ur oldest and noblest families is not deemed well-born enough to mate with a lack-land German prince, whose ancestors a hundred and fifty years ago were gentlemen about court, and nothing more. A tradesman is " well-born," but the daughter of an Anglo- -Norman house, who marries the sixth son of Prince Potztausend, is doomed to bear her maiden name, and know that out of England the union is regarded as morganatic, and her children as illegiti- mate. Germans, like Erenchmen, are quite incapable of understanding English aristocratic distinctions. I have known a lady refuso to 2 G( i many, Present and Past. allow her daughter to dance with sons of some of our first county families, and heirs to "baronetcies, because they bore no "von" before their surnames, and therefore could be no gentlemen. In a drama of one of the best German playwrights, laid in England, an " esquir " {sic) is addressed as " milord," an earl's wife is entitled " Lady Harriot," and the eldest son of a peer is Sir Jones, Baronet. Englishmen too often speak with contempt of the German nobility, because titles are common and the majority of the bearers of them have no estates. As a fact the majority of nobles without estates have flowing in their veins the bluest blood in Germany, whereas some of the princes, who can only mate with royalty, are mere parvenus. The stratification of the German classes, and of the aristocracy, is most peculiar, and quite unlike what we meet with in England. It is absolutely inexplicable without an historic sketch of its growth and alteration. When the mist clears off early German history, we find the inhabitants of the land divided into two strongly marked classes, the Free and the Not-Free. The not-free class constituted most certainly a conquered people, distinct in blood from the Germans who subjugated them. The conquered race remained bound to the soil, and were denied the right of bearing arms, and pleading in a court. They were like the Kayas in Turkey. They w-ere neither " wehrfahig " nor " rechtsfiihig." The serf tilled the soil, the freeman held juris- diction over it, and fought in its defence. Between the classes hovered a swarm of Lazzi or Freilazzi (i.e. Frei-gelassene), men emancipated from serfdom, that they might become " wehrfahig," capable of wielding a sword, and fight for their lords. But it took three descents to convert a Lazzus into a Freeman. One sharp law kept the classes apart as castes — this was the law of " Ebenbiirtigkeit," which forbade a freeman marrying below his class. If he did so, both he and his children ceased to be free, and were numbered among serfs. The freewoman who married a serf became herself a serf. This gave occasion to a common specidation in the early Middle Ages, which had to be checked by law. Nobles sent their serfs out into the world to pretend to be freemen, and so to pick up free wives. Then the lord asserted his prerogative, and the deluded wife found herself suddenly degraded. Among the Saxons the serf who acted thus was punished with The Upper Nobility. 3 death. The object of the law of " Ebenbiirtigkeit " was to keep Teutonic blood pure from various and villein strains. Salic law, and the law of the Eipuarian Franks, knew nothing of a nobility. Only two birth ranks were recognised — the free and the not-free. Nobility and freedom were equivalent ideas. All free-born were " ebenbiirtig." But though in the Frank empire there was no privileged class among freemen, there were personal privileges enjoyed by a favoured few. These were the men who stood in close relation to the king, and acted as his officers in the administration of justice. These officers were noble, in so far that they were raised above their fellow-freemen, but this ministerial nobility lacked the essential element of aristocracy — it was personal, not hereditary. These officers, whether temporal or spiritual, held their nobilitv for life only. Such were the bishops, chief abbots, dukes and counts, the royal butler, sewer, forester, and marshal. The great bulk of freemen lived on their estates, and let them out to free or servile farmers. As enjoying freeholds, they were entitled Freiherren — free lords — or Barons. Bar is an old German word meaning a man, that is a man of substance, exercising all the rights of a freeman. 1 The holder of an allodial estate was an adeliger, a gentleman. If he lost his estate he ceased to be an adeliger, but not to be a freeman. But I am not now going to speak of the landed gentry who constituted the lower nobility, but of the royal officers who have formed themselves into a superior caste. The Empire under the Carlovingians was this. The whole country was parcelled into shires. A shire (gau) usually took its name from the river that flowed through it, or from the conspicuous object in it ; as a frontier it was called a mark. Over every " gau " and " mark " was a count — " graf." Over the royal stable was a Stallgraff (constable or marshal). Over the crown land, a steward called Pfalzgraf or Count Palatine, held rule. The Grenzgrafen or Markgrafen (margraves) kept the frontiers against Sclavonic barbarians. The Burgraves held the royal castles; Woodgraves, Saltgraves, Dykegraves, Millgraves, and Hansgraves, saw after Imperial rights in later times in forests and salt mines ; looked to the condition of the mills, canals, and tho trade of the 1 Lex Alleman. c. 76, " barum aut foeminam," man or woman. It is no doubj from the same root as vir in Latin. 4 Germany, Present and Pa . Hanseatio towns. Thcro was even a Spielgraf, with jurisdiction over the tumblers, jugglers, minstrels and clowns of the royal household. A Graf was a minister of the king, and on his death his office and title were given by the crown to another favourite. The title is derived from gerefa, judex, exactor fiscalis ; and it retains in England some of its old significance as applied to the sheriff of the county (scire-gerefa) and the portreve (port-gcrefa). Among the ancient Germans a duke — " Herzog " — was the general in command in time of war, and with the cessation of war his office and title expired. Dukes, however, soon retained their titles, and remained as permanent centres round whom the country could be mobilised. When, as with the Alamanni and the Bavarians, they ruled over distinct races, the rank of duke became hereditary in a family, and with the break-up of the empire the dukes became independent. It was by crushing the dukes that the Carlovingian monarch}' was founded. Under Charles the Great there were none ; but with the fall of the Empire they reappeared, the holders of several counties and possessors of large estates. Conrad I. endeavoured to reduce them. Henry I. issued from their midst, and thenceforth their position was recognised. There were dukes in Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria, Austria, Swabia, and Lorraine. The kings used their utmost endeavours to bring the duchies into their own families. The Bavarian alone maintained its independence and integrity till the thirteenth century, when it fell a prey to division. At the same time the Sclavonic princes assumed the ducal title, fresh duchies were created, and the ducal office became titular, nothing more. But to return to the Counts. The office of count was, as already said, given for life only. But as, on the death of a count, the transfer of the office to another family caused jealousy and discontent, it was soon found advisable to make these offices hereditary. With the office went very generally crown lands given in feof. These were also continued now in a family, and became hereditary like the office, by tail male. Even in the last days of the Frank monarchy there was no hereditary nobility in Germany, other than that of the Freiherren ; but the germ of a court aristocracy was laid, which from generation to generation received from the crown great benefices, and appropriated the most lucrative The Upper Nobility. 5 offices in the realm. This " Beamten " aristocracy was, no doubt, in part recruited from the landed gentry, the Free-lords seated on their allodial estates, but far more from the flunkies of court favour, emancipated serfs, and all the rabble who hang about a court. As soon as these benefices and offices became hereditary, the division between the nobility and the gentry was completed. Every crown officer had originally represented the sovereign in his " gau " or " mark," and acted for the king as source of justice in it, responsible to none save the king. Thus he became " immediate " (unmittelbar). All other freemen, however large their estates, were "mediate" (mittelbar), subject to the jurisdic- tion of the crown, acting through the count. It was natural that the families of these imperial officers should hold their heads high above the ordinary landed gentry, over whom they, in the name of the king, exercised authority. " Beamten " insolence has been the bane of Germany in all ages. When the offices became hereditary, the dignity which was at one time personal passed imperceptibly to the family, and thus arose the conception of a noble race towering above the simple Freiherren living on their estates and with pedigrees purer and more ancient than those of these minions, or soldiers of fortune, who lorded it over them and disdained to associate with them in marriage. But in the eye of the law, for a long while, there were still but two classes — freemen and serfs. The nobles were the first only among their equals, primi inter pares, nothing more. The Sachsen-Spiegel, drawn up about 1215, classes all together : "princes, barons, and ordinary freemen are alike in fine and wehrgeld." And though, in documents of the twelfth century, the same person is termed indiscriminately princeps, nobilis, and liber, the great feudal vassals of the crown persisted in distinguishing themselves as princes, and cutting themselves off from the true landed nobility on the soil. The Schwaben- Spiegel, drawn up a century later than the Sachsen-Spiegel, shows us how successful they had been. In it the freemen are divided into three distinct classes, the Semper freien — the great vassals holding " immediately " from the crown ; the Mittel freien — the gentry living on their freeholds, or serving in the courts of the great vassals ; and the Landsassen, the yeomen, farming their own small properties, or renting those of landlords. 6 Germany, Present and Past. But tho surest token of a cleavage of ranks is found in the lack of " Ebcnbiirtigkeit." Now, whereas the Sachsen-Spiegel makes all freemen, from the yeoman to the duke, ebenburtig — able, that is, to contract marriages with each other's families, without loss of rank — the Schwaben-Spiegel makes an union between a Semper frei and a Mittel frei so great a mesalliance, that it disqualifies the children from inheriting their father's rank and dignities. Step by step an hereditary nobility had established itself among the officers of the crown, enjoying special immunities and sovereign dignities. It was no longer a class of freemen devoting itself to serve the crown, but a close corporation of princes (Fiirsten), whose members, whether high up or low down, could intermarry, but who could not unite with those who were " mediate." The title of Prince (Princeps, Fiirst) had, till the close of the twelfth century. no technical signification, but was applied to rulers generally, that is, to all who bore authority. It was only at the end of the twelfth century that the Imperial Chancery gave it a special signi- fication, and made it applicable only to those exercising direct control over their lordships — to Dukes, Margraves, Counts Palatine, and such counts as remained invested with " immunitas," as those of Tyrol and Henneberg, and to bishops, abbots and abbesses, who also enjoyed this prerogative, as the Provost of Berchtesgaden, and the Abbess of Gandersheim. When the duchies of Swabia, Franconia, and Elsass fell into abeyance through the extinction of the Hohenstaufen, the small barons, or lords of manors, were left pretty much their own masters, and they took advantage of the occasion to assert, and, where possible, to establish their sovereignty over their petty estates. The Emperors experienced so much opposition from their great vassals, that they favoured these small landholders, who always held by the Imperial crown in its contest with the Electors. At the close of the fourteenth century there were organised con- federacies of the knightly lords of manors in Swabia, Franconia, and on the Ehine, and in 1422 the Emperor Sigismund took them under his protection and confirmed them in their immunity. They also were " immediate." But the princes would not allow them to be " ebenburtig " with themselves, for the Free-imperial-knights were sovereign on their own estates; whereas tbe princes were so on estates held in feof from the Emperor, and exercised their juris- The Upper Nobility. 7 diction over other families who were " mittelhar." The real reason was, however, that there were too many of them. The Free Knights of the Ehine formed themselves in 1527 into the cantons of the Upper, Middle, and Lower Ehine. Following this example, in 1543, the Swabian knights organised themselves into five cantons. In England the Crown was sufficiently strong to prevent the great vassals from breaking loose from the constitution. In France, the duchies of Normandy, Brittany, Gnienne, and Burgundy, the counties of Toulouse, Champagne, Flanders, etc., established their independence under the last feeble Carlovingians. But the Crown of France had the good fortune to be able to gather them in, one after another, under its sovereignty, so that only a few— as Bouil- lon, Doubes, Orange, Avignon, and Venaissin — were able to main- tain themselves to a late period in partial independence. Finally, the hand of Bichelieu, under Louis XIII., reduced them all to subjection. But it was different in Germany; the Crown there was much more truly elective than in England and France, where it was so in theory rather than in fact. In Germany it passed from the Frank to the Saxon, to the Bavarian, the Swabian, and the Austrian houses. Elections were disputed, and rival candidates maintained brief authority. The princes, electors, and great vassals became all-powerful, and the supremacy of the Emperor existed more in name than in reality. The princes — that is, the great feudal vassals — had their own code of laws, the Fiirstenrecht ; and by means of that established themselves as a class apart from all others, as the highest stratum of the social lump. In the Volksrcchte of the several German races, the principle prevailed that " the child should follow the inferior hand ; " that, for instance, in a marriage between free men and serfs, the child should be servile. But this principle was not intended to go further. The Fiirstenrecht gave it another charac- ter altogether, by making it applicable to the intercourse of princes with the gentry and biirgers. Gentry and burgers were free men ; but the princes began to treat them as the free men had treated the serfs — to forbid intermarriage with them. The Yolksrechte estab- lished the law to keep Teutonic blood from intermixture. The Fiirstenrecht used it for the purpose of glorifying the class of crown vassals at the expense of others. 8 Germany, Present a/nd Past. Nothing of the sort existed elsewhere. In France no law of the sort was known. The Princes of Vendome, Verneuil, Verniandois, Maine, Penthievre, etc., were legitimatised, not because they sprang from the union of a sovereign with a woman of another class, but because they were the children of mistresses. Among the noble families the children proved their blood by their father's pedigree. It is the same in England. James II. married the daughter of Chancellor Hyde, and their daughters Mary and Anne came to the throne. This could not have been in Germany. Mary and Anne would have been esteemed illegitimate. As English peers were not " immediate," exercising legal jurisdiction within their coun- ties and duchies, the German high nobility never have acknow- ledged, and do not at the present day acknowledge, them as their equals in birth. Marriage was allowed with only six French families, which, although not enjoying sovereign rights, were yet related to reigning families, or were descended from houses once sovereign. These were the houses of Lorraine, Savoy, Grimaldi (princes of Monaco), Eohan, Tremouille, and La Tour d'Auvergne (Dukes of Bouillon). The title of Fiirst or Prince belonged to the holder of a feof under the crown, who exercised immediate jurisdiction in his prin- cipality. Consequently landgraves, margraves, counts palatine, burggraves, as well as dukes, were princes. So also were all such counts as had acquired independence in troublous times, and had wrung from the emperors acknowledgment of it, even though they did not acquire a right to sit in the Imperial Diet. "When a count who was a prince died, he left, we will s&y, six sons. Then the estates of the family, and, after a time, the crown feofs, were divided equally among them all ; but one son only, or at the utmost two, remained responsible for the feudal lands to the crown, and this one son inherited the title of prince, whereas his brothers did not. They remained counts, calling themselves after the estates they inherited, but were not princely counts. Beside the princes, temporal and spiritual, were the free im- perial cities. In these the council (BatJi) exercised "immediate" jurisdiction, and delegates from these free cities sat with the princely electors in the. Diet. In 1512, under the Emperor Maxi- milian, the Diet (JReiclistdg^) was a body of three ranks, or classes — the electors, the princes, and the free cities. The electors alone The Upper Nobility. 9 bad a voice in the nomination of the Emperor. At this date the Diet was composed of about a thousand " immediate " princely powers, secular and ecclesiastical. Of the latter there were seventy-four. In the course of the next three hundred years a great number of illustrious princely and countly houses died out ; as, for instance, the dukes of Pomerania, of Juliers-Cleves-Berg, of Saxe-Lauenburg, the margraves of Anspach and Baireuth, the princely counts of Henneberg, and the counts of Mansfeld, Gleichen, Hanau, Schaum- burg, Diepholz, etc. Bat the Emperors set to work recruiting the ranks, in a manner not creditable to themselves. Already, at the end of the fifteenth century, they had begun issuing patents to their favourites conferring on them the titles and prerogatives of princes. The very first to receive such a diploma was the Count of Croy, an ancient house in the Netherlands. In 1486 it was made princely. But it was not till late, in 1803, that it was admitted to a place in the Diet. The Arembergs, who obtained title and seat in 1583, sat next to the dukes of Wurtemberg, and older families by far, such as those of Orange and Hohenzollern, took very subordinate places. After the Thirty Years' war new princes were created by the dozen — as the Liechtensteins, the Diedrichsteins, the Auerspergs, and the Esterhazys. Many of these families were of no antiquity or were insignificant; they received their princely coronets as rewards for conversion from Protestant- ism. A needy Italian, Couut della Torre del Tasso, came to the court of Frederick III. and was made chief forester. He then organised a postal service, and his grandson, in 1500, was created postmaster-general ; and this office and the farming of the post- office were made hereditary in the family. The post-office was a great success, and made the fortune of the masters. Torre del Tasso became, in German, Thurn und Taxis; in 1605, Leonard von Taxis was made a baron, and in 1621 his son was created a count. He established a riding post between Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. The income brought in by the post amounted to a million of florins annually. In 16S6 the house was made princely, but did not gain a place in the college of princes of the empire till 1754. Though thus made to rank with sovereigns, they never possessed " immediate " jurisdiction. The Auerspergs, Liechten- steins, Esterhazys, and Trautmanndorl's were made princes as a 10 Germany, Present and Past. reward for abandoning Protestantism. I have said that, when a prince had several sons, the estates were divided among them, but that one only retained the title and dignity of prince. This was the case till the end of the Thirty Years' war, when every petty connt could obtain from 1be Emperor recognition of the independ- ency which was virtually his. A table of the branchings of the family of Nassau will show how one small countly house could become a nursery of princes. (See next page.) After the fashion of the Emperor, each Elector constituted his court, with sewers, butlers, foresters, and marshals, chosen from among tbe landed gentry of his province. And just as in tbe Empire such officers were made hereditary, so was it in the pro- vinces. A Prince Palatine held his court with as great splendour as the Emperor ; and tbe best families in tbe Palatinate ministered to the Elector as to their king. The present house of Schonborn is descended from a Ehineland family in which was the hereditary office of butler to the Archbishop of Mainz. The Metternichs were hereditary chancellors to the Archbishop of Cologne. The Stadions, sewers to tbe see of Augsburg. The Wurmbrands, cooks to the counts of Styria. The Count von der Lippe held tbe basin, and Count Bentheim poured the rose-water, at table, over the fingers of the Elector of Hesse-Cassel. 1 The law of " Ebenbiirtigkeit " has been already spoken of. "We shall see now its working in the families of the princes. According to this law, a prince, or a count of the Empire, if he married beneatb him, even with a daughter of one of the old noble families of the land which was " mediate," could not leave his titles and office to his children by her. The children followed their mother, bore her name, and were, in the eye of the law, illegitimate. Tbe Elector Frederic of tbe Palatinate, in 1462, married Clara Detten, an Augsburg damsel, lady-in-waiting and singer at the court in Munich. His son by her, Ludwig, was, at his request, made Count of Lowenstein by the Emperor Maximilian, and is the ancestor of tbe princely house of that name in Wiirtemberg, which can now only mate with sovereign houses. It was in vain that Frederic tried to obtain recognition of his burger wife, and of bis 1 All these families are now princely, and can only mate morganatically into our .crreat houses. The Upper Nobility. 11 _o_' 5 y - a ■+> 1» <3 1-1 o be- _5, e3~ o.2 < % g •? Q o ! -S3 ■2 "s" — <■fcq r ■ , >-3^X H °'* o.2 a* o A. p eo d % bo«3 — |S£ •£ 03 g< -s* CO -2 . t» © £ £;*; g •B3 o ~ t- ?- h- fc tr ^ o __§ A( in ~ •3! c - ft o 52 ^rF ft T T Oi = W>o « 3 U — ° .^ **-• . to - |8)gg 11^ CO c ^3 . No "Adel" without an allodial estate, was a maxim of early German law. The son of an " edeler Herr " who did not inherit, relapsed into simple freeman. The Edelmann living on his estate held of his ancestors, and not by feof of crown or great vassal, was a Freiherr, a lord of the manor, or baron. Menzel has happily said that in the early Middle Ages all the barons were bauers and all bauers barons. It was a favourite saying, " A nobleman is at the plough in the morning, and at tourney in the afternoon." A son of Albert of Austria praised an old peasant once for his good plough, strapping son, and sturdy horses. Next day he was much surprised to see the old man arrive at court at the head of his armed retainers, and to learn that he was the Baron of Hegenau. Scott's Arnold Biederman is not a fancy picture. There were thousands of such rustic nobles scattered over the country. Too often they combined taking of tolls with tillage. The present princely family of Salm derives from a knightly house on the Bhine, which made its wealth by exacting of every ship that passed Bingen a pound of pepper. In Altenburg, near Beutlingen, as late as the sixteenth century, lived nobles who on Sunday swaggered to church in scarlet mantles, and on week-days divided their time between ploughing their fields and taking purses on the highway. The Lower Nobility. zt Of landed property there were three sorts : the crown lands, given in feof to the great vassals, and the free land, private pro- perty, allodium nobile, held by the baron, and allodium villanum, held by a bauer, a freeman, but one who, on account of the smallness of his estate, could not exercise magisterial rights over it. The representatives of these two classes in England are the squires and the yeomen. Of these, the former were alone ritterbiirtig, i.e. capable of being knighted, and bearing coats-of-arms. They are entitled in mediaeval Latin " mediocriter nobiles." Among the lower nobility the law of " ebenbiirtigkeit " applied only to mar- riages with serfs. Marriages with free persons, the daughters of farmers and of citizens, was allowed. Thus, in the story of the " Poor Heniy," which Longfellow lias adopted for the groundwork of his " Golden Legend," the knight marries the miller's daughter, who was ready to sacrifice her life to cure him of his disease. Such an union was unusual, but not illegal. So also the country nobles married rich citizens' daughters, to recruit their dilapidated for- tunes. It was not till the fifteenth century that this was depre- cated. At a tournament at Onolzbach in 1485 it was decided that a nobleman who had married a burger's daughter was not to be allowed to enter the lists against other gentlemen, unless she had brought with her a dower of 4000 florins. Marriage out of their rank did not debar the sons from inherit- ing the name, title, and estate of the father, but after the fifteenth century it did bar their way to the enjoyment of certain privileges. There were offices about the court of the prince which they were not allowed to fill ; they could not take the seats occupied by their fathers in the provincial diets. Ecclesiastical benefices, chapters, and certain abbeys were closed to nobles who could not prove purity of blood through eight or sixteen descents on both sides. And in German heraldry a mesalliance effaces every quartering on a shield, and leaves the noble who has contracted it with, indeed, his family coat, but with a cancelled past, to start a new family, and be the root of a new genealogical tree. In the play of " Pfeffer Rosel," the Baron of Sonnenberg marries a market-girl. The Emperor bids six ladies of his court lay their hands on her head, and he ennobles an ancestor of the gingerbread-seller with each hand that reposes on her, so as to save the escutcheon and the pedigree of the Sonnenbergs. The ennobling of ancestors long 2b Germany, Present and Past. gathered to the dust was done not infrequently to assure the benefits of his rank to their descendant. The Chinese system is the reverse of the German. In the Celestial Empire the exaltation of a man to be a mandarin, mandarinises — excuse the expression — all his forefathers. By the fifteenth century many of the barons had called them- selves counts. They had assumed the title without having any of the requisites of a count. They were not vassals holding feofs from the crown. But the original countly families had broken into so many branches — each branch and subramification had carried with it the title — -that the old Freiherren thought they might as well bear it also. But there were also a great many landed gentry who contented themselves with the title of " edler Her von " — like the Scottish " laird." A few, a very few, old families remain on their ancestral estates, untitled. Such is the family of Giinz von Pudlitz, to this day proudly declining coronets, whether offered by Emperors or Grand Dukes. The head of the house is simply designated Der edeler Herr von Pudlitz, and the brothers are con- tent with the modest prefix of " von." Yet the family can show an unbroken pedigree from the sixth century. The nobility enjoyed several privileges at the close of the Middle Ages, and till the French Bevolution. 1. They held an hereditary magistracy in their estates. This was much as if every county squire was ex officio justice of peace. 2. They sat on the upper bench in the provincial assemblies. 3. They had the right of settling tradesmen on their estates — a valuable privilege, as it checked the monopoly of the guilds. 4. They were exempt from having soldiers quartered on them. 5. They were exempt from paying taxes. 6. They were exempt from judicial mutilation, and insulting- punishments. With the break-up of the Empire many privileges were given up or abolished. The right of exemption from having soldiers quartered on them was the first to go. In the Thirty Years' war neither Swedes nor Imperialists were likely to respect such a privilege, when the house of the gentleman offered the most com- fortable quarters. The next to go was exemption from taxation. At first, the nobility sought to save the principle by granting subsidies ; but The Loiver Nobility. 29 this did not last long: the free contributions expected of them were found to exceed the sura that could be exacted by taxation, and in their own interest they yielded. A favourite print in village inns represents the bauer and the parasites who prey on him arranged on a scale. The Emperor stands on one step with the motto, " I live on the taxes." The soldier on another stage boasts, " I pay for nothing." The pastor on his platform says, " I am supported by the tithe." The beggar whines, " I live on what is given me." The nobleman airily says, " I pay no taxes ; " and the Jew mutters, " I bleed them all." Beneath the whole crew stands the bauer with bent back, exclaiming, " Dear God, help me ! I have to maintain all these." The burdens remain to this day unrelieved, rather made more onerous ; but the Beamter, the government official, has taken the place of the Edelmann. There was a reason for the exemption of the nobleman from taxation. He paid with his blood. The gentle- man was the soldier of the Empire. His profession was arms. The battlefield consumed his sons. The farmer tilled and reaped, and paid tax to be allowed to carry on his agricultural round with- out molestation, without having to buckle on the sword and grasp the spear, when he ought to be sowing or reaping. But when the military system ceased to be feudal, this reason for exemption ceased also ; and when it ceased it was abandoned. With the surrender of exemption from taxation, and from being quartered upon, the special privileges distinguishing the gentry from ordi- nary freemen were gone. Those that remained were unimportant. The nobleman might, indeed, claim a right to sit on a chair when had up before a court of justice, and to be cited by written sum- mons, not by word of mouth ; to be married in his castle instead of in the parish church, and to put a lock on his pew ; but these were privileges rapidly becoming antiquated, little valued, and ready to disappear ; or were shared with wealthy citizens ; and were a grievance to nobody. It was otherwise with the rights claimed by the nobility and gentry as landed proprietors. The English system of letting farms for a term of years at a fixed annual rent — a system which dates back to the reign of Edward III. — was unknown in Germany. So also was the Italian system of farming estates, the tenant sharing the profits equally 30 Q&rmwwy, Present and Past. with the landlord. Money was .scarce in Germany, and what money there was Lad a limited circulation ; for every free city, sovereign, count, and margrave coined ; and these several coinages lost value beyond the district. The German system was essentially feudal. The nobility were so constantly engaged in war that they could not attend to their land ; they therefore gave it to villein or freeborn farmers on " lehn " — in feof. A large tract of crown land, for instance, was given by the Emperor in feof to a count. The graf did homage for the "lehn" on bended knee, when invested with it. He was thenceforth bound to supply the Emperor from it with a certain number of fighting men. The count appointed stewards (Vbgte) over the land ; they built themselves castles, and supplied their lord with men and money. Their offices became hereditary in their families. The Castle of Staufen belonged to the Dukes of Zahringen, but it was inhabited from generation to generation by stewards who called themselves lords of Staufen. It was of one of these von Staufen that the story was told wJiich forms the basis of Eouque's " Undine." The farms were given by these stewards to peasants in feof, and the bauers undertook to supply their lords with so many sacks of corn, so many pecks of malt, so many horses, oxen, geese, and eggs in the year. The farm once given was very generally given for ever ; it became an heritable tenure, just as the tenure of the vogt and that of the graf had become hereditary. The castle and barony of Wilden stein was a feudal tenure in male line belonging to the Palatinate of the Ehine. In the beginning of the fifteenth century it was given in feof to Baron John von Zimmern, in this curious fashion, that he should share the castle with another feudal tenant, the knight John Conrad von Bodmann, divide the farms and villages, and on the death of the knight buy right of succession of his heirs, for 600 florins. The Baron von Zimmern was a wag and fond of a rough broad joke. The story goes, that, on his entering into possession, the bauers of "Wittershausen thought to ingratiate themselves with him by min- istering to his sense of fun. When he came to visit their village and fix their annual payment, they assembled on the greensward beside the road, and lying in a circle entangled their legs together, and when he rode up, he found a ring of wriggling peasants with their nether limbs in a knot seemingly inextricable. After having The Loiver Nobility. 31 laughed, at the comical sight, he asked the occasion of it, when the batters cried out that they had gone to sleep after their noon meal, and their legs had got entangled, and that now none of them knew his own limbs from those of his neighbour. " I will restore his proper legs to each man," said the Baron jumping off his horse, and with his whip he laid about the shoulders of each bauer, who speedily loosed himself from the tangle, and skipped out of reach of the lash. " And now, for having found you your legs again," said Baron, John von Zimmern, "I lay on you the charge of a sack of corn, paid annually to AVildenstein." After harvest his steward went to Wittershausen with a huge sack, which when full of wheat would load a cart. The peasants were aghast, but had to pay, as no stipulation had been made as to the size of the sack. But they had their revenge. The bauers had a "servitude" on the forest, i.e. a right of cutting down trees for building purposes, and a right to clear away sufficient wood to make a way for the conveyance of the timber to their village. They accordingly went into the forest, and selected a tree peculiarly tall, at the extreme further end of the forest, cut it down, laid it across a cart, and then hacked down trees right and left, making a Inoad avenue clean through the woodland up to their village. This brought the baron to terms. He reduced the size of the sack of corn, and they propitiated him by making over to him the church-rate. In the Middle. Ages the strongest ecclesiastical laws were decreed against the taking of rent in money for land; it was regarded as a form of usury, and was forbidden under penalty of excommunication. These laws were evaded by the landlords letting their farms fur real payment, i.e. for frohn (corvee) and payment in naturalia. Even at the beginning of the present century it was very common in Germany for the peasants to let bits of ground for building purposes or for garden, not for a sum of money, or annual rent, but on condition that the tenant should give his work for a day or two in the month, and for three or four days at harvest time. During the Middle Ages many freemen farming their own land found it advisable to surrender their estates to the barons, and receive them back again in feof, to secure themselves from molestation by powerful neighbours, and 32 Germany, Present and Past. to relieve themselves from the irksomeness of being personally called to arms. Thus nearly all land ceased to be allodial, and was held in fcof. Payment was almost always made in kind, and this system proved vexatious. Instead of the farmer paying a half-yearly rent, the steward of the land visited the bauer at irregular intervals, and carried off a tithe of flax, or hemp, or corn, or cattle, as it was needed at the moment by the lord. The steward was not always just in his estimate of the amount to be taken, and he was sometimes oblivious of the fact that he was repeating these requisitions. Caleb Balderstone's raid in search of provisions for the guests at Eavenswood was what took place frequently in every barony of Germany. But if rent in money was not allowed, taxes were permitted, and every horse, and calf, and goose, indeed every stove, was taxed. An old steward, who can remember these payments before they were commuted, says that a farm worth, if sold, 200Z., was charged with six or ten such payments — the hearth shilling, the smoke-tax, the Shrove Tuesday eggs, the Walpurgis tax, Michaelmas tax, a pfennig for a goose, nine pfennigs for every calf, etc. But, he acids, when all were collected, the total amount was only four shillings. 1 The grievance lay, not in the heaviness of the charges, but in their vexatiousness. What was far more grievous than the tithe or tax, was the frohn (corvee), the right of the landlord to exact work from the peasant on so many days in the week, and to requisition his carts and horses. The word "frohn" is derived from the Old German fro, a lord, and means work done for the lord of the manor. " Handfrohn " consisted in service on the home farm, an estate surrounding the castle or manor-house (meierhof), for immediate requirements ; this was cultivated entirely by unpaid labourers, working sometimes three days a week, in return for a more or less extended farm which they enjoyed free of rent in money. The lord had also right to employ a bauer's son or servant as a messenger, or to call him to assist in beating the woods for a chase. It was the " frohn " which was the immediate cause of the outbreak of the Peasants' War. The Countess of Lupfen had eagerly embraced the tenets of the Beformation. She thereupon suppressed the festivals of the peasants as papistical and superstitious, and she ordered her peasants to go on Sundays 1 Dr. Laurenz Fischer : Der Teutsche Adel. Frankf. 1S52. The Lower Nobility. 33 gathering strawberries for her dinner-table, and snail-shells for the making of ornamental pincushions. This circumstance, so trifling in appearance, became the occasion of a general conflagration. Hitherto no " frohn " had been exacted on a festival ; on Sunday the bauer had been a freeman. The snail-shells were the limit of his obedience. On the day of strawberries and snail-shells the peasants of Stuhlingen, Bondorf, and Ewatingen assembled to the number of six hundred, and announced to the count and countess that they were freemen, and would pay no more frohn and tax. This was on August 2-i, 1524. In a fortnight the six hundred had swelled to four thousand. Before the end of the year nearly every castle in the Schwarzwald was in flames. In the towns, as in the country, the classes were originally divided into patricians, freemen, and not-freemen. The patricians were the nobility or gentry of the towns, owners of land in and outside of the walls, those who lived not necessarily on trade, but on their estates, and who formed the governing body of the town. They were originally all of gentle blood ; but in time the masters of the trades succeeded in working their way into the council, and then bought their gentility of the Emperor. Thus it came about that many patrician families were also engaged in trade. Fugger, the weaver of Augsburg, though raised by Charles V. to be a count, did not think it necessary to abandon his looms. When asked to choose his arms, he humbly elected lilies, for " they toil not, neither do they spin," and he hoped they would ever remind his descendants of the humble origin of the house. Both of Ulm was a sugar-refiner, with factories in Italy and Spain. The Croarias and Holbeins of Bavensburg in the fourteenth centiuy had paper-mills. An ox's head is the water-mark by which paper can be recognised that issued from the factory of the Holbeins. The Welsers of Augsburg were great merchants ; they bought Venezuela, and Charles V. gave them a patent to allow them to continue their business without derogation to their gentility. The Ayrers of Heilbronn were dealers in saffron, the Weichsers of Schaffhausen, who fought as knights at Sempach, were money- changers. The Behm family of Augsburg were tile-burners. But perhaps the most curious instance of the mediaeval view of trade not being dishonouring to a noble is seen in the history of Ludwig the Saint, Landgrave of Thuringia, who entered into a part- 34 Germany, Present and Past. nership with a pedlar, and was able to clothe his court with his annual profits. When the chapman's ass was stolen by some of the vassals of the Bishop of Wiirzburg, he made war upon the bishop, and harried his land till the pedlar's ass was restored. From the fifteenth century, however, the landed nobility began to look down on the patricians, as a pack of grocers and weavers who had no right to be reckoned as of gentle birth ; and they refused to admit them to tournaments. In Augsburg and Basel, in 1474, the chapters of the cathedrals, filled with younger sons of noble families living on their country estates, by statute excluded a citizen from ever enjoying a prebendal stall in their highly aris- tocratic bodies. In former times members of patrician families bad been Grand Masters of the Knightly Orders ; now they were excluded. 1 For a long time the patricians monopolised tbe government of the towns ; but the trade-guilds formed a powerful organisation against them, and forced their way into the Bath. A curious instance may be given from the history of Strassburg. There two rival families, the Zorns and the Miilnheimers, were the most powerful in the city, and were mutually jealous. In 1321, Clans Zorn complained in the town-council that the Bathbans was much nearer the tavern frequented by the Miilnheimers than that where the Zorns drank their beer. The consequence was, that when a motion was put. to tbe vote, the whipper-in of the Miilnheimers could call up his party, and carry it or throw it out, before the Zorns arrived on the spot ; therefore Claus proposed that a new town-hall should be built exactly halfway between the rival taverns, and his proposal was actually carried and acted upon. The quarrel between the two families burst out in full explosion in 1332. There was a garden outside the walls of Strassburg where the gentlefolks met to eat sausages, drink lager beer, and dance or fight. In the year mentioned, eating, drinking, and dancing one hot day led to a grand battle, in which two of the Miilnheim faction were killed, and seven of that of the Zorns. The Landvogt arrived on the scene, and endeavoured to put an end to the strife, but failed. Numerous nobles of the neighbour- hood flocked in, and threw themselves into the melee. The fight 1 The first Grand Master of the German Order was a Waldbot, the second a Carpen, both citizens (patricians) of Bremen. The Lower Nobility. 