nothing but an aggregation of petty
despotisms--leniently administered, I grant; but still nothing but
despotisms. Those who are in power, or connected with those in power,
are the only portion of the community who can amass large sums; and thus
the authority is handed down from one to the other within certain
limits, which it but rarely transgresses, something very nearly
approximating to the corporations in England.

In Switzerland, the working man remains the working man, the labourer
the labourer, almost as distinct as the Indian castes the nobles are
crushed, and the haughty burgh rules with all the superciliousness of
vested right.

I have always held a "respublica" as only to exist in theory or in name.
History has proved the impossibility of its retaining its purity for
half a century. What the American Republic may be, it is impossible to
say, until one has been in the country, and discovered what its
advocates have been careful to conceal. The Americans had a great
advantage in establishing this system of government; they had nothing to
overthrow, nothing to contend with. They all started fair, and their
half century is now nearly complete. Time will prove whether it be
possible in this world to govern, for any length of time, upon such a
basis. Mr Cooper, in his work on Switzerland, is evidently
disappointed with his examination into the state of the Helvetic
Republic; and he admits this without intending so to do.

At Soleure I saw nothing very remarkable, except a dog with a very large
goitre on his neck, a sight which I never had witnessed before, during
the long time that I wandered through Switzerland.

On our way to Berne, to divide the day's travelling more equally, we
stopped at a small village, not usually the resting-place of travellers,
and I there met with a little bit of romance in real life, which Sterne
would have worked up well, but I am not sentimental. The house, to
which the sign was the appendage, struck me, at first entering, as not
having been built for an _hotellerie_; the rooms were low, but large,
and the floors _parquette_; here and there were to be seen remains of
former wealth in pieces of _marquetterie_ for furniture, and clocks of
_ormolu_. There were some old prints, also, on the walls, very superior
to those hung up usually in the auberges of the continent, especially in
a village auberge. When the supper was brought up, I observed that the
silver forks and spoons