I wish you then to think well of the Bursche, and forgive the eccentricities into which a college life and a most absurd doctrine of its ordinances will now and then lead him. That wild-looking youth, for all that he has a sabre-wound across his cheek, and wears his neck bare like a Malay, despite his savage moustache and his lowering look, has a soft heart, though it beats behind that mass of nonsensical braiding. He could recite you for hours long the ballads of Schiller and the lyrics of Uhland; ah! and sing for you, too, with no mean skill, the music of Spohr and Weber, accompanying himself the while on the piano, with a touch that would make your heart thrill. And I am not sure that even in his wildest moments of enthusiastic folly he is not nearly as much an object of hope to his country as though he were making a book on the Derby, or studying ‘the odds’ among the ‘legs’ at Tattersall’s. Above all things, I would beg of you not to be too hasty in judging him. Put not much trust in half what English writers lay to his charge; believe not one syllable of any Frenchman on the subject--no, not even that estimable Alexandre Dumas, who represents the ‘Student’ as demanding alms on the highroad--thus confounding him with the Lehr- Junker (the travelling apprentice), who by the laws of Germany is obliged to spend two years in wandering through different countries before he is permitted to reside permanently in his own. The blunder would have been too gross for anything but a Frenchman and a Parisian; but the Rue St. Denis covers a multitude of mistakes, and the Boulevard de Montmartre is a dispensation to all truth. Howitt, if you can read a heavy book, will tell you nearly everything a _book_ can tell; but setting a Quaker to describe Burschen life, was pretty much like sending a Hindu to report at a county meeting. Now, all this time we have been wandering from Bonn and its gardens, sloping down into the very Rhine, and its beautiful park, the former pleasure-ground of that palace which now forms the building of the University. There are few sweeter spots than this. You have escaped from the long, low swamps of Holland, you have left behind you the land of marsh and fog, and already the mountainous region of Germany breaks on the view; the Sieben Gebirge are in sight, and the bold Drachenfels, with its ruined tower on its summit, is an earnest of the glorious scenery to come. The river itself looks brighter and fresher; its eddies seem to sparkle with a lustre they know not when circling along the swampy shores of Nimmegen. Besides, there is really something in a name, and the sound of Deutschland is pleasanter than that of the country of ‘dull fogs and dank ditches’; and although I would not have you salute it, like Voltaire-- ‘Adieu, canaille--canards, canaux!’ still, be thankful for being where you are, take your coffee, and let us have a ramble through the Park.