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1764, tlien the " octagon tower," at the corner next tlie viaduct-like " terrace," was Struck by liglitning, and the interior of theCastle entirely consumed by fire, as the Elector Charles-Theo-dore was returning to it from his residence at Mannheim.

Since then it has never been restored or occupied, and itnow remains a mere shell of red-stone walls, having beenroofless for nearly a Century; still it is one of the mostinteresting ruins in Europe, not only on account of its variedfortunes, but for its picturesque Situation, as well as its vastnessand its architectural riches, exhibiting as they do the stylesof different centuries and the taste of its different founders.

The town of Heidelberg contains little to attract the stran-ger. It is, as we said, one interminable, narrow thoroughfare,as long as our Oxford Street, and extending from the railwayStation to the handsome gate of Carl-Theodore. The line ofhouses is squeezed in between the " Castle" mountain (Schloss-berg) and the Neckar, and is broken by the clumsy, bulboustower of the Church of the Holy Ghost (a most accommodatingand Christian edifice, being used by Catholics and Protestantsby turns), the square turret of the Church of St. Peter (againstwhose door Jerome of Prague, the noble friend of Huss, nailedhis theses, and in whose pulpit he afterwards defended them),and the Temple-Bar-like front of the Jesuits' Church (a heavymarble affair, in the usual Jesuitical style of church architec-ture). The Haupt Strasse (High Street) of Heidelberg is,comparatively speaking, busy with passengers—the Universitystudents, with their gay-coloured cloth caps and striped watch-ribbons, composing the greater number of the pedestrians, andthe shops being more like those of Paris and London thanthe ordinary sleepy-looking " Magazins " of a German town.Indeed, the whole place has the look and bustle of a thrivingCommunity. The University, however, is very much like a

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