I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, and pastoral, than
this remote little Chur. What need have the inhabitants for walls
and ramparts, except to build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang
clothes to dry on them? No enemies approach the great mouldering gates:
only at morn and even the cows come lowing past them, the village
maidens chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the
ever-voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys,
with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium,
and return thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in the
town, and I see one old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no
customers seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little
windows at the single stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with
baskets of queer little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk
trade with half a dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there
is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There's nobody at the
book-shop. "If you will have the goodness to come again in an hour,"
says the banker, with his mouthful of dinner at one o'clock, "you can
have the money." There is nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady,
the kind waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is
in the Protestant church--(oh! strange sight, the two confessions are
here at peace!)--nobody in the Catholic church: until the sacristan,
from his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies the traveller eying
the monsters and pillars before the old shark-toothed arch of his
cathedral, and comes out (with a view to remuneration possibly) and
opens the gate, and shows you the venerable church, and the queer old
relics in the sacristy, and the ancient vestments (a black velvet
cope, amongst other robes, as fresh as yesterday, and presented by that
notorious "pervert," Henry of Navarre and France), and the statue of St.
Lucius who built St. Peter's Church, on Cornhill.