After we had exchanged congratulations, Dennett, B——­ and I set out for the Zeil.  The streets were full of people, shouting to one another and to those standing at the open windows.  We failed not to cry, "Prosst Neu Jahr!" wherever we saw a damsel at the window, and the words came back to us more musically than we sent them.  Along the Zeil the spectacle was most singular.  The great wide street was filled with companies of men, marching up and down, while from the mass rang up one deafening, unending shout, that seemed to pierce the black sky above.  The whole scene looked stranger and wilder from the flickering light of the swinging lamps, and I could not help thinking it must resemble a night in Paris during the French Revolution.  We joined the crowd and used our lungs as well as any of them.  For some time after we returned home, companies passed by, singing “with us ’tis ever so!” but at three o’clock all was again silent.

CHAPTER XIV.

WINTER IN FRANKFORT—­A FAIR, AN INUNDATION AND A FIRE.

After New Year, the Main, just above the city, and the lakes in the promenades, were frozen over.  The ice was tried by the police, and having been found of sufficient thickness, to the great joy of the schoolboys, permission was given to skate.  The lakes were soon covered with merry skaters, and every afternoon the banks were crowded with spectators.  It was a lively sight to see two or three hundred persons darting about, turning and crossing like a flock of crows, while, by means of arm-chairs mounted on runners, the ladies were enabled to join in the sport, and whirl around among them.  Some of the broad meadows near the city, which were covered with water, were the resort of the schools.  I went there often in my walks, and always found two or three schools, with the teachers, all skating together, and playing their winter games on the ice.  I have often seen them on the meadows along the Main; the teachers generally made quite as much noise as the scholars in their sports.

In the Art Institute I saw the picture of “Huss before the Council of Constance,” by the painter Lessing.  It contains upwards of twenty figures.  The artist has shown the greatest skill in the expression and grouping of these.  Bishops and Cardinals in their splendid robes are seated around a table, covered with parchment folios, and before them stands Huss alone.  His face, pale and thin with long imprisonment, he has lain one hand on his breast, while with the other he has grasped one of the volumes on the table; there is an air of majesty, of heavenly serenity on his lofty forehead and calm eye.  One feels instinctively that he has truth on his side.  There can be no deception, no falsehood in those noble features.  The three Italian cardinals before him appear to be full of passionate rage; the bishop in front, who holds the imperial pass given to Huss, looks on with an expression of scorn, and the priests