ST. MARY OF EINSIEDELN.
FOR four or five days during the month just past the Swiss lake of the " Four Cantons " was more enlivened, and the steamers running upon its waters were more thronged, than they are likely to be even in a month, when the full tide of British and Yankee tourists shall have set in. The Swiss Tir Federal was celebrating its twentieth or twenty-fifth anniversary, and every patriotic Switzer who, besides possessing a rifle and knowing how to use it (which they almost all do), had got the money and time to spare, started for the diminutive capital of Schwyz, where the contest was to take place this year. Of the shooting itself it is scarcely worth while to say anything. Swiss patriotism is as yet too conservative to admit the use of any more modern armes de precision, and will not, for the moment at least, go beyond the 300 yards' rifle." Besides, the shooting, even if it must be con- sidered as the principal, was cer taiuly not the only object of the meeting. The prospect of seeing the flag of one's canton unfurled in the midst of those of the remaining thirty-one members of the Confederation, the certainty of finding an unlimited supply of indifferent beer, cheap wine, and patriotic music, but above all, and dearest of all to the heart of a true Switzer, the hope of hearing the ancient glories of his Fatherland extolled, and the names of Wilhelm Tell, Arnold Winkehied, &c., invoked for the hundred thousandth time,—all these without doubt attracted thousands, who had no chance whatever of distinguishing themselves at the rifle stands, or carrying off any of the really very substantial prizes offered for competition. But if a well constituted patriot can with never flag- ging zest listen day after day to a continuous stream of speeches, in which the mythical Struthahn, and the scarcely less mythical Tell, play the principal, nay, almost the only part, the same cannot be said of any one who has not the honour of being a Swiss citizen, especially if, as was the case this year, the never ending stream of patriotic eloquence flows at the foot of the Great Mythen, who in his calm and Jove-like grandeur seems to be listening with a serene yet slightly contemptuous smile to the bathos spouted below.
So, shouldering his knapsack once more, and bidding adieu to the " free [and easy] Switzers," the writer walked up the Great Mythen, through the fresh meadows and luxuriant hedgerows at its base, over the light grey and then dazzling white quartz of its flank, up to the gigantic metal cross which stands on the highest point of the huge mass of dark red granite forming the summit of the mountain. There is scarcely a lake in the whole of Switzerland, and there is positively not an Alpine peak, which you could not see from the top of the Great Mythen. The whole majestic, snow- capped chain, beginning with the Sentis in Appenzell and ending with the hoary giants of the Oberland, stretches out right before you, the huge masses of Mount Pilatus and of the Frohnalpstock, bounding the emerald waters of the lake in the foreground ; while, turning to the other side, the naked eye just catches the faint outline of the Jura and of the Schwarzwald, encircling the wide plain of North Switzerland and Western France. As for the sunrise and the famous Alpengluhen, as witnessed from the top of the Great Mythen, there is probably nothing like it to be seen in the whole of Switzerland, although it is quite as probable (in fact, as there is no railway communication with Schwyz, and the whole canton lies out of the regular tourist's track, even more than pro- bable) that scarcely any one will think of visiting the Great Mythen till it will have grown into a " show place," and, like the Rigi, will have become endowed with a fleecing hotel, ex- tortionist guides, and other tourists' appendages.
