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The Zeil was at all times a lively street, and is still famous for its shops and hotels. Its length is about that of the Haymarket, but, children having no sense of proportion, to me it appeared a thoroughfare of extraordinary dimensions and the most imposing character. As my Great-Uncle Anselm resided in it and as I was taken to see him every Saturday, I often had the satisfaction of leaving the silent quarter of the town in which we lived, for the brilliant and animated Zeil, of which I never tired. At one end, facing the Rossmarkt and the Hotel d’Angleterre, stood, and I believe still stands, the old Guard’s House, which was alternately occupied by Austrian, Prussian, and Bavarian soldiers, and which was built of red sandstone with a richly carved pediment representing military trophies. At the corner of the Fahrgasse at the other end stood another guard-house, the town prison; a narrow one-storeyed edifice which I never passed without a shiver, for I could see the pale faces of the prisoners peering through the iron-barred windows, and hear, or perhaps fancied I heard, their coarse laughter and savage cries. Our business offices are still situated in the Fahrgasse.

My Father's house was then in the most fashionable quarter of the town, at the corner of the Mainzer Strasse, where it forms a sharp angle. It has now long been levelled to the ground, and a street built over its site. It was a large mansion with a courtyard and a garden, and opposite were the stables, which my Grandfather had stocked with fine Arab horses. The head coachman was an old Frenchman named Michel, who had been a soldier in the Grand Armée, and had gone through the disastrous Russian campaign. He had had some of his toes frozen during the memorable passage of the Beresina. There were few carriages to be seen in the streets of Frankfort in those days - chiefly lumbering old coaches and chariots - but there was no lack of four-wheeled cabs. Most objectionable conveyances they were, the horses were slow, overworked and under-bred brutes, while the drivers were surly, ill-conditioned boors. There was a great sensation when we drove out in the first brougham seen in the town, which my Mother had imported from London. It was a delightful improvement on the heavy chariot.

Frankfort was in many respects behind the times, considering its wealth and its situation, for its inhabitants were slow to adopt the innovations and refinements of Paris and London, being content to live unostentatiously as their fathers had done. Sea fish, for instance, was an unknown delicacy, and game was a great luxury in those days at Frankfort. The comparatively late introduction of railways may have accounted for the somewhat primitive simplicity of the worthy burghers. The first railway built in Germany was from Fulda to Nuremberg, the second from Frankfort to Höchst, a distance of about ten miles. I was present at the opening ceremony when this line was extended in 1844, and I remember seeing a locomotive called the Lightning, garnished with evergreens, steaming out of the station. Although the railways were rapidly extended after that time, I can recall being aroused one night by the arrival of my parents on their return from Paris, and being told that it had taken them five days to