throws around it. No,--the fantastically dressed fellows whom the
tourist may notice at Jena, and the groups of starers who stop every
narrow passageway in front of the confectionery-shops of Heidelberg, or
amuse themselves of summer-afternoons with their trained dogs, diverting
the attention of the temporary guest of "Prince Carl" from the
contemplation of the old ruined castle of the Counts-Palatine,--these
are but a fraction of the German students. From, among them may be
chosen those tight-laced officers who make the court-residences of
Europe look like camps; or, as they are often the sons of noblemen or
rich parents, they may reach some of the sinecures in the State. They
make their student-years but a pretext for a life of rough debauchery,
from which they issue with a bought diploma; and, in many cases,
satiated and disgusted with their own lives, they dwindle down into
the timeserving reactionaries, the worst enemies of free development,
because they themselves have abused in youth the little liberty they
enjoyed.

If the numbers be counted of those who lead the life so much extolled
by William Howitt,--who, by the way, has left out some of its roughest
traits,--they will be found, even where most numerous, as in the smaller
towns, never to exceed one-fourth of those inscribed as students.
The linguists and philosophers of Germany, her historians and men of
letters, her professors and _savans_, have come from the ranks of that
stiller and more numerous class whom the stranger will never notice:
for their triennium is spent mostly in the lecture-room or at home; and
their conviviality--for there are neither disciples nor apostles of
temperance in this beer-drinking land--is of a nature not to divert them
from their earnest pursuits.

Truth and earnestness are the distinguishing traits of the German