35 waxed more furious, and the chief magistrates were powerless to arrest it. Then the guilds met, entered the Eathhaus, took the banner, keys, and seal of the city, by acclamation altered the con- stitution of the council, which had before been filled exclusively by members of the ecclesiastical corporation and twenty-four patricians, and then, with an armed band of apprentices, put down the riot. They went further, and demolished the drinking-places of the rival factions, and laid waste the pleasure-gardens where they had danced and quarrelled. The town-council was variously constituted after that, according as the guilds or the patricians got the upper hand ; but on the occasion . mentioned the former first succeeded in entering and breaking up the close corporation of the Stadtrath. In the fourteenth century the Emperors began to create nobles by patents, for the same consideration that made James I. create baronets. Dat census honores, Census umicitias ; pauper unique jacet. The Emperor Wenceslas the Fool ennobled all kind of rabble. Sigismund sold titles. Under his successor Ferdinand a chimney- sweep was created a baron. It was the age of the Briefadel. Patrician families like those of Ebner, Kress, Haller, Behaim, Holzschuher, Both, etc., some by patent, some without, adopted the predicate " von," under the impression that this particle be- tokened gentility; and they blossomed into Ebner A'on Eschen- bach, Kress von Kressenstein, Haller von Hallerstein, Behaim von Schwarzbach, Holzschuher von Aspach, Both von Schreckenstein, after estates they had inherited or purchased. Others prefixed the " von " to their famiby names, whether appropriately or not, as " von Weber," " von Denzlinger," which are as absurd as " of Weaver" and "of Londoner." Others, not having estates, have taken the name of the place of their nativity as a territorial title, as Schnorr von Carolstadt, Varnhagen von Ense. Many bought or were granted baronial titles, and assumed the pearl coronet of a Freiherr, who had never actually held a freehold. Members of trade-guilds who had found their way into the council of their town received patents of gentility : they might put a "von " before their names, and adopt a coronet of three strawberry-leaves and two pearls. 36 Germany, Present and Pasl. The grant of arms and the prefix of " von " in Germany was and is precisely like the grant of arms made in England by the College of Heralds, which is also costly. But in England now any one adopts arms, and tails his name with esquire, whether he have a right or not to these distinctions. In German}- a man can scarcely paint a coat on his carriage and put a " von " before his name, unless he has an hereditary or an acquired right to both. The ordinary gentleman, untitled, uses a coronet — by what right is perhaps more easily asked than answered — which is the same as that we attribute to a marquis, i.e. three strawberry-leaves and two pearls. The coronet of a Margraf in Germany has three strawberry-leaves and six pearls. The princes alone can raise a burger out of his class and make a gentleman of him. They sometimes confer gen- tility for life, so that the person ennobled bears the " von " before his name, but his sons do not. 1 This personlicher Adel attends the giving of an Order. The elevation of a citizen to be a gentleman is noted in the official gazette and daily papers. The old Freiherren were the ancient landed gentrj- — in Swabia and Eranconia obtaining independence over their estates, like little princes. In 1791 the Margravate of Anspach-Baireuth fell to Prussia through the surrender of the last Margrave, Karl Eried- rich, who married Lady Craven, after she had lived with him as his mistress for some years. The two principalities were given a new constitution, and the liberties of the free knights in them were curtailed. Three independent barons were obliged to sur- render their sovereignty over their little domains. The only opposition encountered was in the cantons of Altmiihl and Gebirg. Portions of Franconia and Swabia fell to Bavaria, portions swarm- inc with these "immediate" families. Their independence was summarily abolished. Those in the Ehenish provinces were ex- tinguished by Napoleon in 1805. Since the surrender of the Imperial crown by Francis II. there have been no fresh creations of Freiherren. Publishers, as Tauch- nitz, chemists, as Liebig, tailors, as Stulz, have been made barons ; but a modern baron is not the equivalent of an ancient Freiherr. A baron created by a Grand-Duke since the dissolution of the Empire, has a right to bear a seven-pearled coronet, but the new- 1 Sometimes, if they maintain their father's position, they are allowed in courtesy to retain the " von ; " but they have no legal right to it. The Lotver Nobility. 37 baked noble cannot take his place in the close aristocratic society of the town he inhabits. The baron hovers in gauche discomfort between the burger and the adel ; he is the bat of society, neither altogether bird nor beast, and not an inviting specimen of either. In the theatre he takes a loge in the first circle, instead of in the burger range of boxes, but he sits there uneasily ; he has lost his old companions, and his new give him the cold shoulder. Princes, like the Almighty, love to create out of nothing ; but their creations, unlike His, are not always " very good." The German baron newly made stands on the same level as the English knight. He is perhaps a gentleman by birth, he is more probably a success- ful grocer or cornfactor. During the Middle Ages the landed gentry had been a check upon the princes. The latter could only exercise their sovereignty with consent of the chambers in their provinces in the matter of raising taxes and imposing laws. After the Thirty Years' war, when the French fever set in over Germany, the princes sought not merely to copy French fashions, but also French despotism. The extravagance of their courts made it necessary for them to impose huge burdens on their lands, and such imposition the landed Freiherren opposed. The princes, therefore, set deliberately to work to extirpate them. This they effected by degrees, by involving them in extravagances, making them attend their courts and there dissipate their fortune, and then buying their land. In Oldenburg, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were fifty-three noble estates, held by old families of gentle blood, the Westerholz and Mundel, Mausingen and Fichenhold, Knigge, Ehaden, Steding, and others. Nearly all of these have died out or lost their estates. Two that survive, the Wehlaus and Westerloys, have so sunk in the world that they are now represented by farmers, and have abandoned their claim to be regarded as gentry. In Anhalt Dessau, Prince Leopold, who married the apothecary's daughter, bought up all the estates in his land, and those of the nobility who demurred to sell he drove out of the principality, and took their estates from them at a j)rice he fixed. Thus he got rid of the Barons von Grote, the Harslebens, Schillings, Krosigks, and many others. The Prince of Bernburg did the same. He took their lands from the von Geuderns, Erlachs, and Einsicdenlers, etc. The same policy was pursued by the Prince of Kothen. He 38 Germany, Present and Past. also was not satisfied till lie reigned alone over bauers, with a nobility hanging about bis court, and dependent on his bounty as his chief foresters, marshals, chamberlains, etc. In Schiller's letters we get a picture of the old landed gentry as they were, and as they were being made. On December 8, 1787, he wrote from Schwarzburg-Kudolstadt : " I have met in this neigh- bourhood with some interesting families. For instance, in the village of Hochheim is a noble family, consisting of five young ladies — in all, ten persons — living in the old patriarchal way, or reviving old knightly manners. No one in the family wears any- thing which is not of home manufacture. Shoes, cloth, silk, all the furniture, all the necessaries of life, and almost all its luxuries, are grown or manufactured on the property, many by the hands of the ladies, as in patriarchal days and in the times of chivalry. The greatest exterior cleanliness and order, and even display and beauty, please the eye ; of the ladies, some are young, and all are simple and true, like the nature in which they live. The father is a sturdy, honourable, landed noble, a famous sportsman, and a generous host, and, I must add, an inveterate smoker. Two hours distant, in a village, I have met with a house the reverse of this. There lives the Chamberlain von S , 2 with his wife and nine children, on an extravagant princely footing. In place of a house they have a castle, in place of society they hold a court, instead of plain dinner a dress dinner in French fashion. The wife is a vaporous, false, intriguing creature, and hideous as falsehood, but all in the best Parisian ton. The young lady is very pretty, but the devil rules the mother, and would not let her permit the young- girl to travel with us. Herr von S is a dignified man of many good and shining qualities, full of entertainment and propriety, but a libertine to the highest degree. He is Charlotte's x uncle, and he values her highly." The European war was felt severely by the lesser German nobility. Their estates had been burdened by extravagant living, and they were ill-prepared for a season of invasion and its con- sequent evils. On the Ehine, in Hesse, in Baden, in the Talatinate, 1 Herr von Stein in Volkershausen. Frau v. Stein was the aunt of Charlotte von Kalb. 2 Charlotte von Kalb, who set her cap at Schiller, and ten years later at Jean Paul Richter. The Lower Nobility. 39 the Code Napoleon was introduced, and subdivision of property was made compulsory. In Prussia, before this, Frederick William bad done bis utmost to break up the properties and destroy the privileges of the aristocracy, and for much the same reasons as other princes, because they interfered with despotic government. But it was not only where the Code Napoleon was introduced, that lands were divided and subdivided till the owners sank from being nobles to bauers. Such a subdivision had been universal in Germany ; fought against, indeed, in Westphalia and Saxony, but prevailing freely elsewhere. Great houses had melted into a hundred little farms. But in the seventeenth century it was fully seen that this equal cutting-Tip of land was ruinous ; and every- where the gentry were adopting primogeniture or some other system by which propei ties might be held together. But it was too late. The introduction of the Code Napoleon sealed the fate of the gentry on the Bhine. Elsewhere they were ruined by the events of 1848. The revolution in that year produced an electrical effect in Germany. On February 27, at a gathering at Mannheim, four demands were made — freedom of the press, trial by jury, national representation, and general conscription. A mass deputation carried these demands on March 1 before the Baden Chamber. A few days later the abolition of the privileges of the aristocracy, and of the remains of feudal obligations, of copyholds and ground- rents, was demanded. Speedily the whole of Germany was in commotion; the bauers joined the revolution started by town republican clubs, with the double object of getting rid of ground- rents and of expelling the Jews from the country. In the National Assembly at Frankfurt a violent attack on the nobility Avas led by Mohl, Busier, and Jacob Grimm ; and " the nobility as an order was abolished " by a majority of fourteen. But whilst the National Assembly was discussing the rights of man, natural equality, and the bases of authority, the princes, who had cowered before the storm, put their heads together and organised opposition. When the deputation of the Assembly came to Cologne to meet the King of Prussia, and lay before him its resolutions, Frederick William curtly told them not to leave out of their calculations the fact that there were princes in Germany, and that he was one of them. A volley dispersed the rioters in Berlin ; the bauers grew suspicious 40 Germany, Present and Past of the town rabble, and sided with the sovereign. The revolution came to an end ; but it had left its victims, especially in the south. The small sovereigns, in the agony of their alarm, had flung the gentry to the wolves, and many were reduced to poverty by the loss of their property in land. All rights of " frohn " were abso- lutely abolished, without compensation to the lord of the manor ; and the State took measures to convert the copyhold land of the bauer into a freehold estate, by making its allodification compulsory should the tenant be able and willing to commute. In Austria all chai-ges on land were abolished by a stroke of the pen on September 2, 1848. In Bavaria the work of allodification was begun by a law passed June 4, 1848 ; in Wiirtemberg on April 14, 1848 ; in Baden on April 10 and July 31, 1848. In Kurhessen all feofs, and ground- rents, and charges on land, together with other manorial rights, were abolished on August 26, 1848, the landlords receiving as indemnity from 3 to 5 per cent, of the value of their estates. This was done in Waldeck, in Sigmaringen, in Saxe- Weimar, and elsewhere. In almost every case all personal services were done away with without compensation. To assist the peasants in converting their farms into freeholds, the Saxon Government established a fund for the redemption of the land, under Govern- ment guarantee. In 1850, a similar bank was established in Prussia. Baden and Hesse followed. The law for the estab- lishment of " rent banks " provided the machinery for the whole- sale redemption of the land. By it the State constituted itself the broker between the peasants by whom the rent was paid and the landlords who had to receive it. The bank established in each district advanced to the latter in rent-debentures, paying 4 per cent, interest, a capital sum equal to twenty years' purchase. The peasant paid into the bank each month a twelfth part of a rent calculated at 5 or 4-J- per cent, on this capital sum, according as he elected to free his property from incumbrance in fortj^-one or fifty-six years, the respective terms within which, at compound interest, the 1 or H per cent., paid in addition to the 4 per cent, interest on the debenture, would extinguish the capital. As the greatest part of the estates of the gentry had been let, there remained to them now only the home farm and the sum in money they received from the State for their lands which had been let and leased. This money came to them conveniently, at a time The Lower Xobility. 41 when they were for the most part in debt, not having recovered the exhaustive effects produced by the European war. The capital disappeared, and their sons are left with a little patch of land about the ancestral castle, and no funds on which to keep up the stately mansion. The result of the allodification has therefore been to sever the gentry from the soil. They cannot live all the year round in the country ; they go for a few weeks in the summer to the schloss, carrying with them sufficient furniture, and there they picnic for a while. They have lost their interest in the ])easants, and the peasants in them. They seek situations under Government as judges, or make the army their profession, and live in offices on their salaries rather than starve in their ancestral halls. The Englishman living in Germany should remember this : the biirger in office everywhere and at all times bears the title of his office. Herr Gerher, when a judge, even in deshabille, is Herr Obei'gerichtsrath ; but Herr von Stolzenfels drops the civil desig- nation when he closes the door of the office ; he is then von Stol- zenfels only, and it is an insult to entitle him Gerichtsrath. In the south of Germany, where the free imperial knights were most numerous and most independent, their descendants are most im- poverished and most dependent on State employ. In the north of Germany the Freiherren are still landed gentry, but they have not clung to old acres with the same tenacity as the nobles and squires of England — probablj' they have not been able to do so. In 1861 there were in all Prussia 12,543 knightly estates— that is, estates belonging to gentle families — but of these only 394 had been in a family over a hundred years. In 1858, in the Prussian House of Lords, there were only 77 landed proprietors holding old family estates, the remaining 89 were life peers. The Bavarian Constitution requires for the position of a herit- able " Fieichsrath " an entailed landed estate paying at least 30/. per annum in tax. The "Wiirtemburg Constitution requires that the landed proprietor shall have a net income from his estate of 300L These landed gentry elect a certain number of members to the Upper House as their representatives. In North Germany the landed gentry suffered by the allodifica- tion of their farms, but not to the same extent as those in the south; the process was less rapid, and more moderate. In tho north the nobles are not unfrequcntly manufacturers ; dye-works, 42 Germany, Prevent and Pad. spinning-mills, distilleries, rise within a few yards of the castle. The reaction after 1848 helped the Prussian nobility to obtain some new privileges. In Bavaria the noble families are allowed by law to found fresh majorats, i.e. fresh families with entailed estates, carrying with them titles and coronets and representation in the first chamber. If an aristocracy is to be preserved, this seems the most reasonable manner of letting it develop itself. If the citizen and the peasant represent man alive to the con- sciousness that he is a member of a family, the noble represents man awake to the fact of the continuity of family life. The aristocracy is the class invested with historic consciousness. The citizen and bauer do not care a straw who we're their grandfathers, and have no thought for their grandchildren. A member of an aristocratic class is full of interest respecting the past of his family, and plants trees, and builds, not for himself, but for a future generation. In the German courts the nobility not mediatised were treated with sovereign contempt. Frederic, the fat King of Wiirtemberg, the smallest of kings and the greatest of snobs, did his utmost to drive the few that lingered on in Swabia out of his realm by making residence in it intolerable. He published a decree that no nobleman of his newly manufactured kingdom should be allowed to leave his district for more than a week at a time without leave of the " burger " functionaries of the parish. In 1810 the Minister of the Interior, by gracious consent of his Majesty, issued the following licence to a count : — " The Herr Graf is required by his Majesty to spend at least three months in every year at the royal residential city of Stuttgart. With respect to the remaining nine months, should the count desire to reside on his own estates, his Majesty accords his most gracious permission to him to do so. His Majesty begs further to express his gracious hope that his sovereign orders will meet with punctual attention. Should this hope be disappointed, one quarter of the territorial receipts of the Herr Graf will be confiscated to the royal treasury." There is something not a little insulting in the way in which the old landed gentry — counts and barons of as good, if not better blood than their sovereigns — are treated when they visit court. Their aristocratic rank is ignored ; military rank alone is recog- The Lower Nobility. 43 nised. Eank throughout Germany is military, hut certain civil offices are reckoned as military offices. Thus a judge ranks as a major-general, and a lord-in-waiting as a colonel. The princes of the royal or grand-ducal family, and the mediatised princes in their territory, are ahove rank. The following is the order of precedence in a minor German court : — 1st class. "Excellencies.'''' l Generals in command of a division. Generals in command of an army corps. A minister-president of the House of Assembly (Stilndever- sammlung). An ambassador. A privy councillor of the 1st class. 8 2nd class. " Metre Bang.''' Major-general. Geheimrath of the 2nd class. Chief judge (President des Gerichtshofes). First chamberlain. State councillor (Staatsrath). Bishop. Prelate (Catholic or Protestant). 3rd class. " Chamberlains." Colonel. Lord-in- waiting. Privy councillor of legation (Geheimc Legationsrath). Privy councillor of war (Geheime Kriegsrath). Assessor to a judge. Appendix to 3rd class. The landed gentry of whatever aristocratic title. 1 Once an " excellency,'' always an excellency; a general who lias com- manded an army corps, a president, etc., to the end of his days remains an " ex- cellency," and takes precedence, though out of office, of one in office. They rank hy order of service. 2 A Geheimrath was originally a member of the privy council of the sove- reign. Now that constitutional government has become general, there is no privy council. But those whom the sovereign delights to honour can he created Geheimrlithe. , The members of all government boards are Geheimriithe of the second class. No duties attach to the title of Geheimrath of the first class. 44 Germany, Present and Past. 4lh class. " Lieutenant- Colonel Bank." Lieutenant-colonel. Geheime Hofrath. Geheime Finanzrath. Geheime Regierungsrath. Ministerialrath. Landescommissar. 1 5'7i class. " Page-in-Waiting Batik." Page-in-Waiting. Head forester. Oberstaatsanwalt. Canon of a cathedral. Regierungsrath. Stadtdirektor. In the first two classes the wives are " hoffahig," presentable at court ; in the third class, presentable only if of gentle birth ; in the fourth, not presentable at all. Consequently a countess or baroness comes in at the very end of the tail of presentable ladies. This arrangement sometimes leads to awkwardness. In a certain German court a brother of the sovereign is married to a baroness belonging to a family quite as ancient, noble, and illustrious as that which by favour of Napoleon I. sits now on the throne. The family was, however, never " im- mediate." The marriage therefore was not " of equal birth," and the sister-in-law of the sovereign could not appear at court as a princess. At the same time there was a clever civilian, whom we will call Herr Pumpernickel, who for his abilities was elevated by the sovereign into a privy councillor of the 1st class, and was made a gentleman of for life by the grant of a " von." His Excellency Herr Geheimrath von Pumpernickel took rank in the first class. Herr von Pumpernickel married a pretty young actress, and intro- duced her at court, and the Frau Geheimrathin took rank in the first class with him. But the sovereign's sister-in-law, being only 1 I leave many of these titles untranslated, because it is impossible to render them into proper English equivalents. Many of them are purely honorary titles. The Lower Nobility. 45 a baroness, came in as a landed proprietress in the appendix to the third class, a very long way behind the little actress, who was quite at home and happy in her place, and unconscious of the con- fusion she caused in divers distinguished breasts. There was no possibility of redressing the inconvenience. The only way for the baroness to climb to the rank of excellencies above the head of the Geheimrathin would be by marrying a general officer, but that was impossible, as she was married to the sovereign's brother. The consequence was that she withdrew altogether from court. The head of a princely family alone is called Fiirst, the other brothers and sons are Prinzen. But the children of a count are counts and countesses, and of a baron are barons and baronesses. 1 Every writer on the German nobility has urged the abandonment of this senseless adhesion to titles by the junior branches of noble families. It has a mischievous effect. In England, where only the eldest son inherits the title of his father, the other members of the family melt into the general mass of the English gentry, and in another generation are altogether one with it. In Germany the retention of title by every one who derives from a noble family makes of the aristocracy a caste which associates only with its own members, and is absolutely cut off from the class below. This caste severance is the more mischievous, because courtesy of man- ner and gentlemanliness of feeling are both a tradition of the aristocracy. It is because the burger has not associated with a polished class, but been left to stew in his own fat, that he has never been able to emancipate himself from mediaeval boorishness. The incessant circulation of social currents in England keeps the whole body sweet. In Germany the classes are superposed as geologic strata. Carrara marble lies on millstone grit. Porphyry pierces beds of pudding-stone without transforming it. It is a great misfortune to the country that the gentry are dis- sociated from the land. The bauers are left without a civilising and softening element in their midst. Just before the French Revolution the landed gentry had everywhere built themselves houses in the very midst of the people, not cut off from them by 1 In Northern Germany, when by family compact the chief part of the estate goes to the eldest son, only the eldest son of a count assumes the title of Graf, the other sons are barons. 46 Germany, Present and Past. parks as in England, "but with the windows looking into the very village street. There was evidently a desire among them to live on a kindly footing with the peasants. These houses are now deserted, or tenanted only for a couple of months in the summer. Of the ways of the peasants, of their domestic sorrows and suffer- ings, the family at the schloss know nothing and care nothing. For the schloss and village are not the home, only the hotel for the " sommerfrische." Of the friendly, affectionate intercourse between the poor in a parish and the " quality " at the Hall — so common, so pathetic, that exists everywhere in England where there is a resident squirearchy — Germany knows nothing. We lament, in England, the cleavage between the classes, 1 >ut it is nothing to that which exists in Germany. A separation of classes is mischievous in every way, for every class can and ought to learn from the other. In America, where there are no classes, the result is that every man and woman lives for, and thinks of, self only. There is isolation of interests and disregard of others. In Germany the severance of classes produces a similar result ; but in Germany it leads not to self-glorification but to class glorifica- tion. The bauer thinks himself everything, and hates the citizen. The citizen despises the bauer and the noble, and the nobles live in their narrow exclusive circle, in which they waste their energies in sighing over an irrecoverable past. The German lesser nobility — that is, the gentry — are no longer a power in the realm. Here and there in every town they are to be found scattered about in the Government offices, or turning their castles into distilleries of turnip-brandy or potato-schnaps, but still associating and marrying only within their sacred circle. In no country have the gentry been so utterly crushed out as in Germany, not even in France. They have had since the fifteenth century two deadly foes working their destruction — the princes, who were jealous of them, and their own improvidence, in sub- division of their estates among their sons. The princes have trampled them down and insulted them, that they might be left alone on the earth to deal with the ignorant peasantry. In 1848 they felt what it was to be without a class to stand between them and the rabble. Nowhere did the bauer revolution rage more savagely than in Anhalt, where the landed gentry had been ex- terminated to a man. ( 47 ) CHAPTEE III. THE LAWS OF SUCCESSION. Orlando. I know you are my eldest brother ; and, in the gentle condition of blood, you should so know me. The courtesy of nations allows you my better, in that you are the first-born ; but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us: I have as much of my father in me as you ; albeit, I confess, your coming before me is nearer to his reverence. As You Like It, act i. sc. 1. The earliest conception of property among the Germans attached only to movables. The land belonged to all; but not so the sheep and oxen, they had owners ; not so the tent and trinkets, they were personal property. When men were few and the world was wide before them, land was not sufficiently esteemed to be parcelled out. A house-father moved with his herds from a feeding-ground, after it had been cleared, to fresh pastures. But it was otherwise when men settled and tilled the soil. Then the byre— the house and the cultivated patch of land just round it — were held to be property — the property, however, of a family and not of a person. From very early times a sharp distinction was drawn between real and personal property ; land, real property (liegende Habe), never belonged to the individual ; he had it in usufruct, never as his own ; but movables (fahrende Habe) were allowed to belong to the individual. Roman law drew no distinction between possession and property. What man had in possession, over that he exercised uncontrolled and absolute right. German law never allowed this to apply to land. The land a man enjoyed the possession of belonged to his family, and he had but a life-interest in it. 48 Germany, Present and Past. In England, at the Conquest, William confiscated the estates of those who had opposed his invasion. He granted the land to his Norman followers. But the lands thus granted were not given freely and for nothing ; they were given to hold of the king subject to the performance of certain military duties as the con- dition of the enjoyment of them. The king was considered as in some sense the proprietor, and was called the lord paramount ; while the services to be rendered were regarded as incident or annexed to the tenure of the land ; in fact, as the rent to be paid for it. This feudal system of tenures, or holding from the king, was soon afterwards applied to all other lands, although they had not been granted out, but remained in the hands of the original Saxon owners. The feudal doctrine of tenures invaded Germany also, and curiously modified the Teutonic tenet that land belonged to the family, or, more correctly speaking, was itself modified by the latter. The crown lands were given in feof. The nobles in like manner gave their lands to farmers free or servile. But when once the plough of the new tenant had turned the soil, and his hand had put thatch on the roof, the farm and house became the property of his family under the lordship of the nobleman. The ruling principle of property rights in German law rests on the right of a man to enjoy the fruits of his labour. The bride, in like manner, takes possession of her future abode, by kindling a fire on the hearth, chopping up wood in the stack-yard, and salting the soup in the cauldron. With this principle is bound up another, i.e. that man is not an unit isolated in the world, but that he is a member of a family ; that the family, and not the indi- vidual, is the unit in the commonwealth. Consequently when a man tills the soil it is not for himself, but for the family, just as truly as when the bride salts the soup, it is not for her own eating, but for the household over which she is the newly-crowned queen. What St. Paul taught as a new revelation to the civilised Roman world : " The body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body ; is it therefore not of the body ? " — this doctrine of the Apostle was so thoroughly ingrained in the convictions of the Teutonic people The Laws of Succession. 49 "before they embraced Christianity, that it has influenced their whole social development, and ruled their relations to property. "When a nobleman, therefore, gave land to a barter, free or villein, he gave it for ever. He lost all power of expelling the family from the house and farm in which he had settled them. They paid him a rent in services of various sorts ; the bauer tilled his home farm for him, sent his children into service in the castle, paid dues on their marriages, offered a goose at Michaelmas; and so long as the bauer family rendered its services, and had a stalwart son to hold the plough, its tenure of the farm was unassailable. The farmer could divide it among his children, or leave it to only one. He could dispose of it in his family, and in many cases, with consent of his heirs, even out of his family, freely ; for by his toil he had acquired a right of property in it, equal to, if not above, that of his over lord. In close connection with the distinction drawn between the ownership and usufruct of land, is the distinction between pro- perty inherited (Erbe, Fr. propres) and acquired (Errungenscliaft, Fr. acquets), which came to be recognised in the second period of German legislation. What a man had himself acquired by his own labour and energy, over that he was allowed free disposal, but that which came to him from the family, of that he had only the use during his life. It was not his own ; it belonged to the family of which he was a member, to the chain in which he was a link. The same doctrine prevailed in England. By the laws of Canute testamentary disposal of movable property was alone allowed. By the laws of Henry I. this distinction was drawn : "Let a man bestow what he has acquired on whom he will, but if he has bookland inherited from his parents, let him not bestow it beyond the family." Indeed is was not till the reign of Henry VIII. that testators were allowed to dispose of part of their real estate inherited by them from their fathers. In Germany the right of the family to the land was most closely guarded. Movable property might pass freely from hand to hand, real property never without legal formalities. Women and serfs might inherit and devise the former, serfs could not hold and bequeath allodial land, neither for a while could women. The great-grandfather had cleared a piece of ground, the grand- father had tilled it, the father had hedged it in, the son drained E ,50 Germany, Present and Past it. One generation entered on the labours of another. The land was made fat with the sweat of generations. It was just that it should remain in the hands of the family which had given it its present value — of the family whose ancestors' hands had planted every fruit-tree, and feet had trodden every furrow. The grandson must not alienate it by imprudence, allow it to relapse into wilderness, leave the vines unpruned and the garners un- thatched. Consequently he was always liable to " impeachment for waste ; " and the testamentary alienation of allodial land was never allowed. The land was never regarded as individual pro- perty. Tacitus, it may be remembered, noticed that the Germans made no wills. 1 The children entered as their right on what their fathers had enjoyed for life. When the Eoman custom of making Avills was introduced, it was resented as an invasion of the rights of the natural heirs, and was forbidden by the Laws of Eothar. 3 An Alemannic population, that has been secluded among the Alps from the intrusion of foreign ideas, has persevered to the present day in its opposition to testamentary dispositions. In Unterwalden - — and I believe it is the same in Uri and Schwyz — to make a will is to this day illegal, and a testator has no power even over his movables and acquisitions. A gift made within a month of decease is invalid. 3 A curious instance came under my notice. A priest in Unterwalden, before his death, gave his old house- keeper the cheeses in his dairy, as a little recognition for her unwearied devotion during a long and distressing illness — he died of cancer in the face. He was dead before thirty days had elapsed, and his nephews extorted the cheeses from the old woman, and made her pay for one which she had disposed of to her poor relations. In the second period of German legislation, when Roman civilisation began to exercise a powerful influence over Teutonic institutions, testamentary disposition of property was permitted to those who died without issue. 4 Benefactions to the Church were tolerated rather than approved. The earliest wills show by their structure how little reliance was laid on their legality, and the ' l "Nullum testamentuni." — German, c. 20. 2 Lex Eothar. 360. 3 It is so in Scotland now. A will is invalid unless a man has appeared at kirk and market after its signature. 4 Lex Wisigoth. iv. 2, 20. The Laivs of Succession. 51 attempt was made to give them that effect which they lacked in law, by an appeal to the superstitions terrors of the heirs. They were weighted with curses as terrible as the anathema that fell on the Jackdaw of Eheims — -curses which were to fall on the head and body and limbs of the heir-at-law should he fail to comply with the injunctions of the testator. In ihe reigns of Henry I. and Otto the Great wills were not uncommon among the nobility, but it was not till the fifteenth century that they were made by the third estate. That land might be retained as long as possible in a family, women were not allowed to inherit till all the male descendants had died out. " In land," say the Salic and Burgundian laws, " woman has no inheritance." By the laws of the Angles land passed " from the sword to the spindle " x only in the fifth degree. In Denmark the exclusion of women from succession lasted till the beginning of the eleventh century. In Sweden Eric the Saint (d. 1160) decreed that daughters should inherit a third, and Birger Jarl (d. 1260) raised their share to a half. Among the Anglo-Saxons bookland (allodial land) was allowed to pass to a woman, but not so folk- land. But by degrees the " impia consuetudo " 2 of excluding the daughters from the inheritance of their fathers gave way before a just appreciation of woman's position, brought in by Christianity. Wisigoth law allowed daughters to inherit equally with sons; 3 and Chilperic, by edict, in 574, removed female disabilities to inherit in the Frank Empire. 4 Lombard law was peculiar. Legitimate sons inherited to the exclusion of all others, but were obliged to give a fixed sum to their sisters and natural brothers. When there was no son, the daughters and sisters of the deceased divided, but a portion fell to the nearest male relative on the father's side. In the Middle Ages land was divided between sword and spindle. On the Middle and Upper Ehine, the sons took two- 1 But movables went to the daughter after the son, then to the sister, lastly to the mother of the deceased. 2 Marculf, Form. ii. 12. 3 Lex Wisigoth.' hr. 2. 4 " De terra vero nulla in muliere hereditas est " — Lex Sal. 59, 4. Later recensions inserted " Salica " before terra, to exclude her only from the hall estate, the land that went with the ancestral title and position. 52 Germany, Present and Past. thirds, tho daughters one-third. On the Lower Rhine and in part of Switzerland the sons had a half and the daughters a half; hut inSwabia and in a great part of Germany the division washy heads. As tho land belonged, not to the individual in possession of it, hut to the family, he could not part with it without the consent of all those who had any expectation of inheriting it, or part of it. In the North of Germany, adelsland, i.e. land which had been in the same family for six generations in direct succession, or which had been received in feof from the king, or which had been acquired by exchange for other allodial land, or which had been received as Wehrgeld, was held to be absolutely inalienable from a family. By Burgundian 1 and Bavarian 2 law a man could not dispose of his estate without the unanimous consent of all his sons. In Sweden every member of the family alive was required to give his consent before an estate could be alienated. In Germany dire necessity (ScMefnoth) alone allowed a man to sell his paternal acres. For instance, if the possessor of an estate fell into captivity, he was allowed to sell his land without the consent of his heirs for the purpose of redeeming himself. Later, he might alienate, if he took oath that without the sale of the land he could not pay his debts. 3 This was the pauvrete juree of French law. But here, again, the law intervened to assist the family in recovering its ancestral fields. If the purchaser intended to resell the land, the heir of the original holder must have the first offer ; and unless he formally refused to purchase, the sale could not take place ; and if the heir or original owner could produce the sum for which the land was sold within a year and a day of the sale, the purchaser was bound to restore it. This was the retractatus bursse or gentilitius — the ret rait lignager of French law. As late as the sixteenth century this law was universal in Germany. It was only abolished at the Bevolution in France. Mortgage of a property was as inadmissible as alienation, except under the same conditions — consent of heirs or necessity. These laws applied not only to the land held by the nobles, but to that of the peasant as well, and the bauer clung to his ancestral farm with as much tenacity as the noble to his castle, — with more indeed — the former holds fast still, the latter has let go. 1 Lex Burcjund. i. 2. ■ Lex Bajuv. i. 1. 5 Lex Saxon, xvii. ; Sachsen-Sjriegel, i. 52, 21 ; Schicaben-Spieqel, 312, etc. The Laivs of Succession. 53 But though landed property was thus secured to a family, it was not indivisible. On the contrary, it was, throughout a great part of Germany, divided equally among the sons, or among the sons and daughters in equal or different proportions according to their sex. The Salic * and Alemannic 2 laws speak of the division of an estate among many sons. This was not, however, always possible, especially among the bauers. Among them it was customary to leave the farm to one son, and divide the profits, hoarded through many years, among the others. As the most general custom was for the 3'oungest son to inherit the . farm, the elder children were portioned off before the death of the father. But of this presently. In the Middle Ages there were two codes of law governing the relations of holders to the soil — the feudal law (Lehnrechf), and the land law (Landrecht). These codes favoured distinct modes of inheritance. Feudalism demanded primogeniture. An office given by the king could not be divided among several ; it must be held by one man. With the office went crown land in feof. The office and lands once given became hereditary in a family in tail male. The eldest son invariably succeeded to both the office and the crown feof. But almost always a crown vassal had also allodial estates in his use, which he had inherited from his ancestors. When he died, his feudal tenures went by feudal law to his eldest son, and the family estates by land-right were partitioned equally among all his sons. The Landrecht did not recognise primogeniture. In 1036 died Frederic I., Count Palatine of Saxony. His eldest son (not in orders) succeeded to the Palatinate, but his family property was equally partitioned among his three sons. Welf IV., Duke of Bavaria, was succeeded in the duchy by his eldest son, Welf V. ; but Welf V. shared the family estate equally with his brother, Henry the Black. Henry the Proud, in 1126, followed his father as sole Duke of Bavaria; but Swabia fell to his brother, Welf VI. Very often estates were divided by lot. In the thirteenth century the families holding feofs had come to regard their feudal tenures as inalienable family property, to 1 Lex Sal. lix. 2, 5. ' 2 Lex Alaman. SS. 54 Germany, Present and Past. bo dealt with and divided like their allodial lands. And we begin then to find the eldest brother retain the title only, and the lands, feudal and allodial, thrown into one lump and divided among the brothers " sequa lance." By feudal law descendants alone succeeded; there was no succession by ascendants} German feudal right excluded daughters and female de- scendants ; it instituted a purely agnatic descent. Barely were princely families able to have recourse to that convenient institution of the land-right, the " gesammte Hand," to interfere in favour of ascendants ; they were, however, successful in obtaining in several instances succession of tenures in tail male to their daughters' husbands. Leutolf obtained the duchy of Swabia after the death of his father-in-law, Duke Hermann I. ; he had married Ida, the duke's daughter, and as there was no son, the feof reverted to the crown, but the Emperor invested Leutolf with it afresh. Again, Hermann III. died without male issue in 1012, and the Emperor, Henry II., gave the dukedom to Ernest I., who had married the sister of the late duke. Frederic III., Burgrave of JSTiirnberg, fearing that he should die without male issue, obtained a special concession from the Emperor (1213) that his office and feudal lands might pass to a daughter. The Count of Guelders wrung a similar privilege from the Emperor Adolfus in 1295. It was quite otherwise with land-right. