The Heidelberg Jubilee. II.

At a very early hour the city was astir to see the great historical procession, the crowning feature of the week of jubilee. The streets were roped off and were paraded by numberless police, who confined the crowds to the sidewalks and to the great stands (tribunes they called them) erected in Bismarck Place and along Leopold Strasse. The spectators on the sidewalks were Germans of the middle and lower classes; and the contemplation of their various traits would have furnished profitable amusement for an entire day. Most of them realized the exhaustive nature of the display and were already fortifying the inner man with sandwiches, cheese, bits of sausage, and bottled beer. Anxious fathers and mothers were wedging a slow and painful progress through the crowd, towing some half dozen shock-headed, wide-eyed offspring of graded ages and heights. Surely little Fritz and Heinrich and Annchen and Kaetchie must see the gay colors and the prancing horses, albeit the pressure of the crowd, forcing their tender necks against the ropes over which they hung on tiptoe, threatened slow strangulation, if not instant decapitation. Frantic vendors charge up and down the street, bawling out the name and nature of their wares: Photographs of Heidelberg, programmes of the procession, jubilee medals, whips, whistles, badges, sandwiches and pretzels. As nine o'clock approaches, the excitement becomes intense. Every available standing place is occupied; every window is full; some housetops are covered. One original man has removed enough tiles from his roof to admit of the protrusion of his head. It gives one quite a start to look up and see the gray, mossy slope of the roof adorned by one human head, red faced, fat cheeked, with huge spectacles on and with an umbrella raised to protect it from the hot August sun. Whether the heroic watcher was standing on a stringer or whether kind hands supported him beneath, or whether he was prosaically seated on a tub, could be the subject only of the forlornest conjecture. The head alone was visible; and the head told no tales.

Like all such things, the procession was late in starting; but when it at last appeared, it was well calculated to chain the interest. It was altogether the most scholarly, artistic, complete and interesting procession that I have ever seen. It was intended to represent, as by a living panorama, the history of the university and city for the last five hundred years; and it certainly succeeded in bringing back those past epochs with startling vividness. There came a sudden clatter of mounted police, then a snarling of antique trumpets, and Lo! the hands on the dial of time swept suddenly back, all the harsh realism of the nineteenth century vanished, and the age of romance was with us once more. The year of grace, 1386, is drawing toward a close, and his Royal Highness, Ruprecht I, is celebrating the founding of his new university by a grand procession through the streets of Heidelberg. Here comes the herald, clad in velvet, and bearing aloft the yellow banner and black eagles of the Prince. Then follow four trumpeters, braying right lustily, albeit somewhat dolorously, upon their slender brass horns. Six knights in armor, with iron helmets and prodigious spears are followed by a company of foot soldiers, whose antique swords and oral shields call Walter Scott vividly to mind. A group of little children, clad in white, and with wreaths of flowers on their heads, go by singing a hymn written for the occasion. But Ruprecht I is a staunch Catholic, and the representatives of the church must not be forgotten. Here come pale nuns from the convent on the Heiligenberg and stern-faced monks, with sandalled feet and rough, rope-girt robes and dark cowls; and in the midst of them rides a gorgeous Cardinal, the papal legate sent in honor of the occasion. The Prince and his spouse, Princess Beatrice, magnificently arranged in brocade and blue velvet, ride by under a canopy, escorted by the noble ladies and gentlemen of the court, among whom the court fool, mounted on a frisky ass, plunges recklessly about. A group of students and professors are followed by a huge car, a sort of exalted chariot, on which sit five beautiful young girls, representing Ruperto Carola, Piety, Wisdom, Justice, Truth. This ends the first division of the procession. The next epoch begins with the triumphal entry of Frederick I, named the Victorious, after the battle of Seckenheim, 1462. The war-scarred veterans, with torn ensigns and shattered spears and battered armor, but with proud, triumphant faces, ride slowly along, amid the cheers of men, women and children who owe safety to their arms. Then follows group after group of knights, ladies, students, monks, citizens, symbolic cars and gorgeous canopies.

The effect is truly startling. Long, long years have passed since these gay folk lived and loved and fought and made merry in the old Palatinate. Havoc and desolation have swept the city time and again since then. They had their day and went to rest; and their bones have long since dropped quietly to dust. Yet some weird spell has called them from the grave. Here they are once more, riding through these same streets, with the same trappings, the same armor, the same music and, in the case of historical personages, almost the same features. Professor Jacob Mycillus goes by in a great car, seated at his old oaken desk and reading his ponderous tome as quietly and attentively as he did three hundred years ago; and Melancthon, with his robes about him, is expounding some knotty point of doctrine to the grave monk beside him. The end of the sixteenth century finds the gay court at its gayest. There are splendid cars with Ceres, Bacchus, Venus, sitting on them, while vineyard laborers, with grape-laden baskets, dance about them. Then comes Sileuns, reeling from his ass and surrounded by a fantastic bevy of mymphs satyrs, demons, goblins and bats. We move forward to the 13th of June, 1613, and ill starred Frederick of Bohemia, with his bride Elizabeth, daughter of James of England, heads a stately train. "The tea-cup time of patch and hood" is upon us now. The Count and Countess of Lenox, Countess of Harrington, Count of Arundel, with a great retinue of lords and ladies, accompanying the young wife to her new home by the Neckar. Gloom and sorrow follow close after. A jet black steed in inky trappings is led by, mournful and riderless. Black plumes nod on his head, and a broken shield hangs from the empty saddle. He symbolizes the War of the Orleans Succession and the disasters which plunged the "gay court" in deepest mourning. Under Carl Philipp things are more cheerful. It is a time for hunting and merry-making. A huge boar is carried triumphantly aloft in a wagon, and then a stag. Falconers ride by with hooded birds perched upon their wrists; and sturdy huntsmen follow with eager hounds in leash. Through all our vicisitudes, we have now come to the dawn of the nineteenth century, and hereafter prosperity reigns supreme. Carl Frederick of Baden, the restorer of the university, goes by amid huzzas from a joyful people and the peals of music. A grand jubilee car with two maidens in white, representing the two genuises of the Schola Ruperto Carola, gay modern banners, modern dresses and corps of modern students - and the vision is gone, and we are standing in the Heidelberg of to-day, cheering with the excited populace. The procession has taken a half hour to pass and is considerably over a mile long. The horses have been especially noteworthy for their spirit and beauty. We join the huzzas of the Heidelbergers, of whom not one is silent. Even our friend on the roof - or in the roof - gives tongue with prodigious power and adds his contribution to the universal roar which pronounces the procession a glorious success.

A. M. CUMMINGS.