It's a university, just like Trinity College in Dublin, only they don't wear gowns, nor keep within certain buildings, but scatter about over the whole town. We know several of the young men who are princes, and more or less related to crowned heads; but for all that, very simple, quiet, inoffensive creatures as ever you met. Billy Davis, after he was articled to that attorney in Abbey Street, had more impudence in him than them all put together.
The place itself is pretty, but I think it does n't suit my constitution. Maybe it's the running water, for there's a big river under the windows, but I am never free from cold in my head, and weak eyes. To be sure, we are always doing imprudent things, such as sitting out till after midnight in a summer-house, where the young Germans come to sing for us,—for singing and smoking, Molly, is their two passions. It's a melancholy kind of music they have, that has no tune whatever, nor anything like a tune in it; but as Mrs. G. and my daughters agree that it's beautiful, why, of course, I give in, and say the same. But, in confidence to you, Molly, I own that it puts me to sleep at once; and, indeed, most of our other amusements here are of the same kind. We are either botanizing, or looking for stones and shells, to tell us the age of the world. Faith! you may well stare, Molly, but it 's truth I 'm saying, that is what they pretend to find out. They got an elephant's jawbone the other day, that gave them great delight, and K. I. said, "I could tell a horse's age by his teeth, but for guessing how old the earth is by an elephant's grinders is clear beyond me."
When it rains and we can't go out, we have chemistry at home; but I 'm always in a fright about the combustibles, and I 'm sure one of these days we 'll pay for our curiosity. That man that comes to lecture has n't a bit of eyebrows, and only two fingers on one hand, and half a thumb on the other; not to say that he sat down one day on a pocketful of crackers, and blew himself up in a dreadful manner.
If the weather be fine,—and I was near saying, God grant it may n't—we are to have a course of astronomy every night next week. I can stand everything, however, better than "moral philosophy and economics." As to the first of the two, it's not even common-sense. It was only two evenings ago, they laughed at me for twenty minutes about a remark that's as true as the Bible.
"What relations does Locke say are least regarded?" says the professor to me.
"Faith! I know nothing about Locke," says I; "but I know well that the relations least regarded are poor relations."
As to the economics, if they could enliven it a bit by experiments, as they do the chemistry, I could bear it well enough; but it's awfully dry to be always listening to what you can't understand.
This is the way we live at Bonn; and though it's very elevating, I find it's very depressing to the spirits. But I don't think we'll remain much longer here, for K. I. is beginning to find out that the sciences are just as dear as silks and satins; and, as he remarked the other day, "it would be cheaper to have a dish of asparagus on the table than them dirty weeds that they are gathering only for the sake of their hard names."