A MONTH
IN
SWITZERLAND

By the same Author,

Demy 8vo. 14s.

EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS AND

OF THE KEDIVÉ.

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The Spectator.

‘We have in this volume a thoughtful, almost exhaustive, treatment of a subject too often handled by mere dilettante writers, who dismiss as unworthy of notice the problems with which they are unable to cope.... We heartily commend Mr. Zincke’s delightful book as a fresh pleasure to the thoughtful reader.’

The Literary Churchman.

‘A more independent and original volume of Egyptian travel than at this time of day we should have thought possible. Mr. Zincke has a quickness of eye, a vigour of judgment, and a raciness of style which place him far above the ordinary run of travellers.... Readers will lose much if they do not make some acquaintance with this truly remarkable volume.’

The Guardian.

‘Each chapter takes some one topic, treats it in sharp piquant style, and generally throws some new light upon it, or makes it reflect some new light upon something else. If these bright and sparkling pages are taken as containing suggestions to be worked out for oneself and accepted or rejected in the light of more mature knowledge, they will be found full of value.’

The Saturday Review.

‘Mr. Zincke speaks like a man of rare powers of perception, with an intense love of nature in her various moods, and an intellectual sympathy broad and deep as the truth itself.’

The Westminster Review.

‘A very pleasant and interesting book.... Mr. Zincke tells his readers exactly such facts as they would wish to know. The style is captivating.’

The Examiner.

‘A series of brilliant and suggestive essays.’

SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND

BY

F. BARHAM ZINCKE

VICAR OF WHERSTEAD

CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN

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Deo Opt. Max.

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LONDON

SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1873

All rights reserved

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.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A MONTH IN SWITZERLAND

CHAPTER I.
TO ZERMATT

What blessings Thy free bounty gives

Let me not cast away;

For God is paid when man receives:

T’ enjoy is to obey.—Pope.

August 26.—We left London at 8.45 P.M., and reached Paris the next morning at 7 A.M. We found the Capua of the modern world looking much as it used to look in the days that preceded the siege and the Commune. The shops were decked, and the streets were peopled, much in the old style. If, as we are told, frivolity, somewhat tinctured with, or, at all events, tolerant of, vice, together with want of solidity and dignity of character, are as conspicuous as of yore in the Parisian, we may reply that if they were there before, they must be there still; for a people, can no more change on a sudden the complexion of their thoughts and feelings than they can the complexion of their faces. These matters are in the grain, and are traditional and hereditary. The severity of taxation France will have to submit to may, when it shall have made itself felt, have some sobering effect, whereas the bribery and corruption of the Imperial régime only acted in the contrary direction. But time is needed for enabling this to become a cause of change; and much may arise, at any moment, in the volcanic soil of France, to disturb its action. All that we can observe at present is, that the people seem still quite unconscious of the causes of their great catastrophe. Their talk, when it refers to late events, is of treason and of revenge; as if they had been betrayed by anything but their own ignorance, arrogance, and corruption; and as if revenge, to be secured, had only to be desired. In such talk, if it indicates what is really thought and felt, there is scant ground for hope.

August 27.—We left Paris this evening at eight o’clock, taking the route of Dijon and Pontarlier. The sun was up when we reached Switzerland at Verrieres. There was no gradation in the scenery: as soon as we were on Swiss ground it became Swiss in character—mountainous and rocky, with irrigated meadows of matchless green in the valley. We were sure that the good people in the châlets below could not be otherwise than satisfied with the price they were getting for their cheese; for its quantity, and perhaps quality, we were equally sure that the greenness of their meadows was a sufficient guarantee. By the wayside we saw women with baskets full of wormwood, for making absinthe which will be drunk in Paris.

We breakfasted at Lausanne, and dined and slept at Vevey. We had thus got to Switzerland, practically, in no time at all, and without any fatigue, for we had been on the way only at night, and both nights we had managed to get sleep enough.

We had come, as it were, on the magical bit of carpet of Eastern imagination; which must have been meant for a foreshadowing of that great magician, the locomotive, suggested by a yearning for the annihilation of long journeys, without roads, and with no conveyance better than a camel: though a friend of mine, whose fancy ranges freely and widely through things in heaven above, and on earth below, tells me he believes that that bit of carpet was a dim reminiscence of a very advanced state of things in an old by-gone world, out of some fragments of the wreck of which the existing order of things has slowly grown.

My last hours in London had been spent in dining at the club, with a friend, who is one of our greatest authorities on sanitary, educational, and social questions; and our talk had been on such subjects. It is well to pass as directly as possible, and without tarrying by the way, from London and Paris, where man, his works, and interests are everything, to Switzerland, where nature is so impressive. The completeness of the contrast heightens the interest felt in each.

Those who give themselves the trouble, and do you the honour, of looking through what you have written, become, in some degree, entitled to know all about the matter. They are in a sort partners in the concern. I will therefore at once communicate to all the members of the firm that I did not go on this little expedition because I felt any of that desire for change by which, in these days, all the world appears to be driven in Jehu-fashion. I have never felt any necessity for this modern nostrum. I do not find that either body or mind wears out because I remain in one place more than twelve months together. I am a great admirer of White of Selborne; and I hope our present Lord Chancellor’s new title will lead many people to ask what Selborne is famous for; which perhaps may be the means of bringing more of us to become acquainted with a book which gives so charming a picture of a most charming mind that it may be read with most soothing delight a score of times in one’s life (one never tires of a good picture); and which teaches for these days the very useful lesson of how much there is to observe, and interest, and to educate a mind, and to give employment to it, for a whole life, within the boundaries of one’s own parish, provided only it be a rural one.

It is true that I have been in every county of England, and in most counties of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and some general acquaintance with his own country—which is undoubtedly the most interesting country in the world—ought to an Englishman, if only for the purpose of subsequent comparison, to be the first acquisition of travel; and also that I have made some long journeys beyond the four seas, having set foot on each of the four continents; but I can hardly tell how on any one occasion it happened that I went. It certainly never was from any wish for change. It was only from taking things as they came. And so it was with this little excursion. It was not in the least my idea, nor was it at all of my planning. My wife wished to spend the winter in a more genial climate than that of East Anglia; and it was thought desirable that her little boy should go to a Swiss school, for, at all events, a part of the year, until he should be old enough for an English public school. And so, having been invited to go, I went. My part of the business, with the single exception of a little episode we shall come to in its place, was to be ready to start and to stop when required, and to eat what was set before me; in short, to take the goods a present providence purveyed. I recollect a weather-beaten blue-jacket once telling me—on the roof of the York mail, so all that may be changed now—that the charm of a sailor’s life was that he had only to do what he was told, and nothing at all to think about. Of this perhaps obsolete nautical kind of happiness, we housekeeping, business-bound landsmen cannot have much; but a month of such travel comes very near it. And if a man really does want change for the body, together with rest for the mind, here he has them both in perfection. What a delightful oasis would many find such a month in their ordinary lives of inadequately discharged, and too inadequately appreciated, responsibility! This little confidence will, perhaps, while we are starting, convey to the reader a sense of the unreserved and friendly terms on which, I hope, we shall travel together. I regret that, from the nature of the case, in these confidences all the reciprocity must be on one side.

August 29.—Left Vevey by an early train for Sierre. The line passes by Montreux, Villeneuve (where it leaves the eastern extremity of the lake of Geneva), Aigle, Bex, St. Maurice, Martigny, and Sion. At Sierre we took the diligence for Visp. This part of the valley of the Rhone is a long delta, which in the lapse of ages has been formed by the débris brought down by the Rhone, and the lateral torrents from the mountains. Much of it is swampy, and full of reeds. Some of this, one cannot but suppose, might be made good serviceable land by cutting channels for the water, and raising the surface of the land with the materials thus gained. Indian corn grows here very luxuriantly. It is a large variety; some of the stems had three cobs. This, the potatoes, and the tobacco—of which, or, at all events, of the smoke of which, we saw much—in thought connected the scene before us with the New World.

Between Sierre and Visp there are a great many large mounds in the valley. The side of these mounds which looks up the valley is always rounded. The face which looks down the valley, is sometimes rocky and precipitous. This difference must be the effect of former glacier action, at a time when the whole valley, down to Geneva, was the bed of a glacier, which planed off and rounded only that side of the mound against which it moved and worked. Above Visp the land is very poor, consisting chiefly of cretaceous detrital matter. This is covered with a pine forest, a great part of which is composed of Scotch fir, the old ones being frequently decorated with tufts of mistletoe.

Geologists are now pretty well agreed that the lake of Geneva itself was excavated by this old glacier. Its power, at all events, was adequate to the task. It was 100 miles long, and near 4,000 feet in thickness at the head of the lake, as can now be seen by the striated markings it left on the overhanging mountains. It acted both as a rasp—its under side being set with teeth, formed of the rocks it had picked up on its way, or which had fallen into it through its crevasses; and also as a scoop, pushing before it all that it could thrust out of its way. And what could not such a tool rasp away and scoop out, at a point where its rasping and scooping were brought into play, as it slid along, thicker than Snowdon is high above the sea, and impelled by the pressure of the 100 miles of descending glacier behind, that then filled the whole broad valley up to and beyond Oberwald? It was wasting away as it approached the site of the modern city, where it must have quite come to an end; for the lake here shoals to nothing; there could, therefore, have, then, been no more rasping and scooping. At the head of the lake, where the glacier-tool was tilted into the position for rasping and scooping vigorously, the water, notwithstanding subsequent detrital depositions, is 900 feet deep.

At Visp my wife and the little boy got on horseback. Another horse was engaged for the baggage. I proceeded on foot. Our destination was Zermatt. We got underway at 2 P.M., and reached St. Niklaus at 5.45; about twelve miles of easy walking. The situation of this place is good, for the valley is here narrow, and the mountains, particularly on the western side, rise abruptly. The inn also is good. I note this from a sense of justice, deepened by a sense of gratitude; because here an effort, rare in Swiss hotels, has been made to exclude stenches from the house; the plan adopted being that of a kind of external Amy Robsart gallery. From Visp to St. Niklaus the road is passable only for horses.

August 30.—My wife and the little boy took a char for Zermatt, which also carried the baggage. I was on foot. The distance is about fourteen or fifteen miles, slightly up hill all the way. The road is good and smooth. I must now begin to mention the conspicuous objects seen by the way. At Randa, in the Bies Glacier, which is that of the Weisshorn, we saw our first ice. This glacier descends so precipitously from the mountains, on the right of the road, that you can hardly understand how its enormous weight is supported. There are, however, on record some instances of its having fallen; and it is also on record that on one of these occasions the blast of wind caused by the fall of such a mass, was so great as to launch the timbers of houses it overthrew to the distance of a mile; but I would not back the truth of the record.

After an early dinner at Zermatt, my wife and myself walked to the foot of the Gorner Glacier, to see the exit from it of the Visp. It issues from a most regularly arched aperture. This is the glacier that descends from the northern and western sides of Monte Rosa, the sides of the Breithorn, and one side of the mighty Matterhorn.

We found the hotels at Zermatt overcrowded. This is a great rendezvous for those who do peaks and passes. In the evening, particularly if it is cold enough for a fire, the social cigar brings many of them together in the smoking-room. Among these, at the time we were there, was the hero of the season. He is a strong, wiry man, full of quiet determination. He was then doing, so ran the talk of the hotel, a mountain a day, and each in a shorter time than it had ever been done in before. To-morrow he is to climb the Matterhorn in continuous ascent from this place, in which fashion I understand no one has yet attempted it.

CHAPTER II.
THE RIFFEL—THE GORNER GRAT—SUNDAY—ZERMATT—SCHWARTZ SEE—MOUNTAINEERING

Not vainly did the early Persian make

His altar the high places, and the peak

Of earth-o’ergazing mountains; and thus take

A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek

The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,

Uprear’d of human hands.—Byron.

August 31.—After breakfast my wife and I walked up to the Riffel Hotel. It is rather more than 3,000 feet above Zermatt. The little man rode. We were two hours and a half in doing it. It would be a stiff bit for beginners. The upper part of the forest, on the mountain-side, consists of Pinus Cembra. This is far from being either a lofty or a spreading tree. The lower branches extend but little beyond the upper ones. There is a good deal of reddish-brown in the bark. In this respect, as well as in the colour of its foliage, and in its form, it contrasts well with the larch and the spruce, though of course not so well with the Scotch fir. I heard that its timber is very lasting. The views, from the forest, of the Gorner glacier, and, when you are beyond the forest, of some of the neighbouring mountains, and of the valley of Zermatt, are good.

After luncheon at the Riffel Hotel, we walked to the summit of the Gorner Grat. Here you have what is said to be the finest Alpine view in Europe. You are standing on a central eminence of rock in, as far as you can see, a surrounding world of ice and snow. On the left is the Cima di Jazi, which you are told commands a good view into Italy. Just before you, as you look across the glacier, which lies in a deep broad ravine at your feet, rise the jagged summits of Monte Rosa with, at this season, much of the black rock showing through their caps and robes of snow. Next the Lyskamm, somewhat in the background; then Castor and Pollux, immaculate snow without protruding rock; next the Breithorn, then the naked gneiss of the Matterhorn, a prince among peaks, too precipitous for snow to rest on in the late summer, looking like a Titanic Lycian tomb, such as you may see in the plates of ‘Fellowes’s Asia Minor,’ placed on the top of a Titanic rectangular shaft of rock, five thousand feet high. Beyond, and completing the circle of the panorama, come the Dent Blanche, the Gabelhorn, the Rothhorn, the Weisshorn, over the valley of Zermatt, the Ober Rothhorn, and the Allaleinhorn, which brings your eye round again to the Cima di Jazi. What a scene! what grandeur for the eye! what forces and masses beneath for the thought! Here is the complement to Johnson’s Charing Cross and the East Anglican turnip-field. Both pleasant sights in their respective classes, but not enough of all that this world has to show.

The little boy in the morning, during our ascent of the Riffel, had not been able, when he dismounted, to take a dozen steps without resting, as it appeared both from having outgrown his strength, and from some difficulty in breathing; but in the afternoon he skipped up to the top of the Gorner Grat, an hour and a half, and ran down again, just as if he had been bred on the mountains. It was difficult to keep him on the path, and from the edges of the precipices. He was at the top some minutes before any of us—we were a large party, for several parties had drawn together in the ascent. I heard a lady exclaim, ‘There is the blue boy again’ (that was the colour of his blouse). ‘He has beaten us all.’ Never was there such a difference before between a morning and an afternoon.

As we descended the Gorner Grat a scud of snow passed by. The antithesis, common in the mountains, of gloom to sunshine, and of cold to warmth, was as complete as it was sudden. In a few minutes it was bright and warm again.

While we were at the hotel two American lads came up with their guides, and, after a rest of ten minutes, started for some pass. They had nothing on but coarse grey woollen pants, shirts of the same without collars, and boots very heavily nailed, or rather spiked. They were not more than seventeen years old, if so much.

The Riffelberg abounds in beautiful flowers; Gentians, Sedums, and Saxifrages reach almost to the top of the Gorner Grat. As might be expected at such a height, none rise, at their best, more than an inch or two above the ground. Gorgeous lilies and lovely roses would be as much out of keeping, as impossible, here. Such objects belong to the sensuous valley.

September 1.—There was a sharp frost this morning, but the sun was bright and warm all day. So warm was it at ten o’clock, that people were glad to sit about on the grass, some preferring the shade of the rocks. It was Sunday, and I was requested to conduct divine service. The reading saloon was prepared for the purpose. I shortened the service by omitting the first lesson, the Te Deum, and the Litany. Before commencing, I announced to the congregation that I should do this, giving as my reason that the room did not belong exclusively to us, and therefore that it was better to act upon our knowledge of this, than to be reminded of it afterwards by those who had withdrawn that we might hold our service. I had been called upon to conduct the service only a few minutes before it commenced, and as I had no memoranda for sermons with me, I took for my text the scene around us, and spoke of the effects such scenes, and the contemplation of nature generally, appear to have on men’s minds. The knowledge men now have of the solar system, and of the sidereal universe, does not prevent the heavens from discoursing to us as eloquently as they did to the Psalmist. Intelligible law is grander and more satisfactory for thought to rest upon than vague impressions of glorious power. So with the great and deep sea also, now that we know something about the place it occupies in the economy of this terrestrial system. It is the same with the everlasting mountains, since we have come to know something about the way in which they were formed and elevated, and how the valleys were cut out. Man is the child of Nature, in whose bosom he is brought up. It is true that there are some who cannot see that it is his duty and his happiness to acquaint himself with nature; but no one who had made any progress in the study of nature, ever thought lightly of what he had attained to. And this is true of the knowledge, not only of the grander objects of nature, such as the starry firmament and the great and deep sea, but equally of the most inconspicuous, and, as they appear to our senses, the most insignificant objects in nature. It is not more true of the eternal mountains than of the particles of moss that hide themselves in the crevices of the rock, or the lichen that stains its face, &c., &c.

In the afternoon we walked back to Zermatt.

Though every effort was being made at Zermatt to prevent people from going up to the Riffel without tickets assuring them of accommodation at the Riffel Hotel, still, so many, in their impatience, set this regulation at defiance, and went up on the chance that they would be allowed six feet by three somewhere, that night after night, as we were told, the authorities were obliged—perhaps it was a necessity which was accepted not unwillingly—to convert the bureau, the salle-à-manger, and the reading-room, into dormitories. At all events, we were turned out of the reading-room before ten o’clock to make way for a pile of mattresses we found at the door, ready to be substituted for the chairs and tables we had been using. To be berthed in this way is far from pleasant; but it is not worse than spending the night in the crowded cabin of a small steamer, or in the hermetically-closed compartment of a railway carriage, with five other promiscuous bodies.

