quaint little inn, dined humbly yet very heartily on a crust of bread and cheese, washed down with the common perry of the country. One person only besides ourselves occupied the low cross-barred room, black with the smoke of a thousand pipes. This was a red-faced man, some forty years old, with a prodigious power of voice, such as that with which illustrious Farel, the Boanerges of the Reformation, shook the pulpits of Zurich, three centuries ago, overpowering the noise of drums and trumpets raised to prevent his being heard. He turned out, we were not long in learning— for we make a point of talking to everybody with whom we happen to be thrown into company, so that he does not wear a fine coat-to be the schoolmaster of Sempach; and a proud and a happy pedagogue was he, to think that an Englishman should have walked over, all the way from Lucerne, on a pilgrimage to his native place. The good man fought over the battle again, as earnestly and as vividly as though it were an event of last year roaring at times even louder than his ordinary pitch of talking, and striking with his stick upon the table, by way of illustrating his narrative, blows more smacking and energetic than any, we sincerely trust, which he was in the habit of bestowing on his pupils. One of his stories-for many a story had he, not to be found in Planta or in Zshokke was as follows:

The Lake of Sempach has always been renowned for the number and excellence of its fish, abounding in many varieties of them which are to be found in no other Swiss water. The right of taking them with nets -for anybody is at liberty to angle there-has belonged from time immemorial to the burghers of Lucerne, who are in the habit of appointing a fisherman to protect their privileges. In the year 1386 Hans Halwyl was the fisherman-a very prudent and peaceable sort of man, who was of opinion that all fighting is a quarrelsome kind of business, alike to be deprecated and avoided. Good Hans remained quietly in his boat, upon the lake, while the battle was going forward, looking on as though it were a play that was being enacted for his special entertainment, and caring very little, if the truth be told, which party should prove victorious. Now among the fugitives that came pouring down the hill, when the fight was over, was an Austrian Knight, in a splendid suit of gilded armour. Seeing the fisherman sitting in his boat, the Knight, who appeared to be quite as anxious as any plebeian to escape from the halberts Hans Halwyl of the pursuing Swiss, implored him to ferry him across. assented; but when the boat was in the deepest part of the lake-by an accident very similar to that which occurred to the coach of Mr. Weller the elder, on its way down to the borough of Eatanswill, laden with voters-it was unhappily overturned. Hans escaped by swimming; but the Knight sank at once to the bottom, and, probably thinking that to be

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the safest place, never came up again in his lifetime. The next morning Hans repaired to Lucerne, and informed the chief burgher that he had taken a wonderful fish in the lake, of a singular form, extraordinary magnitude, and covered with yellow scales. He requested, as his fee upon the occasion, that he might be allowed to keep the scales. The burgher readily promised this-thinking, perchance, in his secret soul, that his friend the fisherman was a very simple fellow for his pains; but what he thought a short while afterwards, when the corpse of the Knight was brought to him, stripped of his valuable armour, with Hans Halwyl's duty to the chief burgher, and he had sent his worship the fish but kept the scales for himself, tradition has not recorded. Had he lived in the present day, it had probably occurred to him that Hans would have made a very excellent member of the Peace Society, for some other reasons just about as disinterested as his distaste for fighting.

Two other circumstances connected with the battle of Sempach, a little more authentic than the tale of the fisherman-at least we can speak to the truth of them ourselves, while the schoolmaster abroad is our only authority for the other-we will record. The anniversary of that great day, after the lapse of four hundred and sixty-eight years, is still celebrated very solemnly, and joyously at the same time, in the village. Grateful thanks to God, for the signal deliverance wrought by his hand, are offered up in the church; tattered old banners, the trophies of the fight, are paraded about, with music and patriotic songs; the young men practice in the rifle-ground; it is a public holiday for all classes; and the day closes with a feast, at which the whole population of the place, men, women, and children in arms, are present.

The other one is this-that there is now being collected in Switzerland a national fund for the erection of a monument to Winkelried, on the spot where he fell. How warm and general is the feeling which has led to it may be inferred, not more from the enormous number of the subscribers than from the miscellaneous character of the donations: women's jewellery, articles of clothing, wine, tobacco, pictures, books, and children's toys, are daily announced, in the journals, as having been contributed in aid of the undertaking.

May we venture to make these pages the vehicle of a suggestion to our own countrymen? Between England and Switzerland there has existed, from the earliest times, a mutual feeling of liking and respect. On the part of England towards Austria there has existed, at least of late years, a feeling of aversion and contempt. Can we more aptly give expression to both these feelings than by honouring the memory of a hero, in the truest and noblest sense of a word more abused, perhaps, than any in the language-a man worthy in every respect to have been born an

Englishman? If any of our readers, influenced by these emotions, should incline, as we hope will be the case, to add their offerings to those of the Swiss people, let them forward them, together with their addresses, to the office of The New Monthly Review. We who write these lines will undertake that they shall reach their destination, and that a copy of the newspaper in which they are acknowledged by the Committee shall be sent to every contributor.

The name of Winkelried has long been celebrated in the annals of the canton of Unterwalden, before the heroic death of the great Arnold had invested it with a renown extending over the whole civilized world. "Few noble families," says the historian Muller, 66 can boast so many truly distinguished progenitors as the peasant race of Winkelried." One of the number, Struth Von Winkelried, was the leader of the Auxiliaries, whom the cantons of Schwytz, Uri, and Unterwalden, sent to the assistance of the Emperor Frederick the Second, in the year 1240; and distinguished himself so much at the siege of Faenza, that he was created Knight and Noble, on the field of battle, in the presence of the whole army, by the grateful Emperor,—dignities which, it deserves to be mentioned, he hastened to lay aside the moment he returned to his own country.

