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the whole village district. You can seldom find a whole acre together. Farmers owning fifty acres leave their lands in small beds varying from an eighth to an acre. In some villages they approach so near a line that parents are forbidden to divide them any longer. The country is entirely innocent of fences. The larger cattle must be kept in the stable the whole year. Morning and evening the streets are alive with busy females, carrying home large bales of grass on their heads, almost as large as themselves! Every village has its geese-herd, swineherd and shepherd. Every morning these respective functionaries blow their horns along the street, when geese, swine and sheep come running out of every gateway and alley, each to join its kind, to be led on a common village pasture. Long lines of gabbling geese run through narrow, fenceless foot-paths, without daring to touch a single blade not their own. The shepherds sometimes remain on the neighboring hills for whole weeks. At night they commit their flocks to their dogs. These animals, not very unlike sheep in color and hair, possess a remarkable intelligence and faithfulness. I have seen the shepherd walking carelessly ahead of his flock, while the dogs would run guard on each side. The hungry sheep were tempted to browse among the rank wayside grass, but their inflexible canine honesty would check the slightest appearance of depredations. Landed property is pretty equally distributed. With few exceptions, the poorest have a few patches on which to raise their bread, and the richest have seldom more than fifty acres. In this valley good arable land sells from five to eight hundred dollars an acre, just the bare land, for dwellings are distinct property altogether.

The villages are almost as close together as our farm houses in America. Within four miles of Freilanbersheim there are at least twelve villages, containing a population of from five to fifteen hundred each. Every village has a chief magistrate called Burgermeister, assisted by an adjunct and a town council. Next to the minister the Burgermeister is the most important man in the community, and in some respects even above him. Every marriage must be solemnized by the Burgermeister before it can be done by the minister. The latter is optional, but by the omission of the former the bridegroom will forfeit his citizenship. Moreover, whether villain or saint, he is chief member of the church council-an office corresponding to the eldership in the German Reformed Church of America. Usually my first acquaintance in the village was the minister, and then the Burgermeister. I always found them a gentlemanly and hospitable class of men, worthy to be at the helm of their little commonwealths. Every village has a protestant and catholic church. Sometimes both denominations worship in the same building. Each has a distinct school, in which the pastor is allowed to give religious instruction. On Saturday evening about dusk the church bell rings to announce the end of week-day labor, and to remind the villagers to prepare for Sunday.

When I reached Freilanbersheim there happened to be a wedding in the town. Now a wedding in these rural villages is an occasion of rejoicing in which all the inhabitants feel and take a warm interest. Old grand-ma's take their frolicing little posterity to greet the bride; shy lovers bashfully congratulate the novices in wedlock, while their hearts

beat hopefully for a similar event in their history. Messengers are sent to every house with wedding-cake gifts-in short they are designed to diffuse universal merriment and joy. The news of my arrival was soon carried to the hall of rejoicing. The Burgermeister was consulted to have me brought thither as their guest. He replied, that much as he desired to entertain the son of their ancient Burger, whom a few of their number still remembered with pleasure, that it would be contrary to the rules of etiquette to take so newly arrived a stranger away from the retirement of his happy relatives into the jumbling jollification of a merry marriage day. Weddings are often a key to the manners of a people, and on this account it might have been interesting to the mind of a curious traveler.

The dwellings of these rural villages are all arranged after the same plan. The front is invariably closed. A gateway opens into a court, two of whose sides are occupied by the house and barn, and the remaining sides are usually formed by the rear side of a neighbor's buildings. From this court man and beast enter their respective dwellings, but of course the latter sometimes take undue liberties. This arrangement possesses the advantage of compressing the premises into the smallest possible compass, an important consideration where there is such a scarcity of money and land. In America, where there is enough of both and to spare, man and beast need not be kept in such close proximity. The stock of cattle, like their farms, must necessarily be small. A few farm with horses, more with oxen, and most with cows. In Belgium I saw donkeys struggling along in carts large enough to carry a dozen like themselves. In Holland I saw four and five dogs hitched to wagons and dashing along the streets with reindeer-speed, and here I have seen a cow galloping along the road in a truck-wagon, as if she had been created for that purpose.

