Letters of a Traveller. Second series

Front matter

■ LETTERS FROM SPAIN AND OTHER COUNTRIES. LETTERS OE A TRAVELLER. SECOND SERIES. BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 846 & 348 BEOADWAT. 1859. Entered, according to Act os Cajagt inBj iirmeyear 1859, by WILLIAM CULLEN BET ANT, In tie Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. TO THE READER. These Letters, sent home to the United States during recent journeys in several countries of the European continent, are laid hefore the public just as they were written on the spot, without additions, and with no material corrections. Of their imperfections none can be more sensible than the author ; their merit, if they have any, consists in their being a record of observations committed to paper while the impression they made was yet clear and distinct.

Contents

Pagh Letter I.— A Floral Exhibition at Paris.— Beautiful Arrangements.— A Fountain and Brook.— Tropical Plants.— Black Swans.— New Roses.— M. Vattemare.— Persian Visitors.— Delaroche's Paintings.— His Queen Elizabeth.— His three Portraits of Napoleon 11 Lettee II.— The Pauper Colonies of Holland.— Their Origin.— The Dwellings of the Paupers. — Their Neatness. — Begging Propensity of the Inmates. — Their Manufactory.— Their Schools.— Mode of Compensation for their Labor.— Numbers of the Colonists 17 Letter IIL— The Swiss Industrial Exhibition.— Ingenuity of the Swiss.— Their success in Manufactures.— Freedom of Trade. — Natural Advantages for Manufactures.— Iron Articles. — Swiss "Watches, Porcelain, Glass, Silks, "Woollens, Embroidery. — Carvings in "Wood. — Skins of Birds. — New Palace of the Confederation.— Swiss Paintings 22 Letter IY. — Bagneres de Luchon. — Geneva. — Lyons. — Nimes. — Melons at Nimes. — New Buildings. — Toulouse. — Beauty of Luchon. — Guides. — The Tillage.— The Baths.— The Cours d'Etigny.— Sights in the Streets.— English at the Lac d1 Oo.— The Pic de TAnticade.— The Maladetta.— A Legend 3C Letter Y. — Bagneres de Bigorre. — Horace Yernet's Elijah. — Catholic and Protestant "Worship. — Pan.— Its Summer Dulness.— Journey to Bayonne. — Fresh Appearance of the Environs. — Hotel du Commerce. — People of the Town. — Journey to San Sebastian.— The Scenery. — The Basque Race seen on a Holiday.— The Bidassoa. — Behobie. — Entrance into Spain. — Irun. — The People.— Port of Passages. — A Gascon Coachman.— Arrival at San Sebastian. 41 Letter YL— San Sebastian.— The Pyrenees and the Atlantic. — Noises of San Sebastian.— Compactness of the Town. — Church of Santa Maria. — Sunday Gayeties. — Quiet of the Night. — The Alameda.— Basque Children. — No Thieves. — Absence of Beggars.— The House of Mercy. — The Climate. — Occupations of the Paupers. — The School. — The Hospital. — Sufferings from Thirst. — Yalley of Loyola. — Basque "Women. — Yineyards Abandoned 52 Letter VII. —Hall of Maternity.— Graves of British Officers.— Hats of the Priests. — Departure from San Sebastian.— Caution to Travellers.— The CONTENTS.

