indeed find
one man, a young hay-making man carrying a scythe, who knew a little
French and was going my way. I asked him, therefore, to teach me
German, but he had not taught me much before we were at the gates of
the old town and then I left him. It is thus, you will see, that for
my next four days or five, which were passed among the German-speaking
Swiss, I was utterly alone.

This book must not go on for ever; therefore I cannot say very much
about Soleure, although there is a great deal to be said about it. It
is distinguished by an impression of unity, and of civic life, which I
had already discovered in all these Swiss towns; for though men talk
of finding the Middle Ages here or there, I for my part never find it,
save where there has been democracy to preserve it. Thus I have seen
the Middle Ages especially alive in the small towns of Northern
France, and I have seen the Middle Ages in the University of Paris.
Here also in Switzerland. As I had seen it at St Ursanne, so I found
it now at Soleure. There were huge gates flanking the town, and there
was that evening a continual noise of rifles, at which the Swiss are
for ever practising. Over the church, however, I saw something
terribly seventeenth century, namely, Jaweh in great Hebrew letters
upon its front.

Well, dining there of the best they had to give me (for this was
another milestone in my pilgrimage), I became foolishly refreshed and
valiant, and instead of sleeping in Soleure, as a wise man would have
done, I determined, though it was now nearly dark, to push on upon the
road to Burgdorf.

I therefore crossed the river Aar, which is here magnificently broad
and strong, and has bastions jutting out into it in a very bold
fashion. I saw the last colourless light of evening making its waters
seem like dull metal between the gloomy banks; I felt the beginnings
of fatigue, and half regretted my determination. But as it is quite
certain that one should never go back, I went on in the darkness, I do
not know how many miles, till I reached some cross roads and an inn.

This inn was very poor, and the people had never heard in their lives,
apparently, that a poor man on foot might not be able to talk German,
which seemed to me an astonishing thing; and as I sat there ordering
beer for myself and for a number of peasants (who but for this would
have me their butt, and even as it was found something monstrous in
me), I pondered during my continual attempts