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THE STOUT GENTLEMAN LECTURES UPON THE COMET.

miles by long lines of poplars, bleak, rigid, and lugubrious; the mountains are gradually depressed to a succession of level lowlands; then comes a maze of glittering lamps. A great many bells ring; there is much shouting, much "Yo-heave-hoing," in German, and the three travellers are at MAYENCE.

"What do they let the soldiers wear white calico frocks for, so late at night?" the stout gentleman asked, after landing, as two sentinels, habited like journeymen bakers who had recently enlisted, threw open the battants of the city gate immediately opposite the landing-place, for the passengers and merchandise of the Prinz von Preussen to pass through. "Surely they will catch cold."

"Unthinking man!" the M. I. C. replied, sternly; "those are Austrian soldiers."

92

CHAPTER IV.

FROM MAYENCE, alias CASTEL, BY HOCKHEIM, TO FRANKFORT ON-THE- MAINE,

AND THENCE TO

VANITY FAIR, OTHERWISE CALLED HOMBOURGVON-DER-HÖHE.

THE federal city of Mayence may be described as being, politically, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red herring. It doesn't seem to belong outright to any European Power, although two great and one mediocre one-Austria, Prussia, and Bavaria-have an interest in it, and keep soldiers there, making it a capital place to study the varieties of German military costume, and to note the various inflections of the Teutonic language in. Of course, all the Powers are jealous of one another, and the soldiers of the different nations indulge in mutual hatred of the most cordial description. The Austrians call the Prussians donkeys; the Prussians retort that everybody knows that the Austrians are cows; and both fall foul of the unfortunate Bavarians, who are contemned and ridiculed as walking beer-barrels. I am afraid, myself, that the horrible explosion of the powder magazine at Mayence, which we have all heard of, must have been caused by the vindictive desire of an Austrian uhlan to blow up a Prussian jäger, or vice versa, or by a conspiracy between the children of the black and the two-headed eagle to send the Bavarian light infantry into the air.

The gate through which the warriors in white holland blouses had admitted our three travellers was

the Frei Thor or Free Gate, to build which was demolished the famous old feudal residence of Martinsburg, which, up to the end of the seventeenth century, was the palace of the Kurfursts or Electors. "Bother the electors!" the stout gentleman remarked parenthetically, when this information was imparted to him; "the whole of German history appears to have been turned topsy-turvy by those elector fellows. It's my opinion that the whole Thirty Years' War was nothing but a contested election." There also was the Merchants' Hotel, a magnificent building erected by the notorious "League" in 1317, and which was decorated with the statues of seven electors, and two colossal figures supporting the Imperial crown of Germany. This was razed to the ground during the wars of that enlightened and art-loving people the French, who, it will be remembered, had also the honour of burning up the wretched Palatinate once or twice, and in all ages have been distinguished for politeness, taste, liberality, and also for stabling their horses in churches, making drinking troughs of the holy-water fonts, smoking their pipes in confessionals, and using sacred pictures for muskettargets, leaving behind their line of march burning cottages, uprooted vines, and devastated harvest fields, insulting women, and grinding the faces of the unhappy peasantry. As they used Germany, so they used Italy; so they have used Algeria, so Kertch (our own poor Highlanders getting the credit of much of that Vandalism); and so they would use your front parlour and best bedroom, Mr. Bull, your snug Mechanics' Institute, and neat proprietary chapel, your goods and chattels-from your cash-box to your youngest born's perambulator-if ever they had a chance. And yet these tiger-baboons, who grin with their mouths and tear with their teeth with equal facility, have the assurance to declare that the Rhenish provinces are naturally theirs, and that they

are beloved by the Germans. Why, it will be a thousand years ere the Germans forget the murder of Palm, the bridge of Leipsic, the outrage on the followers of the heroic Schill-sent to the galleys when fairly prisoners of war-and the sacrilegious rifling of the Great Frederick's tomb!

There is a bridge of boats at Mayence first built by Charlemagne, and affixed to the piles thereof are seventeen water mills, whose murmur during the night is very romantic and tranquillizing. Indeed, the man with the iron chest, always of a sentimental temperament, declared that he could not imagine a better preparation for bed than a solitary walk on the old bridge, the great pale moon shining placidly above like a benignant empress, fluttering, fleecy, skimmering little clouds paying their court to her, and hurrying away, abashed by the radiance of her countenance; the stars around twinkling with brilliance, subdued but sufficing; the planets a proud aristocracy, coroneted and full of rich domains, down to the "little people of the skies," glittering mildly, mere pins' points of gentility, down at last to the tiny wavelets of the Rhine, sparkling, too, in their humble way, fawning on the great luminary above like bright-eyed little spaniels, glad to catch the smallest reflex of the Mistress Lux, like genteel dwellers in a village in ecstacies at an invite from my lord at the priory, who dined last week with his grace at the hall, who, as each reader of the "Court Circular" knows, is Pinchbeck-stick-in-waiting to her Majesty at the palace. "Yes," the M. I. C. sighed meekly, "that walk on the bridge would be delightful. I don't mind the poplar and alder fringed banks of the river being somewhat formal. The moon, the stars, a mild cigar, a glimmering red light under the hood of one of yonder barges, and memory enough to repeat a dozen lines of Tennyson's 'Vision of Fair Women,' would suffice me."

"There is only one obstacle to your taking such a sentimental stroll," (they were smoking in the hotel vestibule when this conversation occurred), "and that is that the bridge is unfortunately outside the town gates, and that Frei Thor and all are closed at ten p.m. Thus far the slim gentleman.

"And what the dickens has a bridge of boats to do with a vision of fair women ?" asked the stout gentleman, taking the red-nosed man's cigar (without permission) from his lips, and kindling his own extinguished weed at the other's incandescent tip. He was always wanting a light for his cigar, the stout gentleman, like the people who are always wanting a fresh start in life. "Besides," he continued, "you know you're nearly as blind as a mole. You couldn't see the fair women, if they were there, without turning on a policeman's bull's-eye. You ran against the pretty German girl, who wore her hair parted on one side, while I was explaining the nebulous theory of the comet's tail to her; and I am sure you trod on her toes, confound you!"

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"As a rule," the slim gentleman interposed, balancing the minute fragment of his cigar on the tip of a penknife," girls who part their hair on one side are to be avoided. Even as a great authority in such matters has declared that red-haired girls should be shunned, being as deceitful as the foxes of the field, so onesided-haired girls are ordinarily too scientific. They know all about the 'Vestiges of Creation,' read the 'Old Red Sandstone,' and the Testimony of the Rocks; have a good deal to say about the megatherium, the iguanodon, and the other horrible saurians you see on the lake in the Crystal Palace gardens, and carry little hampers and chips of gypsum and feldspar in their workbags. The minxes! they should be minding their knitting! Next to the late Doctor Buckland, they think the greatest man in the world is Sir Roderick Murchison. I knew such a young lady once,

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