Tradition, benevolent reader, has preserved an anecdote of this brave warrior, with which we will not apologize for the troubling thee: the rather that it is necessary to explain for what reason-long lost sight of— we have headed this Paper (Article we will not deign to call it, for we are no haberdasher) with the name of the Lord Rayleigh.

In the year 1250, according to the chronicles of Tschudi and Cysat, the valley of Ennetmoos in Unterwalden was infested by one of those terrible dragons which would appear to have been so common in the middle ages, to the destruction of beasts and men, the imminent peril of so many virgins, and the immortal glory of so many champions. Struth Von Winkelried-who, we regret to say, had been condemned to banishment from the canton, shortly after his return from Italy, for knocking on the head one of his late companions in glory-offered to attack the public enemy, on the condition that if he succeeded in killing him his sentence should be repealed. His countrymen having readily assented to this very reasonable proposition, the valiant Struth lost no time in repairing to the haunt of the dragon. "He was armed," says the chronicler Tschudi, "with a cuirass, as ponderous as that which protected the breast of Goliath; in his right hand he carried that famous sword of his, wherewith he had cleft asunder so many rebels to the great Emperor; in his left hand was a long lance, on the point of which, wrapped in a sheep-skin, was a fagot of prickly thorns. Thus equipped, he sallied forth at night

fall, and concealed himself behind a thicket which grew near to the mouth of the cavern. But the spear, with the sheep-skin at the top of it, he thrust through the bushes to the other side: so that it seemed to be an animal entangled therein, like to the ram of good father Abraham. At break of day the dragon awoke; and espying the sheep-skin, he darted furiously at it, and swallowed it with a single gulp. Then the Knight came out from his hiding-place: he pressed the fagot, with his long lance, firmly down the monster's throat; and while it vainly endeavoured to disgorge it, belching forth torrents of black blood and venom, he dealt it many fierce blows with his sword, and by God's blessing prevailed against it, and put an end to its baleful existence."

Struth Von Winkelried, we are told, did not survive many hours his encounter with the Echidna of Ennetmoos. The blood of the monster, trickling down his sword, fell upon an unhealed wound in his hand, and spread through the whole of his frame, as rapidly and with as deadly an effect as the slaver of the rattlesnake or cobra-capella.

One of his sons, also named Struth, was of a like adventurous spirit and daring courage with his father. He, too, greedily sought opportunities to distinguish himself; but the Emperor had no more enemies to be hewed down in Italy, or elsewhere, and the dragon of Ennetmoos would appear to have died "sine prole," leaving no inheritors of his cavern. Disgusted with the tameness of the times in his own country, Struth, the younger, repaired to England: hoping, it may be supposed, to find in that barbarous island a reasonable quantity of giants to encounter, and to exterminate certain serpents. Whether he succeeded in these laudable aspirations, we have no means of knowing; "but this," exclaims Mr. Dod, in his Peerage and Baronetage for Great Britain, "is an undoubted fact, that he acquired lands in the county of Essex, slightly altered his name from Struth to Strutt, and was the ancestor of the Right Honourable John James, first Baron of Rayleigh."

Reader, this is all we have to tell thee of that nobleman; and for the best reason in the world-because it is all that we know about him.

NOMADIC SKETCHES.

No. 1.

In times present, when every portion of this terraqueous globe, from Camden Town to Candahar inclusive, is travelled over and exploité, it is easy to conceive why the erratic British public hesitates to peruse, much less to purchase, any locomotive records, however graphic they may be. When we behold Fitz-Buggins abroad, tablettes à la main, toiling up pillars, belfries, hills, and every other vantage-ground, that he may gain inspiration for his "original impressions" on the country generally, and then descending, to repeat, Sisyphus-like, the same process in another locality; when we hear him conversing with the natives, in a mongrel dialect—a curious cross between Anglo-Gallic and Indo-Germanic !—in order to glean suggestions for architypal notions on the people in particular, and incorporate these valuable acquisitions, as a kind of adventitious matter, with the eclectic marrow of his Guide-book-for, be it known, "Hand-books," " Manuals," and "Continental Vade-mecums," are considerably subsidized to tumulate the pages of "Rambling Recollections" here, "Jottings down" there, and all the ephemeral works belonging to this legionary family of literature;—I repeat, for I have lost myself in a protracted parenthesis, when I see Fitz-B. at this sort of work, I mentally enquire who on earth's face will purchase the salmi he is thus preparing to serve up to the public, under the title of "Ten days in Belgium"? Surely, we do not want to know the altitude of Antwerp cathedral, nor the height of St. Gudule! The field of Waterloo is fully as familiar to us all as the green-sward of any of our London parks! And I venture to say, that for one Englishman who has visited York, Durham, Lancaster, or any of our northern towns, for pleasure merely, a score might be found intimately acquainted with Mons, Tournay, and Liège !

Why, are we not all intimate with the clerk at the Boulogne railwaystation? The young ladies in the Amiens refreshment-rooms call us by our Christian name, and never demand from us the exorbitant price of four francs for an isolated peach. The Garçon at Creil is solicitous about our health, while serving us with coffee; and the Douanier at Paris inquires regularly after our respected grandmother, as he hunts for contraband cauliflowers in our carpet-bag. "A Tea-party in Teheran," "Bagdad Balls," "The Snobs of Samarcand," and works of similarly