crossbow preserved in the arsenal at Zurich, as unimpeachable
witnesses to the truth of the story. It is in vain that we are
told, "The bricks are alive to this day to testify to it;
therefore, deny it not." These proofs are not more valid than
the handkerchief of St. Veronica, or the fragments of the true
cross. For if relics are to be received as evidence, we must
needs admit the truth of every miracle narrated by the
Bollandists.

The earliest work which makes any allusion to the adventures
of William Tell is the chronicle of the younger Melchior Russ,
written in 1482. As the shooting of the apple was supposed to
have taken place in 1296, this leaves an interval of one
hundred and eighty-six years, during which neither a Tell, nor
a William, nor the apple, nor the cruelty of Gessler, received
any mention. It may also be observed, parenthetically, that
the charters of Kussenach, when examined, show that no man by
the name of Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers of the
fifteenth century, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe
the tyrannical acts by which the Duke of Austria goaded the
Swiss to rebellion, do not once mention Tell's name, or betray
the slightest acquaintance with his exploits or with his
existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is not alluded
to. But we have still better negative evidence. John of
Winterthur, one of the best chroniclers of the Middle Ages,
was living at the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), at
which his father was present. He tells us how, on the evening
of that dreadful day, he saw Duke Leopold himself in his
flight from the fatal field, half dead with fear. He
describes, with the loving minuteness of a contemporary, all