_Frankfort, June 24th._--Walked about the town, and went into the shops, where I cannot resist buying prints, Bohemian glass, and the deer's-horn things. Went to Mr. Bethmann's garden to see Dannecker's Ariadne, which is one of the great sights of this place. We (Francis Molyneux and I) found a French family, father, mother, and extremely pretty young daughter about sixteen, wanting to get in, and not able to make themselves understood, not speaking German. Francis Molyneux got the custos to come, and we entered. The first _salle_ is furnished with a number of casts of gladiators and Apollos, which, however, so terrified the young innocent, who, it seems, has not been long out of a convent, that she started back, and nothing could get her into the museum. We passed on to the sanctum in which the Ariadne is placed, and the father went off to try and get his girl to pass through these formidable statues, but all in vain. I was amused with the _naïveté_ with which he said, shrugging up his shoulders, 'Non, ma fille ne veut pas venir. Le fait est qu'elle n'a jamais rien vu de pareil.' The Ariadne statue is fine, the attitude easy and graceful, but the face is deficient in expression, and it has an impudent look. [Sidenote: FRANKFORT.] At three o'clock I got on the railroad, and went over to Mayence, to hear the military bands, which play every Friday. This is a great lounge, attended by all the people of the town, and many from Frankfort and Wiesbaden. I was delighted. The music is really magnificent. It was an Austrian band, about sixty or seventy in number, admirably conducted. The garden in which they play, just beyond the fortifications of the town, is very pretty, and the people sit at tables drinking chocolate or eating ice; the men mostly walking about and almost all smoking. There I fell in with Lord Westmoreland and Frederick FitzClarence from Wiesbaden, and we dined together afterwards, and at half-past eight returned home by railroad. This morning I have been wandering about and exploring. It is a fine town, and remarkable for the frequent intermixture of handsome modern houses with buildings of a very antique but generally decayed appearance; the place has a great look of well-doing, and one sees no beggars, and no miserable objects. I understand that there is a good system of relief for the poor, and no pauperism of the miserable and degraded character that shocks one so in England. Frankfort is not very gay or amusing. There is very little society; the rich people here live very quietly, and only display their wealth in occasional banquets, which are splendid, but long and tiresome. The old mother of the Rothschilds, the grandmother of the present generation, is here, living in the Jews' quarter in the old home of the family, which she will not be persuaded to quit. It is miserable-looking on the outside, but is said to be very different within. The old woman, who is ninety-four