Chapter II: Preface

THE LEGITIMATE USE of a Preface, like that of a Prologue, is merely to give explanations that will be necessary, and to save from expectations that would be delusive. I will, therefore, at once say to those who may have read my ‘Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Kedivé,’ that this little book belongs to the same family. The cast of thought and the aims of the two are kindred, and both endeavour to do their work by similar methods. They are, alike, efforts to attain to a right reading, and a right interpretation of nature, and of man. The differences between them are, perhaps, such as must result from the differences in the matter itself they had, respectively, to take account of. The field, in which the younger sister here makes some studies, is small in extent; its physical conditions, too, are those of our own part of the world, and its human issues those of our own times. It ought, therefore, to be looked at from very near points of view, and to be exhibited in pictures of much detail and minuteness. The field, however, which the elder sister surveyed, was wide in area, and rich with scenes of singularly varied character. Its place, indeed, in the panorama of nature possesses an interest which is exclusively its own; and its history includes a chapter in the construction of thought and of society, of which—while again its own with almost equal exclusiveness—the right appreciation is necessary for the right understanding of some contemporary and subsequent chapters in general history, and not least of the one that is at this day unfolding itself, with ourselves for the actors, we being, also, at the same time, the material dealt with, and fashioned. So it presented itself to my own mind, and so I attempted to set it before the reader’s mind.

To those, however, who are unacquainted with the book I have just referred to in explanation of the character and aims of its successor, I would describe the impulse under which both of them were written in the familiar words, ‘My heart was hot within me; and, while I was thus musing, the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue.’ I had been much stirred by a month spent among the Swiss mountains, not only by what might have been their effect upon me had I been alone, but also by what I had seen of their effect upon others—to one of whom, a child who was with me throughout the excursion (if mention of so small a matter, as it may appear to some, can be allowed), a little space has been given in the following pages; and this it was that first made me wish to fix in words the scenes I had passed through, the impressions I had received from them, and the thoughts that had grown out of them. But how unlike was the landscape, and those who peopled it, to what had come before the eye, and the mind’s eye, in Egypt! Instead of the long life-giving river and the broad life-repelling desert, both so replete with history, the import of which is not yet dead, as well as with natural phenomena of an unwonted character to eyes familiarised with the aspects of our little sea-girt sanctuary, as we fondly deem it, Switzerland offered for contemplation, in the order of nature, the ice and snow world of its cloud-piercing mountains; and, in the order of what is of existing human concern, unflagging industry, patient frugality, intelligently-adapted education, a natural form of land-tenure, and popular government; and invited the spectator of its scenery, as well as of the social and intellectual fermentation of portions of its people, in strong contrast to the immobility of other portions, to meditate on some of the new elements, which modern knowledge, and modern conditions of society, may have contributed for the enlargement and rectification of some of our religious ideas, inclusive, and, perhaps, above all, of our idea of God; for these ideas have at every epoch of man’s history been, more or less, modified by contemporary knowledge, and the contemporary conditions of society. These were the materials for thought Switzerland supplied. Upon all of those, however, which belong to the order of human concern, Egypt, too, in its sense and fashion, had had something to tell us.

