s walk up and down, reading their red-edged breviaries in black
leather bindings.

Happy monks! Not a fraction of a pessimist among them! How well they
understand life! A beautiful convent, beautiful nature, good wine and
good cheer, neither disturbance nor care; neither wife nor children; and
when they leave the world, heaven specially created for them, seraphim
waiting for them with harps of gold, and angels with urns of rose-water
to wash their feet!

Lucerne began as a nest of monks, hidden in an orchard like a nest of
sparrows. The first house of the town was a monastery, erected by the
side of the lake. The nest grew, became a village, then a town, then a
city. The monks of Murbach, to whom the monastery of St. Leger belonged,
had got into debt; this sometimes does happen even to monks. They
sold to King Rudolf all the property they possest at Lucerne and in
Unterwalden; and thus the town passed into the hands of the Hapsburgs.

When the first Cantons, after expelling the Austrian bailiffs, had
declared their independence, Lucerne was still one of Austria's advanced
posts. But its people were daily brought into contact with the shepherds
of the Forest Cantons, who came into the town to supply themselves with
provisions; and they were not long in beginning to ask themselves if
there was any reason why they should not be, as well as their neighbors,
absolutely free. The position of the partizans of Austria soon became so
precarious that they found it safe to leave the town....

The opening of the St. Gothard Railway has given a new impulse to this
cosmopolitan city, which has a great future before it. Already it has
supplanted Interlaken in the estimation of the furbelowed, fashionable
world--the women who come to Switzerland not to see but to be seen.
Lucerne is now the chief summer station of the twenty-two Cantons. And
yet it does not possess many objects of interest. There is the old
bridge on the Reuss, with its ancient paintings; the Church of St.
Leger, with its lateral altars and its Campo Santo, reminding us
of Italian cemeteries; the museum at the Town Hall, with its fine
collection of stained glass; the blood-stained standards from the
Burgundian wars, and the flag in which noble old Gundolfingen, after
charging his fellow-citizens never to elect their magistrates for more
than a year, wrapt himself as in a shroud of glory to die in the fight;
finally, there is the Lion of Lucerne; and that is all.