l law. The radicals, who, the pasteur said, wished
Switzerland to attempt the role "_grande nation_," had brought forward
this measure in the Federal legislature, and it was now, according to
the sensible Swiss custom, to be submitted to a popular vote. It
provided for the establishment of a national bureau of education, and
the conservatives protested against it as the entering wedge of
centralization in government affairs. They contended that in a country
shared by three races and two religions education should be left as much
as possible to the several cantons, which in the Swiss constitution are
equivalent to our States. I am happy to say that the proposed law was
overwhelmingly defeated; I am happy because I liked the pasteur so much,
though when I remember the sympathetic bric-a-brac dealer at Vevay, who
was a radical, but who sold me some old pewters at a very low price, I
can't help feeling a little sorry too. However, the Swiss still keep
their old school law, under which each canton taxes itself for
education, as our States do, though all share in the advantages of the
universities, which are part of the public-school system.

The parties in Switzerland are fortunately not divided by questions of
race or religion, but the pasteur owned that the Catholics were a
difficult element, and had to be carefully managed. They include the
whole population of the Italian cantons, and part of the French and
German. In Geneva and other large towns the labor question troublesomely
enters, and the radicals, like our Democrats, are sometimes the
retrograde party.

The pasteur spoke with smiling slight of the Pere Hyacinthe and the
Doellinger movements, and he confessed that the Protestants were cut up
into too many sects to make progress among the Catholic populations. The
Catholics often keep their children out of the public schools, as they
do with us, but these have to undergo the State examinations, to which
all the children, whether taught at home or in private schools, must
submit. He deplored the want of moral instruction in the public schools,
but he laughed at the attempts in France to instil non-religious moral
principles: when I afterwards saw this done in the Florentine ragged
schools I could not feel that he was altogether right. He was a member
of the communal school committee, and he told me that this body was
appointed by the syndic and council of each commune, who are elected by
the people. To some degree re