Pagb Oria.— Treatment of Trees.— A Basquo Peasant.— The Chestnut Crop.— "Woollen Mills.— A Showy Country House.— A Manufacturing Village.— Tolosa.— Night Travelling.— A Member of the Civil Guard.— Vergara.— Neatness of the Hotel.— The Deva.— A Basque Girl.— The Cantabrian Mountains.— Salinas.— The Roads.— Beggars.— Arrival at Vitoria .". . 65 Letter VIII.— Spanish Politeness. — Public Grounds at Vitoria.— The Alameda.— Thriving Appearance of the Town.— Sights in the Streets.— The Cathedral.— Ribera's Dead Christ.— Country about Vitoria.— The Arquillos — Winter at Vitoria.— Pigs and "Women.— A Fair.— The People.— Their Animals.— The Pig Market— Public Schools.— Departure from Vitoria. — A Castilian Coachman.— Miranda de Ebro. — Swarms of Beggars. — Entrance into Castile.— Custom-House. — A Castilian Traveller.— The Pass of Pancorvo. — Briviesca.— Dreary Region. — Arrival at Burgos 73 Letter IX.— Aspect of Burgos.— Spanish Courtesy. — The Alameda. — The Cathedral.— Beauty of its Architecture. — Its Oriental Character. — Side Chapels. — Tomb of the Condestable. — Chapel of Santa Tecla. — A Spanish Ordinary. — A Public "Walk. — Students Designed for the Church. — A Spanish Beauty.— A Drive into the Country.— Convent of Las Huelgas. — A Lady Abbess. — Chant of the Nuns. — Chant of Priests 91 Letter X. — The Cartuja. — Monuments of Isabella the Catholic and her Brother. — Cells of the Monks. — The Burial- Ground. — Poverty of the Secularized Monks. — A Bull Fight. — The Amphitheatre. — Procession of the Combatants. — A Tame Bull. — Dogs brought to Attack Him. — He is Killed.— A Savage Bull. — The Banderilleros. — Horses Killed. — Another Bull Despatched. — Men Tossed in the Air.— Commercial Panic of 1S5S 102 Letter XI. — Courts of Justice in Burgos. — Handmaidens at the Inn. — Departure from Burgos. — A Night Journey. — Singing of the Coachmen. — Lerma. — Quintanilla. — A Spanish Breakfast. — People on the Road. — Vineyards. — The Vintage. — Grape Gatherers.— Aranda. — A Dirty Town and Inn. — Fleas.— Boceguillas. — A Grove of Evergreen Oaks. — Jenny's Tavern.— A Genteel Family in a Cart.— Somosierra. — Buitrago.— A Spanish Venta. — The Lozoya.— Beautiful Scene.— "What Becomes of the Donkeys.— Strange Rocks. — Cabanillas and its Inn. — A Hired Mule. — Alcobendas.— Mambrino's Helmet.— First Sight of Madrid.— Hotels 109 Letter XII.— Madrid.— Imitation of the French.— The Prado.— Costumes of the Ladies.— Nature of Spanish Hospitality.— Social Customs.— Late Hours. —The Amphitheatre for Bull Fights.— The Theatres.— The Puerta del Sol. —Idlers.— Gossip.— A Revival of Religion.— Galiano.— The Royal Museum. — Richness of the Collection. — Raphael's Pasmo de Sicilia. — Modern Spanish Paintings 124 Letter XIII. — Engraving in Spain. — Martinez. — Private Galleries. — Medraza's Collection.— Making of a Doctor of Laws.— Address of Emilio Castelar.— The Degree Conferred.— Feast of All Saints.— Burial Places.— Ceremonies CONTENTS. 9 Page of Commemoration.—

Reservoir and Aqueduct.— Newspapers of Madrid. — Liberty of the Press. — The Spanish Ministry.— A Railway.— Railway Pro jects.—The Future of Spain.— Recent Political Changes and their Effect- Kindness of the MadrileDos. — The American Minister 137 Letter XIV. — Departure from Madrid. — A Hermitage. — The Tagus. — Aranjuez. — Villasequilla.— La Mancha.— Dreary Absence of Trees in Spain. — Aspect of the Country. — Albacete. — Spanish Daggers. — Almansa. — A Carrito. — Unpleasant Conveyance. — A Murcian Driver. — Villena. — A Murcian Inn.— Garlic. — Scarcity of "Water. 102 Letter XY. — Departure from Villena.— Narrow and Muddy Streets.— Sax. — Picturesque Country. — Elda.— An Accident. — Foul Roads. — Four Corners* Tavern. — Good Fortune. — A Railway. — Civility of the Superintendents.— Arrival at Alicante. — The American Consul, Mr. Leach. — Quijano. — His Humane Labors, Death, Funeral, and Monument 164 Letter XVI. — Departure from Alicante. — A Spanish Galera. — Cigarritos. — Matches. — Elche and its Palms. — The People of Elche. — Morning Cup of Chocolate. — Spanish Sobriety. — Curiosity of the Inhabitants. — Orange Groves. — Orihuela.— Dialogue with a Landlady. — Language of tho South of Spain.— Olive Groves. — Olive Gatherers 173 Letter XYII. — Arrival at Murcia. — Mosquitoes. — The Cathedral.— Starers.— Variety of Costumes. — Departure from Murcia. — Cheerful Fellow-passengers. — Aspect of the Country. — Cartagena. — Hotel of Four Nations. — Picturesque Site of the Town. — The Harbor. — Arrival of a Steamer. — Departure from Cartagena. — Almeria. — Its Port and Rocky Shores. — A Rough Night.— Arrival at Malaga 182 Letter XVIII. — Malaga. — Aspect of the Town. — Narrow and Crooked Streets. — The Protestant Burial- Ground.— Decline of Fanaticism.— Tropical Plants. — Monuments. — The Public Cemetery. — Robbers.— Death of a Bandit.— A Boy made Captive. — Statuettes of Baked Earth 192 Letter XIX. — Journey to Grenada. — Aspect of the Country. — Colmenar. — Loja. — The River Genii. — Beauty of Grenada. — The Alhambra. — Beauty of its Architecture. — Restoration of the Buildings and Removal of the Spanish Additions.— Garden of the Moorish Kings.— Cathedral of Grenada. — Tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella. — Grenada in Spring. — Ugliness of the Town. — The Gypsies. — A Spanish Visitor. — "Women of Grenada.— A Castilian's Opinion of the People. — Return to Malaga 201 Letter XX. — Departure from the African Coast— Softness of the Climate of Malaga. — Collision of our Steamer with Another. — The Spanish Language in the East. — View of the Spanish Shore.— Pirates of the Barbary Coast- Landing at Merz-el-Kebir. — A Spanish Boatman. — Spanish Colonists at Oran.— Custom-Houses.— Beauty of the African Shore.— Oran. — Its Motley Throngs of Inhabitants. — An Effect of the Commercial Panic 21E i* CONTENTS.

