emoluments of professors, whose dress and gravity they imitate. They can easily be distinguished from the latter by their more youthful appearance, more rapid step, and a certain sensitiveness of eye and bearing, proper doubtless to merit out of office. The morning after I arrived in Göttingen, I went out at an early hour, full of transatlantic respect for European literature, and by a natural association, for European universities, both professors and students. My head was busy in figuring forth scholastic forms, with eyes fixed in meditation, brows furrowed by thought, This was what I expected to see; now I will tell you what I saw. I met crowds of coarse young men, with a swaggering air, mostly dressed in frock coats of brown blanketing, such as our sailors' dreadnoughts are made of. They wore low round caps of all hues, although green was on the whole predominant. Nor was it, I ween, in the Palais Royal, nor yet in Bond Street, that they had learned the art of enveloping the neck. Some wore handkerchiefs of every variety of stripe and fabric; others a woollen tippet, which was sometimes blue, sometimes red, and sometimes of no color at all. I have even heard it asserted, that under cover of the closely buttoned frock, this last article frequently served in lieu both of vest and cravat, but for the correctness of this I cannot vouch from personal inspection. Others, more whimsical or more independent, left the neck entirely bare. Some clattered along the public ways in spurs; these I concluded were newly dismounted; but I soon found this was a non sequitur; for it was not uncommon for one to wear them who had not been on horseback for months. Some wore their hair of great length; a few even allowed it to fall on their shoulders. Some increased the natural fierceness of their countenance by mustachios; and many, who perhaps were not sufficiently confident of their own power to strike terror, were accompanied by dogs. Even these poor beasts were compelled to appear in costume; for if nature had given them shaggy hair, they were shorn of all but what hung upon the shoulders and fore paws, to give them the resemblance of a lion. Thus equipped, and with note-books under their arms, moving at all places and in all directions, these personages were students at the far-famed University of Georgia Augusta. Besides the forementioned classes, who constitute the university, there are various others, nearly or remotely connected with it. The pastors of churches are of course few in so small a city, The but are men of unexceptionable manners and character. citizens are a quiet, orderly set of people, moving, from the constitution of European society, in those humble walks of life, where, to be born and die Of rich and poor makes all the history. In these modern days, civility and servility are often found as hard to be distinguished, as were Sibboleth and Shibboleth of old, and that, not in the words alone, but in the practice of men; and these worthy citizens, like thousands elsewhere, in aiming at the one, often fall into the other. But this is a fault of the head; I know none of the heart, which is prevalent among these respectable people. I come next to the young women, or mädchens, a class much too important to be passed over in silence. These have the burden of all sorts of business. They not only take care of the rooms, make fires, and bring coffee, but there are always many of them to be seen in the street, on all kinds of errands. They go to the baker, the butcher, the provider of dinners; they carry heavy loads on their backs, and work in the gardens and fields. Is a letter to be carred to the post-office? The mädchen carries it. Is a book to be taken out of the library? The mädchen goes to fetch it. Is any little purchase to be made at the shops? The mädchen executes the commission. And be it wet or dry, they never wear bonnet or great coat. On Sundays and holidays, they put on all their gay apparel, tie their hair with a band, and let the two ends of the ribbon fly loose, to the length of half a yard. The police officers are a necessary appendage to the government of the university, and of course come in for an ample share of the students' ill will. In their grave dark-green uniform, they have the appearance of old pensioners, yet it is a fact perhaps not wholly inexplicable to you, that there are few stations in which the soldiers are so uniformly in active service, as in this favored retreat of the sciences. Besides these, there is a whole regiment of the regular army of Hanover constantly quartered here. They guard every avenue to the city, and the citizens cannot go in or out without being put in mind of the allegiance they owe, and how it will be secured. I have had occasion to observe the neatness of their equipments, and the licentiousness of their manners; though in the latter respect, it must be owned they find an excuse in the more shameless licentiousness of many among the students. And now that I mention the students, your own charity will suggest, if you should think that my censure of them has been, in this or any former letter, too frequent or too harsh, that the worst is the most obvious side of their character; that virtue is