The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings.  I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them.  Millions of them.  But they are libels upon him, every one of them.  There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get.  Even the sun fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all.  The shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting.

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff—­for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff.  His size is colossal, his attitude is noble.  How head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France.  Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass.  The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion—­and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings.  The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.

Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people.  Louis XVI did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him; she is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues which are not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings.  She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head.  None of these qualities are kingly but the last.  Taken together they make a character which would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill luck to miss martyrdom.  With the best intentions to do the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one.  Moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him.  He knew, well enough, that in national emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how he ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink the man and be the king—­but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female saint.  He was not instant in season, but out of season.  He could not be persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good—­he was iron, he was adamant in his stubbornness then—­but as soon as the thing had reached a point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could stop him.  He did not do it because it would be