Whenever I pay a visit to Dessau I find the town more and more enlarged and much improved. The old lamps that swung across the streets are gone, the gurgoyles frown no longer on large red and green umbrellas; there are gas lamps, and there are waterworks, and cabs, and tramways. The grass is no longer allowed to grow in the chinks of the pavement. The old Duke is gone, and the old people whom I knew as a boy are gone too. The wild boars are still there, but they are no longer allowed to break out of bounds. Old men and women are still seen sawing wood and cutting it up in the street, but I do not know their faces, nor the faces of the old women from whom I bought my apples. I look at every man and woman that passes me, there is not one whose face or name I know. It is only when I go to the old cemetery outside the town that old names greet me again, some very dear to me, others almost forgotten during my _Wanderjahre_. No doubt the present is better, and the future, let us trust, will be better still; but the past had its own charms; our grandfathers were as wise as their sons and grandsons, and possibly they were happier. RECOLLECTIONS OF ROYALTIES II My first and very pleasant contact with Royalty had taken place at Dessau, while I was a schoolboy. When afterwards I went to the University of Berlin, the Duchess of Dessau had given me an introduction to Alexander von Humboldt, and while I was in Paris, working at the then Bibliothèque Royale, Humboldt had used his powerful influence with the King, Frederick William IV., to help me in publishing my edition of the “Rig Veda” in Germany. Nothing, however, came of that plan; it proved too costly for any private publisher, even with Royal assistance. But when, after having published the first volume in England, under the patronage of the East India Company, I passed some weeks at Berlin, in 1850, collating some of the Vedic MSS. in the Royal Library there, I received a message from Humboldt that the King wished to see me.