itself, each professor is a law unto himself, each student revolves on his own axis and at his own rate of speed. English and Americans have formed not a few queer notions of university life in Germany. They picture to themselves a town like Göttingen, for instance, as a place where everybody is running a break-neck race for scholarly fame, where days are months and hours days, where minutes are emphatically the gold-dust of time. The truth is, that no one hurries or gets into a feaze over anything, the University itself setting a good example. The academic year is divided into two terms, called the winter and the summer semesters. The winter semester covers nominally five months, from October 15th to March 15th. In reality, both beginning and end are whittled off, so to speak, and there is a pause of two weeks at Christmas, so that the actual working time is little over four months. From March 15th to April 15th is the spring vacation. The summer semester then runs to August 15th, but practically the work is over by the first of that month.

Supposing yourself to be a tyro in such matters, and the 15th of October to be drawing near, you are naturally impatient to be matriculated and at work. But you will discover that the older students are not yet back, and, on consulting the "Black Board," you see no announcement of lectures. There is no hurry. A day or two after the 15th, perhaps, a general announcement is affixed, to the effect that candidates for matriculation may present themselves at the Aula on such and such days of the week, at certain hours. The ceremony is a simple one. In the first place you proceed to the sccretary's office and deposit there your "documents" entitling you to admission. For a German, this is a matter of some importance: he is not admitted unless he is able to produce certain papers, the principal one of which is a certificate that he has attended a gymnasium or Realschule, and has passed satisfactorily the final examination (Abiturien, tenexamen). As the University holds no entrance-examination, this is the only guarantee it can have that those seeking admission are properly qualified. But in the case of a foreigner, the utmost liberality is displayed. Ten years ago, while Göttingen was a Hanoverian university, the only document required of a foreigner was his passport. It is the same to this day in Leipsic, Heidelberg, and the South German universities. The Prussian universities are a trifle stricter; in the case of Americans, they generally expect a diploma of Bachelor of Arts or the like, but they can scarcely be said to exact it. I doubt whether any German university would refuse to admit any foreign candidate who showed by his size and bearing that he was able to look after himself, and not a mere boy.

Matriculation Fees.

The next step in matriculation is to visit the treasurer (Quaestor) and pay the matriculation fees. These vary somewhat with the

different universities, but are nowhere excessive. In Göttingen they amounted to about five dollars. In exchange for your fees you get two weighty documents, the abc of student life: your Anmeldungsbuch, and your student card. The former varies in size and shape (in Berlin they used the Anmeldungs-bogen as distinguished from buch), but whether book or merely folded sheet, it answers the same purpose; it is to be your record of work done. Imagine to yourself a large, stout book like a copy-book; each page is for a semester, and there are eight or ten pages in all, that being the estimated maximum number of semesters that you will remain. If you study longer, you can get a fresh book. The page is ruled in vertical columns, one for the names of the courses of lectures that you hear, another for the treasurer's certificate that you have paid the lecturefees, a third and a fourth for the professor's certificates that you have attended the course, entered at the beginning and at the end of the semesters. The modus operandi is as follows. After deciding what lectures you will hear, you yourself write the official title in the left hand column. You then get the Quaestor to affix his teste in the second column. This entitles you to a seat, and if the course happens to be a popular one, attended by large numbers, the sooner you secure your seat the better. After "hearing" a week or two, you make your visit upon the professor himself, selecting some hour in the forenoon when he has no official engagement. If you wish to conform rigorously to etiquette, you must appear in grand toilet, i. e., in dress coat and kid-gloves, although the chances are ninetynine in a hundred that in so doing you will catch the professor himself in wrapper and slippers, unshaven and smoking a long pipe. With regard to the second certification, given at the close of the lecture course, there is no fixed rule; any time not too long before the end of the semester will do; you can even wait until the next semester or still later; in fact, you need not go in person, but can send the book around by your servant-girl or your boot-black.

Legitimation or Student-Card.

The student-card, like the Anmeldungs-buch, is a peculiarly German institution. When you are matriculated, not only is your name entered in the general university register, but you must be inscribed under some one of the four general faculties, viz.: theology, law, medicine, philosophy. You then receive a card, rot much larger than an ordinary visiting card, of stout pasteboard. On the face of the card is placed your name, Herr N. N., aus (from) such and such a place, student in such a faculty. On the reverse is a printed announcement, couched in the knottiest of German sentences, that none but the accomplished scholar of both English and German can untie, to the effect that you are always to carry this card about you on your person, and produce it whenever it may be demanded by the university or town police, under penalty of a fine of twenty Silber Groschen (50 cents).

This simple card is your Legitimation. In a university that has a complete jurisdiction of its own, as Göttingen has, at least did have in the days of which I write, producing this card secures you against all municipal arrest. You are member of a special corporation, and as such are amenable only to the university court; neither civil nor criminal action can be brought against you in the ordinary courts, but must be laid before the university court in the first instance. If this body should find you guilty of a crime or a grave misdemeanor, it would then surrender you to the Supreme Court, Criminal Section, the German equivalent to our Circuit Court. You cannot be arrested or locked up by a town policeman; all he can do with you is to keep you for a few minutes in custody, until he can find a University Pedell (beadle) to take you in charge.

Your card in your pocket and your Anmelsdungs-buch in your hand, in company with ten or twelve other candidates, you are then ushered into the august presence of the Rector magnificus, or Chancellor of the University. You will probably find him to be a man much as other men, only looking a trifle uncomfortable in his dress coat. The rector makes a short harangue, of which, if you are in the backward condition that I was, you will probably understand one word in five, but the substance of which is that he is rejoiced to see so many promising young men aspirants to the higher culture imparted by the Georgia Augusta (the official name of the University), and that he hopes you will be good fellows and make the most of your time and opportunities. In token of which, each candidate in turn shakes hands with him. You are then ushered out, to make room for a fresh squad who have just got their books and cards.

