1855-Mar. 1855-Dec. Second report of the commissioners on Portland harbor. Report of advisory council of the New York harbor commission. New 1856-July. Report of the advisory council of the New York harbor commission," recommending certain lines in the East and North Rivers, and in Brooklyn. New York Senate Doc., 1857, No. 40, p. 107. 1856-July. Report of the advisory council of the New York harbor commission on Gowanus Bay and its improvements. New York Senate Doc., 1857, No. 40, p. 118. 1856-Sept. Report of the advisory council of the New York harbor commission on the Hell Gate Passage, regarded as a channel of approach to New York harbor. New York Senate Doc., 1857, No. 40, p. 137. 1856-Oct. 1856-Dec. 1856-Dec. 1857-Feb. 1857-Mar. 1860-Mar. 1860-Dec. 1860-Dec. 1860-Dec. Second general report of the advisory council to the harbor commissioners, on lines in New York harbor. New York Senate Doc., 1857, No. 40, p. 81. Report of the advisory council to the commissioners on harbor encroachments of New York, in regard to safe and commodious anchorages in New York harbor, for the purposes of the quarantine of vessels. New York Senate Doc., 1857, No. 40, p. 132. Report of the advisory council to the New York harbor commissioners upon Harlem River and Spuyten Duyvil Creek. New York Senate Doc., 1857, No. 40, p. 151. Report of the advisory council of lines for the East River, for the shore of Long Island, and the east shore of Staten Island. New York Senate Doc., 1857, No. 126, p. 9. Report of the advisory council to the New York harbor commissioners upon the comparative map of New York Bay and harbor, and its approaches, prepared by the Coast Survey in March, 1857. New York Senate Doc., 1857, No. 126, p. 12. Preliminary reports of commissioners on Boston harbor. Boston City Doc., 1860, No. 37. Second report of United States commissioners on the condition of Boston harbor. Boston City Doc., 1860, No. 97. Special report of the United States commissioners on Boston harbor, on the relation of Mystic Pond and River to Boston harbor. Boston City Doc., 1861, No. 12. Report of the advisory council of the joint committee of the Massachusetts legislature on the subject of a ship-canal to connect Barnstable Bay and Buzzard's Bay. Mass. Pub. Doc., 1864, No. 41. 1861-Sept. Fourth report of the United States commissioners on Boston harbor. Boston City Doc., 1861, No. 62. 1861-Sept. Fifth report of the United States commissioners on Boston harbor. Boston City Doc., 1861, No. 63. 1863-April. Sixth report of the United States commissioners on Boston harbor. Boston City Doc., 1863, No. 53. 1864-Mar. Seventh report of the United States commissioners on Boston harbor. 1864- Mar. Eighth report of the United States commissioners on Boston harbor. Boston City Doc., 1864, No. 34. LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. BY ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE. [The following lecture on Switzerland, from the manuscript of Professor Bache, is here published for the first time to illustrate in connection with the foregoing eulogy his habit of observation and his facility of description. It presents, however, a lively sketch of one of the most interesting portions of the earth, whether considered from a historical or physical point of view, and we doubt not will be read with pleasure, especially by all who have been favored with a visit to the delightful region which it describes. The original notes from which the lecture was prepared were taken during the Professor's visit to Switzerland in 1837-38. The foot-notes, exhibiting the present condition of the country, have been kindly furnished to us by the Hon. Mr. Hitz, Swiss consul general in this city.-J. H.] Travelers relate that in certain conditions of the atmosphere a spectator standing upon the shore at Reggio, and looking upon the smooth waters of the Straits of Messina, sees suddenly rise before him, as if by magic, the walls, towers, palaces, domes, and streets of a city, in which mimic life goes on, men and animals moving noiselessly to and fro. The illusion is as complete as if the waters of the bay were a foundation upon which the genii of the lamp or of the ring had suddenly erected their magic structures. This is an extreme case of the ordinary illusion presented to those who, in a calm clear day, look at distant objects across a wide expanse of bay or river. Familiar forms are strangely distorted; level shores appear precipitous; the puny sloop swells into the size of a frigate; the fisherman's boat becomes a dismasted sloop, and its occupant a giant. Just so it is when in mental vision we attempt to look through an atmosphere disturbed by the habits and prejudices to which we are accustomed. Unreal towers and walls appear, and objects so lose their shapes that the most familiar forms escape recog nition. Every country has its prejudices resulting from education, from all the