SACELLUM
QUO RELIQUIAS
EXERCITUS BURGUNDICI
AB HELVETIIS, A. 1476,
PIA ANTIQUITAS CONDIDIT.
RENOVARI
VIISQUE PUBLICIS MUNIRI
JUSSERUNT
RERUM NUNC DOMINÆ
REIPUBLICÆ
BERNENSIS ET FRIBURGENSIS
ANNO 1755.
The borders of the lake of Murat are enriched with gentlemen’s houses, and villages in great abundance.
The dress, manners, and persons of the inhabitants of this country indicate a different people from the Genevois, Savoyards, or the inhabitants of the Pays de Vaud.
We dined at Murat, and remained several hours in the town. There was a fair, and a great concourse of people.—The Swiss peasants are the tallest and most robust I have ever seen. Their dress is very particular.—They have little round hats, like those worn by the Dutch skippers.—Their coats and waistcoats are all of a kind of coarse black cloth.—Their breeches are made of coarse linen, something like sailors trowsers; but drawn together in plaits below the knees, and the stockings are of the same stuff with the breeches.
The women wear short jackets, with a great superfluity of buttons. The unmarried women value themselves on the length of their hair, which they separate into two divisions, and allow to hang at its full length, braided with ribands in the Ramillie fashion.—After marriage, these tresses are no longer permitted to hang down; but, being twisted round the head in spiral lines, are fixed at the crown with large silver pins. This is the only difference in point of dress which matrimony makes.
Married and unmarried wear straw hats, ornamented with black ribands. So far the women’s dress is becoming enough; but they have an aukward manner of fixing their petticoats so high as to leave hardly any waist. This encroachment of the petticoats upon the waist, with the amazing number they wear, gives a size and importance to the lower and hind part of the body to which it is by no means entitled, and mightily deforms the appearance of the whole person.
The elegant figure of the Venus de Medicis, or of the D——ss of D——re, would be impaired, or annihilated, under such a preposterous load of dress.—As we arrived only this afternoon, I can say nothing of Bern. You shall hear more in my next. Meanwhile, I am, &c.
[4] Near this town the Helvetians were defeated by Cæcina, one of Vitellius’s Lieutenants.—Multa hominum millia cæsa, multa sub corona venumdata. Cumque direptis omnibus, Aventicum gentis caput justo agmine peteretur.
Taciti Historia, lib. 1. cap. 68.