thought that men who were totally inexperienced in the affairs of government could conduct matters properly,—­an old and favourite appeal with the disciples of political exclusion.  I endeavoured to persuade him that the art of administering was no great art; that there was more danger of rulers knowing too much than of their knowing too little, old soldiers proverbially taking better care of themselves than young soldiers; that he must not expect too much, for they that know the practices of free governments, well know it is hopeless to think of keeping pure and disinterested men long in office, even as men go, there being a corrupting influence about the very exercise of power that forbids the hope; and that all which shrewd observers look for in popular institutions is a greater check than common on the selfishness of those to whom authority is confided.  I told him the man who courts popular favour in a republic, would court a prince in a monarchy, the elements of a demagogue and a courtier being exactly the same; and that, under either system, except in extraordinary instances, it was useless to attempt excluding such men from authority, since their selfishness was more active than the feelings of the disinterested; that, in our own case, so long as the impetus of the revolution and the influence of great events lasted, we had great men in the ascendant, but, now that matters were jogging on regularly, and under their common-place aspects, we were obliged to take up with merely clever managers; that one of the wisest men that had ever lived (Bacon) had said, that “few men rise to power in a state, without a union of great and mean qualities,” and that this was probably as true at Berne as it is at Washington, and as true at Paris as at either; that the old system in his country savoured too much of the policy of giving the milk of two cows to one calf, and that he must remember it was a system that made very bad as well as very good veal, whereas for ordinary purposes it was better to have the same quantity of merely good veal; and, in short, that he himself would soon be surprised at discovering how soon the new rulers would acquire all the useful habits of their predecessors, and I advised him to look out that they did not acquire some of their bad ones too.

I never flattered myself with producing a change of opinion in the captain, who always listened politely, but with just such an air of credulity as you might suppose one born to the benefits of the Burgerschaft, and who had got to be fifty, would listen to a dead attack on all his most cherished prejudices.

The next day was Sunday, and we still lingered in our comfortable quarters at the Crown.  I walked on the Plateforme before breakfast, and got another of those admirable views of the Upper Alps, which, notwithstanding the great beauty of its position and immediate environs, form the principal attraction of Berne.  The peaks were draped rather than veiled in clouds, and it was not easy to say which was the most brilliant, the snow-white vapour that adorned their sides, or the icy glaciers themselves.  Still they were distinct from each other, forming some such contrast as that which exists between the raised and sunken parts on the faces of new coin.