CORRESPON DENCE.

'MONTRETX is One of the most highly privileged places in Swit- zerland; I might go even further, and say in all Europe. It has acquired a reputation, which is doubtless deserved, as a Avinter resort for people afflicted with weak lungs and kindred 'infirmities; and while most of the places that figure in the itineraries of Murray and Baedeker are left from May to October unvisited and forlorn, this is _just the time when Montreux is crowded with guests. When the heats of summer drive invalids to more northern climes, they are succeeded by tourists of passage, nearly all of whom feel it their duty to ,end a few days or a few hours in a region consecrated by the genius of Byron and Rousseau, The position of the village, as well as of Veytaux, Chillon, and Chums, sheltered from the north wind by the lofty Jaman, the wood-crowned Moth, and the rock-crested Naye, in full view of the Alps, and bathed by the 'blue waters of Lake Leman, is superb ; while the verdant slopes which shield it from the blasts of winter, with their picturesque -chalets and comfortable hotels, offer the health-seeker every variety of climate, from the balmy air of Territet to the .dust- free atmosphere of Aux Avants. And it must be admitted that the people of Montreux turn the advantages bestowed on them by nature to the best account. Neither as agri- culturists nor as entertainers of strangers do they show the slightest disposition to let the grass grow under their feet. Lawn-tennis has been introduced ; some of the hotels give -passable concerts and occasional balls; there is an establish- ment devoted to the sale of American drinks, tinned oysters, and other Transatlantic luxuries, and you may buy London papers the day after publication at a not too immoderate price. An English church has lately sprung up, a German Lutheran ,church and a Kursaal are being built, and divers other improve- ments are contemplated. I am glad to hear, from a gentleman .whose .pesition enables him to speak with authority, that the English church (built, I believe, by one or two property-owners of the neighbourhood) has proved a paying speculation. Since fit was opened the number of English visitors shows a gratify-

ing increase, and it is confidently hoped that the building of a Kursaal and a Lutheran church will be followed by equally satisfactory results. But Montreux has other and, as some may think, higher claims to distinction than the enterprise of its innkeepers and the healthfulness of its climate. It is one of the most flourish- ing and interesting communes in all Switzerland, It may almost, indeed, be regarded as a Switzerland in miniature, for the village of Montrenx lends its name to a confederation of communes—Veytaux, Les Planches, and Chatelard—and while they possess a common government and, for most purposes, a common purse, every hamlet has its own council, its own headman or governor, and manages its local affairs after its own fashion. The villages, some thirty in all, are grouped in arrondissements, each of which has a thyresentative at the Great Council, or Bogie contrale, of the three Communes. One of the most important departments, that of education, is adminis- tered by a committee, nominated by the Council. The popula- tion of Chatelard-Montreux (as the three communes are generally called) is 8,000, of whom probably 2,000 are strangers, and their annual expenditure for educational purposes, ex- clusive of the cost of maintaining the school-houses, and the payments in kind (such as winter fuel) made to the village schoolmasters, reaches a total of £1,600 a year. To this the Canton adds a subsidy of 8,000 francs, towards the support of the College, and makes seine trifling grants in augmentation of the schoolmasters' salaries, to each of whom the Communes pay £52 a year, besides providing them with a house, garden, and firing. The Communes possess nine rural schools, besides infant schools, a college which answers to an English grammar. school or a German gymnasium, and a superior school for young girls. In consideration of the assistance granted by the State (i.e., the Canton), it has a right to nominate cue of the members of the School Committee.

Chatelard-Montreux is the paradise of peasant-proprietors. Nowhere can the system of la petite culture be seen to greater advantage, and, if the greatest happiness of the greatest num- ber be taken as a test, nowhere has that system been attended with happier results. Of this, two facts, which I have from the highest authority on these matters in the district, afford striking proof. There is not a single landless family belonging to the three Communes, nor one that does not possess a cow or two or a few goats. There are no paupers, and, except strangers, no poor. This, however, is a somewhat important distinction, and requires a word of explanation. Members of Swiss com- munes acquire that quality either by birthright or purchase. Those who are not members are considered as "strangers," albeit they may have been born and lived all their lives in the district. To become a burgher of Chatelard-Montreux, a " kranger " must be of good repute, prove that he is in solvent circumstances, and pay £48. He is then admitted to all the privileges of membership. If he fall into poverty, the com- mune is bound to support him, and to bring up and educate his children. Destitute strangers, on the other hand, have no right to relief, save that, when overtaken by sickness or dis- abled by accident, they may not be suffered to perish unhelped ; and if they die, they must, of course, be buried at the expense

of the community. But poor strangers are almost as rare in Chatelard-Montreux as poor burghers. Those of them who are

Swiss can be sent back to their own communes, while foreign residents, whether they be dwellers in lacustrine villas, hotel servants, or village tradespeople, do not often fall into abject poverty; while the German and Italian vagabonds who make occasional incursions into the district are never permitted to remain or to beg. Native beggars there are none.

