this idea, and established German champagne breweries, where now much is made of a very tolerable quality.

But the great and crowning harvest is the vintage. This generally commences about the 12th of October, and is announced by the firing of guns, and ascent of rockets at night in all directions in the vineyards, which echo, and reverberate, and gleam amongst the hills, mingled with the shouts of old and young. This shouting and shooting are kept up, more or less, during the whole vintage. As every man begins his own vintage, he has a volley fired from his vineyard, the people shout, and others shout back to them.

Goethe, in his "Hermann and Dorothea," has introduced a graphic description at once of a German housewife, a garden, a vineyard, and the vintage, where the mother of Hermann goes through the premises to seek him.

So traversed she nimbly the long and the twofold court-yards through ;
Left the stables behind, and the barns all so handsome with wood-work ;
Stepped into the garden, which far as the walls of the town stretched;
Passed through it, rejoicing in all that was growing around her;
Set right leaning props 'neath the boughs of the apple and pear trees,
Which weighed on them heavy with loads of their beautiful fruitage;
Cleared insects away from the strong swelling heads of the cabbage-
For a managing wife makes no step of her daily course useless;
And so she was come to the end of the far-reaching garden;
Was come to the arbour all covered with clustering woodbine;
But no son could she find, any more than she found in the garden.
The door through the wall, which, by speciallest favour permitted,
Their ancestor broke once, the worthy old Bürgermeister,
Now stood on the latch, leading forth from the green shady arbour;
So the dry town-moat she stepped conveniently over,
Where close on the street, with fences well guarded, the vineyard
Rose in steep footpaths, its surface all turned to the sunshine.
Here, then, she ascended, rejoicing herself even while climbing,
In the fulness of bunches that challenged the leaves to conceal them.
Shady and arched was the high middle path all with trellis,
Where she mounted by steps all of Nature's unchiseled rudeness,
While over her hung the Gutedel and Muscadel bunches,
Redly-blue near each other, and all of the noblest greatness,
All cultured with care to pleasure the guests at their table.

But the rest of the hill was with vine-stocks all openly planted,

A smaller grape bearing, yet whence the most racy of wine comes.
So climbed she, already rejoicing herself in the autumn,-
In the festival day, on which the nation, exulting,

The grape gathers and treads, and the must into barrels collected,
Fireworks, at evening, from every spot of the country
Lighten and thunder, and thus is the vintage most honoured.

People are seen in all directions descending from the hills, with their tubs on their backs filled with grapes; carts are seen standing at the bottom, loaded with tubs in which to carry them away to the press; the people are discovered in all quarters in the vineyards, where they are gathering the grapes, and their laughter and voices come from afar to you. There is a general spirit of gladness and activity abroad. It is in this feeling of gladness and general activity that the charm of the vintage is to be found; for in other respects our poetical notions of a vintage are not very highly realized. Even in this slowly changing country, much of the old mode of the wine-making is altered. The treading of the grapes is generally done away with. They are crushed in the tubs with wooden mallets, or are put through a sort of mill set on the vat, and are ground by turning a handle. You see wagons loaded with large barrels going from the press to the owners, each barrel having a plug of a foot long stuck into the bung-hole, and a green sprig of the vine; and for the rest, the pressing, and the tunning, and all that, is no more than the work of any ordinary brewing, and goes on under cover, and where it is little seen. More is seen, indeed, of the casks, often enormously large, which are in preparation turned out of the cellars, and stand about in the streets of all the villages and towns, to be sweetened and repaired. Of much of the must, in many places, especially in bad seasons, they actually do not attempt to make wine, but convert it at once to vinegar. The vine culture is not considered a profitable one, and the growers are for the most part, poor. Here and there a celebrated tract is a valuable property; but the small proprietor of an ordinary vineyard, like the small proprietor of corn-land, is compelled to rush into the market at the very earliest day with his produce, and receives but the jackal's portion of the profits. They are the dealer and capitalist in this, as in everything else, who make the golden harvest. They who know how, not only to buy, but to hold, to mix, to give fine and fashionable names to the growth of nameless hills, in short, to impose cleverly on the credulous world.

