Waterfording, rowing, and rowing expeditions. But these people must ramble everywhere, as far as money will carry them, to make all the world as well acquainted with the numerous family of fools which the wealth, and miserable, mischievous education of certain classes of England produce, as we are at home. Many of them with some showy accomplishments and no sound sense; some of them even having that air of elegance which covers no valuable quality,-elegance without intellectuality; but the far greater part without even these superficial refinements; people at whom you wonder why they go abroad at all, except that it affords them a wider field for the display of that folly which has become familiar, and therefore has ceased to be noticeable and piquant at home.

These people are to be seen all over the Continent. In Germany, the Rhine towns are the most infested by them, and by a much inferior class, those who have scraped money together in the dens and alleys of London, and, with no pretension to gentility, there think to act the gentry, and become the worst apes of what is, though bad, by means of a higher education, above them. They associate with a nondescript race, to be found in these towns, half English and half German-the worst class of all, having the follies and vices of both nations, without their sense and virtues. The squabbles, the heart-burnings, the everlasting feuds and absurdities of this mongrel tribe, are most ridiculous, but painful to those who regard the honour of their country. The pure and respectable Germans act the exclusives, and carefully shun them; and the respectable English either keep themselves quiet, associating with the quiet Germans, or soon fly to the capitals, where not only a higher grade of English live, but where galleries and works of art are open to them.

One of the more aristocratic class, however, of those here

alluded to, was this young man. He had the appearance of a gentleman; was tall, good-looking, and was very polite; but his conversation was so interlarded with oaths and slang terms, and ornamented with "By Jove!" "By George!" and "The Devil!" that it was easy to see what school he had been brought up in.

This was the style in which he ran on as the procession passed. "What a grand squad are these German students! Did you ever see such a low-bred set! By Jove! and ever so many of them are nobles! and some are military! What an aristocracy! Look there, at that great lounging fellow with the sandy mustachios! That's a Count! By George, I wonder what he'd count for in England! See! there's another sweet tulip! that cove with the mop of a flambeau that he is snuffing against an old woman's nose-that's a Graf, or some devil of a thing! Look how the fellow slinks along. By Jove! our English aristocracy for me after all!

"I was at the swimming-bath to-day. I always take a bath directly after dinner; and there came a posse of these great hairy fellows, with a lot of hounds, and in they jumped with their clothes on, and dogs after them; and out they got, and walked off up the street like so many drowned rats! I went to Olebull's concert t'other night. Did you ever see such a place! The floor was broken, and I just escaped without a broken leg, and that was all. And what walls! as dirty and black as Holborn Hill of a rainy day. And what a set of low-lived scoundrels looking on! I was glad I didn't take my wife with me. One could not think of taking one's wife to such a place, you know. "But what a devil of a thing they are making of this funeral! Pretty swads these are with their torches! By Jingo, when my brother died, my father-he was Colonel of the militia then-determined to do the thing in this style. The church where my brother had to be buried was eight miles off, and all this kind of thing; torches, and all that sort of thing; and the whole way was laid down with matting. It cost a devil of a sum I can tell you. By Jingo! eight thousand pounds, and eight hundred people at it! This fellow, I understand, was a precious chuck to make all this to do about. He drank himself to death, they tell me; drank like a very devil of a fish. He'd have clapped his ugly mug at the bridge and sucked up the Neckar if it had been beer. That was one of the amiable qualities for which his cronies are making all this larum over him ;-t'other was fighting. He was the devil of a fighter, they say. But lord! what fighting

is theirs! Did you ever see it? Up to the neck in leather; and if they scratch their leather cravat, it's a finish. I asked a fellow to-day how many got killed in a year? He said, "O! they never kill one another! never such a thing has happened for years." By Jingo! but I should like to have a turn or two with them. I'd bore their jackets for them in a jiffy! I'd give 'em their bellyful of fighting in a crack!"

Such was the running commentary of our English traveller, from which as soon as possible we ran away, to witness that striking conclusion of the funeral already described.

THE Germans, as we have seen, retain more of the picturesque and poetical in their festivals, both public and domestic, than we do. They are particularly fond of garlands on all such occasions. Their festive or triumphal arches are beautiful. Their diningrooms are hung with festoons, and adorned with wreaths of flowers and green boughs, with great poetical feeling and elegance. The birth-days of their princes, or anniversaries of great days in their own lives, are celebrated often in picturesque situations. Sometimes within the court of a fine old ruin of a castle on one of their mountain heights, such as those above the Rhine, the

Danube, the Elbe, or the Neckar; and the walls and approaches are richly decorated with garlands and wreaths. Traces of such a festival we found in the court of Auerbach Castle, on the Bergstrasse, where the anniversary of the birth-day of the Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt had been kept. The rural rostrum of moss and stones yet remained, from which the army-chaplain had delivered an oration. The wreaths of oak leaves on the walls, each of which enclosed the name and date of a battle in which the Duke had been engaged; some of which, by the bye, must have been fought against the Fatherland, under the banners of Napoleon, still hung there too.

On private birth-days, such garlands are as much in use. Birth-days are kept more ceremoniously than with us. Your friends come in to congratulate you; and at dinner your health is drunk with a great touching of glasses. On the wall hangs a lyre, formed of wood or other material, covered with moss, and adorned with leaves and flowers. This is kept from year to year, many of the flowers being everlastings. On the table, round its central ornament of sugar-work, a temple generally, with a figure or device bearing an appropriate sentiment, burn as many little wax-lights as the years at which the person has arrived. You see this love of the poetical carried into all occasions of social pleasure. In England, we read of wreaths and garlands, but seldom see them. In Germany, the bridal and the funeral garlands are still no fictions. The bride wears, and goes to church in the Brautkranz, or bridal garland, even the poorest; and the funeral car is richly adorned with wreaths of leaves and flowers. On their graves are, again, hung wreaths, as in the old times of England; and there grow roses and carnations, and other flowers and shrubs, making the region of decay lovely. There is also, at balls and dancing parties, a great presentation of little bouquets; and at the tables d'hôte, boys or girls come round and offer you bouquets; and will, if required, bring them to your house through the whole year.

But on no occasion does the sentiment and domestic character of the Germans shew itself so strongly in this respect, as at ChristThis is expressly a family festival. In England it used to be so in the olden times, but now it is more a festival of friends.

mas.