STUDENT LIFE IN GERMANY. 97 The south portico of the Pandrosium was not supported by pillars, but by six female figures, (Caryatides,) about seven feet high, one of which is likewise in the Elgin collection. Between the Propyloa and the Erectheium stood the colossal bronze statue of Minerva, the defender, by Phidias, which rose aloft above all the buildings of the Acropolis, so that the helmet and the point of the spear could be seen by those at sea between Sunium and Athens. The Acropolis was, moreover, crowded with so many statues and monuments that we can hardly conceive how they could be placed in such a limited space, for the length of the Acropolis from south-east to southwest is only 1150 feet, and its greatest breadth does not exceed 500 feet. It is therefore quite incredible that it could have contained houses in regular streets. In the earliest ages of Athens men may have dwelt upon it; in the most flourishing periods of the history of this famous city, the Acropolis was doubtless sanctified to the gods. STUDENT LIFE IN GERMANY No. 3.-DUELLING. THE custom of duelling is by no means so frequent in the universities of Germany as it was some years since; in some of them propositions, emanating from the students themselves, have been brought forward, and we believe adopted in general meetings of the students, for the establishment of courts of honour, (Ehrengerichte,) in which all academical disputes shall be settled without reference to the sword. The frequent reports in the German journals would seem to indicate that this is no isolated movement, and that in a few short years this barbarous mode of celebrity or revenge will have yielded to the more humanizing influence of the times. Meanwhile we have the testimony of some youthful Teutonic members of Alma Mater that the following description of Mr. Russel, although now bearing occasional marks of caricature, is still substantially correct. The theme of his declamation was that hero of the whilom Burschenschaft, a Jena student. "The lecture-rooms are but secondary to the fencing-schools-that is his temple, the rapier is his god, and the Comment is the gospel by which he swears. This Comment, as it is called, is the general code to which all the Landsmannschaften are subject. However numerous the latter may be in a university, there is but one VOL. II. 2 c Comment, and this venerable body of law descends from generation to generation, in the special keeping of the senior convent. It is the holy volume, whose minutest regulations must neither be questioned nor slighted: what it allows cannot be wrong, what it prohibits cannot be right. 'He has no comment in him,' used to be a proverbial expression for a stupid fellow. It regulates the mode of election of the superior officers; it provides punishments for various offences; and commonly denounces excommunication against thieves and cheaters at play, especially if the cheating be of any very gross kind. But the point of honour is its soul. The Comment is in reality a code, arranging the manner in which the Burschen shall quarrel with each other, and how the quarrel once begun shall be terminated. It fixes, with the most pedantic solicitude, a graduated scale of offensive words, and the style and degree of satisfaction that may be demanded for each. The scale rises, or is supposed to rise, in enormity, till it reaches the atrocious expression, Dummer Junge, (stupid youth,) which contains within itself every possible idea of insult, and can be atoned for only with blood. The particular degrees of the scale may vary i different universities, but the principle of its construction is the same in all, and in all stupid youth' is the boiling point. If you are assailed with any epithet which stands below stupid youth in the scale of contumely, you are not bound immediately to challenge; you may set yourself in advantage,'—that is, you may retort on the offender with an epithet that stands higher than the one he has applied to you. Then your opponent may retort, if you have left him room, in the same way, by rising a degree above you; and thus the courteous terms of the Comment may be bandied between you till one or the other finds only the highest step of the ladder unoccupied, and is compelled to pronounce the 'stupid youth,' to which there is no reply but a challenge. I do not say that this is the ordinary practice-in general it comes to a challenge at once-but such is the theory of the Comment. Whoever submits to any of these epithets without either setting himself in advantage or giving a challenge, is forthwith punished by the convent with 'Verschiss' or the lesser excommunication; for there is a temporary and a perpetual 'Verschiss,' something like the lesser and greater excommunication in ecclesiastical discipline. He may recover his rights and his honour by fighting within a given time with one member of each of the Landsmannschaften; but if he allows the fixed time to pass without doing so, the sentence becomes irrevocable:-no human power can restore him to his honours and his rights; he is declared infamous for ever; the same punishment is denounced against all who hold intercourse with him; every mode of insult, real or verbal, is permitted and laudable against him; he is put to the ban of this academical empire, and stands alone among his companions, the butt of unceasing scorn and contumely. STUDENT LIFE IN GERMANY. 