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries daughters inherited estates, and carried them, as heiresses, into other families. In the county of Wertheim reigned two brothers simultaneously, Boppo IV. and Budolf II. Poppo left behind him no sous, but three daughters; and these, as his heiresses, divided the ^Yertheim estates with their uncle, and each took a sixth of the county as her portion. When the ducal line of Ziihringen expired in male tail, the Margrave of Baden, though closely allied in blood, did not succeed to the territories of the duke; they were taken by his daughters into the families into which they married. 1 " De consuetiuline imperii rton succedit nisi filius descendeus, imo revertitur feudurn ad imperatorem. Sic vidi hoc quando fieri in Aleinannia, per proceres judicari."— Card. Eostiensis; Summa de feudis (loth cent.). The Laics of Succession. 55 ~By land- right, as already said, no alienation of family property was allowed to the greatest duke or the humblest yeoman, without the consent of his heirs presumptive. In 1221, Hermann von der Lippe made a religious foundation " with the consent of his wife, his sons, his daughters, his brother's son, and all his heirs." Had one of these withheld consent, the foundation could not have been made. In 996, Adela, daughter of Count Wichmann, appealed against a religious bequest of her father, because it had been made without her leave, and the Emperor Otto III. restored the estate to her. The Elector Palatine, Ehrenfried, and his wife Mathilda, founded and endowed the Abbey of Braunweiler. Their children reclaimed the land as an illegal alienation, their consent not having been given, and they gained their cause. As might have been anticipated, the interminable division and subdivision of estates brought many princely and country families to ruin. They sank out of consideration, and disappeared. The disintegration would have been more rapid had not the wars which raged in Germany swept away so many heirs expectant, and reduced the number of those among whom an estate was ultimately split up. But when the military profession ceased to absorb the scions of noble houses, and the sword to consume them, the consequences of unbounded subdivision came to be felt seriously. Land-right took a lesson from feudal right. One member of the family was constituted its head and rallying-point ; to him the estate was made over entire, and the rest of the family contented themselves with annuities, or appanages. But it was not the sword only which had reduced the number of heirs to a barony and county. The Church had been utilised by the nobility for the same purpose. Almost every great house had an abbey or a convent which it had endowed, and which could accommodate the junior sons, and the daughters it could not afford to portion. Cathedral chapters, mitred monasteries, received into them none who were not nobly born. He who would renounce the world must first prove his pedigree. In Wiirzburg were twenty-four canons and thirty vicars choral ; at Bamberg twenty canons and fourteen minor canons; and none could be received into these chapters who could not trace blue blood through eight descents on both father's and mother's sides. In vain did the Popes protest, 56 Germany, Present and Past. under colour of lovo for religion, actually because these aristocratic strongholds were closed to their Italian favourites. The Reformation led to the secularisation of a vast number of religious houses and the appropriation of their lands by the Protestant princes. These were left, after the first excitement and exultation of appropriation, face to face in aggravated form with the difficulty of providing for their younger sons. In 1356 the Golden Bull of Charles IV. had subjected the feofs of the electors to the law of primogeniture. Several of the princes of the Empire thereupon established the same law in their families, but it was not effected at once, or generally, or without difficulty. No such law could be passed without the consent of all the sons, and the consent of juniors to disinherit themselves was not always to be obtained. But the principality of Liineburg was made inheritable by the first-born in 1356; primogeniture was introduced into the Palatinate in 1368, and again confirmed in 1378. Into Branden- burg it penetrated in 1473, into TVurtemberg in 14S2, into Bavaria in 1506. In the territories of the Albertine line of Saxony it was introduced as early as 1499; in Austria not till 1587. It was only when the Saxon princely families were seen to be broken up and sinking into a wreck of splinters, that they adopted primo- geniture, Saxe- Weimar in 1719, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1724, Saxe-Altenburg in 1715, Saxe-Meiningen-Hildburghausen in 1801, Hesse-Homburg in 1626, and Hesse-Cassel in 1620. It is hardly matter of surprise that those families which were the first to admit the principle of primogeniture, and keep their territories together, are the only ones which have survived mediatisation. All the others had fallen into such small portions that their independence was suppressed in 1808. The house of Bentheim had estates of some extent. Arnold IV., who died in 1606, left five sons, who divided tliein among them. Only two of the six branches now survive. Duke Ernest I. of Saxony had seven sons, and he saw that if he divided Saxony among them, the dignity of the family as well as its power would suffer. He meditated the introduction of primogeniture, but was dissuaded by his court preacher, who quoted to him the text, "If children, then heirs." But the fate of Saxony, and of the House of Saxony, was sealed earlier. The Loads of Succession. 57 Frederic the Elector left two sons, Ernest and Albert, who, in 1485, divided the inheritance of their father. Ernest took Thuringia, half of the Osterland and Namnburg, the Electorate, the Yogtland, the Franconian possessions of the family, and the duchy of Saxony. Albert took Meissen, and the second half of Eastern Saxony, all of which he left to his eldest son. But Ernest did not introduce the right of primogeniture, and the possessions of the Ernestine line were broken up. Ernest I. (born 1601), who, as already said, purposed its introduction, was one of ten sons; aud he left seven — all heirs. The Ernestine line dissolved into Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Eisenach, Saxe-Gotha, Saxe- Coburg, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Eomheld, ' Saxe-Eisemberg, Saxe- Hildburghausen, and Saxe-Saalfeld, whereas the younger Albertine line is now royal. Had Frederic II. but introduced primogeniture into his family at the same time as the Elector of Brandenburg, Saxony, and not Prussia, would have been the head of the Germanic Empire. The breaking up of the Ernestine line into parcels, patches, pinches of principalities, has been the ruin of a great people, and has robbed it of its right prerogative, the head- ship of Germany. The disastrous effects of unlimited subdivision of property are now fully realised by the upper nobility of Germany, and they have taken j)recautions against it. There are four modes Avhereby estates are kept together by settlement: — 1. Primogeniture, the right of the eldest son, or, in the event of his death before his father, his eldest son, to succeed to the undivided landed estate. 2. Majority, the right of the eldest of the near male relations to succeed. 3. Seniority, the right of the eldest male relative, without regard to closeness of relationship. 4. Sccundo and Tertiogcniture, the giving of appanages to the younger sons for life ; which revert on their death to the family- estate. Majority and seniority (majorat and seniorat) require some further explanation and illustration, as they are not English institutions like primogeniture, with which we are familial". I. Among descendants. — A is Count of Stolzenegg, leaving two sons, B and C. If D, the eldest son of B, dies before his father, then, if the right of primogeniture be established in the family, the title and territory and estate will pass to G, the eldest grand- 58 Germany, Present and Pad. son of B. But if the law of succession adopted "be that of Majority 1 , E, the second son, will become Count of Stolzenegg, and inherit the undivided property. But, if Seniority he the family right, D G H then C, the brother of B, will become Count, to the exclusion of D, the grandson, and E and F, the sons of the deceased. II. Among ascendants. — If E dies after his brother F and F's eldest son G, then, by right of primogeniture, the county and coronet of Stolzenegg pass from B to K, his great nephew ; but, by right of Majority, it would go to H, the second nephew. By right of Seniority, however, it would go to D, the son of C — that is, supposing C to be dead. But if C be alive, then, both by right of Majority and of Seniority, he would succeed E. A D I II I The inheritance of an estate by Majority or Seniority has this advantage (!), that he who succeeds to the fortune of the deceased is not legally responsible for his debts, which is not the case when the successor is the eldest son ; therefore Majority or Seniority is regarded as much stronger than primogeniture for keeping up the fortunes of a family, and is therefore much affected by the great houses of Germany. The Count of Dyhrn now enjoys the "Majorate" of Laasau The Laws of Succession. 59 and of Ober-Glogau ; the Erince Sulkowsky is also in possession of two, the " Maj orate " of Euchelna and that of Eeisen. Secundogeniture is the giving a life-interest in an estate belonging to the family to a second son. Tertiogeniture is a similar provision for the third son. In the House of Hapsburg, the Grand Duchy of Tuscan}* was an appanage held by the second son, till it was incorporated in the Kingdom of Italy. The German " Fideicommiss " is much the same as the English entail of property. It is a legal creation of the seventeenth century, and is a curious instance of the way in which Eoman light was twisted to accommodate German principles of landed tenure. We have seen that throughout the Middle Ages the doctrine was held that land belonged to the family, and that the possessor of it for the time being had only a life-interest in it — a doctrine quite foreign to Eoman law. A Fideicommiss now means an estate which has been legally constituted an entail, with succession either by primogeniture or by " Minorat," or by " Majorat," or by Seniority. A Fideicommiss can at any time be founded by the " Familienrath," or family council, constituted of all the members of the family. By similar judgment of the family- council, ratified by the board which registered the foundation of the Fideicommiss, the entail can be cut off. The possessor of the entailed estate has little power over it ; he cannot sell or mortgage it, and is liable to " impeachment for waste " should he cut down timber excessively, or in other ways injure it in value, or allow it to deteriorate. The Count of Dohna sits in the Erussian Court of Nobles and House of Lords in virtue of being the holder of the Fideicommiss of Schlobitten, Lauch, Schlodien-Carwinden, and Eeichertswald ; the Count of Dyhrn for the entailed lordships of Neu-Hardenberg, Klein-Oels, Mittelwald, and Eeisewitz. The Count of Taczanowo holds his Grafschaft by Fideicommiss. In Germany, in the Middle Ages, the upper nobility had their own code of laws, the Fiirstenrecht. Though mediatised, they still enjoy great legal privileges of establishing family laws, which are allowed to have legal force. The family law (Familienjgact) is passed by the family gathered in council, and it affects everything in which the house has a common interest, as the succession to titles and estates, the marriages of its members, and the authority more or less dictatorial accorded to the head. His consent with- GO Germany, Present and Pad. holdcn may invalidate a marriage. I know a case of a member of the upper ten thousand who married a lady not of equal rank with himself. The marriage could not have been solemnised by Board or priest, without the consent of the head of the house having been given in writing ; and that was only granted when he had signed away every claim he might have to the titles and estates of the family, both for himself and his son, and undertook to bear thenceforth only his family name, with no other mark of rank than the prefix " von." Should his elder brother die childless, neither he nor his son could succeed ; they are cut out of the family-tree legally as well as heraldically, and the title and coronet would pass over his head to his nephew by a younger brother. The German Bundesact (Art. 14) gives this autonomy and right of passing family statutes to the houses of the mediatised princes and counts. When a statute has been passed, it can only be repealed by an unanimous vote of the family council. A majority of voices can neither make a law nor abrogate one. In France all family pacts are illegal. The House of Nassau, in 1783, drew up a most elaborate code of family institutes, which were ratified and renewed in 1814. But the most remarkable of all was the family code of Napoleon I., signed March 30, 1806, by which all the sovereigns of his family were subjected to his paternal authority and supervision ; and it was provided that in case of dis- obedience he might throw them into prison and keep them there for a twelvemonth. One institution of German right never took root among the aristocracy ; this was the " gesammte Hand," already alluded to, but not explained. Before describing it, it is necessary to review the laws and customs relating to the property of married women. "When a woman married, she brought with her to her husband's house a dower, given her by her parents (Aussteuer). This con- sisted sometimes of two parts, the " Heimsteuer " and the " Leibge- dinge." The " Heimsteuer " was her contribution towards the furnishing of the house, and the clothing and adorning of her own person. It comprised almost always the linen. Amongst ourselves an unmarried woman is termed a spinster, because she is supposed to be engaged in the days of her maidenhood in spinning and weaving the linen for her future house. In Germany to the pre- sent day the wife is expected to furnish the new house, not only The Laius of Succession. 61 with, sheets and towels, but with pots, pans, chairs, beds, and tables. This, then, is the " Heimsteuer," in the sense of her con- tribution towards the stocking the new home. It means more. She must bring with her clothes and jewels suitable to her rank. 1 The former part of the " Heimsteuer " falls under the law of the "gesammte Hand." It goes into the common stock, and neither husband nor wife can dispose of any article that was comprised in it without the consent of the other and of the children. But her clothes and ornaments belong exclusively to the woman, and the husband cannot touch them. It was thought a thing monstrous and illegal when Count Eulalius, to pay his debts, sold his wife's trinkets. 2 The second part of the " Aussteuer " was the " Leibgedinge," or the old Witthum. This consisted of a dower in land, money, or stock, given by the parents with their daughter, so that she might not be wholly dependent on her husband for her maintenance. Among the Romans it was thought discreditable if a woman came to her bridegroom empty-handed ; 3 but it was thought more than discreditable among the Germans, it was regarded as making the marriage nothing better than concubinage. The German mind was so penetrated with the conception of marriage as a putting together of property, that it refused to allow that to be a lawful marriage where the property was all on one side. 4 " Charles the Bald took Eichildis to be his concubine. Now on a certain feast- day he took the aforesaid concubine and made her his wife (in con- jugem accepit) by espousing and dowering her (desjponsatam et dotatam)." 5 The Emperor by fiction assumed that her parents had given him money with her ; he then before witnesses made a " AViederlegung," assured her a dower in widowhood, and by so 1 " Ornamenta propria " — Leges Angl. et Wer. i. 7. 2 Greg. Turon. Hist. Franc, x. 20. 3 Sed ut inops, infamis nc sim, ne mi banc famam differant Me germanain nieam sororeni in concubinatuin tibi Sic sine dote dedisse magis quam in matrimoniam. Plaut. Trinumm. A. iii. sc. 2. 4 King Alfred ordered, "If a man allows his son to marry a slave-girl, let him betroth her to him, and provide her "with clothes and what is necessary for her maidenhood ; that is her Weotuma, let him give her that." Without the witthum the girl would be a concubine, but with it a legitimate wife. 5 Fragm. ap. Duchesne, ii. 401. G2 Germany, Present and Past. doing converted her from mistress to lawful wife. Till the dower was paid, the children were illegitimate. Sometimes, as in the case of Charles the Bald, the husband provided the dower without having received its equivalent from the parents of his bride. Chindaswind, in 645, forbade husbands giving more than one-tenth of their property as dower, except as a " Wiederlegung," to money actually paid with the bride. When land was given Avith the wife, it did not come into the " gesammte Hand/' but the woman had free disposal of it. In the lay of Meier Helmbrecht we read — Full well I know what will be given By Master Eupert to his daughter ; Some sheep, some pigs, a dozen kyue. When the portion consisted of cattle, they were put into the common stock, and then ceased to belong to the wife alone. It was the same among citizens when the bride brought with her merchandise or money. It was put with, and confounded with, the property of the man, and thenceforth all the property was held with " gesammte Hand," so that neither had power over it without consent of the other. Among the aristocracy, when the bride brought with her money, not land, then the husband made a " Wiederlegung " — i.e. he gave to her the land or buildings equivalent in value to the sum paid to him with her. In 1332, the Count of Montfort received with his wife 2000 marks in silver, and he undertook to build her a castle "as a true and proper Wiederlegung." In the ballad of " Metzen's Marriage : " Then Mistress Metzen was " wieder laid " With two good acres, thickly sowed With winnowed oats, and in the yard With poultry-house and fourteen hens, And of pennies five pound. The wife had also as her own the " Morgengabe." This was a sum of money, or a charge on land, or cattle, given freely by the husband to his wife the morning after marriage. It was given only to those who were maids, and therefore not to widows on second marriage. The generosity of the bridegroom was thought on such an occasion to require legal restriction, and the Schwaben- Spiegel lays down the limits of the Morgengabe, which must not be exceeded. Kings were under no control, but princes and barons The Laivs of Succession. 63 might not exceed 100 marks in their effusive liberality ; the lesser nobility could not give above 10 marks; the servants of a prince were limited to 5 marks. A knight might bestow on his bride his best horse or a cow, money he was not supposed to have to give ; but a merchant might bestow on her 10 marks and a horse and cow. A farmer was tied to one horse and one cow, or 10 marks, not both ; and a serf to a sheep or a goat, or 5 sous. When a woman brought with her no portion from her parents, she had only the " Morgengabe " of her husband to look to as her own, as her provision in widowhood. A marriage with only "Morgengabe," and without " Aussteuer," was called in the cor- rupt Latin of the Lombard laws " matrimonium in morgenaticam," and this originated the name, " morganatic marriage." The wife who came to her husband without portion was naturally supposed to be his inferior in birth, and therefore unequal marriages were entitled morganatic marriages. A law of Liutprand, in 717, requires, "If any husband wishes to give a Morgencap to his wife, when he has associated her to him in marriage, let him do so by deed and before witnesses, her parents and friends, and let him say, ' This is the Morgencap I have given to my wife,' that there may be no chance of mistake afterwards. But the Morgencap must never exceed one quarter of his property. It may be less if he chooses." Again, in 728, Liut- prand forbade husbands under any excuse giving more of their fortune to their wives than what was fixed by law for " Meta " and " Morgencap." The Franks called the Morgengabe " donum matutinum," and fixed it at not exceeding a third of the estate. "With them it was soon confounded with the dower or " Wieder- legung." The amount of the Morgengabe came in the Middle Ages to be agreed upon in the marriage contract ; but it was never paid till the morning after marriage. It was sometimes given in land, sometimes in goods. William I. of Holland, in 1220, gave his wife as morning-gift a water-mill (molendina aquatica). Duko William of Julich gave his bride Sybilla of Brandenburg, in 1480, the castle of Benrode, and 500 florins for pin-money. In the Sachsen-Spiegel, the Morgengabe is that part of the substance of the husband which the widow can claim on his death. It consists of all the hens, geese, cows, marcs, and sheep ; to the 64 Germany, Present and Past. cocks, ganders, bulls, and horses she has no claim. But the widow never broke up the farmyard by carrying off all the poultry and cattle of her sex ; she received from the heirs in lieu a sum which was their value. In Saxony the institution was legally abolished in 1829 ; it survives more as a tradition than a practice, except, perhaps, among the peasantry of parts of Germany, who cling tenaciously to old usages. The property of married people was not usually thrown together till a child was born to them, or till a year and a day had elapsed since they were united. When the property was thrown together it was held with " gesammte Hand " by both together, and neither without the other could dispose of the property ; for " Leib an Leib," said the law, and " Gut an Gut." Generally the man had control with free hand over the movables, but his hand was tied in his disposal of the immovables. During marriage two kinds of property had to be considered — that which was brought into common use on the occasion of marriage, and that which was acquired by husband or wife after marriage. Such was rarely thrown into "gesammte Hand," but remained at the free disposal of the party who had inherited or otherwise acquired it. "When husband or wife died, the division and succession to property differed according to whether the marriage had been without issue (unbeerbte EJie") or with issue (beerbte Ehe). Accord- ing to Old German law on the Upper and Middle Ehine, when in a marriage without issue one of the parties died, then the widower took two-thirds, the widow one-third, of property acquired during marriage (Errungcnscliaft). Such was a statute passed by Bishop William of Strassburg, in 1533, for Egishcim. 1 The survivor could always claim support from the estate of the deceased. This was called, on the Lower Bhine, Lif-tocht, on the Middle Bhine and in Franconia, Bisess. According to the usage of Freiburg in Breisgau (1120), of 1 " Que les plus proches heritiers du defunt he'ritent et prennent pour leur part les biens immeubles provenant de la ligne du de'ce'de', s'ils sont encore ex- istans et n'ont pas e'te changes ; raais au cas que les biens ont ete' change's, ils en prennent deux tiers, et la fernine ou ses he'ritiers un tiers." The Laws of Succession. 65 Colmar (1293), of Kemich (1477), of Lorraine, Luxemburg (1588), Echternach (1589), etc., the woman inherited all after the death of her husband without issue. 1 By Saarbriicken land-rigbt the survivor kept all the personal and acquired property of the deceased for life, after which it passed to his heirs. This was the law also in Old Wiirtemberg and the towns of East Franconia. As a general usage in marriage without issue, the movables were held in common during life, and after death all went to the survivor, or were divided by quota among the heirs. All acquisi- tions in immovables went to the male heirs, but if the widow had received no Morgengabe, she could legally demand of them one- fhird as her own, in some places one-half; and what was over, and went to the male heirs, was encumbered with charges for the support of the widow. All acquisitions by inheritance on one side or the other went to the heirs, but were charged for the maintenance of the widower or widow. "When, however, marriage was with issue, laws were different. By Cologne right all property went to the children, but was charged with the maintenance of the widow. But by Bern, Frei- burg in Voigtland, and Swabian right (in Kempten, Meningen, Lindau, etc.), all went to the survivor, with charges for the children. By Mainz right the estate was divided between widow and children, the widow and daughters taking the " spindle share," one- third, and dividing it among them ; the sons taking the " sword share," two-thirds, and dividing that. When property went all to the widow, the children had a lien (Verfangenschaft) on it ; she could not mortgage, sell, or give away any of it. The law in Prussia is now this, in cases of intestacy : — If the deceased leaves relatives in descending line, children or grandchildren, the survivor (widow or widower) takes one- fourth If there are more than three descendants to inherit, the survivor shares equally with the children. If the deceased leaves only ascendants in the first degree brothers and sisters, then the survivor takes one-third. 1 " Omnia mulier parificabitur viro, et e contra, et vir mulieris erit nacres, et e contra." 66 Germany, Present and Past. If the relatives are more distant, as nephews and nieces, the survivor inherits one-half. If there aro no relatives, the survivor inherits all. In no case can a husband or wife deprive the other by will of one-half of the share which would fall to his or her lot in the case of intestacy. For instance, a man with three children may be- queath to his wife one-eighth of his estate. The half of what she would obtain were he to die intestate is called the " Pflichttheil," and is inalienable. Modern German law lays down as the rule of intestate succession : " Children inherit equal shares of their parents' estate." But a parent is not obliged to give his child more than the " Pflichttheil." When a parent has only one or two children, then the " Pflicht- theil " is a third of the sum which would be given to the child were the parent to die intestate. For instance, a man has an estate worth 10,000Z.; if he dies intestate, leaving a wife and two children, the widow takes 2,500Z., and each child, male or female, 3,750Z. But he may so dispose of his property that the wife gets only 1,250Z., and each child 1,250Z. If there be three or four children, then the "Pflichttheil" is one-half; if there be more than four, two-thirds of what would be the share of the child were the parent to die intestate. But if a child marries without the parent's consent, the " Pflichttheil " is reduced one-half. When modern German law rules the equal subdivision of pro- perty among children when the father dies without making a will, it follows the tradition of German land-right from immemorial times. But, though equal partition has been the theory, it has not been the invariable practice. During more than two thousand years among the Bedouins the law of primogeniture has been recognised. The wealth of the Bedouin consists in herds, and not in land. Divided, the herds of the head of the family would not suffice to maintain each son. Subdivision of the movable inheritance, when nothing else pre- vented, does not take place, for economical reasons. For econo- mical reasons also equal partition has not been put in practice in a great part of Germany. A bauer has a dwelling-house and farm- buildings and an estate. He dies, leaving five children. They call in a valuer, and he appraises the land at 40,000 thalers, and The Laws of Succession. 67 the buildings at 10,000. Each child takes a fifth. One, there- fore, gets the farm-house and offices without land, and the others get each a quarter of the land and no house, barns, or stables. I remember a raffle in a village got up by a travelling tinker. There were three prizes — his donkey, his cart, the harness; and tickets were sixpence each. A shoemaker who had no paddock got the ass ; the cart went to a lollipop-seller, a widow, who had no shed under which to put it ; and the harness was won by a carrier who had a horse too large to go in the gear worn by the donkey. Partitions as unpromising of success are often the result of these divisions among the heirs of farmers. Recourse is sometimes had to a sale. This is avoided if possible, as the German peasant clings to the paternal farm with as much love as the English squire to the estate and hall of his ancestors. What is much more common is for one son to undertake the farm, mortgage it up to its full value, and pay with what he raises on it the claims of his brothers and sisters. This is how it is that so much farm-land is mortgaged. The profits go to the Jew money-lenders; and the bauer scrambles on as best he may, never able to pay off the money raised, and when he dies leaving nothing to be divided among his children. Wherever one goes the German peasant may be heard muttering curses on the Jew, who sucks the fat out of the land, and grows rich on the labour of the peasant whom he is crushing. But the system is to blame, and not the money-lender. It has been proposed, but, I believe, not yet acted upon, that the bauers should leave annuities to those of their children who do not take on the farm. A farmer could pay his fellow-heirs out of the annual receipts; and those who desire to raise capital could sell their annuities. One thing is perfectly certain ; the present system is ruinous to agriculture, for the farmer goes on tilling without capital. He starts on his farming without a penny in his pocket ; all he has raised on the land has gone to his brothers and sisters, and to the end of his days he is struggling to keep a family on nothing, whilst the profits of the farm are eaten up by the usurer. Till the Reformation usury was forbidden. The idea of capital, as we understand it, was not understood in the Middle Ages. Canon law forbade the taking of usury for the loan of money, and it was forbidden also by land law. Even Melanchthon regarded money taken for the loan of a sum as robbery. The prohibition of usury 68 Germany, Present and Past. had one advantageous result — it saved estates and farms from being burdened with mortgages. It is obvious that before the raising money on a farm was possible, the system of buying off the coheirs could not be put in practice. There were, also, economical reasons in many parts which forbade the parcelling of the land. What was done was this. The youngest sun was constituted heir to the farm and lands. The father was always, therefore, able to portion off his elder children in his lifetime, according to his means, extinguishing one after another their claims on his inheritance. Consequently, when the youngest son came into possession, the farm was burdened only with an annuity for his mother. This system is still very widely spread and greatly favoured, and it answers admirably. The father, better than any- body else, is able to estimate the net value of his farm. He lays by his savings till he has enough for the portion of the eldest son or eldest daughter ; he then puts the first out in trade or marries the other. Then he saves for the second, and so on till all the children are provided for. In some cases the amount given is not over the Pllichttheil ; it is never quite up to the full share, were the estate sold and divided. The professional valuer, as a bauer said to me, puts the full price on the land ; the father always values to suit the exigencies of the family and the welfare of the farm. 1 One great advantage of " Minorat " succession in farms is that the bloom of life and power for work of the heir coincides more nearly with the declension of power and activity in the father than under primogeniture, in which very generally both father and heir presumptive are simultaneously full of life and vigour. But, on the other hand, it has this disadvantage, that no son knows whether he will be heir or not till nine months after the father's decease. " Minorat," Borough English, is general in the Schwarzwald, in Altenburg, Wolfenbiittel, Oldenburg, and portions of Bremen and Verden, and universal in Westphalia, Grubenhagen, Diepholz, the Emmenthal, and the Upper Palatinate. In Bremen and Verden another custom is for the father to 1 In North Germany, where farms are not divided, the daughters are dowered not in proportion to the estate, but to the station in life of the father. — HteM: Die Fumilie. Stuttg. 1861, p. 16. The Laws of Succession. 69 leave the farm to the most ahle-hoclied of his sons, without regard to age. In Meiningen, the parents conjointly appoint their heir to the land. Their choice usually falls on the eldest or the youngest, according as Majorat or Minorat is the tradition of the family or the custom of the neighbourhood. In some places primogeniture and Borough English subsist side by side in adjoin- ing communities. In certain places — in portions of the Black Forest, for instance — the land always travels through a female hand. It goes to the eldest daughter ; if there be no daughters, to the sister, or sister's daughter. This custom dates from a remote antiquity, and is certainly pre-historic. Among some Turanian tribes, and still among the North American Indians, descent is always through the female. A son belongs to his mother's family, not to that of his father. A wise son knows his father, but any fool can name his mother. Borough English is now almost exclusively the custom of the bauers ; it has long ceased to be that of aristocratic succession ; but German nursery tales, which always make the youngest son the successful and favoured child, the heir to the crown, point to a period when it was universal among all classes. " It is well," said Moser, " to have the elder birds out of the nest, full-fledged and flying, whilst the heir is hatching." In some places, as at Gottingen, lot decides which son shall have the farm. A very common usage is for a son to be dis- qualified for inheriting if he be not born on the farm. Another, equally common, is more curious, and altogether inexplicable. In the event of a bauer dying and leaving a widow with a family, if the widow marries again, then the second husband and her children by him inherit over the heads of the children of the bauer whose property it was. She alienates the estate, by marriage, from the blood descendants of the possessor. When an heir is under age — and this is often the case when the farm goes to the youngest — then " Interimwirthschaft " is a common form of trusteeship. It is usually this : the nearest adult male relative — the uncle, or even the stepfather — throws his property in with that of the minor, and manages them as one. A " gesammte Hand " can only be broken by death. Consequently, the trustee remains on the estate with life possession, and the heir can only enter on it on the death of the guardian. This system 70 Germany, Present and Pad. proved so fruitful a cause of quarrel, that it was abolished by law iu Mecklenburg in 1810, and some other States have since for- bidden it. I have already mentioned the fact that in parts of Swabia the widow inherits and carries on the farm or business for life, and the children cannot enter upon it till after their mother's death. ( 71 ) CHAPTER IV. PEASANT PROPRIETORS. Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere. Tennyson's Northern Farmer, N. S. There is no feature in the English landscape so tormenting and intractable to an artist as the hedge ; and yet that is the feature dearest to the naturalist — the home and harbour of flower and fern. A painter can make no picture out of a hillside cut up like a chess-board ; and the botanist despairs of flowers on the un- hedged plains of France. How came we to have hedgerows in England? and how came they in South Germany to have none ? We have hedges because, if the Anglo-Saxons did not bring the tradition with them, there grew up among their descendants a theory of land-tenure and farming which necessitated hedges; whereas the Alemanni, the Franks, Burgundians, and Swabians held a doctrine of land- tenancy which dispensed with them. On the north bank of the Lippe scattered farms nestle among trees with their stackyards round them, and fields girt about with hedges. On the south bank not a solitary farm is visible, nor a hedge, only clustered cottages, and the land laid out in strips. The distinction is older than might be supposed. Caesar says of the Nervii, a Belgic people, that "against attacks of horsemen from olden times they have been wont to protect themselves by cutting down tender trees and weaving the branches, so that the countless twigs, interlaced with thorn-bushes and other shrubs, might make a hedge not only impenetrable to the foot, but even to the eye." 1 Caesar was a 1 Be Bello Gallico, ii. 17. His description applies exactly to the Westphaliaii " Knick." 72 Germany, Present and Past soldier, and viewed everything from a military point of view. The hedge to him was a military defence, and nothing more. As a soldier he hated it. Varus did not fall before the Germans in the Teutoburger "VVald, but west of it, among the Westphalian hedges. Tacitus says that the people of Germany (meaning the free Saxons whom he had seen north of the Ehine) " do not live in towns. They cannot endure houses in close proximity to each other. Scattered and separated, they settle where attracted by a spring, a pasture, or a grove. The villages are not arranged in our manner [the Eomano-Celtic] with united, dependent buildings. Each surrounds his house with a garth, from fear of fire or from ignorance of how to build. They do not even use stones or tiles, but employ a common material without show or value [the Devonshire cob] and thatch." 1 On the other hand, Caesar says of the Suevi (the Swabians) : " They have no private and separate fields," and " none have fixed fields and proper boundaries, but the magistrates and princes in assembly annually divide the ground in proportion and in place among the people, changing the arable land every year." 2 Tacitus was only personally acquainted with the Saxon portion of Germany north of the Ehine, but from hearsay he gives an account of the Swabians : " The serfs are not employed as ours, on work distributed among them. On the contrary, each occupies his own house and has his own hearth. The lord lays on him a tribute of corn, cattle, and stuff [flax] ; slavery goes no further." He adds that the lands are held by the farmers in common, and the fields occupied in rotation. " They change their tillage-land annually, and let much lie fallow; . . . they do not hedge their meadows nor water their gardens, and they cultivate only corn." 3 Here we have a rough sketch of a condition of farming which has survived to the present day in Middle and South Germany, with only slight modifications. When Germany was first colonised, the population was small, settlements sparse, and there was land in abundance to satisfy every necessity. The requirements of the colonists were simple and easily met, the chase was yielding, the soil fresh and 1 German. 16. 2 De Bello Gallico, iv. 1, and vi. 22. 3 German. 25, 26. Peasant Proprietors. 73 apparently inexhaustible, the rivers and lakes teemed with fish. There was at first no landed property. A family settled on a suitable spot in a valley, by the water — even on the water (Pfahlbauten) — where the wild deer would come to drink, and a net let down from the platform would draw up a breakfast. Bound the settlement the best soil was broken up, and flax and corn were cultivated. The rest of the land as far as the forest was the common mark, where all might pasture their short-horned oxen. The virgin earth yielded harvest after harvest through long years. But at length it became exhausted, and the crop did not answer the demands of the tiller. Then the settlement was dis- solved, the family migrated, and repeated its experiments and experiences on new soil. But in the meantime the family had increased. The sons separated and founded homes for themselves, generally in the neighbourhood of the paternal settlement, and when that moved migrated with it. From the Family sprang the Stock, and from the Stock the Folk. All social development issues from the patriarchal conception of the family ; but it is only when the basis has broadened to cover a large tract, and involve a multitude, that the Folk emerges upon the stage of history. As population increased boundaries were created by the necessity of fixing limits to prevent incessant feud. A cluster of related families formed a " Gemeinde," a cluster of Gemeinden made a Gau or a Mark. When a Folk became too numerous for its confines, the overflow attacked another Folk. If the assailants failed they disappeared ; if they triumphed they enslaved the con- quered, and assumed the rights and privileges of freemen. Bapidity of growth of populations made migration a difficulty. The land already exhausted was returned to, and found to have recovered itself while left fallow. The only confines that existed at first were those of the Folk. The next to be traced were those of the Gemeinde — the Commune. The parish is the English division, but the German is communal and not ecclesiastical. The Gemeinde was a community of families allied in blood — an expan- sion of one family holding land in common. The next stage was the distributing of arable land among the householders, and the marking off of each portion as appropriated. In favourable situations families increased more rapidly than in others, and the sons settled near their fathers' hearths. Thus the village came into 74 Germany, Present and Past. existence. But where the soil was not rich enough to allow of this — was rocky or sandy — there dispersion was compulsory. In such situations one son alone remained under the parental roof, perhaps the eldest, most generally the youngest ; and the rest separated and sought their fortunes elsewhere. The great swarms of Saxons and Angles who came to Britain and conquered it, were the elder sons of the households leaving the parental hive to seek their fortunes elsewhere; the youngest son remaining with his father to succeed him in the byre and inherit his flocks and herds. We hear of periodical migrations of great peoples. In most cases the migrations were not of the whole race, but only of the sons who could not be supported at home. The Montavun Thai contains a population three times as much as the soil and produce of the valley can support. Every spring a dense swarm of men and girls issues from the narrow gorge above Bludenz and disperses over Switzerland and France. The men work the summer through as masons in France, the maids as wait- resses in the Swiss inns. In winter they return to their rocky home with pockets well lined with gold. In early days there was no demand for masons and kellnerins ; when the young people swarmed out, it was to conquer or be killed ; the pastures of the Alps of Montavun could support at home but one son and one daughter. This, on a large scale, is the history of the migrations of the Saxons, Angles, Franks, etc. Among the Suevi (the Swabians) the whole Gemarkung, or land belonging to a Gemeinde, remained common property, cultivated by the whole village ; but among the Saxons the sons migrated, and one alone remained to inherit the parental house. There was reason for this. On the great plain of North Germany the land is sandy, peaty, and poor. It cannot support a dense population. There must be periodical swarms or devastating famines. But in the South and Middle of Germany it is not so. The richer land allows of the growth of population on it. It admits of extensive tillage. Therefore the poor land instituted the custom of one son inheriting and the rest dispersing ; and the rich land nourished all at home with impartial kindness. Thus inexorable necessity established the aristocratic theory of the tenure of land prevalent among the Saxons. Nature herself determined the opposite laws of inheritance which still govern the holding of land in the North Peasant Proprietors. 