several courses public. The students often attend for months as guests,
_hospitanten_. As they say,--"The _Fox_ pays for more than he hears, and
the _Bursch_ hears more than he pays for." The lecturers take no notice
of those present; and, provided the matriculation-papers have been taken
out, the beadle has nothing to say. There is the fullest liberty of
wandering from room to room, and hearing, if only once or twice, any one
of the professors. As for the expenses of living, they vary. To one who
would be satisfied with German student-fare and comforts, four hundred
dollars a year will answer every purpose, even in the dearest cities:
many do with much less. In Southern Germany, life is simpler and cheaper
than in Northern, and the saying is true in Munich, that a _Gulden_
there will go as far as a _Thaler_ in Prussia. There are poorer
students, who are exempted from college-fees, and support themselves by
_Stipendia,_ whose outlay never exceeds a hundred dollars a year.

When several hundred or thousand young men are thus thrown together,
with their time all their own, and none to whom they are responsible
for their actions, it may easily be supposed that many abuses and
irregularities will occur. Yet the great mass are better than they have
been represented; though regular attendance upon lectures is true
only of those who _ox_ it at home, as the phrase goes, and who by the
rioting, beer-drinking _Burschen_ are styled _Philistines_ or _Camels_.
These same quiet individuals, whom the Samsons affect to despise, will
be found to be by far in preponderance, when the statistics of _Corps,
Landmannschaften_, and all such clubs, are looked into; though the
characteristic of the latter, always to be seen at public places of
amusement with their colored caps, gaudy watch-guards, or cannon-boots,
would lead one to suppose that German student-life was one round of
beer-drinking, sword-slashing, and jolly existence, as represented, or
rather, misrepresented, by William Howitt, in the halo of poetry he