of the Last Judgment, cut in the stone, in which the
good, very scantily attired, and of most self-satisfied countenances,
trotted off after St. Peter, who carried the father of all keys, to the
door of a castle representing heaven, while the poor wicked were borne
away in a Swiss basket, strapped upon the back of a pig-headed devil, to
a great pot over a blazing fire, which a little imp was vigorously
blowing up with a pair of bellows. The wicked seeming to outnumber the
good (this was designed many centuries ago), and the pot not being large
enough to hold them all, the surplus were thrust into the jaws of a
patient crocodile near by. Seated in an arm-chair, above all this, the
devil looked down with an expression of entire satisfaction.

The interior of the Cathedral was in no way remarkable. In the choir
(which you know, perhaps, is not a place where girls stand in their best
bonnets to sing on Sundays, but the corner of these great cathedrals in
which the church service is held) were some fine stained glass windows;
but even here, horrible monkeys and hideous animal figures, life-size,
were cut from the wood, and made to stand or crouch above the stalls
where the priests sit. Those old ecclesiastic artists must have believed
in a personal devil, who assumed many forms.

A threatened shower hastened our steps to the station some time before
the arrival of the train, which seemed to come and go without regard to
the hour appointed. While waiting, we read the advertisements framed and
hanging upon the walls, of hotels, shops, &c. One of the latter, in a
triumph of English, ran,--

WOOD CARWINGS;
CHOOSE AS NOWHERE ELSE.

We reached Berne before night, and drove to the Hotel ----. If it could
by some happy chance have been turned inside out, how comfortable we
might have been! The exterior was most inviting. A German waiter of
Irish face, who had a polyglot manner of speech, difficult to be
understood, showed us to our rooms; and the _table d'hote_, to which we
descended an hour later, was made up of an uncommon array of
prim-visaged individuals. Dickens's Mr. Chadband, in a very stiff, white
neckcloth, was my _vis-a-vis_. I looked every moment for his lips to
open, and--"Wherefore air we gathered here, my friends?" to issue forth.

The guide-book had informed us that the greatest attraction of Berne to
strangers was the fine view of the Bernese Alps to be gained from here;
but a curtain of clou