individuality. In small communes, for example, like Villeneuve, there
are features of practical socialism, which have existed apparently from
the earliest times. Certain things are held in common, as mountain
pasturage and the forests, from which each family has a provision of
fuel. These and other possessions of the commune are "confided to the
public faith," and trespass is punished with signal severity. The trees
are felled under government inspection, and the woods are never cut off
wholesale. When a tree is chopped down a tree is planted, and the floods
that ravage Italy from the mountains denuded of their forests are
unknown to the wiser Swiss. Throughout Switzerland the State insures
against fire, and inflicts penalties for neglect and carelessness from
which fires may result. Education is compulsory, and there is a rigid
military service, and a show of public force everywhere which is quite
unknown to our unneighbored, easy-going republic. I should say, upon the
whole, that the likeness was more in social than in political things,
strange as that may appear. There seemed to be much the same freedom
among young people, and democratic institutions had produced a kindred
type of manners in both countries. But I will not be very confident
about all this, for I might easily be mistaken. The Swiss make their
social distinctions as we do; and in Geneva and Lausanne I understood
that a more than American exclusivism prevailed in families that held
themselves to be peculiarly good, and believed themselves very old.

Our excursions into society at Villeneuve were confined to a single tea
at the pasteur's, where we went with mademoiselle one evening. He lived
in a certain Villa Garibaldi, which had belonged to an Italian refugee,
now long repatriated, and which stood at the foot of the nearest
mountain. To reach the front door we passed through the vineyard to the
back of the house, where a huge dog leaped the length of his chain at
us, and a maid let us in. The pasteur, in a coat of unclerical cut, and