legal tarif, that I will present the bill itself (translated) to my readers.

Bill for the costs of the funeral of the child of Mr., deceased, in this place, and buried according to the first class of the funeral regulations::

The free choice of this class attested.

The Receipt of 15 florins, 5 kreuzers, attested.

GOTTFRIED BAUEN.

At the back of this bill you have a copy of all the police regulations connected with the business of a funeral. These are fifteen in number; and they are so curious, that I shall notice a few of * Florin, twenty-pence.

+ Kreuzer, one-third of a penny.

them, not only for the gratification of the general reader, but for the gratification of the honourable profession of undertakers in this country. It must be particularly interesting to them to see how they would be tied up, hand and foot, under a paternal government, and would be only allowed to follow their calling in such numbers, and in such a manner as government prescribed, with the bill already made out for them.

The first regulation is, that the cost of every thing shall be fixed; that there are, as observed, five classes of funeral requisites, out of which the friends of the deceased must choose one. The tax-list for this will be handed in, and must be signed by the orderer. Any ceremonies, or attendance out of the ordinary routine, such as a funeral sermon, attendance of more clergy men, may be ordered of the procurator, or manager of funerals, who will enter the same at their fixed cost in the bill. The coffin is to be delivered from the magazine at the house, quite ready, without further charge. If the parties want it pitching, which in general is not considered necessary, the charge is 40 kreuzers (sixteen-pence), but in the University Hospital, only 30 kreuzers, i.e. ten-pence. very cross, the little black cross of deal, which is stuck on a new-made grave, is to be procured at the police magazine, and at its fixed charge by law, 24 kreuzers, eight-pence. All funerals of the three first classes must be accompanied by a mourning

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coach, even though the procession shall go on foot; and only the two last classes are allowed to omit this. All funeral service and evening tolling of the bell are forbidden, except by particular permission of the President of the Board of Funeral Commissioners. The tolling of bells has its exact tax— as two bells, 2s. 8d.; three bells, 6s. 8d.; five bells, 7s. 6d. But different towns, and even different churches, have different charges; but all fixed by the police tarif. Even the very way the funeral shall go is prescribed. The funeral procession shall take the most direct way from the house to the cemetery. The number of persons to be bidden may be forty, at the regular fee to the bidder; all exceeding this number at a further fixed price. All demands beyond these fixed, by any party, or the demand from the friends of the deceased of even their fixed fees, by the prescribed conductors of a funeral, are strictly forbidden; no one can make any demand but the procurator, and he only by his bill, according to the regular tarif.

Such are the minute regulations by which the German police enter into this and every other of your domestic transactions. You are treated as so many great children who cannot take care of yourselves, and so the government, by its numerous agents, the police, becomes your general guardian, bailiff, and beadle. It takes care that you do not burn your house, and it sweeps your chimneys for you. The police can come at night, and demand

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an entrance to see whether you have carefully extinguished all your fires, and such a thing as a person ordering his chimney to be swept is never dreamed of. That were a piece of free-will indeed! No, all this is prescribed and done for you. The appointed sweeps, at their fixed times, enter your house, sweep all your chimneys, make the proper charge, and away again. It is no use telling them that they do not want doing, or have not been used, it is the time, and they must be done. We were the first tenants of a new house, and the legal sweeps actually came and swept all the chimneys. within ten days of the house being occupied, and before some of them had had a fire in them. We appealed to the landlord; he only shook his head, "it is the time, and they will certainly do it."

Some of these regulations strike oddly against our old established poetical ideas. A serenade is a very poetical and romantic thing in one's unpractised brain. A lover standing silently on a summer night beneath the balcony or the window of his beloved one, and amid the odour of flowers and the songs of nightingales, singing to his guitar a charming lay of love,-O how many youthful imaginations has it fired! how many poetical pens has it put in motion! But hear, young enthusiasts, hear, poets and poetesses,-your lover must get a license from the police-office before he dare either raise his song, or thumb his guitar! Yes, I know not whether this be the cold reality of things

in Spain and Italy, in the Austrian states of Italy assuredly it is,-but in Germany that is the fact. No one is allowed to sing at all in the streets after a certain hour,-eleven, I believe, at night. Whoever, therefore, intends to give a serenade must, and does, first procure permission from the police!

And what, indeed, must he not get permission for from the police? What the Germans call Schreiberei, Scribbling, has grown up to a most amazing extent under this system. The policeoffice has its long paper of printed regulations on all possible subjects, with all its fines and taxes appended; and nothing can be more amusing to an observer, though often most provoking to the parties concerned, than to see how fresh English are continually knocking their heads against these. restrictions, prescriptions, proscriptions, laws, regulations, ordinances,-descending to the most insignificant and unexpected things. Let us take an actual case, witnessed by myself.

An Englishman is just arrived in a German town, with half-a-dozen youths under his care, for the finishing of their education. Some of these youths are nearly grown to manhood. They have their guns and pistols, and practise at a mark, or at birds in their tutor's garden. A flock of sparrows settles on a tree, they fire at them. A man in a neighbouring garden raises his head and gazes sternly and significantly at them. Presently arrives a policeman, with a long printed paper of regula