is forced upon you, that you are ashamed
to put in your purse, and half inclined to
fling out of the window: the poverty-stricken,
clipped, measley, pockmarked, greasy, slimy
silbergroschen, neuegroschen, grosgroschen,
and gudegroschen (the eulogistic adjectives
silver, new, big, good, to these leprous
testoons all breathe the bitterest satire). A
German refreshment room is a receptacle for
all the lame, halt, and blind coins of the
Zollverein, the monetary refuse of Russia,
Saxony, Bavaria, Austria, Hanover,
Mecklenburg, and the infinite variety of smaller
tinpot states; nay, you are very lucky if the
waiters do not contrive to give you a sprinkling
of Hamburg and Lubeck money, with a
few Copenhagen shillings and Schleswig-
Holstein marks. The rogues know that you
have no time to question or dispute; they
take care not to give you your change till
the starting bell rings; and by the time you
have counted the abominable heap of marine-
store money, and got over your first outburst
of passion, you are half-a-dozen miles away.
As a climax of villany, the change they give
you at one station is not current, or is said not
to be so, at the next. Say, waiter at Bienenbuttel,
is not this the case? And didst thou
not contumeliously refuse my Prussian piece
of ten groschen?

Why should it be that England, the great
market of the world, amply provisioned
as it is, and with its unrivalled facilities of
communication, refreshment-rooms, not only
on railways, but in theatres, gardens, and
other places of amusement, should be so
scantily and poorly furnished, and at such
extortionate prices? Why should our hunger
be mocked by those dried-up Dead Sea
fruits, those cheesecakes that seem to contain
nothing but sawdust, those sandwiches
resembling thin planks of wood with a strata of
dried glue between them, those three weeks
old pork and veal pies, all over bumps full of
delusive promise, but containing nothing but
little cubes of tough gristle and antediluvian
fat; those bye-gone buns with the hard,
cracked varnish-like veneering; that hopeless
cherry-brandy, with the one attenuated little
cherry bobbing about in the vase like a
shrivelled black buoy; that flatulent lemonade
tasting of the cork and the wire and of the
carbonic acid gas, but of the lemon never;
that bottled brown stout like so much bottled
soapsuds; that scalding infusion of birch-
broom miscalled tea; and that unsavoury
compound of warm plate-washings facetiously
christened soup? Why should English
railway travellers be starved as well as
smashed? Sir Francis Head tells us that
they keep pigs at Wolverton, who, in course
of time, are promoted into pork pies; but the
promotion must surely go by seniority. Look
for comparison, at the French buffets, with
the savoury soup always ready; the sparkling
little carafons of wine, the convenient
cotelette, the tempting slices of pâte-de-foie
gras, the crisp fresh loaves of bread, and all
at really moderate prices. Look again at
the German refreshment-rooms. That
practical people (though they do indulge in
smoking and metaphysics to such an extent)
have a system of refreshment called thumb
restauration. This consists of the famous
butterbrod, or compact little crust of bread
and butter on which is laid ham, cold
meat, poultry, game, dried salmon, or
caviare. Caviare! The first sight of that
glistening black condiment startled me,
and made me feel Due North more than
ever.

Minden, Hanover, Brunswick, have been
passed. The armorial white horse made his
appearance at the second of these places
on the coinage of the poor blind king, and on
a flaring escutcheon in front of the railway
terminus. At Brunswick there was a fête in
honour of the twenty-somethingeth of the
anniversary of the accession of the reigning
duke, which I suppose must be a source of
great annual satisfaction to the sovereign in
question, as well as to that other duke who
doesn't reign. The terminus was plentifully
decorated with evergreens and banners;
here was a great deal of dust and music
and beer-drinking going on (the chief
ingredients, with smoking, of a German fête),
and the platform was crowded with
Brunswickers in holiday attire. Beaux and belles
in Teutonic-Parisian trim, and ruddy, straw-
haired and straw-hatted country folk in
resplendent gala-dresses. To give you a notion
of the appearance of the more youthful female
Brunswickers, I must recal to your remembrance
the probable appearance of the little
old woman, who, going to market,
inadvertently fell asleep by the king's highway,
and with whose garments such unwarrantable
liberties were taken by a wretch by the
name of Stout, a tinker by profession. The
peasant girls of Brunswick look as the little
old woman must have looked when she awoke
from her nap; and, so brief are their skirts;
but they wear variegated hose with
embroidered clocks, and their mothers have
bidden them, as the song says "bind their
hair with bands of rosy hue, and tie up their
sleeves with ribbons rare, and lace their
boddice blue," and Lubin, happily, is not
far away, but close at hand, and very
pretty couples they make with their yellow
hair tied in two ribboned tails behind.
Mingling with the throng too, I see some
soldiers I have been anxious, for many a
long year, to be on visual terms with,—
soldiers clad all in sable, with nodding black
plumes, bugle ornaments to their uniforms,
and death's-heads and cross-bones on their
shakoes. These are the renowned Black
Brunswickers; and I am strangely reminded,
looking at them, of him that Sate in the
windowed niche of the high hall, alone,
cheerless, brooding, thinking only of the
bloody bier of his father, and of revenge:—