As the Grisons had equal cause with the Confederates to fear the power and purposes of Emperor Maximilian, the Gray League, 1497, and that of God's House, 1498, made a friendly and defensive alliance with Zurich, Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, and Glarus.

They were properly united only with the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, as with a common centre, but among themselves by special treaties.

Only in the shepherd cantonsUri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, also Zug, Glarus, and Appenzelldid the country people possess equal rights, and, in the city cantons, only the burghers of the cities; and often, even among these latter, only a few rich or ancient families.

you require a vent for your energies," had Rudolf Reding of Schwyz already said, when, years before, he saw the free life of the young men after the Burgundian war.

Then the King of France received twenty thousand men from the cantons with whom he was allied; maintained himself in Italy, and gave to the three cantons, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, 1502-1503, the districts of Palenza, Riviera, and Bellenz.

THE MEN OF SCHWYZ.

Schwyz lies at the foot of the Hacken Mountain, which rises with double peaks known as the Mythen, (Murray and the tourists, with dubious etymological right, translate Mitres,)with the dark forests above it on the slopes, and the green openings sparkling in the sunlight, where men and their herds of cattle breathe a purer air.

Touching the origin of these men of Schwyz, there is a tradition, handed down from father to son, which runs in this wise.

They besought of God a land like that of their ancestors, where they might pasture their cattle in peace; and God led them into the country of Brochenburg, and they built there Schwyz; and the people increased, and there was no more room for them in the valley.

And of old time, also, the Emperors have admitted that these people of their own free will sought and obtained the protection of the Empire,a privilege by no means extended to all the dwellers of the Waldstätte, (or Forest Cantons,) but confined to the men of Schwyz.

The people of Schwyz were strengthened in their adherence to the authentic Word of God, as it was with the Apostles, without the use of pictures or the bones of saints; this Word they learned by heart, and made little of the additions of men; hence they got to be heretics, and were called Manicheans; but Catholicism conquered them at last.

Whereupon the Abbot laid his complaint before Henry V. at Basel, where Graf Rudolph of Lenzburg, Bailiff of Schwyz, spoke for them.

And now it came the Emperor's turn for the ban; the whole Imperial House of Hohenstaufen fell into spiritual disgrace; Friedrich II. was cursed at Lyons as a blasphemer; but these things did not turn away the hearts of the men of Schwyz from his House.

But he was hateful to them, nevertheless; and although we know nothing of the way in which he administered his office, we conjecture that it was partly because the Emperor who appointed him was not of the House of Hohenstaufen, to which they were attached, and partly because he claimed that the office of Bailiff was hereditary in his family, whereas the men of Schwyz preferred to offer it of their own free will to whom they would.

And now Rudolph, Count of Hapsburg, founder of the Austrian monarchy, strides into the history of the men of Schwyz.

He appointed Bailiffs whose poverty and avarice were the cause of much oppression, emboldened as they were by the ill-feeling of the King towards the men of Schwyz, whose freedom the King had refused to confirm, and waited only for opportunity to annihilate their ancient rights, after the example he had already set in Vienna and Styria.

The Imperial Bailiffs resolved to take up their abode in the Forest Cantons,Landenberg in Unterwalden, near Sarnen, in a castle of the King's, while Gessler built a prison-castle by Altorf in Uri; for within the memory of men no lord had dwelt in Schwyz.

The peace and happy security of the men of Schwyz were gone, and they looked in one another's faces for the thing that was to be done.

In this moment of deadly danger, Gessler commanded them to unbind Tell, who, he knew, was an excellent boatman; and as they passed by the foot of the Axen Mountain, to the right as you come out of the Bay of Uri, Tell grasped his bow and leaped upon a flat rock there, climbed up the mountain while the boat tossed to and fro against the rocks, and fled through the land of the men of Schwyz.

Schiller had sung of Wilhelm Tell; and the men of Schwyz remembered him on that occasion, too, on the Rütli, with their confederates from Oberwalden and Niederwalden.

On the afternoon of the 11th of November, they met at Brunnen,on the lake, as we have said,the men of Schwyz embarking in one great boat, amidst peals of music, while numberless little canoes received the others.

As they are about to break up at last, the Landammann Styger of Schwyz suggests a beautiful thing to them:"As

Morell, monk of Einsiedeln, the music by Baumgartner of Zürich; Unterwalden takes up the burden; then Schwyz; then all three in chorus;and the echo of the fresh voices among the rocks there was as in a cathedral.

EINSIEDELN (8), a town in the canton of Schwyz, Switzerland; has a Benedictine abbey, containing a famous black image of the Virgin, credited with miraculous powers, which attracts, it is said, 200,000 pilgrims annually.

REDING, ALOYS VON, a Swiss patriot, born in Schwyz; was the bold defender of Swiss independence against the French, in which he was in the end defeated (1755-1818).