The ceremony is over, you are a German student, or a student in Germany, at last, ready to absorb all the knowledge and Bildung that your Alma Mater deals out with lavish hand. If you happen to be of an amiable, convivial turn of mind, your spirits will be buoyant; you will consider it your privilege and duty to cele brate the occasion by "dedicating" a bowl of punch to your elder brethren and compatriots who have helped you through the ordeal by telling you where to go and what to do. You and they will then make an afternoon of it, driving out to the Gliechen or the Plesse to enjoy the scenery, and indulge in coffee in the open air, and on your return, if still unsatisfied, you can make a night of it at Fritz's or the Universitatskneipe. Should you wake up next morning with a headache, a Jammer or a Kater, you can derive consolation from two circumstances: first, that it is only what has hap-. pened to thousands before you and will happen to thousands after you; next that you have fairly and honorably initiated yourself into student-life. You know now what it is to be a student, as Victor Hugo might felicitously express it, avant d'avoir crachê du latin dans la boutique d'un professeur.

SELECTION OF LECTURES.

Having habituated yourself to the sense of your new dignity, the next step is to decide upon the professors with whom you are to "hear." This will not be so easy as you might suppose. Unless you have come to the university with a preconceived plan of study, you will find yourself embarrassed by the wealth from which you are to choose. Fortunately the professors give you ample time for making a suitable selection.

The University opens nominally, it may be assumed, on the 15th of October. One professor announces that he will begin to read on the 18th, another on the 20th, a third on the 25th; in fact, I have known one professor to begin his course on the 9th of November. Each professor, it has been already observed, is a law unto himself: the main point is that he read at least one course of lectures each semester, on a subject of his own selection, for which he has properly qualified himself, and that he cover about so much ground. Whether he begins late and stops early, is a matter in his own discretion. This is not indifference or sloth on the part of the professors, but rather a deliberate forecasting of time and labor. Where the work is heavy, and the field wide, the professor will not waste an hour. Vangerow, for instance, in lecturing at Heidelberg on the Pandects, used to begin on the very first day after the nominal opening day, and continue, averaging three hours daily throughout the winter, until two weeks after the semester had nominally closed.

Each course of lectures is paid for separately, the prices varying with the number of hours occupied in the week. Thus a single course, as it is called, one taking four or five hours a week, is charged about $5; a double course, one of ten or twelve hours a week, would cost $10. The usual double courses are those on the Pandects, on Anatomy and Physiology, and on Chemistry. The highest number of courses (double and single) that I have taken in any one semester (my fifth) was four, aggregating twenty-five hours a week, for which I paid between $25 and $30, a small price, in view of the quantity and quality of the instruction.

Lecture-fees are paid to the Quaestor, and not to the professor direct, although this latter eventually receives them, or the greater part of them, from the Quaestor. The new-comer will be puzzled at the distinction between lectures publice, privatim, and privatissime. Public lectures are those held by a professor gratuitously, on some minor topic of general interest. In the Prussian Universities each professor is held to announce at least one such lecture a term. The privatim lectures are the ordinary ones, for which fees are paid, and which are regarded as the substance of university teaching. A lecture privatissime is nothing more than our private lesson, the terms and times for which are settled by agreement between the professor

and the student. The fees for it are not paid to the Quaestor, and the lecture, or lesson, is not entered in the Anmeldungbuch.

I have used more than once the expression "a course of lectures;" to guard against misapprehension, it may be advisable to stop and explain at length. By a course of lectures in a German university is meant a series of lectures on one subject, delivered by one man, during one semester. A German university has, strictly speaking, no course of instruction; there are no classes, the students are not arranged according to their standing by years, there are no recitations, there is no grading, until the candidate presents himself at the end of three or four years for his doctor's degree, when the quality of his attainments is briefly and roughly indicated by the wording of the diploma.

Hospitiren, or Dropping-in-Attendance.

Under the pilotage of H—, a countryman who had been pursuing classical studies for two years, I went the rounds of what the German students call hospitiren, i. e., dropping in to a lecture to see how you like the lecturer. This practice prevails to a considerable extent at the University, at least at the begin ning of a semester. It is practically the only way that newly matriculated students have of deciding between rival lecturers or of selecting some lecture that is not embraced in the ordinary routine of study. On this, as on so many points, the Germans display a great deal of practical sense. The student is free to roam ⚫about for two or three weeks, but at the end of that time it is expected of him that he will come to a decision and settle down, either to steady work or to steady idleness. Consequently, if you should attend regularly a certain course of lectures, occupying a seat and taking notes, without presenting your Anmeldungbuch to the professor, you would probably be waited upon by the beadle, at your room, and interrogated as to your studies, what you had paid for, what you intended to pay for, and the like. In other words, your freedom of hospitiren will not be suffered to amount to unmistakable "sponging."

I availed myself pretty thoroughly of the hospitiren privilege, attending one or two lectures in every course delivered upon subjects connected in any way with letters. The philosophical faculty covers everything that is not law, medicine, or theology. It embraces, consequently, the exact sciences, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and the like, the descriptive sciences, botany, physiology, geology, the historical sciences, political history, political economy, finance, the humanities, that is, Latin and Greek, Alterthumswissenschaft, Oriental and general philology, and the modern languages, as they. are taught philologically and critically. The field, therefore, is immense, and often overlaps those of the other faculties. Thus the medical student, being held to a general knowledge of chemistry, botany, and comparative physiology and anatomy, has to pass at