citing kind. They are more simple, inexpensive, and harmless, than with us. They consist of clubs, at which every evening the members meet to play at billiards, dominoes, draughts, cards, and ninepins. The German billiard-game is characteristic. It is constructed on the principle of rejecting everything that is tolerably easy of accomplishment, and which renders the game amusing to the great majority of players; and it only tolerates and depends upon a successful calculation and execution of all sorts of complicated designs and movements. There is no fun in it, and, except to a scientific hand, it is intolerably stupid and unprogressive. The game at ninepins (or large and tall skittles) is in all respects excellent amusement. Concerts are also numerous, and for the most part, very indifferent. Talk of a musical nation! why, any one of our first-rate London concerts will contain more superior artists, and always a more liberal and varied selection than shall be found in any half-dozen first-rate concerts in Germany, with the exception of those which are given on the greatest occasions in such places as Vienna, Dresden, and Berlin. It is true that most of our best solo performers in this country are Germans; but that only proves that our nation, and not the supposed "musical nation,' has got the best men. The fact is, the concerts in Germany are generally confined to the heaviest German compositions, very indifferently and harshly executed. As for their theatres, there is not much to be said about them. To be sure, they are far better than ours at the present time, which is saying little enough. Their exhibitions of gymnastic performances and of horsemanship are admirable. The most exciting and least temperate of all the amusements in Germany occur during the carnivals.

The Carnival begins with long processions through the principal streets of all great cities; and of small towns also, according to their means; consisting of triumphal and emblematic waggons and cars and chariots, and eccentric edifices on wheels, all highly ornamented, and filled with men and women,-often some of the most respectable among the inhabitants, in fancy costumes. There are horsemen and footmen, and riders on donkeys, and goats, and pigs, and calves, and stuffed imitations of colossal birds, all of whom are also attired in a fanciful manner, and distribute printed ballads and witticisms to the admiring crowds around, and to those also who throng the windows, and to whom the papers are presented at the end of long poles as the procession and all its motley train

moves along. The period for all this is in the month of February; and as the weather is either snowy, rainy, or there is a hard frost upon the ground, everybody looks purple and white with the cold, and probably has his feet wet through half the day if he issue into the streets. At Mayence, last year, the performers of the carnival introduced the pleasant appearance of a number of drunken houses reeling about in the squares and public places, effected by the houses being made of some very light material capable of being carried and danced about by men inside, and unseen, who supported the inebriated edifices on poles. But a still more numerous and varied series of displays and processions takes place at the Carnival of Cologne. After the splendours of the streets are concluded, all the parties retreat to different hotels to dinner. The close of one of these dinners, of which we were partaker and witness, presented an extraordinary scene. An elaborate description of it appeared in a London periodical some half-year ago, from which we crave permission to make the following extract. We might have been more scrupulous in quoting our own words, but that an ingenious rogue has deliberately pirated the whole account for an ornamental book, which appeared after the Queen's visit to Prussia, and without a syllable of acknowledgment of the obligation. The after-dinner scene in question we related nearly as follows.

The band now began to play a well-known air, which had been some years since composed for the carnival, and the whole happy company at each table took part in it in the following manner. One of the heroes took the post of leader of the chorus, and sung the air with the band, accompanied by the whole room. With the beginning of the next verse, or recommencement of the air, the leader set the example of clapping his hands "to the tune;" and this hand-clapping accompaniment was accordingly made by all present. The leader next began to whistle with the band, and we all whistled. The next thing was to tap the wine-glasses with the back of the desert-knives, which produced a multitudinous ringing and jingling sound, and of course many glasses were broken by ambitious performers. Marking time, or beating the "melody" with the feet upon the floor, followed this with a sounding, unanimous, satisfactory effect. The next variation upon this very original melody was that of rattling the plates upon the table; and because at the conclusion, enough plates had not been broken, a number of gentlemen broke their plates upon their own heads, the

white fragments falling upon and down their backs in all directions. Then we had an imitation of the braced drum, everybody drumming upon the table with the handles of his knife and fork; a harsh noise, in which the band could scarcely be heard. A laughing accompaniment followed, and was very well executed by us all. The leader now took a cork,-cut one end of it,-dipped it in wine, and rubbed it up and down the outside of a wine-bottle, producing a squeaking sound as if a mouse should sing, only sharper; the band thus had an accompaniment of three hundred squeaking instruments, the effect of which was indescribably ridiculous. The last variation was to sing with the band, and drum upon the table with both fists; which was accordingly performed to admiration, every glass, plate, knife and fork, tumbler, and even decanter and bottle, leaping up in the air, or contributing its share of sound and merriment to the accompaniment, and thus terminated the amusement.

The grand conclusion of the day's entertainments-ranking above the theatres, the horsemanship, the puppet-plays, &c.-is the great masked ball, which takes place at the Gürzenich—our account of which was also "adopted " verbatim, without acknow ledgment by our friend of the black flag.

