others more, and then still more, swarming altogether on this hilltop. An Austrian officer, trusting to his military eye, acknowledged himself inclined to the very highest estimate. "Endless discourse was circling round. There were numbers of peasants' rules, and traditionary weather-prophesyings, as to what should come to pass this year-such as, 'A dry April is not the peasant's will,' 'When the grass-fly sings before the vine springs, there will be a good year,' with a host of others. A mountaineer, who listened to these many old saws foretelling fruitfulness with eagerness, if not with envy, was asked if such were current amongst them too; he replied, not in such variety. Their riddles and sayings were more simple, thus: In the morning round; At noon-day stamped; At evening in panes ; It is sound. The people present rejoiced themselves in this contentedness, and added, that these were times in which one may be contented to be even so well off. "But now rise many of the company with complacency from the table, to the end of which it was almost impossible to see. Others greet and are greeted; and so by degrees falls by degrees falls away the multitude. The sitting-together, few, desirable guests alone linger. They part reluctantly. They turn to each other once more to enjoy the pleasant grief of such a separation, and promise finally to the satisfying of some, impossible meetings again. Without the tent and booths, you feel instantly, under the high sun, the want of that shade which an extensive new planting of walnut trees promises to the future grandsons. "A new movement announces some new circumstance. People are crowding to the preaching. All crush to the east side. There the building is not yet completed. Still stands the scaffolding; yet even during the erection one serves God. Even so was it in the deserts. Churches and cloisters were erected by pious saints with their own hands. Every hewing, every laying down of a stone, was a god-service. Connoisseurs are reminded of the striking painting of Le Sueur; of the wanderings and workings of the holy Bruno. So repeats itself everything distinguished in the great world-course. The observant remarks it everywhere. * * * "A stone pulpit projecting from the church wall, and supported on arches, is accessible only from within. The preacher steps forth; a clergyman in his best years. The sun stands high, and therefore a boy holds a canopy over him. He speaks with a clear intelligible voice, a pure and able discourse. We believed ourselves to have seized its meaning, and repeated it many times to our friends. Meantime we, his hearers, looked up to the pure vault of heaven. The clear blue was enlivened with light stretching-away clouds. We stood on a high point. The prospect Rhinewards, bright, clear, free; the preacher to our left above us. The audience before him, and below us. The space on which this numerous company stands is a large unfinished terrace, uneven, and behind having steep slopes. In the future, completed and built about with a builder's skill, the whole would be one of the loveliest situations in the world. No speaker addressing so many thousands ever beheld over their heads so splendid a landscape. Now let the builder place the multitude on a clear level, perhaps backwards a little ascending space, and thus all would see and hear the speaker commodiously. But this time, through the incompleted terrace, they stood downwards, one behind another, accommodating themselves as well as they could; and, as seen from above, one wonderful quietly-rolling wave. The place where the bishop listened to the preacher, was indicated only by the canopy, he himself was swallowed up and lost in the multitude. The sagacious builder will also erect a proper place for this important ecclesiastical dignity, and thereby heighten the solemn state of the occasion. These attentions to the unfinished state and capabilities of the place, hindered however not attention to the preacher, who now proceeded to his second part. * * * The attention to every word of the preacher was great; the audience not all to be comprehended in one glance. All the individually arriving pilgrims, and all the united township processions stood here collected, after they had reared their standards and banners by the church, to the left-hand of the preacher, to the no small ornament of the scene. But pleasantly just by, in a little court which opened itself only too incompletely to the assembly, the whole collection of the paintings brought hither were elevated to the right on scaffolds, as if asserting their right as the hearers of the greatest pretensions. "There Mother-of-God images, of different sizes, stood new and fresh in the sunshine. The long rose-coloured ribbons fluttered gaily and gladsome in the breeze. The Christ-child in the gold stuff continued unchanging his friendly look. The holy Rochus, indeed, more than once gazed quietly on his own festival. The figure in black velvet, as reasonable, standing aloft. The preacher turned now to his third part. * * * * "The preacher ended, certainly, to the edification of all; for every one