the habitual
pastimes and amusements of the students; or at least of that large
majority of them who attend no lectures and study, nothing that they can
possibly avoid, but look upon their residence at the university as three
or four years to be devoted to smoking, beer-drinking, and scratching
one another's faces in duels. These duels, by the by, are pieces of the
most intense humbug that can be imagined. They take place now in the
large room of the inn at Ziegelhausen, a village on the banks of the
Neckar, about two miles from Heidelberg, and are fought with straight
swords, square but sharp at the extremity, and having guards as big as a
soup-plate.

Before the fight begins, the combatants don their defensive arms,
consisting of a strong and broad-brimmed hat protecting the head and
eyes, an immense leathern breastplate defending the chest and stomach, a
padded case, also of leather, which shields the arm from wrist to
shoulder, and an impenetrable cravat which protects the neck up to the
ears. The nose, and a bit of each cheek, is all that can be possibly
wounded. Thus equipped the heroes set to work, slashing away at each
other, (it is forbidden to thrust,) shaving off pieces of their padded
armour, and looking exceeding fierce and valiant the while; until,
after a greater or less time, according as the combatants are equal in
skill or not, one of them gets a scratch across the nose, or small
eyelet hole in the cheek, which terminates this caricature of a duel.
Since "young Germany" finds amusement in so harmless a practice, it
might very well be allowed them; provided they afterwards, like good
boys, took their books and learned their lessons. But such a proceeding
would be by no means consistent with the _Burschen-Freiheit_--the
academic freedom of which these hopeful youths make their boast. To
celebrate the valour of the victory, and show sympathy with the
sufferings of the vanquished--whose wound is by this time dressed with
an inch of sticking plaster--the party repairs to a tavern to breakfast;
and there the morning is killed over beer and Rhine wine till one
o'clock, by which time some of them are usually more than half tipsy.
They then repair to the table-d'hote, dine, drink more, and finally
stagger home to sleep off their libations. We have more than once, in
German university towns, seen students reeling-drunk at four in the
afternoon.

About seven in the evening, the _kneipes_ or drinking-houses begi