preconceived ideal must give way to the living reality. And yet so it is with many! It may have contributed not a little to the reputation of Göttingen and Heidelberg with foreigners, that a good and clear German is spoken in both places by the professors. In Tübingen, on the contrary, even in Munich, to a great extent, the local dialect prevails to such a degree, that students from Northern Germany, many of whom frequent these cities in the summer session, find it difficult, nay, almost impossible, to understand at first, especially the broad Suabian of Tübingen. Here, however, as the system of dictation prevails, the slowness of utterance compensates in a measure for its indistinctness and incorrectness. In some places, where academic freedom, as the students style it, exists to a high degree, a general scraping of the feet admonishes the lecturer to repeat his words or be more distinct and clear in his enunciation. This pedal language, though often disregarded, still does not fail in the end in producing the desired effect. With such characteristics, it cannot be a matter of wonder, if some time be required to be spent in hearing lectures daily before the full benefit can be fairly appreciated. Many will appear slow in the extreme; and the constant recourse to notes, and the tedious manner, will create a feeling of weariness hard to overcome. However, these peculiarities are soon forgotten in the excellence of the matter, and their disagreeableness is scarcely noticed after a few weeks, except in extreme cases. The mannerism fades away, and the hearer learns to follow from thought to thought under the guidance of an experienced leader, whose living words he hears, whose thought he feels as it is communicated directly to him. Not so much from the actual things heard, the actual facts mastered, is the lecture-system valuable to the student, as for the method of study which he derives from it. He is no longer like an automaton, a school-boy guided by his teacher and text-book, but is spoken to as an independent thinker. Authorities are quoted, which he may consult at his leisure. No subject is exhausted,--it is only touched upon. He learns to teach himself.