Half way up the Great Mythen, or, to speak more accurately, just at the point where the bare rock begins to emerge almost perpendicularly out of the thin layer of soft greensward covering the rising ground, there branches off a footpath, gradually widen- ing into a carriage road, which leads to the ancient monastery and sanctuary of the Virgin Mary at Einsiedeln ; in days gone by not only a famous and renowned, but also a powerful and influential member of the Holy Roman Empire. At the present time, however, and following the example of so many other similar institutions, it has exchanged its former power for riches untold, and its world-wide renown is lost amidst the din and uproar of these latter evil days. As you approach Einsiedeln the aspect of the country becomes less and less interesting, bare and bleak expanses of turf extend in all directions, the horizon being but occasionally broken by some stunted trees, or the hard and exceedingly unpicturesqne outline of a turf-digger's miserable cottage. Nothing even approaChing in aspect the ordinary Swiss village, with its accompaniment of luxuriant trees and hedgerows, its murmuring springs and prattling children, is to be seen here ; and from the general appearance of the country one might be led far more easily to fancy oneself on some breezy Norwegian plateau than within a few miles of the smiling shores of the Vierwald- stattersee. One can easily understand how, now just 1,000 years ago (in 1861 the monastery celebrated its millennium) St. Meinrad, disgusted with the ways of the world in his day, chose this wild spot as a fitting place to live a hermit's life in ; but it is a little more difficult to admit the so frequently advanced claims of the Roman Church as a great civilizing element, when one comes to perceive that all she did on this spot, for instance, during the whole of these 1,000 years, was to cut down the enormous forests—making money out of them, by the way, of course—and to place upon the ground thus cleared a miserable, fanatically ignorant, almost brutish population, who for their daily hard labour daring these many centuries have only gained this, that from serfs to the monastery they have become proletaires. For Einsiedeln and the whole country around have been Church pro- perty from the very first day that they came under the law of property at all. The'Emperor Otho L granted to the first Abbot Eberhard, a brother of the Duke of Franconia, a tract of land ex- tending very nearly from the Great Mythen to the Lake of Zurich, and when Otho III. raised the Abbot of his time, the Blessed Gregory (a grandson of our Alfred the Great), to the rank of a Prince of the Empire, the position and power of the monastery were complete. It may possibly be urged, on the other side, that the Church, or in this case the Benedictines of Einsiedeln, can scarcely be held responsible for the quality of the soil or the wintriness of the climate ; but it should be remembered that the Protestant canton of Appenzell lies considerably higher still, and that notwithstanding this, and a good many more natural dis- advantages of soil, the persevering and, comparatively speaking, even enlightened labour of its inhabitants has made it what it is, —one of the pleasantest and happiest spots in Switzerland.
In the centre of the town of Einsiedeln—a town which;without having the excuse of poverty, is even a shade dirtier than most towns in Catholic Switzerland—there rises on an open and slightly elevated piece of ground, the spacious church of St. Mary, form- ing one of the sides of the conventual quadrangle. Pretentious, but, architecturally speaking, very mean semicircular colonnades, by way of imitating those in front of St. Peter's, at Rome, lead up to the peristyle. Besides being intended as an ornament, these colonnades serve as shops for the sale of all sorts of sacred gew- gaws, statuettes of the Blessed Virgin, saints' images, rosaries, &c. It would be impossible to imagine anything better calcu- lated to lower the popular taste, in many instances even anything more absolutely hideous, than these statuettes and pictures. The former are simply execrable ; they are small triangles of baked yellowish clay (the basis being supposed to represent the flowing robes of the Virgin), with an irregular black blotch at the apex doing duty for the face of the Mother, and another similar blotch a little to the right, for that of the Child ; the whole triangle is about the size of an old copper penny. Now such and similar "objects of devotion" are to be met with in all out-of-the-way parts of Catholic Europe, from Brest and Gibraltar to Lemberg and Konigsberg, and yet the defenders of the Roman Church repeat, with imperturbable faith in the truth of their own words, that one of the strongest claims of the Catholic Church consists in her giving a legitimate and wholesome direction to the human craving after the Beautiful ! High Mass at Cordova or the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel are undoubtedly very grand, and offer to a refined eye and ear high and unwonted enjoyment, but what becomes of the vaunted equality with which the Catholic Church boasts to treat all her children, when beside the Sistine Madonna we place the wretched hideosities of Einsiedeln ?
Just opposite the principal entrance to the church there is a fountain (miraculous, of course), surmounted by a statue of the Virgin. But neither about it, nor even about the chief attraction of the sanctuary, the famous miraculous image of " Our Lady of Einsiedeln "—placed in a separate chapel of black marble all by itself in the nave—is it worth while to say anything here. Such fountains, images, and chapels, each with its legend, one more wonderful than another, abound in the Catholic world, and to those who do not believe in them, the purely human side of such institutions as Einsiedebi, the character and life of the monks and their relation to the people, are by far more interesting.
