would soon give over coming to see us, unless we could return the visits. No, no! as Abraham said, let us bury our dead out of our sight. "At least," said I, "the Mummies are a natural curiosity." "Why, yes," he replied, with a smile, as we stepped into the bright, brisk, open air, “and a political one, too, Frank, to see so many of our representatives beyond corruption."

At the church-door we parted with the pleasant French people, who were going further inland; and then returned to our carriage. In our way home we halted at Poppelsdorf, to see the Botanical Garden, and the Museum, which contains abundant specimens of the mineralogy and geology of the Rhenish mountains, the Eifel, and the brown coal of Friesdorf. Amongst the fossils is a complete series of frogs, from the fullgrown froggy that might a wooing go, down to that minute frogling, a tadpole. My uncle's remark on them was an original one, and deserves the consideration of our chemists. "Frank, if we could but find out a way of petrifying our great men, what a deal of money would be saved, in chipping statues ! "

But now, Gerard, good-night. Fatigued and drowsy from our breezy rambles, a resolution has been moved and seconded, for retiring early, that I am too heavy-headed to oppose. "God bless the man who invented sleep!" cries honest Sancho Panza, and Heaven be praised that he did not take out a patent, and keep the discovery to himself. My best love to Emily.

I am, my dear Gerard, yours very truly,

FRANK SOMERVILLE.

P. S. Past one o'clock, and here I am, not couchant, but rampant! Yet have I been between sheets, and all but into the soft arms of Mrs. Morpheus, but O Gerard! a night at Bonn is anything but a bonne nuit !

Never did I throw myself with such sweet abandonment into that blessed luxury, a bed. Sleep, the dear Eider-duck, was beginning to brood me with her downy breast and shadowy wings, I was already swooning away into the delicious semi-oblivion that precedes the total forgetfulness, when crash! I was startled broad awake by the compound rattle of a vehicle that seemed to have twelve wheels, with four-and-twenty

Doze again,
and then a duo,

loose spokes in each, and a cast-iron horse! Students, of course, from their revels at Godesberg! Another and another followed, then a street squabble, and then "Am Rhein! Am Rhein !" arranged for any number of voices. but no, another scrambling shandrydan, no, a trio, no, a quart, no, a quint, no, a sext, zounds! a dozen were chiming in at the topmost pitch of their lungs! Partial as I am to music, I could not relish these outbreaks, nor did it comfort me a whit, that all who met, or overtook these wassailers, joined most skilfully and scientifically in the tune!

I like your German singers well,

But hate them too, and for this reason,
Although they always sing in time,
They often sing quite out of season.

In short, finding that it was impossible to sleep, I got up, rang for candles, cigars, and brandy and water, and then amused myself with the tale of diablerie I enclose. Meanwhile the students subsided, once more, good night.

the streets are quiet, and

TAILS FROM THE GERMAN.

THE FATAL WORD.

A ROMANCE OF BONN.

THANKS to the merry company, and the good Ahrbleichart wine, at his Cousin Rudolph's, it was midnight ere Peter Krauss, the little tailor of Bonn, set out on his road home. Now Peter was a pious and a tender-hearted man, who would not hurt a dog, much less a fellow-creature; but he had one master-failing, which at last brought him into a horrible scrape, and that was curiosity. Such was his itch for meddling and prying, that whatever business went forward, he was sure to look and listen with all his might. Let a word or two be pronounced in a corner, and you could fancy his ears pricking towards the sound, like the ears of a horse. Perhaps, if he had ever perused the tragical story of Blue Beard, he would have learned more prudence! but, unhappily, he never read Fairy Tales, nor indeed anything of the kind, except some of the old Legends of the Saints.

