Another Day's Journey Brought Us To The Picturesque Town Of Zurich, And
The Next Morning About Four O'clock I Was Awakened By The Roll Of Drums
Under My Window.
Looking out, I saw a regiment of boys of a tender age, in
a uniform of brown linen, with
Little light muskets on their shoulders,
and miniature knapsacks on their backs, completely equipped and furnished
for war, led on by their little officers in regular military order,
marching and wheeling to the sound of martial music with all the precision
of veterans. In Switzerland arms are in every man's hands; he is educated
to be a soldier, and taught that the liberties of his country depend on
his skill and valor. The worst effect, perhaps of this military education
is, that the Swiss, when other means of subsistence are not easily found,
become military adventurers and sell their services to the first
purchaser. Meantime, nobody is regarded as properly fitted for his duties
as a member of the state, who is not skilled in the use of arms.
Target-shooting, _Freischiessen_, is the national amusement of
Switzerland, and has been so ever since the days of Tell; occasions of
target-shooting are prescribed and superintended by the public
authorities. They were practicing it at the stately city of Berne when we
visited it; they were practicing it at various other places as we passed.
Every town is provided with a public shooting-ground near its gates.
It was at one of the most remarkable of these towns; it was at Freiburg,
Catholic Freiburg, full of Catholic seminaries and convents, in the
churches of which you may hear the shrill voices of the nuns chanting
matins, themselves unseen; it was at Freiburg, grandly seated on the
craggy banks of her rivers, flowing in deep gulfs, spanned by the loftiest
and longest chain-bridges in the world, that I saw another evidence of
the fact that Switzerland is the only place on the continent where freedom
is understood, or allowed to have an existence. A proclamation of the
authorities of the canton was pasted on the walls and gates, ordaining the
16th of September as a day of religious thanksgiving. After recounting the
motives of gratitude to Providence; after speaking of the abundance of the
harvests, the health enjoyed throughout Switzerland, at the threshold of
which the cholera had a second time been stayed; the subsidence of
political animosities, and the quiet enjoyment of the benefits of the new
constitution upon which the country had entered, the proclamation
mentioned, as a special reason of gratitude to Almighty God, that
Switzerland, in this day of revolutions, had been enabled to offer, among
her mountains, a safe and unmolested asylum to the thousands of fugitives
who had suffered defeat in the battles of freedom.
I could not help contrasting this with the cruel treatment shown by France
to the political refugees from Baden and other parts of Germany. A few
days before, it had been announced that the French government required of
these poor fellows that they should either enlist at once in the regiments
destined for service in Algiers, or immediately leave the
country - offering them the alternative of military slavery, or banishment
from the country in which they had hoped to find a shelter.
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