Literal description of the Gürzenich Ball is out of the question. The reader will understand a rough cartoon of it much better. Imagine a dancing saloon, so long that it requires two bands of music, one at each end, and when you are at one end (the saloon being full of talking and laughing masqueraders), you cannot hear the band at the other. Imagine three or four thousand people there. You are in the midst of a crowd of ugly-painted monsters. Cheeks of chalk and scarlet, goggle eyes, carbuncle noses, long ears and horns, dogs' faces, ghosts' faces, fools' faces, devils' faces, jolly faces, and women half face and half mask; bulls' heads, leopards' heads, asses' heads, Turks' heads, and girls with giddy heads and gold ornaments; princes, princesses, merry-andrews, Swiss and Tyrolese peasantry and brigands, white-robed figures and dominoes; all these there are, and many gentlemen in plain clothes, all of whom, by the violent contrast, look like undertakers. We are assured that sometimes there have been five thousand and upwards crammed in. To dance is impossible; nobody thinks of it, but to walk is also impossible; you cannot stand or move except as the grotesque mass around you stand or move. If an apple were to fall from the roof into the saloon, it would not reach

the ground, one would think for hours, but bob about from shoulder to shoulder. A walking-stick would find itself unable to stand without great pressure on all sides. At about four o'clock in the morning the density of the crowd has diminished, space is obtained, and dancing commences.

Next to the carnivals, the Christmas festivities take rank among the enlivening scenes, and not very numerous public demonstrations of hilarity, in Prussia. We will just say a word or two on Christmas-time in Berlin.

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Christmas is the period when everybody makes presents to his friends, male and female; it will, therefore, be readily understood, that all the shops are fitted out to the utmost of their owners' means, and make their most striking displays. There is a great deal of cake-eating performed in all the northern parts of Germany, and particularly in Berlin, where the confectioners' shops are on the first scale of magnificence. Some of them endeavour to attract attention by a variety of exhibitions, such as beautiful views from Italy, the Rhine, China, &c. In the Conditorei of Fuchs there is also a sort of magic-lantern, exhibiting about fifty caricatures relating to the "chronique scandaleuse," and the bureaucratic administration of the city. Few, however, possess a universal interest, and are solely adapted to the time and place. The wit and humour are, in fact, in almost all cases, of a local character, and would be uninteresting, if not unintelligible, to all who were not familiar with Berlin. Kroll's Wintergarten" is the most magnificent and extensive of all these palaces of sweets. There is an immense saloon in the centre; a band playing continually; and round the walls are two-and-twenty elegant shops, under tents and fancy arbours, where a profusion of glittering things, eatable inclusive, are waiting to be purchased as presents. Both the wings adjoining the saloon are decorated like hot-houses; the walls are covered with climbing plants; and Chinese lamps hang from the roof. The large curtains of the windows are transparencies, chiefly displaying painted caricatures. There is also in Berlin at this time a popular Lotterie, in which, by paying 5 groschen (about 6d.) for a chance, a variety of "invaluable things are possible to be obtained. The exhibition of Faust's "Blumengarten," is also a sort of lottery, in which the prizes are all living flowers. The saloons are glass-houses, very profusely decorated with flowers. Last Christmas, the Royal Academy had, for the first time, the following ingenious and beautiful exhibition. Six paintings of Albert Durer were copied upon a

transparent ground, and displayed by a rich illumination, with an accompaniment of choruses selected from the works of old masters, such as Palestrina, Gluck, Haydn, &c., so as to give an harmonious exposition of the subjects of these great pictures.

In concluding this series of papers, the "Englishman in Prussia" requests permission to offer one or two emphatic remarks. Much has been said of a disparaging kind in the views he has taken of the polities, religion, morals, and customs of Prussia; nor have various objectionable characteristics and domesticities been allowed to pass without comment. All he can now say is this,he has spoken the truth exactly as it presented itself to his mind. But no disparagements that he has thought himself bound to utter,no sense of absurdities, incongruities, and shortcomings, have in any respect altered his estimate and opinion of the essentially high qualities existing in the inner spirit of the German nation. He regards Germany as the great store-house of new ideas; as the nation by which the kingdoms, equally of imagination and of science, have been ruled over in modern days by potentates of a genius ranking with the highest; as the nation producing the greatest number of indefatigable and life-devoting spirits in the cause of Truth, both abstract and practical, though chiefly abstract; as the nation to whom, of all others, the modern age is most indebted for new food for its soul; and as the nation in which (though the practical development and organization may devolve upon England and France) the redemption of the modern world will be originated.

A VISION.

METHOUGHT, upon a barren promontory,
Rearing a mighty bulwark 'gainst the sea,
Whose wild waves round it roared tumultuously,
I lay in slumber, and a form of glory

Came in a dream, and told me the sad story,
Of dark crime brooding over misery ;

Of human laws that warred perpetually

With the soul's holiest instincts, and the dowry
Bequeathed to man by nature of free thought,
Free bread, free labour, filched from human kind,
Who in their struggles as their fury blind,

Like the wild ocean chafing 'gainst the rock

That stands unshaken, freedom vainly sought

From tyrants who their prayers and threats did only mock.