he dingy, shabby old buildings of
the university for anything newer and smarter. What the students can
find to fight their little duels about I cannot see; but fight they do,
as many a scarred cheek attests. The students give life to the town.
They go about in little caps of red, green, and blue, many of them
embroidered in gold, and stuck so far on the forehead that they require
an elastic, like that worn by ladies, under the back hair, to keep
them on; and they are also distinguished by colored ribbons across the
breast. The majority of them are well-behaved young gentlemen, who carry
switch-canes, and try to keep near the fashions, like students at home.
Some like to swagger about in their little skull-caps, and now and then
one is attended by a bull-dog.

I write in a room which opens out upon a balcony. Below it is a garden,
below that foliage, and farther down the town with its old speckled
roofs, spires, and queer little squares. Beyond is the Neckar, with the
bridge, and white statues on it, and an old city gate at this end, with
pointed towers. Beyond that is a white road with a wall on one side,
along which I see peasant women walking with large baskets balanced on
their heads. The road runs down the river to Neuenheim. Above it on
the steep hillside are vineyards; and a winding path goes up to
the Philosopher's Walk, which runs along for a mile or more, giving
delightful views of the castle and the glorious woods and hills back
of it. Above it is the mountain of Heiligenberg, from the other side
of which one looks off toward Darmstadt and the famous road, the
Bergstrasse. If I look down the stream, I see the narrow town, and the
Neckar flowing out of it into the vast level plain, rich with grain
and trees and grass, with many spires and villages; Mannheim to the
northward, shining when the sun is low; the Rhine gleaming here and
there near the horizon; and the Vosges Mountains, purple in the last
distance: on my right, and so near that I could throw a stone into them,
the ruined tower and battlements of the northwest corner of the castle,
half hidden in foliage, with statues framed in ivy, and the garden
terrace, built for Elizabeth Stuart when she came here the bride of the
Elector Frederick, where giant trees grow. Under the walls a steep
path goes down into the town, along which little houses cling to the
hillside. High above the castle rises the noble Konigstuhl, whence the
whole of this part of Germany i