It may have contributed not a little to the reputation of Goettingen and Heidelberg with foreigners, that a good and clear German is spoken in both places by the professors.  In Tuebingen, on the contrary, even in Munich, to a great extent, the local dialect prevails to such a degree, that students from Northern Germany, many of whom frequent these cities in the summer session, find it difficult, nay, almost impossible, to understand at first, especially the broad Suabian of Tuebingen.  Here, however, as the system of dictation prevails, the slowness of utterance compensates in a measure for its indistinctness and incorrectness.

In some places, where academic freedom, as the students style it, exists to a high degree, a general scraping of the feet admonishes the lecturer to repeat his words or be more distinct and clear in his enunciation.  This pedal language, though often disregarded, still does not fail in the end in producing the desired effect.

With such characteristics, it cannot be a matter of wonder, if some time be required to be spent in hearing lectures daily before the full benefit can be fairly appreciated.  Many will appear slow in the extreme; and the constant recourse to notes, and the tedious manner, will create a feeling of weariness hard to overcome.  However, these peculiarities are soon forgotten in the excellence of the matter, and their disagreeableness is scarcely noticed after a few weeks, except in extreme cases.  The mannerism fades away, and the hearer learns to follow from thought to thought under the guidance of an experienced leader, whose living words he hears, whose thought he feels as it is communicated directly to him.

Not so much from the actual things heard, the actual facts mastered, is the lecture-system valuable to the student, as for the method of study which he derives from it.  He is no longer like an automaton, a school-boy guided by his teacher and text-book, but is spoken to as an independent thinker.  Authorities are quoted, which he may consult at his leisure.  No subject is exhausted,—­it is only touched upon.  He learns to teach himself.

Far different is the mental training thus acquired from that gained in the same amount of time spent in mere reading.  Thought is stimulated to a far greater degree.  The lecture-room becomes a laboratory, where the mind of the hearer, in immediate contact with that of a man mature in the ways of study, of one whose whole life seems to have prepared him for the present hour, assimilates to itself more than knowledge.  The lecturer gives what no books can give, his own force to impel his own words.  His mind is ever active while he speaks.  The hearer feels its workings, and his own is stirred into action by the contact.  It is not given to all to enjoy the conversation and intercourse of the master-minds of the age:  in the lecture-room they speak to us immediately; we feel the current of their life-blood; it pulsates through all they say.