75 and South of Germany : developed in one part the farm with its homesteads, fields, and hedges, and in another formed the village with its common-lands and Gewannen; created two systems of farming, the Koppel- and the Hufen-wirthschaft. Among the Franks, Alemanns, and Swabians, the communal system was universal, except where the soil was too poor to allow of it. Thus, in the dry table-land of Bavaria, in parts of the Black Forest, and in the Bavarian Alps, we find the close property entailed hard by land held in common and land equally divisible. At first, the whole Gemarkung was the common property of all the households in a Gemeinde. But after a while, as already said, the arable land was divided between the heads of the village house- holds, to be held by them a certain length of time. Then it was allowed to fall back into fallow, and another portion of pasture was appropriated and marked off for tillage. By degrees there came to be system in this change. Large portions of the common land were marked off and allotted for tillage in regular rotation. The land beyond the marks remained common (Allmand or Allmend). 1 At Gersbach, in the Baden Schwarzwald, for instance, the tillage land to this day is all common. Every year a portion is alloted to each village householder who can established an ancestral claim to it, and is by him cultivated for three years ; at the expiration of this time it becomes again common property, and he receives by lot a fresh piece of arable land. In the high land on the Hundsi iicken and on the spurs of the Eifel, lauds are fresh assorted among the village community at intervals of a certain number of years. In the Altmark all the laud is common ; and the heads of the house- holds assemble under the presidency of the village constable (Schulz) every evening to decide what agricultural work is to be carried on the following day. Among the Swabians and Alemanns, as the population grew, the time of rotation was reduced to a minimum of three years. The movable landmarks dividing the several allotments became permanent, and every householder received as many parcels of land as there were divisions for rotation of crops — i.e. three. Thus 1 Some writers suppose the Alemanni were so called from their system of landed holdings, from the " Allmend." This I doubt; I suspect the Alemanni derived their name from being a mixed people of Swabians, conquered Celts, Wends, and Khaetians. 76 Germany, Present and Past. arose the three-field system, so universal in South and Mid Ger- many. After a while the tillage land in cultivation proved in- sufficient fur the growing population; it was found necessary to reclaim more of the common land. The reclaimed portion was again divided into three, and then subdivided among the house- holders in parallel strips, so that each strip might enclose some of the best and worst sorts of soil. After another long interval there ensued a third enclosure and allotment. Then perhaps a fourth ; till in some parishes the whole of the Allmend was taken in and distributed as private property. All these appropriations are marked off in long strips, called Gewannen or Gewende ; and as they were made at long intervals and by lot, it generally happens that the strips of land belonging to a peasant holder lie scattered all over the parish. If one were to go into a nursery after a child has been cutting up coloured papers to twist into spills, one would see on the floor, strewn with strips of red, blue, yellow, and green, a map of the lie of fields belonging to as many bauers in a South German parish. But the majority of Gemeinden have not yet appropriated all their common land. They have at all events their forest and pasture. But they have also Allmend, which is in till- age, but not appropriated. It still belongs to all, and has no happy lot. In some parishes it is let, and the rent goes into the common box or vestry account. In other parishes it is given for life to the oldest inhabitant ; in others it goes by turns to the heads of the community for fixed terms of years. Whichever way it is disposed of, the common saying holds good, " Gesammt-gut, Verdammt-gut " (common property is accursed property), for it is racked out by its temporary tenant. In Westphalia, portions of the Allmend, there called Vohden, are given to bauers for from four to six years ; at the end of which time the land falls back into common property, and is then so exhausted as to be unable to grow anything. It is bad also for the temporary tenant. Whilst he holds the land he is obliged to have, say six horses. When he gives it up he must reduce his number to two. After a lapse of a few years he gets another grant of common land, and must again buy more horses. Thus there is incessant buying and selling. Precisely like the Vohden of Westphalia are the Wildfelder of the Spessart, land re- claimed from forest, the Scheffelland in the Eifel, the Torffelder in Waldeck, and the Eggarten in Switzeidand and Swabia. Till quite Peasant Proprietors. 77 recently it was not unusual in Baden for the common-land tillage to change tenants every three years, and for the Allmend meadows to change every year. Many villages still have common forest, and each householder in the parish has a right to so many Klaftern of firewood from it. Such reckless ruin has "been wrought through improvidence in devastating woods, that the various Governments in Germany have been forced to interfere ; and now no man may cut down timber that has not been marked by the forester. In their eager- ness to be rich, and indifference to the requirements of posterity, the peasants were sweeping away all the forests of Germany, to turn the wood into cash and the soil into tillage. The pastures which were common land have fared worse than the woods, which have attracted and secured the protection of Government. Common pasture has in most places been reclaimed and appropriated, and turned into tillage. As there are no hedges, and the strips of land belonging to each farmer are not much wider than a good-sized room, it is impossible to feed cattle on them. Consequently, not cattle only, but sheep also, are stall- fed. Stall-fed sheep bear little wool, and their mutton is tasteless. The abolition of the pastures has made the rearing of crops take the place of the rearing of cattle. Yet, wherever a farmer has cattle and a dairy, he is well off; a bauer with only tillage is always poor, and generally in debt. As has been shown, where villages of peasant proprietors exist, there the property of each is scattered all over the parish. The further subdivision and distribution of the property is effected by the Suevo-democratic law of equal partition among all children, male and female, common in Hesse, Thuringia, the Ehenish Franks, the Swabians and Alemanns of Wiirtemberg, part of Bavaria, Baden, and German Switzerland. Yet even there econo- mic reasons often prevent it. Aloft on a mountain slope sits a comfortable farm, with its alps and home meadows, which one son will inherit. Below in the plain is a village of tillers and growers of grain dividing their little parcels into minuter particles among their children. Yet the rich mountain bauer attends the same parish church as the poor peasants of the plain. Necessity forced the owner of the Alpine farm to break through the rule of his race, and bequeath the pasture-land and herds to one son, and send 78 Germany, Present and Past. forth the others into the wide world to seek their fortunes. No such necessity existed in the plain, where the land was rich, and a man can subsist on the produce of half-a-dozen acres. In North Germany the land belongs to the nobility and to yeomen farming their own estates. There we have the isolated farm (Einzelhof, Einudhof). The lines of demarcation between the two systems — the aristocratic and the communal — can be drawn exactly. The limits, beginning from the north-east, are from the Marches of Bremen along the Weser to Einteln ; from thence over the Lemgo and the sources of the Lippe to Lippe, by Hamme, Plettenburg, Attendorn, Drolshagen, to Siegburg and Miilheim; then the line crosses to the right bank of the Ehine at Neuss, and goes by Erkelenz and Heinsberg to the Meuse. All west of this line the land is held in close properties, and is cultivated by farmers not living in villages, but in their scattered houses, as in England. Every farm {Hof) is surrounded by its farmyard and its ranges of fields. Several scattered farms form a Bauerschaft, which generally bears the name of the oldest and most honourable Hof. This Hof is first in rank among the farms. In it the yeoman of the Bauerschaft assemble and debate on the affairs of their society — decide on marriages, patch up quarrels, and strike bargains. Formerly these assemblies exercised judicial powers, and could pronounce and carry out capital sentences. It was from them that the Holy Vehm arose. The decisions of the assembly were called Bauersprachen or Bauergerichten. The head farm was called the Bichthof, or Court of Judgment, or simply the Oberhof, as chief farm. Its proprietor bore the proud title always given him of Hauptmann. 1 It will be seen that the present division of the land in Germany is the result of a process of development reaching back to pre- historic times — a process of regular growth till the time of Charle- magne ; but it has been hindered, delaj'ed, and even thrown back during the last thousand years by the growth and pretensions of feudalism. In Germany it is always possible to distinguish the close farm, Koppelicirthsdiaft, from the scattered divisible properties of the peasant owners in villages. The first exist in North Germany, and here and there as islands — one may say oases — in the midst 1 See, for a sketch of Westphalian farm-life, Iniwerinann's Oberhof. Peasant Proprietors. 79 of other lands ; some the remains of free peasant estates of ancient date, others the creation of nobles or the Church, most of which have now fallen into the hands of bauers. Wherever they exist they are conspicuous for superior cultivation of the soil and a better stock of cattle. The land in the hands of large farmers supports, as we shall see presently, fewer hands on the acre, but more in the aggregate. Peasant properties are almost always broken up into many scattered strips, and rarely lie together. Villages of peasant proprietors are of three sorts. One sort is a street of houses ; such, for instance, as Denzlingen, in Baden, some two miles long. Each house heads a strip of land, the width of the house and offices. This strip is divided into sections. Close to the house are orchard and vegetable garden ; beyond is arable land, outside that meadow, and at the verge is wood. Such villages are frequently met with in the Schwarzwald, Oden- wald, Oberbayern, and between the Lippe and the Liineburger moors. But usually the village lies in the middle or at the edge of the parish, always by the water and where the best soil is found. The houses are rarely built so close to one another that there is not room for vegetable gardens, paddocks, and orchards among them. The orchards round a village, and the cherry-trees along the road, are occasionally common property. The fruit, when gathered, is subdivided among the households. In the immediate neighbour- hood of the village is always a portion of the best land bounded off from the rest, kept for most careful cultivation, well manured, and used as vegetable gardens. Outside this is the tillage {Aclier- land). The whole of this, without exception, is divided into a number of Gewannen, each of which also contains a number of subdivisions. The Gewannen vary greatly in length from 30 to 1000 yards and more, but run, on an average, 200 yards. The longer the strips the narrower is their relative width. It is most rare for a single proprietor to hold a whole Gewanne; each bauer has usually only a strip, a sixteenth or twentieth, of the Gewanne in one place, and a sixteenth or twentieth of a Gewanne elsewhere. The width of these subdivisions naturally varies. Some in the Ehenish Tfalz are only a yard wide. I have measured a good many in Biden, and have found them frequently as narrow as 80 Germany, Present and Past. seven yards — i.e. width in which to turn a plough — sometimes only three yards. As a general rule, the strips are rectangular. The traveller in South Germany can scarcely have failed to notice the Gewannen parted from each other by footpaths, and their subdivisions by trenches or stones. Except on steep hill- sides, where for convenience of ploughing the Gewannen are ranged horizontally, they are generally so laid out as to give the owners equal shares of good and inferior soil. Where there is diversity of soil, great variation in the direction and shape of the Gewannen is observable. When one set of Gewannen falls at right angles on another set, that strip on which the heads impinge is called the Anwende ; it is that on which the ploughs turn, and it is that, in consequence, on which the best soil accumulates. But as it also suffers from the same cause, it always stands in the village land-book as less than it really is — a fact of some import- ance in the event of sale or exchange. Onhy of late years have roads and paths of access been made to the several strips of land. Formerly the main road alone was kept up by the parish, and right of way across the land of neigh- bours was stringently ruled. It was permitted only at certain seasons, so that a bauer could not always obtain access to his property. There are villages of a third sort, which must be briefly noticed. In the Westerwald, for instance, the face of the country is studded with innumerable little villages of from six to ten houses, and from forty to fifty inhabitants, each with its school and church and Eathhaus. These villages sprang up in a very natural way. When fresh common land was enclosed, the new families for whom it was taken in set up their cottage-farms near the " new take " to save having to walk far to their work. In the early Middle Ages the whole country was covered with these little daughter-villages. The large village was a later phase of peasant life. When an old chronicler like Hermann the Cripple relates that " on July 3, 875, the village Eschborn was so wrecked by a storm that every trace of it vanished," he alludes, no doubt, to some such humble collection of half-a-dozen houses. But the feuds of the Middle Ages forced the bauers to flock together for protection, and seek shelter under the walls of a castle or a convent, or at all events of a massive church tower. The site of many an Peasant Proprietors. 81 old hamlet then deserted is pointed out. Such are the " wiiste Marten," the deserted marches noted in the archives of every State since the fourteenth century. For instance, in the terrier of the house of Wiesenburg, a feudal tenure of 40,000 acres in East Prussia, in 1575, nineteen wiiste Marten are noted, and it says : " These villages must have existed in times before mind, as the fields, and even the homesteads, are overgrown with oak and beech three hundred years old." In the Ehenish Pala- tinate every little swell in the ground was once crowned by its village ; now only the names remain to tell where once they btood. When the dwellers in these hamlets crowded into large villages, they kept their land, but lived at a distance from it. By marriage and purchase they acquired other bits of ground in other parts of the Gemarkung ; their children divided the parental acres and united them to other inheritances ; and thus ensued the most marvellous distribution of property in patches and shreds all over a parish. The average size of a strip or piece of arable land possessed by a bauer is naturally very variable. In some places, where they scarce exceed two Aren, 1 the owner of twenty hectares (about 50 acres) will have some 1000 bits of land distributed over the whole surface of the parish. Such is the case on the Main and the Middle Ehine. On the Upper Ehine, on the other hand, the average size of a field is from twelve to fifteen Aren ; in Bavaria, thirty Aren. In Baden it has been fixed by law so as not to include less than a quarter of a Morgen, 2 or about a quarter of an acre. Elsewhere it is unregulated. The three-course system of farming is almost the only one possible in peasant communities. In most of them the arable land is divided by immemorial invariable custom into three portions — ■ the Feld, Flur, and Zelg — the winter, the summer, and the fallow field. We can see in almost every South German parish farming as it was when the Gemarkung was first divided up. Century after century has passed, new vegetables have been introduced — 1 1 Are = 100 square metres = 119-603 square yards. 100 Aren = 1 Hectare. 1 Hectare = 2-471 English acres. 2 A Moreen iu Baden is = 0-3G00 Hectare. 82 Germany, Present and Past. roots, tobacco, hops — but the system has remained unaltered. The arable land changes year by year in rotation of three. Till the feudal system was abolished, this method of farming could not be altered, as the charges on the land were computed by it. But, though the tithing of the crops has ceased to be exacted, it is not much easier to work a change in the three-course system, so hampered is the farmer by the rights of his neighbours, and the danger he incurs of being sued for trespass or damage should he break the customary routine. If a property does not abut on a main road — and this is only the case with a few — the owner is laid under the yoke of old custom, and cannot adopt a more rational system, for he cannot get to his land except at the customary times. Consequently, continual cultivation is only found in large farms. The meadows (Wiesen, Matten) as a rule follow the course of the streams, but often lie on dry soil, as on hills and the rough ground that breaks in upon tillage-land. The proportion borne by meadow to tillage is very important. It varies from : 1 or from 3:1. Almost without exception, as already stated, in the latter case the bauers are in flourishing circumstances, and in the former are in debt and in the hands of the Jews. Meadow land, like arable land, is parcelled out. But the greatest subdivision is found among the vineyards. Of these the majority of portions are less than an Are, say ten rods. The peasants possessing vineyards are almost always in comfortable circumstances. Pasture land is generally common land. But in some cases it is parcelled out in strips like the meadow and tillage. I have seen a whole family watching three sheep and a cow whilst grazing, to prevent their trespassing upon a neighbour's pasture, there being no hedges, but an invisible line drawn between two stone pegs to separate the estates. Such parcelled pastures are common in the Schwarzwald. It is difficult to overrate the waste of time and trouble which they entail, and which they divert from the tillage land. The average size of a peasant's property can hardly be given. In fertile districts an estate of seventy acres is rare, and a bauer with such a property would be looked up to as a man cf wealth. Where the land is poor, it is different. Peasant Proprietors. 83 Anything like a compact farm or estate in Mid and South Germany is most rare. Even where land belongs to the gentry, it is in patches and parcels scattered here and there in and out among the strips belonging to the peasant proprietors. The landed gentry are therefore obliged to cultivate their ground in the same wretched manner as the bauers ; and it is only by means of exchange, often at a sacrifice, or by purchase, often above its worth, that they have been able to throw their land together ( VcrJcoppelung), and thus introduce a more rational system of agri- culture. This is why, in Germany, landed property pays worse than in England. In England the return is 2£ per cent., in Germany it is reckoned rarely to reach 2 per cent. Where land has been thrown together, it is always possible to let it, and a farmer (P'dchter) is generally glad to rent it, and will pay the rent and make more out of it for himself than he could have made out of his own land, free of rent, but dispersed over the GemarJcung. These farms stand out as oases in a desert of bad agriculture. In North Germany, where large landed estates exist, there is no difficulty in making farms compact. In the large farms the soil yields better, and the cattle are of a superior kind ; but the small farms support the largest number of human heads. The small holder who has much tillage and little pasture has no capital to sink in the soil ; the number of cattle he maintains is insuf- ficient to manure the land. If his crops fail one year, it is as much as he can do to scramble on to the next harvest : if the second be not unusually good, he falls into the hands of the Jews, who sell him up, take his land, and dispose of it at a price above its worth, for small parcels always fetch high figures as accommo- dation land to neighbouring holders. There is scarce a village without some Jews in it. They do not cultivate land themselves, but lie in wait, like spiders, for the failing bauer. The usual story of a small farmer's ruin is this. His second ox dies. He cannot plough without two, and he has not the money to buy one. A Jew lets him have an ox at a certain price, to be paid in instal- ments. When the Jew has thus put his little finger in at the door, the whole fist follows. Just as in England the land of small yeomen gets into the possession of country lawyers who lend them money in hard times, so does the land in Germany go to the Jew. But the Jew never keeps it. Ho sells it. Where there was 84 Germany, Present and Past. -wood ho was wont to " stub " it up and sell the ground as tillage, hut Government has forbidden this, and made the practice penal. 1 The subdivision of the land is such an impediment to good farming, and leads, when carried to extreme results, to such a dead-lock, that tho Governments in Germany have had to interfere at different times. In Baden, for instance, in 1760, and again in 1771, and in Speyer in 1753 and 1752, laws were passed forbidding the par- celling of arable land below \ of an acre, garden ground below \ of an acre, vineyards also below | of an acre. In Nassau, 1777, tillage might not be reduced below | an acre, and garden plots below \ acre. By law of 1839 the minimum of arable landed property was fixed at 50 rods, of meadow at 25, and of garden at 15. In Darmstadt in 1834 the minimum of subdivision of bad land that was turned by the plough, was fixed at 400 square Klafter, 2 of good land 200, of meadow 100, of vineyard and orchard 50, of garden 20. In Weimar, since 1862, fields of one acre and meadows of |- an acre may not be legally cut up. In Bavaria a law of 1834 forbade the subdivision of land below a ratable value of a Gulden (Is. 9d.) In Delecarlia, in Sweden, a farmer has occasionally 300 parcels of ground distributed over a district four miles square, and only the head of the family knows where they all are. On the Bhine there are peasant properties of twenty acres divided into 120 scattered patches. At Hohenheim is an agricultural college for Wiirtenibergers, founded by Govern- ment with the object of raising the character of farming in the kingdom. But it has been found that the pupils will not buy land in Wiirtemberg, parcelled out as it is, and prefer migrating to North Germany, where they can rent close farms. " What educated man," asks List, " will buy a property broken into a hundred bits in closest contact with blunderheaded, cantankerous boors ? " It is remarkable that in Lippe, where largo farms are the rule, and there is not equal subdivision, when the standard of cultivation and prosperity is high, so great fear is felt lest the system general elsewhere of equal subdivision should invade and ruin the princi- pality, that in 1880 laws were passed forbidding the breaking up of large estates. 1 In Bavaria with fine and imprisonment. 2 A Klafter is about 6 ft. Peasant Proprietors. 85 The mischief wrought by distribution has repeatedly attracted the attention of Government, and various attempts have been made to rearrange scattered peasant properties, so as to facilitate Koppelwirihsehaft. In 1617, rearrangements of property were effected in a great number of parishes in Bavaria. Fresh rearrangements were made in 1791, 1810, 1817, 1818, 1821-1826, 1838-1860. In 1861 a law was passed to facilitate redistribution of property in parishes; but as such a redistribution could only be made when approved by a majority in a parish reckoned by heads, not by acreage, 1 it has remained a dead letter ; for Koppelivirtliscliaft is an advantage to the large proprietor, but not to the little holder, as the scattered patches of land fetch more than they are worth, and the small proprietor keeps a sale always in his eye. In Brunswick, during the last thirty-five years, " Verlwppelung " — the throwing together of properties — has been carried out ener- getically, and is now nearly complete. In the south of Hanover, property is in the hands of little owners as in Mid and South Germany. From 1820 till 1850 Verlwppelung was optional, but since then it has been made compulsory wherever a majority, reckoned by acreage, agrees to it; all small holders not being allowed a vote, as being invariably obstructives. In the Grand- Duchy of Weimar the Prussian system, which we shall presently describe, has been pursued, and the land everywhere redistributed. Since Hesse-Cassel has been taken by Prussia, redistribution has been carried out there with a high hand. In Wiirtemberg and Hesse nothing has been done to stay the evil. But the Prussian Government has gone vigorously to work with Hohenzollern and has recast the land. There are three systems of Verkoppelung : the oldest is the Nassau system ; the most effectual but most despotic is the Prussian ; the Baden plan is a combination of both. It will bo sufficient if we describe briefly the first two. In Prussia, if one quarter of the proprietors in a parish ask for a redistribution, the Government proceeds at once with the re- arrangement. In Nassau and Baden the Government will not act till the consent of a majority of holders has been obtained. 1 That is, where the owner of one Morgen exercises one vote, and the owner of ten Morgen exercises ten votes. 86 Germany, Present and Past. The Nassau experiment dates from the close of last century, that of Baden from 1856. In Nassau, when a Parish has to he recast, it is visited hy a .surveyor and a special commissioner, who take an exact survey of the land. Then the soil throughout is tested and valued, and registered in a graduated scale. When this has "been done, every landholder prefers his claim, and the claims are balanced and registered. The surveyor next lays down a network of paths and roads over the whole parish, so as to allow of every proprietor being able at any time to obtain access to his own land. "When this is done, the redistribution of the land takes place. Every claim is considered and satisfied. Where there are equal claims, the lot- decides between them. This system is costly : the cost varies from 31. to 61. per hectare, exclusive of the expense of making the new roads ; and the plan is not altogether satisfactory. It prevents much litigation, and allows of a farmer breaking through the old three-course system, by giving each man a way to his own field, but it does not tend to consolidation of property. The surveyor finds that Bauer Bengel has originally ten lots of soil of class A, five lots of class B, fifteen of class C, and so on. When the redistribution takes place, he takes care to give him the same number of lots of the same quality of soil ; and as the different qualities of soil lie all over the parish, it is found that after the readjustment has taken place, lands are little less scattered than they were before. The Prussian system is different. There is a special Board for rearrangement of land, and when application is made to it, it takes the matter in hand in a somewhat despotic manner. A special commissioner is sent down to hear, and compare, and register claims. When the proprietors have made their claims they are no more consulted. The surveyor goes to work, maps the parish and tests the soils. Then the net value of every lot is estimated accord- ing to the present system of husbandry. The rate-book is next consulted, and each man's claim is considered by that, checked off and controlled. The roads and paths are then thrown as a net over the whole Gemarfamg, crossing each other at right angles. Then follows the re-allotment of land, which takes place without any regard to former arrangement, and is simply determined by the Peasant Proprietors. 87 net value of the several claims. From this it follows that where claims are equal in amount, one man will have less good soil and more of an inferior quality, and the other more good soil and little poor land. The ohject held in view hy the Prussian system is the consoli- dation of property. When the whole parish has "been redistributed, staked out and docketed with the names attached to each lot, then, and not till then, are the claimants allowed to express their opinion on the rearrangement. Their objections are listened to, weighed, and if considered well-founded, some modification in the arrange- ment is conceded. The cost of the Prussian plan is about half that of the Nassau system, from 21. As. to Al. 8s. per acre. That the par- celling and scattering of a farm all over a parish is an unmixed evil can scarcely be doubted. It leads to a great waste of time, labour, and manure. Half a day is sometimes consumed in going from one patch of land to another, and the droppings of the horses and oxen fall on the road instead of dressing the ploughed land. But the distribution of the land among peasant proprietors is not either an unmixed evil or an unqualified advantage. The advantage or disadvantage of subdivision of property is a difficult question, because it is a mixed one. The first and most important question raised is, how does the system affect the population ? This is not easy to answer. In the case of equal subdivision, or of one son inheriting, and the other children being paid off, the result is the same — a large family is a heavy charge on the farm. A bauer to whom I expressed my sur- prise at his and his neighbours having only two or three children, answered laconically, " Vie rear as many as our farms will bear. X (a cotter) has a dozen children: he is so poor that he can afford it." The huge families of our labourers are not known in Germany, at all events among the bauers. In France, where the law of equal subdivision prevails, it is found materially to affect the increase of the population. In Canada, out of 10,000 inhabitants, there are 4,2S9 children under 15. United States „ „ 3,173 „ Hungary „ „ 3,700 „ Scotland „ „ 3,GGS „ England and Wales „ „ 3,011 „ Germany „ „ 3, 1 19 „ France „ „ 2,706 „ 88 Germany, Present and Past. There are districts of Germany almost as prolific in children as Canada, and also such as are only a little less barren than France. To the first belong the Prussian plain, Bromberg, Marienwerder, Koslin, Posen, and Oppeln ; to the latter belong the districts of Upper and Lower Bavaria, Swabia, Middle Franconia, with the Donau circle in Wiirtemberg and the district of Constance in Baden, and, above all, Lorraine. Curiously enough, the first district is distinguished by its weakness in the number of pro- ductives, and the latter by its strength in productives — In Marienwerder, out of 10,000 inhabitants, there are 3,9S0 children under 15. Koslin „ „ 3,014 „ Bromberg „ ., 4,006 „ Oppeln „ ,, 3,945 „ Whereas in the South of Germany — ■ In Upper Bavaria, out of 10,000 inhabitants, there are 2,7(51 children under 15. Lower Bavaria „ „ 3,031 „ Upper Franconia ,, „ 3,426 „ Middle „ „ „ 3,204 „ Lower „ „ „ 3.282 „ Bavarian Swabia „ „ 2,S96 „ Lorraine „ „ 2,973 ,, But owing to many and various causes, the population may be arrested in one place, and given occasion to grow in another, and I do not think it safe to draw a hasty conclusion that the distribution of property should have affected this great difference. It may be influenced by laws prohibiting marriage without a competence to support a family, such as prevailed till lately in Bavaria, or by the emigration of the productive population. Eiehl says : " Where right of primogeniture among the peasants (Bauemmajorat) does not exist, the estate is generally put to lot among the children, so as to save the paternal inheritance from being broken up. Where the law interferes with the right of primogeniture or allotment, there we find the bauer circumvent the law. He will violate morality to secure his end. For instance, on the Lower Maine, where subdivision has flourished in great ex- uberance, I know a pair of solitary villages, which wage unflagging war with petty parcelling. It is an unheard-of thing in those villages for a marriage to yield more than two children. The com- munities are rich and thriving, and the pastors preach against the Peasant Proprietors. 89 crying evil, "but all in vain." 1 Ulmenstein, in 1827, said the same thing, 2 and Autenrieth, in 1779, 3 gave painful particulars of the systematic way in which the population was kept down to avoid the breaking-up of small properties. In France, as is too well known, in marriage contracts it is not uncommon to specify how many children are to he reared. The unproductiveness of French marriages is almost solely the result of the law of equal subdivision. The peasant is under the same desire as the noble to keep his pro- perty together, and circumvents the law of the land by violation of tbe law of God. Mr. Boner, in his valuable book on Transylvania, says : " We have seen how the Wallach population' has increased, outnumbering by far that of the Germans! How is it that these German colonists should thus dwindle away, instead of peopling the land with their race? The man of substance could not bear the thought of seeing his possessions divided, and as the patrimony could not be increased to provide amply for each member of a numerous family, the same obnoxious and objectionable causes, which in France check the increase of the population, were allowed to work here among the Saxon peasantry. One child got the house and some land, and the other the remaining portion. Thus each got a goodly estate. Moreover, the Saxon could not accustom him- self to give the surplus population of his village to the towns, the sons and daughters going into the world to make their way, and gaining their bread in a humbler sphere. Yet formerly it was not so. In early times the Saxons colonised new spots with the surplus population of their hamlets. There are villages where the population has remained stationary for a hundred and more years. In others, where originally every inhabitant was German, with but a few Wallach huts outside the boundary, there is now hardly one Saxon left. This is the case at Dunesdorf, and the change has taken place since the childhood of men still living. There were, however, throughout Transylvania Saxon villages, whose in- habitants were not free men, located on the manor of the Hungarian noble. They were without land of their own, and poor, and had nothing to give their children in marriage, or to leave as a bequest. Yet just in these villages the Saxons were blessed with numerous 1 Die Biirrjerliche Gesellschaft. Stuttg. 1861, p. GS. 2 Ueber unbeschranlde Zerlhdlbarkrit des Bodens. Berlin, 1827. 3 Ueber Yertrennung der Bauerng titer. Stuttg. 1779. 00 Germany, Present and Past. descendants. At Peschendorf the Saxons were all serfs formerly. Here it would be difficult to find a household where there were only three children ; and they rejoice that it is so. But at St. Jacob, a free, rich village, close by, it would be equally difficult to find one with as many as three." l It is precisely the same in the Palatinate, and also in West- phalia. Certain it is that the German day-labourer has a swarm of children, and the bauer has few, and this is not a caprice of nature. The subdivision of farms among many heirs has a bad effect on the agriculture. The live stock is deteriorating. The common pastures are now so few, that most sheep as well as cattle are stall-fed. In the valley of the Rhine, from the Dutch frontier to the head of the lake of Constance, and all the high land admirably suited for sheep-farming, the Eifel, the Taunus, the Haardt, the Odenwald, the Vogesen, and the Black Forest, 170 sheep 2 to the English square mile are reared; the average of oxen along the Pihine valley is, however, 430 to the English square mile. Sheep living in warm stables, as already said, give little wool. The cows are used to give milk, and plough and draw the wain. They are of a poor lean quality. A poor ox eats as much as a good beast; but the peasant cannot afford to buy animals with breed in them. Veal is eaten to an enormous extent in Germany, for beef defies mastication unless boiled to rags. The peasant cannot afford to rear oxen for meat. Their services are needed for the plough. "When farms are divided, a couple of oxen take the place of a horse, and the live stock about the yard dwindle to pigs and poultry. Fallati mentions three farms in a Wiirtemberg parish, com- prising together 152 acres. These farms, a few years ago, supported from 68 to 74 head of cattle. The three farmers died and their lands were divided among thirteen children, and on these thirteen little farms the number of cattle dropped to sixteen or seventeen. 3 It is, moreover, impossible to make the land yield what it can, unless capital be expended on it. The soil is impoverished. It 1 C. Boner: Transylvania and its Products, 1S65, p. 272 sq. - Rhenish Provinces only 170, Baden 120, Rhenish Palatinate, G9. In Eng- land the average is 1570. 3 Tiibinger'Zeitschrift, 1S45, p. 332. Peasant Proprietors. 91 gets plenty of labour on it, but it demands other dressing than the sweat of the brow. It never tastes lime, guano, nor superphos- phate. Even the burning of clay is too costly an experiment on loamy soils. Stall- droppings alone restore to it a part of what is taken from it ; but as an insufficient number of cattle is kept, and as much manure is wasted on the roads in travelling from one patch of land to another, that part is small. But what Germans do understand is the utilisation of the town soil. That is carefully cherished and distributed over the land within a radius of four miles of the town. In almost every parish are a large number of small proprietors, existing on the fragments of a parcelled farm. They have too little land to allow of their keeping a horse or oxen, consequently they have to depend on the great bauers for the tilling of their land and the carting of their harvest. These little holders have to pay high for the hire, and they obtain what they desire often when too late in the season. They are behindhand with their ploughing, and their crops are not carried till bad weather has set in. An English labourer lives in luxury compared to these small farmers, who drag on in squalor and misery, bowed under debt to the Jew who lies in wait to sell them up. In England, in good years an acre will produce on an average thirty bushels of wheat ; in Germany the average is fourteen ; in the richest districts and most favourable years, little over twenty. Nor are the root crops good. Nothing tells the tale of how a land is farmed better than the roots. The richest soil in Germany renders roots no better than are raised on some of the poorest soil in England. In England, we clean the ground from which corn has been reaped by giving it a root crop. The small farmers of Germany till and till through the summer to clean the soil, but take nothing from it. The Tuniberg is built up of the richest soil of the Ehine valley. It is a range of inexhaustible heaped-up soil, tho glacial mud of the Swiss mountains coating to a depth of from fifty to a hundred feet a ridge of volcanic trap and scoria. In the hollows, and all along the Southern slopes of the Kaiserstuhl, similar mud (called Loss) has been deposited, fine and impalpable as dust — the para- dise of the ant-lion, which there makes its traps in myriads. Here the little farmers grow, in succession, potatoes, barley, and hemp, 92 Germany, Present and Past. an exhausting course which would ruin the soil, underdressed as it is, were it not of inexhaustible fertility. On the Kaiserstuhl the little holders went on growing their wretched vines and expressing their sour wine year after year. At last a capitalist by good fortune succeeded in laying three or four farms together. He rooted up every vine, and imported fresh plants from Naples. For three years he reaped nothing. The outlay was great and there was no return. The fourth year he began to realise, and rapidly made a fortune. Now the Kaiserstuhl wine is the best on the Upper Rhine. Small holders are con- demned to go on in the old routine. They cannot sacrifice a year's income to make an improvement, they cannot sink any money in the soil, but they will drop into it any amount of sweat. Mohl, who was no friend to patriarchal holding together of property, complained despairingly of the condition to which sub- division of land was reducing the agriculture of Wtirtemberg. The little properties of a few acres he called " cancers corroding the face of the country, the health of which can only be saved by heroic measures." 1 An instance is given of a nut-tree to which thirty persons had claims. When the nuts were gathered, they were parted into thirty lots. In the Elsass plain, the mean size of a peasant estate is four hectares, from nine to ten acres. " La terre," says Lavergne, " y est litteralement decoupee en lamieres, qui se vendent a des prix fous." 2 The easy transfer and ready sale for parcels of land has led to speculation which goes by the popular name of " Hofmetzgerei " (farm-butchery), carried on by the Jews. They buy a farm of moderate size of the heirs of a yeoman, who will divide the inheri- tance equally among them, and chop it up into bits which are sold by auction. Spirits are freely distributed at the sale, the competition becomes lively, and the morsels sell for extraordinary prices. The Jew realises large profits. This speculation was becoming such a danger, that the Bavarian Government in 1852 passed a law punishing it with three months' imprisonment, and a fine of from 100 to 1000 florins. The Wtirtemberg Government in 1853 was also forced to interfere, and forbid the sale of an estate of more than ten acres till three years have elapsed since its pur- 1 Poli 'ze in:, Idhschaft, ii. § 99. - Journal J.cs Economies, 1S56, p. 181. Peasant Proprietors. 