"Though the Coopers' Dance takes place only once in seven years, the Butchers' Leap occurs annually, and always on Fasching Montag,—the Monday before Shrove Tuesday. I believe the ceremony is of great importance to the trade of the Butchers; as certain privileges granted to them are annually renewed at this time, and in connection with the Leap. These two ceremonies—of the Coopers' Dance and the Butchers' Leap—are now almost the last remains of the picturesque and quaint customs of old Munich.

"The Butchers commence proceedings by attending High Mass in St. Peter's Church,—close to the Schrannien Platz, or market-place, in which the fountain is situated. It is a desolate-looking church, this St. Peter's, as seen from without,—old, decaying, and ugly; within, tawdry and—though not desolate and decaying—ugly. From staringly white walls frown down on the spectator torture-pictures, alternating with huge gilt images of sentimental saints in clumsy drapery. The altars are masses of golden clouds and golden cherubs.

"Music, as from the orchestra of a theatre rather than from the choir of a church, greeted us as we entered. The Butchers were just passing out. We caught glimpses of scarlet coats; and saw two huge silver flagons, covered with a very panoply of gold and silver medals, borne aloft by pompous officials clothed in scarlet. Having watched the procession—some half-dozen tiny butchers' sons, urchins of five and six years old, with rosy, round faces and chubby hands, mounted on stalwart horses and dressed in little scarlet coats, top-boots, and jaunty green velvet hats—seven butchers' apprentices, the Leapers of the day, also dressed in scarlet and mounted on horseback—the musicians,—the long train of master-butchers and journeymen in long dark cloaks and with huge nosegays in their hats—and the scarlet officials bearing the decorated flagons,—having watched, I say, all these good folk wend their way in long procession up the narrow street leading from the church, and seen them cross the market-place in the direction of the Palace, where they are awaited by the King,—let us look around, and notice the features of the market-place:—for it is, in fact, a quaint old bit of the city, and well worth a glimpse.

"If I love the Ludwig Strasse as the most beautiful portion of the new Munich, I almost equally love the Schrannien Platz as about the quaintest part of old Munich. It is long and narrow as a market-place, but wide as a street. The houses are old; many of them very handsome, and rich with ornamental stucco-work,—

The roofs are steep, red tiled, and perforated with rows of little pent-house windows. The fronts of the houses are of all imaginable pale tints,—stone colors, pinks, greens, greys, and tawnies. Three of the four corners of the market-place are adorned with tall pepper-box towers, with domed roofs and innumerable narrow windows. At one end is the fountain; and in the centre a heavy, but quaint shrine,—a column supporting a gilt figure of the Madonna. The eye wanders down various picturesque streets which open into the market-place; and on one hand, above steep roofs, gaze down the two striking red-brick towers of the Frauen Kirche—the cathedral of Munich:—those two red towers which are seen in all views of this city, and which belong as much to Munich as the dome of St. Paul's does to the city of London,—those towers which in the haze of sunset are frequently transformed into violet-tinted columns, or about which in autumn and winter mists cling with a strange dreariness as if they were desolate mountain peaks!

"But the quaintest feature of all in the Schrannien Platz is a sort of arcade which runs around it. Here, beneath the low and massy arches, are crowded thick upon each other a host of small shops. What queer, dark little cells they are,—yet how picturesque! Here is a dealer in crucifixes,—next to him a woollen-draper, displaying bright striped woollen goods for the peasants,—then a general dealer, with heaps and bundles and tubs and chests containing every thing most heterogeneous,—and next to him a dealer in pipes. There are bustle and gloom always beneath these heavy low arches,—but they present a glorious bit of picturesque life. There are queer wooden booths, too, along one portion of the Schrannien Platz where it rather narrows, losing its character of market-place, and descending to that of an ordinary street. But the booths do not degenerate in their picturesque character. The earthenware booths—of which there are several—are truly delicious. Such rows and piles of dark green, orange, ruddy chocolate-brown, sea-green, pale yellow, and deep blue and grey vessels of all forms and sizes—all quaint, all odd—jugs, flagons, pipkins, queer pots with huge lids, queer tripods for which I know no name—things which always seem to me to come out of a witch's kitchen, but by means of which I suspect that my own dinner is cooked every day. All these heaps of crockery lie about the doors, and load the windows of the wooden booths, and line shelves and shelves within the gloom of the little shops themselves. When I first came here these old crockery shops were a more frequent study to me than any thing else in the old town.

"We ascended a steep, narrow staircase leading out of this arcade into one of the houses above it, from which we were to witness the leaping into the fountain. I looked out of the window on the crowd that began to collect around