The Swiss, as is natural from their greater antiquity, richer recollections, and perhaps from their geographical position, are more national than the Americans.  With us, national pride and national character exist chiefly in the classes that lie between the yeomen and the very bottom of the social scale; whereas, here, I think the higher one ascends, the stronger the feeling becomes.  The Swiss moreover is pressed upon by his wants, and is often obliged to tear himself from his native soil, in order to find the means of subsistence; and yet very few of them absolutely expatriate themselves.

The emigrants that are called Swiss in America, either come from Germany, or are French Germans, from Alsace and Lorrain.  I have never met with a migration of a body of true Swiss, though some few cases probably have existed.  It would be curious to inquire how far the noble nature of the country has an influence in producing their strong national attachments.  The Neapolitans love their climate, and would rather be Lazzaroni beneath their sun, than gentlemen in Holland, or England.  This is simple enough, as it depends on physical indulgence.  The charm that binds the Swiss to his native mountains, must be of a higher character, and is moral in its essence.

The American character suffers from the converse of the very feeling which has an effect so beneficial on that of the Swiss.  The migratory habits of the country prevent the formation of the intensity of interest, to which the long residence of a family in a particular spot gives birth, and which comes, at last, to love a tree, or a hill, or a rock, because they are the same tree, and hill, and rock, that have been loved by our fathers before us.  These are attachments that depend on sentiment rather than on interest, and which are as much purer and holier, as virtuous sentiment is purer and holier than worldly interestedness.  In this moral feature, therefore, we are inferior to all old nations, and to the Swiss in particular, I think, as their local attachments are both quickened and heightened by the exciting and grand objects that surround them.  The Italians have the same local affections, in a still stronger degree; for with a nature equally, or even more winning, they have still prouder and more-remote recollections.

I do not believe the Swiss, at heart, are a bit more attached to their institutions than we are ourselves; for, while I complain of the tone of so many of our people, I consider it, after all, as the tone of people who, the means of comparison having been denied them, neither know that which they denounce, nor that which they extol.  Apart from the weakness of wishing for personal distinctions, however, I never met with a Swiss gentleman, who appeared to undervalue his institutions.  They frequently, perhaps generally, lament the want of greater power in the confederation; but, as between a monarchy and a republic, so far as my observation goes, they are uniformly Swiss.