93 chase. By Prussian law of the same year, no man can chop up and sell land till he has held it a twelvemonth in his own hands. But these laws do not prevent the racking out of the soil before sale, and they are easily and constantly evaded. In England, small proprietors of land rarely thrive, whereas yeomen on a moderate estate get on in life. The reason is that land must have capital laid out on it to make it pay. In Germany, the experience of the bauers has formulated itself in proverbs. " Great estates," they say, " nourish their man, and little ones devour themselves ; " 1 and " a divided rood never comes to the fourth brood." 2 The land now produces hardly two-thirds of what it might be made to yield if worked by men with capital. That means, it supports ten men where it might support fifteen. But it supports seven men on the land, whereas in the hands of a large farmer it would keep only five in employment. Thus the same piece of land will hold to the soil seven men, and feed three more in a city or engaged on a trade, which under a better system of farming would keep five men on the land and feed eight employed on other branches of industry. It may be questioned whether the general happiness of the country is not greater by so many being kept to agricultural work, who would otherwise be drudging in factories. But the com- mercial prosperity of a country and the sum of happiness of the people, I fear, vary in inverse ratio. The artisan is restless and dissatisfied. He is mechanised. He finds no interest in his work, and his soul frets at the routine. He is miserable, and he knows not why. But the man who toils on his own plot of ground is morally and physically healthy. He is a freeman, the sense he has of independence gives him his upright carriage, his fearless brow, and his joyous laugh. The worker among machinery feels himself to be a slave, a slave bound to a wheel, and this consciousness causes his moral deterioration. The serf may love his master, but who can love a boiler ? In the town the brain is active. Like the pearl, it grows out of disease in the shell. In the country it lies latent, but muscle grows, and the lungs play like blacksmith's bellows. The initiative must ever come from the town. The pagani arc 1 " Grosse Giiter nahren ihren Mann : kleine zehren sick selbst ar.f." 2 " Getheiltes Gut komrnt nicht auf die vierte Brut." 94 Germany, Present and Past. ever averse to the light, except the light of ignes fatui. But the Bauernstand is a wholesome check on too rapid and one-sided de- velopment in civilisation. New ideas are given off in the town like sparks, from the clashing together of minds different yet equally hard, but the peasantry are not the tinder which they will fire. The amadou are the artisans. To the hauer new ideas are as hateful as rockets in a stack- yard. " One is never too late to learn," said the hag, " and she began to study witchcraft." This is the answer he makes to every new suggestion. When the Thirty Years' War broke the power of the nobles, and left waste places void of owners, the peasantry spread like a lichen noiselessly over the scars and obscured them. In old Wiir- temberg, then half the size of the present kingdom, there were left 250,000 acres of ownerless arable land, 40,000 acres of devas- tated vineyard, and 40,000 acres of unclaimed meadow. The peasantry soon appropriated them all, and there was no one to say them nay. The sovereigns perceived that the bauers were their best support, and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries removed one disability after another, till the Bauernstand became the most favoured in the land. The bauer is the great conservative element in Germany as in France. Against him the Government may always set its back. "Gesammt Gut ist ver- dammt Gut," is his answer to Social democracy. In 1848 the peasants rose at the call of the political clubs, but not for any political idea, solely for the removal of disabilities. When liberty of the press was decreed, they became suspicious, because the towns grew jubilant. They had their calendars, and who wanted more? When told that a parliament was to be established, they inquired whether it was to consist of cavalry or of infantry. They exhausted their anger on the toll-gates. When they could lay hands of them, they burnt the mortgages on their lands, and were much disappointed that they might not also burn the Jews who held them. The German soldier is the German bauer in uniform. After having crawled like a maggot about the paternal dungheap for eighteen years, he suddenly appears with wings and antennas. He is in uniform, and for three years flutters on the parade, in the beer-gardens, in the gallery at the theatre, and then he chrysalises Peasant Proprietors. 95 into the old paternal bauer suit and the patriarchial ideas. When the peasant hoy is confirmed, he dons a new suit, made very long in the leg and body, and arms and tail. When the ceremony is over, the garments are folded up and put away again, to be assumed at his wedding. He has grown to fit them. So he has grown to fit the doctrines and prejudices and doggedness of his class. He becomes a chrysalis, I said, on returning to the village from the barrack. The soldier's life has been a dream, nothing more ; and now he spins, and spins his cocoon for his Schatz and himself and his eggs, burying himself in his domestic bliss more and more, deeper and deeper from the day. The Bauernstand is the arm, the muscle ; it is the good heart of the country ; but it is not, in any sense, its brain. 9G Germany, Present and Past. CHAPTEE V. MARRIAGE. Hymen: — I bar confusion. — As You Like It, Act V. sc. 4. The reader of " Geier-Wally," if lie is at all acquainted with ancient German literature, cannot fail to connect the wrestle of Joseph and Wally in the tavern with that of Gunther and Brunhild in the marriage chamber. The Tyrolese peasantess does not surrender her freedom without a fierce struggle, in the nineteenth century, any more than did the Queen of Gunther in the Nibelungen times. Whoever has attended a village wedding in the Black Forest, and has seen the bride chased by the bridegroom, and knows anything of early civilisation, discerns a relic of the bride-capture of primi- tive times. The speared bride among the Tartars is proud of her scars, but Tonelli "with the bitten cheek" in the Schwarzwald resented a recurrence to barbarous practice, and broke with her lover for marking her for life. 1 Marriage law in Germany has varied capriciously within two centuries, but German opinion was formed by more than ten cen- turies of national law before it was influenced and disturbed by the introduction by jurists of Eoman law. Ecclesiastical marriage, Avhich only late became prevalent, throughout the Middle Ages was a matter of conscience rather than of legal obligation. After the Eeformation it became compulsory, but in 1873 became again optional, and the Protestant pastors suddenly found that they were no longer called upon by their flock to unite them in the bands of wedlock. * The introduction of civil registration has scarcely affected the marriages in England. In Germany it has produced wholesale 1 Auerbach : Dorfgcschicliten, l or Band. Marriage. 97 desertion of the religious ministration. The board of the Bearnter is preferred to the Lord's tahle. If the Government had not come to the relief of the clergy, who drew a large part of their revenue from marriage fees, they would have been ruined by the change in the law. It is impossible to understand German ideas on marriage and explain this phenomenon, without a survey of the history of the marriage laws of the Fatherland. Such a survey will show us that, however capricious and changeable laws may be, Teutonic feeling on this important subject moves on steadily within its old banks. Yerl oJ2v,nrj in Qprmany is a very different thing from " engage- ment " in England. In bath ^'""V'tries matrimony is made up of ,two " moments," contract and tradition ., j.p., eng agement ( Verio- bung) and marriage (T rauung) ; but wit h us, in accordance with Soman law, the last moment is accentuated and contai ns _the _ essence, whereas among Germans the first is the essential. em phatic transaction. In entering on the relation in which engagement and marriage stand to one another, it is necessary to define terms. " Trauung " is not what we mean by betrothal, though the words are etymo- logically identical. Wejn- nst-tmrislate " Verlobung " by Betrothal, ■«4jd"Trauung " by Marriage. We do not speak of those actually married as betrothed, nor of those engaged to be married as bride and bridegroom. Germans do both. After enga gem ent arid till jna rriage,_ t ]ie maid and m an are "Rra/nt an d Brautig am, and when wedded cease to be thus entitled. It is curious to notice what confusion there is in terms on the popular tongue. Strictly speaking, betrothal, engagement, Verio- bung is the desponsatio, sponsalia, of the Eomans, and sponsus and sponsa are those promised to one another before they are given to one another. But the English spouse, the French epoitse, and the Spanish espose, are applied after marriage, and not before. So, in_ G erman y, Gem ah 1, Gemahlin, m ean engaged by word , 1 but in com- mon use are applied to t hose married. In Thuringia to this day the people do not distinguish by word one state from the other. Verlobter and Gemahl are used i ndi scriminately for betrothed and 1 From the old verb mala, to converse. The German Haul, mouth, is from the same root. It is the organ of speech. n 98 Germany, Present and Past. wedded. Originally, marriage among the Germans was' si mply ^t ho purcha se of "a woman. T^Pown even till late in the Middle Ages " ein Weib zu kaufen " was the common expression for getting engaged. But the first laws which have _been transmitted to us show that the idea of sale of the woman was g one; another idea ha4 taken its place — tha t of tr ansfer of authorit}'. A woman was always under ward : the natural holder of the wardship w as_ t he father ; at marriage he made over this wardship to the husband. Wardship was called mundium, and the guardian was called the Vormund. Betrothal was a contract of sale between the guardian and the suitor. The purchase-money was still called legally " pretium puellse,'" — the price of the girl — but more generally Minul- scliatz (the value of the mundium) or Witthum. These words must be remembered, as I shall have to use them freely. But the chief token of a change of opinion regarding marriage is visible in the fact that the Witthum was a fixed sum. It did_ not fluctuate with the state of the market. : it was, not any longer the price of the girl, like the price of a slave, to be affected by her beauty or bodily vigour. It was legally fi xed, for all maids alike ; it was not her market value any more, but the theoretical value of the wardship ; and the authority exercised by father or husband over daughter or wife mu st be~th e same among rich_and pojxr , beautiful and plain. Among the Salic Franks the mundium was estimated at 62^- solidi, among the Eipuarii at 50, among the Alemanni at 40, among the Saxons as high as 300 solidi. In case of invasion and injury of authority it had to be compounded for, and the Wehrgeld was precisely the same in amount as the mundium. In early times the woman was never independent, she was always under a Vormund, a perpetual ward. The transfer of guardianship constituted mar- riage. The maid could no more dispose of herself than could a field, for she was never out of wardship. Consequently no agreement of marriage could legally be contracted with a woman alone. The contract must be made with the guardian. All that was allowed her in the sixth century was the right of veto. Again, according to Germ a n law, no verb al en gagement is valifl without a real transfer, A compact to sell a field or a cow is no Marriage. 99 compact unless the price has "been paid. The courts refused t o allow of rights based on verbal agreement (conlocutio, the Lombard fabula), thou gh signed and _s ealed, unle ss the r e had been actu al tr a,nsfp,r. -C onsequently, the suitor was re quired to pay ovpr t.n t.ho legal guardian the price of the mundium, when he made the contract. The girl then and there, at the betrothal, became his property; the rights over her became legally his, and he might enter on the exercise of them when he chose. If the bride (s ponsa) (Ijpjljj gfnrft she was del ivered over to him, the guardian returned . the money. 1 Breach of promise could not be made actionable unless the mundium had been paid. 2 But an obvious difficulty arose. The bridegroom had to pay down the mundium some time before entering into possession. He laid out capital without receiving his money's worth. In unsettled times men could not calculate on receiving their bread again after many days when they cast it on the waters. The object of pur- chase might die or depreciate. Consequently, would-be purchasers buttoned up their pockets, and the market was glutted with marriageable maids. The law was obliged to tolerate a compro- mise. Prepayment of the mundium was not exacted, and in its place the purchaser paid a hansel, or earnest money (Haftgeld, Draufgeld), the Eoman arrha, called by the Lombards Launichild. (Lohngeld). A_t the present day in Germany , if a servant be engaged, Haftgeld is paid, whereupon she is bound t o her maste r : if it is n ot_j2 aid> she can g et off her agreeme nt. This is like the half-crown at English statute fairs, and the Queen's money which binds the recruit. T his Haftge ld _w,as. exacted aL_ a betrothal to clench the bargain; it was generally spent i n wine, w hence it took the name of^Weinkauf, or wasj riven to the jd iuroh or poor, and so was calle d the Grottespfennig. But this handsel did not, like the Boman arrha, strengthen a bargain, it clenched the bar- gain — there was no legal bargain without it. Among the Franks in the fifth century the handsel had already taken the place of the mundium at a betrothal, and was fixed at a sou and a denier. 1 Edict. Iiothar. c. 215 (ed. Bluhme) : — " Si quis puellam aut viduam sponsa- tam habuerit (i.e. betrothed to him) et oontigerit casus ut ipsa aute moriatur quiim a patre, aut qui mundium ejus potestatem habet, tradita fuerit, tunc meta (i.e. price of mundium") qua) data fuerat ab illo sponso, reddatur ci, tautum quan- tum in ipsa meta dedit." 2 Lex Wisigoth. iii. 4, 2. Lex Burgund. G2. 100 Germany, Present and Past. When Clovis asked of Grundebald of Burgundy the hand of his sister and ward Clothild, he sent him by his messengers the requisite sou and denier. Simultaneously a change was effected in the destination of the Witthum or mundium. This_w as to be paid whe n the bride was . t ransfe rred t o the husband's ho use — i.e. wheji he_claimed his pur^ c hase. But instead o f^eisf^l^dJxL^fchiL guardian wh o_ relinquished his char ge, it was held back to be paid, after the death of the , hufiban^ i _taJi£_^nardian of t he widow for h er suppor t in widow - ho od j^ /Itjwas tho ught , not , without reason, t hat the fair bride, who was a delight to the husb and, might pro ve_-a-Jiuisanee--as. widow to a trustee, and t herefore the Witthum-^as-left to he. | to compensate him. The mundium of the ninth century had lost its significance as price for the wife, and won that of provision for the widow. As, therefore, the bridegroom at betrothal (Verlobung) no longer paid over the Witthum or mundium, but only undertook that it should be paid after his death, he was required to make a pledge or Wette (wadium, vadica) 1 that he would do so. Wette is a word derived from the same root as Witthum ; the verb is vidan, to bind. OurEng lish word '^ eddingj^_means_a binding, not of the husband to the wife. but_ of the h xidfegvomn f.o_th~n guardi an ; and the betro thal, no t the marriage 2 _is_ the proper wed- ding. Th is was so among the Anglo-Saxons £oni the ni njh""3o > the eleventh century, till with the Xorman ^JEkmian_ljtw began to take the place of S ayrm . 1a\y J __ajT^upgetjthe relation s betwee n betrot hal and marriage. In the laws of Alfred and Ethelbert an v engagement is called a wedde, a beweddunge ; and the betrothed maid is entitled a wedded woman (beweddodu faemne). But, a ccording t o-German la w, no promise is binding wiihoa* a simultaneous pay ment or transfer. Consequently, when the bridegroom " wedd"ed~ 5T_ himself to provide for his widow, he was obliged to fasten his promise by a transfer. This assumed a sym- bolical form. With each Wette that he made he handed over to the guardian of the maid a straw, stick, arrow, or glove. This fictitious payment is the festuca of Teutonic law. In Weber's opera of " Euryanthe," Adolar and Lusiart place their gloves in the hands of the king, as tokens that under a certain eventuality 1 The English bet is the same word. Marriage. 101 they are prepared to surrender their titles and possessions. "With- out the festuca of the gloves they could not have "been held to their promises. 1 It will be seen that throughout the maiden had nothing to do with the negotiation, which was carried on wholly between the suitor and the Vormund. JX4h£^lop^d_with_a_man_ of her choice i t was no marriage. The guardian could reclaim her, and the man must pay Wehrgeld — i.e. the value of the mun- dium or right over her he had violated, and also might be punished as a seducer. If_ t he girl remained with him, she forfeited __all__ family rights, and could inher it nothing from her paren ts. 2 j But under the influence of Christianity the position of the woman improved, and in the Middle Ages the parts of brid e and T )^- g_uar dian became inverted. The woman assumed prominenc e, exerc iser! her voie e, and a sserted herwilL and the guardian sank into thejbackgrcjmd===his voice and will lost importance. Origin- ally the Vormund had contracted her in espousal, and to her was reserved only the power of exercising a veto ; now she contracted herself freely, and to the guardian remained only the right of veto. If the veto of the guardian was disregarded, then the woman lost all claim on inheritance through her family. With this change, however, the form of betro thal remained the sam g,^ only the handsel was paid, not to the guardia n, bu t to the brhhx It consisted generally of thirteen or three Pfennige — i.e. a shilling or twopence with a Pfennig over for the betrothal- drink. The riTio^wag jTi nsft among the " Romnns as t h e arrha , and m ade its way into Germany^ , and w as often _g iven at b eiroihal either with_oi_in pl ace of the coin, as clinching the bargain. There was no exchange of rings in those days. One ring was given. Am ong the lo wer c lasses the rin g was not so common as t he com . The_ money wa g called the(Mahlscbatz;)or agreement money be- tween the Gemahl and Gemahlin: — Iir"f592 the Duke of Mecklen- burg struck a special silver coin for use among the peasants as a Mahlschatz, instead of the pierced shillings they were wont to employ. This coin, which was equal to three Sechser, bore on it 1 The English word glove means a pledge : gelofa, geloben. 2 Lex. Alaman. ed. Hloth. 54, 1 :— " Si quis filiam alterius non sponsatam acceperit sibi ad nxorem, si pater ejus fequirit, reddat cam et cum xl. solidis componat earn." Greg. Turon. E. F. ix. 33 :— " Quia sine parentum consilio earn conjugio copulasti, non erit uxor tua." 102 Germany, Present and Past. the inscription, " Der Scegen des Herrn inacht reich, und er giebt es wem er will." It originated a proverb, " Three Sechser made an old purchase, or hound a couple for life." It has been shown that Verlobung, betrothal, was among the Germans the chief act ; Trauung has more ceremony but less im- portance. Verlobung in law and usage was the conclusion of the con- tract; Tauung was merely the transfer of the purchased article to the house of the purchaser. The farmer buys a cow and he fetches it home when he has a stall in which to accommodate it ; but though he has not entered into actual occupation, he is already the owner of it. This was precisely the view of Verlobung taken by the German race. The betrothal is the desponsatio puellce, the marriage is the traditio puellce, the " gifta " of Anglo-Saxon law, the Norse " gipta," the German " Gabe." Trauen is literally the entrusting of the maid to her new lord. " The husband is his wife's guardian (Vormund)," says the Sach- sen-Spiegel, " to have and to hold as soon as she is married to him (getruwel)." In the Trauung, as in the Verlobung, the guardian, father or other, was the person who disposed of the maid, who betrothed and gave her away. He confided her to the troth of the husband. From the necessity of the case, the Trauung was a public cere- mony, as it was the transfer of the woman from her father's house to that of her husband. It was attended with certain formalities. As symbols of the authority which passed to the husband, the father handed over to him a sword, a hat, and a mantle — tokens that he was invested with power of life and death, and supremacy over her. The mantle signified the protection under which she had sheltered in her father's home, and which she must now find in her husband's house. The ring or coin given at betrothal to the Vormund was also then returned, as also the gloves or straws with which the Wette had been confirmed. According to a Swabian form of the twelfth century, the Trauung was performed by the Vogt or Vormund — the natural guardian — with these words : " I commend my ward to your faith and favour, and pray you, for the sake of the betrothed whom I now make over to you, to be her right steward (Vogt), her gracious Marriage. 103 steward, and not to be a faithless guardian (Vormund) to her." Thereupon he returns the seven gloves, pledges of seven Wetten made at the betrothal, and gives the symbols of authority — sword, hat, and mantle. Thereupon the maiden looks to her husband as her " reenter und gnadiger Herr." But in course of time this ceremony underwent an alteration precisely as did the betrothal. The woman assumed the place as chief actor, and the guardian's position became less prominent or clearly marked. In the Swabian form quoted, the proper person to perform the marriage ceremony is the natural guardian. But in a Cologne formulary of the fourteenth century, the person to marry the couple is " Jemand," any one chosen by the bride to represent her guardian. He is father by a fiction. In the "Huguenots," the heroine Valentine is married to Baoul de Nangis in the street of Paris during the massacre of St. Bartholomew, by the old squire Marcello. According to German usage and law, such a marriage was sufficient. Marcello was assumed by fiction to be Valentine's father, and, as such, he performed the transfer. In the metrical tales of the thirteenth century, the person who solemnises the marriage is the emperor or king, sometimes the host: in Wernher's "Meier Helmbrecht," it is any old man "der solche Dinge kann," which we may render "up to doing the job." In the English Marriage Service we see the trace of the same idea. The priest asks, " Who giveth this woman in marriage ? " and the father or fictitious father signifies that he does. Originally the church had nothing to do with marriage. Both espousal and marriage were civil acts. When the priest was present at betrothal it was simply as a witness. He had also nothing to do with the actual marriage, or transfer. That was performed by the guardian. After the marriage it was customary for the couple to attend church together ; their first appearance at mass was their first appearance in public after their union. In the Nibelungenlied, Gunther and Brunhild, Siegfried and Kriem- hild, go to the minster on the morning after their marriage. They make then their first appearance together in public, and are crowned. In " Metzenhochzit " we have a graphic picture of a wedding among peasant farmers in the thirteenth or fourteenth century : the scene laid probably in Upper Swabia. Young Biirschi (Bar- 104 Germany, Present and Past. tliolomew) loves young Metzi (Meclitild), and they arc "betrothed. Iler parents promise, as her dower, three beehives, a horse, a cow, a calf, and a goat; and Biirschi gives, as Witthum, a yoke of flaxland, two sheep, a cock and fourteen hens, and a pound of pennies. It is then agreed that they shall be married without " scholars and parsons," 1 i.e. without religious ceremony, according to old German fashion, and no yielding to new-fangled ideas. Conse- quently a great feast is prepared, all the neighbours with their ' wives and daughters are invited, each guest is given a bucket of beer, and " they sucked and they drank, till their tongues could jwag no longer." Then turnips and bacon are produced, and the guests gorge themselves with " hands and beards glossy with grease." Next come sausage and the bridal porridge. Then follow the flight, chase, and capture of the bride, and she is conducted to the marriage chamber. As Morgengabe Biirschi gives Metzi a fat porker, and then, not till then, the pair go, preceded by the village band of pipers and drummers, to church, where the bridal mass is sung. 2 It was much the same with another Meclitild in a far higher rank of life, now a saint on the altars of the Catholic Church. Henry I. repudiated his wife Hadburg to marry her. She was the daughter and heiress of Count Dietrich of Bingelheim, and was educated by her grandmother in the convent of Herford. He went to the convent, drew her thence, and conveyed her with all dignity to Walhausen, where he held the bridal banquet. Next morning he gave her the revenues of the town of Walhausen as Morgen- gabe. In this case the Church was not invited to intervene. The newly married pair at the first mass were wont to receive the Communion, make an offering, and receive the benediction of the priest. But soon a special mass, " Missa pro sponsis," was employed, with appropriate Epistle, Gospel, and Bost-communion. Assistance at the mass did not make nor strengthen the marriage ; the union was valid and complete in itself without the religious ceremony ; but it was felt, and rightly felt, that so serious a step in life as marriage required a special benediction from heaven. In the Middle Ages the Church attempted a reform of the betrothal. She endeavoured to make that a public and a sacred 1 " Obue Schuoler n.nd Pfuffen." - Liedersaal, iii. 399 sq. Marriage. 1 05 rite. She required that betrothal should take place before the priest and witnesses, and that at it should be formally announced what Witthum the bridegroom purposed to give, so that there might be no after dispute on this point. But, apparently, the people did not take kindly to this interference, and instead of giving it up, the Church allowed the two ceremonies to be run together, much as in the English morning prayer, matins, and litany, and communion are lumped, though originally intended to be distinct services performed at different hours of the day. 1 The betrothal took place as before, as a purely secular cere- mony, in the house of the bride, and the Church merely rehearsed and published before the church-door what was already concluded elsewhere. In a Eitual of Eennes, of the eleventh century, we find a rubric to this effect : " The priest shall go before the door of the church in surplice and stole, and ask the bridegroom and bride prudently whether they desire to be legally united ; and then Tie sltall make the parents give her aioay, according to the usual custom, and the bridegroom shall fix the dower, announcing before all pre- sent what (Witthum) he intends to give the bride. Then the priest shall make him betroth her with a ring, and give her a honorarium of gold or silver according to his means. Then let him give the prescribed benediction. After which, entering into the church, let him begin mass ; and let the bridegroom and bride hold lighted candles, and make an oblation at the offertory ; and before the Pax let the priest bless them before the altar under a pall or other covering, according to custom, and lastly, let the bridegroom receive the kiss of peace from the priest and pass it on to his bride." "We see in this the outline of the Anglican service, which scrupulously follows the mediaeval type. The Anglican office is divided into two parts, the first " in the body of the church," the second at the altar. The body of the church was substituted for " before the door " as a concession to the English climate and brides' dresses. The honorarium is not given to the bride, but pocketed by the parson. "The man shall give unto the woman a 1 This Friedberg disputes: he contends that the betrothal before the church- door -was an attempt by the Church to mar the real Verlobung, so as to divest the private contract of legal right, and to run the two parts of marriage together. If so, the Church has wholly failed in effecting this.— Friedberg : Verlobung it. Trauung. Leipz. 1876. 106 Germany, Present and Past. ring, laying the same upon the book Avith the accustomed duty (honorarium) to the priest and clerk. And the priest taking the ring shall deliver it (only) to the man," etc. It is generally sup- posed that the parson has the right to give the first kiss to the bride. With other superstitions of Papal times, the mediate kiss through the bridegroom has been abandoned. But all the first part of the Marriage Service was felt to be a " vain repetition." It was unreal. The betrothal had taken place before as a secular act, and the rite at the church-door was an empty echo of a completed transaction. This was seen by the bishops and theologians assembled at the Council of Trent, and they cut off this first part as superfluous, and retained only the Bridal Mass with benediction. The Church abandoned thereby the pretence of uniting the betrothed, and retained her proper function of bestowing divine sanction and blessing on the union already entered upon. The priest had stepped into the place of the anybody " up to doing the job," and had acted by fiction as the guardian or father. The Council of Trent displaced him, and restored the marriage to its original form. By German law, we must again repeat, the betrothal was the completion but not the conclusion of marriage. It was the com- pletion of the purchase, but not the entering on possession. Betrothal lacked the positive characteristics of marriage. It was not the taking home of the wife, it was not the transfer of complete authority, it was not the entering into possession of her person and property. But, nevertheless, betrothal was invested with matrimonial rights. German laws unanimously declare the indis- solubility of the tie. Breach of promise is the same as adultery, Death, by Lombard, Burgundian, and Wisigoth law, was the penalty on the woman attending breach of troth after Yerlobung as after Trauung. By Alemannic law, the man who carried off a wife was con- demned to pay eighty solidi, and if he did not restore her 400 more. The man who eloped with a betrothed girl had to pay 200 solidi, and if she were not returned to her guardian, 400 more. By Bavarian law, 160 solidi was the Wehrgeld for betrothed as for wife. "When King Theodebert let seven years elapse without fetching home his betrothed, popular indignation was so strong that he was Marriage. 107 forced to dismiss Lis concubine and " take Lis bride to lvim as wife." 1 A Prague statute of 1364 says, " Those are truly married people (Heirezleute), who have been betrothed (gelubet)." This view was clean opposed to that proclaimed by Eoman law. By this latter, marriage consists in the consensus nuptialis, i.e., the living together of husband and wife with maritalis affectio, intent to regard one another in the light of husband and wife. Marriage is not constituted by any ceremonial act or transfer, but by actual matrimonial union. It follows therefore that by Roman law, espousal or betrothal is a promise (stipulatio) at some future time to unite in marriage, but is nothing further. It is the initiation of marriage, but only that. Canon law in Italy was based on Eoman law, and adopted the Eoman view of espousals. But when the jurists had to construct canon law to meet the requirements of Cisalpine peoples, they were obliged to accept facts and make the best of them. How to reconcile the two theoi-ies of marriage was a constant difficulty. After quoting and discussing certain authorities and cases, Gratian concludes : " From all these authorities it is clear that the be- trothed (desponsatt) are married (conjuges)." But St. Augustine and Leo the Great, knowing only Eoman law, had taught that the essence of marriage lay in the union of the parties ; and con- sequently that an imperfect union was dissoluble. Gratian tried to harmonise these doctrines thus : — "Sciendum est quod conjugium desponsatione initiatur, com- mixtione perficitur — unde inter sponsum et sponsam conjugium est, sed initiatum ; inter copulatos est conjugium ratum." In the case of the marriage of Henry VIII. with Catherine of Arragon, there rose a conflict between Eoman and Teutonic law. Catherine, according to the latter, had been married to his brother, because she had been betrothed to him, therefore Henry's union with her was incestuous. Gallican and German canon law was on this point in accord with the Teutonic theory. But such was not the Eoman doctrine, as there had been only a betrothal and not a perfected marriage with the deceased prince. A Cologne summary of canon law of 1170, speaking of the two doctrines of marriage, says plainly, " On this question the Gallican and the Transalpine churches disagree." 1 Greg. Turon. II. F. iii. 27. 108 Germany, Present and Past. The canonists endeavoured to bridge the difference by a curious distinction, purely artificial, between espousals " de prajsente " and " de futuro ; " that is, they asserted that a betrothal in the present tense was a valid marriage and brought it under German law, whereas a betrothal in the future tense was the Roman espousal, and not binding. A Parisian Summa of the twelfth century says, " The Church of the French teaches differently (from the Roman Church), that if there has been an espousal in the present tense, as ' I take you as mine,' on both sides, this constitutes a valid mar- riage. Consequently, though a woman be actually united to another man, she is bound to return to the first." The same Summa says further, "Marriage now-a-days takes place, not according to the (Roman) laws, but according to the Canons." The Canons call a betrothal a " full, perfect, and com- plete" marriage. 1 Luther in his Tract "Von Ehesachen " (1530), plainly adhered to the Teutonic, popular, and canonical theory. " However bad a betrothal may be," he says, " it is soon settled : no other is permissible, for the betrothal is a true marriage before God and the world ; " and further, " An openly betrothed wench (Dime) is a wife (Ehefrau), and this public betrothal forms a right honourable marriage. Consequently he (the bridegroom) is cer- tainly a proper husband, and as amongst us it is not fitting that a man should have more than one wife, he has no more power over his body, and cannot take another without committing adultery." As may well be supposed, the greatest confusion reigned in social relations. No abuse could arise under the old sj-stem hedged round with guarantees. Bat the hedge had been broken through on all sides, and every guarantee was gone when the maiden was allowed to dispose of herself freely, and fix her fate irrevocably with a " Ja ! " with not a witness by. Here and there, indeed, the Church had attempted to intervene and insist "on the betrothal being made before witnesses and blessed by the priest, but such attempts were local and not general. The reader may remember the pretty picture of religious betrothal in Lamartine's " Gene- vieve," where the bride goes to church in a new gown, which she afterwards gives to the Virgin. But the ceremonial of the Church universally was associated with the Traditio puellse, and the espousal was generally left a secular transaction. The result was that, 1 "Ratum, perfectuui, consuminatuin matrimonium." Marriage. 109 when the guardian became a nonentity, all control over espousals was lost, all control, that is, over the essential transaction. The Church was called to bless a union, but had no means of assuring herself that this union was legitimate — that the persons asking her blessing had not betrothed themselves secretly to others. As an inevitable consequence, applications for divorce were frequent, on the plea that those married publicly had been previously contracted to others. Luther thus graphically sketches the confusion : — " It has often fallen out that a married pair came for me, and that one or both had already been secretly betrothed to another : then there was a case of distress and perplexity : and we- confessors and theolo- gians were expected to give counsel to those tortured consciences. But how could we ? Official right and custom pronounced the first secret betrothal to be a legitimate marriage. So off they went and severed the second marriage, and offered to observe the first betrothal. They had already, may be, ten children in their public married state, and had thrown their property into a common fund. They must, however, part. God grant that the first bride- groom be at hand to acknowledge the claim, but often enough he is already married, and not prepared to cast off his wife to take the applicant to his arms. Moreover, when such a betrothal was secret and confirmed by no witnesses, and the other marriage was public and ratified by the Church, there was a pulling in two directions. First, the woman was obliged, as a matter of con- science, to regard her private betrothal as a true marriage in the sight of God, and yet she was bound by obligations laid on her publicly, and recognised, to associate, night and day, with a man who was not her real husband. No one would believe in the first betrothal, which was known only to God, every one was aware of the other, which had taken place in public. "What was a poor conscience to do in such a case ? " Another characteristic passage occurs in Luther's " Table- Talk." " When I was in my cloister many an one came to mc, and said, ' Dear sir, I have got a wife to whom I was privately betrothed. What am I to do, dear doctor? help me, lest I despair ! Gretel, to whom I betrothed myself, is my true wife (Eheweib). But Barbara, who has since been married to me (vertraut), is not my wife ; and yet I am forced to live with her. I may not take 110 Germany, Present and Pad. Gretel, as I gladly would, for I am wedded to another, and Gretel also has a husband — nobody knowing that she is my very true wife, save God alone. I shall be damned ! I do not know how to get out of this hobble.' Then comes the Pope with his dis- ciples, the jurists, and says, he must stick to Barbara whom he has taken to wife before all the world, but in his heart of hearts must cleave to Gretel, as his true wife, to whom he was secretly betrothed. So he must not fulfil his marriage obligations to either ! He cannot shake off Barbara, who has gone to church with him, and he cannot take his true wife Gretel." The Pope and the canonists were not to blame, as Luther tried to make out. The difficulty sprang out of the altered position of woman under laws framed for a different condition of society. The Cisalpine canonists had done what they could to make some practical working theory by which to govern marriage arrange- ments, which should not run counter to Teutonic and G alii can custom and law ; they had failed, but that was because the two doctrines were irreconcilable. It was absolutely necessary for some order to be introduced into matrimonial connections. Either the betrothal must be declared a valid marriage or not. Common sense would suggest, If it be, then take precautions that it be not abused. Luther, as we shall see presently, made over the regulation of marriage to the State ; but his own opinion was in accordance with Old German Law ; and the Lutheran Church followed him till the eighteenth century, in treating betrothal as marriage. The bishops and canonists assembled at the Council of Trent took a different line. Two things had to be reconciled — German custom and Eoman custom. Where betrothal was regarded as valid marriage it should take place before witnesses — that seemed a reasonable provision ; and to secure that where German views of betrothal prevailed, the nuptial benediction should not be pro- nounced over the wrong parties, it was requisite that the parish priest should be cognisant of all betrothals. Consequently, the Council of Trent ordered that betrothals should take place before at least three witnesses, of whom the parish priest should be one. If the Eoman Church does not now exact his assistance at espousals, it is because, with the general adoption of Roman law, and Koman views of the relations between espousals and marriage, Marriage. Ill the necessity for the priest witnessing betrothals has passed away. But the Tridentine fathers made another regulation concerning marriage. They reduced the ceremony, as of obligation, to its original form, a benediction of the union. Where the old forms of rehearsing the espousal at the church door had commended them- selves to the people, they were not ruthlessly to be cut away, they were to be tolerated, but not exacted. The reception of Eoman law in Germany created a revolution in the legal doctrine of marriage. Eoman law came in with the perruques. In the seventeenth century Paulus Cyprams argued that the current view of espousals was wrong, that betrothal was not marriage, but a looking forward to marriage, by mutual consent ; and that, therefore, a betrothal was dissoluble. He started the ball and others gave it a kick. Theologians and jurists began to distinguish between the consensus sjponsalitius and the consensus matrimonialis. At the close of the seventeenth century the dis- tinction was a favourite theme for the theses of candidates for the doctorial degree. Finally, Puffendorf formulated the Eoman law of marriage in his book " De Jure Naturae et Gentium," which became a standard authority. Boemer took the same line in his work for Protestant ecclesiastical law, " Jus Ecclesiasticum Pro- testantium," and, though pretending to found his doctrine of marriage on natural right, he actually followed Eoman law. Bcemer completely revolutionised the received Lutheran views. The new doctrine was accepted by one State after another, and passed into its legislation. The Lutheran Church woke to suppose the religious ceremony was of essential importance. German popular opinion and tradition suddenly found itself at variance with secular and ecclesiastical law. In the Prussian code stood the novel declaration, "A valid marriage is effected by priestly ministration." 1 The betrothal, which had been slight but strong, like the bond that bound Fenrir, was now transformed into a cord of sand. The word of promise was vox et jprseterea nihil. It mattered not how many engagements had been made before marriage, they were cancelled by the nuptials. Before, betrothals were everything, marriage nothing ; now the positions were legally reversed. But 1 Preussisches Landrecht, Th. ii. Tit. i. § 136. 