The winter of 1844 was a severe one in Germany. Both sides of the Rhine, for many miles between Coblentz and Cologne, were frozen hard enough to bear a horse and cart; and even the centre, save and except a thin stream where the current persisted in displaying its urgent vitality, was covered over with thin ice, or a broken film that was constantly endeavoring to unite and consolidate its quivering flakes and particles. We were staying in Bonn at this time. All the Englishmen in the town, who were skaters, issued forth in pilot-coats or dreadnaught pea-jackets, and red worsted comforters, with their skates dangling over their shoulders. Holding their aching noses in their left hands, they ran and hobbled through the slippery streets, and made their way out at the town-gates near the University. They were on the way to Popplesdorf--a little village about a mile distant from Bonn. We were among them--red comforter round neck--skates over shoulder. The one great object in this little village is a somewhat capacious and not unpicturesque edifice called the Schloss, or Castle, of Popplesdorf. The outer works of its fortifications are a long avenue of trees, some pretty fir groves and wooded hills, numerous vineyards, and a trim series of botanic gardens. The embrasures of its walls are armed with batteries of learned tomes; its soldiers are erudite professors and doctors who have chambers there; students discourse on philosophy and art, and swords and beer, and smoke forever on its peaceful drawbridge; and, on the wide moat which surrounds it, Englishmen in red comforters--at the time whereof we now speak--are vigorously skating with their accustomed gravity. This scene was repeated daily for several weeks, in the winter of 1844. One morning, issuing forth on the same serious business of life, we perceived that the peasantry of Popplesdorf, who have occasion to come to Bonn every market-day, had contrived to enliven the way and facilitate the journey by the gradual construction of a series of capital long slides. We stood and contemplated these lengthy curves, and sweeps, and strange twisting stripes of silver, all gleaming in the morning sun, and soon arrived at the conviction that it was no doubt the pleasantest market-pathway we had ever seen. No one was coming or going at this moment; for Popples is but a little _dorf_, and the traffic is far from numerous, even at the busiest hours. Now, there was a peculiar charm in the clear shining solitude of the scene, which gave us, at once, an impression of loneliness combined with the brightest paths of life and activity.