he beadle as security. Yet such little incidents are but slight
annoyances at most, which a little good-humor and desire to conform to
the habits and ways of doing of the country will remove. He who goes
abroad always ready to bristle up against what does not exactly conform
to his preconceived ideas of propriety, measuring and weighing all
things with his own national weights and measures, will be continually
making himself disagreeable and unhappy, and in the end profit little by
his absence from home.

The conclusion of the training-system in the gymnasia usually occurs
before the nineteenth or twentieth year. With the reception of the
certificate of maturity the youth may be said to have donned the virile
toga. He enjoys during his university years a degree of liberty such as
he never enjoyed before, never will enjoy again when his student-days
are over. Having taken out his matriculation-papers, and given the
_Handschlag_ (taken the oath) to obey the laws of the land and the
statutes of the university, he has become a student,--a _Fox_, as the
freshman is styled,--he chooses his own career, his own professors,
hears the lectures he pleases, attends or omits as he pleases, leads the
life of a god for a triennium or a quadrennium, fights his duels, drinks
his beer, sings his club-and-corps songs.--But of student-life more in
due time.--There is no check, no constraint whatever, during the whole
time the studies last. At the expiration of three or four, sometimes
even five years, an examination takes place before the degree of Doctor
can be conferred,--not a severe one by any means, confined as it is to
the special branch to which the candidate wishes to devote himself.
In the Medical and Law Departments it is more serious than in the
Philosophical. This examination is followed by a public discussion in
presence of the dean and professors of the faculty, held in Latin, on
some thesis that has been treated and printed in the same language by
the candidate. His former fellow-students, and any one present that
wishes, stand as opponents. This disputation, whatever may have been its
merits in former days, has degenerated in the present into a mere piece
of acted mummery, where the partakers not only stutter and stammer over
bad Latin, but even help themselves, when their memory fails utterly,
with the previously written notes of their extempore objections and
answers. The principal requisite for the attainment of the Docto