Heidelberg has been celebrating its quincentenary this week with great
solemnity, one of the most curious features of the occasion being the presentation by the Pope to the University of a splendid catalogue of the works and MSS. of which Tilly despoiled the University in the Thirty Years' War, and which are now in the possession of the Vatican. To send you a list of the valuable property of which one's own predecessors have in former times rifled your ancestors, is a somewhat ironic form of compliment, and it appears that the Pro-Rector of Heidelberg, while acknowledging the present Pope's courtesy, did manage to convey, either by his language or by his tone, some hint that he did not regard this formal acknowledgment of what Heidelberg had lost to Rome, as a satisfaction for the past. The Crown Prince of Germany delivered an address, in which he impressed on his country the need of fostering still more carefully in the new united Empire the culture in the creation of which Heidelberg has in the past had so large a share. The grand old Schloss was in the evening made the scene of festival, where the Prince and the Grand Duke of Baden held a sort of court. It must have been a very gay and brilliant sight, with the grand mili- tary and grand academic costumes so freely mingled in the crowds which thronged it. The most brilliant of the addresses delivered on Tuesday was that of Professor Zeller, the President of the French Institute, who, by his tact and generosity, quite disarmed German jealousy.
Previous page
