" for the rest of my life after.'

'I should not wonder if you became a Presbyterian to-morrow,' said I,
endeavouring to encourage his own effort at good-humour: 'but here we
are at the Rhine Good-bye; I needn't warn you about----'

'Not a word, I beseech you; I'll never close my eyes as long as I live
without a double lock on the door of my bedroom.'

CHAPTER XXVII. THE RECOVERY HOUSE

Frankfort is a German Liverpool, minus the shipping, and consequently
has few attractions for the mere traveller. The statue of 'Ariadne,'
by the Danish sculptor Danneker, is almost its only great work of art.
There are some, not first-rate, pictures in the Gallery and the Hotel
de Ville, and the Town Library possesses a few Protestant relics--among
others, a pair of Luther's slippers.

There is, however, little to delay a wanderer within the walls of
the Frey Stadt, if he have no peculiar sympathy with the Jews and
money-changers. The whole place smacks of trade and traders, and seems
far prouder of being the native city of Rothschild than the birthplace
of Goethe.

The happy indolence of a foreign city, the easy enjoyment of life so
conspicuous in most continental towns, exists not here. All is activity,
haste, and bustle. The tables d'hote are crowded to excess by eager
individuals eating away against time, and anxious to get back once more
to the Exchange or the counting-house. There is a Yankee abruptness in
the manners of the men, who reply-to you as though information were a
thing not to be had for nothing; and as for the women, like the wives
and daughters of all commercial communities, they are showy dressers and
poor talkers, wear the finest clothes and inhabit the most magnificent
houses, but scarcely become the one and don't know how to live in the
other.

I certainly should not like to pitch my tent in Frankfort, even as
successor to the great Munch Bellinghausen himself--Heaven grant I may
have given him all his consonants!--the President of the Diet. And
yet to the people themselves few places take such rooted hold on the
feelings of the inhabitants as trading cities. Talk of the attachment
of a Swiss or a Tyrolese to his native mountains--the dweller in Fleet
Street or the Hoch Grasse will beat him hollow. The daily occupations of
city life, filling up every nook and crevice of the human mind, leave no
room for any thought or wish beyond them. Hence arises that insufferable
air of self-satisfaction, that con