a
stranger, and specially exposed by my ignorance of the languages spoken
here to imposition, no one has attempted to cheat me from the moment of
my entering the Republic till this, while in Italy every day and almost
every hour was marked by its peculiar extortions. Every where I have
found kindness and truth written on the faces and evinced in the acts of
this people, while in Italy rapacity and knavery are the order of the
day. How does a monarchist explain this broad discrepancy? Mountains
alone will not do, for the Italians of the Apennines and the Abruzzi are
notoriously very much like those of the Campagna and of the Val d'Arno;
nor will the zealot's ready suggestion of diverse Faiths suffice, for my
route has lain almost exclusively through the _Catholic_ portion of this
country. Ticino, Uri, Lucerne, etc., are intensely, unanimously
Catholic; the very roadsides are dotted with little shrines, enriched
with the rudest possible pictures of the Virgin and Child, the
Crucifixion, &c., and I think I did not pass a Protestant church or
village till I was within thirty miles of this place. Nearly all the
Swiss I have seen are Catholics, and a more upright, kindly, truly
religious people I have rarely or never met. What, then, can have
rendered them so palpably and greatly superior to their Italian
neighbors, whose ancestors were the masters of theirs, but the
prevalence here of Republican Freedom and there of Imperial Despotism?

Switzerland, shut out from equal competition with other nations by her
inland, elevated, scarcely accessible position, has naturalized
Manufactures on her soil, and they are steadily extending. She sends
Millions' worth of Watches, Silks, &c., annually even to distant
America; while Italy, with nearly all her population within a day's ride
of the Adriatic or the Mediterranean, with the rich, barbaric East at
her doors for a market, does not fabricate even the rags which partially
cover her beggars, but depends on England and France for most of the
little clothing she has. Italy is naturally a land of abundance and
luxury, with a soil and climate scarcely equalled on earth; yet a large
share of her population actually lack the necessaries, not to speak of
the comforts, of life, and those who sow and reap her bountiful harvests
are often without bread: Switzerland has, for the most part, an Arctic
climate and scarcely any soil at all; and yet her people are all
decently clad and adequately thou