Heidelberg with foreigners, that a good and clear German is spoken in
both places by the professors. In Tübingen, on the contrary, even in
Munich, to a great extent, the local dialect prevails to such a degree,
that students from Northern Germany, many of whom frequent these cities
in the summer session, find it difficult, nay, almost impossible, to
understand at first, especially the broad Suabian of Tübingen. Here,
however, as the system of dictation prevails, the slowness of utterance
compensates in a measure for its indistinctness and incorrectness.

In some places, where academic freedom, as the students style it, exists
to a high degree, a general scraping of the feet admonishes the lecturer
to repeat his words or be more distinct and clear in his enunciation.
This pedal language, though often disregarded, still does not fail in
the end in producing the desired effect.

With such characteristics, it cannot be a matter of wonder, if some
time be required to be spent in hearing lectures daily before the full
benefit can be fairly appreciated. Many will appear slow in the extreme;
and the constant recourse to notes, and the tedious manner, will create
a feeling of weariness hard to overcome. However, these peculiarities
are soon forgotten in the excellence of the matter, and their
disagreeableness is scarcely noticed after a few weeks, except in
extreme cases. The mannerism fades away, and the hearer learns to follow
from thought to thought under the guidance of an experienced leader,
whose living words he hears, whose thought he feels as it is
communicated directly to him.

Not so much from the actual things heard, the actual facts mastered, is
the lecture-system valuable to the student, as for the method of
study which he derives from it. He is no longer like an automaton, a