monuments of the genius of the dead are presented to the admiration of the living. No one asks what the princes and people of Italy are doing; an iron sceptre is extended over them. The intelligent Italian feels that he has no country, and mingles his sighs and regrets, his indignation and his anguish, with the sublime lamentations of the poet of England.

We must now turn to Germany. I must leave Pfeffel to conduct you from the accession of Rodolph, to the opening of the history of Robertson. His work may be read with more or less attention, according to the varying importance of the subject matter. But the first observation that occurs is, that from this era the history of Germany assumes a double aspect, and that our attention must be directed, not only to the empire itself, but to the rise, growth, and subsequent predominance of the House of Austria. A work has lately been published, executed with every appearance of diligence and precision, by Mr. Coxe (Coxe's History of Austria), and furnishing the English reader with a complete account of the political history of that celebrated family. By his labours, and those of Pfeffel and Robertson, we may consider ourselves as furnished with information, which we must otherwise have extracted with great pain and labour, if at all, from those documents and historians in different languages, to which they refer. These writers will be found to illustrate each other and may be read together-Pfeffel, Robertson, and Coxe.

From several details and particulars that belong to this portion of history, and which may be perused, I conceive, somewhat slightly, there are some which should be considered more attentively: the gradual settlement of the constitution of the empire, as it is noted by Pfeffel, and more especially the Golden Bull of Charles IV. This Golden Bull was the first among the fundamental laws of the empire, and was published by the emperor, it is to be observed, with the consent and concurrence of the electors, princes, counts, nobility and towns imperial.

But by this famous bull, as by all the prior regulations of the Germanic constitution, the emperor was still left the elective, the limited, and almost the inefficient head of an

aristocracy of princes; each of whom seems to have remained the real monarch in his own dominions; and the vast strength and resources of Germany, dissipated and divided among a variety of interests, could at no time, even by the most able princes of the House of Austria, be combined and wielded against the enemies of the empire with their proper and natural effect.

Apparently, indeed, and on great public occasions, the majesty of the emperor was sufficiently preserved and displayed. The princes and potentates of Germany officiated as his domestics; the count-palatine of the Rhine, as his steward, placed the dishes on his table; the margrave of Brandenburgh, as his chamberlain, brought the golden ewer and bason to wash, the king of Bohemia, as his cup-bearer, presented the wine at his repast; and each elector had his appropriate duty of apparent servility and homage.

Such are the whimsical and contradictory scenes of arrogance and debasement, of ostentation and meanness, of grave folly and elaborate inanity, which are produced among mankind, when in a state of civilized society, by the intermingled operation of the various passions of our nature. History is full of them; and private life, as well as public, presents the same motley exhibition of compliments paid, by which no one is to be flattered; trouble undertaken, by which no one is to be benefited; and artifices practised by which no one is to be deceived.

But we now approach one of the most interesting portions of history, and one that is connected with Germany, and more particularly the House of Austria,-The formation of the Helvetic Confederacy, the growth and establishment of the independence and political consequence of Switzerland.

The historians you are to read are Planta, and Coxe in his House of Austria. There is a history by Naylor, who is more ardent than either in his love of liberty, but seems less calm, and less likely to attract the confidence of his reader.

Switzerland is a name associated with the noblest feelings of our nature, and we turn with interest to survey the rise and progress of countries which we have never been accustomed to mention, but with sentiments of respect. In the history of the world, it has been the distinction of three

nations only, to be characterized by their virtue and their patriotism-the early Romans, the Spartans, and the Swiss. We speak of the splendour of the Persians, of the genius of the Athenians; but we speak of the hardy discipline and the inflexible virtue of Sparta, and of ancient republican Rome; "the unconquerable mind, and freedom's holy flame." So in modern times we speak of the treasures of Peru, of the luxuries of India, of the commerce of Venice or of Holland, and of the arts of France; but it is to Switzerland that we have been accustomed to turn, when as philanthropists or moralists, we sought among mankind the unbought charms of native innocence, and the sublime simplicity of severe and contented virtue.

