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on its very verge. Arts, sciences, and letters have also found more encouragement atZurich than in any other town of Switzerland .

Agriculture is perhaps better cultivated in this than in most other parts of Switzerland ;manuring is well understood, and irrigation is successfully practised. “Anywhere in theneighbourhood of Zurich, ” says Inglis, “ one is struck with the extraordinary industry ofthe inhabitants, and if we learn that a proprietor here has a return of ten per cent., weare inclined to say ‘ he deserves it.’ It is impossible to look at a field, a garden, a hedge,scarcely even a tree or a flower, without perceiving proofs of the extreme care andindustry that are bestowed on the cultivation of the soil. If, for example, a path leadsthrough or by the side of a field 'of grain, the corn is not, as in England, permitted to lieover the path, but is everywhere bounded by a fence. If you look into a field towardsevening, where there are largo beds of cauliflower or cabbage, you will find that everysingle plant has been watered. In the gardens, which around Zurich are extremely large,the most punctilious care is evinced in regard to the culture of every product.”

“ I have seldom entered a rural dwelling,” says Dr. Bowring, “ without finding one ormore looms in it employed in the weaving of silk or cotton. If the labours of the fielddemand the hands of the peasant, his wife or children arc occupied in manufacturingindustry. When lighter toils suffice for the agricultural part of the family exertions, thefemales and the young people resign the loom to the father or the brothers. The inter-stices of agricultural labour are filled up by manufacturing employment; and in morethan half of the operations of Zurich the farmer and the weaver are united.”

Zurich is still called the Athens of German Switzerland . Science and literaturehave been cultivated in that city for ages, and many valuable works have issued from itspresses. Of one of its most celebrated men, Coxe has left the following record :—

“ I did not omit waiting upon Solomon Gesner, the celebrated author of the death ofAbel, and of several idyls, which for their delicate and elegant simplicity are justlyesteemed. They abound with those nice touches of exquisite sensibility which discovera mind warmed with the finest sentiments ; and love is represented in the chastestcolouring of innocence, virtue, and benevolence. Nor has he confined his subjectsmerely to the tender passion ; paternal affection, and filial reverence, gratitude,humanity, in short every moral duty is exhibited and inculcated in the most pleasingand affecting manner. He has for some time renounced poetry, in order to assume thepencil; and painting is at present his favourite amusement. A treatise which he haspublished on landscapes discovers the elegance of his taste and the versatility of hisgenius ; while his compositions in both kinds prove the resemblance of the two arts, andthat the conceptions of the poet and the painter are congenial. His drawings in black andwhite are preferable to his paintings ; for, although the ideas in both are equallybeautiful or sublime, the colouring is inferior to the design. He has published ahandsome edition of his writings in quarto, in which every part of the work is carried onby himself; he prints them at his own press, and is at once both the drawer andengraver of the plates. It is to be lamented that he has renounced poetry; for, whileordinary writers spring up in great plenty, authors of real genius are rare and uncommon.His drawings are seen only by a few ; but his writings are dispersed abroad, translatedinto every language, and will be admired by future ages, as long as there remains arelish for true pastoral simplicity, or taste for original composition. lie is plain in hismanners, open, affable, and obliging in his address, and of singular modesty.”

Another sketch from the same pen is not a little amusing:—

“ I called upon Mr. Lavater, a clergyman at Zurich , and celebrated physiognomist,who has published four large volumes in quarto upon that fanciful subject. Thatparticular passions have a certain effect upon particular features, is evident to the mostcommon observer ; and it may be conceived, that an habitual indulgence of these passions