In undertaking to condense floating reminiscences and idle reflections into a compact multum in parvo upon German University Life, I am somewhat apprehensive as to the limits of the parto. The theme is so interesting and so diversified that it threatens to grow indefinitely under one's pen. A few words of explanation at the outset may not come amiss. It is not the object of the present brief sketch to treat of the origin and educational functions of the German university system, but to indicate the salient features of life and study in the university towns, in order that the stayat-home reader may obtain some clear notions of this peculiar phase of studentlife. Those however who know by experience what it is to study in Germany, will perhaps find some entertainment in having their reminiscences of bygone hours refreshed in this informal

manner.

A German university might be characterized as a circle the circumference of which is everywhere and the centre nowhere. In rambling through the narrow streets of G for the first few days after my arrival, I was continually puzzled in trying to find out where the university really was. Every walk discovered some new building. It was not as it is in an American college, where the lecture-rooms, library, chapel, and dormitories are clustered in and around a centre-the campus, or college green. A German university really has no common rallying-place for all the students. There is the Aula, where applicants are immatriculated, where the treasurer keeps his books, the university court sits, and the carcer shuts its doors upon the young spirits whose love of beer has outrun their discretion. In quite another place is the Collegien-haus, where the majority of the lectures are held. In an out-of-the-way corner of the town is the chemical laboratory. Still farther off and

in an opposite direction is the anatomical museum, where the medical course is pursued. Wholly outside of the town rises the dome of the observatory, while in another suburb blooms the botanical

garden.

The professor of agricultural chemistry meets his students in some cidevant mill. After I had passed upwards of three years in G- and flattered

myself with the belief that I was acquainted with at least the externalities of all the university buildings, I learned that a neat, well-appointed little farm, situated about a mile and a half from the town-gate, was the agricultural school connected with the university. Not long afterwards a cluster of shed-like buildings was pointed out to me as a veterinary school-also connected with the university.

The students' habitations are as scattered as the public buildings. Each man lives by himself and substantially after his own fashion. Almost every house in the smaller university towns has one or more rooms let out to these quasi Bohemians. Such a thing as a dormitory after our fashion would be an abomination in the eye of a German. It would suggest too forcibly the school or the barracks. Frequently many students room in the same building, which is then called a caravansery or mill, while the inmates pass under the name of house-bones. A room itself is styled a booth or shanty. To enter a student's apartment is to "charge upon him in his booth."

Shall we then charge upon one or two students in their booths? The first one happens to be of studious habits. We enter a medium-sized, uncarpeted room, furnished with a table, a sofa, a desk or secretary, some book-shelves, and two or three uninviting chairs. To one side of the main room is the sleeping chamber, through the open door of which we catch a glimpse of the wash-stand in

admirable disorder and the end of a feather bed. The shelves are filled with books; the books overflow upon the sofa and the desk and the table and into

the corners of the room. Upon the table stand the remains of a frugal breakfast—a battered coffee-pot, a very discouraging butter-plate, the end of a long loaf of brown bread, a knife but no fork. Against the wall, over the sofa, are hung photographic likenesses of the inmate's friends. In one corner stands the inevitable pipe-rack, with its assortment of long cherry stems and porcelain bowls, while on the table is the ashcup and also a small porcelain arm or leg, used for plugging the pipe. As the inmate of the room rises to greet us, we may observe that he is unshaven, unkempt, and collarless; he wears cloth slippers and a long wrapper of coarse cloth reaching down almost to the feet, and his pantaloons are baggy. The atmosphere is fragrant with coffee and tobacco, while the pale, somewhat worn countenance of the man betokens high learning.

By way of contrast, we may enter the room of some student whose present business it is not to study. He is probably a corps-student. Being of a social disposition, he likes to be surrounded with friends, corps-brothers, of whom a half-dozen are present, all talking and smoking to the full capacity of their lungs.

Some wear parti-colored caps of the ordinary shape and in the ordinary manner; others have Servis-mützen, a rimless apology for a cap, which is placed on the extreme back part of the head and kept in position by a small elastic thread passing under the chin. We see few books, but the deficiency is made up by the increased number of pipes and chairs. Suspended to the wall hang divers sabres and Schläger, with baskethilts ornamented by the corps' colors. Table, chairs, and sofa bear marks of hard usage. Instead of books we find masks and fencing-gloves in the corners. One individual is perhaps practising the Schläger exercise in the air, by cutting Tiefquart with his walking-cane. Two Two or three poodles give variety to the VOL. II.-32

meeting by jumping over the chairs to order, or standing on their hind legs to beg for sugar. The students themselves discuss vigorously the most recent question of general interest-how gloriously the last duel has terminated by the senior member's slicing the nose of his antagonist, or the probability of some other brother's being relegated for six months, for having unmercifully thrashed an impertinent watchman the previous night.

The students breakfast in their rooms. The meal is extremely simple, consisting of coffee and bread and butter, prepared in the house and brought in by the servant. These servants are, it seems to me, the peculiar feature of German student-life. Whether their nomenclature is regulated by the Government or not, I am unable to say; but, as a matter of fact, they are all called either Marie, Carline, or Luise. Their capacity for work and their general cheerfulness border on the marvellous. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that they perform as much work in the course of the week as any two cardrivers on our city railroads. One servant girl waits upon some six or seven students and does the family-work in addition. She is sent to the library for a basketful of books for some "dig" who is busy on his doctoral dissertation, sent out for clothes, for boots, for tobacco, for wine or beer; she brings the dinner for those who take that meal in their rooms; she makes the beds and fires and sweeps the rooms (when they are swept); in the autumn she is sent to the family garden outside of the city walis, to dig potatoes, by way of variety. Her hebdomadal relaxation consists in dancing from seven o'clock on Sunday night until one or two o'clock Monday morning. Tight-bodied, rosy-cheeked, she is a marvel of endurance.

The student takes his supper wher ever he may happen to le-whether at home, or in the country for a walk, or in a saloon drinking beer with his friends. Medical students, who attend lectures and clinique from, say, nine in the morning until six in the evening, have a fashion of hurrying at the close

Ile

of the day's work into some favorite kneipe (beer saloon) and passing the five hours to eleven in drinking beer, eating bread and cheese, smoking and playing "sixty-six " or quodlibet," pretty much all at once. The greater part of the students dine at the various hotels or dining places; the hour is one, at least in all the small university towns. Of course there is the usual diversity of fare and of price. The price is computed by the month. Whatever the student orders in his room is charged on account by the house-owner, so much, e. g., for each portion of coffee, so many pounds of sugar, so much bread, butter, &c.; the account is made up every month or every week, according to agreement. It may thus be seen that a German student is the most comfortably independent mortal in existence. has his room free from all surveillance, and can send the servant on all conceivable errands; if he wishes to invite his friends to a bachelor "spread," he has only to make some previous arrangement with the landlady, and to give the servant-girl a trifling Trinkgeld for her extra labor. He is thus as independent as one who hires furnished rooms in New York, and enjoys the comfort of not being obliged to go out in all weathers for every meal or to run his own errands. Most students, I have said, dine in some hotel. A few, however, have their dinner brought by the servant from the hotel. The basket used for this purpose is so practical and so peculiar to Germany, that a description of it will perhaps be of service. It is round, small, and very deep, and has a wide slit running down one side to the bottom. Into this basket the dishes, generally four in number, are dropped one upon the other. The bottom of the second dish fits upon and into the first, the third upon the second, and so on, after the fashion of the iron rings used in making long vertical castings. Each of the dishes has a knob which slips down the slit and projects beyond the side of the basket, so that the dish may be easily lifted out. When the dishes are all in place and the cover is on, the

whole is readily carried in one hand without spilling or cooling the contents. A German university is not a place where teaching is done, but where information is imparted. There are no lessons or recitations. When the German gymnasiast receives his certificate of scholarship and sets out for the university, he knows that he is bidding farewell to drilling, memorizing, reciting, and grading, and that henceforth he must be his own admonisher. Were the university a person and not a corporation, we might imagine it as saying to every young man who matriculates: you have received a thorough, careful training in all the elements of a liberal education; you know so much of Latin, Greek, history, mathematics, and the other branches; you have been kept to your work for the last ten or twelve years and subjected to rigid discipline; you have chosen your profession and are now about to fit yourself for it; in other words, you are to become a man. Therefore I shall treat you as a man. You are free to attend lectures or to neglect them; to read this text-book or that; room where you will and live as you see fit. You will not be called upon to give an account of your progress before the end of your course, when you apply for a degree. You are of course responsible for breach of public order or propriety, but otherwise you are free from supervision.

The difference between such a system and the American one is too obvious to be dwelt upon. A German university is without a doubt the paradise for donothings. But on the other hand it is the only place, excepting Paris, where the student can pursue every conceivable branch of research in a manly, independent manner. So long as our collegians are tied down to certain text-books, forced to repeat a given number of pages of history or metaphysics or criticism, whether they agree with the author's views or not, and then marked according to the facility with which they know their parts, so long we may expect mediocrity and even downright hypocrisy. The German method is at least a training for the world, a preparation for the

problem-what shall I learn, rather than the task-how shall I learn what is given me.

The instruction, then, which is given to German university students assumes the form of lectures. Now none but those who have attended a university can have an adequate idea of what is meant by a complete system of lectures. In order to speak with the plain but forcible language of figures, I have carefully reckoned out the Berlin catalogue for the summer-term, and find, by actual count, the following courses of lectures are announced for that term, viz. : in

43 occupying 157 hours per week.

Theology, Jurisprudence, 56

183

That is to say, during a single term of four months we find 274 courses of lectures announced upon every conceivable subject of inquiry, from Schopenhauer's philosophy down to the latest improve ment in draining vegetable gardens, which lectures occupy in their delivery 915 hours every week. The computation however must be made more accurate, by allowing for a certain number of lectures which are announced but never real. There is a trifle of humbug in every thing, not even a Prussian university excepted. Young graduates, aspirants after professorial honors, remain after obtaining their degrees, pursue their studies, and in the course of a year or two receive permission to lecture. They are not professors, not even extra-ordinary professors, but mere lecturers, who have a right to the use of such of the lecturerooms as happen to be vacant. They receive no salary from the university. These lecturers usually avoid competing with the regular professors, and take up rather remote subjects of investigation or else specialties. The majority of the lectures which they announce are never read, for want of hearers-an accident which not infrequently happens to the

professors themselves. A liberal deduction, say twenty per cent., must accordingly be made for such contingencies. This will give, as to the total of bona fide lectures, 220 courses, occupying 732 hours per week. On the other hand, it may be remarked that the above calculation has been made from the catalogue for the summer or short semester; in the winter-term, however, the number of I must lectures is materially increased. also add that several practical courses are not embraced in the above computation. For instance, there are no less than eleven cliniques which should be added to the list of medical lectures, to say nothing of the various chemical laboratories, courses of practical investigation in botany and physiology, histology, practical exercises in law, theology, diplomatics, and the like. If we further consider the fact that the various cabinets whether of art, history, or science, are well filled, and that the library is on a scale of which America can scarcely have a conception, we shall realize that a firstclass German university is an institution of learning sui generis. According to a statement recently published in the New York Nation, the annual endowment of the Berlin library amounts at present to nearly $100,000. I know no reason for discrediting the statement, for it is and has been for years the declared policy of both Berlin and Göttingen, to keep pace with the world of books by purchasing every thing that has any value, so soon as it is published.

In order to complete this statistical part of the picture, it will be necessary to give the average number of students and professors. During the winter-term, 1867-1868, there were in attendance at Berlin, 2,249 students; in Leipzig, 1,190; at Munich, 1,144; at Bonn, 927; Halle, 847; Göttingen, 805; Würzburg, 594; Heidelberg, 526; Königsberg, 936; Jena, 416; Erlangen, 401; Greifswald, 401; Giessen, 326; Marburg, 300; Münster (Prussian Catholic Academy), 468. This statement does not include Vienna, which has an attendance at least equal to that of Berlin, or Prague, which equals Leipzig. Making these additions,

we find an average attendance of 850 students at seventeen universities. The list, as first given, contains the names of fifteen universities. These are all Prussian, with the exception of three, viz.. Munich, Würzburg, and Heidelberg. Adding Breslau, we have a total of thirteen Prussian universities. These were directed, also, during the winter of 18671868, by 394 full professors, 160 extraordinary (sub) professors, and 232 private instructors (equivalent to the coaches of Oxford and Cambridge). We have consequently an average of 30 full professors, 12 sub-professors, and 18 private instructors, for each university of 850 students. In other words, there are 60 instructors for 850 pupils, or one to fourteen-a very unusual proportion, especially when we take into consideration the circumstance that the instruction is communicated by lectures and not by recitations.

If we wish to see German studentlife in its typical phase, we must visit the lecture-room. Ordinarily this is a badly-lighted, worse-ventilated, cramped apartment, furnished with long, narrow desks and hard wooden seats. In the smaller university-towns considerable license obtains with regard to deportment. Before the lecturer enters the room, laughing, talking, and smoking are tolerated to the utmost extent; but no sooner does the door open and the bespectacled form of the professor appear, than every tongue is hushed, cigars are put aside, portfolios unfolded, the stereotyped formula, “Meine Herren," is uttered, and for three quarters of an hour nothing is to be heard but the dry, didactić monologue and the scratching of pen upon paper. Almost all the lectures are read, with what is called tempus-i. e., they are commenced fifteen minutes after the hour. This may appear, at first sight, a waste of time; but if we bear in mind the circumstance that many of the professors, and also of the students, have several lectures in succession, perhaps on different subjects and in different buildings, we shall see the fitness of such a brief respite. It gives one time to rest the mind and

take a turn in the fresh air between two spells of quill-driving. This notion of tempus has communicated itself to the private relations of students among themselves, so that every meeting is understood to begin after a quarter's grace, unless distinctly declared to be "ohne tempus."

A university lecture is, as a rule, dry, and delivered without grace. It consists of nothing more than a plain, unvarnished enunciation of facts or principles: In Berlin, popular lectures are delivered by such men as Droyssen, Ranke, and Gneist, which are brilliant, and attract outside audiences; in fact, every university has one or more lecturers in each faculty, who strive to shine either by wit or elegance of manner. But apart from these, lecturing is, as already observed, a mere straightforward statement of fact or doctrine. The students copy down diligently what they hear, and use their notes for study or reference. The professor commences his course by introducing the subject generally, and giving a list of such books as he desires or advises his hearers to read up or consult collaterally. In very many departments printed schemes of the entire course of lectures are distributed. This method of study is eminently simple, staightforward, earnest. The professor states his own opinions upon disputed points, alludes to and combats opposing opinions, and gives copious references to authorities which the student may consult for himself. I am aware of the imperfect success which must attend every effort to portray to the uninitiated American mind the German method of university instruction; it is impossible to apprehend through mere words this subtle spirit of restless yet good-natured, persistent, liberal inquiry. I might perhaps best characterize the method by saying, that the student is not expected to memorize lessons, to repeat, parrot-like, what he does not believe; he is not expected to believe any thing, but to listen, to read, to reflect, and to judge for himself.

And now a few words upon the students themselves, their character and