Letter I. The Floral Exhibition At Paris Delaroche's Paintings

Paris, June 11, 185*7. There are some things which can only be clone in Paris, or at least can only be clone by Frenchmen, and one of these has furnished for the last fortnight a most attractive spectacle for the people of this place and those who visit it. The French not only delight in scenic effect, but produce it with a dexterity, despatch and success which find no parallel else where. A few weeks ago the interior of the Palais de V Industrie, the Crystal Palace of France, built among the trees of the Champs Elysees, was a bare and empty space, with a floor of dust and gravel, and rafters streaming with cobwebs. The order for an exhibition of flowers was given, and in three or four weeks the dusty waste was transformed into a fresh and beautiful garden. I went to see it the other day — a hot day for the season.

We passed from the entrance to the garden TEOPICAL PLANTS. through an alley embowered with evergreens, young pines and firs, planted for the occasion, filling the cool air with resinous odors. On each side of the alley were benches, in viting the visitor who might be wearied with his walk, to rest awhile. Thence we passed into the vast area beyond the columns which support the galleries, and here the floor was covered with a bright green turf, closely shaven, formed into hillocks and gentle slopes, surrounding beds of shrubs and other plants in full bloom, and intersected by winding walks. Here were thickets of rhododendrons of different varieties ; here was a group of our own mountain laurel, as beautiful as any seen in our forests ; here were showy companies of azaleas of all tinges of color, from bright scarlet to pure white ; here were beds of roses and wildernesses of geraniums, pampered into innumerable diversities, perfuming the air.

All had their roots in the soil ; and a friendly soil it seemed, for though the exhibition had already lasted a fortnight, there was nothing faded or withered ; every blossom and leaf was as fresh as it could have been in its native bed. The tropical flowers themselves seemed not to miss, under this immense canopy of glass, their own genial climate. A young date palm stood on one of the hillocks, with plants of its own lat itudes clustering and blooming around it. In the midst of the area a little fountain threw up its waters, which formed themselves into what had the appear ance of a winding brook. A rustic bridge bestrode the little stream, which, to say the truth, was not quite so transparent as one of our country brooks, for it was the turbid water of BLACK SWANS. 13 the Seine ; but it was glassy enough on the surface to make a mirror for some magnificent water-plants whose roots were steeped by it.

Two black swans from New Holland, as we crossed the bridge, were standing on the brink of the water, each supported by one broad foot, the other coiled up under the body, and the head tucked under one wing. As we ap proached, they suddenly pulled out their heads from under their wings, put the uplifted foot to the ground, uttered a clanging cry, and taking to the water sailed off among the groups of calla and iris that fringed the bank. The exhibition was visited by a crowd of people, and groups of smartly-dressed Parisian ladies were hovering about the flowers like butterflies. Among the roses exhibited were some fine new varieties, which it is the fashion of the day to name after eminent military commanders. A large blush rose bears the name of Lord Eaglan, and a larger, with flaming blood-red petals, the name of General Jacqueminot.