had already comprehended his words, and every one laid to heart the intelligible and practical teaching. Now turned the bishop back to the church. What passed therein remained hidden from us. The resounding of the Te Deum we distinguished from without. The in-and-out streaming of the throng was agitated in the highest degree. The festival stooped towards its conclusion; the processions arranged themselves for their return. The Bidenheimer, as the last arrived, set out the first. We longed to escape out of the chaos, and therefore drew away with the quiet and grave procession of Bingen. In the descent we observed other traces of the sad days of the war. The stations of our Lord's sufferings. were purposely destroyed. By the removal of these, the pious Christian and genuine taste for art might work together; so that any one, be he whom he would, might travel this path with a livelier sympathy and edification. "Arrived in the nobly-situated Bingen, even there we could find no rest. We wished, after so many wonderful, divine, and human affairs, to plunge headlong into the bracing bath of nature. We called a boat, and let the stream bear us away downwards." Imagine, in addition to this expressive picture, crowds of eager, solemn, and absorbed devotees on their knees before shrines. in the chapel or church, telling their beads,-their lips moving, and tears falling down their cheeks; gazing devoutly on holy pictures; planting little burning tapers at the feet of pillars, and before images and pictures of saint or virgin; and offering up little legs or arms, little infants, or horses of wax, the subjects of their present prayers for help; and crowds of others kneeling on the outsides of the church, where some saint stands in a niche, or even before some tomb where a saint or a departed relative lies,—and you have a pretty good idea of one of these periodical pilgrimages. Nor less singular nor less conspicuous than the Student-Life of Germany, is that of the handwerksbursche, or wandering handicraftsmen. One of the first things on your arrival in the country which strikes your eye, is the number of young men on the roads with knapsacks on their backs, and stout sticks in their hands. They have a wayfaring, but not a mendicant or vagabond look, though, to your surprise, they will often, on the approach of your carriage, off with their caps and run along beside it, to ask for something. Their looks-frequently those of mere boys, often handsome lads too, well dressed, though in a peculiar pedestrian style-and their good and well-stored knapsacks, do not fail to fill you with curiosity, especially when, without the slightest aspect of shame or of impudence, they solicit you for money, and you learn, on inquiring, that these are the Gesellen, Handwerksbursche, or wandering journeymen of Germany; that this rambling all over the country of such numbers of these young men, in every part and every direction, is not so much a matter of choice as of necessity; that, for three or more years after the expiration of their apprenticeship, they must thus pursue their travels, and on their return must give evidence of having become perfect in their calling, by making their meisterstück, or masterpiece, before they can obtain permission to enter on business for themselves. The Gildwesen, or existence of guilds, is one of the most ancient institutions of the country. In the earliest ages, before the Romans broke into and overran Germany, as well as the rest of Europe; while the Germans lived in their vast forests, hunting their plentiful deer, auerochsen, or buffaloes, bison, boars and bears, and fighting one tribe with another, they had a sort of guilds amongst them. These were termed Waffenbruderschaften, or brotherships-in-arms. The individual members of these brotherships were styled guild-brothers and oath-brothers, because they had united for mutual benefit and protection; and before the magistrate were held as security for each other, and were regarded, in fact, as if they had been but one man; so that, if any one was accused of a misdemeanour, and the guilty person could not be fully committed on evidence, all were held equally responsible for the deed. These guild-brotherships, called also Wergilda and Bergilda, consisted only of ten men, thence termed the tien manna tala, or ten-men-number-whence our old word tale for count; but these were again comprehended in another community of ten times ten, who held their own assemblies for the administration of justice, electing from amongst them a person, termed by the Franks, Tunginus; by the Longobards, Sculdais; and by the Anglo-Saxons, Hundredarius. Hence this custom was established by Alfred in England, every county being divided into hundreds, for both civil and military purposes. These popular brotherhoods, or jurisdictions, were again included, each in a community of ten times a hundred, which made in Germany a Gau, or district. As the population within these bounds afterwards increased, still all the freemen, besides their own private possessions, enjoyed in common many public rights, as those of free use of wood and |