If I were not sketching a real personage, and retailing an anecdote once heard, I should pronounce the Hofrath von Froriep a fictitious character, for which reason I bear you no ill-will if you incline to that opinion. I have no witness to call in my defence. There were but two Englishmen in Gottingen in my day; one of them is now no more. Poor fellow! he had just entered the army; his regiment was at Corfu, and he was spending the six months of his first leave in Germany. We chanced to be fellow-travellers, and ended by becoming friends. When he left me, it was for Vienna, from which after a short stay he departed for Venice, where he purchased a yacht, and with eight Greek sailors sailed for a cruise through the Ionian Islands. He was never seen alive again; his body, fearfully gashed and wounded, was discovered on the beach at Zante. His murderers, for such they were, escaped with the vessel, and never were captured. Should any Sixty-first man throw his eye over these pages he will remember that I speak of one beloved by every one who knew him. With all the heroic daring of the stoutest heart, his nature was soft and gentle as a child’s. Poor G----! some of the happiest moments of my life were spent with you; some of the saddest, in thinking over your destiny. You must take my word for the Hofrath, then, good reader. They who read the modern novels of Germany--the wild exaggerations of Fouqué and Hoffman, Musaeus and Tieck--will comprehend that the story of himself has no extravagance whatever. To ascribe language and human passions to the lower animals, and even to the inanimate creation, is a favourite German notion, the indulgence of which has led to a great deal of that mysticism which we find in their writings; and the secret sympathies of cauliflowers and cabbages for young ladies in love is a constant theme among this class of novelists.