It is a most
comfortable town on a rainy day; for all the principal streets have
their houses built on arcades, and one walks under the low arches, with
the shops on one side and the huge stone pillars on the other. These
pillars so stand out toward the street as to give the house-fronts a
curved look. Above are balconies, in which, upon red cushions, sit the
daughters of Berne, reading and sewing, and watching their neighbors;
and in nearly every window are quantities of flowers of the most
brilliant colors. The gray stone of the houses, which are piled up
from the streets, harmonizes well with the colors in the windows and
balconies, and the scene is quite Oriental as one looks down, especially
if it be upon a market morning, when the streets are as thronged as
the Strand. Several terraces, with great trees, overlook the river, and
command prospects of the Alps. These are public places; for the city
government has a queer notion that trees are not hideous, and that a
part of the use of living is the enjoyment of the beautiful. I saw an
elegant bank building, with carved figures on the front, and at
each side of the entrance door a large stand of flowers,--oleanders,
geraniums, and fuchsias; while the windows and balconies above bloomed
with a like warmth of floral color. Would you put an American bank
president in the Retreat who should so decorate his banking-house? We
all admire the tasteful display of flowers in foreign towns: we go
home, and carry nothing with us but a recollection. But Berne has also
fountains everywhere; some of them grotesque, like the ogre that devours
his own children, but all a refreshment and delight. And it has also its
clock-tower, with one of those ingenious pieces of mechanism, in which
the sober people of this region take pleasure. At the hour, a procession
of little bears goes round, a jolly figure strikes the time, a cock
flaps his wings and crows, and a solemn Turk opens his mouth to announce
the flight of the hours. It is more grotesque, but less elaborate, than
the equally childish toy in the cathedral at Strasburg.

We went Sunday morning to the cathedral; and the excellent woman who
guards the portal--where in ancient stone the Last Judgment is enacted,
and the cheerful and conceited wise virgins stand over against the
foolish virgins, one of whom has been in the penitential attitude
of having a stone finger in her eye now for over three hundred
years--refused at first to admit