he presence of attentive hearers, to that
living reaction softly felt by the teacher, whereby a perennial mental
harmony is awakened in his soul, which far surpasses the labors in the
study, before blank walls and the feelingless paper."

THE STUDIES.

The first entrance into a German auditorium or _Hoersaal_, as the
lecture-rooms in the universities are called, will show much that is
characteristic. But little care is bestowed on the decoration of the
apartment. Whatever aesthetic culture the nation may have, it finds
little manifestation in the things of daily life, and elegance seems
little less than banished from the precincts of the learned world. The
academic halls present to the view nothing but dingy walls, rough floors
coated with the dust and mud of days or weeks, and, winter and summer,
the huge porcelain stove in one corner,--that immovable article of
cheerless German furniture, where wood is put in by the pound, and no
bright glow ever discloses the presence of that warmest friend of man,
a good fire. For the students there are coarse, long wooden desks and
benches, with places all numbered, cut up and disfigured to an extent
which will soon convince one that whittling is not a trait of American
destructiveness exclusively. Here are carved names and intertwined
lettering, arabesque masterpieces of penknife-ingenuity, with a general
preponderance of feminine appellatives, bold incisures, at times, of
some worthy professor in profile,--the whole besmutched with ink, and
dotted with countless punctures, the result of the sharp spike with
which every student's ink-horn is armed, that he may steady it upon the
slanting board. The preceding lecture ended when the university-clock
struck the hour; the next should begin within ten or fifteen minutes.
One by one the students drop in and take their places,--high and low,
rich and poor, all on the same straight-backed pine benches. The days
fire over, even in title-loving Germany, though not long since, when
the young counts and barons sat foremost, on a privileged, raised, and
cushioned seat, and were addressed by their title.

As the hearers thus assemble, they present a motley appearance,--being,
in the larger cities especially, from all lands, all ranks of society,
and of every age. Side by side with the young freshman in his first
semester, the _Fat Fox_, as he is called, who has just made a leap from
the strict discipline of the gymnasium to the unbounded