September 2.—Started this morning for the Schwartz See and Hornli. We were all mounted—it was the only time I was during the excursion. In ascending the mountain, when we were above the pine-wood, and so in a place where there was no protection, and where the zig-zags were short and precipitous, both the hind legs of the little boy’s horse slipped off the path. The animal was so old, and worn-out, and dead-beaten with its daily drudgery, that it had appeared to us not to care, hardly to know, whether it was dead or alive. But now it made an effort to recover itself, with the power or disposition for making which we should not, beforehand, have credited it. Perhaps the centre of gravity in the poor brute was never actually outside the path. I was close behind, and saw the slip and scramble. It was an affair of a few seconds, but it made one feel badly for more minutes.

At the Schwartz See, we sent the horses to the foot of the Zmutt glacier, and began the ascent of the Hornli. In about a quarter of an hour we made the discovery that the blue boy was not man enough for the Hornli. I do not know, however, that we should have seen much more if we had gone to the top. We were close to the mighty Matterhorn, of which the Hornli is a buttress, and at our feet was the great Gorner glacier. These were the two great objects, and neither of them would have been seen so well had we been higher up. In returning we went by the way of the Zmutt glacier, a wild scene of Alpine desolation. There is much variety, and much that interests in this excursion; the cultivated valley, the junction of the Findelen and the Zmutt with the Visp, the wooded and then the naked mountain, the two great glaciers, the sedgy, flowery turf above the wood, the little black tarn, the bare rock of the Hornli, and, over all, the shaft of the Matterhorn. On the ridge above the Schwartz See we found a handsome blue pansy. Somewhere else I saw a yellow one of almost equal size.

Our guide, Victor Furrer, speaks English well. He wished to come to England for the seven winter months, thinking that he could take the place of under-gardener or stableman in a gentleman’s house, or that of porter in a London hotel. Swiss education disposes the people to look for openings for advancing themselves in life beyond the narrow limits of their own country, and qualifies them for entering them.

The number of peak-climbers and pass-men assembled at Zermatt had increased during our short absence. Among the latter was an Irish judge, who did the St. Theodule. The law was in great force here, as was also the Church. The gentleman who had attempted the Matterhorn on Saturday, had been driven off by the weather. Though fine down here, it had been windy, wet, and frosty up there; and to such a degree that the face of this Alpine pier, for it is more of that than of a mountain, had become glazed with a film of ice. To-day he again attempted it from this place; and, the weather having been all that could be desired, he had gone, and climbed, and conquered. He found the air so calm on the summit that he had no occasion to protect the match with which he lighted his cigar; and, if he had had a candle, he would have left it lighted for the people at the Riffel to look at through their telescopes.

Notwithstanding the argument which may be founded on the graves (one a cenotaph) of the four Englishmen in the God’s acre of the Catholic church of Zermatt, one cannot but sympathise with the triumph, and applaud the pluck and endurance of our mountaineering countrymen. It must be satisfactory, very satisfactory indeed, for a man to find that he has such undeniable evidence that he is sound in wind and limb, and, too, with a heart and head to match; and that he can go anywhere and do anything, for which these by no means insignificant qualifications are indispensable. Mountaineering, in its motives, to a great extent resembles hunting, and, where there is a difference, the difference is, I think, to its advantage. It is more varied, more continuously exciting, more appreciated by those who do not participate in it, and, which is a great point, more entirely personal, for your horse does not share the credit with you. Shooting and fishing can bear no comparison with it. The pluck, endurance, and manliness it requires are not needed by them. It is also a great merit that it is within the reach of those who have not been born to hunting, fishing, and shooting, and will never have the means of paying for them. All these pursuits have each its own literature; and, as the general public appears to take most interest in that of the mountaineers, there is in this, as far as it goes, reason for supposing that the pursuit itself is of all of them the most rational and stirring.

Alpinism is also a natural and healthy protest in some, whose minds and bodies are young and vigorous, against the dull drawing-room routine of modern luxury; and in others against the equally dull desk-drudgery of semi-intellectual work, to which so many are tied down in this era of great cities. It is for a time a thorough escape from it. It is the best form of athleticism, which has its roots in the same causes; and it is, besides, a great deal which athleticism is not.

To a bystander there is something amusing in the quiet earnestness with which a peak-climber discusses the possibilities of an ascent he is contemplating. I was with two this afternoon who were about to attempt a mountain by a side on which it had not yet been scaled. The difficulty was what had hitherto been regarded as pretty much of a sheer precipice of some hundreds of feet. One of the two, however, had examined it carefully with his glass, and had come to think that there was roughness enough on its face for their purpose. The guides who were present were of the opposite opinion. That it had never been ascended on that side, but might perhaps prove not unascendable, was the attraction.

CHAPTER III.
WALK BACK TO ST. NIKLAUS—AGRICULTURE—LIFE—RELIGION IN THE VALLEY

Whate’er men do, or wish, or fear; their griefs

Distractions, joys.—Juvenal.

September 3.—Left Zermatt at 2 P.M. on foot. Walked briskly, but did not get to St. Niklaus till near 6 o’clock. All the way down hill. In coming up was only a quarter of an hour longer; this I can’t understand. A very warm day. Those who went in chars, as did my wife and the blue boy, appeared to suffer more from the heat than I did who was walking.

In my four hours’ walk, having been so lately over the same ground, I paid attention to the methods and results of cultivation, and endeavoured to make out something of the life of the inhabitants of the valley. As to the former, it appeared that all the cultivated land had been reclaimed by a slow and laborious process. The original condition of mountain valley land is to be more or less covered with rocks and stones, with some soil beneath and between. Sometimes the whole surface is completely covered with rocky débris, which has been brought down, like avalanches, on the occurrence of unusually copious torrent floods, which were, in fact, avalanches of water and of mountain shingle commingled. The first step in the work of reclamation is to get rid of the stones. This is either done by removing them to a distance, or piling them up in heaps, or burying them on the spot. One of these methods will be best in one place, and another in another. All the soil that can be procured—sometimes there is enough of it on the surface, sometimes it has to be mined for in a stratum beneath the upper stratum of fragments of rock—is then levelled. Of this land, thus laboriously made, all that can be irrigated by lateral canals brought from the Visp, or diverted from the mountain torrents, is laid down to pasture. Canals of this kind may often be seen some miles in length. These irrigated pastures are always cut twice, or, where the land is deep and good, three times a-year. The turf is not always composed mainly of different kinds of grass. Sometimes it contains more dandelion than grass, a great abundance of autumn crocus, of a kind of geranium with a purple flower as large as a florin, and of other herbaceous plants. Where there is much dandelion the hay, while making, has a sickly smell, but when fully made its scent is generally good. The reclaimed land, which cannot be irrigated, is used for rye, wheat, barley, and potatoes. A well-to-do family has two or three patches, about a third of an acre each, of this grain land. They will have also two or three cows. The mountain forest, and the mountain pastures are held in common for the equal use and benefit of all the inhabitants of the village.

As to the people themselves, the most prominent facts are that they all work hard, and that their hard work does not give them more than a bare sufficiency for the most necessary wants. I suppose that nowhere else in the civilised world is there so little buying and selling, and so little interchange of commodities, as in a Swiss Alpine valley. The rule is for every family to be self-contained, as far as this is possible, in all things, and to produce for itself everything it can of what it will require in the twelve months. Their cows supply them with milk and cheese; the surplus of the latter being the medium through which they procure from the outside world what they cannot produce for themselves: but that does not come to much. It is interesting to see their sheaves of corn stored away in the galleries beneath the projecting eaves of their houses, and their haricots strung up in the sun to dry. This makes you think how carefully these provisions will be used in the winter and spring. And you see the flax and the hemp, of which they grow a great deal, spread out on the grass, to prepare it for scutching; from which, and from the wool of the small flocks of the neighbourhood, they make at home much of the materials for their clothes. From their apples, of which they grow great quantities, they make a kind of brandy. Their lives are a never-failing discipline, notwithstanding the brandy, of industry, patience, and forethought. In imagination you enter the châlet, and sympathise with the cares, the troubles, the frugality, the modest enjoyments of its inmates. The result of all does not go much beyond daily bread. You hope that the harvest has been good, and that the cows are doing well. The boys you have seen are sturdy little fellows. You hope that the girls will not be goitred, and that the sturdy little fellows will in time make them good husbands. They, you are sure, will make industrious, frugal, uncomplaining wives.

We heard at Zermatt, and our guide told us that what we had heard was true, that the inhabitants of the valley pass some of their time in winter in playing at cards; the stake they play for being each other’s prayers. Those who lose are bound by the rules of the game to go to the village church the following morning, and there pray for the souls of those who win. The priest also is supposed to have an advantage in this practice, as it gives him a larger congregation.

Religion—the reader will decide for himself whether or no what has just been mentioned promotes it—holds a large place in the life of these Alpine valleys. The priest is the great man of the village, and has great power. The influx of travellers has a tendency to lessen this power, for it enriches innkeepers and guides, and so renders them independent. Formerly the village church was the only conspicuous building; the only one that rose above the low level of the châlets. This symbolised the relation of its minister to the inhabitants of the châlets. Now the church is dwarfed in comparison with the contiguous hotel. Changes in the world outside have caused a new power to spring up, and take its place in the scene. Be this, however, as it may, one cannot but see that the services and fêtes of the Church, supply the hard monotonous lives of the people with some ideas and interest. Even the authority the Church claims, while it has a tendency to overpower, has also a tendency to stir their minds a little. The prominence of the material fabric of the church in the village led me to reflect on what would be the result in the minds of the people if it were otherwise. In that case they would probably lose the idea of union with other times, and with the great outside world, and the little elevation of thought and feeling beyond the round of their low daily cares, which that idea brings with it. The Church may to them be an intellectual tyranny, and much that it teaches may be debasing and false, still it appears to have some counterbalancing advantages. Our system may have more of truth and of manliness, but it would, at present, be unintelligible to them, or if intelligible, repulsive. Their system, however, is one which, under the circumstances of the times, cannot last. It is even now on the road to the limbo of things that have had their day. In Catholic countries, as far as the educated classes and the inhabitants of all the large cities are concerned, its power is gone, or still more than that, it is actively disliked. This settles the question. The time will arrive when, as knowledge and light spread, the village people will come round to the way of thinking of the educated classes and of the inhabitants of the cities. In this matter history is repeating itself. At its first establishment Christianity spread from the cities to the pagans, that is to the inhabitants of the villages. And so will it be again, at the rehabilitation of religion in those countries that are now forsaking Romanism. A revised and enlarged organisation of knowledge must be first accepted by those who can think and judge. It is then passed on to those who cannot.

Such valleys as this of Zermatt have hitherto offered no opportunities to any portion of their inhabitants to emerge from a low condition of life. Little that could elevate or embellish life was within their reach. The only property has been land, and that, from the working of inevitable natural causes, has been divided into very small holdings. This has kept every family poor. Railways, which connect them with the world, the influx of travellers, in many places a better harvest than that of their fields, the advance of the rest of the world around them, and the capacity there is in their streams for moving machinery, may be now opening new careers to many. It is unreasonable to regret the advent of such a change, for it has more than a material side; it must bring with it, morally and intellectually, a higher and richer life. It implies expansion of mind, and moral growth—new fields of thought, and of duty.

CHAPTER IV.

I. PEASANT-PROPRIETORSHIP IN THE VALLEY. II. 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 FORWARDS

But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralise the spectacle?—Shakespeare.

This chapter is to be a disquisition, after the manner of the philosophers, at all events, in its length, on peasant-proprietorship as now existing in the valley of Zermatt, or rather of the Visp; and on alternative systems. I do not invite anyone to read it, indeed, I at once announce its contents and its length, for the very purpose of inducing those who have no liking for disquisitions in general, or for disquisitions on such subjects, to skip it, and to proceed to the next chapter, where they will find the continuation of the narrative of our little excursion. My primary object in writing it was to ascertain, through the test of black and white, whether what I had been led to think upon these matters possessed sufficient coherence. I now, with the diffidence one must feel who ventures upon such ground, submit it to the judgment of those who take some interest in questions of this kind.

Bearing in mind that the subject is not a lively one, I will endeavour so to put what I have to say as that not much effort may be required to understand my meaning. From all effort, however, I cannot exempt the reader of the chapter, should it find one; for he will have, as he goes along, to determine for himself whether the facts alleged are the facts of the case, whether any material ones have been overlooked, and whether the inferences are drawn from the facts legitimately. He will not be in a position to allow what is presented to him to pass unquestioned; for he will be, himself, the counsel on the other side, as well as the jury.

I. The figures I am about to use do not pretend to accuracy, or even to any close approximation to accuracy. Some figures, but what figures is of no great consequence, are necessary for the form of the argument, and for rendering it intelligible. If they possessed the most precise accuracy that would not at all strengthen it. Those I employ, I retain merely because they were the symbols with which, in my two walks through the valley, I endeavoured to work out the inquiry.

Suppose, then, that the valley of the Visp contains 4,000 acres of irrigated meadow and of corn and garden ground; and that each family is composed of husband and wife, and of not quite four children. The average here in England is, I believe, four-and-a-half children to a marriage. Marriages, probably, take place at a later period of life in the valley than in this country, and, therefore, the average number of children there will be smaller. Let, then, the grandfathers and grandmothers who may be living, and the unmarried people there may be, bring up the average of each family to six souls.

We will now suppose that the husband will require a pound and a half of bread a day, that will be about nine bushels of wheat a-year; and that the wife and children will require each a pound a day; that will be about thirty bushels more, or thirty-nine bushels in all. From what I saw of the land in the valley I suppose that it will not produce more than twenty-six bushels an acre. Whether its produce be wheat, or rye, or barley, will make no difference to the argument. An acre and a half will then be necessary for the amount of bread-stuff that will be required for each family.

A family, we will take a well-to-do one, will also require three cows. Deducting the time the cows are on the common pasture on the mountains, each cow will require, for the rest of the year, two tons of hay. That may be the produce of one acre of their grassland, for some of it is cut three times a-year, but most of it only twice, the second and third crops being light.

They will not want for their own consumption the whole of the produce of the three cows. A surplus, however, of this produce is necessary, because it is from that that they will have the means for purchasing the shoes, the tools and implements, and whatever else they absolutely need, but cannot produce themselves. The cows will then require three acres.

But we will suppose that by the use of straw, and by other economies in the keep of their cows, they manage to reduce the quantity of hay that would otherwise be consumed. This will set free a little of their land for flax, hemp, haricots, cabbages, potatoes, &c. The three last will go some way towards lessening the quantity of bread-stuff they will require. We may, therefore, set down the breadth of cultivated land needed for the maintenance, according to their way of living, of our family of six souls, at four acres.

The 4,000 acres will thus maintain 1,000 families. This will give our valley a population of 6,000 souls.

Here, perhaps, the rigid economist would stop. It would be enough for him to have ascertained the laws which regulate, under observed circumstances, the production and the distribution of wealth. But as neither the writer nor the readers of these pages are rigid economists, we will, using these facts only as a starting point, proceed to ulterior considerations. The question, indeed, which most interests us is not one of pure economy, but one which, though dependent on economical conditions, is in itself moral and intellectual; and, therefore, we go on to ask what kind of life, what kind of men and women, does this state of things produce?

In such a population, the elements of life are so simple, so uniform, and so much on the surface, that there will be no difficulty in getting at the answers to our questions. There is not a single family that has the leisure needed for mental cultivation, or for any approximation to the embellishments of life. They each have just the amount of land which will enable them, with incessant labour, and much care and forethought, to keep themselves above absolute want. Subdivision might, possibly, in some cases be carried a little further, but things would then only become worse. Towards this there is always a tendency. But, for reasons we shall come to presently, there is no tendency at all in the other direction. Intellectual life, therefore, is impossible in the valley. The conditions requisite for it are completely absent.

With the moral life, however, it is very far from being so. Of moral educators, one of the most efficient is the possession of property; the kind of education it gives being, of course, dependent on the amount and kind of property. For instance: the simplicity and gentility of a large fortune in three per cent. consols educates its possessor. It does not teach him forethought, industry, or self-denial. He may be improvident, idle, self-indulgent, and still his means of living may not be thereby diminished; nor will anything he can do improve them. Nor, furthermore, will the management of his property bring him into such relations with his fellow men, that, at every step and turn, he has to consider their wants and rights, and to balance them against his own. Nor will anything connected with his property teach him the instability of human affairs, for his is just the only human possession that is exempt from all risks and changes. Now the non-teaching of these moral qualities is an education, the outcome of which is likely to be a refined selfishness. An equal fortune derived from commerce, trade, or manufactures, teaches other lessons, almost we may say lessons of the very opposite kind. He, whose position depends on buying and selling, and producing, and on the human agencies he must make use of, on new discoveries, and on a variety of natural occurrences, will estimate life and his fellow men very differently from his neighbour, who has nothing at all to do except receiving, and spending his dividends. We are taking no account of individual character, and of the thousand circumstances and accidents, which may overrule, in any particular case, the natural teaching of either of these two kinds of property: we are only speaking generally; and are taking them as illustrations, with which we are all familiar, of a character-forming power every kind of property possesses.

