he town in a sweet
security; and yet there is no sense of imprisonment, for the view is
always wide open to the great plains where the Neckar goes to join
the Rhine, and where the Rhine runs for many a league through a rich
and smiling land. One could settle down here to study, without a
desire to go farther, nor any wish to change the dingy, shabby old
buildings of the university for anything newer and smarter. What the
students can find to fight their little duels about I cannot see; but
fight they do, as many a scarred cheek attests. The students give
life to the town. They go about in little caps of red, green, and
blue, many of them embroidered in gold, and stuck so far on the
forehead that they require an elastic, like that worn by ladies,
under the back hair, to keep them on; and they are also distinguished
by colored ribbons across the breast. The majority of them are
well-behaved young gentlemen, who carry switch-canes, and try to keep
near the fashions, like students at home. Some like to swagger about
in their little skull-caps, and now and then one is attended by a
bull-dog.

I write in a room which opens out upon a balcony. Below it is a
garden, below that foliage, and farther down the town with its old
speckled roofs, spires, and queer little squares. Beyond is the
Neckar, with the bridge, and white statues on it, and an old city
gate at this end, with pointed towers. Beyond that is a white road
with a wall on one side, along which I see peasant women walking with
large baskets balanced on their heads. The road runs down the river
to Neuenheim. Above it on the steep hillside are vineyards; and a
winding path goes up to the Philosopher's Walk, which runs along for
a mile or more, giving delightful views of the castle and the
glorious woods and hills back of it. Above it is the mountain of
Heiligenberg, from the other side of which one looks off toward
Darmstadt and the famous road, the Bergstrasse. If I look down the
stream, I see the narrow town, and the Neckar flowing out of it into
the vast level plain, rich with grain and trees and grass, with many
spires and villages; Mannheim to the northward, shining when the sun
is low; the Rhine gleaming here and there near the horizon; and the
Vosges Mountains, purple in the last distance: on my right, and so
near that I could throw a stone into them, the ruined tower and
battlements of the northwest corner of the castle, half hidden in
foliage, with statues fra