Thus Peter Krauss, pipe in mouth, was trudging silently homeward, through the pleasant valley between Roettchen and Poppelsdorf, when all at once he heard something that brought him to a full stop. Yes, Yes, there certainly was a talking on the other side of the bushes; so giving loose to his propensity, he drew near, and listened the more eagerly as he recognized one of the voices as that of Ferdinand Wenzel, the wildest and wickedest of all the students of Bonn. The other voice he did not know, nor indeed had he ever heard one at all like it: its tone was deep and metallic like the tolling of a great bell.

"Ask, and it shall be granted, if within my compass." Peter, trembling, peeped through the thick foliage at the last speaker, and to his unutterable horror, descried a dreadful figure, which could only belong to one fearful personage,

the Enemy of Mankind. Krauss could nearly see his full face, which was ten thousand times uglier than that of Judas in the old paintings. The Fiend was grinning, and dismally the moonlight gleamed on his huge hard cheek-bones, and thence downward to his mouth, where it gleamed awfully on his set teeth, which shone not with the bright bony whiteness. of ivory, but with the flash of polished steel. Opposite to the

Evil One, and as much at his ease as if he had only been in company with a bosom crony, sat the reckless, daring Ferdinand Wenzel, considering intently what infernal boon he had best demand. At last he seemed to have made up his mind Krauss pricked up his ears.

"Give me," said the Wild Student, "the power of life and death over others.'

“I can grant thee only the half,” said the Fiend. "I have power to shorten human life, but there is only one who may prolong it."

"Be it so," said the Student; "only let those whom I may doom die suddenly before my face."

"All the blessed saints and martyrs forbid!" prayed Krauss in his soul, at the same time crossing himself as fast as he could. "In that case, I'm a dead man to a certainty! He will make away with all that is Philister, namely, with all that is good, or religious, or sober, or peaceable, or decent, in the whole city of Bonn!"

In the mean time, the Evil One seemed to deliberate, and at length told the Wild Student that he should have his wish. "Listen, Ferdinand Wenzel! I will teach thee a mortal word, which if thou pronounce aloud to any human being, man, woman, or child, they shall drop down, stone-dead, as by a stroke of apoplexy, at thy very feet."

"Bravo!" and he

"Enough," said the Wild Student. waved his arms exultingly above his head. "I am now one of the Fates. I hold the lives of my enemies in my hand. I am no more Ferdinand Wenzel, but Azrael, the Angel of Death. Come, the word, the mighty word!"

We have said that the topmost failing of Peter Krauss was curiosity, it was rather his besetting sin, and was now about to meet with its due punishment. Where other men would have shut their eyes, he opened them; where they would have stopped their ears, he put up a trumpet. O Peter, Peter! better hadst thou been born deaf as the adder, than have heard the three dreadful syllables that made up that tremendous WORD. But Peter was wilful, and stretched out his neck like a crane's towards the sound, and as the Fiend, at Wenzel's request, repeated the fatal spell nine times over, it was impressed on the listener's memory, never to be forgotten.

"I have got it by heart," said the Wild Student, “and I know right well who shall hear it the first."

"Bravo!" said the voice that sounded like the toll of a death-bell.

The hair, long as it was, rose erect on Krauss's devoted head; every lock felt alive, and crawling and writhing like a serpent. He considered himself the doomed man. Wenzel owed him money, and debtors are apt to get weary of their creditors. Yes; his days were numbered, like those of the pig at the butcher's door. Full of these terrible thoughts, he

SINCE THEN I'M DOOMED.'

got away as hastily as he could, without making an alarm, and as soon as he dared, set off at a run towards his home. On he scampered, wishing that his very arms were legs, to help him to go at a double rate. On, on, on, he galloped through Poppelsdorf, but without seeing it, like a blind horse that knows its way by instinct, on, on; but at last he was compelled to halt, not for want of breath, for his lungs seemed locked up in his bosom; nor yet from fatigue, for his feet never felt the hard ground they bounded from; but because a party of students, linked arm in arm, occupied the whole breadth of the road. As soon as they heard footsteps behind them they stopped, and recognizing the little tailor, began to jeer and banter him, and at length proceeded to push and hus