naturally silent, and brutality is obtrusive and loud. There is undoubtedly much diligence, much excellence among them; and I should indeed be sorry, if any severity of mine should have seemed to you of indiscriminate application; for I have been acquainted with more than one individual among them, whose character would furnish a complete refutation of any such opinion. I will not applaud any for refinement of external manners, but I will maintain, that I have never known persons more amiable, more pure, more intellectual, more candid, more generous, than some of the German students. The peasants of the neighbouring villages form a strong contrast in dress and manners with the classes before mentioned. There is a coarseness of feature, language, garb, and gesture, from which they are never exempt. On first seeing them, I perceived they were of a different class from any of my countrymen. We see stupid people enough, but never such wooden rigidity of feature as is stamped upon these men, proclaiming to the observer, that they are hardened almost to machines, and that the currents of thought within them are frozen up. 'Tis said the sun of every zone is kind to beauty; and nothwithstanding such ungainly kinsmen, the peasant women, especially the younger, have sometimes a mild and open expression of countenance. The women come in small companies from a distance of several miles every morning, bringing, in large baskets, on their backs the various products of the farm and the dairy. No part of the provisions for the market is brought, as with us, in wagons; the whole is conveyed in this manner. Thus the way through the centre of the town is thronged, not by market carts but by women, and there is little rattling of wheels to disturb the student. As this is the custom of nearly all the continental cities, an American, whose ears have been seasoned to the din of our Atlantic cities, might think himself, while sitting in his apartment, in some city of tombs, were it not for the periodical shouts of children at their play, and some few other indications of human existence. But to return to the peasants. Women as well as men labor in the fields and gardens. The men get from twelve to twenty cents per day for this work, the women not so much. Sunday is their only season of rest from low and menial occupation, and on that day a walk to one of these villages, and the sight of these poor people engaged in their only intellectual employment, have more than once afforded me pleasure. In summer they often dance of a Sunday afternoon. Their food corresponds with the wretchedness of their situation; tough brown or more properly black bread is the principal article. The costume of many of the German villages is sufficiently bizarre, but in those around Göttingen there is little very peculiar. Yet it is impossible to refrain from laughter, on first meeting the little boys, who are sent into the city with heath-berries, or raspberries, dressed in a suit which has strong marks of having come to its present owner by inheritance, and, so far as it goes, an exact miniature of his father's; but he never wears a vest under his preposterously long coat, and though his small clothes reach only to his knees, he is equally independent of the use of stockings, which we are so apt to think indispensable to that dress. There are also a few young men that carry about for sale small rugs of village manufacture, who array themselves with a fanciful nicety. Their neat grey stockings carefully tied at the knee, and their round hats with conical crowns bravely cocked on their heads, and always bearing a bouquet of flowers, make them, I doubt not, the beaux of their respective villages. The shepherds are likewise worthy of note for their antique and singular dress. It is of an ancient cut, entirely white, with a black three-cornered hat, and they carry in their hand a truly pastoral appendage-a long crook. These respectable personages tending their flocks on a hill-side, accompanied by the true shepherd's dog, with his short, quick, anxious bark, watching his master's commands, and skilfully guiding the silly sheep, carry the imagination far back into the realms of history and fable. Thus I have made you acquainted with some of the outward shows of life and costume in our dramatis persona; in students and professors, in pastors in black and pastors in white, in doctors, burghers, mädchens, soldiers and police, peasants and carpet-sellers. You will probably think this a sufficient variety for so small a city, and you will now be doubtless content that I should defer till another occasion the rest of my account of Göttingen. Yours, affectionately. ORIGINAL POETRY. THE DAMSEL OF PERU. WHERE olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew, "T is a song of love and valor, in the noble Spanish tongue, For she has bound the sword to a youthful lover's side, And sent him to the war, the day she should have been his bride, A white hand parts the branches, a lovely face looks forth, That white hand is withdrawn, that fair sad face is gone, A ballad of a tender maid heart-broken long ago, Of him who died in battle, the youthful and the brave, And her who died of sorrow upon his early grave. |