the winter, and a store of potatoes, one is happy and secure.' The Polish boor says the same; the Bohemian and Silesian weaver; the Saxon, Hessian, Westphalian, Rhenish, day-labourer. We have the same sentiment in later times from the once rich Flemish; in short, it is everywhere a repeated echo, from Ural to the Atlas, wherever there are men. The rich live, the poor starve. Misery, therefore, prevails in all longitudes and latitudes, climates, religions and political institutions. Misery and potatoes! To this have philanthropy, the political economists, and philosophy, brought the world! Want and hunger is the pressing cry, which is sought to be smothered with potatoes. Not for their daily bread' do the poor cry, but potatoes!" Of Liege the count says, "Whatever the manufacturers require in rough materials for their employ, is furnished by the Ardennes' iron and coal. In what manner, however, these materials (and it is to be hoped in part only) are employed, is proved by the fire-arms which are fabricated for those over the seas, especially for the African coast trade. These, according to orders, are to burst after five or six shots, else the article is destined to form part of the manufacturer's stock in trade -is not vendible.-Industrious industry!" Speaking of the clergy, he says, "It was to me an unaccustomed sight, and an unagreeable one, and my catholic esprit de corps was shocked everywhere, and at all times, to hit upon priests, on whose brows might be read no apostolic humility, but arrogance and a proud consciousness of their power. I speak not of the church, but of railroads and diligences, and what was worse, to find them in gaming houses, and animated spectators of races, in the dress of their order!" Under the heading of Forts, the count gives an excellent anecdote: -"At the building of a new fortress, the officer in command said to a Jew, one of the labourers, Now this fort, when finished, will put an end to revolts outside.' 'Suppose, however, those inside should revolt,' retorted the Jew." At Bruges, he makes the following apostrophe :-"O cotton wool! thou universal and all involving material! For thee there has been, for more than half a century, more blood shed than for any other idea of the old or new world. For thee is the earth and its people stirred up. Cotton, thou Alpha and Omega of our time; thou turnest the negro in America, and the white man in Europe, into slaves; thou hast dominion over nations and kings, the press and diplomacy; all live but through thee, and for thee! How can we wonder or complain of the insensibility of the age. All the channels to the human affections are stopped up with bales of cotton!" At Ostend the count speaks of King Leopold :-"In a narrow street I observed coming out of a five-windowed, two-storied house, an oldish gentleman plainly dressed, and his clothes of a very old-fashioned cut. Right and left, he, without intermission, saluted those he met, and which greetings were returned with more cordiality than respect. His haggard, elongated features expressed German bonhommie, not without talent, but at the same time a tolerable dose of true British spleen. In answer to my inquiries, I learnt that this was the King of the Belgians, and that the modest house was his and his family's summer palace. The king is fortunate in understanding how to make so easy his thorny constitutional throne, and retaining his good humour under the oppression of ennui. King Leopold is set over spirits so unruly and discordant, that it required as much art as policy in him to preserve the necessary calm and endurance, and to be esteemed as he is. Many a time and oft has he had to sacrifice his personal inclinations to ministerial constitutionalism. Such was the case with his favourite aide-de-camp, Gen. von N., whom the minister dismissed in the royal ante-room. So was it with the cavalry general, Count von L., a brave active soldier of Napoleon's time, and who, in spite of the wish of the king, and the order of the day, which had received the king's signature, on account of his aristocratic birth, was by the plebeian minister placed on half-pay. By such means, constitutional royalty loses the only ground that justifies its existence, whose prerogative it is to defend and promote the welfare of all; if it fulfils not this, it sinks down to party. Belgium," he adds, "has only the name of a kingdom, for the king has less power than the president of the United States." It is clear from these remarks, that the count is no friend to constitutional governments; indeed, the whole tenor of his work-his one sided view of Belgium and its institutions, and his fulsome praise of the Emperor Nicholas, shows this; but he cannot "help confessing, that in no country in Europe have the freedom of the press and equality become so much the fundamental principles of the state." No small praise. This desultory volume, spread out by a river of margin to a size which exempts it from the censorship of the press, is, as may be judged, rather a political pamphlet than a hand-book of Belgium, and his descriptions of Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Mechlin, and