Bonn was a very different place from the fashionable town that it is now, when, on May 3, 1837, Professor Wutzer, as Rector Magnificus, pledged "Prinz Albrecht Franz, Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha", "by pressure of hand in place of oath," to be a faithful "citizen" of the University. Prince Ernest, the Prince's elder brother, matriculated at the same time. There was also a Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of whom little was seen or heard; moreover, Prince William of Löwenstein, who grew to be the Prince's intimate friend; and two Hohenlohes. (Prince Erbach is not in the University Register included among persons of illustrious birth.) All the wide belt of spruce and tidy villas set up amid laughing gardens, which now make Bonn so charming and attractive, and impart to it so pleasing a look of prosperity and comfort, were still a thing to come. The little town, having only about 12,000 inhabitants, still lay hemmed in within the lines of its old walls, the gates of which were carefully closed for security every night. There was an air of "smallness" about everything, except the handsome "Schloss," which Archbishop Clemens August had built (with money received from France) as a sumptuous residence for himself, but which King Frederick William III. in 1818, without much regard for Roman Catholic susceptibilities, converted into a "double-denomination" University. Lutheran divines now taught where the most orthodox of Catholic princes had held court. A non-denominational Senate conferred degrees where the last Archbishop-Elector, the Austrian Archduke Max Franz--"Abbé Sacrebleu," as he was popularly called--had danced with most unepiscopal perseverance and vigour. And at Poppelsdorf learned professors made the air malodorous with chemical stenches in the same palace in which that most courtly of all archbishops, Clemens August, had entertained those beautiful ladies who got him into rather serious trouble at Rome. But, apart from these costly buildings, all was country-townish. There was no Coblenzer Strasse as yet--only a small cluster of houses, among which the _Vinca Domini_--whilom the winepress of the local lord--and the villa of the patriot Arndt, were alone conspicuous. Inside the walls the students were much in evidence, rough in their uncouth costume of those days, very "Guys" in embroidered "pikesches" and wide petticoat-trousers, having long curls dangling from their heads and heavy rapiers from their waists. However, opinion in high quarters was not altogether favourable to them. The revolutionary "Burschenschaft" had been strong in Bonn, numbering Heinrich Heine among its members. Rhineland was, moreover, at that time still wholly unreconciled to Prussian rule. Its seventeen years of incorporation with France had raised a crop of free and anti-Prussian ideas which were not soon to be eradicated. And with Austria so powerful, and Austrian sympathies so widely diffused, thanks to Max Franz, the