60

DOMESTIC MANNEBS OF TUE TBUSSIANS.

ugliness to Neuwied —the paradise of the Moravian Brothers,where the streets are cut as trim and Square as a Quaker'scoat, and the town has been devised after the parallelogramprimness of some " New Harmony," or " Abode of Love."

The ground-plan of Mannheim, indeed, is a kind of civicchess-board, where rectangular blocks of houses stand for the" chequers," and cross-bar streets, intersecting each other atequal distances, represent the lines separating one Square patchfrom another. In a word, the reader has but to imagine atown laid out like a draft-board, with a palace (about as palatialin design as an Industrial School) situate at the upper end, anda Suspension bridge (fashioned after the style of our own Pontde Ilammersmitli) at the lower one; and with a broad streetrunning up between the " chequers " from the Neckarbrücketo the Schloss, and an equally wide roadway stretching acrossthe civic draft-board, and planted with a few stumpy trees ;*while here and there one of the chequers, as it were, is leftblank, so as to serve for an open "Market Platz," or "Parade,"or " Theater" ditto;-—the reader, we repeat, has but to forma mental bird's-eye view of such a town in order to havea tolerable notion of the architectural beauties of Mannheimand its principal thoroughfares.

Moreover, the street nomenclature (if such a term can beapplied to thoroughfares that have only initial letters andfigures to mark them^, has the same uninviting air of "System"about it as the laying out of the town itself—the different blocksof residences being distinguished like policemen with us, asA 1, A 2, &c.; B 1, B 2, and so on; so that an inhabitant ofthe town, instead of boasting a Square, or terrace, or crescent,

* This planted roadway is the only thoroughfare in Mannheim that rejoicesin the singular distinction of a name — it being known as the "Planken"(Planches).