SKINS OF BIRDS.

27

intermingled with graceful human figures. There are in Appenzell and St. Gallen six thousand persons who live by this sort of needlework.

Of course there were many samples of carving in wood, but these were excelled by the carvings in ivory--an art which seems to have sprung naturally from the national skill in wood-carving, Among these I noticed a little group of trees, wrought with such delicacy that it seemed as if the foliage must tremble and turn with the wind.

In the north they slay animals for their fur; but the Swiss finds a substitute for fur in the skins of the birds which haunt his lakes. There were numerous samples of muffs, tippets and cuffs formed of this material; some of them of a silvery whiteness, others nearly black, all of them extremely light, smooth and glistening. The names of the birds which had been made to yield this singular contribution to the national fair were annexed to the articles--they were mostly water-fowl of the grebe family, and the kinds related to it. These were the mergus merganser, the anas ferina, and others which I do not remember.

Among the frolics of Swiss ingenuity I noticed a group of stuffed skins, the wild quadrupeds and native birds of Switzerland, so skilfully adjusted that one could scarcely believe that they were not alive. On the shelves of what seemed a mountain-peak, were owls of different kinds, and other birds, feeding their wide-mouthed young; eagles tearing a pigeon in pieces, foxes lurking behind the crags, a chamois climbing a rock, and another apparently listening on the

28

PALACE OF THE

CONFEDERATION.

summit for the approach of his enemies from below. Another was a water-fall pouring over a rock, formed of some composition in such a manner as to avoid that patched appearance which generally belongs to rock-work, and half draped with wild herbage.

I fear I have tired the readers of this letter, as I have done myself, with this recital; but I hope that I have given them some idea of the variety, the pertinacity and the success of Swiss ingenuity.

The manufactures were exhibited in the barracks near the northern gate of the city, but there was another department of the exhibition, that of the Fine Arts, which was held in the new Palace of the Confederation. The palace, not yet finished, is a sumptuous building, in the Byzantine style, worthy to be the place of assembly for the representatives of a republic like Switzerland. The quarries around Bern yield a light-brown sand-stone, which, when first taken from its bed, is as easily chipped as chalk, and of this the palace is built. It surrounds three sides of a quadrangle, with a massive balcony in the front of the building resting on richlycarved brackets, and on the other side, within the quadrangle, a vaulted ante-room resting on columns, through which is the principal entrance. From the balcony, and the terrace on which the palace stands, you have a view of the green valley of the Aar immediately below you, and beyond the hills which bound the valley rise the snowy summits of the Bernese Oberland.

I found less to interest me in the annual exhibition of

SWISS PAINTINGS.

29

Swiss works of art than I had hoped. A Swiss friend, who accompanied me, directed my attention to a large historical picture, by Volmar of Bern, representing the battle of Morgarten, in 1315. It is painted with a good deal of knowledge, but it looked to me as if the artist had conceived and studied each figure separately, and then put them all together in a group as he best might. The light is lurid and like. moonshine. There were several historical pictures of a smaller size, by Vogel of Zurich, full of commonplace faces and draperies like leather. The landscapes were better. There were a few exceedingly spirited drawings of Swiss scenery in water colors. Calame of Geneva has an excellent picture in the collection, called "The Torrent." Grisel of Neufchatel, Isenzing of St. Gallen, Jenni of Solothurn, Kaiser of Staz, Koller of Zurich, Meyer of Luzern, and Zimmermann of Geneva, had all clever landscapes in the gallery-representations of Swiss scenery, the contemplation of which ought to make a man a landscape painter if any thing can. But this is a mere "muster-roll of names," and I have no time for more particular remark.

Much as my countrymen travel, there are few of them, I think, who come to the warm springs or baths of Luchonthe Bagnères de Luchon, as they are called here-and few are aware what a charming spot it is, what a delightful summer climate it has, and how picturesque is the surrounding country. It is Switzerland with a more even temperature, a longer summer, a serener sky, and mountains which less capriciously veil themselves in fogs at the moment you wish to get a sight at them. The black rocks with which they are ribbed crumble into a darker and apparently a richer soil, which lends the verdure of their sides a deeper tinge. Here, at Luchon, I see fields of maize and millet half-way up the mountain sides, and patches of buckwheat, now in bloom, whitening almost their very crests.

At Geneva I fell in with an English gentleman, who has been botanizing industriously on the continent for seven years, and had not seen his native country in all that time. We told him we were going to Bagnères de Bigorre.

"Go ra

PRESENT STATE OF GENEVA.

31

ther to Bagnères de Luchon," he answered. "You will there be in the heart of the Pyrenees, while at Bigorre you would be only among their lower declivities. Luchon is the finest spot in all the Pyrenees. The accommodations are good; they do not fleece you there as they do here in Switzerland; the English have not got there yet. Besides, you will have about you such a magnificent mountain Flora." We took his advice, and set out for Bagnères de Luchon. But first I must say a word of Geneva.

It was hard to believe it the same place which I saw eight years since. The popular party which now rules Geneva have pulled down the old walls and forts, within which it seems to have been fancied that the city might sustain a siege; these have been converted into public promenades and building lots. Geneva is now an open city, like all our own towns, and is spreading itself into the country. Where Lake Leman begins to contract itself into the Rhone, and the blue waters rush towards their outlet, large spaces on each side, lately covered with water, have been filled up with the rubbish of the forts, and massive quays and breakwaters extending into the lake, have been built to form a secure harbor for the shipping. Long rows of stately buildings, of a cheerful aspect, with broad streets between, have been erected by the water side. Enterprising men have been attracted from other parts of Switzerland and from foreign countries, by the field here opened to their activity, and with them come swarms of strange workpeople. Catholic priests, in their big cocked hats and long black gowns clinging to their legs, are now a frequent sight