now curtailed of its privileges, is still an object of deep veneration among the faithful, and like its neighbour, Einsiedeln, the resort of numerous pilgrims, by whose liberality and superstition the tomb of St. Gall is rendered a source of extensive and voluntary tribute. The Abbey Church, a magnificent structure, with the buildings of the ancient abbey, and another, called the Pfalz, or palace, serve as the residence of the government; while the Convent has been converted into a college of public instruction, under the direction of eleven professors. The churches of St. Lawrence, and St. Mangen, the Arsenal, the Orphan Hospital, and the Casino, are the principal buildings, of which the hospital is particularly striking. The Library, long celebrated for its rare treasures, is arranged in a magnificent hall. It contains upwards of a thousand manuscripts; part of the collection formed by the historian Tschudi; the Niebelungenlied, a manuscript poem of the twelfth century, upon which some interesting lectures were lately delivered at Göttingen, by Dr. Ramm; and the chronicle of Fründ. The Town Library contains the manuscripts of the celebrated Vadianus, so distinguished at the period of the Reformation as burgomaster of the town; the bust of Zollikofer, the most powerful preacher of his time in Germany; the portrait of Zingg, by A. Graf, with an extensive cabinet of petrifactions from the neighbouring districts. Besides these libraries, another, belonging to a literary society, is rich in all that relates to the history of the country at large, and of St. Gall in particular. The commerce of the place consists chiefly of muslin, extremely fine in texture, and silver embroidery; as well as every other variety of that manufacture, which is here conducted on a much more extensive scale than in any other part of Switzerland. The population of the town is now estimated at ten thousand, constituting about a thirteenth part of that of the canton, which is annually increasing. Of the entire population, the Catholic part is estimated at eighty thousand; that of the reformed at fifty thousand, who inhabit chiefly the capital, the small district of Werdenberg, and predominate in the valleys of Toggenburg and the Rhine. The effects of industry are every where more or less evident; but a great portion of the rural population still groan under the trammels of ignorance and superstition-a yoke more difficult to throw off than that of despotism. Education, however, begins to extend its influence, and to be held in just appreciation. Let us hope, therefore, that the day may soon arrive, when their love of education will rival that of liberty, and when these two inestimable blessings will be found mutually to embrace and consolidate each other. The great council of the canton, consisting of one hundred and fifty members, with the landamman at their head, exercise the sovereign power, and elect from their own body the lesser council of thirteen members, in whom is reposed the administrative and executive authority. The supreme tribunal, at which nine judges preside, is constituted in like manner. The two religious professions administer their ecclesiastical affairs, as well as whatever relates to religious establishments and the business of education, separately. The reformed clergy constitute a synod, which assembles once every year at St. Gall, at which two members of the government are present. With the exception of Sargans, on the Grison frontier, the Catholic clergy have hitherto formed part of the diocese of Constance. Of the monastic establishments which still flourish in the canton, there are four convents, and eleven nunneries, all more or less richly endowed, and possessing temporal as well as spiritual interests in the country. The facilities for education, and the incentives to industry, are happily on the increase, and the prospects of the canton, as applicable to its moral and political condition, prosperous and encouraging. At the tumultuous epoch of the French Revolution, St. Gall, like its neighbours, became the scene of anarchy and misrule. The people could no longer bear the accumulating weight of taxes, court-exactions, and acts of servitude, by which they were excluded from the blessings of freedom, and held in degrading bondage. With every accession of new territory to the abbey, their own rights and privileges were curtailed: they felt that their privations increased in proportion as their monastic rulers prospered. Five of the communes, therefore, speedily seconded by others, laid their grievances before the abbot, and claimed redress for sixty different abuses which had come to light. The Abbot Beda, a man of enlightened mind, and a native of Thurgau, knowing the necessities of the people, would gladly have lessened their burdens; but of all his ecclesiastics, two only seconded him in a purpose so just and laudable. Much intrigue and negotiation on the part of the monks followed. At length, the Prince-Abbot, detecting their artifice, represented to them the imminent danger of fomenting, at such a crisis, the quarrels between rulers and their subjects. Peace was the end, conciliatory measures the only arms to be employed in a question which they were bound by their character to convert to the glory of God, and the good of his people. "But," said he, "if ye be resolved to risk the consequences by openly resisting our subjects, I withdraw from the unholy contest, and throw myself at once into the arms of my people." The result of this was, the concession of extensive privileges, by which the people were empowered to choose their own senate and council of war, to hold general assemblies, to nominate the municipal officers, and to purchase exemption THE ABBOT BEDA. -TOGGENBURG. 