The traveller who, this year, passed for the first time from Belgium into Germany, must have been deeply impressed with the marked difference between the manners of the two people. In Belgium all is tranquillity, order, and apparent ease. Neither in the towns nor in the country is there discernible the slightest trace of disaffection or turbulence. Citizens and peasantry are pursuing their usual avocations in peace, and the contentment which reigns throughout bears testimony to the blessings of a firm and prudent government. But the instant the boundary is passed, you are immediately and painfully reminded that you have left a land of order, and entered into one of anarchy. Instead of the quiet civil Belgian traders and _negociants_, the carriages on the railway--especially the third class, which I invariably preferred for the sake of enjoying the full flavour of democratic society--are crowded with every imaginable species of pongo pertaining to the liberal creed. Your ears are filled with a gush of guttural jargon, in which the words _einigkeit_, _despotismus_, and _unabhängigkeit_ prodigiously preponderate; and ever and anon some canorous votary of freedom shouts out a stave of a song, constructed upon any thing but constitutional principles. The first feature which strikes you in the male portion of the population is, the preposterous length of their beards. Formerly the Germans used to shave; at least they kept their chins reasonably clean, and if they cultivated any extra capillary growth, reserved their care for their mustache. Now every one of them has a beard like a rabbi, and to use razors is considered the sure and infallible sign of a loyalist and an aristocrat. At Juliers I had the pleasure of encountering the first specimen of Young Germany that crossed my path, and a precious object he was. I had been sitting for some time _vis-a-vis_ with a little punchy fellow from Vienna, with a beard as red as that which the old masters have assigned to Barabbas; and as he spoke little, but smoked a great deal, I was inclined to think him rather a companionable sort of individual than otherwise. But, at the station, in stepped a youth apparelled precisely after the fashion of an assassin in a melodrama. His broad beaver hat, with a conical crown, was looped up at one side, garnished with an immense cockade of red, black, and gold, and surmounted by a couple of dingy ostrich feathers. I lament, for the sake of our home manufactures, to state that he exhibited no symptom of shirt-collar; nor, so far as I could observe, had he invested any portion of his capital in the purchase of interior linen. Over his bare neck there descended a pointed Maximilian beard. A green blouse, curiously puckered and slashed on the sleeves, was secured round his person by a glazed black belt and buckle, and his legs were cased in a pair of rusty Hessians. In short, he needed but a dagger and a brace of pistols