mass is said, and a sermon preached to the people, who go up in solemn procession of little boats, looked friendly over to them; and the countrymen of Schiller, present for the first time from Stuttgart and Munich, wondered at the solemn beauty of the snowpeaks reflected in the waters below.  A chorus of many voices broke upon the mountain-stillness, as the little fleet approached the Ruetli; the men of Uri, already there, “the first on the spot,” and with them the men of Gersau, a valiant band, answered in a song of welcome; and they shook each other by the hand, and made a little circle, three hundred in all, upon the Ruetli; and Lusser of Uri thanked the men of Schwyz for the invitation to remember their fathers here on the five hundred and fifty-second anniversary of the deeds which Schiller has so gloriously sung.  We best remember the poet by repeating and upholding his words:—­

  “Wir wollen seyn ein einzig Volk von Bruedern,
  In keiner Noth uns trennen und Gefahr. 
  Wir wollen frey seyn, wie die Vaeter waren,
  Eher den Tod als in der Knechtschaft leben. 
  Wir wollen trauen auf den hoechsten Gott,
  Und uns nicht fuerchten vor der Macht der
  Menschen.”

  “One people will we be,—­a band of brothers;
  No danger, no distress shall sunder us. 
  We will be freemen as our fathers were,
  And sooner welcome death than live as slaves. 
  We will rely on God’s almighty arm,
  And never quail before the power of man.” [B]

[Footnote B:  Rev. C. T. Brooks’s translation, p. 53.]

Then they read the scene of the Ruetli Oath from Schiller’s play, and sing the Swiss national song, “Callest thou, my Fatherland?” And the pastor Tschuemperlin admonishes them that they best cultivate the spirit of Schiller and Tell by worthy training of their children.  As they are about to break up at last, the Landammann Styger of Schwyz suggests a beautiful thing to them:—­“As we came from Brunnen, and looked up at the Mytenstein as we passed it,—­the great pyramid rising up there out of the water as if meant by Nature for a monument,—­it seemed to us that a memorial tablet should be placed there, simple like the column itself, with words like these:  ’To Him who wrote “Tell,” on his One Hundredth Birthday, the Original Cantons.’” And the proposition was received with unanimous shout of assent.  “This was the worthy ending of the Schiller-Festival on the Ruetli,” says the contemporary chronicle.

On the 10th day of November, 1859, also, there was put into the hands of the Central Committee of the Society of the Swiss Union the deed of purchase of the Ruetli.  It is in the handwriting of Franz Lusser of Uri, Clerk of the Court, and dated the 10th of November, the birthday of Schiller.  Thus Switzerland owns its sacred places, and the title-deeds long laid up in its heart are written out at last.