Even as man sits, whose heart alone would be
With some deep care, and thus can find no more
The accustomed joy in all which evening brings,
Gathering a household with her quiet wings.”
[102] This place is evidently a fragment, some seventy-five or one hundred acres, that has fallen from the mountain, and, lying between the lake and the rocks, it offered a good point of rendezvous.
[103] It is a curious fact that Schiller made Franz, the hero of his “Robbers,” say, “In order to become a finished rascal one must have a certain national bent; he must live in a certain climate and breathe a certain rascally atmosphere; so I advise you to go into the Grisons, for that is, in these days, the Athens of pickpockets.” Schiller was obliged to apologize, the Council of the Leagues threatening to withhold the money they had promised to lend the Duke of Wurtemberg if the offending poet was not punished; he also received an order “never to write more of the same.”
[104] In 1796 there appeared in New York an opera in three acts, adapted by William Dunlap from a dramatic performance published in London in 1794, called “Helvetic Liberty.”
[105] A rude weapon much used by the early Swiss, consisting of a club ending in a massive knob, with spikes protruding in every direction so as to suggest the name of “morning star.”
[106] Although it is alleged that five similar feats to Winkelried’s are on record in Swiss history, only one is recognized and commemorated by the Swiss. In the village square of Stantz is a marble group representing Arnold Winkelried in the act of pressing the Austrian spears into his heart and holding them down, while a second figure pushes forward to take advantage of the gap.
[107] The Æneid, vi. 660.