We found the cottages, in the depths of the valleys, among their orchards, just those heavy, old-fashioned sort of things that we see in German engravings; buildings of wood-framing, the plaster panels of which were painted in various ways, and the windows of those circular and octagon panes which, from old association, always seem to belong to German cottages, just such as that in which the old witch lived in _Grimm's Kinder und Haus Märchen_; and in the _Folk Sagor_ of Sweden and Norway. There were, too, the large ovens built out of doors and roofed over, such as the old giantess, _Käringen som vardt stekt i ugnen_, was put into, according to German and Scandinavian legends. The people were of the simplest character and appearance. We seemed at once to have stepped out of modern times into the far-past ages. We saw several children sitting on a bench in the open air, near a school-house, learning their lessons, and writing on their slates; and we wept into the school. The schoolmaster was a man befitting the place; simple, rustic, and devout. He told us that the boys and girls, of which his school was full, came, some of them, from a considerable distance. They came in at six o'clock in the morning and staid till eight, had an hour's rest, and then came in till eleven, when they went home, and did not return again till the next morning, being employed the rest of the day in helping their parents; in going into the woods for fuel; into the fields to glean, tend cattle, cut grass, or do what was wanted. All the barefooted children of every village, how ever remote, thus acquire a tolerable education, learning singing as a regular part of it. They have what they call their _Sing-Stunde_, singing lesson, every day. On a black board the _Lied_, song, or hymn for the day, was written in German character in chalk; and the master, who was naturally anxious to exhibit the proficiency of his scholars, gave them their singing lesson while we were there. The scene was very interesting in itself; but there was something humiliating to our English minds, to think that in the Odenwald, a portion of the great Hyrcanian forest, a region associating itself with all that is wild and obscure, every child of every hamlet and cottage, however secluded, was provided with that instruction which the villages of England are in a great measure yet destitute of. But here the peasants are not, as with us, totally cut off from property in the soil which they cultivate; totally dependent on the labor afforded by others; on the contrary, they are themselves the possessors. This country is, in fact, in the hands of the people. It is all parceled out among the multitude; and, wherever you go, instead of the great halls, vast parks, and broad lands of the few, you see perpetual evidences of an agrarian system. Except the woods, the whole land is thrown into small allotments, and upon them the people are laboring busily for themselves.