George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[100] and Mr. Robinson–they parted not only from these English friends, but from their Boston fellow-travellers, Gray, Cogswell, and Ward, and went on to Heidelberg, where they remained nearly four weeks, ‘as a pause and rest after just three months of uninterrupted travelling and sight-seeing.’ Of his acquaintance and interests there, Mr. Ticknor writes thus:—

Creuzer, the classical scholar, whom I knew here twenty years ago, seemed to me little changed. Schlosser, the historian, is in manner just what his books might lead one to suppose,—decided, and a little bruyant, strong and genial, if not good-natured. He lives quite by himself, and is probably the most quarrelsome of the very quarrelsome professors here; but to me, who entered into none of their manifold feuds, he was pleasant.

Ullmann, the principal theological professor, is a quiet little man, with a good deal of knowledge in elegant literature, who was very much disposed to be useful to me, and at whose house I met agreeable people, more luxuriously entertained than is common in professors' houses in Germany.

But Mittermaier, a man just fifty years old, is more a man of the world, notwithstanding his great learning, than any of them. He is President of the Chamber of Deputies in Baden, and therefore a man of a good deal of political consequence in this part of Germany; and his frank and popular manners form rather a striking contrast to those of his caste generally. Besides this, however, he is a laborious and successful professor, and his works on the criminal law have given him reputation throughout Europe. His house is probably the most agreeable, for personal intercourse, in Heidelberg, since there is a greater variety of persons found there than is found elsewhere. . . . .

In all these families intercourse was simple, according to the German notions of simplicity; but in all of them—except Ullmann's— the ladies of the family seemed to have a good deal of the household work to perform. At Mittermaier's, in particular, it was curious to see the daughters bring in the evening lights, and set and serve two rather large supper-tables, assisted by a single waiting-girl.

We knew, too, the old Baron Malchus and his daughter. The old gentleman was Minister of Finance to Jerome Bonaparte when he was King of Westphalia, and afterwards to the King of Wurtemberg; and he used to make us rather long visits, and talk, much at large, of the days of his power and dignity. I have seldom found a person who had such an immense mass of statistical details in his