there); and the great bell of St. Mark's Cathedral tolling midnight. Next
I put up for a minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where your
going to bed, no matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for
everybody else's getting up; and where, in the table-d'hote room at the
end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the other
end, all made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men, entirely
dressed in jewels and dirt, and having nothing else upon them, _will_
remain all night, clinking glasses, and singing about the river that
flows, and the grape that grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, and Rhine
woman that smiles and hi drink drink my friend and ho drink drink my
brother, and all the rest of it. I departed thence, as a matter of
course, to other German Inns, where all the eatables are soddened down to
the same flavour, and where the mind is disturbed by the apparition of
hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at awfully unexpected
periods of the repast. After a draught of sparkling beer from a foaming
glass jug, and a glance of recognition through the windows of the student
beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of
America, with their four hundred beds apiece, and their eight or nine
hundred ladies and gentlemen at dinner every day. Again I stood in the
bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail.
Again I listened to my friend the General,--whom I had known for five
minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life
with two Majors, who again had made me intimate for life with three
Colonels, who again had made me brother to twenty-two civilians,--again,
I say, I listened to my friend the General, leisurely expounding the
resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen's morning-room, sir;
ladies' morning-room, sir; gentlemen's evening-room, sir; ladies' evening-
room, sir; ladies' and gentlemen's evening reuniting-room, sir; music-
room, sir; reading-room, sir; over four hundred sleeping-rooms, sir; and
the entire planned and finited within twelve calendar months from the