112 Germany, Present and Past. popular opinion is of tough texture. It has persisted in con- sidering an engaged couple as bride and bridegroom, in confound- ing Gemahl with Verlobter, in regarding a breach of promise as a scandal scarce second to a divorce. It allows an intimacy between the betrothed which in England would hardly be allowed; it explains, if it does not excuse, the fact, that so few peasant brides have any claim to wear the myrtle wreath ; it accounts for some village customs which wo do not care to describe. It accounts for the fact that so little disgrace attaches to a girl who is the mother of illegitimate children. She has been betrothed, and, therefore, married in the sight of God and in the opinion of the public, whatever the new-fangled laws may say. Mischievous Malthusian legislation forbade her being taken home by her Gemahl, but no legislation can interfere with her bearing him a family in her father's house. A few years ago I was in the best inn in the pretty village of M , a Protestant village in the Franconian uplands. The landlord's daughter, a fair, modest- looking girl, with honest blue eyes, had her little ones hanging about her skirts, and though unmarried, and one of the first persons in the village, felt no shame in being so seen. She was betrothed, but the Bath and Beamier forbade the marriage, i.e. the taking home of the bride, because the bridegroom could not satisfy them that his finances would support a family. On February 6, 1875, the Imperial Government carried the following law : — " Marriage is to be concluded in the presence of two witnesses by the betrothed persons severally declaring their agreement, when asked by the proper officer whether they announce their intention of uniting in marriage with one another, and by his thereupon proclaiming that they are legally married." x " A clergyman or other minister of religion is not to execute this office, nor to act as substitute for the proper officer." 2 When the first rocket rushed among the Ashantees, the blacks fell flat on their backs and yelled. The discharge of this law pro- duced a somewhat similar effect among the Evangelical clergy of Germany. They were for the moment paralysed, and then, from one end of the empire to the other, raised a wail of despair. The opening of the registrar offices in England for civil marriages has 1 Law of Feb. 6, 1875, (Beichs-GesetzUatt, p. 23), 4ter Absch. § 52. 2 Ibid. Iter Alisch. § 3. Marriage. 113 not materially diminished the number of ecclesiastical marriages, partly because such civil marriages are facultative, not compulsory, partly because the idea of the necessity of a religious solemnisation as at all events decent is deeply ingrained in the English mind. But in Germany the effect was very different. In 1876, lor instance, out of 100 marriages, in Darmstadt 34*5, in Worms 44, in Offenbach 48*0, were performed before the registrar only. Each of these towns has got a certain number of Soman Catholic in- habitants : in Worms one-third, or 5,000 persons, are Catholics : and these, probably without exception, go from the civil bureau to the church for the sacramental blessing of the priest. It is therefore probable that only about half of the Protestant mar- riages in towns are solemnised by the pastor. In the country it is different, where religion has not completely lost its hold on the population. The new law has placed the Evangelical Church in a position of great difficulty. Luther and the Evangelical Church, as well as the Reformed (Calvinist) Church, repudiated the idea of there being anything sacramental in marriage, any special grace given by the benediction of the pastor. Luther characterised marriage as a purely " secular matter (weltliches Ding)." Brenz, the Re- former of Wiirtemberg, declared emphatically, " The marriage contract, like all other secular contracts, can be solemnised (ver- richtet) in town-halls, or any other public, common, convenient, civil buildings or offices." 1 Luther said : "So many countries, so many customs, says the proverb; and as matrimony or the mar- riage state is a secular affair, it is not fitting that we clergy and servants of the Church should order or rule anything concerning it, but leave each country and town to follow its own usages and devices. Some like to lead the bride twice to church, in the evening and in the morning, some once; some announce the mar- riage by calling the banns two or three weeks before; but all such matters I leave to the princes and town-councils to scttlo and direct as they see fitting — it is no concern of mine. But if people ask for the church and wish to be blessed and prayed over in tho church, or even to be there united, it is our duty to accommodate 1 Brenz, in his abhorrence of celibacy and his eagerness to couple everybody, taugbt that maidenhood (Junguiudichlceit) was an unholy estate — "tin un- heiliger Stand." I 114 Germany, Present and Past them." 1 The Lutheran view is quite intelligible. There is no violent "break with German usage. The Reformers did not originate the civil theory of marriage, they fell in with the pre- vailing conception of it. When they rejected the doctrine of Catholicism, that the sacramental benediction of the priest con- veyed divine help to maintain a Christian union in love and purity, and was designed to raise a carnal connection into a sacred bond, they were logically obliged to fall back on the doctrine that marriage is a mere matter of State police. The Reformers there- fore taught that marriage needed no religious service to cement it, but that a religious ceremony might be superadded to the civil contract as a concession to old-fashioned prejudice, as a pious usage not to be lightly abandoned because it was of sentimental rather than of actual importance. Luther accordingly drew up two short sketches of services, which have formed the groundwork of all later marriage rites in the Evangelical Church, and which were themselves constructed out of the pre-Reformation offices. These pre-Reformation services consisted of two parts — the re- hearsal of the betrothing at the door, and then the mass, con- cluding with the sacramental benediction. Luther laid the whole stress in his formularies on the rehearsed betrothal, cut out the mass, but retained the benediction, as a pious hope and prayer expressed by the pastor that divine blessing might rest on the couple. But though the Protestant Church solemnised nuptials, it con- tinued to hold that betrothal was true marriage. In a Wittenberg confession of 1597, the separation of those betrothed was forbidden: " for betrothal is a true, binding marriage concluded between man and woman before God and the world, although the parties may not have been wedded (getraut) and blessed by the priest, as is Christian custom and usage." In the year 1567 a Lutheran town- council informed the Wittenberg Church Consistory that it had become very customary for those betrothed to live together before they were married, and asked whether it would not be well to interfere and prevent, or punish cohabitation. The Consistory answered in the negative : " as with betrothal a true marriage is 1 In the Latin version : " Si vero a nobis petitur, ut desponsatos vel ante vel intra templmn copulenms, eis benedicainus aut pro ipsis orernus, hoc sane ipsis officii debemus." Marriage. 115 contracted, and persons thus cohabiting are to "be treated as truly- married." The Lutheran theologian Dimte in his " Casus Conscientige," in 1634, laid down: " The consent of two contracting persons makes marriage, and the presence of the priest is not necessary." The Leipzig theological faculty, in 1620, decreed that "the consent of two contracting parties, i.e. of a man and woman, not already married, having pleasure and love in each other, constitutes mar- riage," and that ecclesiastical union is a matter not of divine appointment, but of " human ordinance." A curious instance of the application of this doctrine occurs in the transactions of the Eostock courts in the seventeenth centuiy. A certain Hans Steinmann, citizen of Lubeck, was betrothed to a damsel named Engel, but died, in 1637, before the marriage took place. She thereupon claimed her share of his property as his widow, and her claim was recognised. 1 When the law on civil marriage was passed, and couples were bound to appear before the registrar, the significance of the Pro- testant rite was lost. The registrar had joined the couple, con- sequently the pastor could not do this again without appearing to call in question the validity of the secular marriage. A century and a hall ago no trouble or difficulty on this score could have arisen in the Evangelical Church ; but the present generation of pastors has been educated under the influence of Bcemer's " Jus Ecclesiasticum," and has come to regard marriage by a pastor as essentially constituting Christian marriage as distinguished from concubinage. Before 1848, obligatory civil marriage existed only in Ehenish Prussia, Ehein-Hessen, and the Bavarian Palatinate, which had fallen • under French law. It is curious that at the great Frankfurt National Assembly in that year, where the Catholic representatives were in force, they raised no objection to civil marriage, having learned by experience that it did not interfere with Church practices. In 1855 facultative civil marriage was introduced into Olden- burg, in 1850 it was made obligatory in Frankfurt-on-Maine, and in 1869 in Baden. Prussian legislation was more hesitating. 1 So in 1637 ; but in 1757, when Koman law had made its way, the Eostock magistrates made a decree reversing previous practice. " A betrothed person, in the event of the death of the betrothed, may not inherit of the deceased, but the survivor may only wear a mourning dress." 110 Germany, Present and Past. In 1831, when divorce was made easy, and showed a tendency to become frequent, the pastors took alarm. According to the old Lutheran theory that marriage was a secular contract with which the Church had nothing to do, and might not interfere, the pastors were bound to marry all whom the State allowed to contract unions together. But several pastors held that this was a case not contemplated by Luther, or that it was one for which he did not provide, believing that Scripture was sufficiently explicit on the point. Civil marriage was then not possible, except for Jews ; and the case of divorced persons seeking marriage became a burning question. In 1831, a pastor in Pomerania refused his ministrations to bless a union which was a public scandal. In 1833 a similar case occurred in Westphalia, and by 1845 there were as many as twenty -five such cases ; of these seven had been refused by Gerlach, a Berlin clergyman. Government did not interfere, as it was found that where one pastor was scrupulous two were less nice. In 1844 appeared a new law regulating divorce, and a royal order of January 30, 1846, required the Church to lay down disciplinary regulations, so as not to leave the refusal of marriage to the discretion of individual pastors, and, in the meantime, to provide a flying squadron of unscru- pulous chaplains who might be sent about the country and into the parishes of recalcitrant ministers to hallow these unsavoury unions. In 1859 the Prussian Government introduced two bills in succession to authorise facultative civil marriage, but both were rejected by the House of Lords. Shortly before the law of 1875 was signed, the Evangelical Church Governing Council (Oberkirchenrath) of Berlin was sum- moned by Government to revise the Protestant formulary of marriage so as to remove every word which might be taken to cast a slur on the foregoing secular union. The Council had issued a provisional office on September 21, 1874. This defined the marriage by the pastor as the exaction from the already wedded couple " of a vow before God that they will conduct their union till death in a Christian manner and in accordance with the word of God." The form of joining the betrothed was exscinded, so as to give no occasion to the supposition that the Church regarded them as not united till they came before the altar. Ko Marriage, 117 promise to take one another was demanded, "but only an under- taking to live together " in a Christian and orderly manner." As the preface says, every precaution was taken "by elimination and alteration " to remove the impression that the Church regarded the marriage as one still to be concluded — i.e. of appearing to deny the matrimonial authority of the civil act." The Cassel, Kiel, and Waldeck Consistories adopted an almost identical form. But the Hanoverian Synod of November 1874 would not abandon the form of uniting the couple (Zusammensprechen). The Berlin formulary met with the liveliest opposition from the " orthodox " party in the Established Church. In September 1875, some six hundred pastors of this party met in conference and formulated their opposition. But the Government is not prepared to tolerate any ecclesias- tical pretensions on the part of the Evangelical clergy any more than on that of the Catholic priesthood. The Hanoverian Lutheran Church has been incorporated in the Prussian Union, and six of its pastors have withdrawn from it rather than use the mutilated marriage rite. In Schleswig-Holstein, in Hesse-Darmstadt, in Baden, there have been similar secessions. In Baden the Ober- kirchenrath 1 produced a new liturgy with amended marriage formulary in June, 1877, quite in conformity with the Prussian service. Eings are still allowed to be exchanged, and the pastor joining the hands says : " Your solemn vows, which you have given each other before God, I, by virtue of my office, accept as an undertaking "by you to lead together a Christian wedded life, and so I bless your union in the name," etc. If law in Germany has been capricious in the view it has taken of the relations existing between betrothal and matrimony, it has not been less capricious in the way in which it has at one time favoured, at another hindered marriage. In the Middle Ages privileges and advantages were accorded to the married which were denied to bachelors. In' Hanover, the Palatinate, and Brunswick, the estate of a single man on death reverted to the 1 The Oberkirchenrath or Governing Council is not in Baden, any more than in Prussia, a representative synod. It consists entirely of State nominees — a President, who is a lawyer and Staatsrath, another legal officer, three Kam- meralister (managers of the Church finances), and three theologians, — all appointed by the Grand-Duke. 118 Germany, Present and Past. State. Difficulties aroso about the property of priests, and the legal faculty at Hallo published a decision that only the property of wilful bachelors was to be confiscated, " because through wicked- ness and levity they had despised matrimony." At Halle only married men as heads of households could enjoy the rights of citizens and the salt privileges. In Brandenburg, law was equally severe on these evaders of the chief duty of man. As late as 1683 the village authorities were required not to harbour young un- married persons, but to look them up, and, whether citizens or servants, to see that all who had attained the age of twenty were married. In 1722 this law was re-enacted, but the age at which domestic felicity was rammed down men's throats was placed at five-and-twenty. No man was allowed to evade marriage and remain in the land. The bachelor who transgressed his twentieth or five-and-twentieth birthday was arrested, dragged before the Burgmeister and Bath, and ordered to fall in love and marry, at least the latter, within the month, or be cast out of the parish and doomed to vagabondage. A person of either sex condemned to death was given free pardon and release on receiving an offer of marriage. This custom, which prevailed also in France, has formed the basis of one of Balzac's tales in his foul " Contes Drolatiques." As late as 1725 this law or usage was in force. A woman capitally sentenced for repeated thefts, in Switzerland, obtained her pardon and discharge on a Swabian weaver offering to marry her. His grandfather had in like manner saved a woman from being broken on the wheel, and she had brought a blessing on the house and family. Marriage in German minds was thought to purge away crime. But at the end of last century Malthus taught that " men multi- plied in geometrical, and provisions in arithmetical progression," and that the State should therefore check marriages, and, where means were not sufficient to support a family in comfort, to prohibit them. The teaching of Malthus was taken up by a shoal of advocates on the platform and in the press ; and the German Governments became uneasy and alarmed at the rapid increase in population. Bavaria, a poor land of mountain, sandy flats, and forest, became most anxious to arrest the growth. Laws were passed throwing every conceivable impediment in the way of marriage, making it a privilege of the rich and an impossibility for the poor. Candidates Marriage. 119 for hymeneal happiness were required to appear before official Boards and prove that they had fortunes which could dower daughters and set up sons in life. They had not merely to count their chickens before they were hatched, but also to satisfy the village vestry that they had barley on which to feed and fatten them. How these laws acted, common sense will tell. In 1870, the pastor of the Evangelical German Church at Paris stated that there were in the French capital 10,000 from Darmstadt alone, occupied as street-sweepers, who had fled their country to escape compulsory celibacy. In 1772, men ran away to avoid compulsory marriage. That these laws should enormously raise the percentage of ille- gitimate births was not to be wondered at. Bavaria has not yet recovered the demoralizing effect of Malthusian legislation. The proportion now is 13*70 per cent., the same as in Berlin, but it is declining annually. The same detestable interference with the liberty of marriage prevailed till quite recently in Austria and Tyrol, making it quite impossible for a man to marry who could not prove to the authorities that he had a fixed annual income on which a family could be maintained in comfort. Thus, a wood- cutter could not marry, for he earned wages in winter only ; he might pick up chance work in the summer, but as it is not certain work it counts for nothing — he is not permitted to marry. The morals of a people do not recover the deteriorating effects of such laws at a leap. Prussia alone, of the States of the Bund, placed no impediments in the way of marriage. In Mecklenberg, on the contrary, the Malthusian laws were in full force ; the population decreased, and the price of labour rose. After a while the North German Bund followed the example of Prussia, and later these laws were cancelled everywhere in South Germany. The law of February 6, 1875, for the whole Empire, makes every man of age to contract a marriage when twenty years old, and every girl at the completion of her sixteenth year ; but no man may marry without consent of his guardian (father or other- wise) till he is five-and-twenty, no woman till she is four-and- twenty. There is no Imperial legislation to decide whether marriage contracted without consent of guardians is to be held as valid or not, and this question is answered differently in different States. An union without consent of the parents is not legally void in Hanover, in Kur-IIesse, Nassau, Hamburg, the kingdom of 120 Germany, Present and Past. Saxony, Saxc-Gotha, Saxe-Altenburg, and the greater part of Bavaria. But a marriage without consent of parents is absolutely null in Ansbach, Bairouth, Kempten, Kaufbeuren, and Solms. By the law of 1875, only soldiers and Government officials are not allowed to contract unions without special authorisation. "All other regulations which have hindered the rights of persons to contract marriage, except such as are defined in this law, are abolished." x "We might have supposed that with this " Morgengabe " of the Imperial Chancellor to United Germany, marriages would have increased. But this has not been the case. There has, on the contrary, been a steady decrease, whilst the population has grown. Whereas, in 1872, there were in Germany 423,900 marriages, with a population of 41,058,780, in 1876 there were only 366,912 marriages, with a population of 42,752,555. In Berlin alone, in one 3 7 ear, there has been a falling off to the number of 2,435. 3 The decline in number is due partly to the stagnation in trade, but chiefly to universal military service. Every man is now a soldier with the colours from the age of twenty for three years, and then in the Beserve for four years longer. Thus he cannot begin to work for his livelihood till he is twenty-three, and then for four years longer he is hampered with military drills for two months out of the twelve. 3 What has been given with one hand has been withdrawn with the other. The first and best years of a man's life are taken from him, and it is rarely possible for him now to found a household before he is forty. Universal military service is Malthusian legis- lation under another form and another name : it is equally ruinous to the welfare of a country. Brosperity is to be found in burying the dragon's teeth that men may spring up, not in rooting men out of the soil and converting them into murderous fangs. There is one point on which a word must be said before the subject of German marriages is dismissed, viz. the effect on morality 1 3ter A.bsch. § 39. The law forbids unions between blood-relations, between guardians and their wards, between those divorced for adultery aud the persons with whom it was committed. 2 In 1875 there were 14,528, in 187G, ouly 12,093. 3 In Westphalia, Hanover, and Schleswig-IIolstem, military service is from the 21st to the 29 th year. Marriage. 121 of the absence of the religions element in marriage. From the earliest period in Germany, as has been shown, marriage was regarded solely as a civil contract, no more demanding religious sanction than the sale and transfer of a cow. The Eoman con- ception of matrimony was less gross and mercantile. The bond was regarded as sacred, as hallowed by the gods. Through- out the Middle Ages the Church fought hard to place marriage on a better footing, to spiritualise a traffic in flesh. But the re- sistance on the part of the people was stubborn. In the capitulary of Pepin the Little (a.d. 755) no mention is made of any religious ceremony as requisite for hallowing and confirming a marriage. This the Carlovingians recommended, but did not require. Even so late as 1043, at the marriage of the Emperor, Henry III., the clergy assisted merely as guests and witnesses. In the twelfth century, bishops and councils forbade the performance of the marriage ceremony by laymen. It was not till the thirteenth century that formularies for marriage were introduced and became customary. The Eeformation broke out when opinion was in a state of transition. The old view of marriage as a secular trans- action held its ground, but side by side with it was growing up an ecclesiastical theory of marriage as a religious union, which treated an unblessed union as concubinage. It was perhaps inevitable that Luther should adopt the former view ; his appeal was to German law, feeling, and tradition against every foreign importation. In the heat of controversy and the intoxication of passion, he did not sufficiently discriminate be- tween what was good, though un-German, and what was objec- tionable. When he laid down with his fist, " Die Ehe gehet die Ivirche nichts an, ist ausser derselben, ein zeitlich, weltlich Ding, darumb gehoret sie fur die Oberheit," he summed up the stolid German opposition of two centuries. Since the Eeformation till the introduction of Eoman law, and the treatise of Puffendorf, Evangelicals (Lutherans) and Eeformed (Calvinists) alike regarded marriage as a mere civil transaction. The Catholic Church received a check in her work of moulding opinion in Germany. She lost her hold over a large part of the empire. But where she retained her grasp, there she never ceased to labour at the remodelling of popular opinion on the matter of marriage. If cast iron be hammered at lonsr enough it will become 122 Germany, Present and Past. fibrous and flexible. So it is with the most crystalline public opinion. It has been so with popular notions about marriage in the parts of Germany still Roman Catholic; there they do not differ from those in France or in England. Thus, where two villages adjoin, one Catholic, the other Protestant, we find a strict and a lax opinion side by side. The Protestant Church now is as urgent as the Catholic to discountenance illegitimacy, but it is only for the last century that it has taken this line, since it has adopted the Eoman law on marriage. The inevitable result of the laxity of dealing with marriage by the Protestant Church has been a corresponding laxity of morals. Thus, throughout Germany the statistics of illegitimacy show a much higher rate among the Protestants than among the Catholics. 1 For instance : — Province of Prussia (Prot.) illegitimate births are 9'0 per 100. Brandenburg (Prot.) „ 10-9 „ „ Pomerania (Prot.) „ 10 - „ „ Schleswig-Holstein (Prot.) „ 9*6 ,, „ Westphalia (Cath.) „ 2-7 „ ,. Ehineland (Cath.) „ 3*0 „ So, also, in the towns that can be compared as almost exclusively Catholic or Protestant : — Berlin (Prot.) illegitimate births are 13-5 per 1G0. Magdeburg (Prot.) „ 9-6 Hanover (Prot.) „ 8-9 Coblenz (Cath.) „ 2-7 Aix-la-Chapelle (Cath.) „ 2-2 Treves (Cath.) „ 2-3 In Thuringa, where the population is wholly Evangelical, the average of illegitimate births in the towns is 12*0 ; 2 at Altenburg 14-5, Coburg 12-8, Hildburghausen 10-8, Weimar 8-8. 3 1 From Statistik des Deutsch. Reicfis, 1876. 2 At Jena in Thuringa the annual number of illegitimate children is only slightly under that of legitimate children. In the year 1S66, there were 156 legitimate births, and 161 illegitimate. In 1S71, the legitimate were 145, the illegitimate 115. At Jena is a lying-in-hospital, which helps to make the per- centage 45 per cent. At Freiburg im B. is also one, and there it raises the proportion to 19 per cent. But in this case, though the town is Catholic, the population round it is mixed, Catholic two-thirds and Protestant one-third. I was told there also, that several cases came from Basle. 3 Jahrbiicher fur National. Oekonomie u. Statistik, 1S75. Marriage. 123 This difference in morality, it must be remembered, is due, not to one Church having a higher ethic code and greater influence than the other, but to the fact that one has persisted too long in adhesion to German law on marriage, when circumstances were altered making such adhesions injurious to morality. If marriage be a mere civil contract, then that contract may bo dissolved and a fresh one entered into without scandal. This is an obvious deduction, and has been drawn in Germany. The civil board which binds together can dissolve the tie, and dissolve it for the most trivial reasons. Yet the percentage of divorce is not as high as might be expected. The actual number of divorced persons of both sexes in Germany at the' census of December 1, 1871, was only 69,794. Out of 10,000 persons over the age of 15 there are in Prussia 30 divorced, in Saxony 37, in Wiirtemberg 32, in Bavaria 11, and in Baden 10. The reason of the average being no higher is that divorces are almost wholly among the Pro- testants, and amongst them are confined to the citizen, professional, and noble classes, whereas the peasantry rarely resort to the board for a divorce. It is due also to the fact that the number of those who return themselves as divorced at a census does not represent half of those who have been divorced. As a general rule two- thirds of those who get divorced marry again. Consequently the average for Prussia should be 90 in 10,000, instead of 30. In Transylvania it is said that, among the German Lutherans two out of every three girls who get married are divorced before the end of the year, and that most married women have had three husbands. Mr. Boner says : " Among the Saxon peasantry a wife or a husband is a thing which may for convenience sake be put aside or changed at pleasure. Divorce is a thing of such every- day occurrence, is decided on so lightly and allowed so easily, that it has become a marked feature — indeed, a component part of — Saxon rural life. A separation of husband and wife after three, four, or even six weeks' marriage is nothing rare or strange ; and the woman divorced will often want six or eight months of being sixteen. Among a portion of the Saxons, marriage may almost be said to be a merely temporary arrangement between two con- tracting parties : very frequently neither expects it to last long, and may have resolved that it shall not. In the village near the Kochel, sixteen marriages took place in one year : at the end of 124 Germany, Present and Past twelve months only six of the contracting parties were still living together. In the place where I write this, there are at thi.s moment eleven bridal pairs intending to celebrate their wedding a fortnight hence. Of these eleven, the schoolmaster observed that there would probably not be many living together by this time next year. The clergyman, too, was of opinion that before long many would come to him w r ith grounds for a separation. Divorce is easy, and belongs so intimately to married life, that even before the wedding it is talked of, and, under certain probable eventu- alities, looked forward to as consequent on the approaching union. ' Try to like him,' says the father to the girl, ' and if later you find you can't do it, I will have you separated.' In the village where I was staying, five suits for separation were pending; indeed, such cases are always going on. I have talked over this crying evil with the Saxon clergy, and from these have learned how futile the causes generally were. One husband did not believe what his wife had said, and she immediately wanted to be separated, as 'she could not live with a man who would not trust her.' Another did not eat his dinner with appetite. ' Oh,' said his wife, ' it seems my cooking does not please you, if I cannot satisfy you,' etc. The chief cause of complaint of another husband, whose pretty young wife I frequently saw at her father's house, was, that she had washed some linen again after his mother had already washed it, and that was an insult to his mother." Mr. Boner says of Hungary : "In a Hungarian town of somewhat more than 4,000 inhabitants, there were pending, in 1862, no less than 171 divorce suits. All these were among the Calvinist population." 1 In Denmark divorce is much more common than in Germany. From what I have seen and heard I fear that morals are at a terribly low ebb in the peninsula and its islands. Out of 10,000 persons in Germany over 15 years old, 26 are divorced ; in Denmark 50; in Hungary 44; in Switzerland (exclusively among the Zuinglians and Calvinists) 47 ; 2 in Catholic Austria there are only 4-8. 3 At Hamburg, out of the adult population, there are 70 1 C- Boner: Transylvania, its Products and People, Loudon, 1SG5, pp. 4S3, 496, 503. - The proportion to the Protestant population is 90 out of 10,000. 3 The statistics are taken from those published by the German Imperial Government in the Statistilt des Deutsclien I' ' ' . Marriage. 125 divorced persons out of 10,000 remaining unmarried at the census of 1871, in Bremen 38, in Leipzig 48. On the other hand, in the purely Catholic towns, as Treves, there are only 7, at Cologne 9, at Minister 9. The Statistical Eeport of the Government, published in 1872, says : " The connection between the relative proportion of divorced and the religious confessions is unmistakable. In the specially Evangelical districts divorces are frequent, in the strictly Catholic districts they are rare." In the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, especially Vaud, divorce is almost as frequent as among the Saxons in Transylvania. A friend who lived in Vaud has told me how he has sat down at table with a party, four gentlemen with their four wives, each of whom had been the wife of one of the others. They met without the slightest restraint, and as the best of friends. It has not come to this yet in Germany ; not, at least, in the South. Divorces are most frequent in the North. In 1877, in a town of South Germany, with a population of 25,000 inhabitants (2,500 Protestants), there were 7 divorces, all either among the Protestants, or in cases of mixed marriages, and 245 marriages ; or about 3 per cent, of the marriages end in separation. Altogether the present condition of morals in Germany is such as to impress one with the danger of dissociating the idea of marriage from religion. Where passion and temptation are strong, and the tie is regarded as a mere business contract, there passion will have its way, as every new temptation arises. It may be questioned whether it is any gain to virtue or society that the iron rivets of the law should hold together those who have discovered the utter incompatibility of their tempers and habits. But it is a danger to society when the marriage bond is made so easy of rupture, that marriage becomes a joining of hands and down the middle and up again, as in a country-dance, with ever changing partners. The economy of nature demands paramount care to be extended to the protection of the child, and natural religion re- quires that the sanctity of home shall surround and hallow tho nursery. But how can that be called a home whero the husband and the father are not necessarily one, and that sacred where marriage is treated as a mere civil contract ? Divorce laws should be the thorny burrs protecting the child, and preserving a homo and training for it. If it were not for children, law and social 126 Germany, Present and Past customs would be sufficient to guarantee order. The foundations of the State are laid in the family, and not in the individual, and the first care of the State should be to hedge round that plural unit. The strength of a country does not lie in its great armies, but in its multitudes of householders, each a rootlet clinging to the soil, and capable of infinite multiplication. We may hesitate whether that nation is advancing in a right direction, and giving great promise of a future, where marriages are steadily on the decline, and divorces are becoming more common and shameless. t 127 ; CHAPTER VI. WOMEN". Das ewig Weibliche zicht uns hinan. Goethe, Faust, part ii. The French poet Diderot said once, " He who would write about women should dip his pen in rainbow-dye and powder his lines with the gold-dust of butterflies' wings." I venture to think that this does not apply to German women. I am sure that women needing such a material for their description would not deserve description. Hertha — the earth — was the goddess of the old Teutons. But the earth is fair and fruitful in summer, and rigid and remorseless in winter. So the Germans fabled of two goddesses, the one lo-ving, pitying, motherly ; the other hard, repelling, murderous. A peasant woman was sick, and she had a little babe that wailed for the food she could not give it. Then, in the night, there shone a glory in the cottage chamber, and in the midst of the light was a beautiful woman, with golden hair waving about her shoulders, dressed in a robe of varied colours, and with eyes blue as the summer skies.. She took the babe from its cradle, and suckled it at her breasts, and then vanished. It was Frau Gode, the beneficent earth-goddess. A peasant lad was keeping cows on an alp. Then a strange woman stood before him and said, " Let me take you to myself." He was frightened and ran away. But his master was angry that he bad deserted the cows, and sent him back. And when he came to the alp, where the woman had stood, he found only a heap of ironstone and a black pool. He looked into the water, for there was some- thing swimming in it, and he saw an iron head with eye-sockets like deep holes ; and he touched it with a stick, and the iron hea:l 128 Germany, Present and Past. sank. Presently he went out on the edge of the cliff, and sounded his horn. Then something came rushing towards him from among the pines, and he was aware of the iron head looking over his shoulder, and he heard a voice say, "None escape me whom I desire ; " and two iron arms closed round him, and iron claws gripped him. He was found next morning crushed and broken at the bottom of the cliff. It was Jarnsaxa, the cruel earth-mother. 1 The German women are of divine origin, descended from goddesses, and they have carried with them to their last posterity all the warmth of Gode's heart, and some of the iron of Jarnsaxa's head. The two generations have grown together, and I think there never was a time when there were not in Fatherland representatives of Gode and of Jarnsaxa. Heaven be praised ! the daughters of the iron goddess are not all as ferociously disposed as she, the divine blood of Gode throbs in their hearts, they retain only the hardheadedness of their ancestress. It is, no doubt, because among German women there are some of both races, as in one woman there are opposed individualities, that we find such conflicting testimony concerning them in the age when the curtain is first lifted on their lives. Tacitus says that the Germans esteemed something sacred and prophetic in woman, that they followed her counsels, and exalted her as a goddess ; but, on the other hand, the stern evidence of early laws shows that she was treated as a household animal, bought and sold, let or lent. Her life was given her by the capricious generosity of her father, and when her husband died, she was expected to burn herself on his body, as of no more use in the world. 2 The first glimpse given us of the German woman by history is not of her as a benign and bending character. She bursts on us as a being, fearful and violent, but heroic. In the year 102 before Christ, Caius Marius rolled back the inundating wave of Teutones on the bloody field of Aix. The routed barbarians were pursued by the Eoman soldiers to their camp. " Then," says Plutarch, "the Teutonic women rushed to meet them with swords and 1 Ilcela is the same cruel goddess under another name. 2 This was in the earliest stage ; but exposure of infants remained in Christian times, and was only put down with difficulty. Women. 129 cudgels, and flung themselves headlong among pursuers and pursued, uttering hideous and frantic howls ; the latter they drove back as cowards, the former they assailed as enemies, mingling with the battle, beating down the swords of the Romans, with their bare hands grasping the bare blades, and with courage, dauntless to the death, allowed themselves to be gashed and hacked to pieces rather than yield." Valerius Maximus shows us not only their dauntlessness, but their dignity. The captured Teutonic maidens hesought the conqueror to let them enter among the virgins of Vesta, promising to remain untarnished in her service. When their request was refused, rather than submit to the indignities in store for them, in the night they strangled themselves, valuing their honour above their lives. Next year Marius routed the Cimbri at Vercella?. When the legionaries drove the invaders over the wall of their camp, the Cimbric women, standing in the chariots, robed in black, killed those who fled, one cut down a husband, another a brother, a third a father. Then they cast their children under the wheels of the cars and hoofs of the horses, and, lastly, laid murderous hands on themselves. One was found hung by her own hands to a chariot-pole, with her strangled babes dangling from her ankles. With the majesty of heroism and great sorrow, the first German woman whose name is known steps forth on the stage of history. Thusnelda 1 was the wife of Hermann (Arniinius), the indefatigable opponent of jRome, conqueror of Varus and extermi- nator of his legions. Her father Siegast, who had an hereditary feud with the Hessian chief, betrayed his daughter, when await- ing her confinement, into the hands of the Eomans. Inspired with the spirit of her husband, rather than with that of her father, says Tacitus, her captivity drew from her not a tear or word of lamentation. She brooded in silence on her grief, with hands folded on her bosom and eyes resting on her ripening womb. The news that his beloved wife was torn from him, and about to be carried into slavery, drove Hermann to mad fury. But his attempts to rescue her were unavailing. Thusnelda was taken to Rome, and there she bore Thumelicus. She with her babe and brother, Siegesmund, was forced to grace the triumph of Germanicus, and the traitor 1 Properly Tuiscnbild, the maid of Tuisce. 130 Germany, Present and Past. Sicgast saw his daughter, son, and grandson dragging chains before the chariot of the conqueror of his people. Grief probably put a speedy end to the sorrows of this noble woman. The wrath of Kome against the conqueror of Varus expended itself in con- verting his son into a common gladiator. If, as is supposed, the beautiful marble statue of a German woman, which adorns the Loggia de' Lanzi at Florence, be a representation of Thusnekla, it will show that the grandeur of soul of the barbarian did not fail to make its impress on the Romans. In contrast to this tragic female figure, stands the blue-eyed, fair-haired Swabian Bisula, a girl taken in his Alemannic war by Valentinian I., and presented by him to Ausonius. From slave she speedily became the poet's mistress, and he fell in fetters at her feet. Her form is not heroic — it is but that of a sweet German maid, " but oh ! " sighs the infatuated poet, " by her natural charms she eclipses all the pampered and tricked-up puppets of Rome." The ancient Germans prided themselves, like the modern Iroquois, on not yielding to weak emotion. They acted in obedience to their hearts, but sternly repressed every exhibition of tenderness. Parents loved their children, but did not fondle them; husbands loved their wives without, like their descendants, hugging them in public and maundering over their ale of hymeneal happi- ness. The strong natures of that vigorous age, when once the barriers gave way, burst forth in whirlwinds. Slow distilling tears did not beilew their cheeks, but the flood of sorrow flowed mingled with blood from their eyes, and stained both face and raiment. 1 Men and women alike blushed to yield to light emotion, but not to violent passion. In her sorrow, Brunhild smites bet- hands together, so that the walls re-echo, and the birds on the roof fly scared away. On hearing the news of Siegfried's death, her bitter laughter shakes the housed The hall rocks at the queen's weeping. 8 The mighty bosom heaves with such tempestuous emotion, that the necklace is burst, and the starry ornaments fly over the floor. 4 The muscles of Egil work when his son dies, so that his kirtie is rent. 6 Joy at the restitution of his master bursts the iron bands round the heart of the trusty Eckehard. 1 Wernhold, Splcilcg. Formul. 1817, p. 31. Grimm: Andreas and Llene. 2 Scemund Edda, 20S. 3 Gudrun, 927. * Wernhold, SpicO. p. 28. 5 Ahjla, c. 81. Women. 