CANTON OF SCHAFFHAUSEN. 23 three hundred and twenty-seven francs in money. The sources of revenue are silk and cotton manufacture, establishments for the dying and printing of cotton cloths, tanneries, the produce of the soil, wheat, wine, cherry-water-all of which for home or foreign consumption, give an air of commercial activity to the town, and secure a profitable return. The duties on merchandize are also a fertile source of public emolument. The canton is Protestant, and the clerical department subject to a synod, which meets every spring, under a moderator, the minister of the cathedral, where members from the lesser council are also in attendance. The principal churches are those of All Saints, and St. John-the latter, one of the largest in Switzerland. On the great bell belonging to the first, is this inscription "Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango."* The town possesses an excellent college, with nine professors, and affords every facility for the acquisition of the elegant, as well as useful branches in science and literature. Several periodicals, conducted by able and well-informed editors, diffuse a taste for literature and the fine arts; and the society of the place includes many individuals of elegant and enlightened minds. Among several others of distinction, the celebrated historian, Müller, was a native of this town, which is still more recently distinguished as the birth-place, and field where the learned and patriotic Jetzeller so eminently displayed his virtues and talents. Various societies for the encouragement of letters, as well as others for the cultivation of music and objects of taste, give a lively and intellectual character to the evening parties, while the winter season brings its fair proportion of balls and concerts. But we turn from the mere artificial scenes of life to that stupendous feature in the natural world-the Falls of Schaffhausen, which have attracted, from time immemorial, and will continue to attract, so many myriads of pilgrims. "Even here, the hollow thunder of its fall And sheeted vapour, mark the wild turmoil." This grand interruption to the navigation of the Rhine, was the origin of the town of Schaffhausen. Originally built as an entrepôt for the merchandize which it became necessary to disembark at this point, it was afterwards enlarged and embellished under the auspices of the Convent of All Saints. For the space of a league above Lauffen-where the cataract actually begins-the river, "The living I summon, the dead I bewail, And conjure the lightning, the thunder, and hail!" boiling over a rocky channel, forms what may be termed a succession of rapids. Gradually acquiring strength with its speed, and descending at first in a broad verdant sheet, till, whitening by degrees into foaming impetuosity, it bursts at last in three distinct branches over a precipice, upwards of eighty feet in height, and presents the most sublime spectacle in Switzerland. The best moment for witnessing this phenomenon in all its grandeur, is about sunset, in the month of July. The volume of water is then at the highest; and the usual stillness of the hour, and deepening hue of twilight, conspire in a wonderful degree to heighten the effect. Then the cataract seems to rush from the sky like an avalanche-filling the air with whirlwinds of vapour, and stunning the ear with the thunder of its fall. At that hour the foam is of dazzling whiteness; clouds of drizzling vapour incessantly form and vanish away; the ever-boiling vortex of the basin, into which the vast body of water is precipitated, represents a storm in miniature; the trees, and rocks, and precipices, agitated by the continual shock imparted to the atmosphere, and that deep unslackening roar in which the voice of a Stentor seems hushed into the whisper of “a sick girl," impart sensations which it is difficult to explain, and impossible for any spectator to forget. Should the full moon rise as an accompaniment upon the scene, the whole becomes changed, magnified, and improved, under its magic. influence; and every succeeding hour presents the sublime spectacle under some new and more imposing aspect. The moment at which, perhaps, the greatest number of circumstances combine to exhibit the cataract in its unrivalled magnificence, is a little after midnight. Then, Nature seems to have but one voice, to which the hushed and solitary ear of man listens in profound awe, while the flashing of the foam clothes every surrounding object in meteoric lustre. At sun-rise, also, the scene is different, but only in the hues, not in the degree, of its magnificence. Then "Upon the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, The isolated rocky pillars, by which the river is divided into a triple fall, seem as entirely cut off from all social intercourse with the shores opposite as if the latter were some inaccessible point in the Alps. They are covered with green bushes, and were some time since colonized with rabbits, which certainly have nothing to fear, ab externo, provided supplies last, and population does not exceed the territory. These rocks rise to a considerable height, and present, |