ever, in addition to the nature of the soil and the plan of the institution, a great hindrance to the fulfilment of his expansive and economic designs in the political constitution of the canton. At the age of sixteen, after having received the communion of the Supper of the Lord, every male has a vote in its general and supreme assembly, called the Landsgemeind; and it is not to be expected, that when, or just when, about to be entitled to meddle with the affairs of the state, lads will remain subject to the rules of even a mildly governed school. This legislative body is annually convened on the first of May, on an open plain, to make laws and elect magistrates. The duration of the assemblage is wisely limited to one day. Protestants and Catholics, on this occasion, vote together; but each party has meetings beforehand apart. The latter, who have been gradually diminishing in numbers, are the less numerous, the poorer, and, as is commonly observable throughout Switzerland, the less industrious portion of the inhabitants. According to M. Simond, there are in the canton eighteen or twenty thousand inhabitants, and from four to five thousand legislators. Enactments very arbitrary in their nature, and so absurd that it has been impossible to carry them into execution, have been sometimes hastily carried; a fact that cannot create surprise. Amongst a people of a more buoyant or of a more sullen spirit than the Swiss, greater disorders might be justly apprehended than do in fact arise in the democratic cantons. At all times, and in periods of general distress especially, those states will possess the greatest resources in which the representation of property and the weight of intelligence are justly regarded, and in which there are no laws to equalize political rights, or to force population to the utmost limits of the means of sustenance. England has, humanly speaking, owed much of its wealth, its import

ance, and its exemption from the calamities which have assailed other nations, to that very aristocratic influence which revolutionists have so furiously decried. Statutes or customs that withhold substantial privileges to primogeniture, will be found, in ancient monarchies, productive of great mischiefs. On the other hand, when, as was the case in some parts of the continent half a century ago, a system of aggrandisement of families has so far succeeded that extensive tracts of country belong to a few proprietors, as great, or nearly as great, evils are to be dreaded.

In the school of the Linth there are thirty boys, selected as having been the most destitute of the adjacent villages. The master, who is married, has not only the charge of the boys, but the oversight of the whole establishment. This has prevented him from working with his scholars in the fields, after the manner of Vehrli; but his brother, who has also been at Hofwyl, is their agricultural preceptor. The farmyard likewise, which should be close to the house, is at a distance from it and as the boys do not perform domestic offices for themselves, as at Maykirk, and as they cannot themselves cultivate all their land, servants and labourers are necessary, and form a heavy item of expenditure. Some of the produce is, however, sold, as is some of the linen which the boys manufacture. In the making of this, of stockings, and of a coarse material for trowsers, they are partly employed in unfavourable weather. Some flax and hemp are raised; and each boy has a small slip of ground allotted him: the value of what he can produce on it is placed to his account, and he is entitled to the sum total of his earnings on leaving the school. In rotation, they assist in taking care of the live stock. Any of the boys will be received at Hofwyl, to learn whatever they cannot so well acquire here. Their diet is, potatoes and other vegetables, farinaceous.

ousness which a system of excitation is never likely to produce, and decorum, were observable in their countenances and demeanour. The eye of the best scholar craving a modicum of reward in the notice of the visitor, did not here, by its glances, solicit the applause which has been too generally applied as a stimulant to diligence. Of the boys, some were doubtless clever; but it is wiser to form a staple character in all, than to procure renown to a few. These sturdy fellows, exposing their bronzed arms their shirts being tucked up, perhaps to save the sleeves-with a most hearty good-will attacked their last meal of potatoes, farinaceous soup, and milk. Before retiring to rest, they came to shake hands with their master and his wife, who sat at the head of their table, and partook of their fare. There are prayers morning and evening, and the recapitulation, as at Hofwyl.