131 Anger, hatred, sorrow, and love are wild spirits, and among the Old Germans none would yield to them without a "battle ; and each, when it possessed man or woman, wrought him up to Berserkir frenzy. Let me attempt to put together a mosaic picture of the ancestresses of the German people — the prototypes, strongly out- lined and harshly coloured, of the women, who, with fainter outline and faded tints, are the daughters, wives, and mothers of modern Germany. The characters are the same, but finer drawn ; not scored in charcoal with a burnt stick, but traced with a crowquill, the downstrokes hairs, the upstrokes microscopic. Kaces have their special characteristics as well as persons ; and these individualising characteristics reappear again and again in their history, modified it may be, but unmistakable, if only we look for them. We English are a mixture of many races, and our characteristic is Heterogeneity. Women accentuate the peculiarities of the race to which they belong. Corinthian brass was the melting and flowing together of all the metals in a blazing city. It was a precious and highly esteemed amalgam. Let us flatter ourselves that we are the Corinthian brass of Europe, only let us not forget that we have not the individuality of the Celt, or the Saxon, or the Angle, or the Jute, or the Roman, or the Dane, or the Norman. Each, when melted in, lost its distinguishing features. It is so with our women — they are the most beautiful, shining, precious of amalgams, but they have no organic, original individuality. Look at the whole course of our history, look at the women of the present day. They have a little of everything, of the vivacity of the Celt and the domesticity of the Saxon, the adventure of the Dane, and the dignity of the Norman. It is of all these little mickles that the muckle is made up. The soup is one of many ingredients, but it is not stock. It is not so with the German women : they lack a thousand of those charms which make the Englishwoman the most perfect lady in the world. But they have, what our women have not, an original stamp and an original atomic weight of their own — a thing no compound substance can claim. In the third century, Aurclian celebrated his vict try over the Goths in Hungary and over the Marcomanni ; and in his triumphal 132 Germany, Present and Past. train strode Gothic maidens taken weapon in hand. Among them was Hunila, whose beauty and wit so captivated the conquerors, that a noble Eoman offered her his hand. Claudian (fifth century), in singing the victory of Stilicho over Alaric, mentions an Ostro- gothic wife, who urged her husband to war with the words, " Oh, why have I a man so inert? Happy are the Visigothic wives, for they dress themselves in the spoils of cities, and have Greek maidens as their slaves." It was due to the persistency of the Germanic element among the Lombard conquerors of the Italian plains that the history of Paul Warnefried rises so high above the dry records of that age. It is a German national epic, in spite of the Latin garb it wears. It supplies us with many portraits of women, gloomy rather than gay, but portraits showing how great was the individuality and soul power of the Lombard woman, which had raised her from a chattel to a motive power in the household and in the State — a place she had won for herself, in spite of laws traditional through centuries, with her sword and bow — at least, with her hand and tongue. Far back in the gloom of myth appears the weird Eumetrude, daughter of Tato, whose freakish love of blood led to furious war between the Lombards and the Herulii. On firmer historic ground stands the oft-sung tragic tale of Eosamund, the wife of Alboin. She was daughter of Kunimund, king of the Gepidte, slain by Alboin in battle. Out of the skull of the old king, Alboin had fashioned a goblet. One night at Verona, at a banquet, flushed with pride and wine, the Lombard king brimmed the hideous bowl and presented it to his wife. Eosamund drank, and registered with the draught a vow of vengeance. At her bidding, Helmeric, the squire, slew the king as he lay sleeping in the heat of the day ; he could not defend himself, for Eosamund had tied his sword to the bed-post. Woman's nature is gentle and peaceable, but it is like those heaven-reflecting tarns of which folks tell, that if the tiniest pebble be dropped in to ruffle the surface, the depths churn, the sky over- head is overcast with storm, and the lake lashes itself into fury and foam. Passion takes hold of the female heart more readily than that of man. Her heart is more tindery or less protected. Then, with the concentration of all her powers, with no fure- Women. 133 -thought and less restraint, she pursues her object over rock and ravine. Gentleness, pity, shame — all that are most dear and most revered — she tramples under foot, regardless of everything save her one object, and that attained, she totters and falls a wreck. Love, jealousy, revenge, form links in one chain, and many a ■woman who has yielded herself to the first has been bound and strangled by the others. Is this overdrawn ? Perhaps so, when speaking of compound natures in an artificial state of society ; not so of original souls in fresh natural growth. Of revenge there are or were two sorts, one inferior and per- sonal, the other the carrying out of rude justice at a period when justice was executed by individuals and not by the State. Such was blood- vengeance ; and women had a right to it — felt it a duty laid on them by their love and kinship. King Volsung and all his sons, save Sigmund and a grandchild Sinfiotli, were killed by Siggeir, who had married Signy, the daughter of Volsung. The queen meditates revenge, and excites Sigmund and Sinfiotli to execute it. They come to tho palace of Siggeir and are con- cealed in a corner by Signy. The king's little son, whilst playing, discovers them, and by order of his mother, lest he should betray them, Sigmund and Sinfiotli cut the child to pieces. But the Volsungs are discovered, and are condemned to be buried alive. The mound is raised over a stone chamber, and they are lowered into it. But before the last slab closes the vault, the queen casts in a piece of meat wrapped round with straw. Sigmund, in tearing the flesh, finds it transfixed with his sword. With this he and Sinfiotli dig their way out of the mound and come to tho roj-al hall, where all are asleep. They cast in firebrands, and the smoke and flames arouse the slumberers. " Know," cries Sigmund to the king, " that the Volsungs are not all dead." Then he bids his sister come forth in peace. Signy refuses. She has accomplished her purpose, has revenged the murder of her father and brothers, but she will, as a true wife, die with her husband. Only she comes forth to give a last kiss to Sigmund and Sinfiotli, and then she plunges back into the flames. A picture in livelier colours is that of Theodelinda, daughter of the Bavarian king Garibald, whose hand was sought by the fair-haired young Lombard king Authvari. His courtship was a 134 Germany, Present and Past. scrap of early romance. Full of desire to judge with Lis own eyes of his intended bride, he accompanied his ambassadors in disguise as one of them. When Garibald consented to the marriage, the messengers begged that, as token of acceptance, Theodelimla might give them to drink with her own hands. As she came with the goblet of wine to Authvari, he stroked her cheek and fingers. Theodelinda, red with shame, told her nurse what he had done. The wise woman answered: " If this man were not the king and your bridegroom, he would not have dared to touch you." The married life of Theodelinda and Authvari was short, as it lasted but a year; and then the Lombards bade the widowed queen retain her royal prerogative and choose a second husband from among their chiefs. She invited to court Agilulf, Duke of Turin, and when he came, she met him with a cup of wine. The duke knelt to receive it, and respectfully kissed the hand of the queen. She blushed, and smiling said : " He who could kiss my lips should not be content to kiss my hand : " and she chose him as the successor of Authvari. A pleasanter picture still is that of Queen Bathild. Archim- bold, mayor of the palace in the reign of Dagobert, had bought a Saxon slave-girl. She is thus described by one of her contem- poraries : " Her pious and admirable conversation attracted the admiration of the prince and all his ministers. For she was of a benignant spirit and sober manners, prudent and shy, never scheming evil, never light in talk, or pert in speech, but in all her actions upright. She was of Saxon race; in shape graceful and pleasing, with a bright face and a staid gait, and as such she found favour with the prince, so that he constituted her his cup- bearer, and as such, dealing honestly, she stood often by him, ministering to him. But so far from being lifted up by her position, she showed the utmost humility to her fellow-servants, cheerfully obeying them, ministering reverently to her elders, often taking the shoes off their feet, scraping and cleaning them, and bringing them their washing water, and mending their clothes also. All this she did without a murmur, with gentle and pious alacrity." Now it fell out that Archimbold lost his wife, and he looked about for some one to fill her place. His eyes rested with somewhat undue warmth on the modest Saxon girl, and she fearing his intentions, hid herself among the maids of the kitchen, Women. 135 dishevelled her light Lair, begrimed her face, and worked in rags, so that the mayor thought she had gone clean away, and after a while he forgot her and married some one else. Then Bathild shook off her tatters, braided her flaxen hair, washed her sunny face, and shone forth in her accustomed place. But she had fled the mayor to catch the king. How Clovis became attached to her is not recorded, but certain it is that he asked her to be his lawful wife, and to sit by his side on the throne of the Franks. So, at the age of nineteen, in 649, she was married to Clovis II. As queen she exercised a most salutary influence over the mind of her husband, and persuaded him to enact many wholesome laws. Horace Walpole has said that no woman ever invented a new religion, but that no new religion ever made way without woman's help. Theodelinda was a nursing mother to the Church among the Lombards, Bertha to Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, and Bathild among the Franks. She exerted herself to the utmost of her power to relieve the necessities of the poor and ameliorate the condition of the serf. After six years of married life Bathild was left a widow and regent for her son. The gentle queen remembered her sorrows as a slave. She forbade the reten- tion or purchase of Christian slaves, and she spent all the money she could spare to redeem children from bondage. She sent am- bassadors to all the European courts to announce that the sale of Franks was strictly forbidden, and that any slave who set foot on French soil should be held from that moment to be free. Very different was Komilda, the wife of Gisulf, Lombard Duke of Friuli. When Cacan, king of the Avars, invaded the land, slew the duke, and besieged the duchess in Forum-Julii, she was so struck with his good looks that she offered to deliver up the city to him if he would marry her. He agreed, the gates were opened, and he took her to wife for one night. Next day he sent her to be impaled alive, saying : " The stake is the only husband a traitress merits." Her four daughters showed a more noble spirit. To save their honour they stuffed the bosoms of their dresses with decayed flesh of fowls, and the Avars thought the young ladies too odorous to desire to make their near acquaintance. Gundeberga, wife of King Charoald. proved her fidelity to her husband by an act more forcible and expressive than deserving of 13G Germany, Present and Past imitation. "When the noble Adalulf whispered at table his passion in her ear, she turned round with Teutonic leisureliness, and then, as he looked for his answer, abruptly spat in his face. Itadegund was the daughter of a Thuringian prince killed by his own brother Hermannfried. Theodebert and Clothair defeated Herrnannfi ied in a great battle en the Unstrut, and took Erfurt, his capital. Eadegund and her brother fell into the hands of Clothair, and he made her his wife, or one of his wives. He murdered her brother in cold blood, and then, unable to endure his infidelity and brutality any longer, she fled to Noyon, where she appealed to St. Medard, the bishop, to release her from the hated union and consecrate her to God. He refused, mindful of the apostolic precept : " Let not her who is married seek to be released." Cut she burst into the sanctuary, wrapped in the monastic veil, and going to the foot of the altar, charged the bishop : " If thou deiayest to dedicate me, thou fearest man more than God, and He will require my blood at thy hands." Then he extended his hand and laid it on her head. Clothair, who had found her presence some slight restraint, speedily solaced himself for her absence, and sent her money for the building of a convent. With this she erected the Abbey of St. Cross at Poitiers. Theie her sorrow over the miseries of her age, which she had vainly attempted to relieve, and its brutality, which she had been power- less to soften, found a vent in elegiac lamentations, which her friend, Venantius Fortunatus, clothed in Latin verse. In his elegy on the ruin of Thuringia, the poet lets the queen say : " I saw the women carried off into slavery, with bound hands and flying hair, their bare feet dabbled in the blood of their husbands, or treading the corpses of their brothers. All wept, and I wept with them, for the dead, and yet more for the living. When the wind wails, I listen : perchance in the blast will steal by the ghost of one of my dear ones. Where are those I have loved ? I ask the wind that whistles, and would that a bird would answer me out of it!" Mention must be made of two women, two queens — terrible daughters of Jarnsaxa — Fredigund and Brunehild. They were of very different origin and condition, and after a parallel career of fortune ended differently. Fredigund was the daughter of poor peasants, and at an early Women. 137 period in the train of Audovera, first wife of King Chilperic. She was beautiful and ambitious, bold and unscrupulous, and she attracted the attention, and, before long, awakened the passion, of the king. She pursued her unexpected fortune with ardour and without hesitation. Queen Audovera was her first obstacle and her first victim ; she was repudiated and banished to a convent. But Fredigund's hour was not yet come; for Chilperic married Galswintha, daughter of the Visigoth King Athanagild, whose youngest daughter, Brunehild, had just been united to Sigebert, King of Austrasia, the brother of Chilperic. By Fredigund's orders Galswintha was strangled in her bed, and then Chilperic married her. She and Brunehild were now sisters-in-law, and on Brunehild lay the sacred duty of avenging her sister's murder on the low-born intruder who had stepped over her body to the throne. At her insti- gation Sigebert took arms against his brother, but emissaries of Fredigund assassinated him in his tent, and Brunehild fell into the hands of her brother-in-law. The right of asylum belonging to the cathedral of Paris saved her life, but she was sent to Bouen. There, at the very time, happened to be Meroveus, son of Chilperic by Audovera. Seeing Brunehild in her beauty and her trouble, he loved her, and Praatextatus, Bishop of Bouen, was thought to have incautiously joined their hands. 1 That sealed the fate of the prince and the prelate. Praatextatus was stabbed in the armpit in church by an assassin commissioned by the queen, and Meroveus, a fugitive, besought a faithful servant to kill him, that he might not fall into the cruel hands of his stepmother. Chilperic had another son by Audovera ; he was poignarded and Audovera strangled. But the sum of crimes was not yet complete. In 58-i King Chilperic, when returning from the chase, was struck two mortal blows by a man who took to rapid flight, and a cry was raised of " Treason, it is the hand of the Austrasian Childebert." But the care taken to have the cry raised proved its falsity ; it was the hand of Fredigund herself, anxious lest Chilperic should dis- cover a guilty intrigue existing between her and Landii, an officer 1 The charge was brought against him before a Council of Paris, but ho stoutly denied having done so, even when the bishops who tried him urged him to confess that he had, to relieve them from their difficulties, as Chilperic and Fredigund were determined to make them condemn Prrctcxtatus. whether guilty or not. — Greg. Turon. (who was present at the Council), H. Franc, ix. 39, 42. 138 Germany, Present and Past. oi her household. Chilperic left a son, named Clothair, a few months old, of whom his mother Fredigund became the sovereign guardian. She spent the last thirteen years of her life in defending him against the enemies sho had raised, and endangering him by new plots and crimes. She was a true type of a strong-witted, iron- headed, remorseless woman in barbarous times, her character unredeemed by one trait of womanliness or nobility. She started low down in the scale, and rose very high, without any correspond- ing elevation of soul. She died quietly in her bed at Paris in 597, leaving the throne of Neustria to her son, Clothair II. Very superior to her in mental power and greatness of charac- ter, but scarcely her inferior in wickedness, was her rival Brunehild — a woman who, in another age, or among other circumstances, — who even perhaps then, but for the fact that Fredigund was her contemporary — would have been a great and good woman, a Duchess Had wig or a Maria Theresa, instead of an Emprets Catharine. She was a princess of the Visigoths, the German race which had most readily assimilated Eoman culture, and sho came to the Burgundian court, the most barbarous and brutal of all. Venantius Fortunatus, little dreaming what course she would run, saw in the beautiful and modest bride of Sigebert the dawning of a great hope, and sang her praises with enthusiasm, lauding alike her beauty, her goodness, and her wisdom. Brunehild had no occasion for crimes to become a queen ; and in spite of those she committed, and in spite of her outbursts, and the moral irregulari- ties of her long life, she bore, amidst her passions and her power, the stamp of courageous frankness and intellectual nobilit}*, which places her far above the lustful savage who was her rival. Brune- hild took a practical interest in all public works, highways, bridges, monuments, and the progress of material civilisation. She cherished the poor flowers of literature which appeared in that rugged soil and under that chilling sky. In the royal domains, and wherever she went, her charities showed that she had a heart which felt for the sorrows and servitude of the poor. But the right of blood revenge fell to her. The murderess of her sister and of her hus- band must not remain unchastised. Intoxicated with power, prida, above all with hate, she threw herself with female impetuosity and manly determination into the whirlpool of political strife, caring little if she were herself submerged, if only she could first grip and Women. 130 drown her enemies. St. Desiderius, bishop of Vienne, had his biains dashed out by her orders, and for a less reason than the murder of St. Prsetextatus by Fredigund. St. Columbanus, the great Irish missionary, who denounced her irregularities, was ban- ished by her from the dear solitude of the Vosges. Brunehild on one side, and Fredigund on the other, fanned to fresh fury the embers of strife, whenever they showed signs of waxing cold. At length the hellish drama closed in 614 with a scene of unparalleled horror. Seventeen years after the death of Fredigund, when Brunehild was eighty years of age, she fell into the hands of the son, as she had once before into those of the husband, of her rival. No sanctuary could save her now. Clothair charged her with having caused the death of ten princes of the Merovingian line. Then, after having her tortured during three days, he had her exposed to the derision of the camp at Chalons, seated on a camel. Lastly, she was bound by her long white hair, a hand and a foot, to the tail of a wild horse, and was kicked, literally limb from limb, by the furious and frightened animal. We have seen some instances of the esteem in which Teutonic women held their honour. There were Lucretias and Judiths also among them. The Lombard prince Sigehard fell in love with the beautiful wife of Nannigo, one of his officers. When she indig- nantly rejected his advances, he sent the husband on an embassy to Africa, and this left the unhappy woman in his power. From the moment of her disgrace the wife laid aside all her gay clothing and covered herself with rags ; she washed and anointed herself no more, and lay on the bare earth. When Nannigo returned, as her welcome, she bade him smite off her head, for his honour was stained. Nannigo sought to comfort her. He raised her, and made her bathe and adorn herself as of old. But the heart of the noble woman was broken, and she never smiled again. 1 A Frank maid was her own avenger. When insulted by a noble, named Amalo, she caught up his sword and smote him a mortal wound on the head. He lived long enough to prevent his servants from falling on her, and King Cliildebert took her under his protection from the vengeance of the kinsmen of Amalo. 2 Many touching instances of wifely devotion might bo quoted. Bertha, the wife of Gerard of Boussillon, clings to him, though she 1 Cliron. Salitern, c. G5. - Greg. Turon. II. F. ix. 27. 140 Germany, Present and Past. knows his heart is estranged from her and fixed on another ; and when he falls into misfortune, and must secrete himself in wild and desert places, she follows him, comforts him, raises him, and finally rescues him. We have another example in Nanna, wife of the god Baldur. The husband dies through Loki's wiles, and the funeral pyre is raised on a ship, which is sent adrift to sea. But Nanna cannot bear the sight, and her heart breaks. No less devoted is Signy, the wife of Loki. He is condemned to be bound by the entrails of his son to the rock, and Skadi, whose father he had slain, hangs a poisonous serpent above him, so that the venom drops on his face. Signy will not desert him ; she sits ever at his side in the heart of the mountains, catching the venom in a bowl. This lasts till the end of the world. Only when she goes away to empty the bowl does the venom fall on the face of Loki ; and then he writhes in his agony, and the earth quakes. In the German story of the Nibelungen, Kriemhild is the great example of love stronger than death. From the moment that the beloved husband is found lying before her door, transfixed by Hagen's hand, her only thought and aim is to avenge his death on his murderers. For this she leaves her home on the banks of the green Khine, marries the Hungarian king, Etzel, and sacrifices the lives of her brothers, husband, son, and followers. When her purpose is accomplished, when with her own hand she has dealt Hagen, bound in a dungeon, his death wound, then the blow of Hildebrand's sword is a coup de grace. Her object is achieved, and life has no more charms for her. Like Kriemhild in the German story, so is Brunhild in the Northern lays, a mighty example of womanly fidelity. Siegfried dissolves the spell which Odin has cast over the headstrong virgin, and he be troths her to himself. But by enchantment he is made to forget Brunhild as a dream of the night, and he seeks her hand for Giinther, whose sister Kriemhild he has married. But in Brunhild's heart the oath is not forgotten, her fidelity is not shaken. With agonising pain she sees the man who belonged to her by right, happy at the side of another. " Like ice and snow cold resolves come over her," and she stirs up Gunther to cause the death of Siegfried and his son. With the wolf the cub must perish. The deed is accomplished. When Brunhild hears the piercing cry of Kriemhild, she laughs so loud that the rafters ring. Now Women. 141 the hated rival's joy is dissolved, and done for ever, and now in the nether world Brunhild can be with her betrothed. She stabs herself, and is burned beside him on his pyre, with a sword between them. Such love and fidelity are indeed terrible, but they are great. In spite of man's unfaithfulness, the soul of the woman remains constant, and her very love leads her to destroy the beloved rather than let him enjoy life with another. In death she may be united to him at whose side she could not rest in life. It was a feeling such as this which filled the heart of Ingeborg, daughter of Gudmund of Gliisisfeld, when she tore out the eyes of her lover, lest he should see and admire maidens more beautiful than herself. 1 In the Norse version of the story of Brunhild we see the Teu- tonic woman in primeval savagery and grandeur, surrounded with a mythological halo. In the German version of the tale we see Kriemhild — at least in the first part of the tragedy — as the ideal of German womanhood. Kriemhild is indeed German maidenliness impersonified. She is beautiful, pure, gentle, As the moon in brightness White outshines each star, And through clouds its radiance Streameth soft and far. When she first meets Siegfried in the rose-garden at "Worms — Stepped the fair one gently, Like the morning red ■ Breaking o'er the mountains, Shade and sorrow fled. Who would dream of the depth of passion and stoutness of pur- pose in that placid being ? When Siegfried becomes her husband, she loves him as her lord and hero. It is her love which fills her with pride, and impels her to resent the slights of Brunhild. Then comes Siegfried's murder, and the transformation of the gentle, sunny Kriemhild into a monster of remorseless, unwomanly ferocity. If Kriemhild be one ideal of the old German world, Gudrun is another, the pattern and prototype of woman, patient and forgiving, therefore unlike Kriemhild; but true to death, and therefore like her too. Kriemhild is, though baptised, a heathen at heart. Gud- 1 Fornmennir S'ijur, iii. 141. 142 Germany, Present and Past. run has betfer learned her catechism. The former is the active, the latter the passive heroine. In quietness and in confidence Gudrun possesses her soul. Carried away from her home and her betrothed, Herwig, she endures the ill-treatment of Gerlind with patience ; and no hard usage will make her break her troth, and take the Norman prince, Hartmuth. Abased to be a handmaid, washing clothes in the sea waves, her bare feet in the snow, and with but a shift to screen her fiom the icy blast, she never loses her maidenly dignity, and no insults crush or turn to gall her noble heart. When Herwig comes to the rescue, she steps between the conquerors and the conquered to secure peace and the end of blood- shed, and wins mercy from those flushed with victory for those who have ill-used her. I think that when we look at some — I may say most — of the sketches given us of the Teutonic woman, and see her, vehement, eating out her heart, consuming herself and others, we may under- stand how it is that so many mediaeval German writers make moderation the chief glory to be sought of German woman, the chief virtue to be acquired, without which she is a danger to society. Gottfried of Strassburg, the author of the " Tristan," sang in the twelfth century : Von alien Din gen auf dieser Welt, Die je der Sonne Licht erhellt, 1st keins so selig wie das Weib Das stets ihr Leben und ihren Leib Und ihre Sitten dem Mass ergiebt. And Odilo of Cluny thinks the highest word of praise he can say of Adelheid, widow of Lothair and wife of Otto the Great, is that there was, in spite of her cruel usage, her great gifts, her high exaltation, "moderation in her." With one picture more I shall close this gallery. Hade wig, Duchess of Swabia, widow of Duke Burkhardt, was the most remarkable woman of the tenth century. Above the end of the Lake, of Constance, commanding the whole sweep of the Alps from the Algau to Mont Blanc, rises the volcanic crag of the Hohentwiel, crowned with the ruins of a mighty castle. There sat Hadewig, left a widow in the bloom of her days, ruling Swabians and Alemanni, and reading Ovid and Virgil with the assistance of Ekkehard, a young monk of St. Gall, whom she had borrowed of the Women. 143 abbot to be her instructor. They read and studied together the old poets, but ever with open doors and in the presence of a servant, that the breath of scandal might not mar the intimacy. 1 The lady Hadewig was beautiful as she was learned, but she was self-willed and violent as either. As a child she had been destined to be the wife of the Byzantine, Constantine VI., and had been instructed in Greek by an eunuch sent for the purpose. But she had not acquired Greek graces. "When, in a fit of wrath, she swore " By Hadewig's life," all about her trembled. Even her poor preceptor Ekkehard shivered in his habit when one day the Duchess ordered a servant " to have hair and skin heat off" — i.e. his hair wrenched out by the roots, and his hide flayed with rods— because he had unintentionally neglected a duty. A modern novelist makes the Duchess fall in love with the monk; stern history relates that she had him one day mercilessly horse- whipped. The " dread lady " Hadewig died at an advanced age in 994:. She was no blue-stocking. She loved the Muses, but she ruled like a man, and she led her subjects against the invading Huns and routed them. I cannot say, I fear, of this chapter, as Florian did of his Pastorals, that there are only sheep there, no wolves. For though there are, and always have been, German women gentle and dumb as sheep, there are, and always have been, I will not say wolves, among them, but very lively kids, jumping hurdles and climbing the face of precipices. Brunhild, Kriemhild, Hadewig, are the true ancestresses of Geier-Wally, Ernestine, and Felicitas of modern romance; of the Rahel, Brachmann, and Daniel Stern of modern realit}' ; of the tempestuous-souled, emancipated women who boil up to the surface of society every day. And Gudrun, Bathild, and Bertha have also their representatives in fiction and in fact ; in the Gretchen of Goethe, in Auerbach's Barfiissele, in Kleist's Kiitbchen vonHeilbronn, and in almost every household of Germany — the sun- beam that lightens it, the flower that fills the house with fragrance. The first age of German history and romance shows us side by side two types of women — two ideals, the one impetuous and undis- 1 That lias been reserved for a modern writer, Scheffel, in his Elclcehart, nn historical romance much belauded. C4ermany has produced no Walter Scott, so she must glorify a G. F. R. James. Elckehart has much local colour and a strong antiquarian smack, but no other merits as a work of fiction, that I can perceive. 144; Germany, Present and Fast. ciplined, the other retiring and domesticated. The child is father to the man. I pass over the Middle Ages and the Kenaissance, the schooling and the coming out of womanhood, to resume my sketches in the modern period, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We shall see that the types remain, though modified and disguised by the circumstances and fashion of the period. On the very threshold of modern times stands a characteristic figui - e, Sophia Charlotte, Princess of Brunswick Liineburg, the second wife of Frederic I., who in 1700 exchanged the Electoral cap of Brandenburg for the Eoyal crown of Prussia at the price of 10,000 men. 1 As a bride she is described in the " Mercurgalant " of 1684, as slender, clear-coinplexioned, and combining the beauties of large blue eyes and a profusion of glossy black hair. Frederic loved pomp and ceremony, was badly educated and ill-shaped, a mixture of shrewdness, selfishness, and meanness. Sophia Char- lotte, unable to endure his society, withdrew to Liitzelburg, where she kept her simple court, surrounded by men of letters and devoted to the study of philosophy, asking Leibnitz more questions than the savant could answer. " Madame," said he impatiently one day, " you want to know the wherefore of every why ! " She spoke French, English, and Italian fluently, knew Latin, and was an accomplished musician. But there was none of the song and sweetness of life in her soul. Her mind was masculine, and only feminine so far that it was uncreative. She well deserved the title of " the queen philosopher " given her by the people — an honour little to the taste of her orthodox son, Frederic William L, who said of her, " My mother was a wise woman, but a bad Christian." A woman without religion is a flower without scent, and if dipped in the paraffin of philosophy acquires pungency, but not fragrance. Her morals were pure as rock-crystal, and the drops of marital and maternal affection expressed from her were the thawings of an icicle. She died in 1705, with a note of interrogation on her tongue; with philosophic composure addressing her ladies-in-wait- ing: "l)o not bewail me. I am going now to learn the answer to all my queries into the origin of things which Leibnitz could not give, i am going to solve the mysteries of space and of infinity, ' Whom he sold to the Emperor as mercenaries for the right to call himself a king. Women. 145 of being and of not-being. As for the King my husband, I shall supply him with the opportunity of making a public display of my funeral such as he dearly loves." A more genial, and a far grander character, was the great Empress Maria Theresa. Few men or women who have worn crowns have succeeded in exerting such a fascination as this daughter and successor of the last of the Habsburgs. In tho spring of her life, nobly built, her dignity of majesty and charm of womanhood combined to turn the scale of her fortune at the most eventful period in her career. France, England, Saxony, and Prussia, were combined with Bavaria to reject her claims. The Elector of Cologne acknowledged her only b}' the title of Arch- duchess ; the Elector Palatine sent her a letter by the common post, superscribed " To the Archduchess Maria Theresa ; " and the King of Spain refused her any other title than Duchess of Tuscany. Her Ministry were timorous, desponding, irresolute, worn out with age, or quelled by the impending dangers. Her only hope lay in Hungary, where but shortly before the sovereignty of the Habs- burgs had been established by the effusion of torrents of blood. She flew to Presburg, convoked the magnates, and appeared among them attired in Hungarian costume, the crown of St. Stephen on her head and his sword at her side. Radiant with beauty and spirit, she addressed the Diet, and called on the nobles as cavaliers to stand by a Avoman in her jeopardy. The whole assembly, fired with sudden enthusiasm, burst into the unanimous shout, " Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresa ! " and took the field at the head of their serfs, 30,000 cavalry, and the wild hordes of Pandurs and Croats. There was nothing superficial, frivolous, imperfect, artificial in this splendid woman. She was true to her heart's core, towering in every point but one — sagacity in the choice of Ministers — above that English Queen to whom she has been often likened, Elizabeth. Elizabeth was great because of her Ministers ; Maria Theresa was great in herself. Elizabeth was a mixture of meanness in money matters, vanity, and jealousy ; Maria Theresa was a great pruner down of expenses. Notwithstanding the loss of Naples and of Silesia, which used to bring in six millions of florins, her skilful administration raised the revenues from thirty to thirty-six millions. She was full of self-respect, but in no way vain ; once L 146 Germany, Present and Past. only did she lower herself, and that was in addressing Madame de Pompadour as her " dear cousin ; " hut that was in a moment of urgency, when everything depended on detaching France from the Bavarian cause. With the tenderest love to her faithless hushand, she was ahove the jealousy of woman. When she was leaving the deathbed of Charles VI., she passed his mistress, the Princess of Auersperg, crouching in a corner, neglected by the servants. Maria Theresa stopped, turned, and extending her hand to her, said : " My dear princess, what have not toe lost this day ! " She was a woman with the most delicate sensibility of a female heart controlled by strong principle ; she demanded purity of morals from her court and people, and showed a dazzling example of a blameless life in an age of unblushing licentiousness. As regent she was despotic ; but her despotism was patriarchal and idyllic. She was pious, but not bigoted ; a devout Catholic, but ready to sign the expulsion of the Jesuits from the realm. 1 The warm impulses of her heart broke through the restraints of Spanish formality which had enveloped the court; as when, on her hus- band's coronation, her clear bell-like voice led the cheers ; more remarkably in 1768, when the news reached her of the birth of her first grandson, the child of the Grand-Duke Leopold. The news was brought to her as she was stepping into bed. Instantly, for- getful of her deshabille, she flew through the corridor of the palace into the royal lodge of the court theatre, and leaning over the breasting, communicated the glad tidings to the people in the pit in their own Viennese dialect. " Der Poldi (Leopold) hat em Bhuaba (Bube), und grad zurn Bindband auf mein Pfochzeitstag ! — der ist galant ! " 2 The Princess Amelia of Brunswick, married in 1756, at the age of sixteen, to the Duke of Weimar, shall lead us out of the circle of royalty into that of literature. The union was one in which the heart had little share. " Prom childhood," she wrote, " my lot has been nothing but self-sacrifice. Never was education so little fitted as mine to form one destined to rule others. Those who 1 A copy of her confessions made to a Jesuit priest was sent her from Spain, whither the confessor had forwarded it to the General of his Order. This opened her eyes to the character of the Order. : " Our Leopold has got a boy on the very anniveisary of my marriage : i.< he not polite ! " Women. 147 directed it themselves needed direction ; she to whose guidance 1 was entrusted, was the sport of every passion, subject to innumer- able wayward caprices, of which I became the unresisting victim. Unloved by my parents, ever kept in the background, I was regarded as the outcast of the family. The sensitive feelings I had received from nature made me keenly alive to this cruel treat- ment ; it often drove me to despair ; I became silent, reserved, concentrated, obstinate. I suffered myself to be reproached, in- sulted, beaten, without uttering a word, and still as far as possible persisted in my own course. At length, in my sixteenth year, I was married. In my seventeenth I became a mother. It was the first unmingled joy I had ever known. It seemed to me as though a host of new and varied feelings had sprung to life with my child. My heart became lighter, my ideas clearer ; I gained more confidence in myself. In my eighteenth j T ear arrived the greatest epoch in my life. I became a mother for the second time, a widow, and regent of the duchy. I felt my own incapacity, and yet I was compelled to find everything in my own resources. Never have I prayed with deeper and truer devotion than at that moment. I believe I might have become the greatest of saints. When the first excitement was over, I confess, however, that my feelings were those of awakened vanity. Eegent, and so young ! To rule and command ! An inner voice whispered, Beware ! I listened, and reason triumphed. Truth and self-love struggled for the mastery, and truth prevailed. Then came war. My brother and nearest relatives were crowned with laurels. My ambition was roused. I, too, longed for praise. Day and night I studied to render myself mistress of my new duties. Then I felt how absolutely I needed a friend in whom I could place entire con- fidence. Many sought my favour, some by flattery, others by a show of disinterestedness. I seemed to accept all, in the hope of finding among them the pearl of great price. At length I did find it, and I was filled with the joy others experience in lighting on a vast treasure." She speedily displayed talents for government which, in a wider sphere of action, might have given her a name in history. The state of the little duchy was lamentable; the treasury ^vas empty, agriculture was neglected, the people were discontented. With the aid of her faithful ministers she succeeded in restoring 148 Germany, Present and Past. something like order to the exhausted finances, established schools and charitable asylums, and left untried no means of promoting the general prosperity. Disgusted with the wearisome etiquette to which her youth had been a victim, she banished all that was not absolutely indispensable to the due maintenance of her dignity; while in her love of literature she succeeded in drawing round her a galaxy of genius, which recalled the court of Ferrara in the days of Alfonso. Into that circle we will now enter, and see what the women were who associated with the great revivers of literature, of poetry, and art. The rococo period had been one, in Germany as in France, of female degradation. The little courts of Germany had been filled and ruled by mistresses, and the proudest ambition of a lady was to lose her honour to a prince. A fever of French imitation had swept over Germany, and the petty sovereigns, unable to emulate the polish and courtesy of the Gallic court, aped its vices. Politesse rendered into German is gaucherie. The minuet is danced in sabots. The courts of Berlin, Stuttgart, Dresden, Weimar, and Cassel had striven which could surpass the other in licentiousness. It was the ass of the fable imitating- the lapdog. Versailles exhibited the refinement of voluptuousness, these little courts vice in its grossness. In the midst of this degradation the ideal of German womanhood was lost. It had to be recovered by a set of experiments. There was something beautiful, if unreal, in the glorification of woman by the Minnesingers of the Middle Ages there was something affected and grotescjue in the idealism of the new generation of German poets. As with the Minnesingers so was it with the poets of the transition. Woman was elevated to a pedestal on which she could not balance herself. They affected platonic affection which showed an inveterate tendency to lapse into liaisons d'avwur. They taught that love was eternal and omnipotent, and those who imbibed their teaching found it only to be a freakish elf with the life of a may-fly. They pointed to it as a pharos casting its dazzling beams over the tossing waters of life, and their dupes learned too late that it shone to teach them what to avoid, not what to aim at. Whilst the Duchess was surrounding herself with those who were to cast a blaze of light through the intellectual Women. 