These pillars so stand out toward the street as to give the house-fronts a curved look.  Above are balconies, in which, upon red cushions, sit the daughters of Berne, reading and sewing, and watching their neighbors; and in nearly every window are quantities of flowers of the most brilliant colors.  The gray stone of the houses, which are piled up from the streets, harmonizes well with the colors in the windows and balconies, and the scene is quite Oriental as one looks down, especially if it be upon a market morning, when the streets are as thronged as the Strand.  Several terraces, with great trees, overlook the river, and command prospects of the Alps.  These are public places; for the city government has a queer notion that trees are not hideous, and that a part of the use of living is the enjoyment of the beautiful.  I saw an elegant bank building, with carved figures on the front, and at each side of the entrance door a large stand of flowers,—­oleanders, geraniums, and fuchsias; while the windows and balconies above bloomed with a like warmth of floral color.  Would you put an American bank president in the Retreat who should so decorate his banking-house?  We all admire the tasteful display of flowers in foreign towns:  we go home, and carry nothing with us but a recollection.  But Berne has also fountains everywhere; some of them grotesque, like the ogre that devours his own children, but all a refreshment and delight.  And it has also its clock-tower, with one of those ingenious pieces of mechanism, in which the sober people of this region take pleasure.  At the hour, a procession of little bears goes round, a jolly figure strikes the time, a cock flaps his wings and crows, and a solemn Turk opens his mouth to announce the flight of the hours.  It is more grotesque, but less elaborate, than the equally childish toy in the cathedral at Strasburg.

We went Sunday morning to the cathedral; and the excellent woman who guards the portal—­where in ancient stone the Last Judgment is enacted, and the cheerful and conceited wise virgins stand over against the foolish virgins, one of whom has been in the penitential attitude of having a stone finger in her eye now for over three hundred years—­refused at first to admit us to the German Lutheran service, which was just beginning.  It seems that doors are locked, and no one is allowed to issue forth until after service.  There seems to be an impression that strangers go only to hear the organ, which is a sort of rival of that at Freiburg, and do not care much for the well-prepared and protracted discourse in Swiss-German.  We agreed to the terms of admission; but it did not speak well for former travelers that the woman should think it necessary to say, “You must sit still, and not talk.”  It is a barn-like interior.  The women all sit on hard, high-backed benches in the center of the church, and the men on hard, higher-backed benches about the sides, inclosing and facing the women, who are more directly under the droppings of the little pulpit, hung on one of the pillars,—­a very solemn and devout congregation, who sang very well, and paid strict attention to the sermon.