Ostend, are of little use to the traveller. His knowledge of the fine arts is very limited. He finds no picture of Rubens to commend but a Dead Christ at Antwerp; of its port he says, "It is the haven of the Continent-there is none so great-so secure-so thoroughly fit for the frightful (furchtsamen) trade of the Continent. If we add to this, that it is the central point, from which the railroads diverge, its destiny menaces that old coquette, Lady Thames"!!! It is natural to suppose, that the count, like all Belgian tourists, should have visited the plains of Waterloo. It is a thrice-told tale, but his account of it is original. He says, Almost all the inhabitants of the village of Waterloo are cicerones. An Englishman who has, since the battle, resided there, and who was in the action, is on that account, and because more of his countrymen make pilgrimages to it than others, in most esteem. In order, however, to guard against a one-sided view, I associated with him another guide, a young man, who, in the year 1815, was fourteen or fifteen years of age, and at that time employed in the Ferme Mont St. Jean. With these companions, and Jomani's map and description, I sought the plain of grim recollections. My Belgian was body and soul made over to French renown; he hated, like a true son of the Continent, the Insulars, but most of all his rival, who reaped a better harvest from the field than himself. The altercation between them began with the taking up of the positions. The more we got into the thick of the action, so much the more dark and threatening were the looks of the two hostile representatives of history. But it is impossible to describe the rage of the Englishman, when the Belgian pointed out to the hollow way, which right from the monument, some hundred yards long and a foot high, lay in front of the English lines, and where he declared the Man of the Allies, as he called the Duke of Wellington, had, with the regiments of guards, laid down be hind this breast-work, thus protected from the balls of the French; adding, that it was only at the retreat of the old guard, that they sprung up and precipitated themselves on the already overpowered. At this blasphemy my Englishman was speechless with wrath and indignation, and at length declared that my presence alone prevented him from splitting the sconce of the blasphemer. He said this in English, and the other replied, "C'est pourtant cela," without being at all aware that his French skull was threatened. His opponent did not really mean what he said, for the Belgian looked as if he could have broken any two Englanders over his knee. We approached the end of the drama, and the narrative. The event of the battle was all on the side of the Eng lishman. Here, however, the Belgian called out to me, "Ne lui croyez pas, Monsieur, jamais les Anglais ne seraient Venus à bout des Français-C'est les Prussiens qui sont les vrais vainqueurs, et les Fran çais sont morts comme des saints et des braves." This anecdote is amusing, but the tenor of the count's book is anything but cheerful. Count Gurowski is, however, an exile and a wanderer, and can, as he says in conclusion, "strike no chords on his heart that do not vibrate painfully." The work is written in German, and the style keeps pace with the looseness of the materials; it is, however, though untranslateable, worthy of attentive perusal; the production of an active, inquiring, though somewhat of a Machiavellish mind, of a man the want of whose services must be a loss to the autocrat. STANZA S. BY MRS. PONSONBY. THERE are moments when the heart, Sometimes o'er calamity By its unconquerable pride. Strange are these moods-but stranger still An inward Paradise create, From which calm home of sure delight, They smile to scorn the world's despite. No country in Europe is so famous for its superstitions as Germany; a land of forests and mountains, full of the ruins of castles and fortresses, which have been the witnesses of scenes of bloodshed and rapine, the abodes of so many bandit-chiefs and petty tyrants, who waged war with each other, or with their oppressed serfs; there is scarcely a part of it, from the Swartz-wald to the Hartz, that has not its legend, kept alive by tradition, or recorded by the romance-writers or poets; and these not only of olden but modern times. In England, all the interest in our legends is gone by. The pressure of the day, the destitution and misery of the so-called lower classes, awakening even from its lethargy bloated wealth, absorbs all other contemplations. But Uhland, Rückert, and Körner, owe their popularity to such themes. Germany lives only in the past. Perhaps it would have its Dickenses, its William Howitts, and Hoods too, were it not that the press is shackled. And that reminds me where I am, under the eye of Heidelberg Castle. Who has not heard of Heidelberg Castle? the old seat of the Palatines-a mountain of stone-once a town in itself, capable of containing within its walls an army, frowning defiance on its enemies, but vainly, for it has been frequently besieged and captured-devastated by the Bavarians-ravaged by Melac-blown up by the sanguinary Tilly-and