whole school of thirty or forty urchins,
with their knapsacks on their shoulders, attired in blouses, trudging
away from town to town, and from mountain to mountain, to visit all the
remarkable peculiarities of the country.

This is a most excellent method of relaxing from study, and invigorating
the mind at the same time that it is allowed to repose. Neither is it
so expensive as people would imagine. One room will hold a great many
school-boys, where the mattresses are spread over the floor: and I saw
them make a very hearty breakfast upon bread and cheese and three
bottles of wine, among about forty of them. Why should not the boys
about London set off on a tour to the lakes or elsewhere, in the same
way--every year changing the route. They then would see something of
their own country, which few do before they are launched in life, and
have no time to do afterwards. I have never seen the lakes; in fact, I
know nothing of my country, although I have scoured the world so long.
I recollect that my father, who had never seen the Tower of London, was
determined every year that he would go and see it; but he never could
find time, it appears, for he died without seeing it at last. I did,
however, make the observation, that if Geneva had backslided so far as
to permit a theatre, there was a feeling that this innovation required
being carefully opposed. When I was at Geneva before, there was no
theatre, but neither were there shops which dealt exclusively in
religious tracts and missionary works. I observed on this my second
arrival, that there were a great many to serve as a check to the
increasing immorality of the age.

I have referred to the change of twenty years, but what a change has
been effected in about three hundred years, in this very country. Read
what took place in these cantons at about the date which I have
mentioned. I have been reading the chronicles. Observe the powers
assumed by the bishops of that period; they judged not only men but
brutes; and it must be admitted that there was some show of justice, as
the offending parties, being dumb themselves, were allowed lawyers to
plead for them.

How the lawyers were paid, has not been handed down; and it appears that
the judgments were sometimes easier pronounced than carried into
execution.

At Basle, in the year 1474, it appears that a cock was accused of the
enormous crime of having laid an egg: he was brought to trial and
condemned to be