ption of his
wonderful qualities. He has a bench in front, where he tests on the
shoes of his customers, or if none of those are disposed to try it, he
rubs it on his own, which shine like mirrors. So he rattles on with
amazing fluency in French, German and Italian, and this, with his black
beard and moustache and his polite, graceful manner, keeps a crowd of
customers around him, so that the wonderful blacking goes off as fast as
he can supply it.

_April 6._--Old Winter's gales are shut close behind us, and the sun
looks down with his summer countenance. The air, after the long cold
rain, is like that of Paradise. All things are gay and bright, and
everybody is in motion. Spring commenced with yesterday in earnest, and
lo! before night the roads were all dry and fine as if there had been no
rain for a month; and the gardeners dug and planted in ground which,
eight days before, was covered with snow!

After having lived through the longest winter here, for one hundred and
fifty years, we were destined to witness the greatest flood for sixty,
and little lower than any within the last three hundred years. On the
28th of March, the river overflooded the high pier along the Main, and
rising higher and higher, began to come into the gates and alleys.
Before night the whole bank was covered and the water intruded into some
of the booths in the Romerberg. When I went there the next morning, it
was a sorrowful sight. Persons were inside the gate with boats; so
rapidly had it risen, that many of the merchants had no time to move
their wares, and must suffer great damage. They were busy rescuing what
property could bo seized in the haste, and constructing passages into
the houses which were surrounded. No one seemed to think of buying or
selling, but only on the best method to escape the danger. Along the
Main it was still worse. From the measure, it had risen seventeen feet
above its usual level, and the arches of the bridge were filled nearly
to the top. At the Upper-Main gate, every thing was flooded--houses,
gardens, workshops, &c.; the water had even overrun the meadows above
and attacked the city from behind, so that a part of the beautiful
promenades lay deep under water. On the other side, we could see houses
standing in it up to the roof. It came up through the sewers into the
middle of Frankfort; a large body of men were kept at work constructing
slight bridges to walk on, and transporting boats to places where they