The doubt thrown upon the existence of Tell came from an influence that bears upon things of a graver import. They originated at the time when religion was dead, and when rationalism, with an appearance of erudition, was rife. Many critics formed theories of their own in regard to Homer and the ancient writers and heroes in general. Book after book was issued from the press filled with the most absurd theories. Every student who came from a university had the ambition to write a book. Each one thought himself a veritable Daniel come to judgment; nearly every historical character was a being of imagination. They did not stop with human characters, they laid hold upon the Word of God. Moses became a myth in their hands; and Job was a mere story in poetry, like the Arabian Nights; Ecclesiastes was the blating of an Epicurean philosopher no longer young. Good, however, came out of this evil. The best men were led to examine the basis on which the truth stands, and to study more profoundly than ever the “faith once delivered to the saints,” and the result was the overthrow of this school of specious reasoning and crude theories. The details of Tell’s story, at last, do not signify much; they form only the drapery of the figure, which stands to this day one of the few heroes who have been able so to forget themselves, and so to inspire other men with self-forgetfulness, as to obtain with them a nation’s freedom. And thus Tell lives, safely, in the people’s songs and in the faithful hearts of his countrymen.
Ideals, the symbols of the truth which we conceive, of the beauty which we imagine, and of the good which we long for, have as great an influence in the world as ideas, if not even greater. High ideals and loyalty to them are virtues which are requisite to the existence and safety of a progressive society. We cannot afford to surrender the least of our high and pure ideals to the iconoclasm that would declare every grand historical character to be apocryphal; a spirit that revels in the breaking of images simply for the pleasure of breaking, even if chiselled by the hand of Praxiteles; a folly not content with robbing us of Tell and his apple, but would deprive us of Newton’s apple, too, and vainly talks of a cryptogram lurking in Shakespeare’s dramas, which points to his mythical existence. We have too few immortal names identified with their country’s glory. Let us not seek to inquire too minutely into their title to fame, to see if it is embarrassed by vague and contradictory traditions; but let us rather associate their names with the greatness, the virtue, the durability of their race, and invoke blessings on them down “to the last syllable of recorded time.”
In this day, so given to materialism, pitiful rivalries, and ignoble ambitions, we want more hero-worship, a greater reverence of heroism, a more just and delicate appreciation of individual worth, the traditions of noble deeds, and the “passion of philanthropy;” and not to believe that all men are much of a sameness, and the old days in which the gods lived on earth are forever gone. There are certain great events embalmed in tradition that it will not do to question, and which, if of doubtful historical support, it is unwise to disturb, as they are so many incentives to noble deeds, and should be cherished in our hearts even as an inspiring fiction. It is easy for cynics to deride heroism, and scoff at the superiority of ideal existence over the facts of life. But it is not good to be confined to what the physical eye can see, and refuse to use the eye of faith and imagination. Enthusiasm lives and flourishes with imagination and idealism; and together they purify, as well as ennoble, every nature they touch. They paint the world and men as they should be; all that human heart can do; all of which human nature, at its highest, is capable. The craving for the real is good and healthy, but it ought by no means to be set in opposition to the craving for the ideal, for
“A deeper import lurks in the legends told our infant years
Than lies upon the truth we live to learn.”
CHAPTER XIX.
BERN.
From the end of the thirteenth century Bern was the great, influential, and growing town of Switzerland; rich, enterprising, and self-asserting. For the sake of securing their friendship, it made citizens of many of the nobility who lived far from the city walls, and established guilds with many valuable privileges. Some of these guilds still exist, and a membership is quite an expensive privilege, costing from 8000 to 10,000 francs; besides the applicant must possess property to the value of 15,000 francs. In early times Bern held a firm grasp on the lands from Aargau to Lake Leman. Besides conquering them, it largely bought out the neighboring territorial nobility. It was the feudal idea, taking root and growing in mediæval times, that the right of government was as property, and the possession of landed property was looked on as carrying with it a kind of right of government. The whole early history of Bern is the greatest example in modern times of an inland city ruling over a great collection of subject towns and districts. It was an aristocratic republic, having been founded as a refuge for the inferior nobility from the oppression of powerful counts. The rapid development of industry within its substantial walls attracted also peasants, artificers, and tradesmen, who flocked in from the neighborhood. The burghers secured many privileges, and were eligible to the highest offices; but they generally concurred in the election of members of the patrician family. These young patricians were literally apprenticed to political life by the singular institution of the Ausserstand, a copy of the real commonwealth, with councils and magistrates of its own, and the Schultheiss, or chief magistrate of the mimic republic, was commonly elected a member of the Great Council of the real one.
The French Revolution submerged the aristocracy in a general Helvetian republic, and, when the flood had passed, the ancient landmark could only be partially restored. The Bernese, however, continued to acknowledge the ascendency of these noble families, what few were left to them, whose ancestors had been the founders of the city, and whose courage, virtues, and patriotism had secured the confidence of the people. It was not until 1847, under the influence of the Sonderbund excitement, that the last vestige of class privilege was abolished, and perfect equality of all citizens before the law established; political rights granted to every male citizen over twenty years of age, civil administration and justice organized after modern democratic principles, guaranteeing the rights of man, and promising trial by jury.
