenes. I know not how long this will last. I know not if Heaven or Hell will triumph. Yet, strange as you may think it, I believe I am not so bad a man as when I was a professor in slowly destroying my lovely wife. From each paroxysm I fancy I escape somewhat stronger, somewhat more manly than before. I think, too, my periods of excess are shorter, and of repentance longer; and I sometimes entertain a hope that folly and madness will in me, as in the young, become exhausted, and that beyond still lies the goal of peace and wisdom.

Such as it is, strange as it may seem, you have from me a truthful history. Would that the world might hear it and be wiser! Mark me! Let not those who undertake to train the young attempt to destroy what Nature has implanted. Let

them direct and modify, but not extinguish. The impulsive freedom of youth is generally the result of an exuberant and overflowing spirit, and should be treated accordingly, - else, later in life,

it may burst forth fierce and unconquerable, or, what is worse, be indulged in secret and make of us hypocrites and dissemblers.

WOE TO THE MAN WHO HAS HAD NO YOUTH!

As you go from Lucerne in a decorous little steamboat down the pleasant Vierwaldstättersee, or Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, with the sloping hills on either side, and the green meadow-patches and occasional house among the trees, you come to a sudden turn where the scenery changes swiftly, and pass between steep and shaggy rocks rising perpendicularly out of the blue water, which seems to get bluer there, into the frowning Bay of Uri, guarded, as if it were the last home of freedom, by great granite hills, lying like sleepy giants with outstretched arms, while the heavy clouds rest black and broken on their summits, and the white vapors float below. Just where the lake makes this turn is the hamlet of Brunnen, which you will not hurry by, if you are wise, but tarry with the kind little hostess of the Golden Eagle by the pleasant shore, and learn, if you will, as nowhere else, what the spirit of the Swiss was in the ancient time, as in this.

As you walk across the little valley which stretches down from the hills to the lake where Brunnen is, you remember that it is the town of Schwyz you come to, where dwelt once the hardy, valorous little colony which gave its name to Switzerland, famous in the annals of this stout-hearted mountain-land for the "peculiar fire" with which they have always fought for their ancient freedom, worthy to leave their name, in lasting token of the service they did to their fellows and to mankind.

Schwyz lies at the foot of the Hacken Mountain, which rises with double peaks

known as the Mythen, (Murray and the tourists, with dubious etymological right, translate Mitres,) — with the dark forests above it on the slopes, and the green openings sparkling in the sunlight, where men and their herds of cattle breathe a purer air. Behind these everlasting walls the spirit of freedom has found a resting-place through the turbulent centuries, during which, on rough Northern soil, the new civilization was taking root, hereafter to overshadow the earth.

Touching the origin of these men of Schwyz, there is a tradition, handed down from father to son, which runs in this wise.

"Toward the North, in the land of the Swedes and Frisians, there was an ancient kingdom, and hunger came upon the people, and they gathered together, and it was resolved that every tenth man should depart. And so they went forth from among their friends, in three bands under three leaders, six thousand fighting men, great like unto giants, with their wives and children and all their worldly goods. And they swore never to desert one another, and smote with victorious arm Graf Peter of the Franks, who would obstruct their progress. They besought of God a land like that of their ancestors, where they might pasture their cattle in peace; and God led them into the country of Brochenburg, and they built there Schwyz; and the people increased, and there was no more room for them in the valley. Some went forth, therefore, into the country round about,

even as far as the Weissland; and it is still in the memory of old men how the people went from mountain to mountain, from valley to valley, to Frutigen, Obersibenthal, Sanen, Afflentsch, and Jaun; - and beyond Jaun dwell other races."

The time and circumstance of this wandering are unknown, and we may make what we will of it; but to the men of Schwyz the tradition is an affirmation of their original primal independence. And of old time, also, the Emperors have admitted that these people of their own free will sought and obtained the protection of the Empire, - a privilege by no means extended to all the dwellers of the Waldstätte, (or Forest Cantons,) but confined to the men of Schwyz.

