Eugene and Villars concluded the peace of Utrecht, and, in later days, the famous Congress of Ristadt, to which the eyes of Europe were directed from 1797 to 1799, held here their sittings. After dining at the table d'hote, crowded with Swiss merchants returning from the Frankfort fair, we crossed the rapid Murg, and leaving the high Basle road, entered a rich pasture valley, in the green recesses of which Baden is situated. The villages by the road side were neat and bustling, and the hills higher and bolder as we penetrated up the valley, now and then covered with vines, but ⚫ more frequently with rich forest foliage, beginning to reflect the diversified tints of autumn.

Baden is romantic without being wild. A chain of the firclad Black Forest Mountains rise on one side of the smiling valley; while another irregular ridge screens the back of the town, its rocky wooded top crowned by the rums of the old Castle of Baden. The town stands stragglingly on an abrupt slope, with the stream of the valley at the bottom; the more modern Castle overlooking it from a commanding terrace. The streets are narrow, and not remarkable for cleanliness. The summer residences of the Grand Duchess of Baden, and some others, occupied by different princes during the season, are neat and pleasantly situated: but its natural beauties, and the virtues of its waters, are the only recommendations of the place. This was peculiarly the case on our visit, when the season was at an end; the saloons shut up, the actors gone, the rouge et noir

tables dusty and deserted, and about a dozen heavy Germans, the only remnants of the motley as emblage of all nations who had enlivened it in July and August.

We lodged at one of the prin cipal bathing hotels, containing about twenty four baths, and thirty or forty rooms, fitted up with tolerable comfort; but almost all empty. There were seven or eight more houses of similar ca. pacity in the town, and one-third of the private houses let lodgings in the season. Baden contains not less than thirteen sources of hot water; the heat of the prin. cipal one is about fifty-four de grees. Their names are curious enough; such as the Jew's Spring, the Moor's Spring, the Hellish Spring, which rises in a part of the town called the Hell, and the Scalding Spring, christened from the useful purpose it serves of scalding pigs, poultry, &c. A fat kitchen maid was saving herself the trouble of picking a lapful of pigeons by dipping them in the spring, which, with a slight rubing, stripped them with an agreeable expedition. The waters are increasing every year in celebrity, and are said to work surprising cures of gout, rheumatism, indigestion, and surgical disorders. The air of the place is fresh and pure, and the neighbouring scenery abounds with beauties, which good roads render accessible.

In spite of the unfashionable season, a pretty numerous party assembled at the table d'hote, headed, as usual, by the substantil landlord and his pretty wife, who fed daintily, and looked and talked softly to the admiring convives. Her spouse was a complete

German

The ci-devant collegiate, but (to use a violent Germanism) in eighteen hundred secularized Catholic church is an awkward building, of that sort of impure Gothic, with a minaret steeple, so universal in this part of Germany. It is now the parochial church, the foundation being united to the Gymnasium or Lyceum, the professors of which have stepped into the ancient stalls, and officiate at the mass. Their salaries, though, like other ecclesiastical emoluments by no means enormous, are somewhat raised since the foundation of the college in the fifteenth century; when the worthy Provost had one hundred florins), between nine and ten pounds), year, the Dean half the sum, and so in proportion. The modern priests of Baden would probably consider the old statutes of the founder as unrea◄ sonable, and obsolete as his salaries; one of them enacting that none of the choir shall laugh or make faces in service time; that no Prebend go in ironed wooden shoes into the choir; and "that if any shall behave himself unpriestlike, be it in ladies, gaming, or other gross cause, the chapter shall not pay him his salary, be it money, fruit, or wine, until he give up concubinatum publicum, gaming, or other matter for which he was suspended." The church, which was like the castle, and most of the considerable buildings in the country, damaged in the devastation by the French in 1689, presents nothing remarkable but the monuments of the Catholic Margraves of Baden. A benefactress of the church is recorded by an inscription modestly begin

ning "Here lies N. I." but afterwards explaining that she had bestowed 5,000 florins, under an express injunction of concealment of her name. Surely there is some coquetry in the modesty of Madame N. I., whose bounty becomes known to every visitor of the church from the peculiarity of this record; whereas the simple statement of her name would have effectually answered the object of attracting no notice.

