In the interior of the city, the houses are unadorned, and not so numerous as in former centuries; there are still some waste spaces between, but most have been bought by people of rank and turned into gardens. Perhaps there is already a coffee garden, laid out after the pattern of the famed one of Leipzig; it contains some rows of trees and benches, and in the coffee-room, near the bar, are arranged the clay pipes of the habitues; but the maple head and the costly meerschaum are just coming into fashion. In the neighbourhood of the chief market-place, the houses are more stately, the old arcades are not preserved; these covered passages, which existed once throughout the greater part of Germany, led through the basement story to the market-places, protecting the foot passengers from rain, and acted as a communication from the house to the street. The old pillars and vaults are attached to the massive edifice of the council-house by coarse rough-cast cement and intermediate walls; in the dim poorly lighted rooms of the interior hang cobwebs, gray piles of records raise their heads amidst layers of dust; in the council-room, in a raised space, the railing of which separates the councillors from the citizens, are stiff-cushioned chairs, covered with green cloth, and fastened with brass nails; everything is unadorned, even the whitewash neglected, and everything poor and tasteless, for in the new State money is deficient, and no pleasure is felt in adorning public edifices, which are considered by the citizens as a necessary evil. Most of the houses in the market-place have pointed gables; they look out on the street, and betwixt the houses broad rushing gutters pour their water on the bad pavement, which is made of rough stones. Among the houses stands an occasional church or abandoned monastic buildings, with buttresses and pointed arches. The people look with indifference on these remains of the past, bound up with which there is scarcely any fond remembrance, for they have lost all appreciation of ancient art; owing to this, the edifices of the ancient times are everywhere ruined, as the castle of Marienburg was by Frederic of Prussia. The magistrates have carefully turned the empty space into a parsonage-house or schoolroom, knocked out the windows, and made a plaster ceiling; and the boys look from their Latin grammar with admiration on the stone rosettes and delicate work of the chisel,--remains of a time when such inutilities were still erected; and in the crumbling cloisters where once trod monks with earnest step, they now spin their humming tops; for the "_Circitor susurrans_," or "Monk," is still the favourite game of this period, which gentlemen of rank also, in a smaller form, sometimes carry in their pockets.