in Germany, having been founded in 1386. The number of students that flocked to it at one time was very great; but their annual average is now not more than about 700. In the departments of law and medicine it still maintains its ancient renown. Mittermeyer the jurist, and Tiedemann the anatomist, are acknowledged to rank among the first of modern authorities on their respective subjects. Near the university is the library, which contains 150,000 volumes, besides numerous and valuable MSS. The famous Palatine library, sacked and pillaged in the Thirty Years' War, was partly restored in 1815 by Pope Pius VII., to whose predecessors a portion of it had been sent as a present by the Bavarians. There is a tradition that Tilly the imperialist general, being in want of straw for his cavalry after the storming of the town, used the invaluable MSS. of the elector's library to litter his horses. In a suburban building, formerly a Dominican convent, are good museums of anatomy and zoology. By far the most interesting relic of the past in Heidelberg is the castle, once the residence of the electors palatine, and a magnificent combination of the palace and the fortress. It is now in ruins, but is sufficiently well preserved to show the tastes of the different occupants, who added to it the architectural styles of the successive centuries, and the horrors of war in the three conflagrations and ten sieges which it had to undergo. In the beginning of last century it was rebuilt and restored to its old magnificence; but in 1764 it was set on fire by lightning, and burnt to the ground, and since that time it has continued to crumble away an untenanted ruin. In one of the cellars is the famous Heidelberg tun, constructed in 1751, and able to contain 800 hogsheads of wine. It has never been filled, however, since 1769. The view to be obtained from the castle-rock is in its way one of the finest in Europe, and has afforded the material for many a poet's song.

The causes of the decay of Heidelberg are not difficult to trace. In 1622, the era of the Thirty Years' War, it was taken by Tilly after a month's siege, and delivered over to plunder for three days. Eleven years later it was recovered by the Swedes, who did the town nearly as much damage as the Austrians had done. But the cruelties and brutalities of this period were far surpassed by those which devastated the town at the close of the seventeenth century, when the French under Turenne turned the whole palatinate into a desert. In 1688 the town was again stormed and plundered by the French under Melac, in comparison with whom the brutal Tilly was a humane commander and a generous foe. Five years later Melac was in his turn outstripped and left behind by Chambly, whose fiendish excesses have made the French name a byword of horror and execration in Germany to this day. It is matter of wonder that after such a history Heidelberg should exist at all. It is a place of no commercial activity, and is increasing very slowly. Were it not for the students and the visitors, whom the beauty and cheapness of the place attract in considerable numbers, the general stagnation would be complete. Pop. about 15,000.

a fortified town of Württemberg, formerly a free imperial city, on the right bank of the Neckar, 26 miles N. of Stuttgart. The most interesting of its buildings is the church of St. Kilian, a Gothic edifice with a beautiful tower (225 feet high), the lower part of which was built in the thirteenth century, the upper part in 1529. The town-hall is an antique building, in which some interesting ancient records are deposited; and in the outskirts of the town is the tower in which Götz von Berlichingen was confined in 1525. The house of the Teutonic knights is now used as a barrack. Heilbronn has a gymnasium, public library, and a richly endowed hospital. The vicinity produces a tolerably good wine, and the town itself carries on an extensive transit trade between Frankfort and South Germany. Its chief manufactures are woollen cloths, carpets, tobacco, silver articles, and chemicals. Pop. about 10,000.