As the Emperors were often absent, engaged in great wars, and the times were very troublous, and there was need of some commanding character among them, for the administration of the criminal law touching the shedding of blood, they often made the Count of Lenzburg Bailiff. But no matter of any moment could be acted upon without the sense of the people being taken, of the serf as well as the freeman : for these two classes existed not less among these primitive people than elsewhere, in the feudal times; and this community of counsel of freeman and serf is related to have worked harmoniously, "for equality existed of itself, by nature, there." They chose a Landammann, or chief magistrate,—a man free by birth, of an honorable name and some substance; and for judges also they were careful to select men of substance, "for he careth most for freedom and order who hath most to lose"; and for the greater peace of the land there was a Street-Council, consisting of seven reputable men, who went through the streets administering justice in small causes here and there, as in the East the judges sat at the citygate or at the door of the palace.

As the people increased, the valleys of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden were separated and grew to be independent in their own domestic matters, while united with respect to external affairs,

as in the league made in 1251 between Zürich, Schwyz, and Uri; - they were like the Five Nations of Canada, says the historian, but more human through Christianity. Their religious belief was simple and fervent; the Goths, as Arians, had rejected the supremacy of the Pope; and now there came secretly teachers from the East, through Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Hungary, even into Rhætia, and thence to these fastnesses of the Alps. The mind of men, thus left free, developed itself according to the different character of the races. The people of Schwyz were strengthened in their adherence to the authentic Word of God, as it was with the Apostles, without the use of pictures or the bones of saints; this Word they learned by heart, and made little of the additions of men; hence they got to be heretics, and were called Manicheans; but Catholicism conquered them at last.

Thus simple and unknown lived this ancient people, destined to restore in the end the Confederacy of Helvetia, lost since the days of Cæsar's victory, thirteen hundred years before,-till Gerhard, Abbot of Einsiedeln, complained of them to the Emperor Henry V. for pasturing their cattle upon the slopes which belonged to the convent: for, forgetful of the people who dwelt in these parts, whose existence, indeed, was concealed from him by the monks, the Emperor Henry II., in 1018, had bestowed upon the convent the neighboring desert; and the Abbot, of course, did not fail to make the most of the gift. Thus there occurred a collision. The Abbot pursued these poor peasants with the spiritual power, which was not light in those days, and summoned them before the Diet of Nobles of Swabia; but they rejected that tribunal, for they acknowledged only the authority of the Emperor. Whereupon the Abbot laid his complaint before Henry V. at Basel, where Graf Rudolph of Lenzburg, Bailiff of Schwyz, spoke for them. A simple people, innocent of human learning, they could urge against the patent of the Emperor only the tra

ers.

Tradition among people living solitary grows into a religious right, which they fight for readily. For eleven years their turbulence went unpunished; for Henry V. had other matters on his hands, and his two successors conferred other privileges upon the convent. Thirty years afterwards, however, in 1142 or thereabouts, at the solicitation of the monks, obedience was commanded by the Emperor Conrad III., then on the point of departing with his Crusaders to Palestine. But the people answered, "If the Emperor, to our injury, contemning the traditions of our fathers, will give our land to unrighteous priests, the protection of the Empire is worthless to us." Thereupon the Emperor waxed wroth; the ban was laid upon them by Hermann, Bishop of Constance; but they withdrew, nevertheless, from the protection of the Empire, and Uri and Unterwalden with them, fearing neither the Emperor nor the ban, for they could not conceive how it was a sin to maintain the right, and so they pastured their cattle without fear.

When Friedrich I. came to the throne and wanted soldiers, he sent Graf Ulrich of Lenzburg, Bailiff of the Waldstätte, into the valleys to speak to the men of Schwyz. "The heart of the people is in the hands of noble heroes," says the historian; - gladly did the youths, six hundred strong, seize their arms and go forth under Graf Ulrich, whom they loved, to fight for the Emperor his friend, beyond the mountains, in Italy. And now it came the Emperor's turn for the ban; the whole Imperial House of Hohenstaufen fell into spiritual disgrace; Friedrich II. was cursed at Lyons as a blasphemer; but these things did not turn away the hearts of the men of Schwyz from his House.

