It was quite true. There was no special reason for our starting for Lyons that day, no pressing necessity for our leaving Switzerland just then. The Lake of Lucerne, moreover, had originally a prominent place in our itinerary, and the weather was so fine that there seemed fair hope of the prescribed sunrise from the Rigi. But, if the truth were told, we were weary—weary not in body but in soul; and had taken such an aversion to the country, from a spiritual point of view, that a strong antidote—such as Lyons with its Notre Dame de [pg 376] Fourvières and general Catholic life would afford—had become to us absolutely essential.
Six weeks previously we entered Switzerland—two ladies overflowing with enthusiasm. The picturesque was certainly a main object in our journey; for where else can it be equalled, or found in such variety? Still, we had no intention whatever of leaving religion and devotion behind us, and never doubted for a moment that we should succeed in finding means of satisfying our desires.
It was our first visit to this region, and our knowledge of it, we are bound to confess, was most superficial. But how little does one know of a foreign country until either long residence or some special circumstance excites the curiosity or rouses the attention! Catholics even, who as a rule interest themselves more than all others about the religious state of countries outside their own—instigated by that principle of universal brotherhood, that bond of spiritual union, which the church so effectually promotes—seldom know, notwithstanding, the details of current ecclesiastical foreign events, unless accident brings them to the spot. A great commotion like the warfare going on in Geneva, and the fact that the attitude of the Catholic community in that town was most noble, and those willing “to suffer persecution for justice' sake” neither few nor faint-hearted, had of course a large place in our view of the case. But except this, and the broad facts that Geneva, Berne, and Zurich were Protestant, Lucerne and its neighborhood Catholic, we are constrained to admit that our acquaintance with Swiss matters, geographical, historical, or ecclesiastical, was very limited. It is little wonder, therefore, that we lent a willing ear to the thoughtless assertions of fellow-travellers, who told us we should find Catholic churches scattered all over these districts. Without further questioning, then, we proceeded, commencing by a few days at Lausanne and along the shores of the lovely Lake of Geneva. Thence we made our way to Bellalp, Zermatt, the Eichhorn, and, finally, passing round to the northern side of the great mountains, wandered on from the Faulhorn, Scheideck, and Wengern Alps to Mürren, where we rested for several days, having “done” sunsets and sunrises, peaks and glaciers, until our minds were filled with the most magnificent images. Still, despite all these wonderful beauties of nature, which seemed every day to draw us more closely and more humbly towards the Creator, an irrepressible dreariness had crept over us, from the absence of all visible signs of union with him or of grateful worship on the part of man. Certain it is that the result our present wanderings had produced by the time we reached Berne was a longing for a Catholic land and Catholic churches, where we might pour forth our praises, and give utterance to our thanksgivings for the glorious sights we had seen; a longing that had grown stronger than the mere love of the sublime and beautiful, for its own sake, of which we were, nevertheless, most ardent votaries.
It may be said that, coming to Protestant cantons as we did, we ought not to have expected a profusion of Catholic churches; the Catholic population is small, especially in the highland districts, and labors under many disadvantages. True, and after the first disappointment was over, we were ready to [pg 377] study our excursions, and often to shorten them, in order to hear Mass on Sundays. Yet even so, more than once we could not even accomplish this; and the difficulty of approaching the sacraments under these circumstances is most distressing to travellers. Besides, to an outside observer, piety does not seem to flourish; or, where it does, the Catholic congregations have that subdued look peculiar to all persecuted communities, so extremely depressing to witness. Many believe that, for this and other reasons, the battle now raging in Geneva and elsewhere will be productive of great gain, and that Switzerland and Germany will emerge from a life resembling that of the early Christians in the Catacombs, only with tenfold power and vigor. At the present moment, one is chiefly led to reflect on the false interpretation of that freedom so much boasted of by the Swiss Protestants—if one may so style the advanced liberals and free-thinkers who come to the surface nowadays—and remember how easily an American Catholic could make them blush by his report of how differently these matters are treated across the Atlantic.
Our path had nowhere, as yet, it is true, touched on a Catholic canton; and there all might be different, though everything we could glean led us to a contrary expectation. An old German who had been coming to Switzerland for the last thirty years, and whom we met en route, told us it was all the same. “No religion anywhere. Nothing can be more uninteresting than the people,” he asserted. “Bent only on money-making and fighting about religion—religion, that is to say, in name, but not in deed; the disputes are purely party questions, and have no real, substantial foundation. Peaks and passes are alone worth a thought,” he added. On these he was inexhaustible, but always dismissed the other subject with contempt. Later, when our own observations in the Catholic cantons completely altered our opinions, we also ascertained that he, like so many of the summer tourists one encounters nowadays, was perfectly indifferent to all forms of worship, and blind to those signs and manifestations of the inner being which still abound in all that region. Meanwhile, however, his report, coming from one familiar with every part of Switzerland, carried conviction to our untutored minds, as, no doubt, happens in similar cases every day.
But it was not, perhaps, the difficulty about, and paucity of, Catholic service which so much roused our indignation, once we saw the small number of our co-religionists, as the universal aridity, tepidity, nay, coldness, of all the inhabitants of these favored regions. Nor could we gain much knowledge about them. The ordinary tourist never meets a Swiss above the class of guides and hotel-keepers; the former, in the Protestant cantons, are a stolid, uncommunicative race of men, with all their intellects apparently given to their horses and Trinkgeld; the latter too much engrossed in the feverish anxiety of drawing up large bills and providing for the passing crowd to give attention to any other matter during the summer season. Besides, the line of interest does not run in the direction of the “people”; if it did, these men would no doubt also labor to supply the demand; as it is, few have time, or, having time, inclination, for anything but [pg 378] scenery, and next to scenery—sometimes first—come food and lodging.
