civil war. His voice was deemed the voice of Heaven; and, conformably to his counsels an alliance immediately took place between the divided cantons; who would have loaded him with rich presents in token of their gratitude: but he refused to accept them, and returned to his hermitage. His great merit was that of active zeal for the public good; yet not for so laudable a part of his career has his memory become the object of ecclesiastical distinction and of popular veneration; but for his abandonment of wife, children, and friends, in order to submit himself as a monkish recluse to a thousand useless rules and unmeaning restrictions, alike alien to true honour and unfriendly to practical virtue. So just is the observation "Toute fausse Réligion combat la Nature."*

Under the portico of Sachslen church are two fresco paintings; one relating to the political, the other to the legendary history of the worthy and respectable Nicholas. Of the former the design represents the aged hermit making his sudden and unexpected appearance before the assembled. Diet, just as its members were about to separate in irritation and hostility. His tall and reverend form, clothed in a friar's dress, and his dignified countenance rendered more impressive by a black flowing beard-the figures of the awe-struck deputies habited in the full magisterial suits of the 15th century, some rising from their seats, as he is in the act of addressing to them his short but admirable speech of pacificationt-are well executed

Rousseau-who with equal propriety remarks: la pure morale est si chargée de devoirs sévères, que si on la charge encore de formes indifférentes, c'est presque toujours au dépens de l'essentiel.

"My friends (said De Flue on this memorable occasion), I come from a deep solitude. I am a stranger to the ways of man, but I serve the Lord. You cities (Zurich, Berne, and Lucerne), must give up your sepa

and have the marked expression of portrait. The inside of the edifice is elegantly constructed and altogether very sumptuous. The pillars and arches are of black marble; all brought by the manual labour of peasants stimulated by their religious enthusiasm, from quarries in the valley of the Melchthal, about two leagues from Sachslen. Some of the altar pieces are adorned with sculptures of no mean workmanship and with pictures of considerable merit. This is a favourite place of pilgrimage. The bones of the Swiss Saint are enshrined in a sort of glass coffin, decorated with much gilding and jewellery; and before these precious relics, as well as upon his tomb-stone in one of the side chapels, we saw persons of both sexes with every outward sign of intensely ardent feeling, prostrated at their devotions. Father Klaus having, as his epitaph boldly asserts, lived "nineteen years in the desert without taking any sustenance," and consequently proved himself a walking miracle whilst in this world, it is not very surprising that he should be regarded as continuing to work wonders* in that beyond the grave. Accordingly we find him sharing the honours of vœux rendus with the Virgin Mary; and in

rate league: it is big with mischief. You rural cantons (Uri, Schweitz, Underwalden, Zug, and Glarus), forget not the services that have been rendered you, and reward Fribourg and Soleure, by freely admitting them into the Confederacy. 1 learn with sorrow, that, instead of thanking God for the victories he has bestowed upon you, you are still contending for the division of the spoil. Let all the lands you have acquired be divided in due proportions among the cantons; and all moveables among the individuals, according to the number supplied by each canton. Lastly, let me exhort you to unite all your separate leagues into one great intimate union, of which truth and friendship shall be the basis and firm support. I have nothing to add. God be with you."-History of Switzerland.

"Miracles prepared by pious fraud for popular credulity."-Southey's Vindicia, p. 89.

some cases engrossing them to himself. In an ex-voto, bearing the date of 1817, the Romish Queen of Heaven appears in the clouds with the Infant Jesus in her arms. Father Klaus is kneeling before her: in the lower part of the picture is a young woman in bed: her pale complexion, and the basins and medicine bottles placed on a table near the bed-side, indicate her state of sickness; from which however this votive offering vouches for her recovery through the powerful interposition of St. Nicholas with the Virgin Protectress-" near God."-In another, the holy Klaus appears alone in the celestial regions, and the sick person in a bed below.—In a third we see a tempest on the lake, and the canonized De Flue from his place in the skies, stills the raging of the winds and waves.-Such is the fabric of solemnity and superstition which priestcraft has raised, not upon the basis of a man's good qualities or valuable services, but after the example of his weaknesses and his failings.

The well built town of Sarnen, delightfully situated at the northern extremity of the lake, is the chief place and seat of government of the vallée d'en haut, (Oberwald) as Stanz is that of the vallée d'en bas, (Underwald) into which two districts the canton is divided. At the entrance of the town we noticed a circular stone platform, which they told us was in former times the place of execution, by beheading; but is now not used.-It was our wish to have stopped a few hours at Sarnen, which contains some curiosities worthy a traveller's notice; but as the city of Lucerne was our intended quarters for the night, to accomplish which object an extensive piece of water remained to be traversed, prudence dictated expedition, and we made the best of our way down the valley to Alpnach.

In that miserable town, on one side frowned upon by lofty mountains, and washed on the other by the lake-in that little place, consisting for the most part of scattered hovels, a new church has lately been built at the expense of the inhabitants. It was not, in sacerdotal judgment, deemed sufficient that they had already a church of small size but apparently large enough for the population. The new temple is on a scale of grandeur and in a stile of embellishment fitted rather for Fribourg or Lucerne, being of scarcely inferior dimensions to some Protestant cathedrals: nor was this needed for the accommodation of the adjoining village, for that also has a chapel. The indigence of the people of Alpnach is but too clearly discernible both in their persons and in their dwellings.— Could we be at a loss to divine the cause? Struck with the circumstance, we asked the only respectable looking inhabitant we could meet with, at the door of his house, viz. the master of the inn, how it happened that we should then have before our eyes three places of worship and so few houses? He observed, in reply, that it was out of all proportion, and in his opinion uncalled for by the necessity of the case; that the expence of the new building had been very great, and had fallen heavy on the commune; that for his part he had been against the erection of so grand a structure, but persons of small property, like himself, were not their own masters; that the priests governed every thing there by their great spiritual influence; that the money collected from different sources was spent by them in increasing the number of churches, and in administering to the pomp of religious worship, whilst the poor, so far as related to their temporal wants, were left in the wretchedness of total neglect.

Our guide himself informed us of a fact connected with the subject above mentioned, which the men who rowed us in their boat to Lucerne confirmed. It appears that the people of Alpnach would have found themselves incapable of furnishing the means of building their great church, but for a large forest of pines on the skirts of Mount Pilatus, over which the commune possessed an unlimited right of felling and disposing of the trees. At the instigation of the clergy, a bargain was made between the inhabitants and an engineer of the name of Rupp, with whom were joined two gentlemen from Arau. This contract allowed the speculators to cut down as much timber as they pleased for the space of eight years, after which time the original right reverts back to the inhabitants of the commune in question. The price given was 30007. sterling, and the timber proved so fine, that the greater part of it, when it reached the lake of Lucerne, was floated, in the form of rafts, down the Reuss into the Rhine, and thus conveyed to Holland, for the purposes of ship building.* In return for this sacrifice of property, Alpnach and its adjacent plains of pasture can boast of a church, whose white walls and tapering spire are the admiration of the traveller by water, as he approaches the south-west shore of the bay; but when on landing he discovers nothing

In order to bring down to the lake of Lucerne the wood purchased by this company, 9000l. were expended in erecting a slide of singular construction." Its length is about 44,000 English feet, and the difference of level at its two extremities is about 2600 feet. It is a wooden trough, five feet broad and four deep. The large pines, with their branches cut off, are placed one at a time in the slide; and descending by their own gravity, they acquire such an impetus in their progress through the first part of the slide, that they perform their journey of eight miles and a quarter, in six minutes, and, in wet weather, in three minutes."-Loudon's Dictionary of Agriculture.