ppression. Any man who is
suspected, or feared, or disliked, or supposed not to approve of the
proceedings of the victorious party, is arrested and imprisoned at
pleasure. He may be guiltless of any offense which could be made a pretext
for condemning him, but his trial is arbitrarily postponed, and when at
last he is released, he has suffered the penalty of a long confinement,
and is taught how dangerous it is to become obnoxious to the government."

From Heidelberg, thus transformed, I was glad to take my departure as
soon as possible. Our way from that city to Heilbronn, was through a most
charming country along the valley of the Neckar. Here were low hills and
valleys rich with harvests, a road embowered in fruit-trees, the branches
of which were propped with stakes to prevent them from breaking with their
load, and groves lying pleasantly in the morning sunshine, where ravens
were croaking. Birds of worse omen than these were abroad, straggling
groups, and sometimes entire companies of soldiers, on their way from one
part of the duchy to another; while in the fields, women, prematurely old
with labor, were wielding the hoe and the mattock, and the younger and
stronger of their sex were swinging the scythe. In all the villages
through which we passed, in the very smallest, troops were posted, and men
in military uniform were standing at the doors, or looking from the
windows of every inn and beer-house.

At Heilbronn we took the railway for Stuttgart, the capital of Wurtemberg.
There was a considerable proportion of men in military trappings among the
passengers, but at one of the stations they came upon us like a cloud, and
we entered Stuttgart with a little army. That city, too, looked as if in a
state of siege, so numerous were the soldiery, though the vine-covered
hills, among which it is situated, could have given them a better
occupation. The railway, beyond Stuttgart, wound through a deep valley and
ended at Geisslingen, an ancient Swabian town, in a gorge of the
mountains, with tall old houses, not one of which, I might safely affirm,
has been built within the last two hundred years. From this place to Ulm,
on the Danube, the road was fairly lined with soldiers, walking or resting
by the wayside, or closely packed in the peasants' wagons, which they had
hired to carry them short distances. At Ulm we were obliged to content
ourselves with straitened accommodations, the hotels being occupied by the
gentry in e