“Though wine, it is true, be a rarity here. We’ll be jolly as gods with tobacco and beer. “Vivallerallerallera.” While bellowing about liberty, justice, honour, and truth, the Burschen will tyrannize over others with the most despotic sway—break the sword of justice over the victim’s head—trample on the laws of honour—and violate the sacred truth! “Full of lofty unintelligible notions of his own importance—misled by ludicrously erroneous ideas of honour—the true BURSCHE swaggers and renowns, choleric raw and overbearing. He measures his own honour by the number of _scandals_ (duels) he has fought; but never wastes a thought on what they have been fought for. He does not fight to resent insolence; but he insults, or takes offence, that he may have a pretext for fighting. The lecture-rooms are but secondary to the fencing-school. _That_ is his temple—the rapier is his god—and the “COMMENT” (the Burschen laws) is the Gospel by which he swears.”[95] Such is the BURSCHEN, or collegiate youth of Germany. The fraternity itself is called the “LANDSMANNSCHAFTEN”—a confederation of various clans for the double purpose of fighting among themselves, and defending the corps against the Philistines, as the rest of the world is called! Fortunately for society, this odious freemasonry which is forced on the student at first, is dropped with the cap, long hair, uncouth coat, and Jack-boots, the moment he bids adieu to Alma Mater—and he settles down among his brethren the PHILISTINES, discharged from the LANDSMANNSCHAFTEN, like an old soldier from the army, with nothing but honorable(?) scars to remind him of the days of “renowning” and “scandalizing,” in Gottingen, Jena, Leipzig, or Heidelburg. It is said, but I doubt the assertion, that this three years’ training in habits the most objectionable, seldom, if ever, exerts any influence on the citizen in after-life—and that he becomes as peaceable, civil, and obedient to the laws, as those who had never set foot within the walls of a university. Be this AS IT may, it becomes a serious question whether initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries and eccentric, not to say barbarous, habits of the Burschen, be conducive to the welfare of British youth? The effects of English universities are not always thrown off with the cap and gown! Let parents ponder on the LANDSMANNSCHAFTEN.