Looking, then, at the property possessed by these Visp-side families in the same way, we can readily understand the moral effect it will have upon them. It will enforce what it teaches with irresistible power, because it will be acting on every member of the community in precisely the same way, throughout every day of the lives of all of them, generation after generation. Such teaching there is no possibility of withstanding. And what it teaches in this undeniable fashion,—undeniable because the virtues taught are to them the very conditions of existence,—are very far from being small moralities, for they are industry, prudence, patience, frugality, honesty.

Without industry their little plots of land could not support them; not the industry of the Irishman, in the days before the potato-famine, who set his potatoes in the spring, and took them up in the autumn, without finding much to do for the rest of the year; but an industry which must be exercised, sometimes under very adverse circumstances, throughout the whole twelve months. Every square yard of every part of their land represents so much hard labour, for nowhere has land been so hard to win. This fact is always before their eyes, and is in itself always a lesson to them. And this hard-won land, reminding them of the industry of those who were before them, has still, always, to be protected against the ravages of winter storms, and its irrigation kept in order. And every hard-won square yard must be turned to the best account. And all must labour in doing this. Their cows, too, require as much attention as their families. For them they must toil unremittingly in their short summer: they must follow them up into the mountains, and they must collect and store up for them the provender they will need in the long winter. And they must be industrious not only in the field, but equally in the house. They cannot afford to buy, and, therefore, everything, that can be, must be done, and made, at home. They cannot allow any portion of their time, or any capacity their land has for producing anything useful, to run to waste. There can be no fallows, of any kind, here.

With their long winters and scanty means, frugality, prudence, forethought, are all as necessary as industry. These are the indispensable conditions for eking out the consumption of the modest store of necessaries their life-long industry provides. If they were as wasteful, as careless, as improvident as our wages-supported poor, the ibex and chamois might soon return to the valley.

It is these necessity-imposed virtues which save the valley on the one hand from depopulation, and on the other from becoming overpeopled. Our labourers, and artisans, and operatives, who depend on wages, as soon as they have got wages enough to support a wife, marry. The general, almost the universal, rule with them is to marry young. The young men and maidens on Visp-side, not being dependent on wages, but on having a little bit of land, sufficient to support life, do not marry till they have come into possession of this little bit of land. Early marriages, therefore, are not the rule with them. The discipline of life, such as it is in the valley, has taught them—and a very valuable lesson it is—to bide their time.

Another virtue, which comes naturally to them, is honesty. The honesty of the valley appears to an Englishman unaccountable, Arcadian, fabulous. The ripe apples and the ripe plums hang over the road without a fence, for land is too precious for fences, and within reach of the hand of the passer-by; but no hand is reached out to touch them. Why is such forbearance unimaginable here? The reason is that, where only a few possess, the many not having the instincts of property, come to regard the property of the few as, to some extent, fair game for them. It is their only chance—their only hunting-ground. This is a way in which, without sanctioning a law which will act prejudicially to themselves, they can secure their share of the plums and apples nature provides. But, when all have property, each sees that the condition on which his own plums and apples will be respected is that he should himself respect the plums and apples of other people. This idea is at work in everybody’s mind. The children take to the idea, and to the practice of it, as naturally as they did to their mother’s milk. Honesty becomes an element of the general morality. It is in the air, which all must breathe.

Here then is a picture that is most charming. How cruelly hard has Nature been! Look at the cold, heartless mountains. Look upon their ice and storm-engendering heights. See how the little valley below lies at their mercy. Consider how, year by year, they fight against its being extorted from their dominion. Yet the feeble community in the valley, by their stout hearts and virtuous lives, continue to make it smile on the frowning mountains. How pleasing to the eye and to the thought, is the sight! And what enhances the charm it possesses is the sense of its thorough naturalness. There is nothing artificial about it; and so there is nothing that can to the people themselves suggest discontent. Their condition, in every particular, is the direct result of the unobstructed working of natural causes, such as they exist in man himself, and in environing circumstances. Whatever may be its drawbacks, or insufficiencies, they can in no way be traced to human legislation. How unwilling are we to contrast with this charming scene—but this is just what we have to do—the destitution, the squalor, and the vice, not of our great cities only, but even of our Visp-sides.

But, first, we will endeavour, by the light of the ideas we outside people have on these subjects, to complete our estimate of the worth of the state of things we are contemplating; of this oasis, the sight of which is so refreshing to those whose lot it is to be familiar with, and to dwell in, the hard wilderness of the world.

Its virtues are, doubtless, very pleasing to contemplate; but they are not of quite the highest order. The industry before us is very honourable. The mind dwells on the sight of it with satisfaction. But, as it only issues in the barest subsistence, the observation of this somewhat clouds our satisfaction. There are, too, higher forms of industry of which nothing can be known here—the industry of those who live laborious days, and scorn delights, from the desire to improve man’s estate, to extort the secrets of nature for his benefit, to clear away obstacles which are hindering men from seeing the truth, to add to the intellectual wealth of the race, to smoothe the path of virtue, and make virtue itself appear more attractive. Such industry is more honourable, and more blessed both to him who labours and to those who participate in the fruits of his labour. And such prudence, frugality, and forethought as are practised in the valley are very honourable, and the mind dwells on the sight of them, too, with satisfaction. But he who belongs to the outside world will here again be disposed to repeat the observation just made. It is true that that man’s understanding and heart must be out of harmony with the conditions of this life, and therefore repulsive to us, who does not gather up the fragments that nothing be lost, but when this is done only for self, and those who are to us as ourselves, though so done unavoidably through the necessity of the case, it is somewhat chilling and hardening. And it is not satisfactory that so much thought and care should be expended only upon the best use of the means of life—those means, too, being sadly restricted; for a higher application of these virtues would be to the best use of life itself. And so, again, with respect to their honesty. This is a virtue that is as rare as honourable; and the mind dwells on the sight of it with proportionate satisfaction. But its application to plums and apples is only its beginning. It has far loftier and more arduous, and more highly rewarded forms. It may be acted on under difficulties, and applied to matters, not dreamt of in the valley. It may rise into the form of social and political justice, in which form it prompts a man to consider the rights of others, especially of the most helpless and depressed, and even of the vicious, as well as his own; and not to use his own advantages and power in such a way as to hurt or hinder them: but, rather, to consider that it is due to their unhappy circumstances and weakness, that he should so use his power, and good fortune, as to contribute to the redress of the evils of their ill fortune.

Attractive, then, as is the contemplation of the moral life of the inhabitants of the valley, it is not in every respect satisfactory. A higher level may be attained. After all, it is the moral life rather of an ant-hill, or of a bee-hive, than of this rich and complex world to which we belong. And even if it were somewhat more elevated than it is, still there would remain some who would be unable to accept it, as worthy of being retained without prospect of change or improvement; and their reason would be, that man does not live by, or for, morality only. The worthy exercise of the intellectual powers is necessary for their idea of the complete man; and here everything of this kind is found to be sorely deficient. On the whole, then, in respect of each of the three ingredients of human well-being, a thoroughly equipped life, intellectual activity, and the highest form of virtue, we feel that something better,—with respect, indeed, to the two first something very much better,—is attainable, than what exists in the charming oasis before us.

II. I now invite the reader to proceed with me to the consideration of how different economical conditions, such as our experience enables us to imagine, would modify the state of things we have been contemplating. For instance, suppose Visp-side were in Scotland or England, then its 4,000 acres might, and it is not unlikely that they would, be only a part of the estate of some great landlord. Let us endeavour to make out the effects this would have on its inhabitants.

The most obvious result would be that the population would be diminished by more than a half. At present the produce of the valley, with no very considerable deductions, is consumed in the valley. What is produced is what is required for supplying its large population with the first wants of life. But this will no longer be the case. The land will be let. We will suppose that this change has been completely effected; and that its irrigated meadows, with the contiguous little plots of corn-land, have been formed into farms, and that all is now treated in the way those who rent them find it pays best to manage them. We will suppose they have to pay a rent of 30s. an acre. The rent of the valley will then be 6,000l. a-year. How will this sum be made up? Cheese, of course, will be the main means. The young bullocks and the old cows will come next. We will take little credit for corn or potatoes, because it is evident that not nearly so much of them will be grown as was done under the old system; for much of the mountain corn-land will not pay now for cultivation with hired labour.

The economist, pure and simple, may say that this is all right. The course of events must be submitted to. Whatever they dictate is best; and best as it is. Interference with natural laws is always bad. The cheese and the cattle will sell for as much as they are worth. The sovereigns they will fetch are worth as much as the produce. There will be no diminution of wealth. But, however, it has to be proved that the new system is unavoidable in the sense of being either a natural step in the unobstructed course of human affairs, or, as some would tell us, the natural consummation of their long course, now at last happily effected. Perhaps it may be possible to show that there has been serious interference with their natural evolution; so serious as greatly to affect their character. And, if so, then the question of whether or no there has been any loss of value does not arise, for the antecedent question may render its discussion unnecessary. Be, however, these matters as they may, they do not cover all the ground we are desirous of investigating. We are thinking not of exchangeable wealth only, but also of men and women; and they, perhaps, may be regarded as wealth in its highest form; a kind of wealth, in which, if the men and women are not corrupt or counterfeit, but good and true, all may to some extent participate, and be the better for.

Under the system we are now considering, it jars against a sense of something or other in the minds of many, to see so much of the results of the labour of the people of the valley passing away from them, never to return in any form or degree. As far as they are concerned it is a tribute they are paying to the man who owns the land of the valley. And whether it be, year by year, paid to him, or whether all this cheese and all these cattle be every year on a stated day collected and burnt at the mouth of the valley; or the price, for which they may have been sold, thrown into the mid-ocean, would make no difference to them. They will get no advantage from it at all, for it is evident that a man who has an income of at least 6,000l. a-year will never live in the Valley of the Visp. He will, perhaps, have his mansion on the bank of the Lake of Geneva; or perhaps at Paris: at all events, it will be somewhere at a distance. The case of so many bales of calico being sent out of Manchester, to all parts of the world, is not similar. They are sent out for the very purpose of coming back again in the form of what will not only support those who produce them, but will also, if trade be good, increase the fund that supports the trade, that is to say, will increase the number of those who in various ways are supported by the trade: hence the growth of Manchester. Nor is it the same thing as so many quarters of corn being sent from America to this country, for in that case also the price of the corn returns to the hands of those who grew it. Their corn-fields have produced for them, only in a roundabout fashion, a golden harvest; and they have, themselves, the consumption of this harvest, precisely in the same way as the now existing Visp-side population have the direct consumption of the produce of their little plots of land. Some, of course, of the price of the cheese and cattle sent away will enable the farmers to live and to pay their labourers; but none of the 6,000l. a-year will come back in any form.

But the point now actually before us is the effect this change will produce on the amount of population. In order that the land might be let profitably, it was necessary to clear it of its old proprietors, for they could pay no rent at all. Their little estates were barely sufficient, with the most unremitting labour, and the most careful frugality, to support life. The valley has now been formed into cheese-farms; and we will suppose that for keeping up the irrigation, cutting the grass, tending the cows in summer on the mountains, and during the winter doing everything for them, and for cultivating whatever amount of land is still cropped with corn and potatoes, five men are wanted for a hundred acres. This will give for the 4,000 acres 200 men. Let each man, as before, represent a family of six souls. Here, for the labourers and their families, will be a population of 1,200. We will also suppose that, under the circumstances of the valley, the average size of the farms is not more than fifty acres. This will give eighty farmers. If their households average eight souls, we have 640 more. These, and the labourers, will not, as was formerly done, under the old order of things, by every family, produce themselves pretty nearly all that is necessary for their households. It will not be so, because the farmers, who must also attend to their farms, will require many things that none required before; and because the labourers, having to give all their time and strength for wages, will be obliged to buy almost all that they will require. This will necessitate the introduction into the valley of a considerable number of tradesmen. We will suppose a hamlet every five miles, in which, besides farmers and labourers, will reside eight tradesmen and petty shopkeepers. That is five hamlets, and forty tradesmen and shopkeepers. These, with six to a family, will add 240 to the population. These different contributories, then, will raise the total to 2,080. As the distances will remain what they were, and as there will be more stir and ambition among a population of farmers and shopkeepers, than there was formerly among the peasant proprietors, we will take the number of school-teachers as much the same under either system. The reduction of the population to one-third of its former amount will somewhat reduce the number of priests; but as thought will now be more active, and, therefore, more varied, this reduction will be counterbalanced by an increase in the number of prophets.

The next step in our inquiry is, how will this revolution affect the character of the population of the valley? We have seen that under the old system their whole character was the direct result of the fact that everyone was either the actual, or the prospective, possessor of a small plot of land, just enough to sustain the life of a family. That was the root out of which their lives grew; and their industry, frugality, forethought, patience, and honesty were the fruits such lives as theirs produced. That root is now dead. The conditions of life are different; and with different conditions have come corresponding differences of character. For instance, we all know that those who labour primarily for others, that others may make the profit that will accrue from their labour, are not so industrious as those who labour entirely for themselves. Nor will they have the same forethought, because their dependence is on wages, and wages require no forethought. Formerly forethought was a condition of existence. They are also now in a school which is a bad one for frugality and patience, and which is very far from being a good one for honesty. These, however, are still the main constituents of morality, for in them there can be no change, because morality is the regulative order of the family and of society: and now, with respect to all of these points, among the mass of the population, there is, necessarily a deterioration. Nor is petty trade, at least so says the experience of mankind, favourable to morality. As to those who hire the land, we will suppose that the more varied relations, than any which existed under the old system, into which they have been brought with their neighbours, and with the world outside the valley, have in some cases had an elevating and improving effect. The moral influences, however, of occupations of this kind are far from being universally good, because those who live by the labour of others, will in many cases be of opinion, that their own interests are antagonistic to the interests of those they employ in such a sense, that it is to their advantage to pay low wages, which means to lessen the comforts, and even the supply of necessaries, to those by whose labour they live. This may be an unavoidable incident of the relation in which the two stand towards each other, but it is not conducive to the result we are now wishing to find.

The intellectual gains and losses are harder to estimate. As to the labourers, one cannot believe that a body of men that has been lowered morally has been raised intellectually. Among the tradesmen class there will be some who will have more favourable opportunities for rising into a higher intellectual life than any had among the old peasant-proprietors. And among the small occupiers of land, for the farms only average fifty acres, these chances will, perhaps, be still greater. But all this will not come to much. The great question here is about the one family, for whose benefit mainly, almost, indeed, exclusively, the whole of the change has been brought about. This family now stands for 4,000 of the old inhabitants of the valley. One of the greatest of all possible revolutions has been carried out in its favour, for it is a revolution that has swept away the greater part of the population, and completely altered the material, moral, and intellectual life of all that remained. We will, however, suppose that they are everything that can be expected of a family so favourably circumstanced. That their morality is pure and elevated. That, intellectually, they are refined and cultivated. That they promote art. That science is at times their debtor. That among its members have been men who have advanced the thought of their day, and have made additions to the common fund of intellectual wealth; and others who have done their country good service in peace and in war.

When I say that this family stands in the place of the 4,000 who have disappeared from the valley, I limit the observation to the valley, for I do not mean that the population of the world has been diminished to that extent to make space for them, because the cheese and cattle sent out of the valley for their 6,000l. a-year, will contribute to the support elsewhere of a great many people who must work, and so live, in order that they may be able to purchase them.

But to return; those who were not satisfied with the original Arcadian state of things, we may be sure will not be satisfied with that which we are now imagining has taken its place. For nothing will satisfy them, if there must be a change, except some such condition of things as will work as favourably both for morality, and for intellect, as that did for morality alone; and which will, at the same time, provide, generally, a better supplied material life than that did.

We have now endeavoured, first, to analyze the land-system of the valley, such as it presents itself to the eye of a contemplative pedestrian; and which may be regarded as the natural working out of proprietorship in land, when it is the sole means of supporting life. We then proceeded to compare with this a system we wot of, carried out to its full-blown development. This second system is what people refer to when they talk of English landlordism. These two forms, however, of the distribution and tenure of land are very far from exhausting all that have existed, and that do and that might exist. Distribution and tenure are capable of assuming many other forms; and some of these must be considered before we can hope to arrive at anything like a right and serviceable understanding of the matter.

III. The distinguishing feature of the economical conditions of the present day, and of other conditions as far as they depend on those that are economical, is the existence of capital in the forms and proportions it has now assumed. This has modified, and is modifying, the life of all civilised communities. It is this that has built our great cities, that is peopling the new world, that has liberated the serfs of the Russian Empire. It leavens all we do, or say, or think. We are what we are, because of it. The tenure and distribution of land, next to capital itself, the most generally used and diffused of all property, originally the only, and till recently the chief, property, cannot escape the influence of this all-pervading and omnipotent agent of change, which everywhere cuts a channel for itself, and finds the means for rising, sooner or later, to its own level. In some places it has affected land in a fashion more or less in accordance with its natural action; in other places in a fashion which has resulted more or less from artificial restrictions: but in some fashion or other it affects it everywhere; as it does all man’s belongings, and the whole tenor and complexion of human life.

Land, then, was the sole primeval means of supporting life. Over large areas of the earth’s surface it is so still. It was so in Homeric Greece—at that time the most advanced part of Europe—though we can trace in its then condition a certain indefinite nebulous capacity for the development of capital, the higher means of supporting life; and which capacity afterwards assumed its true form and action among the Ionians and other Asiatic Greeks, but above all at Athens: which accounts for the differences between it and Sparta: for it was the existence and employment of capital which made it the nurse and the holy city of intellect; while it was the contempt and the legislative suppression of capital which kept the Lacedæmonians, except so far as they were affected by the general influences of Greek thought, in the condition of a clan of splendid savages. And what obtained all but absolutely in Homeric Greece, obtained at that time, as far as we know, quite absolutely over all the rest of Europe. In the early ages of Roman history, Rome was a city of landowners; that is, of landowners living a city life. To understand this fact is to understand its early, and much of its subsequent history. It was so, also, with the neighbouring cities, in the conquest and absorption of which the first centuries of its historic existence were spent: they were cities of landowners. As we walk about the streets of disinterred Pompeii, we see that in this pleasure-city, even down to the late date of its catastrophe, it was very much so, although the capital of the plundered world had, at that time, for several generations, been flowing, through many channels, into Italy. That specimen city, as we may call it, of imperial Italy, appears to have been laid up in its envelope of ashes, preserved like an anatomical preparation, for the very purpose of enabling us to understand this luciferous fact.

I need not go on tracing out the subsequent history of land and capital, which would lead, again, to a comparison of the splendid savagery of feudal landowners with the revival of culture in the capital-supported trading communities of the Dark Ages; and their interaction upon each other: but will pass at once to ourselves. It is very possible now, at all events it is conceivable under the present state of things, that in a large English city—it is more or less so with almost all our cities—there may not be a single owner of agricultural land in its whole population: for I now, as I do throughout this chapter, distinguish land held for agricultural purposes from that which is held merely for residential, or commercial purposes. Here, then, is a difference so great that it takes much time and thought to comprehend its extent, its completeness, and its consequences. It belongs to a totally different stage of economical, and of social development; as complete as the difference between a caterpillar and a butterfly. The solid strength, the slow movements, the monotonous existence of the former represent the era of land. The nimbleness (capital is of no country), the beauty, the variety of life, but withal the want of solidity of the latter represent the era of capital. It is the wise combination, and harmonious interaction, of the two, which would, and which are destined to, cancel the disadvantages, and secure the advantages of each.

The revolution, that has been effected, is mighty and all-pervading. But because it has not been carried out by invading hosts, ravaged provinces, blazing cities, and bloody battle-fields, it is difficult to bring home to the general understanding that there has been any revolution at all. At its commencement it found those who owned the land of the country, not merely the most powerful order in the state, but quite supreme. It gradually introduced another order of men, those who own capital; and has ended by making them at length the most powerful; and so much so that now, whenever they choose to assert their power, they are supreme. Of course there ought not to be any antagonism between the two; but as there is unfortunately, and quite unnecessarily, an artificially created antagonism, there must be collisions and conflicts; in which, however, the supremacy must always eventually rest with the strongest.

The progress of this revolution ought to be seen a little in detail. Not an acre can be added to the land of the country, but to the capital of the country, already several times as much in value as the whole of the land, and supporting a greater number of lives, there is added a sum of two millions and a half of pounds sterling every Saturday night. We will note a few of the steps in the growth of capital. The year 1550 is very far from the date of the recognised appearance of capital in this country: it was even observed that in the previous century there had been an unexampled extension of commerce; but there are good reasons for supposing that the whole of the accumulated capital of the country at that time was less than one year’s purchase of the land. The land, at all events, was worth a great many times as much as all the capital amounted to.

In 1690 the purchase of an estate, of the value of 100,000l., was the wonder of the day.

In the next fifty years bankers were the chief, or only, large purchasers.

In the following half-century the Indians came home, and were added to the class.

Then, in the last half of the last century, came the manufacturers.

And now the most prominent capitalists, who become large purchasers of land, are the coal-owners, and the owners of iron-works, who, however, are accompanied by a cloud of contractors, engineers, merchants, brewers, Stock Exchange speculators, Australians, and even tradesmen, among whom bankers and manufacturers still hold their ground. Of course all of these classes who might, do not, become purchasers of agricultural estates; but those who do, show us in what direction we are to look for the great money-lords of the day. And if they are so many—there probably are at this time in Newcastle alone, in consequence, just now, of the prosperity of the iron and coal trades, five and twenty houses making, each, its 100,000l. a-year, how many must be the rank and file of the army of capital. The ratio then of capital to land has been completely inverted. At this moment there is disposable capital enough in the country to buy, at its present enhanced price, all the land of the country, three times over. And this stock of capital goes on increasing at the rate of 150,000,000l. a-year.

In the political order, we are indebted to capital for Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, and for their policy; and we may suppose that the policy which capital may dictate will, henceforth, be the policy of every Government that will administer the affairs of this country. The land and the proletariat will never combine for the purpose of attempting to make it otherwise: for it will never be their interest to do so. Capital is both aristocratic and democratic in the best sense of each of these words. It is the cement, and the mainspring of modern societies, and, also, the ladder within them, without which there would be no rising from low to high positions.

And now let us go back to Visp-side, bearing in mind the ideas we have been working out. We will, then, suppose that by trade, and commerce, and manufactures, which are both the children and the parents of capital, other means for supporting life have become abundant in the valley. It is easy to make out what will be the effect of this on the dimensions of the, at present, diminutive properties of its one thousand families. Land will present itself to the minds of all as what it has really become; that is to say, as only one means among many for the support of life: the many others being the various forms in which capital works. The present subdivision, therefore, of the land will no longer be regarded as an obvious and undeniable necessity. It has, indeed, become only a secondary, and inferior means for supporting life. Those engaged in trade and commerce, it will be manifest, are many of them living much better lives than the petty proprietors. The old ideas and practices, then, with respect to land will melt away, and be utterly dissolved. The necessity for maintaining them has ceased; and they will cease to be maintained.

At the same time those who have acquired capital by trade, and commerce, and manufactures, will be desirous of investing some of it, perhaps a surplus their business may not require, in land, which must always continue to be the safest, and in some other respects the most desirable form of property. And many of those who have come to wish to retire from the labours and anxieties of business, will have the same desire. So, too, will some who are disposed to prefer agriculture to other kinds of industry; and who are, therefore, desirous of becoming possessed of sufficient land for their purpose, that they may apply to it their capital and intelligence, using it as the raw material of the manufacture towards which they are most attracted. Some will merely want a pleasant situation for a home for their families; some a little land around such a home to give them a little pleasant occupation. There will, we will suppose, be no artificial, as there are no natural, obstacles to all of these people buying what they have the means for buying, and the wish to buy; and using what they buy as they please. The properties thus formed will, many of them, be large, in proportion to the amount of surplus capital many will come to possess. But what will be remarkable, in this respect, will be, while the number of landed properties will be very considerable, the variety of their dimensions, which will be proportionate to the endlessly varying means of the multitudes, who in an era of capital will be desirous of investing in land, and the variety of uses to which they will be put in accordance with the varying wants and tastes of their owners.

And in these properties, whether great, or small, there will be incessantly at work two directly opposite tendencies. One in the direction of enlargement by inheritance, by marriage, and by larger increases of surplus capital, and of capital retiring from business. The other in the direction of subdivision, through the necessities, or the wishes, of their holders. These necessities may have arisen from the vicissitudes of business, the occurrences of life, and the extravagances and vices of their holders from time to time. Or the descendant of a purchaser may wish to capitalise his land, and take the capital back to business; or to place it in some investment more profitable than land. But, at all events, there will be no escaping from the natural, ever-felt, imperious obligation proprietors of land, like all other men, will be under, of providing for their widows and children. This will keep every estate in the condition of liability to subdivision; and must, at intervals, subdivide it. All these may be regarded as natural conditions. They are self-acting, and never-failing; and that they should lead to their natural issue, that is to the subdivision of landed estates, is in accordance with good instincts, in no way demoralising, and in every way healthy. Their free action exactly accommodates things to the requirements both of individuals and of the times.

What we are now contemplating is the state of things which will be brought about when the natural action of capital, and the natural action of landed property, have been left to take their own unimpeded course in the valley: for it is to the actual and the possible conditions of Continental Visp-sides, viewed in connection with the actual and the possible conditions of Continental cities, rather than to the broad acres and busy cities of wealthy England, that what I am now saying belongs, notwithstanding the appearance, which is unavoidable, of a constant reference to ourselves. Their case is not quite identical with ours, either in their existing conditions, or their future possibilities, as will be seen in due time and place, when we come to the distinct, and separate, consideration of our own case. Surplus capital, then, and capital withdrawn from business, will always be seeking investment: and as the land of a country is the natural reservoir for a large proportion of all such capital; and as every acre of land is, on our supposition, saleable, as much so as a sack of wheat, or a horse, though at the moment the owner may not be tempted by the price that would be offered for it; and as much of the land everywhere is always actually in the market, and on sale; the habit of looking to land as the safest both of temporary and of final investments, will become pretty general amongst all classes of people engaged in business. And amongst the holders of land, those who may wish to woo fortune by going into business, and to increase their incomes by investing the price of their land in some good security, will have nothing to withhold them from disposing of it. Estates, that are now in process of formation, will inevitably, when children have to be provided for, or upon the occurrence of any of those other causes we have already referred to, sooner or later enter upon the reverse process of subdivision. The great points to be kept in mind are that every acre, though it may not be actually in the market, is yet, at the will of its owner, marketable; and that, whatever may be the will of its present holder, must, sooner or later, come on the market; and that capital, availing itself of these facilities, naturally takes the direction of the land—in the long run, and to the majority of mankind, the most desirable of all investments; and that this maintains at a high figure the number of proprietors, that class which it is for the interest of the country should be as large as possible: it is obvious that this class will be large, in the era of capital, in every country where the land is within the reach of every man who has capital, exactly in proportion to the amount of capital he is desirous of investing in it.

This state of things appears to have some advantages. These may be summed up in the general remark that it is in complete conformity with the wants and conditions of an era of capital, such as that in which we live. Let us, however, endeavour to resolve this general remark into its constituent elements. As land is the most attractive of human possessions, the one possession which gives a man a place of his own to stand on in this world, it ought naturally to attract to itself much of the surplus capital of the day, and of capital that is being withdrawn from business. In the state of things, we have been just considering, there is no hindrance to the operation of this tendency. This flow of capital towards the land will make it far more productive than it ever has been under any other system. For capital is nothing in the world but bottled-up labour, reconvertible, at the will of the holder, into actual labour, and the implements and materials and products of labour; and this system secures the advantage that the proprietors shall generally be men who have much capital in proportion to their land; and much of this capital will, of course, be applied to it. More land will be reclaimed, more rocks blasted and buried; irrigating canals and cultivation will be carried higher up the sides of the mountains; and more costly means of cultivation applied than are possible under either the peasant-proprietor system, or the large estate system. And this may be a state of things which will not dissatisfy the economist.

It is a state of things which the modern statesman, also, ought to regard with approval; because the possession of land has always, everywhere, been the conservative element in human societies; and the wide diffusion of the proprietorship of land is the only effectual means by which the statesman of the present day can hope to balance, and neutralise, the disturbing action of the large aggregations of population capital has called into being in the great commercial, and manufacturing cities of this era of capital. It ought to be a pleasing, and reassuring sight to him to behold streams of capital and of proprietors constantly flowing off from them towards the land: for in these streams he knows that power is being drawn off from those terrible centres of possible disturbance, which cause him so much anxiety; and that what is thus drawn off from them is being added to the conservative elements of society. So that if the order of society, or any valuable, but, at the moment, misunderstood, institution—misunderstood because things are in an unnatural state—should have to sustain a shock, there would be less power on the side of those who might originate it, and more on the side of those who would have to bear the brunt of it—a state of things which would, probably, prevent the shock from ever occurring. Whereas to array on one side the land of a country held by a handful of proprietors against on the other side numbers and capital, is both to invite the shock, and at the same time to forbid the existence of the natural means for resisting it.

Many great cities are terrible centres of possible disturbance, just because there are artificial barriers which keep asunder the land and its inhabitants on one side, and the cities with their capital and population on the other side. If things were so that streams of those who had had the energy and intelligence requisite for success, and had succeeded, were constantly flowing off from the cities to the land; and back-currents of those, who were desirous of seeking fortune, flowing into the towns from the country; and this is what ought to be the state of things in an era of capital; there would be less opposition of interests and sentiments between the town and the country: they would together form more of an homogeneous system. If the town populations could be brought into some kind of connection with the land, they would then, so far, have given hostages, a material guarantee, to social peace, and order.

Neither will they be dissatisfied who are desirous of seeing property so distributed as to favour as much as possible the moral and intellectual condition of the community. Property will everywhere be diffused; and never being encumbered more than very temporarily, that is never beyond the life of the encumbered holder, for on our supposition it will always pass from hand to hand perfectly unencumbered in every way, its numerous holders in every locality will be in a position to do, and to support, whatever need be done, and supported. Take the instance of the support of religion. It would be mischievous under the previously considered system to disestablish a national Church, because as all the surplus produce of the valley, in the form of a rent of 6,000l. a-year, is sent out of the valley, there is nothing left in the hands of the population, such as we imagined it had become, to support religion, except in the humblest, that is in a thoroughly unworthy, form. And here we cannot but think about ourselves; and our doing so will contribute somewhat towards bringing us to a better understanding of this particular point. As things now are in this country the portion of the rent which is retained in every parish for the maintenance of religion is in multitudes of cases the only part of the rent that is retained, and spent, on the spot, among those whose labour produces it. No one will deny that this is in many ways an advantage to them. To instance one advantage, it is often the cause of the existence of needed institutions, as was lately seen most conspicuously in the part the clergy took in the establishment and maintenance of schools, which was an undeniable benefit to their poor neighbours, and to the country, though at the same time something besides and beyond what they were bound to do for the maintenance of the knowledge and of the services of religion. In many places, too, it is the only part of the rent which supports in the locality a man of education and refinement; a social and political advantage which cannot be denied, or overlooked. And this appropriation of a small portion of the rent has largely benefited literature, and to some extent science. It also gives us a large number of families, who far outnumber those supported by the great bulk of the rent of the country, and are in a very favourable position for bestowing on their sons the best attainable education, carefully supervised. To them we owe multitudes of those who are at all times doing the country, at home and abroad, good service. We may, at the present moment, take as instances the Lord Chancellor and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, both of whom were brought up in rural parsonages. Surely it would be a local and a national benefit if more of the rent of the land were somewhat similarly conditioned. And perhaps the greater part of it would be under the system we are now considering. And in addition to this much other property in the form of capital, belonging to such owners of the land, would be brought into each locality, some of which would be sunk in the land, and some retained in securities paying interest and dividends, which would be spent on the spot. Under such a state of things there would be abundance of local means for the voluntary support of all needed institutions, and of religion among the rest; and a national establishment would then cease to be the necessity it is now. At all events, should the national provision for the maintenance of religion, which is incidentally a provision, and as things now are very usefully so, for spending a small part of the rent of each parish, often a very small part indeed, in the parish itself, be cancelled, the aspect of things in many places, and the consequences, would be such as to bring many, who are pretty well satisfied with things as they are without thinking why, to join in the cry for free trade in land.

IV. We have been considering three conditions under which the land of the valley may be held; first, that of a thoroughly carried-out system of peasant-proprietorship, which is the natural consummation of things when land is the only means of supporting life, or so nearly the only means that other means disturb its action so little that they need not be considered; and which is the cause of its being divided down to the lowest point at which it is capable of supporting life: we then passed to the opposite extreme, to which the name of landlordism has been given; and we came at last to that which would result, and in places has more or less resulted, from the free interaction of land and capital, in this era of capital. We still have to consider how it has been brought about that, in this era of capital, the free interaction of the two, in this country hardly exists at all; what it is that here hinders its existence; and so gives rise to the two abnormal, but closely connected, phenomena, that land is held only in very large aggregations, and that capital is driven away from the proprietorship of land, except in these large aggregations, to seek imaginary investment at home in never-ending bubble schemes, the manufacture of which is as much a trade as that of calico, or sent abroad to be sunk in impossible Honduras railways, the shares of non-existent Californian mines, and the bonds of hardly more existent states.

This, as it is an unnatural state of things, can have been brought about only by the disturbing action of law. What, then, we have to consider now is, how law has stepped in, and hindered the existence of the state of things which the circumstances of the times demand, and which, therefore, would be their natural and normal condition; and, as it seems, would be fraught with so many and such great advantages to individuals and to the country. The general sense of uneasiness, these questions have given rise to throughout society, indicate that in this matter there is something constitutionally wrong.

When I was in the United States in 1867-1868, I was frequently asked how the people of England could tolerate a system—the questioner always supposed that such a result could only be brought about by law—that gave the land of the country to a handful of the population? I always replied ‘that it was a natural consequence of our great wealth. A banker, an Australian, a contractor, a merchant or manufacturer, a coal or iron owner, made his million of money, and as he could live very well on 25,000l. a-year, he sunk it in land for the sake of the security the land offered, and because, moreover, its possession gave certain social and political advantages. That it was the competition of these millionaires, who were willing to pay for something beyond the productive powers of the land, that kept small purchasers out of the market, and also induced small holders to sell.’ I gave this answer because I wished to avoid a long explanation, involving probably a great deal of argument; and I had not crossed the Atlantic to give, but to receive, information.

I knew at the time that my answer was only a partial one; that it omitted some very important elements of the question; and, therefore, was worth very little, except for the purpose in view at the moment.

For instance; it rested on the assumption that the interest of money is now so high in this country that under no circumstances—I admit that it is so under existing circumstances—would people hold small amounts of land, say a thousand acres, because they could get a better income by selling the land, and investing the proceeds otherwise; and that none can afford to buy land, except those who can afford to buy so much that the moderate interest of the purchase will still in its amount be sufficient for all their wants. It is acknowledged that at present it is so. The whole question, then, turns on the point of what causes it to be so? Is it unavoidable and natural? If so, then it is all right as it is; and the subject is withdrawn from the category of useful discussions.

I, however, for one, am disposed to think that it is neither unavoidable nor natural. There is not such a great difference between the interest of money in France and in England, as to make the great bulk of the people of France desire, above all things, land, and the great bulk of the people of England quite indifferent about it, and even the few who have it in moderate extents desirous of getting rid of it. And, again, in the United States the interest of money is higher than it is here, and yet the ownership of land is regarded as the support, and its cultivation as the natural employment of, I suppose, four-fifths of the whole white population. To us, who look across the Atlantic, the cities appear to be America. But this is an optical illusion. The United States are as large as the whole of Europe, and the cities, though centres of extraordinary activity, are few and far between. Its vast occupied area maintains an agricultural population; and its agriculture is carried on upon so grand a scale that, when the eye is directed to it, everything else is utterly lost to view. The towns are nothing in a scene which takes in fifteen hundred miles of farm-houses from New York to Omaha, which begin again in the Great Salt Lake Valley, and again on the slopes of the Sierra-Nevada, reaching to the shore of the Pacific.

The cause, then, why what does take place in France, and in the United States, does not take place here, must be sought for in something peculiar to ourselves. And our English peculiarity I believe to be this, that here the dominant and regulative fact bearing on the distribution of land is, that it is not distributable; in plain English, that it is not saleable. This is brought about by the law which allows estates to be settled, that is to be taken out of the market and practically to be rendered unsaleable. This being the general fact with respect to land, the millions connected with its cultivation, seeing no opening for their ever becoming possessed of an acre of it, do not save for this purpose, and have their thoughts turned in other directions, that is to say, to the towns, to trade, or to emigration. And the rest of the population, being met by the same obstacle, have their thoughts with respect to land, and the investment in it of their capital, equally shaped and coloured by the existence of that obstacle. That which is the dominant fact brings about what is the general feeling and practice. Where is the rural district in which, from the general condition of things, it could become a general practice among the population to work, and deny themselves, in order to acquire some property in the land? Unsaleability is the general rule, and so this motive, and everything that would be connected with it, and grow out of it, has no existence. The same cause acts even in a higher degree on the rest of the population, because their thoughts are not, from the circumstances and character of their lives, so naturally directed towards the land. It would be just the reverse if every acre, everywhere, were always saleable: of course not always on sale, but always saleable at the will of its owner.

Speaking generally, we are in the unique and anomalous position of a nation which has no class of proprietors of small, and moderate-sized estates, cultivating their own land. If circumstances were at all favourable to the maintenance amongst us of such a class, I believe it would be maintained, and would go on increasing. What is the case is, that circumstances adverse to it, and even destructive of it, have been created artificially. By the power of settling estates, large settled estates have everywhere been called into existence. Thenceforth the fight in each neighbourhood is between large settled estates and small properties. The large settled estates are endowed, practically, with perpetuity, and they have within themselves great powers of purchasing, that is of extension; for their owners are already wealthy, and have, also, the power of discounting, for the purpose of making purchases, the future increase in value of their estates; and they always have a strong motive for making such purchases. The small properties, as things now are, have very little of the element of perpetuity; generally no self-contained power of extension by purchase; and their proprietors have no special motives for attempting to extend them. The absorption, then, of the small properties is inevitable; and has been, indeed, almost entirely effected already. Our system creates the large estates, and endows them with the power of swallowing up the small ones; and so year by year takes the land, more and more, out of the market: the general result being that at last we have come to have only a handful of very wealthy rent-receiving proprietors, and few cultivating proprietors; and that the thoughts, the prospects, and the capital of the richest nation in the world are all pretty completely turned away from the land.

We said that our system was not either unavoidable or natural. We ought, therefore, to show how it could have been avoided. We partially did this when we pointed out its causes. Let us, however, endeavour now to find for ourselves a distinct answer to the question, In what way could its growth and establishment have been prevented? I need not repeat its peculiarities: they have just been referred to. Suppose, then, a century ago, the Legislature had come to be of opinion that it was contrary to public policy that an existing generation should have its hands tied, in dealing with the land of the country, by the necessities, or the personal and family ambitions, or the ideas, of preceding generations; and that public policy required that the land of the country should pass from hand to hand perfectly free, each successive holder having an absolute interest in it; receiving, and transmitting it, quite unencumbered, precisely in the same way as a sovereign passes from hand to hand. And that, therefore, it had been enacted, with the view of securing these conditions, that land should not be charged in any way; that it should not be encumbered with any uses, or settlements of any kind; and that there should be no power of mortgaging it beyond the life, or tenancy, of the mortgagor. Such an enactment, it is obvious, would have rendered the existence of the present system impossible. It would have had this effect, because no one having had the power of encumbering land in favour of his widow and younger children, those whose property was only land, would have been obliged to provide for their widows and younger children by bequeathing to them certain portions of the land itself. This would have subdivided the large estates. It, also, would have secured to every owner the power of at any time selling his land, if for any reason he were desirous of so dealing with it. It is, then, presumably, the permission of the very opposite to that which would have prevented the present state of things from existing, that has given it existence.

We have been speaking of what might have been done. Let us look at something that has been done. The course of recent legislation upon this subject is very instructive; and, as far as it goes, is confirmatory of what we have been saying as to both the cause, and the remedy, of existing evils. We often hear remarks made upon the mischievous consequences of land being held in mortmain. But the fact is, that in this country there is no such thing as land held in mortmain. The Legislature has seen the ill effects of its being so held, and, by a series of Acts, all having the same object, has released what was so held. The estates vested in the Ecclesiastical Commission were made saleable in 1843; the episcopal and capitular estates in 1851; the estates of all other ecclesiastical corporations in 1860; of universities and colleges in 1858. The estates of schools and charities, and of municipal bodies, are now in the same state. By this series of enactments the Legislature has, I believe, completely abolished the holding of land in mortmain. It could not, we may be sure, have done otherwise. There was among all enlightened people an overwhelmingly preponderant perception of what ought to be done; and it was comparatively easy to deal with that portion of the land of the country to which these enactments apply. The ground they took was not that the corporate estates had a worse body of tenants, or were worse cultivated than settled estates, for that was not the case, but that it was an evil that land should not be saleable; and so some, that was not saleable before, was made saleable.

And now let us see how these Acts have worked. There have been instances in which incumbents of parishes have sold their glebes, and colleges some of their estates. But who have been the purchasers of these glebes and college estates? As far as I can hear, in every instance the purchasers have been large landed proprietors. And they did no wrong in buying them. Reader, had you and I been in their places we should have done just what they did. The result, however, has been that the large estates have become larger; that is to say, the amount of land that was, through settlements, practically unsaleable, is now greater than it was before; and that through legislation which had for its aim to make land saleable. The present system was so widely established, so powerful, and so ready and so able to avail itself of every opportunity, that there was no possibility of its being otherwise. The fate, then, of that portion of the previously mortmain-held land that has been sold, shows how our existing system works; and enables us to see by an instance, which, though not great in amount, is yet distinct and palpable, the tendency in our large settled estates to continue growing, and by so doing to diminish the amount of saleable land in the country. If, instead of being misled by names, we look at facts, the true mortmain-held land of this country is the settled estates.

The corporate lands are, probably, worth somewhere about 30,000,000l. An idea is afloat that there will be a proposal to sell these, and to capitalise the price. But one can hardly suppose that many, except ‘adjacent’ proprietors, will be found to support the scheme, after people have seen what has become of such portions of these lands as have already been sold under the recent Acts just referred to; and when they remember that the discharge of certain duties is attached to the revenues of these corporate and endowment estates. And if these duties are not always discharged satisfactorily, that is a matter which better superintendence might set right. At all events, it is better for the public that they should get out of these estates something, than that they should get nothing. If the public desire that it should be so, the Legislature, we may be sure, will be ready enough to see that all endowments are turned to good account.

We frequently hear the remark, and it is made as if it explained the existence and the character of our present system, that feudalism still flourishes in this country. This is very wide indeed of the mark. There are many, we may be sure, who would be disposed to think that it would be of advantage if something like the division of land of the feudal times still obtained amongst us. The records of the Exchequer give the number of knights’ fees at 60,215. Let that, however, be as it may, our system is as unlike that of feudalism as anything can be. It belongs in its whole character to the era of capital, but in the form a land-system must assume; and this is its distinguishing feature, when the flow of capital to the land has been so interfered with as practically to prohibit its investment in land, except by very rich people, in very large amounts; that is to say, by people who already have a great deal of land, or who have a great deal of capital. This is an artificial state of things belonging to the era of capital. The natural state of things in the era of capital would be the direct opposite: for that would issue in there being a multitude of owners of estates, purchased and used for all manner of purposes; and to all the land being marketable; and, indeed, to a considerable portion of it, everywhere, being at any time in the market. Both of these states, the artificial and the natural one, are equally possible in the era of capital. The first is brought about, when, as I have pointed out, the action of the law favours perpetuity, unsaleability, and agglomeration. The latter, when all the land is saleable; and everyone who has capital, no matter whether much or little, is able to buy. There is no feudalism in either of these two states of things. The former is a factitious kind of capitalism.

It may sound paradoxical, after what has been said, to announce that the change suggested in our present system would have the effect of raising the price of land: I am, however, of opinion that it would have this paradoxical effect; because, though it would largely increase the supply, it would in a still greater degree increase the demand for, and the uses of land. It would make all who have capital possible purchasers, and would be an inducement to many, particularly among those whose work is on the land, to save capital in order that they might become purchasers. It would bring into play and activity a great variety of motives for purchasing. For instance; we should then see joint-stock companies buying land which offers no particular advantages for residence, for the single purpose of manufacturing food out of it. They would pour capital into it in such amounts as only proprietors, who were also joint-stock companies, could. They would drain, mix soils, employ steam machinery for cultivation, for preparing artificial manures, and for cutting, crushing, and cooking food for cattle; they would build beet-sugar factories, or whatever else would pay when done well, and on a large scale. Other districts adapted to small properties, if such there be, we should see falling into the hands of small proprietors. Others again, which from their salubrity, or beauty, or local proximity to large towns, were adapted for residential purposes, we should see turned to this account: so that in places where now there may be one, or perhaps not one, resident proprietor, there would be a hundred, or a thousand. In these days of railways and capital all this is natural: and as it is natural it is what would be best for us. I cannot see anything bad in such a state of things; and I think it is what will be brought about eventually. If it had existed during the last fifty years, probably a large portion of the 1,000,000,000l. of capital that have been sent out of the country, would have been kept at home. If there were perfect freedom in dealing with the land, in this rich and populous country, the price of agricultural land would rise to a higher price than it has attained in Switzerland, Belgium, and parts of France, where it has long been selling for more than it sells for here. If a joint-stock company were to demonstrate that 25l. of capital per acre applied to the cultivation of 1,000 acres was a profitable speculation, would that have any tendency to lower the value of land?

I believe that some of us will live to see the joint-stock principle introduced into farming, or rather applied to the ownership and cultivation of the land. My reason for believing this is, that it has been found to answer in everything else; and that I can see no other way in which capital, to the amount required in these days, can be applied to the land; and that I can see in the nature of the case no reason why it should not be so applied to the land. I take it for granted that, at this moment, land can be cultivated more productively, and more economically, comparing the amount of produce with the cost of producing it, in farms of about 1,000 acres each, cultivated highly, and by steam machinery, than in any other fashion. If it be so, then the system must force its way to general adoption; and to the looker-on, practically, no question remains uncertain but that of time. If he is satisfied that it is the natural system in the era of capital, he knows that, sooner or later, it must come. One of its pre-requisites, which it will take time to bring about, is, that the land should be owned by those who cultivate it; probably, in each case, by a firm. Whether the firm consist of three or four partners, or of three or four dozen shareholders, will make no difference. On no other conditions will the costly plant be provided, or the inducement in the way of profits be sufficient.

The past history of agriculture will here help us in our attempt to understand its future. The aboriginal agricultural implement was, as we all know, a burnt stick—a broken branch, with its point hardened in the fire. That was in the stone era, and so the forest could not be felled. Only here and there a small plot could be cultivated with such an implement. The rest of the land, that is to say almost the whole of it, was a game preserve for wild animals, deer, wild cattle, wild hogs, &c. After nobody knows how many ages of this style of farming, and of utilising the land, came the discovery of metals. An iron hoe was then regarded as a more wonderful machine than a steam-plough is now. It was beyond the means of any individual, except perhaps here and there a great chief. Villages may have clubbed together the few articles they had of exchangeable value, that is to say became a joint-stock company, to secure the possession of one of these marvellous implements. Whatever the land had yielded to the tillage of the burnt stick, and through the game preserves, it now yielded a great deal more. The game preserves still continued: but with respect to animal food also there had been a little advance, for domestic animals now began to appear in the village. One advance always draws on others. But the domestic animals were at first kept only in small numbers, for they wandered over large expanses of land, almost exclusively forest; the game still remaining the more important of the two. This was the second stage. But as time goes on iron, and the domestic animals, become more abundant; and an ox, or so many ox-hides, can be exchanged for a hoe. It is now possible to get so much more food out of the land, that one man can raise enough for the support of two. This immediately leads to slavery, which always makes its appearance in rude societies as soon as they have reached the point at which one man can produce more food than is sufficient for himself. This advances agriculture some steps further. Cattle become abundant; labour is abundant; and a sufficiency of iron is procurable. The forest is, therefore, taken in hand, and fields, that is spaces where the trees have been felled, are formed. And now the plough appears on the scene, and civilised society is fairly under weigh. Cultivation continues to extend, and with cultivation pasturage. The forest gradually disappears, and domestic animals entirely take the place of wild game, except for purposes of amusement and luxury. And so on up to the system with which we are all familiar. Every discovery advanced matters a step, and made the land more productive. As, for instance, the introduction of artificial grasses and roots, for our ancestors in the autumn used to kill and salt the beef and mutton they would require for the winter and spring. Then came a better supply of manures, and the two together rendered the abandonment of fallows possible. The land has all along been a constant quantity. It, from the beginning, has been the same. But its produce has from the first been increasing through never-ceasing advances in the means and methods of cultivating it and of turning it to account.

And now another advance is in sight, that of cultivation by steam. This implies a great deal. In each stage there grew out of the nature of things, as they then were, a certain definite proportion between the means used and the amount of land cultivated as one concern. In the burnt stick era the little cultivated plots might have shown in the forest as the stars do in the field of heaven. In the hoe-period they were multiplied and enlarged as the stars appear to us through a telescope. Then we had peasant proprietors, and small tenants. The number and size of the luminous, that is, of the cultivated, plots were increasing, as means and appliances increased and improved. And now we suppose that a farm ought properly to be of 400 or 500 acres in extent. This means that the instruments of production and our organisation have advanced very greatly. So must it be with steam cultivation: each concern must be on a large scale. I have supposed that not less than 1,000 acres will be necessary for turning to good account the machinery that will be required for tilling the soil, and gathering in the crops, and preparing them for market, for preparing food for the stock, and for making artificial manures, &c. No existing buildings will be of any use. Everything will have to be constructed for the purposes required. Land, therefore, that has to be cultivated in this way must be regarded as quite unprovided with the necessary plant, as much so as a thousand acres of the prairie of Colorado, or of the Pampas of La Plata. And as nobody will invest all this costly fixed plant on other people’s land, the land must be owned by those who are to cultivate it in this way. But the purchasing, the providing with such plant, and the so cultivating a thousand acres will require not less than 75,000l. This, at present at all events, is quite beyond a farmer’s means. It can, therefore, speaking generally, only be done by firms or companies. If it will pay, they will do it. Lord Derby tells us the land ought to yield twice as much as it does now. We may, I suppose, set the present gross produce of good average land fairly farmed at 10l. an acre. If land highly cultivated by steam, and with the liberal application of capital we are supposing, would advance its produce to only half of Lord Derby’s supposed possible increase, the gross yield would be 15l. an acre. And this might give, after allowing one-third for working expenses, deterioration, and insurance, 13⅓l. per cent. on the investment; but we will put the working at half, which will leave a profit of 10 per cent. If this could be done, then the streams of English capital that are perennially flowing off into all countries would be profitably diverted to the cultivation and enrichment of our own land; and no small portion of the other millions we are year by year paying the foreigner for food, might be paid to food-manufacturers of our own, and so saved to the country.

France produces at home its own sugar; and, besides, sends to us 60,000 tons a-year. We do not manufacture sugar at home, because an English tenant would not spend 8,000l., if he had it, in erecting a sugar factory on another man’s land; but such firms of proprietors could, and probably would, on their own.

Capital swept away the peasant proprietor. It has almost swept away the 50-acre tenant. And it will sweep away the 250-acre tenant. But it offers to all better careers than those it closes against them. The system it is bringing upon us will employ more hands, and will require them all to be better men, and will pay them all better, both for their work and for their capital. Under it there will be openings everywhere for everyone to become what he is fit to become. This will be a premium on education; and it will do more to suppress drunkenness in the rural districts than any conceivable licensing, or permissive, or prohibitory Acts.

I do not know what, under such a state of things, will become of our old friend, who was also the friend of our forefathers—the agricultural pauper. On a farm of a thousand acres, carried on in the fashion we have been supposing, there would be no place for him. Upon its area there would not be a man who was not wanted. And all who were wanted would be well paid and well housed. There would be engine-men, and stock tenders, and horsemen, and labourers, more in number perhaps than the hands now employed on the same space, but all would be better off, and would be better men. In order, however, that this may be brought about, capital must be allowed free access to the land, that is to say, the land must be set free.

The argument from the picturesque will not arrest the course of events. Never was the country so picturesque as when there was no cultivation at all, and the noble savage pursued his wild game through the primæval forest over hill and dale. The little hoed plots of a succeeding epoch were a great encroachment on the picturesque. The fields that came in with the plough carried the disfigurement still further. Our hedges and copses, under the existing system, are rapidly disappearing. But the human interest in the scene has always been increasing: and it will culminate when the steam-engine shall have brought in a system under which those who do the very lowest forms of labour then required will be better fed, and housed, and clothed, and paid, because it will be a system that will not admit of bad work, than was possible under previous systems, which did not depend for their success on the intelligence of the labourer, and the accuracy and excellence of his work.

Such a system would carry out to their logical and ultimate consummation the free interaction of capital and agricultural land. All such land, the implements, and whole plant employed in its cultivation, and even the labour, skill, and intelligence of its cultivators, would be represented by dividend-receiving, 10l., 5l., or 1l. share certificates, transferable merely by the double endorsement of the seller and of the buyer. The old certificate, thus endorsed, would be presented to the manager, if necessary by post; and a new certificate would be issued to the new holder. These certificates would circulate almost as freely as money; but as it would be a kind of money that would carry a dividend at the rate of capital employed in safe ventures, say four-and-a-half or five per cent., with a prospect of improvement, wherein it would differ from the low interest of Exchequer bills, the holding of such certificates would be the most attractive kind of savings’ bank to the poor, and to all. The great difficulty in the way of saving in the case of the poor, and of all who are unacquainted with business, is to find suitable, and safe, investments. That difficulty would be removed; and they would be enabled to participate, according to their means, as easily, and on the same footing, as the richest and the best informed, in the wealth and property of the country. Any labourer on any joint-stock farm, or elsewhere, any artisan, any servant girl, any poor governess, who might save a few pounds, might invest them in a share or two; and the increment, whether earned or unearned, in the value of land, and of its produce, would go to them proportionally with the wealthiest. Everyone would, in this way, have opened to him an avenue for participating, to any amount possible to him, in the possession of the land everywhere. A large proportion of the population would thus become interested in the development of its resources, and so in the prosperity of the country, and in the order and stability of society. The land would, in a sense, become mobilised; and the possession of it rendered capable of universal diffusion. Any one of the present owners, who might come to wish that any portion of his land might be held, and used, in this fashion, might receive, if he chose to be so paid, as many shares in each concern formed out of it, as would equal the value of land he might make over to it.

If the possibility of such a system could be demonstrated, the existing owners of land might be the first to wish to see it carried out. The following figures will show why. Suppose a thousand acres of agricultural land is letting at what is about the average rent of such land, that is at about 30s. an acre, the landlord will be receiving for it 1,500l. a-year, subject to some not inconsiderable deductions. But if this same land were sold to a cultivating firm at 50l. an acre, the price being received in shares, and the concern were to pay to original shareholders 10 per cent. the rent of 1,500l., subject to deductions, would have become a dividend of 5,000l. subject to no deductions. But we will suppose only 3,000l., for that will be double the present rent, and so quite sufficient for our argument.

So far as the system might be adopted would ownership of the land of the old kind cease, and in its place be substituted, in convenient amounts, dividend-receiving, easily transferable, and freely circulating capital stock certificates, within everybody’s reach, secured upon definite portions of the agricultural land of the country, representing its present value, and participating in its future advances in value. Such certificates would, also, offer an improving security for trust funds of all kinds, and for endowments.

The combination of what I have observed, during a life in the country, of the requirements of land, and of the condition and wants of the poor, with my experience of the duties of a trustee (which have devolved upon me to, perhaps, an unusually great extent), suggested to me the ideas I have just been endeavouring to present to the reader. If they are practicable they may contribute to the solution of existing difficulties of several kinds. I am aware that they cannot do this, because in that case they would be quite visionary, if they are not in harmony with the natural requirements and conditions of the era of capital. That they would have been impracticable in other times does not prove that they would be impracticable now.

But we have been enticed off the main line of our discussion to a by-path, which was offering a very interesting view into the future. We must now return to the point we had before reached, which was that of the popular misconceptions that are held with respect to our existing system. There are, then, again, others who suppose that its salient peculiarities may be explained by a reference to what is frequently spoken of as ‘The Law of Primogeniture.’ We have, however, in this country no law of primogeniture in any sense that can be intended in such a reference. There is no body of rights attaching by law to the eldest son. The extent of what may be regarded as law in this matter is the right of the eldest son of a peer to succeed to his father’s peerage; and of the eldest sons of those who have hereditary titles to succeed to their father’s titles. The power of entailing landed property only acts in favour of the system of primogeniture, because the holders of landed property themselves choose to work it in this direction; for it might be used equally in favour of equal partition. There is then no law of primogeniture in the sense supposed. A man who buys land, or in any way comes to have the absolute disposal of it, as the word absolute implies, may dispose of it as he pleases. He may, if such should be his wish, leave it all to his youngest child, or in equal partition amongst all his children. Only, should he die intestate, the law will deal with his land (but we have just been told that this is to be altered) in the way in which, looking at the conduct in this matter of English landlords generally, it may be supposed the man himself would have dealt with it had he made a will. Possibly he may not have made a will because he knew that the law would so dispose of it. The law in the few exceptional cases of this kind that arise from time to time, recognises, and acts on, the state of opinion and sentiment which has grown out of the power, it had itself given, of charging and encumbering land—a power which probably had no very glaring economical evils and inconveniences in an age when the population of the country was only a third of what it is at present, and when capital was only in an embryonic condition, and when, too, perhaps the political system this power upheld appeared to be necessary.

It is not, then, any law of primogeniture which has brought about our present land-system, but certain powers, conferred by law, which have suggested to people the desirability of acting on, and enabled them to act on, the voluntarily adopted principle of primogeniture; that is to say the power of charging and encumbering their estates. And, now that the era of capital is upon us, it is not improbable that the policy of continuing this power will be debated, for at such a time it has some very obvious evils and inconveniences. I do not mean that it will be reconsidered by the legislature before many years have elapsed, or in the first instance; for in a matter of this kind the legislature can do nothing but give form and sanction to what the circumstances of the times have already settled. If it shall be generally felt that the ill consequences of the exercise of this power overbalance its advantages, we may suppose that it will be withdrawn. This is not a question that will be much affected by any amount of speaking or writing, if that be all. If the facts of the matter are of themselves not felt as evils and inconveniences, no amount of speaking or of writing will bring people so to regard them. But should they come to be so felt, the people of this country will be desirous of dealing with them as all men, always and everywhere, have dealt with such matters, when they were seen to admit of removal. But however that may be, it is not a law of primogeniture, but certain law-conferred powers, enabling people to act on the principle of primogeniture, which are the cause of the existing state of things in this matter.

In the discussion of this subject, which ramifies in many directions, for it has moral and social, as well as economical, political, and constitutional bearings, many questions will be propounded, and will have to be considered: such, for instance, as whether, in these several respects, a comparatively small number of large landowners is better, in this era of capital, and of large cities, than a large number of landowners, holding estates varying in dimensions, according to the amounts of capital people would, from a variety of motives, be desirous of investing in land, were all the land of the country free and marketable; or, in other words, whether, in such times, the artificial condition of things we have been considering is safer than, and preferable to, the natural condition? The share-certificates, I just now spoke about, would make it free and marketable to the greatest imaginable degree.

It will also be asked whether it is fair to the land-owner, and, all things considered, advantageous to the community, that he should be obliged to provide for his widow and younger children either by saving the means for making such provision from his income, or by leaving to them, absolutely, what portions of his landed property he may think fit? Those same share-certificates would supply an easy, inexpensive, and safe method of providing for widows and younger children.

Another question will be whether in this era of capital, which means that there will always be some large capitalists as well as many small ones, the liberation of the land would really lead to the extinction of large estates? Largeness is a word of comparative signification. Of course there would be few such large estates as there are now, because that is the result of growth through many generations under the very peculiar circumstances we have been referring to: but if the interchange of land and capital were perfectly free there would be everywhere many considerable estates, though the general order of things might be estates of moderate size, descending to holdings of small extent, which might be the most numerous of all; or such holdings might not be very numerous: for in matters of this kind there is always much that is unforeseen. One point, however, may, I think, be held to be certain: we shall never, in this country, see anything approximating to peasant proprietorship. That is simply inconceivable in the era of capital. Both the land and the man can be turned, now, to better account. Its advocates are either ignorant demagogues, or members of that harmless class who, having their eyes in the back of their heads, can only see, and wish for, what has passed away. If we ever come to have share-estates, such as I have endeavoured to describe, they will, probably, average, as I said, about 1,000 acres each.

It will, perhaps, also, be suggested that there may be some mixed method of proceeding, which, while respecting existing arrangements, would, at the same time, largely increase the number of proprietors; as, for instance, to deal with the rents of endowments compulsorily, and with those of the owners of land at their option, just as the tithe was dealt with; that is to say, to convert the rent into a permanent charge upon the land; and then to sell the land, subject to this rent-charge, the yearly value of which would be ascertained, as is done in the case of the tithe commutation rent-charge, by reference to certain averages of the price of the different kinds of grain cultivated in this country. The immediate gain to corporations, and trustees, and to proprietors who might be disposed to sell, would be considerable, for they would continue to get their present rents, without deductions, and would, besides, be able to sell the proprietary right in the land, and its capacity for future increase in value, for whatever they would fetch in the market. This would suit the share-system, for the land might then be bought with or without the rent, as it might happen in each case.

Our opinions on any question are very much influenced by our observation of the direction things are taking. Now, with respect to our existing land-system, all changes in matters connected with, or bearing upon, it, and which appear to be either imminent, or possible, are likely to take only the direction of what will be unfavourable to its maintenance. For instance, if it be decided that endowments, now consisting of land, should be capitalised, in order that more land may be brought into the market, the line of argument, that triumphed against them, will be equally available against our existing land-system. And, furthermore, if the lands belonging to charities, institutions, and corporations be sold, it is evident that, as things now are, they will, for the most part, be bought up by the owners of large contiguous estates; so that, in fact, the remedy attempted will only make the evil it was intended to remedy, more glaring: the great estates will have become greater. The fate of the corporate estates, thus compulsorily sold, will be that of the thousands of small properties the large estates have of late years swallowed up. Everybody knows that many houses of the gentry of former times are now farm-houses on every large estate. It cannot be otherwise, for this is how a large estate is formed. All the smaller estates in the neighbourhood, just like the meteoric bodies which come at last to be overpowered by the attraction of our planet, must, as things are now, gravitate towards it: their end is, sooner or later, generally the former, to fall into it. So, if the estates of the endowments are sold, will it be with them. It has been so with those that have been already sold.

Again, if the Church be disestablished and disendowed, a certain proportion of the rent of each parish in the country, pretty generally more or less increased by private income, will cease to be spent within the parish. What is so spent at present, as far as it goes, and to a great extent in many cases, lessens the hard and repellent features of the absenteeism of the owners of the land in those parishes. Disendowment, therefore, will make the evils and inconveniences of the present system, whatever they may be, more felt, and more conspicuous; and a better mark, as they will then stand clear of all shelter, for adverse comment.

So, too, if the agricultural land of this country should continue, and there is no reason for supposing the contrary, to fall, year by year, into fewer hands, the strength of those who will have to defend the system will be diminishing at the very time that wealth, intelligence, numbers, union, and every element of power, are increasing on the side of those who cannot see that they have any interest in maintaining it.

If the recent Education Act have the intended effect of educating the millions who have no landed property, the most coveted of all human possessions, will they find anything in the existing system that will commend it to their favour? Will they not rather be in favour of a system, which would make every acre of land in the country marketable?

If people should come to think that the reason why France, notwithstanding the abject condition of a large proportion of its peasant-proprietors, and without our stupendous prosperity in manufactures and commerce, has become so rich, is that it keeps its savings at home, because the land of the country is marketable, while we, every year, scatter tens of millions of pounds of our savings all over the earth to be utterly lost, because they cannot be invested at home in the land of the country, the natural reservoir, or savings’ bank, of the surplus capital of a country, as well as the best field for its employment, will they not go on to wish that the land here, too, could be made marketable?

If population and capital go on increasing, may we not anticipate that this will engender a desire—for in these days of railways and telegraphs it is much the same where a man lives—that the agricultural land of the country should be brought into the state of divisibility and marketableness, into which some of the land in the neighbourhood of our great cities has been brought through the pressure of circumstances? This pressure may extend, and be felt with respect to the land of the whole country.

In an era, too, when popular principles so thoroughly pervade society as to influence all our legislation, is it probable that a system which is the reverse of popular will commend itself to general acceptance? It is also on the cards now that manual labour may become so costly as to necessitate, if a great deal of land is not to go out of cultivation, the substitution of machinery to such an extent as will be done, generally, only by those who own the land.

The whole stream of tendency, then, both in what is now occurring, and in what is likely to occur in no remote future, seems setting strongly in a direction which cannot be regarded as favourable to the maintenance of our present land-system. And the observation of this will, sooner or later, consciously or unconsciously, very much modify opinion on the subject; for in human affairs, just as with respect to the operations of Nature, we are disposed to acquiesce in what we have come to understand is inevitable.

But we have for some time lost sight of the Valley of the Visp, though not of its imaginary sole Proprietor. He has all along been before us. What we have been considering was how, in this era of capital, he came to be its sole proprietor, what are the action and effects of those artificial conditions which placed him in this position, and what are the chances of the maintenance of these artificial conditions.

Things move fast in these days: but few people expect that any change will take place in his time. He will continue in the position of social eminence, and of political power, he now occupies. He will go on hoping to leave after him a line of descendants occupying the same, or even a greater, position. This will be the dominant motive in his mind. If any land is to be bought in his neighbourhood, there will still be a likelihood that he will become the purchaser of it. It has always been so, since the estate became the predominant one in those parts. And that it should be so is now regarded almost as a law of nature; as something quite inevitable; so that no one need enquire whether it is beneficent in its action, or otherwise. If he have not cash in hand to pay for the new purchase, he will mortgage his property to the amount of the price. In this era of capital the value of land goes on increasing, and so the mortgage will in time be paid off by the estate itself. In this way, in these times, every large estate has within itself, even without Austrian marriages,[^[1]] a progress-generated power of absorption and growth. Without lessening the area of the estate, he will provide for those who are dependent on him by charging it with the payment of whatever he may please to leave them: so that while no very apparent injustice will be done to them, the position of the single representative of the family will not be affected, for he will still appear before the world as the owner of the whole estate. He will also hope that, from time to time, the representatives of the family will, by making purchases in the way in which he has, and by the introduction of great heiresses into the family, increase the extent of the estate.

[1]. Bella gerant alii. Tu felix Austria nube: Nam, quæ Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.

At times, when he hears how demagogues are raving about the nationalisation of the land, and the tyranny of capital; and when he visits the valley, and sees the condition of many, indeed of all the people on the estate, he may feel that he is in a somewhat invidious position. But he will feel also that no one is to blame: his progenitors could not well have acted otherwise than as they did; nor could he well act otherwise than as he is acting, and will act. And those who are discussing the matter, sometimes with the tone of men who are suffering a wrong, would, we may be sure, not act otherwise, under the circumstances, themselves.

Suppose, however, that for the restricted and artificial action of capital, which has brought this state of things about, its natural action has been substituted: what will be the effect on the hopes, and on the family, of the proprietor of our valley? We may venture to predict that the natural order of things will give him a securer chance of realising his hopes in their best sense. His family will start, in the race of life, in possession of the whole of the land of the valley. For them this will be no bad start. The land of the valley will bear division for several generations without reducing the members of the family to a bad position, even if none of them should do anything at all to improve their position. But this, judging by the ordinary principles of human nature, we may be sure, speaking generally, will not be the case. Two centuries hence, it will be their own fault, if, instead of the family being really only one man, they have not become a clan in the valley: a clan possessed of more social importance, and of more political influence, than could attach to a family represented by a single member. Some will have become invigorated by the inducements to exertion that will have come home to them, and by the wholesome consciousness in each that he is somewhat dependent on himself for maintaining and improving his position. Whatever efforts to advance themselves they may come to make, will not be made under unfavourable circumstances. None of them will have occasion to feel, as perhaps some of their ancestors at times had, that they are in an invidious position; and none will regard them with feelings that, if not ‘somewhat leavened with a sense of injustice,’ do yet arise from a suspicion that things are not quite as they ought to be, through there having been some kind of interference with their natural course. Is not this a nobler, a more patriotic, a more human, and in every way a better prospect than that which is now feeding the somewhat misdirected paternal ambition of the present proprietor? Would it not be a better anticipation of the fortunes of his family, to think of them as a numerous body of proprietors, occupying a good position, through the natural action of the circumstances and conditions of the times, than to look forward to the uncertain character and uncertain position of a single member of his family, who will be maintained, if maintained, by conditions, on the permanency of which no dependence can be placed, because they are at discord with the needs and circumstances of the times?

Land now no longer rules. Capital is king. Capital it is that does everything now; that even, but under abnormal and artificial conditions, aggregates our large estates. Under this dynasty the advantages the land is capable of conferring on man are not withdrawn, but much increased both in degree and in variety; and everything desirable, the land not excepted, becomes, in a manner and degree inconceivable in all foregone times, the reward of personal exertion and worth. This is what distinguishes this dynasty from those that have preceded it. If it be the true king, it will prove its legitimacy, by removing all artificial barriers to the development and exercise of its beneficent powers. If it cannot do this, it is a bastard dynasty, and will be dethroned.

V. But I have not yet exhausted all the possible forms in which land may be held. Their name is legion. Every country, and every condition of society, has had, has now, and will have, its own. I say nothing of the serf-system: that among civilised nations has gone for ever. So has the system of village communities. The co-operative system, however, has believers, and, it appears possible, may have a trial. But I, for one, because I believe in capital, and in the individual, have no belief in this kind of co-operation, as a general system, either in manufactures and commerce, or, and that least of all, in agriculture: and, with respect to the latter, whether the co-operators be renters, or owners. Ownership would make no difference at all beyond the power owners would possess of mortgaging their land; and this, as it is a resource that would very soon be exhausted, need not be considered here. The only practical difference would be, that co-operative renters would require a larger extent of land to live from than co-operative owners, whose land was unmortgaged. If the system of co-operation were general, competition, and the increase of population that would have to be provided for, and which would lead either to subdivision, or to an increase of co-operators upon each farm, would inevitably bring the style of living down to a point at which it would be no better than it is now in the Visp Valley. And this is so low a condition of life, both materially and intellectually, that most people are of opinion that it is not worth while to go in for its maintenance, or even, perhaps, to regret its disappearance.

A population of co-operators sunk to this depth, and they could not but sink to it, would, like the old Irish potatovors, or the French petty proprietors, be in a state of chronic wretchedness and degradation: this, in bad seasons, amounts to a state of starvation. If the individual Irish potatovor could not, and the individual French petty proprietor, in whom the parsimonious disposition of his race is exaggerated, rarely can, save, because bad seasons oblige him to mortgage his little plot of land, from which he can hardly extract a living in good seasons, we may be sure that neither would, nor could, such co-operators. I am disposed to prefer the present condition of our agricultural labourers, the most feeble class amongst us. At all events, they have more than one buffer between themselves and bad seasons. First there is the reservoir of capital possessed by the farmer. This is, to the extent of wages, generally, sufficient. In consequence of its existence bad seasons make little or no difference to hired labourers. But under the co-operative system there would be no farmers, but only co-operators, just able to get along in ordinary seasons. Our labourers have, also, a second buffer, which is often of some use to them, in their wealthy neighbours. But under the co-operative system there would probably be no wealthy neighbours. They possess, too, a third buffer in the State, which comes in, in the last resort, to rescue them from the extreme consequences of every kind of calamity. But under a system of peasant co-operators there could hardly be anything resembling our poor-law; for the rationale of that is, that the people who cultivate the soil of the country, are themselves devoid of all property. These three buffers, then, would all have disappeared; and nothing, as far as we can see, would arise, or could be created, to take their place. Such co-operators would be only co-operative peasant-proprietors: which is an absurdity.

Another sufficient objection to this system is, that this is the era of capital, and that such a system would most effectually prohibit the outflow of capital to the land. Capital could no more be invested in the ownings of a wretched population of co-operators, than it could be in the plots of Irish potatovors, or of French petty proprietors.

The conclusion, then, to which my moralising on the spectacle of the Valley of the Visp brought me was, that it belongs to a state of things, which, even in such secluded retreats, will not be able to linger on much longer: at all events, that it is not desirable that it should. We live under the dominion of capital, that is to say, of property other than land, or rather, perhaps, of an accumulated, and still accumulating, interest or dividend-bearing essence of all property (which is labour stored up in some material), reconvertible at will, for productive purposes, into land, labour, or anything men have of exchangeable value. This mighty essence of all property is within the reach of us all, in proportion to our respective opportunities and abilities, and the efforts to gain possession of it we choose to make. But though within the reach of all, it is the mightiest of all magicians; and it is evident that it must modify both the possession, the distribution, and the use of land, as well as everything else with which we have to do. In this there is nothing to be regretted. On the contrary, we ought all of us to congratulate ourselves on the advent of such an era: for it means that our resources for living, and for living well, in respect of all the requirements of human happiness, have been thereby vastly enlarged, and with a power of indefinite enlargement, irrespective of the area of the country. It means, too, that careers have been thereby opened to all, in ways which would have been inconceivable when land supplied the only resource for living; for that now every moral and intellectual endowment, every form of labour, and every aptitude can be turned to account. Even land can be made productive of greater benefits to us than we were wont to derive from it, for capital is showing that it has economical, and other, capacities for improving man’s estate, undreamt of by its old cultivators.

Popular language, which is the expression of popular ideas, on this subject is adequate. It gives correctly the philosophy of the matter. What is wanted is that it should be clearly and generally understood, and used with accuracy. Money has both an intrinsic value as the representative of so much labour expended in the acquisition of the precious metals, and a conventional use as a metallic certificate, entitling its holder to exchange it against anything else in the world anyone has to part with, that costs in its production an equal amount of labour, there being at the time no abnormal disturbance of the ratio of supply and demand. In the latter respect it matters not whether the certificate is on gold or paper: for the paper represents gold, or equal value. When earned, or otherwise acquired, by a kitchen-maid, a speculator, or a prime-minister, it may be used in any one of three ways. First, it may be spent. Secondly, it may be hoarded. Thirdly, it may be used as capital. By spending is meant using money for the acquisition of what perishes in the use; when it passes into another man’s hands who again has the option of using it in any one of the three ways. It is evident that a man may spend money for clothing, food, and other necessary purposes, in order to live, and to enable him to do his work in life well, whatever it may be: it is then spent well, and in a sense productively. Or he may spend it on vice, or ostentation, or hurtful pleasures: it is then spent ill. By hoarding is meant putting it away unproductively for future use. This was originally the only alternative to spending. The money stored away in the treasuries of the old Pharaohs was an instance of this unproductive suspension of use. This is still the practice, everywhere, among rude and ignorant people: it is the hibernation of money; its active uses are put in abeyance. As capital it may be used in two ways. It may either be invested, or employed. Investing it means placing it in securities that do not require management, as, for instance, consols, mortgages, the rent of land, &c.; the correlative of which is interest. Employing it means placing it in reproductive industries, as, for instance, in agriculture, manufactures, trade, commerce, &c., which require management, and the correlative of which is profit. This when divided among shareholders, who manage the concern jointly, or by a selection from their body, becomes dividend. This is the highest form of economical organisation. It gives to all, in their respective proportions, however small those proportions may be, the power of employing capital; and to all who have the ability and integrity, the chance of rising to its management. It is the full development of the era of capital. It is the stage we have now reached. It enables the kitchen-maid, and everybody, to participate in the highest advantages of capital. I think we shall see it employed in this way in the cultivation and proprietorship of the land. If so, then, I think the poor and ignorant will have brought home to them a very strong motive for saving, because they will have constantly before their eyes a safe and profitable means of employing their savings. They, too, may thus become capitalists of the best kind.

Two pregnant errors, however, there appear to be, which it will be necessary for us to avoid, especially, in order that, as respects the land, we may secure the natural conditions and natural advantages of our era of capital. One is the error of making people’s wills for them directly, in the way done in France. This breaks up the land of a country into properties smaller than they would become under the natural circumstances of the times: thus condemning, through legislation, a large part of the population, deluded by the fallacious disguise of proprietorship, to life-long misery. The other error is that of making people’s wills for them indirectly, in the way done in some other countries. This has the opposite effect of agglomerating the land of the country into estates larger than they would become under the natural circumstances of the times, and of reducing the number of proprietors of agricultural land almost to the vanishing point. The first method both increases the number of wretched, degraded, and almost useless proprietors, and diminishes the size of the properties, to a highly mischievous degree. The latter just in proportion as it increases the size of the estates diminishes the number of proprietors. Both limit the variety of uses to which the land may be put. Both introduce causes of political action at variance with the natural conditions of the times. Every system has some advantages: but whatever may be the advantages of the latter, it is, at all events, an interference with the natural rights of each generation, and with the natural course of things; for it prevents the ownership, and the uses, of the land of the country adjusting themselves to the circumstances and the requirements of the times; and hinders the application, to its culture, of that combination of knowledge, energy, and capital, which is manifestly within reach, and has become requisite for developing its productiveness to the degree acknowledged to be possible now, but which cannot be secured under our present landlord-and-tenant system. If, however, this be a serious evil, it is, for reasons already given, one of that class of evils which engender their own remedy.

Many are of opinion that landlordism was all along at the bottom of the evils of Ireland. Landlordism is probably the cause of the Liberalism of Scotch constituencies. If so, what is there to prevent the same cause having, eventually, somewhat similar effects in England? And, if so, then, what next? If, however, the law, instead of interfering with the natural course of things, by indirectly making people’s wills for them, would take care that the land of the country should pass from generation to generation, and from hand to hand, free from every kind of encumbrance, and so be all, at all times, at the will of the holder, marketable, a question, which is now causing much anxiety, because it may, before long, give much trouble, would probably die away, and be no more heard of; nor, probably, should we hear any more of the antagonisms, with which we are all now so familiar, between the town and the country. One step, at least, would have been taken towards making us one people.

The stimulus new scenes apply to the mind, more particularly when its owner is passing through them on foot, and alone, accounts for the foregoing chapter. But its having been thought out under such circumstances by A is no reason for its being read by B, who is neither on foot, nor, probably, alone; and the only scene before whom is, doubtless, the not unfamiliar one of his own fireside; one which, perhaps, has never invited, and may, too, be quite unfitted for, either the debate, or the rumination, of such discussions. Still, as it was suggested by, and constructed in the mind during, the tramp I am recording, and was so one of its incidents, I set it down here in its place.

CHAPTER V.
WALK TO SAAS IM GRUND—FEE, AND ITS GLACIER—THE MATTMARK SEE

Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her. ’Tis her privilege

Through all the years of this our life to lead

From joy to joy: for she can so inform

The mind that is within us, so impress

With quietness and beauty, and so feed

With lofty thoughts.—Wordsworth.

September 4.—Started at 6 A.M. My wife and myself on foot, the little boy on horseback. We walked down the Zermatt valley to Stalden; and then, turning to the right, ascended the Saas valley. The latter being narrower—so narrow as to bring the opposite mountains very near to you—makes the scenery often more striking than that of the parallel, and wider, valley you have just left. Sometimes the mountain sides are so precipitous, quite down to the torrent, which tumbles, and brawls, along the rocky bottom, that no space is presented even for a cherry or apple-tree. For a great part of the way there is no valley, but only a fissure between the two mountain ranges; and nothing can establish itself in the rifts, and almost on the surface of the rocks, but the larch.

We stopped at a small roadside inn, about an hour and a half from Saas, for luncheon. A German professor and his wife came in for the same purpose. He was a tall, gaunt, study-worn man; she a tough, determined little woman. He recommended Heidelberg (it was not his university) both as a winter residence, and as a place of education. The pair appeared to be, like their country-people generally, honest, earnest, and simple-minded, and in the habit of making the most of their small means without complaining. They were carrying very little besides themselves. We reached Saas im Grund at 12.30. We had been on our legs for six hours. The reason why walking on the level takes more out of one than climbing for an equal number of hours, is not merely that in walking the effort is always the same, but that it is at the same time rapid and continuous; whereas in climbing it is not only varied, sometimes up and sometimes down, but is also deliberate, and often interrupted for a moment or two, while you are looking where to set your foot.

A guide, who was on his way to Saas, overtook us soon after we had left St. Niklaus, and asked permission to accompany our party. He had lately made his first attempt to ascend the Matterhorn. He had not got to the top, but his having failed to do so was no fault of his. He could speak a little French, and was a good-natured, talkative fellow.

At Saas we put up at Zurbriggen’s Hotel. We found the house clean, the people obliging, the charges moderate, and the aspect of things quite unlike—all the difference being on the right side—that of the large Swiss caravansary.

The contrast between Saas and Zermatt is very great. At Zermatt the valley ends, with great emphasis, in a grand amphitheatre of mountains and snowy peaks. At Saas it seems suddenly brought to a close without any objects of interest to look upon. With the mind full of Zermatt, Saas appears but a lame and impotent conclusion. The village, however, is very far indeed from being at the head of the valley. That is to be found at the Monte Moro, five hours further on; and, as it includes the Allalein glacier, the grand scenery of the Mattmark See, and of the Monte Moro itself, it has enough to satisfy even great expectations; such as one has, of course, coming from Zermatt.

September 5.—Went to the Fee glacier with the guide who had joined company with us yesterday. My wife and I walked. The blue boy rode. The path from the village lies across the stream, and up the hill on the west side of the valley. This brings you to a mountain-surrounded expanse of greenest grass, in which lies the village of Fee. The substantial character of the châlets, and their tidy air, imply that the inhabitants of the place are pretty well off. At the western extremity of the reclaimed and irrigated meadow is the great Fee glacier. The mounds and ridges of débris the glacier has brought down are very considerable. I mean the mounds and ridges that are still naked; for, of course, all that now forms the cultivated valley must equally, only at remoter dates, have been brought down by the same agency. The only difference between the two is that time, and man, have levelled the latter, and enabled it to clothe itself in a vestment of luxuriant grass. This grass it is that has built and peopled the village. In this way human thought and feeling, or rather the multiplication of the thinking and feeling organism, man, is the direct result of the storms, and frosts, that have shattered, and riven, the mountain peaks above; and of the glacier which has transported the fragments to the sheltered valley, where they could be turned to human account; and, in the act of transporting them, so ground and comminuted their constituent particles as to render them capable of maintaining a rich vegetation; and which same glacier is, at this moment, engaged in supplying the irrigating streams, the stimulant of the richness of the vegetation.

The upper part of the naked débris overlays large masses of ice. This is very uneven, and full of depressions and cracks, the sides of which are, generally, covered with loose stones, but, sometimes, only with a thin film of mud. A fall upon this combination of ice, pebbles, and slush is the easily attained consequence of inattention to what you are about, and where you are going, while crossing such ground. We had a walk on the glacier; and then, having taken in a fresh supply of materials for keeping up the steam, at a station on one of the moraine ridges, which gave us a good view of the contiguous glacier, the overhanging mountains, and the green valley, we returned to Saas in the afternoon.

After dinner I started with our guide—his communicativeness during the two days he had been with us had made us feel as if he were an old acquaintance—for a walk over the Monte Moro, down the Val Anzasca, and over the Simplon, to Brieg. I also took a porter with me, who was to carry my sac as far as Macugnaga, from which place the guide was to take charge of it. He would not undertake to carry it where he was known as a guide, for that, he affirmed, would be losing caste. My wrappers I sent from Saas to Brieg by post. The charge was a franc and a half for a great coat and shawl. The latter, of fine wool, four yards in length, and two in width, is less than half the weight of an ordinary travelling rug, and more than twice as serviceable. My portmanteau I had already despatched from Zermatt for Brieg by the same common carriers. The facilities of the Swiss post-office for the conveyance of baggage—we found them very convenient—result from the department having absorbed all the diligences. It has thus become the carrier not only of letters, but equally of travellers, and of parcels of all kinds. In fact it seems that in Switzerland you may post anything short of a house. Mistakes appear to be made very seldom; and when they are made you have a responsible office to deal with, whose interest it is to set them right. At Saas the post-master was also the chemist, the doctor, the alpenstock-maker, &c. &c. of the place. Where there are but few people there must be many employments which will not occupy the whole of a man’s time, or, singly, support him.

My wife and the little boy accompanied me half of the way to the Mattmark See. Our plan was that they should return to Saas, and on the third day meet me again at Brieg. Soon after they left me I met two well-grown, clean-limbed Englishmen—it is always a pleasure to meet such specimens of one’s countrymen—with whom I had a little conversation. I asked them what snow there was on the pass which they had just come over. They told me they had crossed seven snow-fields. The next morning I found only four, and of these two small enough. They could have had no wish to misrepresent; but so fallible is human testimony; and nowhere more so than in Switzerland, where you never find two eye-witnesses giving the same account of the same thing. It is possible, however, that they may have made some détour in crossing, and, illogically, answered a question different from the one put to them.

When the path reaches the Allalein glacier the scenery becomes grand. You are again on the visible confines of the ice-and-snow world. On the left side of the glacier you ascend a stiffish mountain. This brings you to the Mattmark See. The path is a little above, and the whole length of, its eastern side. It is carried on a level line along a very rocky descent, a few yards above the water. The humble plants in the narrow rocky strip between the path and the lake were charmingly full of colour, for at this time the leaves of many of them were assuming their rich autumnal tints. At the foot of this narrow strip of shattered rocks, interspersed with highly coloured vegetation, was the unruffled water, looking like polished steel, dark, hard, smooth, and cold. Beyond the water, and rising precipitously from it, towered the rugged, slaty-coloured mountains, capped with white, and streaked in their ravines with snow-drifts and glaciers.

