The great quay of Lucerne is delightful; as good as the seashore at Dieppe or Trouville.  Before you, limpid and blue, lies the lake, which from the character of its shores, at once stern and graceful, is the finest in Switzerland.  In front rises the snow-clad peaks of Uri, to the left the Rigi, to the right the austere Pilatus, almost always wearing his high cap of clouds.  This beautiful walk on the quay, long and shady like the avenue of a gentleman’s park, is the daily resort, toward four o’clock, of all the foreigners who are crowded in the hotels or packed in the boarding-houses.  Here are Russian and Polish counts with long mustaches, and pins set with false brilliants; Englishmen with fishes’ or horses’ heads; Englishwomen with the figures of angels or of giraffes; Parisian women, daintily attired, sprightly, and coquettish; American women, free in their bearing, and eccentric in their dress, and their men as stiff as the smoke-pipes of steamboats; German women, with languishing voices, drooping and pale like willow branches, fair-haired and blue-eyed, talking in the same breath of Goethe and the price of sausages, of the moon and their glass of beer, of stars and black radishes.  And here and there are a few little Swiss girls, fresh and rosy as wood strawberries, smiling darlings like Dresden shepherdesses, dreaming of scenes of platonic love in a great garden adorned with the statue of William Tell or General Dufour.

ZURICH[34]

BY W.D.  M’CRACKAN

If you arrive in Zurich after dark, and pass along the river-front, you will think yourself for a moment in Venice.  The street lamps glow responsively across the dark Limmat, or trail their light from the bridges.  In the uncertain darkness, the bare house walls of the farther side put on the dignity of palaces.  There are unsuspected architectural glories in the Wasserkirche and the Rathhaus, as they stand partly in the water of the river.  And if, at such times, one of the long, narrow barges of the place passes up stream, the illusion is complete; for, as the boat cuts at intervals through the glare of gaslight it looks for all the world like a gondola....

Zurich need not rely upon any fancied resemblance of this sort for a distinct charm of its own.  The situation of the city is essentially beautiful, reminding one, in a general way, of that of Geneva, Lucerne, or Thun—­at the outlet of a lake, and at the point of issue of a swift river.  Approaching from the lakeside, the twin towers of the Grossmuenster loom upon the right, capped by ugly rounded tops, like miters; upon the left, the simple spires of the Fraumuenster and St. Peter’s.  A conglomeration of roofs denotes the city houses.  On the water-front, extensive promenades stretch, crescent shaped, from end to end, cleverly laid out, tho’ as yet too new to quite fulfil their mission of beauty.  Some large white buildings form the front line on the lake—­notably the theater, and a few hotels and apartment houses.  Finally, there where the River Limmat leaves the lake, a vista of bridges open into the heart of the city—­a succession of arches and lines that invite inspection.