9th Sept.-One of the Directors of the institution, who met me by appointment this morning, and who appears to be most warmly interested in the prosperity of the colony, told me that the house stands upon the bed of the torrent; and he shewed me a patch of ground remaining in the same rude state as hundreds of acres did before the Linth was guarded by banks. From him I also learnt some particulars respecting communal regulations. The commune of Niderurnen, in which he resides, has certain lands, besides woods, on a mountain. There are contributions raised for the very indigent; and as the population may increase, each family occasionally cedes a portion of its allotment of land. As the poor families have to contribute their share of the cession, their own interests will establish a salutary jealousy, which will resist a ruinous subdivision. This constitues one check to improvidence, that does not exist where the pockets of the rich pay for its recklessness. Six hundred and fifty toises square, about a CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 344.

quarter of an acre, is what each of the families has still. The commune occasionally buys land.

We paid a short visit to the Rector of the neighbouring village, Bilden, who has the reputation of possessing great skill in tuition, This clergyman, whose church, and that of the adjoining village of Niderurnen, the boys of the colony alternately attend, thinks highly of M. Fellenberg's system.

As we walked back, my kind and intelligent companion told me of the liberality of counsellor Schindler, whom I had the pleasure of meeting yesterday. But I regretted to learn that the institution requires so much assistance from him, and a few other benevolent gentlemen; and that the number of boys has been reduced from 36 to 30, in consequence of a falling off in the subscriptions. The canton of Glarus has rich inhabitants; and if they would generally come forward with their contributions, they would evince as much beneficence, in promoting a laudable undertaking, as their forefathers did valour, in struggling for liberty at Nofels. Free. dom was purchased there at the price of blood; but an education that raises a barrier against the machinations of demagogues and the seductions of the vicious, and that restrains the abuse of liberty, whether personal, civil, or political, is a conquest over the sway of passion that will not draw forth tears from the orphans and the widows of the defenders of the fastnesses of Glarus.

When I bade adieu to the very obliging Director, who had been for two hours busily engaged in affording me information, it was high time for me to have been on my way back to Zurich. The voi turier who brought me here yesterday, and was to re-convey me there to-day, now vehemently maintained that this latter part of the contract could not be fulfilled; for that I should have started at half past eight o'clock, whereas it was now ten. 3 R

But when policy may dictate impossibilities, it is as well not to listen to them: and therefore, hastily swallowing half a breakfast, I set off with him, and, the weather being propitious, I did not doubt that we should sleep at Zurich at night.

In deviating a hundred miles out of my road, and thus sustaining an addition to the fatigues incidental to a long and very hurried journey, I should have considered myself repaid in having been able but to observe the power of education, as exemplified in Vehrli, Pfyfer, and others who have been trained at Hofwyl, and who bear the moral impress of a character precisely of that description which it might be supposed M. Fellenberg's system would impart. I witnessed another proof of its force in Lutsehg, the master at the colony. He had been a pupil at Hofwyl. Steadiness, intelligence, and cheerfulness, indeed, are to be traced in the countenances of the young men, so far as I have seen, who have been instructed there.

The road from the colony lies, for nearly thirty miles, along the lake of Zurich and just as the sun shone on the massive forehead of the snowy Glarnish, uplifted far beyond and above a range of mountains whose green wore a deepened tint under the shadow of a bank of clouds; and as the unruffled waters mimicked on their surface the white canvas of almost useless sails, and pictured the groves and villages of the shore; a scene was to be surveyed which Switzerland only could have exhibited. A favourable day amongst her beauties is indeed a choice occasion; and the same prospect viewed under different auspices hardly wears the same features, and represents the difference there is between a smile

and a frown.

Sun-set, after all, displays in these Alpine regions the highest touches

A mountain of Glarus, 7570 feet above the level of the sea, whose summit forms a widely spreading contour.

From a

of sublunary loveliness. retirement, whose near objects might fill the spirit with thoughts that exclude the world, its cares, its conflicts, and its griefs, we behold the last ray of eventide fast hastening away, yet hanging on the heights of distant mountains, whose snows, lost in the glowing halo of the circumambient ether, and concealed under a reddened mist, exhibit not the majestic forms they clothe, till a sudden paleness on their face, and outlines as bold as clear, tell that day has disappeared. The moon may scatter for a few hours her silvery brightness amongst dark shadows; or twilight may faintly hold for a time the vestige of what had charmed; but can that which must vanish and be lost in night lift the soul to a heaven not to be approached by either obscurity or sin? No: God, infinitely just and merciful through Christ, foresaw that man would be too proud and too obdurate to be softened into humility and holiness by the contemplation of the glories of earth.

