The Arizona sentinel., 1886-09-18
HEIDELBERG'S JUBILEE.
A Notable Gathering at the Old
 University Tour.
History of the Village and Count Ru- precht Founder of the Great School A World-Renowncd Library
 Customs of the Students.

The romantic town of Heidelberg, in South Germany, has been in a whirl of excitement in celebrating the five hun dredth anniversary of the founding of Heidelberg University. The Grown Prince of Germany has been so gracious as to be on hand. The hereditary Grand Duke of Baden has royalty entertained his guests in town. The little place has been so filled with visitors from all parts of the civilized world that the hotels could not begin to contain them, and guests have had to go away in trains to stay all night and to return to the festivities in the morning. There were many Americans among the visitors. The Johns Hopkins University, of Baltimore, Yale and Harvard colleges, Oxford and Cambridge in England, and the Edinburg University in Scotland were represented Delegates were sent from the universities of Bologna, Upsola Lund, Leyden, Utrecht. Amster- dam, Moscow, the French Academy, from the Pope at Rome, and from the universities of Stockholm and Brussels. The jubilee began with services of praise to the Almighty for preserving the uni versity intact while the town itself has been pillaged and sacked again and again and its beautiful architecture destroyed. Following honorary de- grees were bestowed upon distin- guished persons on both continents. Hhor, md hnY nA .y, Neckar Hall, at which the Grand Duke of Baden presided. The Crown Prince of Germany was present, and healths were drank in high German fashion. Afterward there was a procession, in which the historical Counts and Barons were represented in appropriate cos tune, and the celebration closed with grand ball and special performance at Heidelberg's only theater.
 The town is of small consequence- commercially or politically. It is situ- atedi in a picturesque and fertile region, a few miles from the Rhine, on the river Neekar.- The nearest large towns are Carlsruhe and Minnheim. The Neckar narrows as it approaches the town, and flowing between precipltous steeps, passes on to the broad, open country below. When the university was founded the whole region was wild. Every mountain pass was infested by robber bands, and property belonged to him who had the strongest band. The founder of the university was Count Palatine Ruprecht. It was the Counts fine, old-fashined way to confiscate the treasures of the merchants of the South who happened in his direction as they carried on a trade with the countries of the north and west of Eu- rope. It was the fashion for powerful nobles to found institutions of learning in that age, when the new studies" as disputations according to the Aris- totelian method were called, rose in the estimation of thinking men and scholars. Carl of Prague was so en- thusiastically fond of the new studies that he held disputations in a kind of tournament in his palace at Prague. Count Palatine Ruprecht l. felt the in- fiuence of his cousin, and he founded the University of Heidelberg, aided by the gold he had squeezed out of the un- lucky commercial travellers of that age. The university is the oldest in Germany. Those of Vienna and Prague only are older. It was a Roman Catholic in- stitution originally, and was opened by the celebration of mass, attended by all the students, on October 13, 1886. The jubilee was held in August, in order not to interfere with the work of the school year.
 The town itself lies principally on one street, which is about three miles long. It was once renowned for its magnificent architecture, but this has perished in the bloody sieges, wars, and confagrations from which the town has suffered. The important buildings are few. The largest is the Church of the Holy Ghost, in which the religious Serv ces were held and the conferring of honorary degrees took place. Another h 'storical church is that of St. Peters, on the door of which Jerome of Prague. the companian of the martyr Huss, nailed his theses attack ing the Pope. Every body has heard of the ruins of Heidelberg castle, formerly the residence of the Electors of Pala- the, and which, in 1764, was set on fire and consumed. Every American wis itor goes to see the marvellous ruin, and he does not neglect to see the tun in the cellar which will hold two hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred quart bottles of wine. The tun is thirty-s feet high, and was made in the first part of the last century. But