11 from their oppressive burthens. Servitude was also abolished, and an act published, by which all ecclesiastics, and others engaged in the public service— but hitherto exempted by virtue of office-were ordered to contribute their portion to the expenses of the state. Blessings were poured on the good Beda from every corner of the jurisdiction; but the monks, although in appearance consenting to these salutary measures, were inwardly incensed at his submission, and continued to lay insidious plans for defeating his object. With this view, they signed a secret act for the defence of their rights against the peoplerights, which had only originated and been perpetuated through a long course of tyranny; and to this, even the guardians of the abbey clandestinely assented, and fomented the opposition against the pious and philanthropic views of the worthy abbot. So difficult is it for those who have once tasted the sweets of power, and the fruits of despotism, to become amenable to the same laws, and members of the same community, with the humble, but more worthy, citizens whose rights they have abused. At length, when the arms of Austria had won some temporary advantage in Swabia, and had crossed the Rhine to prosecute the campaign in Switzerland, the cause of freedom seemed for a time paralysed. St. Gall had now a new abbot, in the person of Pancratius Forster, who, countenanced by a change in the political aspect of the country, began his career by re-establishing on his territory a degree of servitude still more insupportable than the former. He annulled, by the hands of Austrian dragoons, the articles of emancipation previously accorded. He broke open the national archives, and carried off the important documents they contained. But he soon experienced the fatal results of his measures, and felt that power, founded on injustice, is but a fortress built on sand, which the first floods will overthrow. Perceiving that men are never so strong as when they act under a consciousness of right, and contend for their natural privileges as citizens; the abbot was soon convinced that there was but one alternative to which a people, now roused from their lethargy, and actuated by the all-pervading spirit of freedom, could submit; and this was the confirmation of those rights in which they had been so lately installed by his predecessor-the pious and patriotic Beda. On the many interesting subjects to which we should advert in a survey of this territory, the brevity of our plan will not permit us to dilate. But we would recommend all who visit those districts, to make the tour of the Toggenburg, so famous for the war of that name, and so remarkable for the beauty and grandeur of its natural scenery. The ancient counts of Toggenburg were the most "potent signiors" of Switzerland. Their domestic fortress crowned a rock not far from the present convent of Fischingen. It was from a window of this castle that the Count Henry, in a paroxysm of jealousy, precipitated his wife," the beautiful Ida," into the chasm at its base. On the finger of her page he had perceived her wedding-ring, which, having been left at an open lattice, had been carried off by a raven, and dropt at the foot of the rocks, where the servant, unconscious of its value or character, had picked it up, and, by way of security, put it on his finger. Ida, however, made a miraculous escape from the summary and unjust punishment intended for her, by laying hold of some shrubs that overhung the fearful abyss, and held her for a time suspended between life and death. After her rescue, her innocence was fully proved, and acknowledged by all. But incapable of longer cherishing affection for a husband, who, in addition to the violent death intended for herself, had caused the innocent servant to be dragged to death at the tail of a wild horse, (a fact which might have suggested the story of Mazeppa,) she withdrew from worldly admiration; and, ending her clouded pilgrimage in a cell at Fischingen, left her piety as an example to all her sex, and her story as a legacy to some poet of after times. Let us hope that the subject, and its scenery—a virgin theme —may yet attract the notice of some modern troubadour, and the story of the beautiful Ida be clothed with the charms of song. THURGAU AND SCHAFFHAUSEN. The Swabian waters! on whose slumbering breast The Rhætian Alps repose in shadowy rest: The proud and peopled cliffs of Appenzell.—• THE Canton of Thurgau lays claim to none of those sublime and savage features which characterise the cantons of the higher Alps. The wild and the wonderful, the snowy desert, the glaciers, the mountain gorge, the dark ravine, the giddy precipice, the foaming torrent, the Alpine pastures, the châlets and their summer population, are all replaced by fresh combinations of objects in which the beautiful and the picturesque predominate, and where Nature, laying aside her robe of horrors, is radiant with summer fruits, and ripening with SOIL, PRODUCTS, AND MANUFACTUres. 13 harvests. This transition from the storm-girt regions of Appenzell, to the redundant fertility of Thurgau, is one of the most striking that can be met with, the climate and productions of which are as strongly contrasted as those of Spitzbergen and the Bay of Naples. Equally populous, cultivated, and productive, the valley of the Thur forms the granary of German Switzerland. Wheat-fields, vineyards, and orchards, are closely and luxuriantly interspersed -the latter so much so, as to give to the country the appearance of one uninterrupted garden, through whose various and undulating mass of verdure, spires, towers, hamlets, châteaux, and dilapidated forts, glimmer at intervals,— bringing at once the past and present before us, and offering a thousand pleasing anticipations of the future. Frequent along the waters' flowery marge, In shade or sunshine, floated Pleasure's barge; And, heard on Freedom's hills, what heart but owns The hills are all of moderate elevation, rarely exceeding two thousand five hundred feet above Constance; but, enclosing three small lakes well stocked with fish, are at once the reservoir and the source of fertilizing streams. The upper Thurgau, or that portion which borders the lake of Constance from Arbon to Stein, presents a scene of unrivalled fertility-producing, generally, two crops of flax in the year, succeeded by a third of rye, and all from the same field. A forest of apple and pear trees, the finest in Switzerland, and several leagues in extent, bears ample testimony to the qualities of soil and climate by which this district is so eminently favoured. Some of these trees severally yield an annual product of from sixty to a hundred bushels, which, converted to cider, are valued at five or six louis-d'or. Agriculture, within the last twenty years, has made great progress; and, favoured by the Abbey of Kreutzlinghen,—which acts upon the system of rural economy so successfully introduced by M. Fellenberg,-it promises to carry that noble art to a degree of perfection hitherto unknown in Switzerland. The manufactures, with the exception. of the silk mills at Frauenfeld, are the same as those already stated in St. Gall. The linen and cambric of Thurgau, though slightly depreciated since the introduction of cotton, are still in high estimation, and fetch better prices in the market than any yet produced by their neighbours. The principal export is grain, of which a vast quantity |