99 "In the conduct of the duel itself, the Comment descends to the minutest particu-, lars. The dress, the weapons, the distance, the value of different kinds of thrusts, the length to which the arm shall be bare, and a thousand other minutiæ are all fixed, and have at least the merit of preventing every unfair advantage. In some universities the sabre, in others the rapier is the academical weapon; pistols nowhere. The weapon used at Jena is what they call a Schläger. It is a straight blade, about three feet and a half long, and three-cornered, like a bayonet. The hand is protected by a circular plate of tin, eight or ten inches in diameter, which some burlesque poets, who have had the audacity to laugh at Burschenism, have profaned with the appellation of 'the soup-plate of honour.' The handle can be separated from the blade, and the soup-plate from both-all this for purposes of concealment. The handle is put in the pocket, the plate is buttoned under the coat, the blade is sheathed in a walking-stick, and thus the parties proceed unsuspected to the place of combat as if they were going out for a morning stroll. The tapering triangular blade necessarily becomes roundish towards the point; therefore no thrust counts unless it be so deep that the orifice of the wound is three-cornered; for, as the Comment has it, 'no affair is to be decided in a trifling and childish way, merely pro forma.' Besides the seconds, an umpire and a surgeon must be present; but the last is always a medical student, that he may be under the Comment obligation to secrecy. All parties present are bound not to reveal what passes, without distinction of consqeuences, if it has been fairly done; the same promise is exacted from those who may come accidently to know anything of the matter." These duels are not always, we would hope not frequently, attended with fatal or dangerous consequences, although we have seen a long procession of students following one of the victims of this unhappy custom to his last home. Others of our acquaintances suffer, and will suffer as long as they live, from the effects of wounds received in these early encounters. The Burschenschaft, to which the above description principally applies, no longer exists; the governments, terrified at the excesses of some of this body, having taken energetic measures to put them down. This was not done without exciting great discontent at the reactionary measures of the sovereigns, and more particularly of the late King of Prussia, who had promised his people a constitution. So bold had been the language of official personages after the excitement produced by the war of liberation against Napoleon, and so timid had they afterwards become, that we have been credibly informed that the speeches of the representatives of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the protecting powers, at the inauguration of the free city of Cracow, would not now pass the censorship. The Landsmannschaften, however, in a milder form still exists, although they, too, seem occasionally to excite the jealousy of the higher powers. The manners of the students in the universities in the larger towns have of late years undergone a considerable modification; we no longer hear of their conflicts with the police, for this latter body does not now allow those liberties to be taken with it of which such degrading instances so frequently occurred in the "good old times." In smaller towns the curious in such matters would probably still find the German student lording it in his pristine glory. In such is laid the scene before us. Our heroes, redolent of bravery and beer, return unscathed from the dire conflict; and the Stadtsoldat, the worthy relative of our old friends Dogberry and Verges, is cautious not to excite their martial ire. Schlaegers and beer, Toepfchens and pipes, perhaps of meerschaum, form the appropriate and never-failing companions to these sons of the muses; whilst above, in the corner, an unhappy captive looks with lengthened visage upon his more fortunate comrades who violate the laws with impunity. He has at least the advanage of suffering in the name of the classics. Every university has its own prison, dignified with the name Carcer, an imprisonment in which brings no dishonour. In conclusion, we beg to assure our untravelled readers, if there are any such in her majesty's kingdom in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-six, that this is merely the reverse of the picture, the Peter Priggins version of student life; and as no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, so neither can we expect a student to be so to a scout. It may have been true twenty years ago, and doubtless the species here described is even now far from extinct; but truth compels us to add, that we have known many a German student who united great learning with propriety of behaviour and a manly simplicity of character, who sought no distinction in uncouthness of dress or of personal appearance, but, equally removed from pedantry and rudeness, was contented with his real character as a scholar and a gentleman. THE CITY OF TING-HAI. ISLAND OF CHUSAN, CHUSAN is fifty-one and a half miles in circumference, twenty-one long, and ten and a half broad, and forms part of the Ting-hai-heën. Heën is the smallest division of a province in which the presiding officer has the power of government. In this Heën the whole of the Chusan group north and south are included; the Kewshan islands being also attached to it. The population of Chusan may be estimated at about 280,000, as, from reports in the public offices, it appears to have 40,000 houses on it, which, at seven inhabitants per house, gives the above number. |