About the place where day opened upon me when going from Zurich, darkness overtook me on my return, and I was not within the city gates till nine o'clock.

At four on the following morning, the 10th of September, I quitted them again; and by the mention of a painful spectacle, that presented itself on the road to Bâsle, will conclude what I did not think of writing when I reached Hofwyl on the 29th of the past month.

In parties of various numbers, I met on my way at least four hundred peasants, some of whom were from Alsace and some from the duchy of Baden, on a pilgrimage to the Benedictine Abbey of Ein

abbey owes its celebrity to the miraculous According to Mr. Coxe's account, the image, as it is called, of the Virgin Mary. He reports the legend to be, that in the ninth century a certain hermit, called Meinrad, retired to this spot, where he built a chapel, and was assassinated by robbers. Soon after, the dead body of St. Meinrad, of course, worked miracles.

sidlin, situated in the canton of Schweitz.

The journey, to the young people, male and female, might be much more agreeable than profitable; but it was heart-rending to see decrepit, poor, and aged persons undergoing the hardships of a superstitiously imposed toil. Popery cannot acquit herself of this charge, that, whenever she has triumphed-as, unhappily, she has too frequently-she has first befooled her votaries into an extreme misapprehension of the nature of Christianity; and she has then invariably trampled them under foot, and enriched herself at the expense of their egregious credulity and dense ignorance.

F.

MILNER'S CHURCH HISTORY.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

I BEG to offer the following observations in reply to your correspondent J. H. R.'s animadversions on a particular portion of my Continuation of Miiner's Church His

tory.

1. It is true I have not examined the temporary Saxon formulary of the Elector Maurice, commonly

The sanctity of the place having been thus established, some one (for whether it were St. Benno, or St. Eberhard, or what other saint, Mr. Coxe could not discover) constructed another chapel, which was dedicated to the Virgin; and thus was laid the first foundation of the abbey. In 948, Conrad, bishop of Constance, as he was going to consecrate the chapel, heard a voice from heaven assuring him that God himself had consecrated it. Mr. Coxe adds, that it was computed 100,000 pilgrims annually resorted to the spot. I hope, and believe, that their number since his days has greatly diminished.

I was informed by an intelligent innkeeper at Bâsle, that the pilgrims have to pay for ten masses-a very trifling sum, probably, for each, but the small offerings of thousands will amount to a large total. Some of these deluded beings come a distance of a hundred miles. They generally carry their provisions, and when the weather is wet they suffer much.

called "Das Leipziger Interim," or the Leipsic Interim; partly because I had not ready access to it, but still more because I did not believe, and am not yet convinced, that it most faithfully exhibits "the sentiments of Melancthon and his associates relating to things indifferent ;" much less that by it "only" can be determined the question, whether Melancthon numbered "the doctrine of justification by faith alone" among such things. I should not regard that work as the repository of Melancthon's sentiments in that view it could bear, I conceive, no comparison with the numerous public and private documents-letters to friends, counsels to pastors and to churches, memorials to Maurice, &c. &c.-which I have adduced. It rather exhibited what he thought might be submitted to, than what he would have, wished: it imposed a "servitude" (such is his frequent language) which, though painful, he considered as tolerable, and to be preferred to deserting the churches, and throwing all things into confusion. He disliked, Camerarius says, the proceedings of that period altogether; though he would not withhold his assistance where the public welfare seemed to require it. (De Vit. Mel. sect. 83).

2. But let us hear your correspondent. The "documents to which he (Mr. Scott) refers...demonstrate, indeed, that, if Mosheim's charges be just, Melancthon was in the highest degree inconsistent in contradicting, at the period under consideration, the doctrines which in other parts of his voluminous writings he so often, so ably, and so clearly explains, enforces, and defends. But, unfortunately, this is a part of the very charge brought against him by Mosheim, who represents him as yielding to the judgment of Luther, in preference, if not in opposition, to his own, during that Reformer's life-time; and only stating his real sentiments when the death of Luther had delivered him from the dread of his displeasure."