stadt, rave of the fourteen quarterings which give the
_entree_ to their salons, the nation has no sympathy with these follies.
The unaffected, simple-minded, primitive German has no thought of
assuming an air of distance to one his inferior in rank; and I have
myself seen a sovereign prince take his place at table d'hote beside the
landlord, and hobnob with him cordially during dinner.

I do not mean to say that the German has no respect for rank; on the
contrary, none more than he looks up to aristocracy, and reveres its
privileges; but he does so from its association with the greatness of
the Fatherland. The great names of his nobles recall those of the heroes
and sages of whom the traditions of the country bear record; they are
the watchwords of German liberty or German glory; they are the monuments
of which he feels proudest. His reverence for their descendants is
not tinged with any vulgar desire to be thought their equal or their
associate; far from it, he has no such yearnings. His own position
could never be affected by anything in theirs. The skipper of the
fishing-craft might join convoy with the great fleet, but he knows that
he only commands a shallop after all.

This, be it remarked, is a very different feeling from what we
occasionally see nearer home. I have seen a good deal of student-life
in Germany, and never witnessed anything approaching that process so
significantly termed 'tuft-hunting' with us. Perhaps it may be alleged
in answer that rank and riches, so generally allied in this country,
are not so there; and that consequently much of what the world deems the
prestige of condition is wanting to create that respect. Doubtless this
is, to a certain extent, true; but I have seen the descendants of the
most distinguished houses in Germany mixing with the students of a very
humble walk on terms the most agreeable and familiar, assuming nothing
themselves, and certainly receiving no marks of peculiar favour or
deference from their companions. When one knows something of German
character, this does not surprise one. As a people, highly imaginative
and poetic in temperament, dreamy and contemplative, falling back rather
on the past than facing the future, they are infinitely more assailable
by souvenirs than promises; and in this wise the ancient fame of a
Hohenstauffen has a far firmer hold on the attachment of a Prussian than
the hopes he may conceive from his successor. It was by recalling to the
Ger