t, the University, with
four faculties, modeled upon the German system, but retaining certain
distinctive traits that are essentially Swiss--for instance, the broad
and liberal treatment accorded to women students, who are admitted as
freely as men, and receive the same instruction. A great number of
Russian girls are always to be seen in Zurich, as at other Swiss
universities, working unremittingly to acquire the degrees which
they are denied at home. Not a few American women also have availed
themselves of these facilities, especially for the study of medicine....

Zurich is, at the present time, undoubtedly the most important
commercial city in Switzerland, having distanced both Basel and Geneva
in this direction. The manufacturing of silk, woolen, and linen fabrics
has flourished here since the end of the thirteenth century. In modern
times, however, cotton and machinery have been added as staple articles
of manufacture. Much of the actual weaving is still done in outlying
parts of the Canton, in the very cottages of the peasants, so that
the click of the loom is heard from open windows in every village and
hamlet.

But modern industrial processes are tending continually to drive the
weavers from their homes into great centralized factories, and every
year this inevitable change becomes more apparent. It is certainly
remarkable that Zurich should succeed in turning out cheap and good
machinery, when we remember that every ton of coal and iron has to be
imported, since Switzerland possesses not a single mine, either of the
one or the other.

THE RIGI[36]

BY W.D. M'CRACKAN

If you really want to know how the Swiss Confederation came to be, you
can not do better than take the train to the top of the Rigi. You might
stumble through many a volume, and not learn so thoroughly the essential
causes of this national birth.

Of course, the eye rests first upon the phalanx of snow-crests to the
south, then down upon the lake, lying outstretched like some wriggling
monster, switching its tail, and finally off to the many places where
early Swiss history was made. In point of fact, you are looking at quite
a large slice of Switzerland. Victor Hugo seized the meaning of this
view when he wrote: "It is a serious hour, and full of meditations, when
one has Switzerland thus under the eyes." ...

The physical features of a country have their counterparts in its
political institutions. In Switzerland the great mountain ran