iversity has a reputation. There are
plenty of hard-working students of course; nowadays probably the great
majority are of this kind; but to a large proportion also the
university period is still a pleasant, free, and easy halting-place
between the severe discipline and work of the school and the stern
struggle of the working world.

The social life of the English university is paralleled in Germany by
associations of students in student "Corps," with theatrical uniforms
for their _Chargierte_ or officers, special caps, sometimes of
extraordinary shape, swords, leather gauntlets, Wellington boots, and
other distinguishing gaudy insignia. The Corps are more or less
select, the most exclusive of all being the Corps Borussia, which at
every university only admits members of an upper class of society,
though on rare occasions receiving in its ranks an exceptionally
aristocratic, popular, or wealthy foreigner. To this Corps, the name
of which is the old form of "Prussia," the Emperor belonged when at
Bonn, and in one or two of his speeches he has since spoken of the
agreeable memories he retains in connexion with it and the practices
observed by it.

Common to all university associations in Germany--whether Corps,
Landsmannschaft, Burschenschaft, or Turnerschaft--is the practice of
the _Mensur_, or student duel. It is not a duel in the sense usually
given to the word in England, for it lacks the feature of personal
hostility, hate, or injury, but is a particularly sanguinary form of
the English "single-stick," in which swords take the place of sticks.
These swords (_Schlaeger_), called, curiously enough, _rapiere_, are
long and thin in the blade, and their weight is such that at every
duel students are told off on whose shoulders the combatants can rest
their outstretched sword-arm in the pauses of the combat caused by the
duellists getting out of breath; consequently, an undersized student
is usually chosen for this considerate office. The heads and faces of
the duellists are swathed in bandages--no small incentive to
perspiration, the vital parts of their bodies are well protected
against a fatal prick or blow, and the pricks or slashes must be
delivered with the hand and wrist raised head-high above the shoulder.
It is considered disgraceful to move the head, to shrink in the
smallest degree before the adversary, or even to show feeling when the
medical student who acts as surgeon in an adjoining room staunches the
fl