BASLE : THE FRONTIER TOWN OF SWITZERLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3455, 1 June 1920, Page 55

BASLE : THE FRONTIER TOWN OF SWITZERLAND.

By Edith Ssahle Grossmann, M.A

There axe two or three ways of seeing a famous town. One may go through it hook in hand conscientiously and deliberately ; and this is not a bad plan, but there are better. The best 1S to saturate one's mind beforehand in the history and noteworthy associations of the place, and to keep the guide book only for necessary direction. Next to thk-and yet for some purposes just as good—:s to stroll through the streets and contemplate whatever strikes the eye ot mind. One sometimes gets in this last way just what one is oest fitted to receive. This last plan, or absence of plan, is the one I followed m a brief pause at Bale (Basle or Basel). My former sketch, I fear, has not done justice to the fame of its cathedral or minister. Nothing else in the town struck me so much as the Historical Museum. Speaking generallv, a traveller witn very limited time would not thing of spending it in .visiting the local museum, and would expect if he did to find there much the same sort of collection as elsewhere—enormous skeletons of extinct animals, stuffed birds and dead insects, specimens of stones and things in general. But the Historical Museum of Bale is unique. It is a volume of the history of Switzerland "writ large, an object lesson that almost startles you into the belief that your are looking into the homes of departed burghers of the. lviiddle Ages. Briefly put, it represents some portion of the life of men and women on this snot for untold ages. Of the prehistoric times of the Lake-dwellers, the Stone Ages of history, there are only such relics as you might see elsewhere. But, passing c-ver long gaps of time, the visitor finds himself (or herself) working into a reproduction of "domestic interiors" arranged in order of their periods. Here, for example, we may enter a room, or rooms, of the thirteenth or fourteenth century—arched walls, doorways, arched and deep, silled windows reproduced with the greatest care, and the furniture actually "handed down from that period. The Gothic furniture, the throne-like chairs, the tables, and stools, is a special feature. Next we may venture into a house of the Fifteenth century, and then we are in such rooms as Luther lived in, and Eras mus while he took up his abode here in "Basel." So we pass on, making ourselves at home in the homes of prosperous burghers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The costumes that they and their families wore can still be seen, their ornaments, and the musical instruments long before the piano age—harp, spinet, and such other instruments as we associate with old-fashioned poetry and romance; the housewife's distaff; the embroideries that generations of Swiss dames worked at; the crocks, the pottery, the glass. You almost feel the silence of these vacant rooms, as if expecting the return of beruffled dame and her citizen husband. They might have left them empty but one day. Baie had oo:e famous citizens and visitors dwelling in it, especially in the ago of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Here the great scholar Eirasmus made his home, and here he died and was buried. Here, at an earlier age, Holbein painted his pictures and frescoes. His sketches of the ''Dance of Death" are to this day to be seen in this Historical Museum. Into them he put the grim, grotesque, and yet grimly humorous religion and morals of mediseval Christianity. Looking at them you see the transition by which religion passed from the devil worship of the preRoman pagans of 'Central Europe on into the stern precepts of Calvinistic Christianity. They show us Death, the ghastlyskeleton, jigging and capering on his way, and taking to the grave for his partner reluctant lady or knight or priest. A poetical description is given in Longfellow's "Golden Legend." These clattering stone-paved streete of old Bale have been traversed by the feet of men even greater in the world than Holbein—notably, bv Ulrich Zwingli, and by Calvin, who fled here from France. The city played a prominent part in the Reformation. Here, after 1519, Luther's writings were first printed. At a still earlier epoch a great council of Bale came near to rending the Catholic Church in twain. It fell upon some of the abuses in the practise of prelates and priests with such vigour that the Pope took alarm and excommunicated its Fathers. They, however, filled, we may imagine, with the vigorous independence of the mountain land in which they were assembled, set their own authority above tlie pontiff's, excommunicAtm.£r him in their turn, and set up another Pope, who was acknowledged by a larcre part of the Church, especially the universities. Finally, however, they withdrew their opposition, and acknowledged the original pontiff on condition _of having their other decrees authorised. Cook's' guide book, however, does not seem to be correct in saving that it was the Council of Rale that condemned Huss; it was the Council of Constance.

Bale filled a much bicker space in mediaeval Enrone than it does in modern Europe. It is nn ancient citv, or, rather, it is on the site of an ancient city, an outpost of the Roman Empire, Basilia; but. as our .guide again reminds us, that Basilia was burnt by the Huns at the beginning of the tenth century, and there are Bo traces left of it. Ear nearly 50 years fte soiPin and around it hae been shared

(unequally) between Germany and Switzerland ; but before the disastrous FrancoPrussian war, as it touched the borders of Alsace, it was said that a man could stand at once on the soil of three nations —France, Germany, and Switzerland —at one spot in the neighbourhood of Bale. By the new Treaty restoring Alsace to France this feat, no doubt, can again bo performed.