More minute examination might possibly compel us to abate something of the admiration which we have paid at a distance yet our admiration must be ever due to the singular people of Switzerland; and it must always remain a panegyric of the highest kind, to owe renown to merit alone; to have earned their independence by valour, and to have maintained their prosperity by virtue; to be quoted as examples of those qualities by which men may be so ennobled, that they are respected, even amid their comparative poverty and rudeness; to be described as heroes who, though too few to be feared by the weak, were too brave to be insulted by the strong. The student, while he reads the history of Switzerland, finds himself, on a sudden, restored to his earliest emotions of virtuous sympathy, and he will almost believe himself to be once more surrounded by the objects of his classical enthusiasm; the avengers of Lucretia, and the heroes of Thermopylæ. Insolence and brutality he will see once more resisted by the manly feelings of indignant nature. A few patriots meeting at midnight, and attesting the justice of their cause to the Almighty disposer of events, the God of equity and mercy, the protector of the helpless: calm and united, proceeding to the delivery of their country; overpowering, dismissing, and expelling their unworthy rulers, the agents and representatives of the House of Austria, without outrage and without bloodshed: retaining all the serene forbearance of the most elevated reason, amid the energies and the fury of vindictive right; and magnanimously reserving the vengeance

of their arms for those of their rulers who should dare to approach them in the field, with the instruments of war, and the bloody menaces of injustice and oppression.

Such a trial indeed awaited them; but these inimitable peasants, these heroes of a few valleys, were not to be dismayed. They united and confirmed their union by an oath; and if their enemy, as he declared, was determined to trample the audacious rustics under his feet, they would unawed (they said) await his coming, and rely on the protection of the Almighty. Their enemy came; and he came according to his language, in his council of war, to take some by surprise; to defeat others; to seize on many; to surround them all, and thus infallibly extirpate the whole nation. Three separate attacks were prepared, and the Duke Leopold himself conducted the main army; but he was met at the straits of Morgarten by this band of brothers. Like one of the avalanches of their mountains, they descended upon his host, and they beat back into confusion, defeat, and destruction, himself, his knights and his companions; the disdainful chivalry, who had little considered the formidable nature of men, who could bear to die, but not to be subdued; men, whom nature herself seemed to have thrown her arms around, to protect them from the invader, by encompassing them with her inaccessible mountains, her tremendous precipices, and all her stupendous masses of eternal winter.

The Three Forest Cantons, five and twenty years after the assertion of their own independence, admitted to their union a fourth canton; eighteen years after, a fifth; and soon a sixth, seventh, and an eighth.

These eight ancient cantons, whose union was thus gradually formed and perfected in the course of half a century from 1307, were afterwards joined by five other cantons; and the Helvetic confederacy was thus in the course of two centuries finally augmented to an union of thirteen.

But many were the difficulties and dangers through which the cantons had to struggle for their independence, and the strength of the oppressor was more than once collected to overwhelm, in the earlier periods of its existence, this virtuous confederacy. Seventy-one years after the defeat at Morgarten another Duke of Austria, a second Leopold, with a second

host of lords and knights, and their retainers, experienced once more a defeat near the walls of Sempach; but the battle was long suspended: these Austrian knights were unwieldy indeed from their armour, but they were thereby inacessible to the weapons of the Swiss; and as they, too, were brave, and deserved a better cause, they were not to be broken.

"I will open a passage," said the heroic Arnold, a knight of Underwalden: "provide for my wife and children, dear countrymen and confederates, honour my race." At these words he threw himself upon the Austrian pikes, buried them in his bosom, bore them to the ground with his own ponderous mass, and his companions rushed over his expiring body into the ranks of the enemy; a breach was made in this wall of mailed warriors, and the host was carried by assault.

Such were long the patriots of Switzerland; such they continued to the last. They received privileges and assistance from the empire, while the empire was jealous of the House of Austria. The paucity of their numbers was compensated by the advantages of their Alpine country. Their confederacies were artless and sincere; their lives rural and hardy; their manners simple and virtuous; eternally reminded of the necessity of a common interest, every peasant was a patriot, and every patriot a hero. Human prosperity must be always frail, human virtue imperfect; yet can we long pursue their history, though with some anxiety and occasional pain, on the whole, with a triumph of virtuous pleasure.

The most disagreeable characteristic of the people of Switzerland is their constant appearance as mercenaries in the armies of foreign countries.

In excuse of the Swiss, from the natural reproaches of the reasoners and moralists of surrounding nations, it may be observed, that in a poor country emigration is the natural resource of every man, whose activity and talents are above the ordinary level; that the profession of arms was the obvious choice of those who could pretend to no superiority but in the qualities that constitute the military character.

That, with respect to the Swiss magistracies, they could have no right to prevent their youth from endeavouring to better their condition; and that, while part of the population