and eight wax candles, price one hundred and
eight francs, to light us to bed!"

Here was another slight glimpse of the
presence of modern robbers on the Rhine.
But the great men of the plundering trade
are not to be found hidden in the guise of
maître d'hôtel, money-changer, or steam-boat
conducteur; they wear another costume, and
assume a loftier denomination.

In literature, in science, in art, we find
Germany quite on a level with the present age.
She has produced men and books equal to the
men and books of England or France, as the
names of Goëthe, Schiller, Humboldt, Liebeg,
and a score of others bear testimony. But
whilst in poetry, philosophy, and science, she
is on a par with the best portions of modern
Europe; in politics—in the practical science of
government—she is an indefinite number of
centuries behindhand. Governmentally, she
is now where the English were during the
Saxon Heptarchy, with seven or more kingdoms
in a space that might be well governed
by one sceptre. Where she might get along
very well with two, she has a dozen petty
kings, and petty courts, and petty national
debts, and petty pension-lists, and paltry
debased and confusing coinages, and petty cabals,
quarrels, and intermixture of contending
interests. England, long ago, was relieved of
separate Kings of Wessex and Kings of
Mercia, Kings of Scotland and Kings of
Wales; France has no more turbulent Dukes
of Burgundy or Alsace claiming sovereign
power over portions of a fine country,
naturally one and indivisible; but poor
Germany yet suffers from such troublesome
divisions of dominion. Imagine a King of
Lancashire, with two free cities of Manchester and
Liverpool in its confines; a King of Yorkshire
and a Grand Duke of the Midland Counties;
an Emperor of Middlesex; a Sovereign Elector
of Kent and Sussex; with reigning
Dukes of Hampshire and Gloucestershire
and Wiltshire; a King of Scotland, and then a
King of Wales, who claimed besides all the
little odds and ends of territory, got—some by
marriage, and some by conquest—in various
disjointed parts of the country. Imagine some
of these petty divisions Romanist, and some
Protestant, and some of mixed faiths; different
coinages, opposed interests, each backed by
standing armies, in which every man, high
and low, was for some years compelled to
serve. Imagine all this to exist in our
country, and we have some idea of the
governmental condition of Germany in 1850.

Out of this division of territory arises, of
course, a number of small poor princes; and
as poor princes do not like to work hard
when their pockets are low, we find them busy
with the schemes, shifts, and contrivances,
common from time immemorial with penniless
people who have large appetites for
pleasure, small stomachs for honest work—
real, living, reigning Dukes though they be,
they have added to the royal "businesses" to
which they were born, little private speculations
for the encouragement of rouge et noir
and roulette. These small princes have, in fact,
turned gambling-house keepers—hell-keepers
in the vulgar but expressive slang of a London
police court—proprietors of establishments
where the vicious and the unwary, the greedy
hawk and the silly pigeon, congregate, the one
to plunder and the other to be plucked. That
which has been expelled from huge London,
as too great an addition to its vice, or, if not
quite expelled, is carried on with iron-barred
doors, unequal at times to protect its followers
from the police and the infamy of exposure—
that which has been outlawed from the Palais
Royal and Paris, as too bad even for the lax
morality of a most free-living city—that
huge vice which caters to the low senses of
cunning and greediness, and tempts men to
lose fortune, position, character, even hope,
in the frantic excitements of, perhaps, one
desperate night—such a vice is housed in fine
buildings raised near mineral springs,
surrounded by beautiful gardens, enlivened by
music and sanctioned by the open patronage
of petty German princes holding sway in the
valley watered by the Rhine. In fact,
unscrupulous speculators are found to carry on
German gaming-tables at German spas, paying
the sovereign of the country certain
thousands of pounds a year for the privilege of
fleecing the public.

The weakened in body are naturally weakened
in mental power. The weak in body
are promised health by "taking the waters"
at a German bath. The early hours, the
pleasant walks, the good music, the promised
economy, are inducements. The weakened
mind wants more occupation than it finds,
for these places are very monotonous, and the
gaming-table is placed by the sovereign of
the country in a noble room—the Kursaal,
to afford excitement to the visitor, and profits
—the profits of infamy—to himself.

There are grades in these great gaming-
houses for Europe. Taking them in the
order in which they are reached from
Cologne, it may be said that Wiesbaden is the
finest town, having very pleasant environs,
and the least play. The Grand Duke of
Nassau, therefore, has probably the smallest
share of the gaming-table booty.

Homburg, which comes next in order, is
far more out of reach, is smaller, duller—(it
is indeed very, very dreary)—and has to keep
its gaming-tables going all the year round, to
make up the money paid by the lessees of the
gambling-house to the Duke. The range of
the Taunus is at the back of the "town" (a
village about as large, imposing, and lively as
Hounslow), and affords its chief attraction.
The rides are agreeable if the visitor has a
good horse—(a difficult thing to get in that
locality)—and is fond of trotting up steep hills,
and then ambling down again. In beauty of
position, and other attractions, it is very far
below both Wiesbaden and Baden.