and a want of scars. He is a hero as
successful in the duel by blood, as in the trial
by beer, of which I shall speak presently.
Now, for a wager, he is swallowing a quart a
minute for twelve minutes in succession—to
him apparently an easy task. A fourth is
feeding upon that unsatisfactory Rhenish
dish entitled " sauer braten." It consists of
stewed beef, made sour and putrescent by
vinegar and lapse of time.

The appearance of a stranger in the
"Kneipe " causes an immediate stir. He is
surrounded by men who welcome him, and
he has no peace till he has drunk all their
healths in beer, in quick succession. This,
when the corps is numerous (like that of the
Guestphalen) is no small feat, since the polite
stranger may not swallow less than one pint
at a draught; that is to say, half his measure.
Were the beer heady, the result would be
intoxication; but a man accustomed to
London stout will find no worse affliction in
large draughts of Bonner beer than the
excessive irrigation of his stomach.

It is in the course of conversation, at these
hours of hospitality, that a stranger learns
all about these student corps. The hosts tell
you all about themselves, about their fights,
their rules for stopping and renewing combat,
their intense horror of duelling with pistols.
If they are asked whether a bout at fisticuffs
would not be a better remedy than clumsy
swords and pads, they reply that there is not
any skill in boxing. (This fact the
Guestphalen once began to doubt when a good
number of them had been amicably knocked
down by an English guest.)

Of their duels with swords, familiar descriptions
have been given. The trial by liquids
is not known so commonly. The combatants,
in an encounter of this kind, are generally
men who have grown old in the classes and
corps of the Universities. Numbers of men
spend their lives there, never rising above a
certain level in learning. Their use in life is
to be old students, and to be referees on
points of student law for fresh-men. To be
sure, there are the ancient and authentic
books of rules to lay down conditions of
combat, and such weighty matters. These
venerable manuscripts, with their well-
greased covers, are reverently preserved and
venerated; but law has always ready
commentators, and the student of ten or fifteen
years' standing is a Blackstone to all
neophytes, and by them solemnly respected.

In the duel by liquid, the combatants are
placed on opposite sides of a table, having on
their right hand an equal quantity of bottles
and phials, containing juices of all kinds,
ranged according to their alcoholic strength.
The adversaries are then, on a given signal,
ordered to commence. Each man is required
to drain to the dregs the bottle he takes up,
casting at his antagonist after each draught
an opprobrious epithet. The first man drains
a bottle of Rhenish, and tells his adversary
that he is a thief. The second, ascending in
the alcoholic scale, retorts with a bottle of
Madeira, and the epithet " swindler!" So the
duel goes on till one of the combatants shall
fall. Very anxious are the seconds for the
supremacy of their respective principals.
When one is floored, his second has been
known to pour the contents of a last bottle
down his throat, and then to kick him lustily,
out of his great friendship, until the epithet
Fool! the strongest that can be used in the
German language, issues from him, and he is
left to repose dead drunk, but victorious,
under the table.

But these men are studious. If I wander
into the rooms of the student who overnight
was the heaviest of drinkers, I find him sitting
surrounded by ponderous volumes of the most
heavy learning. He is studying abstruse
pages. His favourite pipe is hung over the
chimney-piece, and the portraits of his friends,
all done in black, are formed into a circle round
it. Partial to billiards, the German student
would think it too much trouble to play, were
not the balls double the size that they attain
in other countries, and the pockets as large
as an ordinary hat. Bowls, too, facetiously
called in England " American," are a time-
honoured game with him. They enable him
to take his exercise in-doors: that, also, is a
thing he likes. From the same cause, also,
proceeds his pleasure in frequenting the fencing-
room, where one may see a dozen youngsters,
each with a curved sword, endeavouring
to strike into a target. This target is cut
starlike, and into its converging rays the
blade has to be struck in quick succession.

The German student will lounge out to
enjoy the fineness of an evening, listlessly
smoking his dear pipe; or he will sit down in
suburban gardens to drink beer; but of the
hard-working out-door English sports he
knows not one. He does not hunt; he does
not course. He has no horse-racing; he has
no cricket. He never boxes, and it would be
sacrilege to say he rows. He is a quiet
philosophic youth; he studies immensely through
a mist of indolence. He is often wonderfully
learned, and he drinks, in Bonn at any rate,
remarkably mild beer.

THE SISTER-SHIP.

I SHOULD probably have arrived a little
earlier, but for the trivial accident of my
having been taken to Fenchurch Street by
the railway, instead of to Blackwall; but at
last I found myself there—peering out from the
banks of the river on the damp shipping—and
speedily fixing my eyes on the vessel I wanted,
namely, The West India Mail Company's
Orinoco—the sister-ship of the unfortunate
Amazon—I have always felt a great interest in
your large mercantile steamers; perhaps
increased, since, in the Bustard, (a jackass
frigate by name, and by nature), we—that is,
old Bulbous, our commander, one of whose