I have seen the banker Rothschild several times driving about the city.  This one—­Anselmo, the most celebrated of the brothers—­holds a mortgage on the city of Jerusalem.  He rides about in style, with officers attending his carriage.  He is a little baldheaded man with marked Jewish features, and is said not to deceive his looks.  At any rate, his reputation is none of the best, either with Jews or Christians.  A caricature was published some time ago in which he is represented as giving a beggar-woman by the wayside a kreutzer—­the smallest German coin.  She is made to exclaim, “God reward you a thousand fold!” He immediately replies, after reckoning up in his head, “How much have I then?  Sixteen florins and forty kreutzers!"...

The Eschernheim Tower, at the entrance of one of the city gates, is universally admired by strangers on account of its picturesque appearance, overgrown with ivy and terminated by the little pointed turrets which one sees so often in Germany on buildings three or four centuries old.  There are five other watch-towers of similar form, which stand on different sides of the city at the distance of a mile or two, and generally upon an eminence overlooking the country.  They were erected several centuries ago to discern from afar the approach of an enemy, and protect the caravans of merchants, which at that time traveled from city to city, from the attacks of robbers.

The Eschernheim Tower is interesting from another circumstance which, whether true or not, is universally believed.  When Frankfort was under the sway of a prince, a Swiss hunter, for some civil offense, was condemned to die.  He begged his life from the prince, who granted it only on condition that he should fire the figure nine with his rifle through the vane of this tower.  He agreed, and did it; and at the present time one can distinguish a rude nine on the vane, as if cut with bullets, while two or three marks at the side appear to be from shots that failed.

[Footnote A:  From “Views Afoot.”  Published by G.P.  Putnam’s Sons.]

HEIDELBERG[A]

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

Here in Heidelberg at last, and a most glorious town it is.  This is our first morning in our new rooms, and the sun streams warmly in the eastern windows as I write, while the old castle rises through the blue vapor on the side of the Kaiserstuhl.  The Neckar rushes on below, and the Odenwald, before me, rejoices with its vineyards in the morning light....

There is so much to be seen around this beautiful place that I scarcely know where to begin a description of it.  I have been wandering among the wild paths that lead up and down the mountain-side or away into the forests and lonely meadows in the lap of the Odenwald.  My mind is filled with images of the romantic German scenery, whose real beauty is beginning to displace the imaginary picture which I had painted with the enthusiastic words of Howitt.  I seem to stand now upon the Kaiserstuhl, which rises above Heidelberg, with that magnificent landscape around me from the Black Forest and Strassburg to Mainz, and from the Vosges in France to the hills of Spessart in Bavaria.