* * * * *

As to the form and colouring of the work, I could have wished that there had been, throughout, submitted to the reader’s attention nothing but the scenes described, and the thoughts they gave rise to, without any suggestion, had that been possible, of the writer’s personality. In a work of this kind a vain wish: for in all books, those only excepted that are simply scientific, and in the highest degree in those that deal with matter, in which human interests preponderate, the personality of the writer must be seen in everything he writes. All that he describes is described as he saw and observed it. Others would have observed things differently. So, too, with what he thought about them; it must be different from what others would have thought. A book of this kind must, therefore, be, to a great extent, a fragment of autobiography, in which, for the time, the inner is seen in its immediate relation to the external life of the author. It gives what he felt and thought; his leanings, and likings, and wishes; his readings of the past and of the present; and his mental moorings. This—and especially is it so on a subject with which everyone is familiar, though it may be one that can never be worn out—is all he properly has to say. And his having something of this kind to say, is his only justification for saying anything at all. The expectation, too, of finding that he has treated matters a little in this way is, in no small degree, what induces people to give a hearing to what he says. They take up his book just because they have reason for supposing that he has regarded things from his own point of view, and so seen them from a side, and in a light, and in relations to connected subjects, somewhat different from those in which other people, themselves included, may have seen them; and that he has, therefore, taken into his considerations and estimates some particulars they must have omitted in theirs. Whether his ideas are to the purpose, whether they will hold water, whether they will work, the reader will decide for himself. But in whatever way these questions may be answered, one particular, at all events, is certain, a book of this kind must be worthless, if it is not in some sort autobiographical; while, if it is, it may, possibly, be worth looking over. On no occasion, therefore, have I hesitated to set down just what I thought and felt, being quite sure that this is what every reasonable reader wishes every writer to do.

* * * * *

One more preliminary note. I was accompanied by my wife and stepson, the little boy just now mentioned, who was between nine and ten years of age. Switzerland was not new ground to any one of the three. Occasionally a carriage was used. When that was not done I always walked. My wife was on foot for about half the distance travelled over. The little boy, when a carriage was not used, almost always rode. I give these particulars in order that any family party, that might be disposed to extract from the following pages a route for a single excursion, might understand what they could do, and in what time and way it could be done. The August and September of the excursion were those of last year, 1872.

F. B. Z.

WHERSTEAD VICARAGE:

_January 16, 1873_.

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CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE
_To Zermatt_ 1

CHAPTER II.

_The Riffel—The Gorner 11
Grat—Sunday—Zermatt—Schwartz
See—Mountaineering_

CHAPTER III.

_Walk back to St. 21
Niklaus—Agriculture—Life—Religion in the
Valley_

CHAPTER IV.

I. _Peasant-proprietorship in the Valley_—II. 28
_Landlordism_—III. _The Era of Capital_—IV.
_Obstructions to the free Interaction of
Capital and Land—Their Effects and probable
Removal_—V. _Co-operative Farming not a
Step forward_

CHAPTER V.

_Walk to Saas im Grund—Fee, and its 113
Glacier—The Mattmark See_

CHAPTER VI.

_Walk over Monte Moro to Macugnaga, Ponte 122
Grande, and Domo d’Ossola_

CHAPTER VII.

_Walk over the Simplon_ 131

CHAPTER VIII.

_Brieg—Upper Rhone Valley by_ Char _to the 140
Rhone Glacier—Hôtel du Glacier du Rhône_

CHAPTER IX.

_Walk over the Grimsel, by the Aar Valley, 149
Helle Platte, and the Falls of Handeck, to
Meiringen_

CHAPTER X.

Char _to Interlaken—Walk over the Wengern Alp 155
to Grindelwald_

CHAPTER XI.

_Interlaken_—Char _up the Valley of the 163
Kander—Walk over the Gemmi, sleeping at
Schwarenbach_

CHAPTER XII.

_Leukabad—Aigle_ 172

CHAPTER XIII.

_The Drama of the Mountains_ 184

CHAPTER XIV.

_On Swiss Hotels_ 194

CHAPTER XV.

_Berne—Swiss Fountains—Zurich—Museum of 205
Relics from ancient Lake-villages—Baur_ en
ville—_Récolte des Voyageurs—C’est un
pauvre Pays_

CHAPTER XVI.

_A Remark on Swiss Education_ 218

CHAPTER XVII.

_Elsass—Lothringen—Metz—Gravelotte—Mother of 230
the Curé of Ste. Marie aux Chênes—Waterloo_

CHAPTER XVIII.

_How the Observation and Knowledge of Nature, 250
and the Conditions of Society, affect
Religion and Theology—An instructive
Parallelism—Conclusion_

_INDEX_ 265

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A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND