‘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.’ ‘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 o

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

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 th

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

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

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 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 on

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 roc

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.

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 mornin

My first hour at Brieg was spent in finding the single barber of the place. He was an idle fellow; and, having it all his own way, was, as it appeared, in the habit of devoting his mornings to society and amusement. His evenings, also, we may suppose, were not allowed, like his business, to run entirely to waste. At last by despatching three little boys, in different directions, to search for him, the finder to be rewarded with half a franc, I succeeded in bringing him back to his razors: mine w

September 11. —We were off at 6 A.M. for a long day over the Grimsel Pass to Meiringen. As usual, my wife and I on foot, and the little man on horseback. You begin the ascent of the mountain immediately from the hotel. It is stiff walking all the way to the top, which is reached in about an hour. The height above the sea is somewhat more than 7,000 feet. On the side of the mountain the most conspicuous plant is the Rhododendron, the rose of the Alps. On the summit of the pass is a dark tarn. The

September 12. —This morning we went by char from Meiringen to Interlaken, along the northern side of the Lake of Brienz. Again, if we had had time, it would have been better to have walked along the southern side, putting up for the night at Giesbach. While stopping at the town of Brienz to bait the horse, we visited some of the wood-carving shops, in one of which we found a school for indoctrinating children in the mysteries, not of the three R’s, but of this trade, which is the great industry

September 14. —Returned early in our voiture to Interlaken. From the tramping point of view, the right thing to have done in the afternoon would have been to have ascended one of the ranges of mountains, which shut in Interlaken on the right and left. But it was fair that the little man should have his turn, and his heart was all for the railway, the steamer, and the Lake of Thun: and so we went by rail, and boat, to Thun and back. The railway, with its smart carriages, some of them two stories

At a little after 8 A.M. we entered Leukabad, having been out three hours from Schwarenbach. I was content that both our personnel and our matériel were safe, plus the ineffaceable impression on our minds of the pass itself. Having breakfasted—it is pleasant to have lived so much before breakfast—we sallied forth to look at the town and the baths. There are several hotels in the place, and they were all pretty well tenanted. Still the aspect of things was not lively. There was none of the stir y

I will here give two or three pages to the blue boy. He is not at all aware that I am about to put him into print. The reader, I trust, will think that the betrayal of confidence involved in my doing so is not altogether unjustifiable. I mentioned that on the day we crossed the Grimsel, from the Rhone Glacier to Meiringen, he was unusually silent. He afterwards told me that he had then been engaged in composing a drama, which was to be entitled ‘The Drama of the Mountains,’ in which the most con

For the word or two I have to say about the Swiss monster hotels, I can make the one mentioned at the close of the twelfth chapter my point de départ with safety; for I never entered it, and only know from what I saw outside, that it is fire-new, and as monstrous as new. As you look at one of these modern caravansaries, you are amused at thinking how precisely everything in it is the facsimile of all that you have seen in a score of others. The Swiss believe, and act, too, on the belief, that th

BERNE—SWISS FOUNTAINS—ZURICH—MUSEUM OF RELICS FROM ANCIENT LAKE-VILLAGES—BAUR EN VILLE—RÉCOLTE DES VOYAGEURS—C’EST UN PAUVRE PAYS September 19. —We spent the day at Vevey. Vineyards were everywhere along the sides of the railway. It is pleasing to note the care with which the vine, that peerless gift of Nature’s bounty to man, is cultivated; how the land is terraced and fenced, and how scrupulously clean it is kept. This indicates the value of the land that is adapted to its growth, and is in ke

It has long been my practice, wherever I find myself, to inquire into the provisions made for education, and into the modes of teaching adopted; and, also, by observation, and talking to the people themselves, to do what I can, as far as opportunities go, to collect materials for enabling me to form an opinion on the results and fruits of what has been done. I did this wherever I was on this excursion; and as it was my object in going to Zurich to see its Polytechnic University, I will here give

ELSASS—LOTHRINGEN—METZ—GRAVELOTTE—MOTHER OF THE CURÉ OF STE. MARIE AUX CHÊNES—WATERLOO. I included Mulhouse, Colmar, Strasbourg, Bitche, and Metz in my homeward journey. As I passed along, the higher peaks of the Vosges were white with recently fallen snow. It is not, however, the forest-clad mountains, and their snow-capped summits which interest most the thought of the traveller, as he traverses this district, now, but the consequences of that recent transference of power, of which the names j

HOW THE OBSERVATION AND KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE, AND THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIETY AFFECT RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. AN INSTRUCTIVE PARALLELISM. CONCLUSION. It was 8 o’clock in the evening when I left Brussels. At 6 o’clock the next morning I stepped upon the platform of the Charing Cross Station. So ended, after very nearly five weeks, my little excursion. In the foregoing pages I have set down, not only what I saw, which could not have had much novelty, but the thoughts, also, as well about man as about n