influences, political, moral, social, and physical which surround and act upon its citizens. By these, in general, the observer of men and things is biased, and he who through the mists of his national or personal prejudices seeks to realize their just forms and proportions, may mistake the pigmy for a giant, the shallop for a frigate. In estimating the institutions of the Old World we are prone to forget that the materials for our judgment are generally furnished by the opinions of those who are brought up under a totally different state of things from that which exists around us. The conclusions which we thus form may be the very opposite of those to which we would have come ourselves, had our own prepossessions furnished the inferences from the facts. In neither case, perhaps, would truth be arrived at, but in the former the result may be deeply injurious, because leading to modes and habits of thought and action not in harmony with the peculiarities of our country. Impressed with the importance to Americans of judging independ ently of the institutions of Europe, I formerly took occasion in another place to present a cursory view of the capital of Austria, as illustrating the effects of institutions the very opposite of our own. I design on this occasion to occupy your attention, without further exceeding the limits of a lecture than is absolutely necessary, by a notice of men and things in the only federated republic of Europe, Switzerland. I cannot pretend to set before you a panoramic view, but merely a few detached pictures in outline, so selected as to convey a tolerably fair idea of republican Switzerland as it appeared to an American. By contem plating it we shall have an example of the practical working of republicanism in the Old World, under various modifications, and with the disadvantages of being hemmed in on all sides by monarchies. We shall thus see the power of this system to civilize and to enlighten. In the course of these sketches we shall find much bearing both directly and indirectly upon the objects which this Institute was estab lished to promote. Upon the map of Europe Switzerland is so well defined by its boundaries that there is no danger of its escaping the sight on account of its small size. The Rhine constitutes nearly two sides of this boundary, from the point where the various streams from the glaciers of the Grisons have met to form a river into the lake of Constance, and from its exit thence to where the Jura Mountains turn its course to the Northern Ocean. The Jura separates Switzerland from France, and with merely an outlet for the Rhone, the Alps take up the line, dividing rugged Switzerland from the plains of Northern Italy. The picturesque features of this country have furnished themes for the poet, the painter, and tourist. Under the influence of its snow-capped mountains, its shady and sequestered valleys, its rough glaciers, and its placid lakes, common-place men have warmed into something approaching to poetic fervor, and men of genius have poured forth their inspirations in verse or lofty prose. It is impossible to call up even in memory those scenes with all their attendant circumstances of romance-both nature and life so different from that to which we are accustomedwithout feeling the heart and the imagination moved beyond their wont. "Who first beholds those everlasting clouds- A sense, a feeling, that he loses not; A something, that informs him 'tis an hour Whence he may date henceforward and forever." But who shall dare to speak in plain prose of scenes of which the muse of Byron has sung? The rugged nature of the country within this bound ary has had its effect in determining the character of institutions as well as of individuals. Small tracts of country are as completely separated by mountains of difficult passage, as by distance, differ in the modes and facilities of life, have different interests, and consequently separate organizations. The character of the topography has divided the country into many small states, and has produced striking differences in language and manners, in religions, social and political organization, in a country of not more than one-third the extent of Pennsyl vania, and with about the same population of that entire State. * The present Swiss confederation consists of twenty-two sovereign states called cantons, the division of which, according to geographical position, includes also that of language. Thus the north and middle of Switzerland contains the sixteen cantons where a dialect of the German is spoken, Zurich being the principal canton on the north, and Berne in the middle. To the west and south of the middle are the mixed German and French cantons of Neuchâtel, Friberg, and Valais; to the. southeast the mixed German Romanic and Italian canton of the Grisons, or gray league, subdivided into its little sovereign states. On the southwest are the French cantons of Vaud and Geneva, and on the