Duke of Milan, and several other Chris tian Princes. Some contemporary Artist-struck with the awful visitation that swept away together the Prince and the Peasantthe Cardinal and the Capuchin, depicted upon the gloomy walls a Dance of Death the original of the famous sketches of Holbein. In this dismal masquerade a hundred Skeletons, whose distorted attitudes bespeak horrific triumph, lead up, in melancholy duet, the reluctant victims of the King of Terrors. It was here, by the light of flaring torches, in the court-yard of an antiquated Hotel, that Maria Theresa (the only Member of the immediate Family of Louis XVI. that was permitted to survive the Revolution, Revolution, which hurled the Monarch from his throne) was received by the Imperial Ambassador, who indignantly rejected the splendid outfit, with which the National Convention had thought proper to send away the Daughter of their Sovereign. The Public Library preserves, with appropriate veneration, some Portraits from the pencil of Holbein—a contemporary Copy of the Minutes of the Council -and the letters of Erasmus written to his friend Amberbachius, when the cautious and timid Reformer had quitted Basil, on account of the religious, or political, disputes that disturbed his philosophic repose. But But the absurd custom of keeping the clocks an hour faster than the true time of day no longer puzzles the curiosity of Travellers, who are become, in this Age of innovations, equally indifferent, whether it originated from the indolence of the Council-the vigilance of the Magistrates -or the declination of the sun dial, which, not having been corrected at the Reformation, the scrupulous Municipality could never afterward be persuaded to reform. There was a Roman Colony in this neighbourhood, and the Country People of the Canton often plough up the coins of the Emperors, from Augustus to Constantine; as in America, arrow heads and stone axes-the silent testimonials of Aboriginal population. Strangers Strangers seldom quit Basil without carrying away with them some memorials of Switzerland from the print shop of Mechel, the celebrated Engraver, who has made an ample collection of Swiss views-the mountain and the valleythe glacier and the lake; to which he has given historic interest by scrupulously preserving those local habiliments, handed down from Father to Son, by the plodding Peasantry of the isolated Can tons. We have sold our carriage to the Innkeeper; and tomorrow we prosecute our journey in a heavy Phæton, hired by the day—a circumstance no less unpromising of expedition than the Driver's pipe: but no matter, I am sick of the impositions of the Post, and we can amuse ourselves |