How they shine in their silken skins, these triumphs of the _Metzgerei_, seen through the plate-glass of a Delikatessen shop--ebon and bronze, russet and red, blonde and grey, mottled and veined, of all hues and all sizes: long and slender, plump and fat, curved like a crescent, round-barrelled and egg-shaped, as if their juices and spices were eager to be set free; some that gain in succulence by time; others that, like the rose, have but their hour in which to be plucked. An essentially south-German dish is the Metzelsuppe--the "bouillabaisse" of Swabia--in which the sausage plays an important role, but which, to be appreciated, requires an essentially German taste as well as a digestion without limit. This consists of several preparations of freshly killed pork, including soup, bacon, and sausages with Sauerkraut, the sausages usually being the Leber and the Blutwurst. It has found its Thackeray in Uhland, whose poem has become a classic, although, with the possible exception of the bacon and Sauerkraut, the alien will find the poem preferable to the dish. With a choice of a different soup for every day in the year, the German does not lack for variety in the stepping-stone of the dinner. With all of these the stranger may not be in sympathy, and in none of them will he find the equal, as an all-round preface to the principal repast, of a perfect Julienne. But the potato soup, the native pot-au-feu, and even the soup in which beer is an important ingredient, have their merits when well prepared. Nor is the boiled beef with horseradish sauce, which usually follows the soup, to be despised, notably in warm weather, when rich and heavy viands cloy. One would be equally lacking in appreciation were he to lose sight of another dish we owe to Germany, the "marinirte," or sour-spiced herring--that offset to _Katzenjammer_ and noon-restorer of a jaded appetite and a parched tongue. The Schmierkäse, or whey-cheese, when cream is employed in its composition and the green of fresh chives enters as an adjunct to please the eye and the palate, surely requires no praises, whatever may be said to the contrary of the variety whose very name one thinks of in a whisper.