Part 46 (1/2)

141. He who has written down any one with authority on the Beer-tablet, and has written him down wrong, is to be called before a future Special Beer-convention. This Beer-convention has to take care that the fault of him who received the commission be amended.

[The remainder of this Beer-Comment is given in the chapter describing a Commers.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The author here makes no charge against the great numbers of high-minded and gentlemanly young men who pa.s.s through, and confer distinction on, our universities; but, as before observed, alludes only to that cla.s.s and those parties, which are not only depicted by the Westminster Review, but so fully described by the Editor of the Quarterly Review, in ”Reginald Dalton.”]

[Footnote 2: The term _Rechtspracticant_ implies the commonest, the lowest, and most tedious stage of a statesman's career: in fact, while he is acting as a clerk or pupil in the amtmann's office, he acquires _practical_ knowledge of the administration of justice.]

[Footnote 3: The words in the original are ”on their Cerevis,” a student term, ”on their beer;” meaning, in the beer-court, on their honour.]

[Footnote 4: Inhabitants of the Marsch.]

[Footnote 5: In the Graffschaft Mark.]

[Footnote 6: Play on the grandiloquent words of Kotzebue.]

[Footnote 7: About a pint.]

[Footnote 8: Probably to prevent Kotzebue's retreat.]

[Footnote 9: No person in Germany can fill any office in a state, not even that of a postmaster, or captain of police, nor follow any of the high professions, those of law, divinity, and physic, after he has pa.s.sed his college examinations, and taken his degree, without having undergone another examination before a board expressly appointed by each state.]

[Footnote 10: The founder of the Orphan-House.]

[Footnote 11: The established word for s.h.i.+rt-collar in Germany is the very odd one of Vater-morder, literally ”Father-killers;” and they are said to have acquired this name from an anecdote manufactured on their first introduction, in order to ridicule their extravagant size and stiffness, as worn by buckish young men. It was said that so large and stiffly-starched had a young student his collar, that when he went home, in rus.h.i.+ng to embrace his father, he run him through the neck with the point of it, and killed him on the spot.]

[Footnote 12: This word, to suit the air, must be p.r.o.nounced postilyn, with a strong accent on the last syllable.]

[Footnote 13: Cicero, humorously here thus p.r.o.nounced, because a party among the cla.s.sics insist that it was anciently so p.r.o.nounced.]

[Footnote 14: Labours hard, like an ox.]

[Footnote 15: As we have no word or short phrase in English to express this German custom, we retain their own term, which means touch your gla.s.ses together; their mode of expressing civility, as in our drinking to each other, and used by them on all occasions of festivity and rejoicing, as in giving a health, a vivat, or a toast.]

[Footnote 16: The Ch.o.r.e colours.]

[Footnote 17: A dandy.]

[Footnote 18: While translating this pa.s.sage, the tidings have come across the river, that a student is shot dead in the wood opposite to my windows behind the Hirsch-ga.s.se, in a duel with pistols.--Tr.]

[Footnote 19: In English money, from about three to seven pounds.]

[Footnote 20: The bell which it rung at a quarter to eleven at night, at the hearing of which all persons are to evacuate public-houses, and betake themselves home.]

[Footnote 21: The university of Heidelberg.]

[Footnote 22: The everlasting subject of regret to the merchant in Kotzebue's comedy _Pagen-Streiche_.]