Notwithstanding their many oddities, I found much to admire and love in the simple German manners of these rural villages. In this region at least two-thirds of them end in home, such as Bosenheim, Engelheim, Badenheim, &c., in itself an indication of the predominant home-feeling of the German family. Their home attachments are intensely strong. Many still live in the house in which their ancestors had lived for five hundred years, and very probably they may remain a family inheritance for five more centuries. For German homesteads are not as evanescent as those in America. Nothing but absolute necessity ean compel them to part with their twofold inheritance-their dwelling and the good name of their ancestors. Though devoted to severe and constant toil for a bare living, they are always cheerful and contented. Often did their unsuspecting hospitality press me to their homely fare, where old and young were entertained with mirthful and mournful tales.

"Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crown'd,
Where all the ruddy family around,

Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail,
Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale,

Or press the bashful stranger to his food,
And learn the luxury of doing good."

The country around Kreuznach is all drained by the Nahe. From the heights of the Niederwald, opposite Bingen, I took a long parting

view of this charming valley. The view extends near thirty miles. Right before me was the gorge through which the Nahe empties into the Rhine, from which the valley widens into a lake of vegetation, its hills and uplands forming emerald waves, and its valleys dotted with busy villages, here and there some gray ruin raising its frowning walls into the blue sky, while the Nahe like a vital thread binding the whole scene into living harmony, wound its crooked path around ruins, cliffs and meadows, higher and higher, until its attenuated roots were lost in the gorges of the far-distant mountains.

Immediately below Bingen "the Rhine cuts across a chain of mountains running nearly at right angles to the course of its stream. There are good grounds for supposing that at one time (before human record) this range entirely stopped its further progress, damming up the waters behind them into a lake, which extends as far as Basle, and whose existence is further proved by numerous fresh water deposites, shells, &c., to be found in the valley of the Rhine above Mayence. Some earthquake, or perhaps the force of the accumulated waters, must have burst through this mountain wall, and secured for the river a free passage to the ocean." From Bingen upwards the Rhine gradually becomes less interesting, its ruins disappear, while its banks subside into flat lowlands more fertile than romantic.

Germany abounds with mineral springs, which, during the summer season, are numerously visited by persons from all parts of the world. The Germans have a universal custom to visit at least one of these places during the year. Kreuznach has extensive salt springs, whose waters have precisely the taste of epsom salts, a flavor to which I have never been very partial. At Wiesbaden hot springs gush out of the earth, constantly sending up curling clouds of vapor. The water tastes not very unlike chicken broth. While hundreds of invalids had resorted thither to wrench the fruits of over-exertion or dissipation from the system, I happened to find relief of an affliction which had resulted from a very different cause. Every country must have its plague, so RhineHessen must have its fleas. Of all the little annoyances in the wide world of animated nature, whether quadruped, poliped or sineped, there are none of such taunting annoyance, which are so much everywhere and yet nowhere, as fleas. And here these little airy-nothings possess ambiquity like the frogs of Egypt. I did not inform myself of the chemical properties of these waters, but their medicinal virtues for the cure of fleas are beyond dispute.

In a little more than an hour the cars whirled us from Wiesbaden to Frankfort-on-the-Main. Here for the first time in a foreign land I had the pleasure of leaning back in an easy chair, and opening a budget of news-letters, papers, and above all, The Guardian for May and June, with a group of familiar friends talking wisely therein. This is one of the free towns of Germany, an imperium in imperio, and the seat of the German Diet. Its present population is 77,000, of which 6,000 are Jews. The latter all live in one section of the city, called the Judengasse, in which is also the house where the Rothschild family were born. Frankfort is the most interesting German city I have yet met with. Founded by Charlemagne, afterwards a rallying point for the Crusaders,

once the capital of the German Empire, the birth-place of Goethe, and, along with these, possessing beauties of natural scenery-bounded on one side by the Main, and its other sides fringed with parks and promenades. These properties make it a city which few visitors leave without regret. Here you have all the advantages of the Past with the conveniences of the present. In fact—

"The Past

Contending with the Present, and by turns
Each has the mastery."