Long after the time of this Ulrich, the last reigning Graf of Lenzburg, shortly

at the instance of Walther of Attinghausen, in 1206, Unterwalden chose Rudolph, Count of Hapsburg, for Bailiff. He endeavored to extend his authority over the other two Cantons, in which he was aided by the Emperor Otho IV., of the House of Brunswick, who had been raised to the throne in opposition to the House of Swabia, and who, for the purpose of conciliating him, made him Imperial Bailiff of the Waldstätte. An active, vigorous man this Rudolph, grandfather of the Rudolph who was afterwards called to be King of the Germans, whom the Swiss, scattered in their hamlets, were little prepared to make head against, and therefore recognized him with what grace they might, after an assurance that their freedom and rights should be maintained; and he smoothed for them their old controversy with the monks of Einsiedeln, and got a comfortable division of the property made in 1217. But he was hateful to them, nevertheless; and although we know nothing of the way in which he administered his office, we conjecture that it was partly because the Emperor who appointed him was not of the House of Hohenstaufen, to which they were attached, and partly because he claimed that the office of Bailiff was hereditary in his family, whereas the men of Schwyz preferred to offer it of their own free will to whom they would. They made it a condition of assistance to the Emperor Friedrich in 1231, when he went down into Italy to fight the Guelphs, that he should deprive this Rudolph of the office of Imperial Bailiff; and then they went forth, six hundred strong, and did famous work against the Guelphs, with such fire in them that the Emperor not only knighted Struthan von Winkelried of Unterwalden, but gave that valley a patent of freedom, according to which the Schwyzers voluntarily chose the protection of the Empire.

And now Rudolph, Count of Hapsburg, founder of the Austrian monarchy,

strides into the history of the men of Schwyz. A tall, slender man this Rudolph, bald and pale; with much seriousness in his features, but winning confidence the moment one spoke with him by his friendliness, loving simplicity; a restless, stirring man, with more wisdom in him than his companions had, equal or superior to him in birth or power, working his way by device when he could, by the strong arm when that was needed. He took the part of the peasants against the nobles, and used the one to put down the other. In the midst of the turmoils in which he got involved with Sanct Gallen and Basel, and while encamped before the walls of the latter city, he was wakened in his tent at midnight by Friedrich of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nürnberg; for there had come from Frankfort on the Main Heinrich von Pappenheim, Hereditary Marshal of the Empire, with the news, that, "in the name of the Electors, with unanimous consent, in consideration of his great virtue and wisdom, Lewis Count Palatine of the Rhine and Duke of Bavaria had named Count Rudolph of Hapsburg King of the Roman Empire of the Germans": at which Rudolph was more astonished than those who knew him, it is recorded. Not because of his genealogy, nor his marriage with Gertrude Anne, daughter of Burcard, Count of Hohenburg and Hagenlock, did he win this great fortune, but, as the Elector Engelbrecht of Cologne said, "because he was just and wise and loved of God and men." And now the world learned what was in him; and how, for eighteen years he kept the throne, which no king for three-and-twenty years before him had been able to hold, history will relate to the curious.

Switzerland was divided at this period into small sovereignties and baronial fiefs; and there were, besides, also the Imperial cities of Bern and Basel and Zürich. The nobles were warlike and restless. Rudolph checked their depredations and composed their dissensions. Upon that seething age of violence and rapine he

laid, as it were, the forming hand, as if in the darkness the coming time was dimly visible to him;- a man to be remembered, in the vexed and disheartening history of Austria, as one of her few heroes. The people of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, notwithstanding the dislike they had shown to his ancestor, voluntarily appointed him their protector; and he gave them, in 1274, the firm assurance that he would treat them as worthy sons of the Empire in inalienable independence; and to that assurance he remained true till his death, which happened in 1291, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

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It is related in the Rhymed Chronicle of Ottocar, how he had been kept alive for a whole year by the skill of his physicians, but that they told him at last, as he sat playing at draughts, that death was upon him, and that he could live but five days. Well, then," he said, on to Spires!" that he might lay him in the Imperial vault in the great Cathedral there, where many Emperors slept their long sleep, till, in the Orléans Succession War in the time of Louis XIV., as afterwards in 1794, under the revolutionary commander Custine, French soldiers rudely disturbed it, with every circumstance of outrage which Frenchmen only could devise. Rudolph went forth thither, but fell by the way, and died at Germersheim, a dirty little village which he had founded. And in the Cathedral at Spires, where he rested from his activities, you may see this day a monumental statue of him, executed by that great artist, the late Ludwig Schwanthaler of Munich, for his art-loving patron, Ludwig I., King of Bavaria.

Rudolph was succeeded by his son Albrecht, then forty-three years old, likewise a vigorous man, whose restless spirit of aggrandizement gave the Swiss much uneasiness. His purpose seems to have been to acquire the sovereignty of the ecclesiastical and baronial fiefs, and, having thus encompassed the free cities and the Three Cantons, to compel submission to his authority. In the seventh week after Ru