The vintage over, the simple peasantry, who have pouched only a lean price for the harvest of all their labours, are busy again carrying up fresh manure into their vineyards, and dig and work there till winter stops them, which, indeed, now strides on apace.

In November you see the Germans, men and women, envelope themselves in their great cloaks whenever they appear abroad, which they never lay aside again till spring. Those of the men are of blue cloth, huge and wide, with capes reaching half way down them. They are generally furnished with fur collars; and many of them are lined with red, especially those of the students. Wrapped in these huge cloaks, three or four Germans will fill the greater part of a narrow street; and they can go dreaming along in them much to their own delight. On a cold or snowy day they will fling the cape over their head, and as you meet them, a hairy face peeping from a small opening in this great moving mountain of cloth, and a pipe hanging out of it, present you with a queer enough object. There is not a more characteristic mark of the different dispositions of the Germans and the English than these cloaks. Englishmen can seldom endure them; they prefer greatcoats, as less cumbrous, leaving their arms free, and altogether as more thoroughly adapted to their more active habits and quicker movements. The ladies are as well wrapped in their cloaks, often lined throughout with fur; and the boys are seen running with their great fur gloves dangling on each side from the cord over their shoulders.

But if any one thinks that the peasantry have finished their out-of-door labours, he is mistaken. You have only to take what you may anticipate as a solitary walk in the woods when the leaves have fallen, and you will find it anything but solitary. The woods swarm with men, women, and children, raking up and carrying away their great bundles of leaves; and the fall of a deep snow will only effectually drive them thence.

AND DANCE RESORT.

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THE working classes of Germany have not only their out-of-door life of labour, but of pleasure too. In town and country they have their dances, balls, and concerts, which will come under the head of their social life; but in the country they have places of resort, often in common with the more educated classes, but where they alone dance in the open air, and their Kirchweighs or wakes are eagerly attended; and in the summer, are falling out pretty frequently within the circuit of a few miles, whither they resort in crowds. To these we must afford a few pages.

The Wolfsbrunnen, about a mile out of Heidelberg, is a place of great popular resort, and may be taken as a specimen of such places, which are to be found all over Germany. It is a little woody glen, running up into the hills from the valleys of the Neckar. The valley of the Neckar is surrounded with fine woody bills, the lower slopes of which are occupied in the national manner, with vineyards and cornslopes, while along the banks of the river lie cottages and villages, with their gardens and orchards about them. A higher road from Heidelberg leads you along the mountain side, a road said formerly to have been a favourite walk of Schiller's. It takes you past many cottages nestled in their orchards, in little sequestered hollows and green slopes, while above you are heights covered with woods, full of rocks, heath, and bilberry plants.

The Wolfsbrunnen is a brunnen or spring, which is poured out into a fountain, and also with little streams from the hills, supplying a pond, clear as crystal, and various reservoirs for fish, where perhaps one of the most plentiful stocks of fine trout is to be seen in the world. Here, tradition says, that Jetta, a sorceress, was wont to live, and was torn to pieces by a wolf. You may imagine it, in old times, a dark and shaggy hollow enough for such inhabitants, and such a tragedy, but now it is all that is delightful. There is an inn built by the fountain. It is of wood, with outside galleries, so that spectators, on days of particular festivity, can stand in great numbers in them and witness what is going on below, as well as get a very sweet view across the valley of the Neckar. Trees overhang the house and fountain. The pond below is overhung with alders. Fine acacias, chestnuts and other trees, render the whole scene bowery and sylvan; and under them, and under sheds, stand tables and seats for parties, as in and about all such places, and all the country inns of Germany, and pretty much as in similar places and tea-gardens about London. Around rise lofty hills and solitary woods. On most days in summer, but especially on Sundays and holidays, people flock hither both from the town and the country. Groups are found sitting at the tables, under the trees and sheds, with wine, beer, and pipes, curds, coffee, and other refreshments. Some are strolling about the private walks in the woodlands; some are lying on