thers have done, and truly he must be sanguine who could hope to
better a condition, which, with so few prorations, comprises so many of
life's best and dearest blessings. If the mountain peaks be snow-clad,
even in midsummer, the valleys (at least all in South Tyrol) are rich in
vineyards and olive groves; and although wheat is seldom seen, the maize
grows every where; the rivers swarm with trout; and he must be a poor
marksman who cannot have venison for his dinner. The villages are large
and well built; the great wooden houses, with their wide projecting
roofs and endless galleries, are the very types of comfort. Vast
piles of fire-wood, for winter use, large granaries of forage for the
cattle--the cattle themselves with great silver bells hanging to their
necks--all bespeak an ease, if not an actual affluence, among the
peasantry. The Tyrolers are, in a word, all that poets and tourists say
the Swiss are, and of which they are exactly the reverse.

It would be difficult to find two nations so precisely alike in all
external circumstances, and so perfectly dissimilar in every feature
of character. Even in their religious feelings, Romanism, generally so
levelling, has not been able to make them of the same measure here.
The Swiss Catholic--bigotted, overbearing, and plotting--has nothing in
common with the simple-minded Tyroler, whose faith enters into all the
little incidents of his daily life, cheering, exalting, and sustaining,
but never suggesting a thought save of charity and good will to all.

That they have interwoven, so to say, their religious belief into all
their little worldly concerns, if not making their faith the rule, at
least establishing it as the companion of their conduct, is easily seen.
You never overtake a group, returning from fair or market, that all are
not engaged in prayer, repeating together some litany of the Church; and
as each new arrival joins the party, his voice chimes in, and swells the
solemn hum as naturally as if prearranged or practised.

If you pass a village, or a solitary farmhouse, at sunset, the same
accents meet your ears, or else you hear them singing some hymn in
concert. Few "Bauer" houses, of any pretension, are without the effigy
of a patron saint above the door, and even the humblest will have a
verse of a psalm, or a pious sentence, carved in the oaken beam. Their
names are taken from the saintly calendar, and every thing, to the
minutest particular, shews that th