were engraved with double arms and the coronet
of a marquis. I asked the female who brought up the soup, from whence
they had obtained them? She replied, rather _brusquement_, that she
supposed they had been bought at the silversmith's, and left the room as
if not wanting to be questioned. The master of the auberge came up with
some wine. He was a tall, fine, aristocratical-looking man, about sixty
years of age, and I put the question to him. He replied that they
belonged to the family who kept the inn. "But," said I, "if so, it is
noble by both descents?" "Yes," replied he, carelessly, "but they don't
think anything of that beer." After a few more questions, he
acknowledged that they were the armorial bearings of his father and
mother, but that the family had been unfortunate, and that, as no tithes
were allowed in the country, he was now doing his best to support the
family. After this disclosure, we entered into a long discussion
relative to the Helvetic Republic, with which I shall not trouble my
readers. Before I went, I inquired his name from one of the servants,
and it immediately occurred to me that I had seen it in the list of
those twenty-six who are mentioned as the leaders of the Swiss who
defeated the Burgundians, and whose monument is carved in the solid rock
at Morat. Two engravings of the monument were in the rooms we occupied,
and I had amused myself with reading over the names. I am no aristocrat
myself, heaven knows! and if a country could be benefited, and liberty
obtained, by the overthrow of the aristocracy, the sooner it is done the
better; but when we see, as in Switzerland, the aristocracy reduced to
keeping village inns, and their inferiors, in every point, exerting that
very despotism of which they complained, and to free the people from
which, was their pretence for a change of government, I cannot help
feeling that if one is to be governed, let it be, at all events, by
those who, from the merits of their ancestors and their long-held
possessions, have the most claim. Those who are born to power are not
so likely to have their heads turned by the possession of it as those
who obtain it unexpectedly; and those who are above money-making are
less likely to be corrupt than those who seek it. The lower the class
that governs, the worse the government will be, and the greater the
despotism. Switzerland is no longer a patriarchal land. Wealth has
rolled into the country; and the time