me to the heart of Trevylyan the holiest spot
which the earth contained,--the KAABA of the world. But Gertrude,
unconscious of her fate, conversed gayly as their carriage rolled
rapidly on, and, constantly alive to every new sensation, she touched
with her characteristic vivacity on all that they had seen in their
previous route. There is a great charm in the observations of one new
to the world; if we ourselves have become somewhat tired of "its hack
sights and sounds," we hear in their freshness a voice from our own
youth.

In the haunted valley of the Neckar, the most crystal of rivers, stands
the town of Heidelberg. The shades of evening gathered round it as their
heavy carriage rattled along the antique streets, and not till the next
day was Gertrude aware of all the unrivalled beauties that environ the
place.

Vane, who was an early riser, went forth alone in the morning to
reconnoitre the town; and as he was gazing on the tower of St. Peter,
he heard himself suddenly accosted. He turned round and saw the German
student whom they had met among the mountains of Taunus at his elbow.

"Monsieur has chosen well in coming hither," said the student; "and I
trust our town will not disappoint his expectations." Vane answered with
courtesy, and the German offering to accompany him in his walk, their
conversation fell naturally on the life of a university, and the current
education of the German people.

"It is surprising," said the student, "that men are eternally inventing
new systems of education, and yet persevering in the old. How many
years ago is it since Fichte predicted in the system of Pestalozzi
the regeneration of the German people? What has it done? We admire, we
praise, and we blunder on in the very course Pestalozzi proves to
be erroneous. Certainly," continued the student, "there must be some
radical defect in a system of culture in which genius is an exception,
and dulness the result. Yet here, in our German universities, everything
proves that education without equitable institutions avails little in
the general formation of character. Here the young men of the colleges
mix on the most equal terms; they are daring, romantic, enamoured of
freedom even to its madness. They leave the University: no political
career continues the train of mind they had acquired; they plunge into
obscurity; live scattered and separate, and the student inebriated
with Schiller sinks into the passive priest or the lethargic b