"Die Kraft derselben Liebe,
Die du dem Knaben trugst,
Ward einst in dir zum Triebe,
Dass du den Zwingherrn schlugst."
Some liken life to a book to be read in. To us it is rather an unwritten poem which each age repeats to the next,—melodious sometimes, as when the blind old mythic bard of Chios sang it under the olive-trees, by the blue Aegean, to the listening Greeks, thirsty for beauty, drinking it ever with their eyes, and with their lips lisping it,—or rough and more full of meaning, as when, with the men of Schwyz and Uri and Unterwalden, the great idea of freedom, majestic as their mountains, utters itself, composed and stern, in deeds which for all time make Switzerland honored and free.
On the 10th of November, 1859, the heart of Germany beat with gladness, if touched also with a certain sorrow, as in every hamlet, on every hill-side, from the German Ocean to the Tyrolese Alps, from the Vosges to the Carpathians and the Slavic border, the people met to celebrate with simple rites the hundredth birthday of its great poet Schiller, in whom they recognize not more what he did than what he sought after, whose striving is their striving, from highest to lowest,—the ideal man, burning to gather them together, and fold them as one flock under one shepherd, that, no longer divided, they may face the world and the future with one heart, with one great trembling hope, to lead the new civilization to its lasting triumphs.
Schiller had sung of Wilhelm Tell; and the men of Schwyz remembered him on that occasion, too, on the Rütli, with their confederates from Oberwalden and Niederwalden. On the afternoon of the 11th of November, they met at Brunnen,—on the lake, as we have said,—the men of Schwyz embarking in one great boat, amidst peals of music, while numberless little canoes received the others. The wind, blowing strong from the north, filled the sail, and, as they floated down the Bay of Uri, they remembered Stauffacher and his friends, who had glided over the same dark waters at dead of night, past the Mytenstein to the Rütli, and the old time lived again; and the little chapel on the spot where Tell sprang ashore, erected by the Canton Uri, where once a year, since 1388, mass is said, and a sermon preached to the people, who go up in solemn procession of little boats, looked friendly over to them; and the countrymen of Schiller, present for the first time from Stuttgart and Munich, wondered at the solemn beauty of the snowpeaks reflected in the waters below. A chorus of many voices broke upon the mountain-stillness, as the little fleet approached the Rütli; the men of Uri, already there, "the first on the spot," and with them the men of Gersau, a valiant band, answered in a song of welcome; and they shook each other by the hand, and made a little circle, three hundred in all, upon the Rütli; and Lusser of Uri thanked the men of Schwyz for the invitation to remember their fathers here on the five hundred and fifty-second anniversary of the deeds which Schiller has so gloriously sung. We best remember the poet by repeating and upholding his words:—
"Wir wollen seyn ein einzig Volk von Brüdern,
In keiner Noth uns trennen und Gefahr.
Wir wollen frey seyn, wie die Väter waren,
Eher den Tod als in der Knechtschaft leben.
Wir wollen trauen auf den höchsten Gott,
Und uns nicht fürchten vor der Macht der
Menschen."
"One people will we be,—a band of brothers;
No danger, no distress shall sunder us.
We will be freemen as our fathers were,
And sooner welcome death than live as slaves.
We will rely on God's almighty arm,
And never quail before the power of man." [B]
[Footnote B: Rev. C. T. Brooks's translation, p. 53.]
Then they read the scene of the Rütli Oath from Schiller's play, and sing the Swiss national song, "Callest thou, my Fatherland?" And the pastor Tschümperlin admonishes them that they best cultivate the spirit of Schiller and Tell by worthy training of their children. As they are about to break up at last, the Landammann Styger of Schwyz suggests a beautiful thing to them:—"As we came from Brunnen, and looked up at the Mytenstein as we passed it,—the great pyramid rising up there out of the water as if meant by Nature for a monument,—it seemed to us that a memorial tablet should be placed there, simple like the column itself, with words like these: 'To Him who wrote "Tell," on his One Hundredth Birthday, the Original Cantons.'" And the proposition was received with unanimous shout of assent. "This was the worthy ending of the Schiller-Festival on the Rütli," says the contemporary chronicle.
On the 10th day of November, 1859, also, there was put into the hands of the Central Committee of the Society of the Swiss Union the deed of purchase of the Rütli. It is in the handwriting of Franz Lusser of Uri, Clerk of the Court, and dated the 10th of November, the birthday of Schiller. Thus Switzerland owns its sacred places, and the title-deeds long laid up in its heart are written out at last.
On the 21st of October of last year, on a brilliant afternoon, the men of Schwyz and Uri went forth again from Brunnen, with the chief magistracy of the land. From Treib came the Unterwaldners, all in richly decorated boats, and the inhabitants of Lucerne in two steamboats with much music, meeting in front of the Mytenstein, which lifts its colossal front eighty feet above the water there. The top of it was covered with a large boat-sail, with the arms of the original Cantons and Swiss mottoes on it; in a wreath of evergreen, the arms of the other Cantons; in the middle of it, in token of the twenty-two Cantons, a white cross upon red ground; above all, the flag of the Confederacy spread to the Föhn. At the foot was a little stand made of twigs for the speaker, about which the little fleet was grouped, under the charge of the Landammann Aufdermauer of Brunnen, a gallant gentleman, host of the Golden Eagle, with his kind little sister, of whom we spoke at the beginning.