ment and a night's lodging. Was haben sie zu essen? Have you any thing for us to eat?* Können wir bette kriegen? Can we get beds? No one was ready to pay us any attention. Hungry as we were, we could get nothing for supper, not even a cup of coffee. Beds were out of the question. Could we be accommodated, we at length inquired, with a few bundles of clean straw? This, I believe, we should have had, if Coleridge had not, at this unlucky moment, exclaimed, 66 Why surely these Hessians never can be Christians!" The Hessians not Christians! A spark falling on gunpowder could not have produced a more sudden explosion. The challenge past from within to the group on the outside, who, rushing in to the assistance of the Maitre d'Hotel, proceeded, without ceremony, to clear the apartment, and, tired as we were with our day's exertion, and waiting only to have our respective beds littered for the reception of our weary limbs, we were bundled out in "double-quick-time," spite of all Literally, what have they (haben sic) to eat? A most courteous salutation; but being addressed to peasants, even this might have had a contrary effect from what was intended. They may have thought that we were quizzing them. In polite intercourse the Germans invariably make use of the personal pronoun plurally, just as, under similar circumstances, the French say, vous etes, instead of tu es; and, after them the English "you are," or 66 'you were," not "thou art," or "thou wert." But the Germans carry this point of refinement further than we do, and in speaking to an inferior person, say er ist, he is; or, if still lower, du bist, thou art. powers were at their lowest ebb, had come in for a heavy blow, which he expressed himself as not at all liking, and which, in addition to the compliments he deemed due to the Hessians, drew down some strong vituperations on the head of our knight errantColeridge-who, there could be no doubt, was the exciting cause, as we medical men say, of the disaster. The ill-humoured villagers would hold no parley with us, and it was sufficiently evident that our only safe course was to make a rapid retreat to a neighbouring wood where we were content to bivouack, attended by a large and noble dog of Parry's, which we had with us, and which would readily have taken an active part on our side, if fighting and not flying had been the order of the day. To sleep soundly after such an adventure, and in such a place, was scarcely to be expected; but Morpheus had a friend for once in Coleridge, whose protracted psychological tirade upon the inhospitable conduct of the Hessian boors acted at length as a soporific, so that huddling together, Turk and all, as closely as we could, we managed to pass a few hours tolerably well for young bivouackers; which is certainly making the best of it; for besides that our nerves were far from being of their usual temper, the ground, although it was a fine E summer-night, was hard and cold, and the twilight air felt particularly chilly. But morn at length arrived, and "Phœbus' fiery car In haste, was climbing up the eastern hill," when, having shaken off our broken slumbers, it was in full council decided that we should, on no account, re-enter the inhospitable village; so proceeding in a different direction, we were fortunate enough after a short walk to fall in with a snug little inn, at the bottom of a hill, and at the extremity of a delightful vale, with civil inmates moreover to welcome us, who allowed us to take coffee as our beverage for breakfast, notwithstanding all guests were strongly recommended, in lines as moral as they were poetical, to drink brandy, morning, noon, and night, for the preservation of their health.* "Brandy is good, at matin prime; *This German aqua vitæ, which I have here translated brandy (brandwein), is much more allied to mountain dew or whisky than to real cogniac, and commonly goes by the name, in Germany, of Schnapps. It must be confessed, that it was not altogether objected to by us in our pedestrian tours; but in excuse for an indulgence which fatigue sometimes rendered almost necessary, we usually qualified it by the addition of milk, a process which Coleridge denominated, sheathing. This versification, which is very near the German, was in perfect keeping with the interior of our inn, in which it was difficult to say whether tobacco or whisky had the predominance. Of the Indian herb, as of whisky, it may with equal truth be said, that it is alike efficacious at all times and seasons; and of the thorough-going tobacco smoker, as of Sir Walter's gallant mosstrooper, with excuse for the bathos "To him alike is time or tide, Moonless midnight or matin prime." And yet what can be more deleterious than tobacco? Many an honest Deutcher have I seen smoking himself into the grave! Rauch-Rauch-immer Rauch! The countenance pale and haggard; the frame emaciated; the propensity to smoke irresistible! "A pipe! a pipe! my heart's blood for a pipe!" Neither is there need of much physiological acuteness, to account for the bad effects of this pernicious habit on the health. Tobacco is a very powerful narcotic poison. If the saliva, the secretion of which it provokes, be impregnated with its essential oil and so swallowed, the deleterious iufluence is communicated directly to the stomach, or if, as more frequently happens, it is ejected, then the blandest fluid of the human frame, that which, as a solvent and diluent, performs an office in digestion secondary only to the gastric juice itself, is lost. Even snuff, my old friend Abernethy used to say, fuddles the nose; but the fumes of tobacco possess a power of stupifying all the senses and all the faculties, by slow but enduring intoxication, in dull obliviousness. I recollect reading, I believe in the Medical and Chirurgical Review, so long and so creditably conducted by Dr. Clutterbuck, the address of a Professor in some American University to his pupils, on the bad effects of tobacco. This address, sensible and spirited, seemed to come from the Professor's very heart. He deprecated in the most forcible manner the practice of smoking which had been recently taken up, and said, "That, prior to the period when pipes were to be seen in the mouth of every student, the youth of the university were as different in their looks from the individuals with whom he was then surrounded, as health from disease." I hope yet to be able to find the original address.* * The following epigram of Petrus Scriverius on a Tobacco Pipe, occurred to the recollection of Dr. H. on reading the above; and I have done it into English verse, as the latinity of his friend, P. S., is not quite as pure as Cicero's, and may not therefore be intelligible to polite readers : |