Tradition has it that Bern was founded by Berchtold V., Duke of Zähringen, in 1191. Being persistently opposed both by the Alpine and the Burgundian nobles, who took up arms against him, he met and defeated them twice in the field, and then began to look about for a suitable site, at an equal distance from both parties, where he might build a town larger and more important than any that yet existed. Different derivations are given for the name of Bern; some etymologists say it is a corruption of the Celtic name of Verona; but the only one that satisfies the Bernese is that given by the old recorder Justinger, who wrote at the end of the fourteenth century, “How the town was called Bern:” There were many wild animals in the oak woods, and Duke Berchtold determined that the town should be called after the first that was caught there; so the first that was caught was a bear, and the town received its name from Bären, the Swabian for bears; and the Duke also gave the burghers a shield and armorial bearings, namely, a black bear on a white field. A bronze statue of the Duke is erected in the cathedral promenade, upon which is the inscription, E bellua cæsa sit urbi futuræ nomen (“from a monster slain, let there be a name to the future city”). The Emperor Frederick II. declared Bern a free city of the empire in 1218, and confirmed its privileges by a charter, which is still preserved in the archives. Its first prominence was in 1339, when in June of that year the Bernese, under Ulric von Erlach, were completely victorious over the allied forces, and struck the death-blow to the feudal nobility of western Helvetia. In 1405 the greater part of the city was destroyed by fire, but was soon rebuilt on the same site. In 1798 it was plundered by the French. Immediately after their entrance into the city, the French soldiers made themselves masters of its treasure, which, no doubt, was one of the motives and most immediate cause of the invasion and attack. The exact amount taken was never ascertained, but by the most moderate estimate made it reached 20,000,000 francs; everything of value that could be taken away became the prey of the victors.
From the date of its accession to the Confederation, in 1351, Bern has been one of the most conspicuous and influential of Swiss towns. The history of the city is the history of the Canton, and in some measure it is the history of the Confederation. From 1798 to 1815 the Federal Diet met in turns at Zurich, Bern, Luzern, Freiburg, Solothurn, and Basel. From 1815 to 1848 the three cities of Zurich, Bern, and Luzern were the seats of the government, the Diet sitting biennially in each place in turn. This system of having three capitals did not work satisfactorily, and the necessity for the country possessing one centre was generally seen. Zurich and Luzern surrendered their claims, and Bern became the central and fixed capital of the Confederation in 1848, the Canton assuming the cost of erecting the necessary public buildings. It is also the capital of the largest and most populous Canton, which has a population of 539,305, out of a total for the Confederation of 2,933,612, or nearly one-fifth. It is the most important of the sisterhood by its territory, wealth, and population, and may be called the Empire Canton of the Confederation. The city itself contains a population of about 50,000, with a superficial surface of an American village of 2500 people. No great city in Switzerland overtops the rest and draws them into moving around it by its mass and weight. Population and wealth are not concentrated in “enormous and apoplectic heads upon a bloodless body,” as great cities were designated by Mirabeau. The largest Swiss towns would be fifth-rate towns in the United States. The Swiss villages are on the declivities of the Alps; the towns either on advanced promontories or on the borders of the lakes. They are all small, and contain none of the monuments which mark the luxury of great nations. They are municipalities rather than capitals, to whom the nature of the country and the smallness of the population have denied the power of increase. Many of these towns are located with a view to the natural defence, furnished by the topography of the site, and were originally walled places of refuge. They resemble those towns of prehistoric Italy described by Virgil, as “perched on precipices of rocks, with rivers gliding beneath their antique walls.” Bern occupies a bold promontory of sandstone rock, seventeen hundred and ten feet above the sea, and its position in early times entailed great strategical advantages. It is nearly surrounded by the Aar, a bold, strong tributary of the Rhine, which rises in the southeast mountains of Bern, and carries to its mouth the waters of fourteen Cantons. A sudden bend of the stream encloses the town on all sides but one. The magnificent slopes to this rapid river are in some places covered with turf, and supported in others by lofty terraces planted with trees.[110] It is not an easy matter to account for the first impression you receive on entering Bern; you certainly feel that you have got to an ancient and remarkable place. Passing under any of its old gate-ways for the first time, one feels as if he had strayed upon a stage conscientiously prepared for the playing of a mediæval comedy or tragedy. No town in Switzerland has been so preserved from the hands of the spoiler and the restorer; the whole town is a sort of informal museum of archæology. A small portion that has grown up around the Federal Palace, which was erected on the outskirts of the old town, when it was made the permanent capital in 1848, is modern in appearance. That which constitutes the town proper is composed of ancient houses of an early age, with curiously frescoed and carved fronts, and many remnants of ancient architecture. The main streets are broad and regular, the houses constructed of sandstone of a grayish-blue color, found in the adjoining hills; in other streets, the tall, thin houses are clustered together as if to use as little as possible of the margin which nature and industry have drawn so closely around them. These houses are six, seven, and eight stories high. Every floor, with the exception of the first, which in all probability is used for business purposes, accommodates a family, and, among the poor classes, several families. It would be difficult to find a town where every part of the house is so fully put to use and little waste or idle room. It is doubtful if a dozen families in Bern each occupy an entire house, and a very small number more than a flat of one floor. All the houses, including the most ancient, are admirably constructed for this multiform occupancy, and Swiss domestic life, as practised in Bern, is a fine art of many centuries’ growth. The walls being very thick, the front windows are made to serve the purpose of verandas. They have neat iron railings encircling them, swung on hinges, and when thrown outward are both a protection and a rest for inclining against. In all pleasant weather these are the favorite places to sit. Furnished with bright red or orange cushions, and probably those on no two floors being uniform in figure, they present from the street a novel and variegated spectacle; touching up the projecting balconies, highly worked and of a glossy black, and complementing the green Venetian shutters. These houses preserve a mediæval physiognomy; the pomp and strength of feudal Switzerland are called up before our mind when we look at the solid walls, at the buttresses which support them, and their steep peaked roofs.