The conditions under which husbandry is conducted in Chatelard-Montreux are peculiar,, and highly favourable to peasant-ownership. There is hardly an acre of level land in the three Communes. The district is mountainous, rising from a height of 1,270 feet above sea-level, near the lake, to the summit of the Naye, 5,500 higher. Every coign of vantage is planted with vines, and vines hereabouts can be cultivated with advantage to an altitude of 2,000 feet. In such a country as this, the great proprietor has no advantage over the small yeoman fanner. Steam ploughs, knowing and reaping machines, and other high-farming appliances would be utterly useless, while viticulture can only be successfully followed by those who give to it constant personal attention and much hard labour. After the vine, in the order of their importance, come the dairy, the meadows, the mountain pastures, and the orchards. The culti-

vation of cereals has long been abandoned. It pays better to buy thorn; yet the practice still prevails, albeit its utility is sometimes doubted, of planting maize among the vines. The peasants grow only sufficient potatoes for their own use, the great summer heats preventing their profitable cultivatien; but they find their account in the production of early vegetables, such as carrots, onions, and peas. Many of the peasants own mountain pastures, although most of these belong to the commune, by whom they are let on lease to the highest bidders, for terms of five and ten years. The measure of their value is not their superficial area, but the number of cows they are capable of grazing. Thus a peasant takes pasturage for 20, 50, or 100 cows, as, the ease may be. A farmer whom I met at Aux Avants, about 3,000 feet above sea-level, hires from the commune four "mountains," equal to 100 cows, for which he pays 1:120 a year. Then there is a strange and complicated system of farming cows. In the Valais, and that part of the Canton Vaud between the Rhone and the Vaudois Alps, pasturage. is scarce, and dairy-owners require all the produce of their meadows for winter fodder. Hence has arisen the system in question. Cattle are let out by the people of those districts to peasants in Chatelard-Montreux for the summer season, at a price based on their milk-yielding capacities. During this term the cows are at the risk of the hirer, who, however, never omits to insure them in one of the communal mutual-assurance societies. The milk produced in the mountains is converted into cheese, and the business is con- ducted on an intelligent and well-organised co-operative system. In every district there is a common cheese-making establish- ment, managed by a man called a frniiier. He keeps an exact record of all the milk he receives, and at the end of the season, when the cheese is sold, the net proceeds are divided pro rata among the concerned. In olden times, the peasants who made a business of dairy-farming had. no fixed habitation. They migrated with the seasons from grange to grange, in order to save the carriage of hay and manure. This was called to gouverner. But owing to the introduction of artificial manures, and the great improvements that have lately been effected in the roads of the district, the practice has fallen into almost complete desuetude.

During the hay-harvest, and for some time before and after, the mountains are a scene of incessant activity. Their slopes are dotted with chalets and sheds. Every property (it would hardly be correct to say farm) of any extent possesses a building, locally known as a grange, which is composed of a shippen, a barn, a bed-room or two, a kitchen, and, perhaps, another room. Here the peasant and one or two members of hie family, or a servant, take up their abode for several weeks in summer and a certain time in winter. At hay-time he pats crampons on his shoes, mows the grass on the steep slopes where it would be dangerous for the cattle to graze, and carries it on his back to the grange. In winter, generally in January or February, he transports his crop on a wooden sledge to the neighbourhood of his house, lower down the mountain. For this purpose, if he does not own a house or an ox, he uses a cow. Failing the cow, he drags the load himself. For these men never spare themselves. The prosperity they enjoy they richly deserve. In the busy season it is no uncommon thing for a peasant to rise with the sun, tend his cattle, then go down to his village— a distance, it may be, of five or six miles—with a well-filled hod on his back ; and after working in his vineyard during the heat of the day, return to his mountain chalet, again heavily laden, in the cool of the evening.

