SWISS NOTABILITIES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR."' SIR,—The writer of the admirable article on "The National Antipathies of Individuals," in your paper of April 29, which has just come before me, could not help, it seems, in passing Switzer- land, giving her, most undeservedly, a severe kick. This act of cruelty may have escaped most English readers, but being myself a Swiss, I felt it keenly, and cannot let it pass by in silence. Switzerland, in that article, is called "that puzzling country, where the people seem able to do everything except develop consider- able men." On reading this assertion, the names of considerable compatriots are crowding upon my memory, and I consider the statement entirely void of foundation. Rousseau, Zwingli, Pestalozzi ; the philosophers Haller, Glareanus, and Zimmermann; the historians Tschndi, J. von Muller, and Ho ttinger ; the statesmen Blamer and Sulzer, the public speakers Heer and Ziegler, the physiognomist Lavater ; Keller, the antiquarian, and Keller, the novelist ; the landscape-painter Koller, the " cartographe " Ziegler, the mathematicians Euler and Bernouilli, the philologers Orelli and Schweizer-Siedler, the savants Gessner, 0. Heer, Escher von der Linth, Desor, Agassiz, Friedrich von Tschudi, Pictet, and Vogt. All these are surely " considerable " men,—a list drawn up at random, without the least attempt at exhaustion. Every one of them occupies in his own department—some in several—an honourable position, not merely in Switzerland, but among the host of European rivals. Or are they, perhaps, less considerable, if the worthy writer of that article should happen to know little about them, owing to the " puzzling " character of the country that developed them? I believe that Switzerland counts, comparatively, fully as large a number of considerable men as any country, England not excepted,—a fact quite in harmony with her constitutional history, the Republic offering better opportunities to every individual to develop himself ac- cording to his idiosyncracy,—and I should deny the writer's statement, even though he had spoken of great men.—I am, [The writer, as it happened, feels a strong attachment to Switzer- land, and never dreamt of a kick. He was contrasting in his own mind the grandeur of Swiss political history with her deficiency in men of European rank.—En. Spectator.]
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