The Lyceum, or Foundation School, was formerly an institution of the Jesuits, who, on the dissolution of their order, contrived, by intrigues, and exciting the popular spirit in their favour, to retain possession of it for some time in spite of the government. At first a single secular teacher of philosophy was introduced, but found their cabals too hot to remain. The celebrated Martin Wierhl was then placed in his stead, whom they involved in disputes on his philosophical tenets, which were referred to six Universities. Wierhl was, however, protected by the Margrave Charles Frederic, and the Jesuits were at last driven out.

There is at Baden a neat small convent, with its little church, of nuns of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, who originally came from Liege, and who have avoided secularization, in latter days, by undertaking a school for poor girls of the place. They have also a few boarders, of higher rank, who pay little more than eleven or twelve louis a-year for board and education. The convent has its own baths, and the nuns are strict in not showing themselves.

The

The poor appear to be well taken care of at Baden. Besides a considerable hospital or poor house, and a smaller one called, the Good-people House (less from the qualifications of its occupants than the dispositions of its founders), there is a large bath for them-where, besides the benefit of the waters, they receive weekly allowances, good Rumford soups, and other comforts.-The establishment is, in part, supported by the heavy tax on gaming, and by a weekly contribution for the poor, collected by a police officer, from the company at the bathing hotels.

Nothing can be imagined more striking than the contrast between an English and a German university. In the former, the Gothic buildings, the magnificent colleges, the noble libraries, the chapels, the retired walks, the scholastic grace of the costume, are all so many interesting indi cations of the antiquity, the munificence, and the dignity of the institution. The University of Heidelberg is one of the most distinguished in Germany-but the constitution of a German University has necessarily no monument of architecture, no appendage of dignity, scarcely any decent building connected with it. The Universität Gebaüde, or public building, containing the library and the lecture rooms of the professors, barely comes under this last description. An Englishman might pass the town a dozen times without remarking any traces of its institutions, unless he happened to encounter a string of swaggering mustachioed youths, their hair flowing on their

shoulders, without cravats, with pipes in their mouths, parading the streets with a rude impudence. These are the students-who resemble each other in all the Universities, in main points, both of costume and character. It is hardly necessary to say this is not an academical costume. A German student would disdain-as a pert young gentleman of this number told me to wear a dress not of his own free choice; and his choice under the influence of a luminous patriotism, takes the direction of reviving the alt Deutsche kleidung, or the old costume of the worthy Germans three centuries ago." They were sturdy patriots, and right good Germans, and stuck up for our liberties against the Emperor Charles and the princes. We want some of this spirit in our days-therefore we will begin by copying them in their dress, and thus we shall introduce it." This is the reasoning of the independent philosophers from fourteen to five and twenty, who attend lectures, if they please, when they please, and on what they please, in the Professors' rooms at the Universities.

The Universities are, with slight variations, constructed upon the same plan. They are not, as in England, composed of colleges where the students are obliged to reside, forming large households under the control of a head; and submitting to wholesome regulations, both as to conduct and study. A German University is little more than a place where there is a good library and a collection of professors who read lectures to those who choose to attend them. They afford bare opportunities

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opportunities for study-with few facilities, no compulsion, no discipline, no subordination. The professor reads his lecture, the student pays him for it-If he attends it, which he does or not as he likes, he walks off at the conclusion as independent of the professor as a man of his drawingmaster at the end of the hour's lesson. There are, besides, private tutors who can be engaged for assistance, at leisure hours.

