aria." And again, at the
yearly feast to the Lord in Shiloh, the dancing of the virgins was in
the midst of the vineyards (Judges xxi. 21), the feast of the vintage
being in the south, as our harvest home in the north, a peculiar
occasion of joy and thanksgiving. I happened to pass the autumn of
1863 in one of the great vine districts of Switzerland, under the
slopes of the outlying branch of the Jura which limits the arable
plain of the Canton Zurich, some fifteen miles north of Zurich itself.
That city has always been a renowned, stronghold of Swiss
Protestantism, next in importance only to Geneva; and its evangelical
zeal for the conversion of the Catholics of Uri, and endeavors to
bring about that spiritual result by stopping the supplies of salt
they needed to make their cheeses with, brought on (the Uri men
reading their Matt. v. 13, in a different sense) the battle of Keppel,
and the death of the reformer Zwinglius. The town itself shows the
most gratifying signs of progress in all the modern arts and sciences
of life. It is nearly as black as Newcastle--has a railroad station
larger than the London terminus of the Chatham and Dover--fouls the
stream of the Limmat as soon as it issues from the lake, so that you
might even venture to compare the formerly simple and innocent Swiss
river (I remember it thirty years ago--a current of pale green
crystal) with the highly educated English streams of Weare or Tyne;
and, finally, has as many French prints of dissolute tendency in its
principal shop windows as if they had the privilege of opening on the
Parisian Boulevards.

46. I was somewhat anxious to see what species of thanksgiving or
exultation would be expressed at _their_ vintage, by the peasantry in
the neighborhood of this much enlightened, evangelical, and commercial
society. It consisted in two ceremonies only. During the day, the
servants of the farms where the grapes had been gathered, collected in
knots about the vineyards, and slowly fired horse-pistols, from
morning to evening. At night they got drunk, and staggered up and down
the hill paths, uttering, at short intervals, yells and shrieks,
differing only from the howling of wild animals by a certain intended
and insolent discordance, only attainable by the malignity of debased
human creatures.

47. I must not do the injustice to the Zurich peasantry of implying
that this manner of festivity is peculiar to them. A year before, in
1862, I had formed the