There is a prejudice which yet prevails abroad, that the student, especially the foreigner, is exposed to many unpleasantnesses through the necessary intercourse with his companions; the obligation to take part in their customs and amusements, which are often denounced as sufficiently rough and barbarous. This prejudice is totally groundless, at least in the present times. The necessity of intercourse, the compulsion, have no existence whatever. On the contrary, every one lets another act as he likes, and troubles himself no further about him, than as his society may be desirable to the individual himself. It is perfectly at the option of the new comer whether he will isolate himself, or in what society he will live; whether he will participate to a certain degree in the student life, or even enter into one of their Chores. If he seeks not the society of the students, he is perfectly secure not to be sought after himself. Nor let any one, especially the foreigner, imagine that he may claim distinction on account of his wealth, or his high birth; or that he may expect from his university acquaintance particular homage on that account; thereby would he certainly expose himself to ridicule and annoyances. Nobility holds in Germany no longer such absurd estimation; few Germans seek a man's acquaintance exclusively on account of its possession, and those few are despised. This is a necessary consequence of the constitutional structure of our German states; and hence are the Germans freer than the English, who pride themselves so much on their political liberty, and yet are such slaves to the nobility. This singularity of the English often becomes very ludicrously conspicuous in constitutional Baden, to whose cities they so numerously resort; and the students of Heidelberg have often made themselves merry over it, especially when the English families in a neighbouring city have, each term, picked out the address calendar of the university--a list of the students published each half year--those names which had any mark of nobility about them, and invited these _elite_ to their entertainments. If this is a prominent feeling throughout Germany, it is in the universities, at least in the majority of them, the ruling one; and to make clear what I have here said, I may quote the following words of Lichtenberg. "An equality like that of the French people, exists amongst the students of the universities. The poorest thinks himself as good as the Graf, and stoops not to him, though he freely leaves him to enjoy any advantages that he may possess. Should he set up haughty pretensions, that were the way effectually to ensure a denial of any claim. They are only proud assumptions, that are intolerable to the free man; for the rest, he is thoroughly disposed to allow to him every distinction that he deserves, and what these distinctions are, he has generally correct means of determining."