These are public places; for the city government has a queer notion that trees are not hideous, and that a part of the use of living is the enjoyment of the beautiful.I saw an elegant bank building, with carved figures on the front, and at each side of the entrance door a large stand of flowers,--oleanders, geraniums, and fuchsias; while the windows and balconies above bloomed with a like warmth of floral color.Would you put an American bank president in the Retreat who should so decorate his banking-house? We all admire the tasteful display of flowers in foreign towns: we go home, and carry nothing with us but a recollection.But Berne has also fountains everywhere;some of them grotesque, like the ogre that devours his own children, but all a refreshment and delight.And it has also its clock-tower, with one of those ingenious pieces of mechanism, in which the sober people of this region take pleasure.At the hour, a procession of little bears goes round, a jolly figure strikes the time, a cock flaps his wings and crows, and a solemn Turk opens his mouth to announce the flight of the hours.It is more grotesque, but less elaborate, than the equally childish toy in the cathedral at Strasburg.
We went Sunday morning to the cathedral; and the excellent woman who guards the portal--where in ancient stone the Last Judgment is enacted, and the cheerful and conceited wise virgins stand over against the foolish virgins, one of whom has been in the penitential attitude of having a stone finger in her eye now for over three hundred years--refused at first to admit us to the German Lutheran service, which was just beginning.It seems that doors are locked, and no one is allowed to issue forth until after service.There seems to be an impression that strangers go only to hear the organ, which is a sort of rival of that at Freiburg, and do not care much for the well-prepared and protracted discourse in Swiss-German.We agreed to the terms of admission; but it did not speak well for former travelers that the woman should think it necessary to say, "You must sit still, and not talk." It is a barn-like interior.The women all sit on hard, high-backed benches in the center of the church, and the men on hard, higher-backed benches about the sides, inclosing and facing the women, who are more directly under the droppings of the little pulpit, hung on one of the pillars,--a very solemn and devout congregation, who sang very well, and paid strict attention to the sermon.
I noticed that the names of the owners, and sometimes their coats-of-arms, were carved or painted on the backs of the seats, as if the pews were not put up at yearly auction.One would not call it a dressy congregation, though the homely women looked neat in black waists and white puffed sleeves and broadbrimmed hats.
The only concession I have anywhere seen to women in Switzerland, as the more delicate sex, was in this church: they sat during most of the service, but the men stood all the time, except during the delivery of the sermon.The service began at nine o'clock, as it ought to with us in summer.The costume of the peasant women in and about Berne comes nearer to being picturesque than in most other parts of Switzerland, where it is simply ugly.You know the sort of thing in pictures,--the broad hat, short skirt) black, pointed stomacher, with white puffed sleeves, and from each breast a large silver chain hanging, which passes under the arm and fastens on the shoulder behind,--a very favorite ornament.This costume would not be unbecoming to a pretty face and figure: whether there are any such native to Switzerland, I trust I may not be put upon the witness-stand to declare.Some of the peasant young men went without coats, and with the shirt sleeves fluted; and others wore butternut-colored suits, the coats of which I can recommend to those who like the swallow-tailed variety.I suppose one would take a man into the opera in London, where he cannot go in anything but that sort.The buttons on the backs of these came high up between the shoulders, and the tails did not reach below the waistband.There is a kind of rooster of similar appearance.I saw some of these young men from the country, with their sweethearts, leaning over the stone parapet, and looking into the pit of the bear-garden, where the city bears walk round, or sit on their hind legs for bits of bread thrown to them, or douse themselves in the tanks, or climb the dead trees set up for their gambols.Years ago they ate up a British officer who fell in; and they walk round now ceaselessly, as if looking for another.But one cannot expect good taste in a bear.
If you would see how charming a farming country can be, drive out on the highway towards Thun.For miles it is well shaded with giant trees of enormous trunks, and a clean sidewalk runs by the fine road.
On either side, at little distances from the road, are picturesque cottages and rambling old farmhouses peeping from the trees and vines and flowers.Everywhere flowers, before the house, in the windows, at the railway stations.But one cannot stay forever even in delightful Berne, with its fountains and terraces, and girls on red cushions in the windows, and noble trees and flowers, and its stately federal Capitol, and its bears carved everywhere in stone and wood, and its sunrises, when all the Bernese Alps lie like molten silver in the early light, and the clouds drift over them, now hiding, now disclosing, the enchanting heights.