It was unreasonable, many observed, to aspire to more. “A thorough knowledge of a nation is not to be picked up in passing”; “One comes to Switzerland for the scenery only”; “The people cannot be judged by outward appearances,” were phrases which met us at every turn whenever we ventured to make a remark. “Doubtless the people may be excellent,” was our reply; “but outward appearances are an index to their minds. In the Tyrol, Bohemia, Brittany, and other Catholic lands, all who ‘run may read.’ ” Mountain chapels, wayside crosses, holy pictures inside and outside their dwellings, speak a language common to all Christian hearts; and the indifferentism and dryness of soul which their absence betokens in the Bernese Oberland, especially amidst its grandest scenes and greatest dangers, cannot fail to leave a most painful impression on every thoughtful traveller.
The only information we found it easy to gather related to everything connected with material subjects. In a surprisingly short space of time, we knew, from our guides, the names of all the peaks, and many, too, of the smaller summits, and, above all, could speak in an authoritative tone of the best hotels in different places, the price of pension in each, whether the Kellners were civil, the living better in one than another, Cook's tickets an advantage or not, where the carriage-roads ended and the riding or walking began—in fine, became very clever on all those points which form the staple of conversation at all Swiss hotels and halting-places. Yet we conscientiously employed our eyes and ears, so as to come to no wrong conclusion. The more one travels in Switzerland, the more necessary this precaution seems. Whatever efforts we made, however, brought about the same unfavorable result. The whole aspect of the country we traversed justified our German acquaintance's harsh criticisms. Even the Protestant churches, which, if only from a pure spirit of opposition, one might expect to show a flourishing exterior, are in Switzerland more than usually bald and cheerless. Unlike English churches of the present day, they are completely innocent of the slightest approach to decoration, and very often without sign of communion-table or anything even representing it. Sometimes a bare slab of marble, without altar-cloth or covering, stands in the middle; but often this is brought out only at stated periods for the administration of the Lord's Supper, and, as a rule, the seats are ranged round the pulpit—the only centre of attraction in these buildings. Of all nations, the English show the most tangible signs of life. They, at least, bring themselves more prominently forward; for the first paper that strikes the eye on entering every Swiss inn is the list of services and chaplains supplied to Switzerland for the season by the English Church Colonial Society. Churches they do not possess, except in a few favored spots; and many are the lamentations amongst the wandering Britons at being obliged to content themselves with the drawing-room or billiard-room of a large hotel, where probably the evening before they had assembled amidst gaiety and laughter. It is an arrangement, too, often complained of by the other inmates—one which led to a serious dispute in one place, where [pg 379] the German visitors claimed their right to the billiard-table at the hour appointed by the English chaplain for his service. Still, there they are, mindful, at least, of “Sabbath worship,” when the majority of their co-religionists see no necessity for remembering it.
Crowds of Anglican clergymen were also found travelling, on their own account, in the Protestant cantons. Five-and-twenty were together one day at Mürren, of all shades and hues, too; from my Lord Bishop, with his wife and daughters, to the young Ritualist curate, in his Roman collar and otherwise Catholic dress, the highest ambition of whose heart is to be taken—or rather mistaken—for a true Catholic priest. And very hard it is to distinguish him, at first sight, from the genuine character, so exact has he made the superficial copy. After a little conversation, however, it is easy to know that such unmitigated abuse of the Episcopal dignitary who sits at the other end of the room, and of the whole bench of bishops, cannot belong to the true church, which not only enjoins but practises submission to authority. Intellectual these High-Churchmen always are, and would make pleasant company but for the crookedness of their “opinions,” and their unconcealed exultation, too, at the assumed progress of the so-called “Old-Catholic” movement, which they represent as undermining the whole of Switzerland. Catholic Switzerland they always meant; for even they could not blind themselves to the fact that in the Protestant districts there is little left to take away. One could only wonder how, with their hankering after Catholic things, they could in any way feel drawn towards those cantons; and it more than ever strengthened our conviction (though nothing offends them more than such a suggestion) that the sole binding link between these English High-Churchmen and the miscellaneous companies which assemble at the “Old-Catholic” meetings is their common ground of rebellion to mother church—which, as daily experience infallibly proves, gathers together all grades of belief and unbelief outside the Catholic fold, and induces them to ignore all their important differences in the bond of a hatred which is truly preternatural to the spouse of Christ!
Wet days at Swiss hotels are proverbially fruitful of talk and discussion; and nowadays these religious subjects are certain to be started by some new Ritualistic acquaintance, who evidently presumes on sympathy from English-speaking travellers. Above all, should he or she discover that you are a “Romanist,” as they choose to call us children of the true church, it is most curious to observe what an irresistible secret attraction impels them to follow you, from morning to night, with their arguments and spiritual “views.” Oh! what days of annoyance continued rain has cost us on those mountain-tops—days of true annoyance unmixed with good; for in no single instance did we find any permanent impression made on these Ritualists, who, of all Protestants, are the most hopelessly blinded and obstinate. And most fully do we agree with a high ecclesiastical authority who recently remarked to us that all other shades of churchmen, including the evangelical or Low Church, respond to the call of grace more readily than these men and women, whose stand-point is that pride [pg 380] which obscures their spiritual vision. After two or three such discussions, we foresaw the point exactly when they would dogmatically assert that they, “too, are Catholics,” and that an irreparable breach was to be the immediate consequence of the solemn protest which it became our duty to make on each similar occasion. Before we reached Mürren, therefore, we had learnt to avoid them. By that time, too, we found that all their information about “Old Catholics” was derived either from the English newspapers or those foreign ones which, in rainy, stay-at-home weather, are studied in those places with persevering assiduity.