Of the present population of Louisville, no less than 18,000 are Germans, and this number is daily being augmented by arrivals from the fatherland. It would perhaps be no more than just to say that these foreigners form, as a body, one of the best classes of our population. They are a careful, pains-taking and industrious people, of quiet, unobtrusive and inoffensive manners; and are, in a majority of instances, men of some education and ability. The better class of this population are rapidly rising in public estimation, and while they are becoming in a measure identified with the native citizens, and so Americanized, the influence of their philosophic habits of mind, of their thoughtfulness, and of their love of the beautiful in nature and in art, is gradually incorporating itself into the social life of the city, and so adding to each some of the advantages possessed by the other. The German character, in its higher developements, displays many attributes which are wanting, in more senses than one to our native population. From the educated German, we may learn that enthusiastic love and reverence for the intellectual and for the beautiful in all its phases, whether of nature, of sentiment, or of art, which is inherent in his character, and which gives to life so much of its charm; while by us he is taught that practicality must be the basis of his philosophy, and that without a certain admixture of utilitarianism his sentiment is mawkish and unmanly, and his theories are idly speculative and puerile. Thus each class imbibes from the other what it most needs, and society reaps the benefits of the union. The German population is also useful to the city in a political point of view. They serve as the "filling up" to the picture. As has been recently said: "The bulk of the population of every city, perhaps two out of three, are small manufacturers or artisans of some description or other, and those dependent on them; of the sewers together of clothing, the makers of toys, confectionary, and jewelry, the compounders of materials used in medicine and the arts, the furnishers of the toilet, the parlor, and the kitchen, the fabricators of iron, wood, and stone into forms required by the uses or fancies of man. Think of the amount of our yearly purchases of Boston bonnets, New York caps, and Philadelphia shoes, and of the thousand, the innumerable articles that our retail and fancy dealers pick up in the lanes, alleys, and cellars of those cities, articles which were made for Western demand, for the very market of which this is the natural, and ought to be the commercial center. To this kind of population we are to look for increase, these hand workers are to cover our vacant lots, and consume the products of our surrounding agriculturists; they come in silently, and go to work unnoticed; the grocer at the corner, the baker, and the brewer, build higher houses, and are men of more noise and note,