I believe this is regarded as a very desirable addition to the stock of roses. As I was about leaving the place, I observed a gentle man looking at me with a very attentive scrutiny, as if he thought he might have seen me before. A second glance sufficed me to recognize him ; it was Mons. Vattemare, author of the system of International Exchanges, looking as fresh as any of the flowers in their beds around him. He hurried me off to a place under one of the galleries, where he had a little niche, in which were suspended in rows ears of maize of different varieties, from the State of New York, and on the table DELAEOCHE'S PAINTINGS. 14 lay the two quarto volumes of the Natural History of the same State, which treat of its botany. The ears of Indian corn, I was not displeased to see, made a much better appearance than the samples from Algeria, which were suspended on a wall immediately opposite.

As we were talking about them, two Orientals, with glittering black eyes and jet black beards, wearing the high, shaggy Persian cap — one of them with features so regular and finely formed that they might have served as a pattern for an ideal bust — came up, and ad dressing Mons. Vattemare in French, asked him for some of the ears of maize to take to their own country. " I will give you them, and a great many other things beside," he an swered, delighted to find the opportunity of pushing his system of international exchanges in a new quarter. In the midst of the dialogue which followed, and which was carried on with great spirit and earnestness on the part of Mons. Vattemare, I took my leave. The same day I went to an exhibition of the works of Paul Delaroche, whose reputation as a painter is as great in the United States as here.

Shortly before his death he ex pressed a desire to paint a picture the subject of which should be of universal interest, in order to give the proceeds to un fortunate artists and workmen in the studios of artists. His friends have thought that the best method of fulfilling a de sign which the artist himself was only prevented from fulfilling by death, would be to assemble all his pictures in one gallery and give the profits of this exhibition to the charitable fund of the Association of Artists, Painters, Sculptors, &c, of which PORTRAITS OF NAPOLEON. 15 Delaroche was President. His works have accordingly been brought together from various collections, private and public, in this country, in England and elsewhere. They illus trate, curiously, the gloomy character of his genius. You look about the walls, and you are in the midst of deathheds, executions, assassinations.

The least interesting of these pictures is the death of Queen Elizabeth. The gigantic old woman, sprawling on her couch upon the floor, her harsh features livid with mortal disease, is a horrid object ; nor is there any thing in the rest of the picture to make amends for the disagreeable impression produced by this principal figure. The series of portraits of Napoleon forms of itself a tragedy, and a most impressive one. The first of these is " Napoleon crossing the Alps," with which the American public is familiar. As he is making his way through the mountain snows, you see that he is revolving his great plans of conquest. You read in the eye of the young adventurer untameable resolution and absolute confidence in his own fortunes. In the next picture, "Napoleon in his Closet," you have him in the noon of life, his ambitious desires grati fied, and the continent of Europe at his feet.

His eye is lighted up with a proud satisfaction, as he contemplates the strength and security of the power he has founded by his single arm. In the third painting, " Napoleon at Fontaine bleau," you see the great egotist after his fall, older, grosser in person, arrived at the palace from a hasty flight, his boots spattered with mud, his riding coat not laid by ; one arm hanging over the back of the chair, as if never to be re- NAPOLEON AFTER HIS FALL. moved, and his eyes staring into futurity with the fixed, sul len gaze of despair. In all these portraits the artist has shown a power which, it seems to me, should place him in a high rank among painters, even if he had done nothing else. PAUPER COLONIES. 17

Letter II. The Pauper Colonies Of Holland

Heidelberg, July 14, 1857. I have made, with my family, the tour of Belgium and Holland, and coming down from Friesland by one of the Hanoverian railways to the Rhine, am resting for a few days in Heidelberg. We are the more disposed to suspend our somewhat rapid journey here, on account of the heat of the weather, which is very great, one hot day succeeding another, with no interruption from showers, the sky being as intense ly dazzling as our own. While in the northern part of Holland, I made a visit to the pauper colonies of Fredericksoord and Willemsoord, in the province of Overyssel. Here are tracts of sandy soil covered with heath and shrubs, which, from the time when they were first formed from the bottom of the sea, till now, have been abandoned to utter barrenness. The great calam ity of Holland is pauperism, and somewhat more than thirty years ago a benevolent society was formed for the purpose of settling the poor, who had become a public charge, upon the waste lands of the kingdom, with a view of reducing them to cultivation.

