If any one imagines that these deep and significant principles of dress are impotent because latent in our own countrythis modern field of civilization-let him experiment by offending the least of these dormant sensibilities. Whether he be in an Irish Catholic congregation, or at the simple altar of a New England church, or touching the hem of a Quaker garment, he will find that Carlyle's vestures have meaning and instant power.

If one thinks that poor Fashion-maligned and caricatured as she is by the thoughtless-is a potentate to be trifled with, let him reconsider such dictum made out of his own folly. Fashion is the Robespierre of Dress. The Democracy recklessly crowns its own potentate; holding this province of social order to be one of the final citadels of the individual self, it can fancy that it rules and controls. The dude turns up his trousers, in imitation of his fellow avoiding London mud; then whole communities troop after this ragged, unkempt, and silly custom, worthy of a half-naked Sioux Indian wearing a silk hat.

We began with a savage, old or young, struggling against harsh circumstance through his military and civic development, always costumed according to his vocation, always enfolded by the weaver's art and meshed in threads spun out of life and experience. Gradually the individual man and woman emerged from this throng of created humanity and clad themselves in their own garments. The home so gracefully pictured by the Hebrew poet went about the civilized world and hardly pauses at the golden gate of the Pacific. The stroke of the weaver's hand and foot has been transmuted into mechanism, swift as thought and delicate as the spider's action. Every phase of life, every human motive, has urged the weaver's shuttle. Desire of comfort, awe in worship, pride of display, love of home, symbolic utterance-all have hovered over the weaver's spirit, have animated his hand, have directed his destiny.

Speculation has no place in historical study, but having completed our inquiry we may give rein to the imagination for a moment.

A century or two hence primitive man may be more highly appreciated than he is just now. Like tyros, we sport with H. Doc. 461, pt 1-14

no

the awful powers of nature by setting a portion of the great forces against the other forces, which we can comprehend. Yet it is only thought that animates matter, whether it be in the stroke of a stone hammer or in the lift of an electric crane balancing a hundred tons. Our mother nature may be dreadful, but we know that she is beneficent if wooed constantly and soothed into peaceful mood. In early development myriad Adams and Eves went up and down the earth, struggling with spirits constantly-with demons occasionally. The man who first conceived the lightning flash to be no Jovine bolt, demonic freak, but a throb in the order of nature, was greater than Edison. Patiently these children of nature wrought, carrying their own spirit into the matter within reach, and informing it with their touch. The mind of man went with his hand until one after another of nature's forces came under his control and malignant demons were left in the limbo of the past. We toil and sweat in the grime of machinery, we grow deaf in the chink of gold as it moves the wheels of finance. We putter with records. In time the seer will come and render forth in his own song the true meaning of all this intercourse with nature, the actual story of these new exploits of man.

All the processes of labor I have faintly described, all the memorials of art in early time, should be cherished not curiously but reverently, for they embody the serious education of our ancestors-little in its own material moment, but lofty in the inevitable progress of the race, great in the possible triumphs of mind over matter.

VIII. MUNICIPAL PROBLEMS IN MEDIEVAL SWITZERLAND.

By JOHN MARTIN VINCENT,

Associate Professor of History in the Johns Hopkins University.

MUNICIPAL PROBLEMS IN MEDIEVAL SWITZERLAND.

By JOHN MARTIN VINCENT.

By the end of the Middle Ages many European cities had become almost sovereign states, consequently their functions of administration were more extensive than in cities of the present. This was not the original condition of these municipalities, but was a state which had been reached through a long history. At the beginning cities were in feudal subserviency, but in the course of time many won for themselves independence and self-government. Each town had its particular history and reached its goal by its own route, but this early development is beyond the task of this paper to describe. The results only at a given moment will be briefly summarized.

Looking at some of the larger cities of Switzerland and, South Germany, one finds in the late medieval period that their governments are concerned in the highest forms of state activity, and at the same time in the most minute, if we may not call them the most trivial, details of community life. A study of the period, therefore, demands that we remove from our minds our modern standards and limitations of city government and examine this earlier municipal life and activity in the light of its own day, and in the perspective of its own landscape.

In their capacity as states the Swiss cities under consideration were members of a political confederation. This was a feeble union, but called for a certain amount of common action. This was at first chiefly defensive, but eventually became aggressive. The surrounding nations became involved and the political horizon of the Swiss was progressively enlarged, while they gradually became the balancing military power in Europe. These city governments, both as members of the confederation and for themselves individually, entered