DILECTA 589

interesting to me in their coolness, especially in connexion with the general caution which influenced my father in all other kinds of danger. No man could be more prudent in guarding against ordinary chances of harm, and in what may be shortly expressed as looking to the girths of life. But here he is travelling with his wife and son through a district in dispute between not only military forces but political factions, without appearing for an instant to have contemplated changing his route, or felt the slightest uneasiness in passing through the area of most active warfare. My mother seems to have been exactly of the same mind, -which is more curious still, for indeed I never once saw the expression of fear on my father’s face, through all his life, at anything; but my mother was easily frightened if postillions drove too fast, or the carriage leaned threateningly aside; while here she passes through the midst of bands of angry and armed villagers without a word of objection.

28. “BADEN (SWISS BADEN, 5th August, 1833).-We heard here of the Basle people fighting with peasantry and burning their villages; and of a battle betwixt Liechstal¹ and Basle soldiers on Saturday; the latter were driven into the town; 80 killed and 400 prisoners. We came to Stein to dine; a single house on the borders of the Rhine, commanding a beautiful view of that river and plains beyond it, and Black Forest in the distance. We had eighteen miles to go to Basle, but, hearing Swiss gates were shut, we crossed into Baden state at Rheinfeld,² where there are some very old buildings and two wooden bridges; the river rolls like a brass cannon, in a field which the peasants were ploughing, on an eminence commanding the road. We arrived at 7 o’clock at Three Kings, Basle, and early next morning I walked to cathedral; found many of the first houses with windows entirely closed, in mourning for officers lost in battle of Saturday; and a report prevailed of there being a plot to admit the peasantry into the town to fire it in the night. The people were much alarmed.

29. “Tuesday, 6th August, we left by a gate just opened to let us pass, being sent from another gate we tried, and which we saw, after we

¹ [Liestal, nine miles from Bâle, severed its political connexion with that city in 1833, and has since been the capital of the half-canton of Bâle Campagne (Baselland).]

² [Rheinfelden: for the bridge, see Plate 83 in Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 436).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]