EUROPEAN MOSAIC.

CHAPTER I.

LUCERNE AND THE RIGHI.

LUCERNE is a small town of about ten thousand inhabitants, and is more beautifully situated than any other in Switzerland. It lies on the shore of the largest and grandest of the Swiss lakes, while on one side the serrated outline of Mount Pilatus, rising clearly against the sky, is strongly contrasted with the verdant slopes of the Righi on the other. In the distance, across the lake, are long ranges of snow-covered mountains. Behind the town the old towers and walls of its earlier history yet remain. From its situation in the midst of scenery so varied and enchanting, Lucerne should be the source of every enlightenment and liberal influence. But the beauty and grandeur of nature alone never elevate the mind of man. Therefore it is not so strange as it would otherwise be, that Lucerne is merely a fossil remnant of the past, with little more animation than one finds within the walls

of disentombed Pompeii. Here vigor either body or mind is no longer to be found; big and intolerance flourish, and ignorance follow their train. It is like an old ruin, where the and owls of the past flap their dreary wings in darkness, or lurk in many a hidden cranny gloomy hole, far from the light of beneficent da

If there are any ancient pretensions which for a century past lost their hold upon the ma of mankind, they are infallibility in priests legitimacy in monarchs. Yet Lucerne always been, and is now, the very focus of these in S zerland. It was formerly the head-quarters of Jesuits, and the source of all their pernicious fluences in that country, until the Diet in 1 decreed their expulsion and the suppression of t establishments. Lucerne and six other can thereupon determined to offer armed resistanc this ordinance, and for this purpose formed "Sonderbund," or separate league. This rebel against their federal government resembled in m respects that against the government of our country, and met the fate which it deserved. T were defeated by the troops of the Diet at Fribo and Lucerne, and compelled to submit to the stituted authorities. Thus was offered another stance of the "irrepressible conflict" which always exist between the powers of light and t of darkness, and of the ultimate and inevit result of that conflict.

Lucerne has lately been made the rendezy

of legitimacy, by the appearance there of the Duc de Bordeaux, grandson of Charles X. of France, and now titular Comte de Chambord, who claims to be the rightful king of France under the title of Henry V., and is a most fanatical son of the Catholic Church. In the summer of 1862 he held his court there, and about 4000 Frenchmen (out of 36,000,000) came to offer their allegiance to him as their lawful sovereign, and to perform, as his courtiers in the salons of the Schweizer Hof, a part which, however willing, they could not have the privilege of playing at the Tuileries. As the possibility of the return of Henry V. to the throne of his ancestors is about as great as that of the Jesuits to Lucerne, perhaps this place was not ill chosen for the advent of this noonday ghost of legitimacy and bigotry. The Comte issued a proclamation to his adherents, in which he laid down at great length the principles of their conduct as followers of an anointed king, and called upon them all to refrain from voting at the French elections, unless by so doing they could save the church in France from the rapacity of their 35,996,000 misguided and rebellious fellow-citizens. It was a very elaborate document, but had about as great an effect upon the French nation, as an address from the Sphinx to the mummies of Egypt would have upon that country.

Lucerne forms an excellent central point from which excursions can be made in every direction, both by land and water, and hardly any town in

Switzerland offers greater attractions in this respect. From it travellers can visit with facility all the localities made famous by the deeds of Tell, the battle-field of Sempach, the site of the overwhelmed village of Goldau, and many other places of interest. The ascent of the Righi is one of the most agreeable of these expeditions, and one of the most popular. This mountain is only about six thousand feet high, the path to its summit is very easy, and the view is one of the grandest in Switzerland, offering, as it does, a glorious panorama of far-reaching, snowcovered Alps. It is extremely fashionable with tourists to pass the night on the top, where is an excellent hotel, in order to see the sun rise; and this spectacle is none the less interesting from the fact that at least nine tourists out of ten have never seen him rise anywhere, and it is consequently a novel and mysterious phenomenon. The Hotel of the Righi Culm is not unfrequently visited by twenty thousand people in the course of a single season, and on a clear morning the scene at sunrise is one of great animation and amusement.

As few would probably rise at the untimely hour of four o'clock, unless they were called, an extremely loud and dissonant horn is blown at that time, with a blast which would start up anything but a granite block. The hotel is situated a little below the topmost peak of the mountain, on which is a small pavilion. Towards this there soon pours forth a long and irregular procession, most of them as pale from the unwonted effort as "the Grecian

ghosts that in battle were slain." Ladies in deshabille, or uncertain raiment, their tangled hair playing with the morning breeze; portly old gentlemen and ladies with bedclothes wrapped round them, (in spite of the request printed on the walls of all the rooms begging "Messieurs les étrangers" not to do So, which of course reminds them to do that very thing); maiden aunts with frigid Medusa faces and handkerchiefs tied around them to prevent their dear old heads from taking cold; widows in the jauntiest of hats, the nattiest of boots, and the gayest of parasols, having risen before the horn; roistering German students, incessantly piping, who have slept in their shawls on the piazza; grumbling Englishmen, who have been wedged away somewhere under the eaves; Frenchmen and Italians calling for café; sprightly jokes and lambent smiles of gay young ladies, and irrelevant exhortations of elderly ones, as they feel the crash of yielding skirts; original remarks about the weather, and hopes that the sun will do the right thing now or never; calls for Tom and Giovanni and Johannes, and " Où est Jacques? Mon Dieu, il sera trop tard;" and one bright young lady bearing a candle, with the naïve remark that “it is so dark, one surely cannot see the sun rise without it; all these strike the eye and ear, and form a scene which, once viewed, is not easily forgotten.

But gradually all are toned down into comparative quiet, and look forth earnestly over the ruins of Goldau and the mountain - ridges beyond to