At Heidelberg, the University is divided into four facultiesDivinity, Jurisprudence, Medicine, and Philosophy. Each department has several professors, and a pro-rector, chosen annually among them, is the actual head of the University. The Grand Duke of Baden, in whose territory Heidelberg is comprised, is the nominal head under the title of Rector. There are a smaller and greater senate chosen from the professors, the former of which meets every fourteen days for transacting the business of the University-and four Ephori, who are said to superintend the industry and morals of the students, to correspond with their parents, &c. But these last have an office of little efficacy. Their admonition is without authority; for, short of the power of the police in criminal offences, the students are subject to no power whatever of punishment or control. They can, consequently, neglect all study, and push their excesses to the verge of a breach of the law in defiance of Rector, Ephori, and professors. Offences which overstep this bound are liable to punishment by the University Police; for the University is not,

subject to the ordinary police of the country-a University Amtmann (Bailiff) and Beadles, supplying the place to the University of the ordinary provincial Bailiff and Gens d'arme. The consequence is, the broken windows, riots, and disturbances, with which the students annoy the citizens, are visited very lightly by the University Magistrates, who often observe them with a secret satisfaction as symptoms of a spirit of independence which they hope may be one day turned to better purposes. With such licence it is not to be wondered that the students find the authorities of the law nearly as much employment as our students give to the gentler advice and correction of the heads. of houses, proctors, &c. In some. universities the students are almost as much the terror and nuisance of the neighbourhood, as the worthy associates of Robin Hood or Rob Roy, were to the inhabitants of the scenes of their exploits. In an inn where I slept at Manheim, it was discovered, one morning, that one of these young gentlemen had decamped by his bed room window, taking with him the sheets of his bed. At Heidelberg, where there are many of noble and respectable families, they are rather better behaved than usual-and a lady of the town, told me she found them" tolerably quiet considering."

The students live in lodgings, at the houses of the shopkeepers in the town; a system which if their superiors possessed any control over their conduct would almost entirely frustrate it. They dine at the tables d'hote of the

inns, to which they are good customers. I dined with an acquaintance of their number, at a table filled with them. Their manners were, in general, as coarse and as rude as their appearance; they had all the air of low mechanics or persons much less civilized. Some of them were young nobles-others had the ribbons of orders in their buttonholes; and they often wear the cockade of their country in their caps or hats, which is sometimes the symbol of a provincial patriotism, much of a-kin to the national one indicated by their clothes. Since the flame of national feeling has been kindled by late events, the distinctions of country are however professedly abandoned. The separate associations of the students from different states are done away; and they now loudly assert that they form but one body of Germans. But it is easier to assume the title than to suppress national prejudices, or neutralize distinctions of character. The light subtle Prussian is little formed to harmonise with the fat phlegmatic Bavarian or Austrian; and if the students of different states mix in amusements pretty indiscriminately, a quarrel (an event of the commonest occurrence) draws out their provincial prepossessions, and ranges the parties accordingly.

The number of students at Heidelberg, for the last spring semestre, or course of lectures, was above 400. Goettingen sometimes musters 1,200. The professors at Heidelberg are now in high repute; and on their attraction depends the fulness of the

University.-When a favourite professor departs, sometimes nearly half a university follow him. The students generally enter very young-many at sixteen or seventeen; for as every young man, intended for the civil service of any prince, must spend two years, by way of qualification, at a university, the object of parents is, to qualify them for office as early as possible. Raw children from the Gymnasium are consequently sent to the University, rather to get over these two years than for the purpose of study. Finding themselves here, all at once, their own masters, and exposed to every temptation, they naturally follow the stream, assuming the vices and caricaturing the consequence of full-grown men. The necessary two years are often spent in drinking, gaming, rioting, and insulting others, more from the intoxication of liberty than from vicious inclination. The pride of premature manhood makes them jealous of their little dignities, and ape the punctilios of false honour. Perpetual duels are the consequence, which have all the ill effect of brutalising the feelings without the questionable advantage of exercising courage-for their execution is, in general, ludicrously devoided of danger. The breasts and faces of the doughty combatants are cased in pasteboard, in the security of which panoply, they chivalrously engage with small rapiers till incensed honour is satisfied, sometimes by the first sprinkling of blood, at others, by nothing less than a wound of a certain length and depth, to be ascertained by measurement of

the