south of the middle the Italian canton of Tessin. While the language spoken by these people is determined by their proximity to those who speak it in its purity, their social, religious, and political institutions may almost be said to be uninfluenced by this circumstance. These are the results of other causes, many of which may be found in their history. A Florentine scholar relating to me unpublished anecdotes of the horrors enacted by members of the far-famed family of the Medici, with Italian fervor broke out into this apostrophe: "Happy your great country, which has not the chains of a dark history to bind it to the institutions and manners of a by-gone age. Beware how you men of the present day sully the pure page which records the actions of your forefathers, of your Adams, your Franklin, your Washington." The condition of a country at a past day must assuredly influence its present state as the summer's sun upon the snow-covered mountains of the Alps increases the autumnal flow of the river whose sources lie among them, or as the accumulation of the winter's snow upon the mountain's peak produces the summer's avalanche. The history of the Swiss republics shows the circumstances which prepared and the impulses which gave existence to each, and a glorious history it is upon which to found progress in virtue and liberty. Nearly in the center of Switzerland is a mountainous district which the Romans never reached, into which the bands of Attila never penetrated, and where no ruins of feudal castles exist to show that, in the * To wit: Zurich, Berne, Lucerne, Uri Schwyz, Unterwalden, (upper and lower,) Glarus, Zug, Friburg, Solerne, Basil, (city and country,) Schaffhausen, Appenzel, (both Rhodes,) St. Gallen, Grisons, Aargan, Thurgan, Tessin, Vaud, Valais, Neuchatel, and Geneva. Middle Ages the inhabitants had a master. Divided, generally, by rocky barriers into separate communities, the people are in a degree united by the beautiful lake of the Forest cantons. These people, from the earliest records, have been, and are now, poor and pastoral. They form the democratic cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, the nucleus of Swiss confederation. As early as the twelfth century they had a representative at the court of the Emperor of Germany, then the titular sovereign of Switzerland. Rudolph of Habsburg, whose castle was near the confluence of the Reuss and the Aar, the father of the founder of the house of Austria, was elected the representative of these peasants, and subsequently the family claimed the dignitary to be hereditary. This claim was never admitted, and to its impolitic enforcement by Albert of Habsburg, accompanied by circumstances of peculiar indignity on his own part, and of great cruelty and oppression on the part of his bailiff Gessler, was owing the revolution headed by Tell and his companions. In pursuit of these same hereditary rights, Frederick of Austria, with his armies, entered the Forest cantons by their mountain passes, determined to overrun and crush them. He was successfully resisted at the pass of Morgarten by one thousand three hundred men, and nine thousand of his troops perished in this defeat. Thus was developed that fierce military spirit which has led the Swiss of every age to acts of the most devoted heroism. From their wars with the dukes of Austria, the Swiss came out in 1412 with eight cantons recognized as independent. The appetite for war had been whetted by this successful resistance to oppression, and was carried to its height by the defeat of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and of his magnificent troops, at Grandson and at Morat. The spoils of these great armies suddenly enriched the people. Labor was neglected and fell into contempt, and the profession of arms alone considered worthy occupation for a Swiss. The nation was for a time debased by a mercenary military spirit, and it required two centuries of bloodshed to impress the lessons necessary to their regeneration. The wars of the Reformation gave the last of this series of unhappy lessons, and at their close left the several cantons confirmed in their attachment to the same churches in behalf of which they had expended to no purpose their blood and treasure. In 1712 the confederation had attained nearly its present limits, but some of the present cantons were held as tributary provinces by the others. The Swiss spirit of former days burst forth when republican France began to proselyte by force of arms, and the constitution of the new Helvetic republic was presented at the point of the sword, and enforced by its edge. While the cantons of the plain were held by the French armies, pleasantly occupied in appropriating the savings of the aristocrats, and in giving liberty to the people by depriving them of their independence, the Forest cantons dared to declare that they had been free since the days of Tell, and Melchthal, |