He was very agreeable, and amused me much by a long and thorough German dissertation upon the difference of character in his two boys, and its developement in the most minute circumstances. This he was exemplifying to me, as they played before us, by the different way in which they ran up and down the banks near us, and the different objects that made them stop, or attracted their young regards. He disappointed me by speaking very lightly of Madame de Stael's Germany, a book I thought most highly of before I saw that country, and think more highly of since personal observation has confirmed to me the value of it. I believe, however, that the plain English of the old gentleman's objection was that true love of father-land, which resented the idea of any but a German born, bred, and resident, treating any subject connected with the history, the institutions, or literature of his country worthily enough.

The road from hence to Heidelberg, along what is called the Bergstrasse, is a wonder and a delight: the eye rests on

nothing but beauty, fertility, and abundance; the outstretched hand can touch no branch that is not fruitful; it has all the appearance of a vast garden; the very towns and villages lose their man-made character; they, too, look as if they were but just enough to preserve it from running to waste, and as if the happy inhabitants had been placed in them with the same blessed command as our first parents in their Eden, "to dress and to keep it." But I check a rhapsody so naturally inspired by the scene, and must confess to my reader, that this paradise is traversed by a military road, and that we need not look farther back than the history of our own times to know, that from these same trees the blushing fruit has been rudely snatched by hands yet red from the battle. This road terminates in the valley of the Neckar; the hills, between which the river flows, are picturesque in their character. On the left bank lies the city of Heidelberg; upon a wooded cliff above it stands the castle. This ruin greatly disappointed me; it is a huge pile of building, dilapidated, roofless, windowless. Row

G

above row of square gaping vacuities stare out upon you from walls, which want alike the form and the colour that give dignity to a castle, or interest to a ruin. It is like the shell of a barrack, a hospital, or a manufactory; such, at least, it appears in the glare of noonday. In the grey

hour of dawn, however, or the deep gloom which follows upon sunset, the effect is certainly imposing, and may be called majestic. I visited it at both those hours, and I sate out on its terrace, looking down the river on the glorious plain, bounded by the Rhine, with an entranced rapture.

There are some pinnacle points on the loftiest part of the ruin, surmounted by statues, the attitudes of which are grotesque. In the evening hour they look like living beings, and produce a very fantastic illusion. I did not forget to visit the famed tun; it is like an old Dutch ship on the stocks, a large ribbed vessel, that might contain a sea of wine, and float it safely over an ocean of water.

I met several students in the gardens,

both in groupes and singly. Heidelberg is a university containing many hundreds. Of German students I can only speak pictorially, as I have seen them in my brief passage through the country, and as I have been impressed by them. Their costume, when clean, I am far from disliking, and their sins of smoking and singing appear to me venial offences; even the drinking of beer where they cannot get wine I forgive. I believe Porson, our renowned Grecian, would have smoked and drunk beer with any two of them; and, perhaps, his shirt-collar might not have shamed the whiteness of theirs. Tom Warton (that well-beloved name) liked his ale and his rubber of bowls, and so did the men of his time. Ale-houses had a long day both at Oxford and Cambridge, but Germany is far behind us; with her they are the rage still, that is, where the country affords not wine. Of the students in German universities the great majority are poor. The period of their residence is a very trying one, and nothing but the care generally bestowed on their boyhood at home would

safely carry a youth through it, and restore him, as * a late traveller tells us it does, "to fall into his own place in the bustling competition of society, and lead a peaceful, industrious life, as his father did before him."

In their universities there is none of that wholesome discipline so honourably distinguishing those of our native country. It was the immediate and shrewd observation of the Duchess of Oldenburgh, on visiting Oxford: Here is one great secret of your superiority in discipline, your scholars live enclosed in colleges, and separate from the citizens." But yet, with all these advantages, let a German traveller arrive at an inn in Oxford, where some of the wilder young gownsmen are holding such a dinner and supper as we know they sometimes do, and let him go next morning to the theatre, and hear an unpopular vice-chancellor and his proctors hooted, nay, literally, by some, howled at with a tone only suited to a cock-fight; would it not be pardonable if he were, for a moment, a little

* A Tour in Germany, by John Russel, Esquire, vol. i. page 193.