But it soon became sufficiently convincing that these elements of education did not naturally assimilate themselves to the scientific life of Heidelberg, but were only artificially engrafted; that Heidelberg has not its mission to represent in itself the spirit of modern science and art; but the simple vocation of working out education and accomplishment suited to the necessities and interests of the practical life of the state and of civil offices, in both their wider and their more circumscribed spheres. It was then suffered to retain the character which it had established for itself, and those endeavours to force it into directions which did not naturally originate in its own bosom and nature, were discontinued. Thus it came to pass that the philosophy and the speculative theology altogether dragged; that the classical and antiquarian studies became one-sided; that even in the practical sciences certain methods became prevalent; that the electrical shocks of the stream of the new literary topics and of scientific revolutions in vain thundered and lightened and raged round the professors of the old--professors who, from their isolated stools, smiled over that rushing and confused scene of excitement; and that the men of modern culture, the genial spirits, the speculative heads, with one voice called down anathemas on that Heidelberg Philisterium. But this anathematized Heidelberg Philisterium yet possesses an internal strength and freshness, with which the hollow inflation of the _soi-disant_ intellectual world found it difficult to measure itself; these old gentlemen, who seem so far removed from the spirit of the age, yet rest themselves in the real soil of the time, in the spirit of the period, in the progression of political and social life, far deeper than those genialists who in high-sounding theories and systems imagine that they have seized on the world-spirit. This scientific life which seems to stagnate, flows on without intermission noiselessly, steadily, but not by fits and starts. Hoffmann.--The old gentlemen shall live, and to their health we will rub a salamander. Every one prepare a half-glass, and then I will command. All seize their glasses, which are half-filled. They rub with them on the table in circles before them, all the time saying--"Salamander, salamander, salam--," Hoffmann commands, One, two, three! and at the three the glasses are emptied; One, two, three! they are again set down on the table altogether with a clap, where they continue rattling with them, till the command again One, two, three! when they are all lifted aloft, and at the final command once more set down altogether on the table with a thump. CHAPTER XX. NEW YEAR'S EVE CONTINUED.--UNIVERSITY STORIES.--VON PLAUEN.