Outside the wall a new city is rapidly rising, composed of princely dwellings, mostly the homes of bankers and retired gentlemen. Some of these also reside in a new part of the old town within the walls. The old town proper has narrow streets, quaint, lofty buildings, five and six stories high, each ascending story projecting over the others, until the attics almost meet. During rainy weather, which I had the misfortune to meet here again, these overhanging projections form a complete shelter. From the narrowness of the streets those in the upper stories can not well observe the passing crowd below. To obviate this difficulty mirrors are placed in front of the windows, consisting of two pieces of glass, the one reflecting up the other down the street. These form a certain angle with the street, so as to reflect the scene below and bring it right on the window. While the German lady sits quietly sewing or reading at the window, she can see all the fashions and follies of the crowd passing before her window alone, the unobserved of all observers.

The Romesberg is an old building containing the Kaisersaal and other rooms used by the old German emperors and their senates. In one corner of this is a building which Luther occupied. In the Cathedral is the Election Chapel in which forty-six emperors were chosen and afterwards crowned in front of the high altar. The house in which Goethe was born looks remarkably fresh for its age. Here his stern, unamiable father had his altercation with the French officer. Here his tender mother played the mediator between the harsh father and his affrighted son. Here the boy-Goethe played and powdered, dreamed and despaired over his "Gretche." And not very far from this, at the Cathedral, was the gorgeous display of the Imperial Coronation, which wrought so powerfully on his youthful imagination. On the middle of the bridge over the Main, on an iron post, stands the golden cock, at which the little fellow used to marvel with curious cogitations.

Hitherto I have had little to do with commisionaries, or special guides. In Brussels, where I was ignorant of the language, I yielded to the importunate offers of one at a stipulated fee, who said he could "explicate" every thing in English. But I soon found this about all he knew. He regretted that I could not understand German. I told him he should let me have it in German, but he knew still less of that. He ran me through muddy streets for an hour after the very objects least worth seeing, and took me through an ordeal of gesticulating "explications" that were painful to see and hear. While passing through the Cathedral I noticed him making his devotions and genu

flections at the images, and thought the man after all had some religious principle about him. But we had scarcely crossed the threshold before he demanded a double fee! Poor man

"Even in penance planning sins anew."

At Antwerp I was besieged by a set with unusual tenacity. I told them in German, English and broken French I did not want them. But still they followed, placing themselves before me to hinder my progress until I felt my situation exceedingly awkward. I put down my traveling bag and drew myself up at full length in an attitude which they interpreted very correctly and speedily disappeared. At Worms a crowd discovered me at a distance coming from the depot, who tried to outrun each other for the job with such scrambling speed, that I narrowly escaped from a serious collision.

After spending a week in the monotonous plain of the Rhine, I found a pleasant relief in getting to Heidelberg. It is situated in a mountain opening through which the Neckar issues into the valley of the Rhine. It stretches its narrow length along the banks of this stream, with a towering range of projecting and receding mountains on both sides, and the view on the third blocked up with the same at a short distance, so that the only clear view is towards the Rhine through the mouth of the little Neckar Valley. One would suppose that a city surrounded by such natural ramparts could easily avert the assaults and calamities of war; but Heidelberg, like its neighbors, has passed through scenes of terrific carnage. It has repeatedly been sacked, plundered and destroyed, and its present flourishing condition is a proof of its tenacious vitality. Its university ranks among the first of its kind in Europe. It has a history of nearly five hundred years, and has numbered among its faculty, stars of the first magnitude. These German students have a martial ferocity that is truly appalling. At Heidelberg they sometimes have four and five duels a week. They had several while I was there.

Heidelberg Castle, the residence of the Electors of the Palatinate, is in ruins. But an invigorating atmosphere surrounds it even in its decay. Large gardens are planted around it, with winding, shady avenues, before which its old crippled walls raise their firm battlements, gray with the dust of many a siege. Above the Castle is the Konigstuhl, surmounted by a lofty tower 1752 feet above the level of the sea. The spire of the Munster at Strasburg can be seen from this on a clear day, a distance of ninety miles. From the summit of this mountain the army of the fierce and cruel Tilly belched fiery destruction upon the illfated city during the Thirty Years' War. On the opposite side of the Neckar is the Heiligeberg; along its side a long road winds through vineyards, called the Philosopher's Walk, because the professors used to promenade along here. I found it pleasant of an evening to stroll along this sequestered path, and listen to the merry hum of departing day. Far below, the rolling stream made a rippling melody, the city swarmed through its doors and streets, while streams of busy idlers from every nation strolled through walks and avenues above the Castle, chattering merrily in indistinguishable confusion. And then, to crown the whole, the town-clock would toll the knell of the expired day. First a

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