Hemicus IV., Abbas Quinquagesimus," to use his full title, with forty-five clerical and eighteen lay brethren, are the present inhabitants of the convent and co-possessors of all its enormous wealth. The first impression which these reverend and venerable brethren would probably produce upon every unprejudiced observer, is one of exceeding discomfort at sight of their preposterously unbecoming dress. Already the lanky figure of the Roman secular priest, with his draggled soutane, buttoned to the very ground, and getting between his legs and impeding his, gait, is bad enough, especially in these days, when the long reign of crinoline has taught the eye instinctively to look for a more rounded outline in any :dress reaching to the feet. But add to this a pretty thickly wadded black silk overcoat, approaching very closely to the shape and the length of an ordinary shooting jacket, and buttoned down tight over the soutane, and you get a tolerably correct, though scarcely favourable idea of the appearance the portly figures of the reverend brethren present. Upon nearer acquaintance, however, one very -soon forgets all about their rather ridiculous appearance in a genuine -astonishment, not only at the profound learning (you could not expect anything else from Benedictines), but at the truly gentle- manly bearing and manners of these monks. Especially upon any one acquainted with the nave ignorance, the slovenli- ness, and rather boorish patriarchality of manners current in the monasteries of the Oriental Churches, the staid, yet per- fectly natural gravity, the kind, almost condescending polite- ness, and the perfect ease and polish of manners of the brethren Of Einsiedeln, produce an impression all the more favourable dor being so very unexpected. Besides being lords of the manor, the brotherhood combine in themselves almost all the other -constituted authorities of the country around ; they govern the parishes and schools, they administer justice (probably accord- ing to canonical law), of course, they collect the rent and imposts generally ; they baptize, marry, shrive, and bury all the inhabi- tants, their tenants,—in short, they are the local temporal and -spiritual powers in one. But all this does not suffice for the activity of the brethren. They manage, and as far as report goes, :successfully, a large seminary for priests, and a lyceum or grammar ,school, whither the well-to-do and orthodox Switzers send their boys to be educated. Lastly, we may mention a library of some .30,000 volumes, containing several really valuable MSS., and -some magnificent incuuabula. In fact, but for the seven daily prayers (the first at four in the morning and the last about eight in the evening), which the rule of St. Benedict strictly enjoins, the life, daily occupations, and general train of thought are as unlike as possible to anything a Protestant would expect to find in a Catholic monastery.
A whole range of tastefully decorated and richly furnished apart- ments is set aside within the monastery for any relations of the reverend fathers, or any other distinguished personages who have :the honour of being on visiting terms with the brotherhood. As the rules of the house do not allow of any strangers, however -exalted or pious, dining in the conventual refectory, there exists .a separate guests' dining-hall, adorned with saint's pictures and gull-length portraits of several of the reigning monarchs of Europe, .arranged in the following really highly discriminating manner. On the wall opposite the entrance are depicted the various exploits -of St. Meinrad, the founder of Einaiedeln ; of St. Benno, his suc- -cessor, and of various angels, bishops, &c. Then, down the long wall, we find first, his Holiness Pius IX., in full pontificals, look- ing as vapid and insipid as ever ; next come their Apostolic Majesties the Emperor and Empress of Austria ; only after them the portraits of the Eldest Son and, we suppose, the Eldest Daughter of the Church, the Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie, and lastly—over the sideboard, and slightly huddled into the corner—the two heretical Kings of Prussia, Frederick William IV., and his brother, the present King. Nothing can be snore incongruous than - the prim, serjeant-like, blue-coated figures and North-German faces of the two Hohenzollern in the midst of this assemblage of holy, pious, and orthodox per- sonages. The reason why they ever got here at all is, that St. Meinrad himself was a Hohenzollern, and the family evidently think it their duty to keep up a sort of connection, by means of
presents, &c., with the brotherhood founded by their saintly relation. But the monks, however much flattered they may have been by the presents, could of course not be expected to place the portraits of the heretical relations of their founder anywhere else than above the sideboard.
On leaving Einsiedeln for Protestant Zurich, the country again becomes gradually better cultivated, and assumes a more civilized aspect ; the sullen faces and ill-humoured, gruff voices are left behind, and make way for the cheerful greeting of the peasant and the pleasant laugh of the children. Possibly his Protestant " proclivities " may have had something to do with it, yet the writer admits frankly that, all things considered, of all the learned and pious brethren who inhabited Einsiedeln, from the days of St. Meinrad to those of " Remious IV., Abbas Quinquagesimus," he feels the greatest sympathy for a certain Father Ulrich Zwingli, once upon a time Preacher in Ordinary to the Sanctuary and Monastery of St. Mary of Einsiedeln.
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