finally destroyed by lightning; and now the most extensive and picturesque ruin perhaps in the world-its Ritter Saal one of its wonders still. It may be supposed that so spectral a pile is not without its legends; but the story I am about to treat of is no legend. Ten years have scarcely transpired since the occurrence took place, even the name of my hero is no supposititious one. He was well known to a young physican now residing here, his cotemporary, and member of the same Cöre in the University; and the cicerone of the castle has enabled me to fill up some details with which he was unacquainted, and if I could connect them well, I think I could prove to my readers, that reality surpasses fiction-life all romance. It was on St. Silvester's night, and near on the stroke of eleven, for the curfew, warning all Kneipers, had ceased tolling, when three students, who had since sunset been drinking large potations from out the ample beakers before them of that favourite German beverage, beer, were seen seated in the Hirsch-gass Hostel. There had been held an allgemeine, or general assemblage of the Cöres. The table, which extended from one end to the other of the vast desolate-looking lofty room, or as much of it as a single lamp in the centre, whose light was dimmed by thick clouds of smoke-tobacco-smoke-could show, bore signs of having been lately occupied, for huge stone flagons, and ample choppin glasses, in admired disorder-some full-some empty-some half filled-others upset or broken, were scattered over the surface of the floating deals. The chairs too kept no regular line, but formed groups in all directions, and many of them upset, others broken, betrayed that harmony had not reigned in the assembly, but, on the contrary, bore incontestable marks of those differences that universally attend such meetings, and mute testimony to the excesses that had characterized this occasion. There is nothing more grim than such a spectacle. The mind reverts to what has been, even goes beyond the reality it peoples the place with Banquo's ghosts, and suggests that the morrow is pregnant with scenes of blood that have been engendered by intemperance and debauchery. But the trio I have mentioned were in no moralizing mood, nor engaged in such contemplations. The Kleeblat, or Trefoil, as these students were called, from their being constantly together, hanging like the three leaves of the shamrock on one stalk, belonged to the same club, and were what is denominated corps burshes, fellows of the corporation, and worthy ones, for though they had roared their songs louder than the rest of their brethren, and drank deeper of that Lethean flood, and though, unlike Socrates in the Symposium, after the celebrated drinking-bout, they were neither of them in a fit condition to give a lecture or attend one, could not be called intoxicated. It was, I have said, the last day of the year. From time to time the report of pistols was heard from the town, half a mile distant, by way of rejoicing at the approaching death of the old year, or welcoming the coming of the new one, and an occasional fall of sparks from an expiring rocket outglared the dim light of the flickering lamp. But I must not forget my triumvirate ;-one was a Freiherr, a ruby-faced bloated Silenus-looking beardless youth, with his coat off and sleeves tucked up to show the muscle of his arm, which he was in the habit of constantly caressing; the second a Graff, who would have been a distinguished ornament of Frederick the Great's body-guard, remarkably dandified after the student fashion, with long ringletted black hair hanging over his shoulders, a coat elaborately embroidered, and who prided himself on a beard that might have done honour to a Persian. Of the third, the hero of my story, it is necessary that I should speak more in detail. He was about twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, for students do not go so young to college as with us, of a very emaciated frame, a face pale and wan from late hours, devoted to hard study and excessive drinking, and which appeared yet more ghastly from the quantity of flaxen hair which covered it, and presented to my mind some resemblance to the flower vulgarly called "Devil in a Bush." He was the son of a rich wine-grower near Worms, renowned for its congress in old times, and now for a vast gloomy cathedral, that occupies as much space as half the town, a pile that seems properly conscious of its former greatness, and proud of the prestige that hangs over it. But Worms is at the present day not without a name, for it is here, under the shadow of another church, that the grapes grow from which is made the celebrated Liebfrau milch. Wine and a church!-what an antithesis! Both, however, equally belong to my tale. Rappert, for such was the name of my hero, had been brought up to associate them together, though not very religiously, for the proverb "The nearer the church the further from God" was not inapplicable to him; and none of the Cöre vociferated with greater emphasis those parts of the students' songs that depict Heaven as a Moslem Paradise. His thoughts now had turned on Worms; he had |