with his
message. "The Herr Rittmeister regrets much that he is ordered away
on Court Martial duty to Entenburg, and cannot have the honour of
accompanying you, before Saturday, when----"

"With Heaven's assistance, I shall be out of the visible horizon of
Erfurt," said I, finishing the sentence for him.

Never was there a mind so relieved as mine was by this intelligence; the
horrors of that two days' perambulations through arched passages, up and
down flights of stone steps, and into caves and cells, of whose uses and
objects I had not the most remote conception, had given me a night of
fearful dreams, and now, I was free once more.

Long live the King of Prussia! say I, who keeps up smart discipline in
his army, and I fervently trust, that Court Martial may be thoroughly
digested, and maturely considered; and the odds are in my favour that
I'm off before it's over.

What is it, I wonder, that makes the inhabitants of fortified towns
always so stupid? Is such the fact?--first of all, asks some one of my
readers. Not a doubt of it--if you ever visited them, and passed a week
or two within their walls, you would scarcely ask the question. Can
curtains and bastions--fosses and half-moons, exclude intelligence as
effectually as they do an enemy? are batteries as fetal to pleasure as
they are to platoons? I cannot say; but what I can and will say, is,
that the most melancholy days and nights I ever passed, have been in
great fortresses. Where the works are old and tumbling, some little
light of the world without, will creep in through the chinks and
crevices, as at Antwerp and Mentz; but let them be well looked to--the
fosses full--no weeds on the ramparts--the palisades painted smart
green, and the sentry boxes to match, and God help you!

There must be something in the humdrum routine of military duty, that
has its effect upon the inhabitants. They get up at morning, by a signal
gun; and they go to bed by another; they dine by beat of drum, and the
garrison gives the word of command for every hour in the twenty-four;
There is no stir, no movement; a patrol, or a fatigue party, are the
only things you meet, and when you prick up your ears at the roll of
wheels, it turns out to be only a tumbril with a corporal's guard!

Theatres can scarcely exist in such places; a library would die in a
week; there are no soirees; no society. Billiards and beer, form the
staple of officers' pleasures, in a foreign army, and certain