They purchased a tract of land, DWELLINGS OF THE PAUPERS. 18 mostly uncultivated, in the province of Overyssel, where they made a beginning with some of the poor of Amsterdam, who had been thrown upon the public charity. The colony thus established has now increased to a considerable commu nity, yet it has made, I suppose, as much impression upon the vast mass of pauperism in Holland, as the Colonization Society has made upon the mass of slavery in the United States. We took a carriage at the ancient village of Steenwyck, and proceeded over a road so sandy that we were obliged to travel very slowly, and rendered almost impassable in some places by an attempt to macadamize it. We passed several comfortable looking tenements of the peasantry, with little flower gardens in front of them, and at length the coachman said, " We are in the colony."

I could not see that the habitations of the paupers seem ed any less comfortable than those of the district through which we had just passed. They were neat brick buildings, spacious enough to contain, besides the rooms for the family, a stable for the cow, a place for the pig, and a room for the fuel. Near each was a little garden surrounded by a well pleached hawthorn hedge, and outside of the hedge a ditch ; for the Hollander, from mere habit, always surrounds his do main with a ditch, whether there is any occasion for it or not. Back of the gardens were fields of rye and barley and other crops, and beyond, in places, was a forest of shrubs and dwarf trees, looking like the scrub-oak plains on the worst parts of Long Island ; and, in places, extensive wastes, the NEATNESS OF THE DWELLINGS. 19 like of which is not seen in our country, covered with dark heath of a purple tinge, and stretching out of sight.

The Director was not at home, and we were accompanied over the village by one of the bookkeepers, who was ready to communicate what he knew, but who spoke French, the only language we understood in common, very imperfectly, and in a low tone of voice. He took us into several of the dwellings. The first we entered was that of a widow from Groningen, who had two or three children able to work at the loom. It was a miracle of neatness. The woman had established in the outer room her summer kitchen, in which were the pig-pen and stable, and had made it as clean as the nicest parlor in our own country. We looked into the win ter room — it was as nice as a new sideboard just from the cabinetmaker's. She had a comfortable bed in a little closet, after the Dutch fashion. In a room above were the beds of the children, in a kind of boxes on each side.

Notwithstand ing these appearances of comfort, the woman took our courier aside, and complained bitterly of the hardness of her lot. She affirmed that she was half starved, and begged him to intercede with the Director in her behalf. When the matter was afterwards mentioned to the bookkeeper he said that there was no end to the complaints of these people, and that the more they got the more they asked for. We went into another house, in which was a good-looking family of both sexes, well clad, and living in a manner which had every appearance of thrift. The rooms glittered with the display of crockery and polished metal utensils, and were hung with cheap engravings. SCHOOLS OF THE COLONY. We were taken to the manufactory of the village, a room full of looms, where coarse cotton cloth is woveD by the children between twelve and eighteen years of age, for the Dutch soldiery in the East Indies.

The looms were clashing merrily — the girls, in particular, jerked the shuttles backward and for ward with incredible swiftness. " These children," said the bookkeeper, " earn a great deal for their families : in fact, those who come to our colony must either work or starve ; if they are obstinately idle, they get nothing to eat." We were shown the school-house — a building with two spacious rooms, in which the children were taught according to the liberal system of public education established in Hol land. The school had been suspended for a while, as the building was undergoing repairs. Religious teachers are pro vided for the colony — a Protestant, a Catholic, and a Jewish Rabbi. The colonists receive copper and iron tokens for their labor, and this forms the money of the colony. With these they purchase the necessaries for which they have occasion, from the magazines of the colony, where every thing is sold but intoxicating liquors, the sale of which is forbidden.

I could obtain no exact information of the profit or loss of this enterprise. " These people," said the bookkeeper, " cost the society a great deal. They come from the cities unaccustomed to the work we require of them, and often with families of very young children, who are of too tender an age to work. They must be subsisted, and their subsistence is a heavy charge." There are now about four hundred families in the colony, POPULATION OF THE COLONY. 21 numbering two thousand six hundred persons. To prevent the excessive growth of the community, and to confine the operations of the institution to their original object, all the young, on reaching the age of twenty, are obliged to leave it, as well as all the young who marry. As the older members drop off, their places are supplied by paupers from the towns. In the mean time thousands of acres have been re claimed from their primeval wild state, and turned into pro ductive fields. SWISS INGENUITY.