A community that has succeeded on its own initiative in extinguishing pauperism and producing general content, thus solving a problem which is just now bewildering one of the

greatest of European statesmen, is so phenomenal, that in- quiry as to the causes of the exceptional good-fortune enjoyed

by these Vaudois peasants naturally suggests itself. Much, as 1 have already explained, is undoubtedly due, so far as Chatelard Montreux is concerned, to geographical position; albeit, there are many localities, even in Switzerland, quite as favourably placed, that are far from being equally well off. Advantages of Boil and climate count for little with an idle and nthrifty people.

In some South-American countries., they are positive impedi-

ments to civilisation. But even thrift and industry are not by themselves sufficient to explain the prosperity of the peasants of the three Communes in question, nor, I may add, of many other communes of Canton Vaud. They are ex- ceptionally intelligent, and the associative principle has taken deep root amongst them. They have learnt the valua of combination and self-help, and they are self-helpful because they are self-governing. They enjoy a local independence of which those who have not stndied Swiss institutions can have little idea. In the whole of Canton Vaud, there is probably not one official representative of the Federal Government, and individual communes are almost equally free from cantonal inter- ference. The circumstances of Vaudois history have, moreover, done much to strengthen the tendency to co-operation which seems inherent in the communal system. From 1536 to 1798, the Pays de Vaud was under the domination of the Lords of Berne, and though they were hard taskmasters, their rule was not so oppressive as has sometimes been represented. They did not impose on their subjects the German language, They freed them from the yoke of Rome, and they insisted on their learn- ing to read and write. Tlse Vaudois people probably suffered more from the exactions of their own seigneurs than from the tyranny of their Bernese masters. But these exactions—corsees and the rest—from which they were not finally freed until 1798, taught them to unite for self-defence against the common enemy, and thus laid the seeds of that associative spirit which has since been so productive of good. The burghers of Chatelard were nearly always at war with the Barons of Chatelard, andporpetually appealing against them tOBerne. Nor did the struggle cease until 1795, when the peasants redeemed. themselves from all seignorial fiefs and dues by a payment of 175,000 francs—to their great subsequent disgust, since if they had waited three years longer their French friends would have emancipated them from their feudal bonds, as they did the

rest of the country, without any payment whatever,—at least to the EleigilniT, The Vaudois, fortunately I'm- them, were saved

by the exactions of the French Commissioner, Esspinat, from courting annexation to France. It was of him that Dean Bride],. afterwards pastor of Montreux, wrote the witty lines

La pauvre Suisse qu'en reale \readmit biota u'on lul expliquat, Si Rapinat vieut do 'rapine,' Oa 'rapine' de Rapinat."

The institution of grouped communes, which is almost peculiar to Vaud, 18 another fortunate circumstance for the canton, since it is evident that three communes working together are more powerful for good than single, and often very small, communes, such as are found in other parts of Switzerland. All the com- munes in Vaud are grouped in threes, after the manner of'.

Chatelard, Veytaux, and Les Planches, an arrangement that was adopted on the reorganisation of the country after the events of 1798-1815.

Montreux ought to be a place after Mr. Ruskin's, own heart, for save the entertainment of strangers, a business, moreover, which is almost confined to the lake shore, the sole occupation of its inhabitants is husbandry, and what appertains thereto. The only machinery in the country side ie that of a sawmill, turned by a mountain stream. There are neither factories to stunt the growth of children, nor tall chimneys to foul the air with smoke; and the excellent education imparted to the peasants in their common aud higher sehoole, and their inherited intelli- gence, developed by the freest institutions in Europe, prevent them from sinking into the sordid ways of the peasants of France..

But the Chatelard Communes would hardly find equal favour in the eyes of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, for they are a wine-pro- ducing and a wine-consuming people. They drink half the wine they make, and they make a great deal. The average consumption of a Vaudois peasant, I am told, is three litres of white wino a day. This is probably au exaggeration, yet there can be no question that an inordinate consumption of the pro- duce of their own vineyards is the besetting sin of Vaudois yeoman farmers, as of most of the people of French Switzer- land.. As it is, they are wonderfully prosperous ; if they would only drink in moderation, they might become morally, what they certainly are socially and. economically, model communities.— I am, Sir, &c.,