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.

Michelangelo writes to his brother Giovan Simone (May 2) describing the bands of exiles who hovered round the city and kept its burghers in alarm: "The folk are stifling in their coats of mail; for during four days past the whole county is under arms, in great confusion and peril, especially the party of the Church."

The king of Prussia having left a garrison in Prague, which he commanded to put the burghers to death, if they left their houses in the night, went forward to take the other towns and fortresses, expecting, perhaps, that prince Charles would be interrupted in his march; but the French, though they appeared to follow him, either could not, or would not, overtake him.

The character of the agitation was no more to be judged by its jokes and epigrams, than the gloomy glory of the English Puritans by the grotesque names of their saints, or the stern resolution of the Dutch burghers by their guilds of rhetoric and symbolical melodrama.

" It is possible that, as some historians have thought, Froissart, being less favorable to burghers than to princes, did not deny himself a little exaggeration in this portrait of a great burgher-patriot transformed by the force of events and passions into a demagogic tyrant.

In these four discreet men we have the forerunners of the two burghers from each town who were summoned by Earl Simon to the famous parliament of 1265, as well as of the two knights from each shire whom the king had summoned eleven years before.

A son of Artaveldt started forth at this juncture, when the popular cause seemed lost, and joining with his fellow-citizens, John Lyons and Peter du Bois, he led seven thousand resolute burghers against forty thousand feudal vassals.

The populace and the burghers at Brussels have quarrelled, and fought a little.

The bugle blast upon the air with clarion tone is heard, The burghers on the city wall reply with scoffing word; And like the noise of thunder the clattering squadrons haste, And on his charger fleet he leads his army o'er the waste.

The son of a burgher with whom Durward had made friends undertook to guide the Countess Isabelle and her companion to the frontiers of Burgundy.

So great was the fame of Master Gerard that he was often called in to settle the mercantile quarrels of the burghers among themselves, and was even chosen as arbiter between those of other towns.

This board, called the Nove della Milizia, or the Nine, were empowered to enrol all the burghers under arms, and to take charge of the walls, towers, bastions, and other fortifications.

The governing bodies of the richer towns were winning the right to exercise absolute jurisdiction over the burghers within their own walls.

These watch-towers, the monuments of liberty, became as necessary for the burghers as the clock-towers of their cathedrals, whose brilliant peals and joyous chimes gave zest to the popular feasts (Fig. 37).