The Rathhaus, or Town Hall, too, is charming.  It stands, like the Wasserkirche, with one side in the water and the other against the quay.  The style is a sort of reposeful Italian Renaissance, that is florid only in the best artistic sense.  Nor must you miss the so-called “Rueden,” nearby, for its sloping roof and painted walls give it a very captivating look of alert picturesqueness, and it contains a large collection of Pestalozzi souvenirs.

Zurich has more than one claim to the world’s recognition; but no department of its active life, perhaps, merits such unstinted praise as its educational facilities.  First and foremost, the University, with four faculties, modeled upon the German system, but retaining certain distinctive traits that are essentially Swiss—­for instance, the broad and liberal treatment accorded to women students, who are admitted as freely as men, and receive the same instruction.  A great number of Russian girls are always to be seen in Zurich, as at other Swiss universities, working unremittingly to acquire the degrees which they are denied at home.  Not a few American women also have availed themselves of these facilities, especially for the study of medicine....

Zurich is, at the present time, undoubtedly the most important commercial city in Switzerland, having distanced both Basel and Geneva in this direction.  The manufacturing of silk, woolen, and linen fabrics has flourished here since the end of the thirteenth century.  In modern times, however, cotton and machinery have been added as staple articles of manufacture.  Much of the actual weaving is still done in outlying parts of the Canton, in the very cottages of the peasants, so that the click of the loom is heard from open windows in every village and hamlet.

But modern industrial processes are tending continually to drive the weavers from their homes into great centralized factories, and every year this inevitable change becomes more apparent.  It is certainly remarkable that Zurich should succeed in turning out cheap and good machinery, when we remember that every ton of coal and iron has to be imported, since Switzerland possesses not a single mine, either of the one or the other.

THE RIGI[36]

BY W.D.  M’CRACKAN

If you really want to know how the Swiss Confederation came to be, you can not do better than take the train to the top of the Rigi.  You might stumble through many a volume, and not learn so thoroughly the essential causes of this national birth.

Of course, the eye rests first upon the phalanx of snow-crests to the south, then down upon the lake, lying outstretched like some wriggling monster, switching its tail, and finally off to the many places where early Swiss history was made.  In point of fact, you are looking at quite a large slice of Switzerland.  Victor Hugo seized the meaning of this view when he wrote:  “It is a serious hour, and full of meditations, when one has Switzerland thus under the eyes.” ...