in 1239, and like every other building in the place, has an air of venerable antiquity. The town is well deserving of a visit.

The city of Fribourg alone contains ten monastic establishments-the whole canton nine monasteries, and seven nunneries; some of which are famous in history, and still attract multitudes of pilgrims.* The College of Fribourg is a vast edifice, and sufficiently known as a theological seminary. Every commune of this canton has an elementary school, and every town, even the smallest, its hospital-that of the capital is on a very large scale. With these ample provisions for the poor and afflicted, the habit of mendicity, once so general in the town, is nearly abolished. In establishments of this kind, however, it must be admitted that the German districts are considerably behind the others. In point of style and situation, the city of Fribourg is one of the most romantic in Europe, and certainly the most striking in Switzerland. The great number of its convents, towers, spires, and churches, rising one above the other, and overhanging the river Sarine, which flows at the bottom of a perpendicular wall of rock-its walls flanked with towers-presents an appearance quite novel to the spectator. The houses enclose numerous gardens, and even vineyards, and the streets are embellished with at least twenty-eight or thirty fountains. The streets are steep, the buildings of an antique and often grotesque appearance, and surmounted by the great tower of the cathedral. The town-house is built where stood in ancient times the palace of the dukes of Zäringhen. The great linden-tree, planted in 1476, in commemoration of the battle of Morat, or according to others, as far back as 1179, by Berchtold IV., is a vegetable prodigy. Several centuries after, it is said, when much decayed, it was accidentally set fire to on a fête-day, when the great quantity of water with which it was then inundated, made it renew its youth, and throw out fresh shoots. But in 1818, a waterspout injured it so materially, that its branches now require to be supported. It is still a great curiosity, and held in high veneration by the inhabitants. The cathedral was founded in 1283the tower of which, three hundred and fifty-six feet, is the highest in Switzerland, and among the objects best deserving of a visit. This church has the finest ring of bells in the Confederacy. At its porch is a picture representing

In 1827, the canton, in a population of sixty-two thousand, contained two hundred and seventy-nine monks, two hundred and eighty-one nuns, and two hundred and forty-seven secular priests, or one ecclesiastic for every hundred and ten of the inhabitants. But the city of Fribourg, with a population of only six thousand four hundred and sixty souls, maintains forty-five seculars, one hundred and forty-one monks, of whom eighty-seven are Jesuits, and one hundred and forty-nine nuns-or one for every eighteen inhabitants-a proportion which, perhaps, is not to be found in any other town of Europe.-See Statist. de la Suisse.