the north-eastern side, which is an exception to the general
barrenness, it having been gradually formed out of the soil and
vegetation brought down the river from more fruitful regions during
periods of inundation. It is a low, marshy, heavily-timbered tract,
which has been partially drained and laid out as a public park, the
so-called English Garden--spot beloved of the people for its welcome
shades, where artificial waterfalls, from the "Isar rolling rapidly,"
add chill to the natural dampness; where unwilling streamlets creep
slowly through tortuous channels toward a stagnant pond, and
pestiferous miasma, rising like incense at the going down of the sun,
broods over the meadows until his rising again. It was in one of the
streets bordering this park that the cholera broke out in 1873, and
there too, Kaulbach, one of its last victims, had his home. So
notorious is the spot as a breeding-place of typhus that it is
generally abandoned at sunset; but the same crowd that hurry out of
its dripping shades at twilight return in the early summer mornings
before the dew has dried on the grass or the poisonous damps have
exhaled from the glens and thickets.

So long as the sun is in the sky it is fine weather to a Municher, no
matter what wind may blow or what evil the earth may be bringing
forth. Thus, on Christmas Day of 1873, when the weather, though
unusually mild for the season, was still windy and chilly, and utterly
unfit for any open-air enjoyment other than a brisk walk, every
beer-garden in the city was filled with an eating and drinking
multitude; and this, too, when a cold was especially to be
deprecated, as the cholera was increasing every hour. And so on all
Sundays and feast-days and fast-days and fairs there is a general
pouring out of the population into places of amusement near and
remote, no matter what may be the state of the weather or what the
condition of the public health.

But, though the people of Munich are extremely fond of staying out of
doors, they are by no means lovers of fresh air in their houses. With
the dread of fever always before their eyes, they make all close when
they go to bed, forgetting that "the only air at night is night air;"
and, hardened by habit, they spend long winter evenings in
concert-rooms and tavern beer-halls, made stifling with tobacco smoke
and foul with accumulated breaths; while at home, especially among the
poorer classes, the air is purposely unchanged in order