At the further end of the lake stands the Mattmark Inn, exactly where it ought to stand. Further back, you would be disturbed by the feeling that you had not yet seen everything, and so were forming an imperfect conception of the scene. Further on, the scene would, by comparison, be dull. Higher up, the opposite mountain would not look so overpowering, and you would lose the mighty masses of fallen rock, as big as houses, which are close to the inn; and you might also lose the water, which is the distinguishing feature of the scene. As to the inn itself, so far away in the mountains you cannot expect anything very extensive either in the way of structure or of cuisine. But you will get here, which is worlds better, a clean house, very obliging people, and all that they can offer for your entertainment—of course without much variety—good of its kind. If you go to Switzerland for what is peculiar to Switzerland, these are the places you should look out for. Large hotels, full of loiterers, among whom there may be perhaps a French count, or even a Russian Prince, may be found elsewhere than in Switzerland, should you think them worth finding. But the very advantage of the Mattmark See Inn, and of other mountain inns like it, is that you will see in them none of this kind of people, while you will have plenty of the grandest mountain scenery, and plenty of mountain work, if that is what you have come for, all around you. From the great hotels you may see the outline of the mountains; but that is a very different thing from being in the midst of the mountains themselves; in the very society and company of the mountains; so that you look at each other face to face, and can make out all their features, and all the components, and the whole colouring, of every feature.

From Saas to the Mattmark See Hotel is three hours and a half. Before turning in I ordered coffee at 3.50 A.M., and told the guide and porter to be ready for a start at 4 A.M.

CHAPTER VI.
OVER MONTE MORO BY MACUGNAGA TO PONTE GRANDE, AND DOMO D’OSSOLA

Creation’s heir, the world, the world is mine.—Goldsmith.

September 6.—At 3.50 A.M. coffee was ready, but was told that it was not so with the guide and porter. On looking them up, I found them both in bed, and asleep. I was not quite unprepared for this, from something I had been told at Saas about the way in which my friend sometimes spent his evenings. But, having taken a kind of liking to him, I had replied that this would make no difference to me, so long as he was all right during the day. About that I was assured that I need entertain no doubt. The delay, however, caused on this occasion, by his inability to wake of himself at the appointed time, did not, as it happened, amount to much. After a gentle ascent of, if I recollect rightly, about forty minutes, and somewhat beyond the Distel châlets, we came to the first snow. It might have been a quarter of a mile across. With nails in your boots, and an alpenstock in your hand, this is almost as easy to walk upon as the path that brings you to it, only, of course, that you cannot walk upon it quite so quickly. Beyond this, the ascent is somewhat stiff up to the summit. Sometimes it is on a ledge of gneiss, with a deep precipice down to the glacier-ravine on your left hand. Another snow-field also has to be crossed here, which lies at an angle of, perhaps, 25° or 30°. The summit of the pass is like a small crater a few yards across. Here my friend, who had been as brisk and talkative as heretofore since we started, called a halt for breakfast. The cold meat and bread were certainly of the driest, and that perhaps encouraged him in the idea that not they, but the liquid with which they were washed down, was the essential part of the repast. Young Andermatten, a name well known in these parts, was now carrying my sac. He had met us between the two snow-fields we had passed, and as my porter had some reason for wishing to return to Saas, he had undertaken to supply his place to Macugnaga.

As soon as you leave the summit you begin to descend a ledge of very smooth gneiss, about six or eight feet wide. On your left is a precipice; on your right a broken wall of rock. You go down this for about a hundred yards, and then get off it by a few projecting steps, which have been fixed in the face of the rock. This takes you on to some snow lying at a sharp incline. It would not do to slip on this ledge of gneiss; and, at first, not being used to such paths, that is to say if it is your first pass, you think you must slip. But you take heart when you see your guide walking down it much the same as if he were walking on London pavement. He turns round to see what you are about, and to offer assistance; but that you cannot accept. Still you are glad when it is done. The descent to Macugnaga is, throughout, rough and steep. Ascending it, and with the sun on your back—it faces the south—must be hard work. If it had been a Swiss mountain there would, long ago, have been a good horse-path made to the top.

This is an old and easy pass. Ordinary lungs, ankles, and head, are all that it wants. It was known to, and used by, the Romans. It was for some time occupied by the Saracens, who left their name upon it, as they did names of their own on several peaks and places around it.

As you trudge over the mountain, in the fresh morning air, accompanied by your guide and porter, and with your attention quickened to receive the impressions of the grandeur around you, which you know will hold a place among the most valued and abiding of your mental possessions, you feel as if you were really one of the lords of creation. This feeling would be a wee bit marred, if the eternal mountain had been presumptuously appropriated by some mortal molecule, for then you might be troubled with apprehensions of disturbing, or of being thought likely to disturb, his ibexes and chamois.

I made the Monte Rosa Hotel at Macugnaga at 8.30; that is to say, in four hours from the Mattmark See, excluding the twenty minutes’ halt in the little crateriform chamber on the top of the Moro. I now had a breakfast, which, by the grace of ‘mine host,’ bore a close resemblance to a dinner, for it consisted of a long succession of dishes. This did not come amiss to one who, having been up some time before the sun, had an appetite that took a deal of killing; and ‘mine host’ had also the grace to charge modestly for what he purveyed bountifully. I found that the inn of the Mattmark See was an off-hand house of his, under the management of his wife. He is besides by profession a guide. He must, therefore, be doubly disposed to regard with favour and sympathy those who do the Monte Moro. I found here a London member of the faculty, who was making Macugnaga his head-quarters for a part of his holiday; and his fuller experiences of the house, and landlord, were all on the right side. The balcony of the hotel commands the best possible view of the upper ten thousand feet of Monte Rosa: its subterranean foundations—the remaining third of its height—are spread out beneath you. You are just at a good distance for taking in the whole of the visible structure—the height, the form, the ravines, the glacier, and the contiguous peaks, with the head of the valley for the foreground. It is a grand, varied, complete, impressive sight.

At 1 P.M. left the Monte Rosa Hotel for Ponte Grande. The guide, who was now also porter, shouldered my sac with a jaunty air, and we started at a good pace. My new acquaintance of the hotel joined company for the first mile and a half. At parting we hoped that we should meet again at the Athenæum. At this point you leave the path on terra firma, and take to a path, laid on a wooden platform, strewn with sand, which overhangs the brawling Anza. This platform road is curious, and well worth seeing. In some places it is supported by lofty pine poles, which must be fifty or sixty feet high. You hardly understand how support can be found for it in the sheer chasms it occasionally has to be carried along. I have somewhere read that the old Roman road along the bank of the Danube was in places constructed in this fashion, and that the holes cut in the rock, for the bearings of the king-posts and struts, are still visible. This of the Anza is very much out of repair. In some places there are gaps you must step, or jump, over. In others it has been entirely destroyed, and you must make a little détour to recover it. For a mile or two, or more, above Ceppo Morelli you quit it altogether, and take to a rocky mule path, which might easily enough be very considerably improved. At Ceppo Morelli is a bridge of one long, slender, much-elevated arch, somewhat in the form a loop caterpillar assumes in walking. Here you return to the left bank; and the carriage road of the Val Anzasca commences. Hitherto we had been walking at a good pace for a rough path; but now the road, having become smooth, invited us to quicken our pace to near four miles an hour. The guide, who had already called two halts, now called them at shorter intervals. He was evidently breaking down. Still he was unwilling to lessen speed. We reached Ponte Grande in a little over four hours. Here is what appeared to be a fairly good hotel. Just before I turned in, the waitress came to inform me that my guide had ordered a carriage, in my name, for the next day. She suspected that all was not right. I asked her to have the carriage counter-ordered, as he was under contract to walk with me over the Simplon to Brieg; and to tell him that I should be off at five o’clock in the morning.

September 7.—Found that the guide’s feet were so swollen that he was quite incapable of going any further. The way, I suppose, in which I had understood that he sometimes spent his evenings had been a bad preparation for continuous hard walking, in a valley with very little air, commanded all day by an unclouded sun, and with a dozen, or more, pounds on his back. I was now obliged to leave my sac, with instructions that it should be sent on to Domo D’Ossola by diligence; and then started alone. To Pié de Muléra (7½ miles) there is an excellent carriage road. So far you are on the mountain side. From thence to Domo D’Ossola (about 7 miles more) the road is generally on the flat. There was a perfectly clear sky, and no air was stirring; and so I found the latter part of my morning’s tramp very warm. Under such conditions one might expect even a water-drinker’s feet to swell.

I was in Domo D’Ossola at 12 o’clock. Having breakfasted leisurely and looked over the newspapers in the reading-room of the hotel, I was ready for another ten or twelve miles; and should have done this in the evening had I not thought it better to wait for my sac. As it was, I spent the afternoon and night at Domo. As I care little for towns, particularly third or fourth-rate ones, and have seen enough of churches and hôtels de ville, this was an unprofitable waste of time. I amused myself as well as I could with the arrival and departure of the diligences, and with the Italian aspect of things. The hotel was cheerless and lifeless. As soon as a diligence left, everyone about the place suddenly became invisible, just as if they had all sunk into the ground, or melted away into the air. Still, it may be the least unlively house, as things go, in a place so dismally doleful.

To go back then to the valley of the Anza. As soon as you enter it at Macugnaga you see that you are among a more sprightly and joyous people; and are struck with the contrasts between them and the homely Swiss on the other side of the mountains. They are better dressed, and with more attention to effect; particularly the women with their white linen smocks, showing very white beneath the dark jacket, not untouched with colour—this is worn open and sleeveless; and with their more gaudily-coloured kerchiefs on their heads. The dress of the fairer part of creation in Switzerland is somewhat sombre. They make little use of colour, and appear to be attracted most by what will wear best; and, if it may be written, will require least washing. The women in this valley have good eyes. They are not unaware of the advantage, and use them accordingly. Their complexion, too, is clear. That of the Swiss is, generally, somewhat cloudy. Their bearing and air are those of people who are of opinion that the best use of life is to enjoy it. The Swiss seem to regard life as if they were a little oppressed by its cares and labours. Perhaps the conditions of existence on their side of the mountains are so hard, that the people must take things seriously. One respects their laborious industry. There is a kind of manliness in their never-ending struggle against the niggardliness and severity of nature. This, and their forethought, one applauds, only regretting that so much toil should secure so little enjoyment; and should have such humble issues. There is something that pleases, and attracts, in the smiles, and in the greater sense of enjoyment, of the light-hearted Italian.

In the upper part of this valley German is still spoken. Here also it is observable that not nearly so much has been done, as on the Swiss side, to reclaim and irrigate the land. You wish to know whether this is at all attributable to a difference in the distribution and tenure of landed property. You pass several mines: some of gold. The abundance and size of the chesnut-trees are a new feature. You contrast their freely-spreading branches and noble foliage with the formal and gloomy pines, of whose society you have lately had much.

CHAPTER VII.
THE SIMPLON

Julius Cæsar also left behind him a treatise in two books on Analogy (a department of grammar); which he composed while crossing the Alps.—Suetonius.

September 8.—Last night I had told the head-waiter that I must be off at 5 A.M., and he had replied that it was impossible: that at that hour no one in the hotel would be up; that coffee could not be prepared before six. I, however, gained my point by asking him to set the coffee for me overnight; telling him that I would take it in the morning cold. This proposal appeared to him so uncivilised, that he was confounded by its enormity, and offered no further resistance. I then paid the bill; and was off this morning at the desired time.

As my sac had not arrived from Ponte Grande, I left written instructions that, when it turned up—it was due last evening—it should be sent on to Brieg. Thus I had gained nothing by the afternoon I had lost. At Ponte Grande, on the morning after the break-down of my own porter-guide, it was evident that the master of the hotel had conceived the very natural idea of persuading me to take one of his people in that double capacity, or, that failing, to take a carriage. In resentment of this, I had contented myself with putting into my pocket what I should want most during the two following days; and had left the bag, and the rest of what was in it, to chance. I now saw the absurdity of what I had done; for why, in such a matter, should I have taken into consideration, the landlord’s scheming, or anything in the world, except my own convenience? My bag, as might have been expected, did not turn up at Brieg. This made me still more conscious of my absurdity. Eventually, however, by the aid of the telegraph and post-office, I recovered it at Interlaken. This I felt I had not deserved.

As you begin to ascend the Simplon, perhaps you will be thinking—at all events you have read remarks of the kind often enough to be reminded of them now—that its road is a line of masonry, carried for forty-four miles over mountains, and through storm and avalanche-swept ravines; that it is one of the mighty works by which man has triumphed over a great obstacle, which nature had placed in his path; that it was constructed for purposes of war and rapine, and for the aggrandizement of an individual, but is now used for the purposes of peace, and for the friendly intercourse of nations; and that the barrier, which it has practically removed, had its use in those times when it was shielding nascent civilisation from northern barbarism. If so, you will not altogether regret that you are on foot, and alone. This will give you an opportunity for conferring, without irrelevant interruptions, with the genius loci, and allow the trains of thought it brings you to unfold themselves, as they will, in your mind: and so, probably, you will feel no want of a vehiculum, either literally, or in the metaphorical sense, in which the proverb says the bonus amicus is a substitute for it.

This day’s walk was very diversified. It began with level ground; some of it productive, and well cultivated; some covered with the coarse shingle the torrent stream, which passes through it, has brought down from the mountains. The ascent then commenced through a region of chestnuts and trellised vines. After that came the zone of pines, sometimes lost, and again recovered. At last the scene was compounded of the naked mountain side, the savage ravine, and the blustering torrent, overtopped with rugged crags; these at times capped with snow, and with glaciers between. But even to the summit, as you follow the road, all is not desolation; for wherever the soil, formed by the weathering of the rock, could be retained, your eye will rest on some little expanse of green turf; or, if the situation be too exposed, and the soil too poor and shallow for turf, it will be clad in the sober mantle of humble Alpine plants.

As I walked along I often noticed how the surface of the fragments of rock lying in the torrent, and their side looking up the stream, were being worn away; while the side looking down, and its upper angle, remained quite unworn. This teaches how the solid rock itself, at the bottom of the torrent, that is to say how its channel, is always being abraded; which means being lowered. While this is going on below, the frosts, and storms, and earthquakes are, at the same time, bringing down the rocks from above. This accounts for the top of the valley, vertically, being very much wider than the bottom. If there had been no frosts, and storms, and earthquakes, the torrent would now be running in a perfectly perpendicular-sided trough, of the same depth as the existing valley—but, then, there would be no valley, only a trough. The valley is wider at the top than at the bottom, because the widening action of frost, storms, and earthquakes has been going on at the top for tens of thousands of years; while it has been going on lower down, with very much less force, only for some hundreds of years. You observe the contrast between the calm majesty of the everlasting mountains and the brawling impatience of the insignificant torrent. The torrent, however, has already set its mark on the mountains; and you see is surely, though slowly, having the best of it. It works, and works incessantly day and night; winter and summer; fair weather and foul. Everything that occurs aids it. The mountain merely stands still to be kicked to death by grass-hoppers. But the end of the conflict will be their mutual destruction. The torrent will so far carry away the mountain, that the mountain will no longer be able to feed the torrent. Probably, in the ages preceding the torrent, a glacier, availing itself of some aboriginal facilities in the lay of the ground, commenced the work of excavation, which its successor, the torrent, took up, and has since continued in the line thus prepared for it.

La belle horreur of the gorge of Gondo, its sheer, adamantine, mountain-high precipices, its terrific chasms, its overhanging rocks, its raging torrent, its rugged peaks against the sky, make it the great sight of the ascent. Two bits interested me especially at the moment, and have impressed themselves on my mind more distinctly than the rest. The first was the Fall of the Frosinone. Crashing and roaring, it leaps down from the mountain, a dozen yards or so from the road, under which it passes, beneath a most audaciously conceived and executed bridge, and, immediately, on your left, rushes into the torrent of the Gorge. The road, at once, enters the long tunnel of the Gondo, upon which the bridge abuts. Here is an unparalleled combination of extraordinary and stirring objects. The other is a cascade, a little way off, of a character, in every particular, the opposite of that of the Fall of the Frosinone. It is on the other side of the Gorge. Here there is no ruggedness in the rock. The cleavage of nature has left it, from top to bottom, with a polished surface. Over this almost perpendicular face of the mountain the water glides down so smoothly and so noiselessly that, at night, you would pass it without being aware of the existence of the cascade. The water is as smooth as the rock, and so transparent that you everywhere see the rock through it. It is only, everywhere, equally marked with a delicate network of lines, and bars, of white foam. The effect is precisely that of an endless broad band of lace, rapidly and everlastingly, drawn down the side of the mountain.

The day was bright and warm; and the walk, being all the while against the collar, brought one into the category of thirsty souls. I must have drunk, I believe, twenty times at the little runnels that crossed the road. However heated you may be, and however cold the water, no bad consequences appear to ensue. At 12.30 P.M. I got to the village of Simplon. Here I breakfasted, or dined, for under the circumstances the meal was as much breakfast as dinner; or, rather, it was both in one. As I was now just twenty-two miles from Domo D’Ossola, that is just half way to Brieg, I had thought of sleeping here. Finding the house, however, in possession of a company of strolling Italian players, whose noise and childishness were insufferable, I left the hotel—uninviting enough of itself from the slovenly, dirty look of everything about it; and made for the Hospice, five miles further on. I found it in a sheltered, green depression, on the very summit of the pass. It is a large rectangular massive building, well able to set at defiance even an Alpine winter storm. As it has no stabling, it takes in only those who come on foot.