vels, early one morning. The moment her carriage
was outside the gates, a party of rampant students who
had escorted it rushed back to the inn, demanded to be
shown to her bedroom, swept like a whirlwind upstairs
into the room indicated to them, tore up the sheets,
and wore them in strips as decorations. An hour or two
afterwards a bald old gentleman of amiable appearance,
an Englishman, who was staying in the hotel, came to
breakfast at the _table d'hote_, and was observed to be
much disturbed in his mind, and to show great terror
whenever a student came near him. At last he said, in
a low voice, to some people who were near him at the
table, 'You are English gentlemen, I observe. Most
extraordinary people, these Germans. Students,
as a body, raving mad, gentlemen!' 'Oh, no,' said
somebody else: 'excitable, but very good fellows,
and very sensible.' 'By God, sir!' returned the old
gentleman, still more disturbed, 'then there's something
political in it, and I'm a marked man. I went out for
a little walk this morning after shaving, and while I
was gone'--he fell into a terrible perspiration as he
told it--'they burst into my bedroom, tore up my sheets,
and are now patrolling the town in all directions with
bits of 'em in their button-holes.' I needn't wind
up by adding that they had gone to the wrong chamber.

It was Dickens' habit wherever he went on his Continental
travels to avail himself of any opportunity of visiting the
opera; and his criticisms, though brief, are always to the
point. He tells us this interesting fact about Carrara:

There is a beautiful little theatre there, built of
marble, and they had it illuminated that night in my
honour. There was really a very fair opera, but it is
curious that the chorus has been always, time out of
mind, made up of labourers in the quarries, who don't
know a note of music, and sing entirely by ear.

But much as he loved music, Dickens could never bear the
least sound or noise while he was studying or writing, and
he ever waged a fierce war against church bells and itinerant
musicians. Even when in Scotland his troubles did not cease,
for he writes about 'a most infernal piper practising under
the window for a competition of pipers which is to come off
shortly.' Elsewhere he says that he found Dover 'too bandy'
for him (he carefully explains he d