bushes which they hang out on all occasions of festivity, days of national or other joy or triumph, have all their precise, and to them very significant, language,-as the tree adorned with flowers and ribbons, set up on the roof on the covering in of a new house; the garlands which they suspend on the little crosses on the graves, and the garlands of the bride, and the funeral. Garland-making is a distinct trade; and you see these expressive and poetical ornaments borne through the streets, in all directions, by the makers, to the houses where they are ordered. By following one of these to the place of destination, you could, without asking a question, perfectly satisfy yourself that there a marriage, a birth-day, or a funeral, was about to be solemnized; and in the latter case, whether the deceased were a man, or woman, or child, whether married or not. All this is clearly indicated by the absence or presence of certain flowers, as white or red roses, lilies, and so on. The garland for an old married man is merely of uniform evergreen, generally ivy. The funeral garlands are so large that they enclose a great portion of the surface of the shroud, which lies on the funeral car; and, so soon as the grave is filled in, are laid upon it in the same form. Here their social, as well as all other life, making its earthly termination, naturally terminates also our chapter.

CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN CITIES AND SCENERY, IN A TOUR THROUGH VARIOUS PARTS OF THE COUNTRY.

THERE is perhaps no mode in which so lively a sketch of the characteristics of the cities and scenery of a country can be given as in that of a tour; and we will, therefore, at once adopt this form for conveying the remarks which we have to make on this subject.

It was in the beginning of August that we started from Heidelberg, on a three months' ramble, amongst the capitals of Germany and the intervening scenes. The weather was and had been wet and cheerless, and everybody predicted its continuance; but, spite of this we set out with spirits filled so thoroughly with the antici

pation of new experiences, that nothing could daunt us, and our resolution was repayed by three months of the most glorious weather that ever was enjoyed.

We had determined, that we might be at liberty to proceed or stop, to go right or left, faster or slower, at our pleasure, and thus have it in our power to examine, at our leisure, whatever we wished, to travel chiefly by the hired carriages of the country, to be found in plenty in every town, and to stretch across any wide and uninteresting track in the eilwagen or the steam train. We therefore engaged a Heidelberg Lohn-kutcher as far as Baden-Baden. Our carriage was truly none of the handsomest, nor our horses of the best; but our kutcher, who appeared a good-natured fellow, assured us that he was only the man and not the master; that the master was at Carlsruhe, and there we should be provided with a splendid carriage, splendid horses, and all those splendid things which are so readily promised and so seldom performed. We knew, however, enough of the race of Lohn-kutcher to make all sure by an agreement, and we jolted away over the stones of Heidelberg in the best possible humour. Scarcely were we out of the city when a very characteristic and agreeable surprise awaited us. It is the pleasant custom of the German students, when one of them leaves the University, to accompany him a stage or so, in carriages, on his way. If he go to enter on his office, and it be at no great distance, they accompany him to the place of his future abode. This was just now the case with a very worthy young friend of ours, who was proceeding to Bruchsal, the next town, to enter on his appointment under government; and thus, actually rolling out of the city gate before us was the train of our young friend and his intimate associates. There he sat, in his Philister-wagen, as it is called on these occasions; that is, the carriage which bears him from the Burschen-heaven into Philistia, or land of the Philistines, of whom he is about to become one. There he sat, in his Philisterwagen, at the head of the train, with another good friend of ours at his side, and three or four carriages following, filled with his associates. It was to us a very agreeable incident, which enabled us to fall into the train, and thus pay him, who had been the companion of so many of our pleasant hours in this place, the compliment of swelling his departing train. We saw him set

down at his place of future destination, his destination at least for a time; and after taking a parting glass of wine with him and his young friends at the inn, again drove on our way.

When we looked back to the cheerful and socially intellectual life which this young man had been accustomed to in Heidelberg, and then regarded the little dull town of Bruchsal, where a few officers of finance and the army make the most cultivated portion of the society, we could not help feeling what a fall from the Burschen-heaven the greater part of the young German students are destined to experience; to what obscure and uninteresting spots they are often, as it were, banished for life; we could not help more than ever sympathizing with them in the fondness with which they cling to the enjoyment and the memory of their student life.

A few hours' drive through a pleasant country saw us in Carlsruhe, the capital of the little state of Baden. Who would believe himself in a capital? Its name is Charles's-rest, and truly a place of rest it appears. A modern town, as usual, all of white houses, with wide streets, and truly very few people in them. Many of the buildings are handsome. There are good inns; and at the termination of every street you see the distant palace rearing its domes and towers in silent and solitary grandeur. It seems as if the palace was never to be out of sight, lest one should forget that it was there, and forget, at the same time, that we were in a capital. There is everywhere a feeling of silence and loneliness; of a want of life and action, that makes you long to be gone, and that with a feeling of pity for those who must pass their dreamy life there. An officer, a few handsomely dressed ladies, now and then break up the brooding monotony; or the sound of a trumpet and the parade of a body of soldiers give a passing gleam of relief. We wandered through the streets, finding that one part of the city was only pretty much like another, and that all terminated in converging lines at the palace. Before the palace lies a large square surrounded by low houses, but which is very pleasantly planted with avenues of trees, and having in the centre a fountain with a group of figures, a large circular basin of water with swans, and orange trees set out in long avenues as approaches to the central fountain, which diffuse a delightful odour, as well as an air of summer beauty round them.

Behind the palace lie again extensive gardens-to which, as everywhere in Germany, you have free access-with broad and extensive woodland walks. But here again all was still, and as it were dead-a sort of life in death. The only living things there were a soldier, a gardener, and a swan, and they looked very like sleep-walkers.

Were these gardens in the suburbs of a busy city, how charming would they be; but solitude to solitude, that is a little too much. The gardens are bounded on the other side by a vast and dense old forest of oak-the Hardt, with radiating ridings through it, diverging in the same manner from the palace as the opposite streets of the city. The very intensity of the solitude of this forest made us anxious to plunge into it, like that feeling that seizes us on high towers with a desire to plunge down below. It was gloomy, brooding, and immense. The glimpses through its different ridings, terminating in the dim distance of the far-off country, gave one an idea of vastness and loneliness, and the "brown horror" of shades, in which we might wander for days without seeing a human being, that had a touch of sublimity in it, spite of the perfect level of the whole of this neighbourhood. No doubt, too, the charm was heightened by the very same circumstance which made the grapes sour to the fox and the apple sweet to Eve; for while the gardener assured us that there were hundreds of wild swine ranging in this gloomy old Hardt, which we had a particular desire to see, he informed us also that nobody was allowed to enter it.

Carlsruhe, like several other of the German capitals, makes us wonder why it came there. With so many glorious situations in this beautiful little state, especially on the Neckar or the Rhine, or in the vicinity of the Black Forest, for a capital, here is this dreamy place clapped down on a dead flat, and that chiefly in the present century, when we should have imagined people alive to all the necessary considerations of this kind. But Carlsruhe, like many greater things in this world, was an accident. The ancient forest of Hardt, which once extended over a great portion of the palatinate, and of which the woods still stretch themselves from Heidelberg hither, in the last century was here the thickest and most solitary. Here abounded the most famous old boars and great