bands, some of whom play finely.  The best, which is also the favorite company, is from Saxony, called “The Mountain Boys.”  They are now playing in our street, and while I write, one of the beautiful choruses from Norma comes up through the din of the crowd.  In fact, music is heard over the whole city, and the throngs that fill every street with all sorts of faces and dresses, somewhat relieve the monotony that was beginning to make Frankfort tiresome.

We have an ever-varied and interesting scene from our window.  Besides the motley crowd of passers-by, there are booths and tables stationed thick below.  One man in particular is busily engaged in selling his store of blacking in the auction style, in a manner that would do credit to a real Down-caster.  He has flaming certificates exhibited, and prefaces his calls to buy with a high-sounding description of his wonderful qualities.  He has a bench in front, where he tests on the shoes of his customers, or if none of those are disposed to try it, he rubs it on his own, which shine like mirrors.  So he rattles on with amazing fluency in French, German and Italian, and this, with his black beard and moustache and his polite, graceful manner, keeps a crowd of customers around him, so that the wonderful blacking goes off as fast as he can supply it.

April 6.—­Old Winter’s gales are shut close behind us, and the sun looks down with his summer countenance.  The air, after the long cold rain, is like that of Paradise.  All things are gay and bright, and everybody is in motion.  Spring commenced with yesterday in earnest, and lo! before night the roads were all dry and fine as if there had been no rain for a month; and the gardeners dug and planted in ground which, eight days before, was covered with snow!

After having lived through the longest winter here, for one hundred and fifty years, we were destined to witness the greatest flood for sixty, and little lower than any within the last three hundred years.  On the 28th of March, the river overflooded the high pier along the Main, and rising higher and higher, began to come into the gates and alleys.  Before night the whole bank was covered and the water intruded into some of the booths in the Romerberg.  When I went there the next morning, it was a sorrowful sight.  Persons were inside the gate with boats; so rapidly had it risen, that many of the merchants had no time to move their wares, and must suffer great damage.  They were busy rescuing what property could bo seized in the haste, and constructing passages into the houses which were surrounded.  No one seemed to think of buying or selling, but only on the best method to escape the danger.  Along the Main it was still worse.  From the measure, it had risen seventeen feet above its usual level, and the arches of the bridge were filled nearly to the top.  At the Upper-Main gate, every thing was flooded—­houses, gardens, workshops, &c.; the water had even overrun