cks of neighboring towns struck
twelve, the clocks of Bale struck one. The origin of this seeming effort
to hasten him who usually moves rapidly enough for us all is lost in
obscurity.

And now why is it that, we have gone back four hundred years and more,
to linger thus long with the Secretary of the Great Ecclesiastical
Council of Bale, in that quaint and queer old town, with its half
French, half German look, its grand, grotesque old churches, hung round
with knightly shields and filled with women, each in a pulpit of her
own, its stork-crowned roofs, its houses blazing with wrought gold and
silver, its threescore fountains, and the magnificence in which, without
a court, it rivalled the richest capitals of Italy, its noble-spirited
and pleasure-loving, but simple-minded and unlearned burghers, its
white-limbed beauties, and its deceitful clocks? It is not because that
town is now one of the principal ribbon-factories of the world, and
exports to this country alone over $1,200,000 worth yearly; although
some fair readers may suppose that an all-sufficient reason,--and some
of their admirers and protectors, too, for that matter. Think of it!
nearly one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of
ribbons coming to us every year from a single town in Switzerland! The
statement is enough to carry horror and dismay to the heart and the
pocket of every father and brother, and above all, of every husband,
actual or possible, who hears of it. It is a godsend to the
protectionists, who might reedify their party on the basis of a
prohibitory tariff against ribbons. If they were successful, their
success would be brilliant; for if our fair tyrants could not get
ribbons--those necessaries of life--from Bale in Switzerland, they
would tease and coax us to build them a Bale in America; and we should
do it.

We have gone back to the old Bale of four hundred and twenty years ago,
because there, and not long after that time,--about 1498,--according
to general belief, Hans Holbein was born; because these were the
surroundings under the influence of which he grew to manhood; and
because there, about sixty years before his birth, a Dance of Death was
painted, the most ancient and important of which we have any remaining
memorial. This Dance was painted upon the wall of the churchyard of the
Dominican Convent in Great Bale, by order of the very Ecclesiastical
Council of which our Aeneas Sylvius was Secretary, and in commem