Letter III. The Swiss Industrial Exhibition The New Federal Pal- Ace Annual

EXHIBITION OF WORKS OF ART. Bern, Switzerland, August 1, 1857. The Swiss are among the most ingenious of the European nations ; they possess in a high degree the constructive fac ulty ; ydu have only to look at their houses to be convinced of this. It seems to me that they are the best carpenters in the world. The Swiss peasantry are lodged, I believe, in more spacious dwellings than any other peasantry in Europe — dwellings as admirably suited to their climate as they are picturesque. Under their overshadowing roofs, which form a shelter from their hot suns in summer, they hang the outer wall with balconies and galleries, which form passages above the deep snows of their winters. The ends of the beams and rafters and the braces are shaped into ornamental projec tions, so that what would otherwise be the deformity, be comes the grace of the building.

The Swiss were long ago the best bridge-builders in Europe, of which the bridge at Schaffhausen, destroyed by the French in the latter part of the last century, constructed entirely of timber, with a span of 365 feet, yet without any support except at the two ends. SWISS MANUFACTURES. 23 was a remarkable example. In the long winters of the Al pine regions, the peasants employ themselves in carving, with their penknives, figures and images and objects of various kinds out of wood, with all the patience and nicety of Chi nese artisans, and a hundred times the elegance. On the high-roads in the valleys of the Bernese Oberland, the travel ler will have the children of the herdsmen trotting beside him, offering him for a single franc the miniature of a Swiss cottage, carved with all the delicacy of frost work.

It is clear that if all this dexterity and patience were di rected to the great branches of manufacture, the Swiss must excel. It is so, in fact. I have just come from looking at an exhibition of Swiss industry now open in this beautiful city. An intelligent American gentleman went through it with me, who was as much surprised as myself, both at the variety of the manufactures and their excellence. The spectacle was to me the more interesting because the manufactures of Switzerland prosper without any of those helps which, in the opinion of some, are indispensable — without prohib itory or protective duties, or, indeed, high duties of any kind. They prosper, too, in a country surrounded by powerful gov ernments which yet adhere to the protective system, and on which the Swiss have never though t» it for their advantage to retaliate.

It must be admitted that the Swiss have some important natural advantages for manufacturing pursuits. Their mountains abound with ores of the useful metals ; enormous forests are at hand to supply the furnaces in which these ores are FREE TRADE IN SWITZERLAND. smelted, and the torrents which rush down the mountain sides wield the hammers by which the metals are beaten into plates and bars. A calculating Yankee would be shocked to see the proportion of water-power in this country running to waste. Mills might be built on the Swiss streams to manufacture for the world, without much disfiguring the grand as pect of Swiss scenery. In going up any of their mountains, you hear the bells of the herds for a vast distance around you. A million of neat cattle are fed in the pastures, with a million and a quarter of sheep and goats, and the woods which supply fuel for the forges and founderies furnish bark for tanning the skins of these animals.

In the forest cantons the driver of your carriage will point out, from time to time, in some gorge of the mountains, where the stream comes down through the forest, a large building in which glass is made. The manufacturer in Switzerland has had the ad vantage from the first, that he has no tax to pay on the crude material which he employs. I was not, therefore, unprepared to see in the exhibition at Bern a creditable display of objects wrought of iron and other useful metals. Here were fire engines, locomotives for the railways, which the people of the Confederation are industriously building in all parts of their country ; engines for the steamers on the lakes, and machines for calico-print ing—all of admirable workmanship; here were stoves for kitchen and parlor, of cast or sheet iron, which certainly in finish, if not in other respects, were beyond what we produce in our country ; here were busts and statuettes in cast-iron, well SWISS WATCHES. 25 designed, of a smoothness of surface equal to porcelain, and great precision of outline.

Geneva had sent muskets, rifles and fowling-pieces, beautifully wrought, and there were sam ples of cutlery from the workshops of Thurgau, Argau, Bern and Glarus, which might almost bear comparison with the cutlery of Great Britain. The Swiss make their own pins in the mills at Schaffhausen. Of their watches I need say nothing, since in that branch of industry they work with greater nicety and cheapness than the people of any other country, and even furnish a large proportion of the mecha nism of what are called English watches. Five cantons of Switzerland employ in watchmaking thirty-six thousand persons. Beside the iron stoves, there were porcelain ones — white porcelain — of elegant forms, a much pleasanter and more cleanly piece of furniture than the iron ones we have at home. I cannot say much for the samples of table porcelain in the exhibition ; they were of the homeliest kind, and had no pre tensions to elegance.