Charles Godfrey Leland (Volume 1); A Biography (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1906. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V PARIS IN '48 Apprenticeship was not at an end when Munich was deserted. I count as part of it the Rye's wanderings to Vienna, -- then " all brilliant foam and sunshine and laughing sirens, where what new thing Strauss would play in the evening was the great event of the day," -- to Prague, and Nuremberg, and Dresden, and Berlin, to the towns of Holland and Belgium; I count, too, the start for Cracow, the encounter with Russian customs officials on the frontier, the necktie concealing suspicious papers, -- how like a student's necktie; and what were those papers, I wonder ? -- and the experiences at the Leipzig yearly fair, and, above all, the gaiety and good comradeship that was the best part of the journey. Over its every incident, big or little, was the glamour of youth, and its climax was Paris. In Paris he returned to the more serious business of the student. His chief end was to make what he could of the lectures at the College Louis le Grand and the Sorbonne. One course was the " very dull series on German Literature by Philarete Chasles," and I do not wonder he found it dull, if I can judge by the " Memoirs " of the lecturer, and my own amazement to discover that a Frenchman of letters, who had lived through the stirring days of the Romantic Revolt, could write the dullest autobiography it has ever been my misfortune to read. But towards the end of 1847 and beginning of 1848, there was more for the wideawake youth to learn from Paris itself than from the most accomplished lecturer. Shortly after his arrival, the young student took rooms in the old Hotel du Luxembourg in the Rue de la Harpe, described by Washington Irving in that story of the girl with the black ribbon round her throat, brought home by the youth, before whose horrified eyes her h...