An interesting addition to the gardens--our gardens--since I was last there, consisted of a cage of meditative monkeys, four in number, who were stationed so near the gymnasium as inevitably to suggest the Darwinian parallel. They had their gymnasium too, and swung gaily on their tree-trunks at such times as they were not engaged in eating or entomological researches. I could not help thinking what a deprivation it was to the gymnasts that, in course of evolution, we have lost our tails. They would have been so convenient on the horizontal bar, where that persevering young workman was still engaged in the pursuit of apoplexy by hanging head downwards. Soon after we got there an excellent band commenced playing, not in the kiosk, lest we should be beguiled into dancing. The first piece was a slow movement, which could scarcely have been objected to by any Sabbatarian, unless he was so uncompromising as to think all trumpets wrong. The second was the glorious march from "Athalie;" and then--my blood runs cold as I write it--a sort of pot pourri, in the midst of which came the "Dutchman's Little Wee Dog," considerably disguised in the way of accompaniment and variation, I own, but the "Little Wee Dog" beyond a doubt. Then I understood why the band was not in the kiosk; for, fourteen stone though I be, I felt all my toes twiddling inside my boots at that time as wickedly as though it had been Monday morning. There were fourteen or fifteen loud brass instruments, with a side and bass drum and cymbals. All these were playing the "Little Wee Dog" to their brazen hearts' content, and only one gentleman on a feeble piccolo-flute trying to choke their impiety by tootling out a variation, just as the stringed instruments in the glorious "Reformation Symphony" of Mendelssohn try in vain to drown with their sensuous Roman airs the massive chords of the old Lutheran chorale--"Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." I really could not bear it any longer, and was rising to go when they stopped; and as the gentleman who played the circular bass got outside his portentous instrument, I found he had a little wee dog of his own who retired into the bell of the big trumpet when his master laid it on the grass. Perhaps it was in honour of this minute animal the air was selected. However, I could not lend myself to such proceedings; so I bribed my youthful charge with a twopenny bottle of frothless ginger beer to come out of her swing and return to the regions of orthodoxy. The Teutonic gentlemen were still hooting and yelling as we crossed the corner of their croquet lawn, until I expected to see them attack one another with the mallets and use the balls for missile warfare; but it was only their peculiar way of enjoying themselves.