149 world, she was creating also a great cloaca of moral corruption. With Don Quixote one exclaims : " Holy Mary ! is it possible that the lady duchess should have such drains." Let us look at "Wieland, whom the Duchess Amalie chose to be the instructor of her son. "When Wieland was seventeen he met at his father's parsonage the beautiful Sophie Gutermann, sent there to recover her heart after an unhappy love-affair with an Italian. Wieland, in all the enthusiasm of youth, and Sophie, with the changeableness of woman, fell madly in love with one another. " It was an ideal, but a true enchantment in which I lived," wrote Wieland later, " and the Sophie I loved so enthusiastically was the ideal of perfection embodied in her form. Nothing is more certain than that if we had not been brought together I should never have been a poet." They cast themselves on their knees, pledged their ever- lasting troth, and sealed the bond with a delirious kiss. Wieland went thence to Zurich, where he wrote licentious verses ; thence to Berne, where he fell in love with Julie Bondeli, an enthusiast, who went about preaching the doctrines of Rousseau. He asked her to marry him. " Tell me," she inquired, " will you never love another?" " Never," he answered, " except I find one more beautiful, more unfortunate, and more virtuous." Julie had the sense to decline such doubtful devotion. Then he became the guest of Count Stadion at Warthausen. Sophie in the meantime had married M. Laroche. " Our friend- ship," she wrote to the poet, " need not be broken by this union with another. We shall meet one another in the Land of the Blessed." At Warthausen they met again. What the meeting must have been we may divine from a description of a second many years later, when he was thirty- eight and she forty-one, which, as a picture of the exaggerated sentimentality of the period, deserves quotation. I must, however, premise that the ecstasies and raptures did not prevent Wieland falling in love with his old love's sister. " We heard a coach drive up," writes Jacobi, " and looked out of the window. It was Wieland ; Herr von Laroche ran down the steps, and I after him, to meet him at the door. Wieland was moved and somewhat bewildered. In the meantime the wife of Laroche came down — all at once he saw her — and I noticed him 150 Germany, Present and Past. shudder. Then he turned aside, threw his hat impetuously on the ground, and tottered towards Sophie. All this took place with such an extraordinary agitation in all Wieland's features and person, that I felt my nerves shaken. Sophie went to meet her friend with wide expanded arms ; but instead of receiving her embrace, he clasped her hands, and bowed to bury his face in them. Sophie bent with heavenly sweetness over him, and said, in a tone which no clarionette or dubois could equal, ' Wieland — Wieland — yes ! it is you ! You are ever my dear Wieland ! ' He, roused by this moving voice, raised himself somewhat, looked into the weeping eyes of his friend, and then let his face sink into her arms. None of us bystanders could refrain from tears ; mine streamed down my cheeks; I burst into sobs; I was beyond myself, and to the present moment cannot tell how the scene ended and we managed to find our way back into the room." In the end Wieland married, prosaically and respectably enough, one Dorothea Hildehrand, whom he describes in a letter to Gessner, as " an innocent, amiable being, gentle, cheerful, and unspoiled, not very pretty, but quite pretty enough for a worthy man who wants an agreeable housewife." When Wieland was called to Weimar by the Duchess to undertake the education of her eldest son, Charles Augustus, the young prince was in his sixteenth year. The appointment was not unopposed ; it was not difficult to point out passages in his " Agathon " and " Musarion " too faithfully reflecting the moral licence of his own life at Zurich. But the Duchess, who, despite the unsullied purity of her own character, was somewhat tainted with the sentimentality and philosophic rationalism of the day, and who held the delusive though plausible theory that no licence of tone, or warmth of colouring, could injure a healthy and high-toned mind, cast these objections to the winds. Not a few attributed the tendency to licentious habits in Charles Augustus, if not to the instructions of his tutor, at least to the perusal of his works. In 1776 the Duchess resigned the reins of government to her son, then aged eighteen. " My son," were her last words on quitting her little capital, " I confide to your hands the happiness of your subjects ; be it your care, as it has been mine." Herder was another of those whom the Princess attracted to Weimar. Like Lessing, he may be regarded as one of the pioneers Women. 151 of German thonght. Through Goethe's influence he was named court preacher and superintendent of the schools established by the Duchess at "Weimar. He married Maria Cornelia Flachsland. This is her account of their first meeting : — " Herder preached. I heard the voice of an angel, and soul- words unheard by me before. In the afternoon I saw him, and stammered out my thanks. From that moment our souls were one. Our meeting was God's work. More intimately could not hearts be united than ours. My love was a feeling, a harmony. "When I spoke with him for the first time alone no words were necessary ; we were one heart, one soul, no separation could divide us." Here is one of her love letters : " Oh ! what art thou doing, blessed, sweetest youth?" (he was then thirty- seven). "Are you dreaming of me? Do you love me still? Oh, pardon me that I ask ! In your last godlike epistle you call me ' your girl,' and nevertheless I am constrained to ask this question ! I live so much in musing on you, that I cannot help this. But away with the doubt, the dream ; you are mine, mine, ah ! in my heart, eternally mine ! Do you hear nothing stirring round you, sweetest of men, not in the moonlight, when by the hour I am alone, and yet with you? Do you hear nothing? not my heart beat to you across space? Does not my angel hover round you, and sigh into your soul the tidings that I am with you ? sympathy, sympathy!" That was in 1775. In 1787 Schiller saw them married, and wrote to Korner, " Herder and his wife live in an egoistic solitude, and form together a sort of sacred twinity, from which every earthborn son is excluded. But as both are proud, both impetuous, this divinity comes to jars within itself. When they are in ill-temper with one another they sulk apart in different stories of the house, and letters pass up and down stairs incessantly, till at last the wife resolves to visit the room of her husband, in her own person. Then she enters reciting from his works the passage : ' One who has condescended thus far must be divine, and none can find fault in such.' Then the overcome Herder precipitates himself into her arms, and the quarrel is at an end." Herder's temper was too uncertain, his sensibility too morbidly 1 keen to permit him to live on good terms with those around him. 152 Germany, Present and Past. Ho was perpetually imagining some offence where none was in- tended, and lending every word and action an import of which their author probably had never even dreamt. Thus he fell out with Goethe and Schiller, and waged an angry feud with them. Cor- nelia, liko a woman, fanned the strife, like a wife took her husband's side without questioning whether he were right or wrong. To Jacobi Herder wrote, " My wife is the mainstay, the consolation, the happiness of my life. Even in quick-flying transient thoughts, we are one." Goethe, in his "Sorrows of Wcrther," fed the flame of false sentiment which pervaded the literary world. There were sorrow- ful Werthers everywhere, despairing Lottes, and suicide became fashionable. Heinrich von Kleist was of noble birth but mediocre fortune. Endowed by nature with every element of happiness, he seemed on his entrance into life to have before him a long career of prosperity. But he was filled with the morbid sentimental craze of the day. He broke off an engagement of years with a young and charming girl, who loved him with her whole heart, and was ready to make all imaginable sacrifices for him, because she would not create a romance out of the marriage his parents were ready to ap- prove, by secretly eloping with him into a wilderness, to dwell a pastoral life in a cabin, instead of marrying him in the open light of day. Wieland and Goethe befriended him, and drew out his rare poetic and dramatic powers. He formed the acquaintance of a young and beautiful woman, Henriette Vogel. Both were passion- ately fond of music, and both were morbid to the verge of madness. On November 20, 1811, a young man and woman descended from a carriage at the door of a little inn, about a mile from Potsdam, on the banks of a lake formed by the Havel. They supped merrily, passed the night in writing letters, and next morning, after a slight repast, set off for a walk, desiring that coffee should be brought them in the most picturesque part of the valley. They had been absent for a short while when two pistol-shots were heard. The servant who went to seek them found them corpses. Henriette was lying full length at a trunk of an old blasted tree, picturesquely posed, with her hands folded on her bosom ; Kleist was kneeling before her : he had shot himself through the brain. The curious part of the story remains to be told. Kleist was not in love with her. She had wrung from him a promise to do what she bid him, Women. 153 and then she proposed this double murder, which he, with a perverse sense of honour, executed according to her wishes and directions. Louise Caroline Brachmann was another of these sick souls. She was a woman of genius and fine poetic instinct. If her novels did not rise above mediocrity, this was not the case with her verses. At the age of twenty-three, in a morbid fit, she flung herself over the banisters of her father's house, without, however, doing herself a mortal injury. In a craze of poetic passion, when aged forty- three, she eloped with a man some twenty years her junior, and, when she found that her bliss was not equal to what she had been led by her idealism to suppose, she threw herself by night into the river. Goethe and Schiller were both sons of clever women. The Frau Eathinn Catharina Elizabeth Goethe was one whom princes and princesses were glad to associate with, for her genial wit — a wit which shone out even on her death-bed, when, an invitation to dinner having reached her, she sent back " her regards, but un- fortunately the Frau Eathinn cannot accept it, being forced to die." Elizabeth Dorothea Schiller, the baker's daughter, was gentle, re- tiring, and tender ; but she, as well as the " Frail Eathinn," was able to discern the buds of genius in her child, and devote herself to their development. Goethe, engaged to Lili (Anna Elizabeth Schunemann), whom he loved, at one time, at all events, passionately, actually fell madly in love with another woman he had never seen, but whose per- fections he had conjured up in his brain. This was Augusta, Countess of Stolberg, and for her sake, whom he could not possibly marry, so strict was the line of demarcation dividing nobles from burger, he broke off his engagement to Lili. " My dearest," he writes, " I will give you no name, for what are the names of friend, sister, beloved, bride, or even a word which would comprehend all these, in comparison with my feelings ? I can write no more." To this he added his silhouette, entreating she would send him hers in return ; the receijit of it seems to have filled him with delight. " How completely is my belief in plrysiognomy confirmed," he writes ; " that pure thought- ful eye " — traced in gold on black paper — " that sweet firm nose, those dear lips. Thanks, my love, thanks. Oh ! that I could repose in your heart, rest in your eyes." 154.- Germany, Present and Past. At Woiinar he loved, not indeed for the first, second, or third time, but with a warmth, a tenderness, and above all, a constancy, which neither the fair, innocent, and trusting Fredrica, nor the bright and graceful Lili, had been able to inspire. And yet the woman to whom was reserved the triumph of fettering for ten long years the heart of one of the most gifted and most incon- stant of mortals, was no longer in the early bloom of womanhood; she had attained her thirty-third year, and Goethe was but twenty- eight. Beautiful, in the strict sense of the word, she had never been, but there was mingled grace, sweetness, and dignity in her demeanour, which exercised a singular fascination on all around her. Goethe, the young, the gallant, the admired of all admirers, was at once enthralled by her spell. " I can only explain," he writes to Wieland, "the power she exercises over me by the theory of the transmigration of souls. Yes ! we were formerly man and wife. Now, I can find no name for us, for the past, the future." Unluckily Charlotte von Stein was already the wife of another, the mother of six children. That she returned the passion of her adorer cannot be doubted, but there is reason to believe she never transgressed the strictest bonds of virtue. 1 She was married while yet a girl to a man infinitely her inferior in mental acquirements, and for whom she could have little sympathy or affection. She was thrown, by her position as lady of honour to the Dowager Duchess, into the constant society of the young and brilliant genius, already the day-star of his age and country. Proud, may be, in her conscious virtue, she could not prevail on herself to break an intercourse replete with danger to herself and him, but one which flattered her vanity and charmed her mind. He en- treated her to obtain a divorce and come to his arms, but this she constantly refused; and then, in a fit of disgust, Goethe threw himself at the feet of Christiane Vulpius. 3 "Who would have imagined it possible that the great poet, living in a world of ideas, peopled by forms of superhuman beauty and ethereal refinement, should be charmed and held by a simple ill-instructed woman 1 She got back all her letters to the poet and destroyed them, to save them from becoming public property. 2 As though he had been a prince, he gave her but his left hand when he married her. The marriage took place in 1S06, seventeen years after the birth of his son. The young August von Goethe was bom ou Frau von Stein's birth- day — Christmas Day, 17S3. Women. 155 with gold-brown hair, fresh cheeks and lively eyes, hut essentially common in her order of mind and beauty. However, as Lord Lytton says — ■ We may live without friends, -we may live without buokb, Yet civilised man cannot live without cooks. And Goethe found, in his old age, when his lively and clever daughter-in-law entered the household, that there was rest for his heated brain on the bosom of the devoted and careful Christiane. The cook and the sylph did not agree. The younger, fair, full of talent, and aristocratic whims, could not endure her mother-in- law, who, despite her good points, was nothing but a first-rate housekeeper, and whose charms consisted in preparing -savoury dinners for the great man, and refreshing him, when weary, with good soup and somewhat coarse merriment. Doubtless, a sincere affection glowed in her bosom, but an intellectual companion for the poet and thinker she never could be nor pretended to be. Probably he did not ask it of her. He had had enough of clover women. He found in Christiane that fresh nature, always so delightful to a poet's heart, and he was disgusted with the arti- ficiality of Weimar Court ladies. That he really did love her is proved by the fact that he, usually so cold, so composed, was completely overcome as he stood beside her dying bed; that he knelt down, took her hand, and exclaimed with passionate grief, " You will not leave me, — no, no, you must not leave me." He was then an old man — most of those who had belonged to his generation had passed away, and despite the homage and flattery that surrounded him, he felt that without that faithful heart he should be alone. With this homage the despised Christiane may rest content. To Weimar came also Jean Paul Eichter, who, in his " Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces," has left us so true a picture of the unwholesome striving of his day after an ideal woman, intellectual and angelic, and of its readiness to break a home-spun tie to attain to an union — spiritual, but also gross — with one of these exalted and emancipated souls. Siebenkiis, advocate of the poor, a needy author, is engaged on the " Selections from the Devil's Papers " — a series of satires. Ho is married to Wendeline, a humble, hard-working, .simple girl, lo6 Germany, Present and Past. whom the reader of "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces" cannot help loving with all his heart. The poor couple have only two rooms over a baker's ; in one room they eat, and he writes, the other is tho bedroom, and it opens out of the first. I must condense a scene. "During the mute quarrel of the preceding days, Siebenkas had unfortunately, whilst writing, accustomed his ear to listen to Lenette's movements ; and every step and noise affected him and killed his hatching ideas, as a loud report will kill a brood of silkworms. At first he kept his feelings under tolerable control ; he reflected that his wife must move about, and so long as she was in the body could not handle furniture and glide through the room noiselessly as a sunbeam. However, on the morning on which they had patched up their difference, he said to his wife, ' If possible, Lenette, don't make much noise to-day, it disturbs me in my literary labours.' ' I thought you could scarcely hear me,' she answered, ' I move so softly.' Woe to Siebenkas ; he had made the request in a foolish moment ; now he had laid on himself the task of watching, ail the time he was working, to see how Lenette conformed to his wishes. She tripped over the web of her household work with light spider's feet ; and Siebenkas was forced to be very much on the alert to hear her hands or feet ; but with an effort he heard, and little that passed escaped his attention, kept now on a strain. When we are not asleep we pay more attention to slight noises than to loud ones ; so now ear and soul were awake counting her steps, and working him to such a pitch of irritation, that he jumped up, and cried to his creeping partner, ' I have been listening for hours to this muffled pit-a-pat. Put on iron clogs, I should prefer that. Go on as usual, dearest.' She obeyed, and went about as much as possible in her usual manner. As he had abolished her loud walk, and her quiet walk, now he longed to do away with her intermediate walk ; but no man likes to contradict himself twice in one morning. In the evening, however, he begged her to go about in her stocking soles whilst he was writing. "Next day he sat in judgment on everything that was going on behind his back, questioning in himself whether it was absolutely necessary for Lenette to do it, or whether she might not have let it alone. He boie it with tolerable fortitude till Women. 157 Wendeline went into the "bed-room and swept the straw under the bed with a long broom. Without rising from his seat he called to the domestic sweep in the bed-chamber : ' Lenette, pray don't scratch and scrape with that broom, it prevents my thinking.' Lenette now became quiet by degrees. She put away her broom, and only pushed three ears of straw and some flue under the bed with the whisk. Quite beyond his expectations, the editor of ' The Devil's Papers' succeeded in hearing this, whereupon he got up, went to the chamber-door, and called out, ' Dearest, the hellish torment is as great as ever, so long as I can hear at all.' ' I have done now,' she answered, and she softly closed the door as he resumed his work. But that was too much : he concluded there was something brewing, so he laid aside his pen and called, ' Lenette, I can't hear what you are at, but I know you are doing something. For God's sake let it alone.' She answered, with a voice trembling with the violence of her exertions, ' Nothing. I am not doing anything.' He arose and opened the door of his torture chamber. His wife was rubbing away with a piece of grey flannel, scouring the rails of the bed." Siebenkiis goes to Baireuth, where he makes the acquaintance of a Natalie Aquiliana : " a female figure, clad entirely in black, with a white veil, holding a faded nosegay in her hand," who, standing before a jet-d'eau, thus for the first time addresses him : " Whence is it that a fountain raises the spirits and the heart, but that this visible sinking, this dying of the water-streams from above downwards, gives me a feeling of anxiety every time I see it ? In life this terrible falling in from above is never made visible to us." Here was a soul full of sentiment which could moralise over a squirt. Siebenkiis rushes into the wood and meditates on divorcing Lenette. Eventually he plays a cruel trick on his wife : pretends to die, has a wax figure buried in his place, and then flies to find aesthetic happiness by melting his soul into that of Natalie. Goethe had reversed the experiences of Siebenkiis. Ho had tried many soaring dream-wrapped Natalies, and had found them in- tolerable as companions. He found rest for his soul on the simple affection and in the good cooking of a Lenette. St. Teter of Alcantara lay with his head against a spike to keep him awake, but he was imbecile. Men of active intellects exact of their wives 158 Germany, Present and Past. that they should he their mental and material pillows, not domestic goads to sting them to fresh activity. An explosive genius is happier plugged with a cork than matched with a lucifer. Jean Paul himself was too wise to hind himself to either Charlotte von Kalb or Emilie von Berlepsch. When Eichter came to "Weimar, Frau von Kalb 1 laid herself out to win him. They wrote daily to one another. She was some years older than Eichter and had a husband, but at that time that was nothing. Her imposing- exterior, the fire of her large dark eyes — a fire of /mingled genius and voluptuousness — the grace and vigour of her language, the exalted sentiments she gave utterance to, her passionate emotions, that might consume as well as warm, made at once a strong impression on Eichter. She was the original of his Linda in the " Titan." She had admired his writings before she saw him, and when she made his accpuaintance she threw herself at his feet. Genius was god-like, and to a god everything may be granted. She was daily with him, sent him books and newspapers, and procured for him every convenience she could obtain, and intro- duced him to the whole circle of her friends. A few days after his arrival at Weimar he wrote to Otto : " She has two great things, great eyes, such as I never saw before, and a great soul. She speaks as Herder writes on humanity. She is strong, full, and her face — I would I could describe it. When she raises her heavenly eyelids, it is as though clouds were lifted from the face of the moon. Over thirty times she repeats to me, ' You are a wonderful man ! ' " On leaving Weimar he wrote a little piece, " Mondfin- sterniss," in which he expressed his feelings on female virtue, and his abhorrence of all but legitimate unions, and sent it to Charlotte. She then showed herself in her true colours. She was saturated with the a3sthetic doctrine then fashionable in German cultivated society, that all virtue is from within, and that the external relations of life are of little consequence in a .moral point of view. Nature was divine ; its voice must be listened to and obeyed. " Eeligion," she wrote, " is nothing but the unfolding and elevation of all our powers and the direction of our natural instincts. The creature should suffer no restraints. Love obeys no laws." Eichter was shocked, and an estrangement ensued. Frau von Kalb offered to divorce her husband if he would take her, but he 1 Ten years before she tried the same game on with Schiller. Women. 159 declined the doubtful honour. Enrilie von Berlepsch, a young widow, was the next to assail him ; she niet him when his heart was bleeding for his mother's loss, and she took occasion to ingratiate herself into his affections. He wrote to Otto, " I have found the first female soul that I can completely unite with without weariness, without contrariety; that can improve me while I improve her. She is too noble and perfect to be eulogised with a drop of ink." Emilie wrote to him, when they parted, after he left the baths where he had accidentally met her, " Follow your heart when it speaks for me, for notwithstanding all your sympathy and goodness, there ^hangs about me a doubt. Do not regard any impediments which may stand between us. What we- lose at present eternity can not restore. There is for mo only one real, pure joy, and in no future life can there be a higher — the sympathy of my soul with yours. Ah ! as yet we have said nothing to each other. I do not pray you to love me, but to look into the unfathomable heaven you have created in me. If you can admire that, you will never destroy it. Would that I could write to you something more of thought than of feeling ! I, who am nine parts reason, and one miserable tenth part heart, forget all logic when, pen in hand, I correspond with you. I become a susceptible girl again when writing to you." But Richter Avould not be drawn into the whirlpool. He wrote to his friend from Weimar : " The Berlepsch is here ! I find in her a soul that is not below my ideal, and I should be happy in her friendship, if she would not be too happy with me." He knew that such stormy heroines as Berlepsch and Kalb were never formed as wives for him. He needed a mild and gentle spirit, in whose unselfish love he could find a sanctuary for his heart. Though Emilie was the Natalie of Siebenkiis, ho was prepared to reverse his tale, run away from her, and seek a Lenette. He knew intuitively that with a Berlepsch he could have found no repose, with Frau von Kalb no security. Men do not attach themselves to rockets ; they prefer to observe them from a distance. Eickter married unhappily after all. The poets and philosophers of the Transition made their own experiences ; but in making them they wrought sad mischief with their aesthetic theories. They taught that the perfection of life was found in the pursuit and worship of the beautiful ; and religion is but the sentiment of the beautiful. Finely constituted souls; 1G0 Germany, Present and Fast can only exist in a state of aesthetics. Such souls have an affinity for each other and naturally combine. The relations of social life are subordinate, and made or unmade according to the 'elective affinities' of these ethereal spirits. Along with this sestheticifim went an extravagant, sentimental expansiveness ; in family or friendly unions the freest play was given to the expression of the tenderest emotions. Tears and embraces were so much in vogue that, if two of any company were at all justified in indulging in them, the rest fell on one another's necks from pure sympathetic contagion. In these duels of emotion the seconds were expected to support their principals, and to be as ready with their tears as their ancestors were with their swords. The fashion was not con- fined to silly peoi^le, who had no ideas beyond the circle of their feelings, but infected, as we have seen, the most educated and intellectual classes. And yet, in the midst of these sighs and maunderings, the foundations were laid of that comprehensive culture which is the pride of German thought, and the restoration was begun of the ruined temple of womanliness wrecked by the brutalities of the rococo period. It was an age of classic loVe of beauty, mediaaval sentimentality, and modern rationalism ; and the three elements combined, with much spluttering and not a little heat, to form in the end the solid civilisation of the present generation. Among the Protestant courts and in the circles of the literary, Christianity was regarded as an exhausted belief; what religion was professed was Deism; but it was a Deism without ethic obligations. Men and women alike, when they rejected the dogmas of Christianity and reverence for Scripture, lost the grounds of a sound morality, and in the cultivation of hysterical sentimentality thought everything was justified which poetry could gloss and passion sublimate. This aberration meets us in Burger's relations to women. We see there a fever of sentiment, glorified by the might of poetry, and lifted into the sphere of spirituality, regardless of all first principles of sober ethics. Burger says of his Molly : " In this costly, heaven-souled being the flower of sensi- bility savours so exquisitely that the finest organs of spiritual love can scarce perceive the aroma." Intoxicated by this aroma, however, he did not hesitate to make Molly his more than spiritual wife, and mother of a son, beside his real wife, her sister Dorette, Women. 101 and to present himself in public with the two sisters as his two wives, and glorify the union as made divine by the Olympian halo which surrounded it. The life of a later poet, Clemens Brentano, one of the Eomantic school, tells the same story, but it tells also of woman exercising a benign and healing influence on a torn and ruined life. As student at Jena, he fell in love with Sophie Mereau, a poetess, then thirty years old, wife of one of the pro- fessors, and after three years' struggle to overcome their mutual passion, Sophie divorced herself from her husband and flew into the embraces of the young poet. In the third year of her second married life Sophie died, and left Brentano to ramble through the world in quest of another heroic soul, guitar in hand, singing sweet songs, wherewith to charm them. In Frankfurt, at the house of the banker Bethmann, he met Augusta Busmann, an extravagant girl, who concealed a cold and empty heart and a frivolous mind under the veil of phantastic, fiery enthusiasm. She fell desperately in love with the black curls of the poet, and succeeded in entangling him in a romantic intrigue. In cloud and darkness she fled with him from the house of Bethmann to Cassel. Brentano was, in spite of his vagaries, a man of honour, and he married Augusta there ; " but even before the marriage," writes one of his friends, "he was convinced that the unintellectual bride, would not make him happy — however, he felt it his duty to complete the transaction. Even on the way to church ideas of flight filled his head, and he turned back with the purpose of escape, but his sense of what was due to her made him abandon the attempt as soon as initiated. He stepped back into the carriage and his obligations. Wonderful things are told us of the wedded life of this young couple. A few days after the marriage she flung the wedding-ring out of the window, and this wounded deeply the sentimental geniality of Brentano's heart. Not less was he vexed when his wife capered down the street with a plume of ostrich feathers on her head and a scarlet flapping horsecloth thrown over her shoulders." Stramberg says, in his " Antiquarius," " Of all the torments which Brentano had to endure, that wdiich most aggravated him was the skill with which she could and would drum with her feet on the foot of the bed whilst playing a pizzicato with her nails on the sheets; this drove Brentano so wild, in his high-strung, 102 Germany, Present and Past. nervous condition, that before the year was out he ran away and obtained a divorce." For some years lie wandered over Germany, restless, consumed with the power of his poetic soul, seeking peace and finding none. The years of youth and self-delusion were over. An insuperable contempt for the hollowness and inflated falseness of the social life of the intellectual circle in which he moved and was admired weighed down his soul. The night of a solitary old age threatened. Ho had tasted what life offers as pleasure, and it had left bitterness on his tongue. He seemed to be, in his own Avords— A wand'ring shadow only, a poor player, Who storms and paces for his petty hour, Then drops back into nothing — but a ballad Sung by a tramp — all clamour, rage, But meaning nothing. Brentano was in this condition of mind when he met Louise Hensel, who transformed his whole life. "In September 1816," says a contemporary, "one Thursday evening, Clemens Brentano came into a social reunion in Berlin, in a house where the noblest in rank and genius of the land were wont to gather. At first there were few persons present ; the son of the house and an old friend were engaged in telling a young- girl that the distinguished, gifted Clemens Brentano was coming, and would read them something. His wit, his sarcasms, etc., were spoken of, and as the word ' gifted ' was used very often in describing him, the young lady, who had been listening with the deepest interest, exclaimed : ' If he be gifted only, and have nothing beside, he may be a man much to be pitied and most miserable.' At that moment the poet was at her side, and said, gloomily, ' Good evening ? ' The company were startled. The folding-doors into the adjoining room had been left open, and the floors were carpeted, and lamps turned down. Xobody knew when he had entered, and how much of what had been said had come to his ears. Some feared his wit would repay their remarks with biting sarcasm. Only she who had last spoken seemed undisturbed, thinking that her observation might have been taken as one of general application. She received his salutation without embarrassment, and offered him a seat at her side on the sofa. He looked fixedly and gloomily into her face, and said : ' My God ! Women. K}3 how like you are to my sister Sophie, whom. I have lost ! ' 'I am glad I am like your sister, and glad also that we shall hear you read. Pray begin.' He read something from his ' Victoria ' and from the ' Founding of Prag,' was unusually cheerful, and charmed all the company, and he was made to promise to he at the receptions every Thursday." That evening opened a new chapter in Brentano's life. In a long letter he poured out into the bosom of this girl the confession of his misery, of his ruined life. '"In vain ' is the legend written over my whole career, inscribed in fire on my heart and stamped on my brain. All my acts, my thoughts, my scheming, my sufferings, have been in vain. When I Was — if not better — at least more innocent, I sought a being like you, to whom I could devote myself, one who might lead me, inspire me. I associated with the ablest men, but they followed their own pursuits ; they went their own way and left me standing alone, with the saluta- tion, ' God helps those who help themselves ? ' " An answer came to this strange epistle, one quite other than he had expected. " What can it profit you to tell all this to a young girl? You are a Catholic. Seek comfort in your religion." This was a word of advice the brother of Bettina, the associate of the most brilliant intellects of Jena and Berlin, had never heard before. He had made many confessions of his misery and of the desolation and despair of his soul, and these confessions bad always been introductions to interesting discussions, poetic exchange of letters, metaphysical disputes, sometimes to quick-blazing friend- ships ; but the end of all was nothing. He was left, as before, in the mire. Now he was told plainly, by a woman's lips, that all his gifts were nothing without a something else ; that genius, poetic exaltation, did not lift into peace of mind, and that without God the most gifted man might find his life a hell. The advice of Louise was too new for him to adopt it all at once. He had been baptized a Catholic in infancy, and there his relations with the Church and Christianity had ended. He had never been brought under their influence, never dreamed of looking CD 7 ^ to them for consolation. And now the spoiled, flattered poet was not the man to yield without a struggle. A passion such as he had never known before possessed his heart, and broke out into 164 Germany, Present and Past. those exquisite hymns of pure love, " An Louisen," which are immortal. His suit for the band of Louise was in vain. The young friend would help him to a now life, hut not he associated with his passion. Months passed in desperate battle with his heart ; and then he sang : — Schwcig, Herz ! kern Schrei ! Denn Alles gelit vorbei, Dock dass ich auferstand Und wie ein Irrstem ewig sie umrunde Ein Geist, den sie gebannt, Das hat Bestand. Then he took her advice, and a peace, " such as passeth man's understanding," came over the stormy soul. The rest of his life was one of happiness — at all events, of rest. If he was foolish enough to chronicle the hysterical twaddle of an Anna Katharina Emmerich, the fault lies in a judgment never naturally strong and wholly uncultivated. It is pleasant to see, after the period of false sentiment, a woman resuming her proper position, as man's comforter and revealer of God. Let us look at another instance, at the influence of Sophie Schwab on Lenau — that strange, crazy genius, full of force and pathos, but with a mind unhinged, that foamed itself away at last in a mad-house. Sophie Schwab, 1 with gentle solicitude, kept her cool hand on his fevered brow. How beautiful is one of her letters to him. " Auersperg is indeed a poet, but not like you ; in spite of his talents, he does not come near you. I should never have thought of applying to him what I saw the other day on the Danube, and which painfully reminded me of you. A poor Croat, a pilgrim, was in his little boat on the river. He stood in his vessel in poverty-stricken, sackcloth blouse, sculling purposeless here and there, his gloomy, heavy eyes resting on the flood, regard- less of the people on the banks who watched his wondrous course. His hat he must have cast aside — he stood bare-headed in the sun. 1 Sophie, the wife of Lenau's friend Gustave Schwab. Sehnrz, in his in- teresting Life of his brother-in-law, expresses the doubt whether any poet exercised a greater power over women of genius than Lenau. Schurz gives many letters by the poet to Sophie, but not many of hers to him. Sophie's father's country-house was at Penzing, near Vienna. See Schurz: Lenau' & Leben. Stuttgart, 1855. Women. 165 He had no clothes, no bread, no bottle in his canoe — only one great green wreath, which he had slung on his pilgrim's staff planted in the forepart of the vessel, like an ensign. Was not that the picture of a true poet ? Your portrait, dear Niembsch. 1 Have you ::ot been swayed about thus in life, in a light boat, on the wild dark stream, with eyes fixed on no shore, with hat thrown away, preserving only your poet's wreath in place of every other earthly good ? And when others seek to cover their heads, you have offered your noble, stately head to sun and lightning, snow and storm, surrounded only by the beautiful green, ever-green wreath, which gives no protection. The glossy leaves of the laurel adorn indeed but shelter not — they will not ward off the bluster of these rough days, and therefore you are ill." But I must not delay longer to speak of one most remarkable woman, the much admired Kahel. The French Eevolution had broken up the " salon " of old French society, when it had acted such an important, and in some respects, it must be owned, such a fatal part in giving literature its pervading tone. But despite all its sins, and its frivolity, it cannot be denied that the pre- Revolution society in Paris was more brilliant, more agreeable, than that of the present era. The men were more amiable, for their principal business in life was to please; the women more delightful, for they found themselves the central point of attraction, and all their charms of mind and manners were called forth to preserve that ascendancy. In Germany, the salon, in the sense in which it was understood in France, was scarcely known. But the Eevolution of 1789, which destroyed for ever — at least in their original form — the salons of Paris, gave birth to those on the other side of the Rhine. Bahel's salon was for a long time the central point of the society of Berlin. She was the wife of Varnhagen von Ense. Mundt calls her a " thyrsus-swayer of the thoughts of her time," and it is certain that she exercised an unaccountable witchery over the geniuses of that day. She was wedded to a man fifteen years younger than herself— a man who, if not endowed with talents of the first order, was yet a writer of no mean rank, and this man she inspired to the last moment of her existence with a veneration and devotion rarely paralleled in the history of we Idcd 1 Niembsch (Nicholas) von Strehlenau was his real name : Ltnau is the latter half of his Hungarian surname. 1GC Germany, Present and Past. life. Goethe, of whom, it is true, she was an idolator, returned her homage with respect and esteem. Jean Paul declared " she was unique in her way, and her letters from Paris worth a dozen volumes of travels." Humboldt declared of her that " truth was the distinguishing feature of her intellectual and moral being." She possessed in the highest degree womanly instinct for what is right and beautiful. Her mind was richly stored, her powers of description great. But the real source of attraction lay in her mar- vellous power of sympathy. She possessed the rare and invaluable gift of thoroughly identifying herself with those around her, of reading the most secret depths of their hearts, of living in their life, and of participating in the fulness, as if they were her own, of their joys and sorrows. Slight, frail, and delicate, with an extraordinary nervous sensibility, and an imagination vivid almost to morbidness, she was utterly unable to live without love, or without a friendship which had almost the warmth of love. Her youth had been twice darkened by blighted hopes and affections. The first love had been compelled to yield to family considerations. The second, still more fervent, perished from its own excess, for in such natures the most intense happiness is often withered up by its own ardour. It was in 1802, on recovering from the long illness, the result of this bitter delusion, that Rahel, abjuring love, as she believed for ever, formed the project of assembling a chosen circle, by means of which she might act beneficially on the minds of her countrymen. Her success was greater than she could have anticipated. All the celebrities of the day gathered round her, and her salon became the centre of intellectual culture and activity. Quite a different character was the elfish, charming Bettina, the sister of Clemens Brentano, married to Achim von Arnim. Bettina's home, by birth and marriage, was in the Romantic school, and her inner mental organisation is traceable in a marked sense to Novalis. Bettina was everything that was delightful in woman in the springtide of her beauty, buoyancy, and freakishness. Her playful spirit dances in the sunbeams and over the flowers, casting flashes and prismatic colours about her like a humming- bird. She entered into familiar epistolary correspondence with Goethe, and her book, " Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde," an epistolary poem, as it has been often called, is one of the most Women. 167 fascinating works of German literature, a romance spun out of some facts. 1 Bettina was half Puck, half Ariel. Her delicate susceptibility, her marvellous rapport with all nature, with the inexhaustible treasure of her love, and her religious sympathy with everything that can ennoble and hallow mankind, would have made her the greatest poetess of all times, if she had only understood one- essential, the mystery of discipline, of restraint, of proportion. With Eahel and Bettina we close this series of sketches of the women who composed part of the literary world of the Transition. With a few bright exceptions, the sketches are not pleasing. Whenever the German woman stepped out of the kitchen, she fell into the sewer. But the fault lay, not in her, but in her preceptors. They exacted of her a life for which she was unsuited. Of all women in creation, the Germans are least able to maintain a healthy activity on moonbeams and the pollen of lilies. It takes three things to fly a kite — the kite, a string, and someone on the earth. One kite will not fly another; if the attempt be made, both come headlong to the ground. When the man is soaring, the woman must keep her feet on the soil ; and the onl} r safety for the aspiring genius lies in the maintenance of the bond between them and their occupying relatively opposed positions. In the Transition period, the education of woman was one-sided, her sentiment and not her mind was drawn out, the very element in her composition which demands most restraint. Of moral principle there was none. Old things were passed away, and a new order had not come in. Those who had surrounded her made her inhale nitrous-oxyde, and lauded her as ethereal if she stood on her head : Auf den Fiissen geht's nicht mehr, Drum gehn wir auf den Kiipfen. She forgot, or was taught to disbelieve, that she was held down by gravitation. She was outside the reach of that attraction. But the extravagance of this doctrine led to a remedy. We find all through that period men raising a protest, and women living it ; 1 " She was one of those phantasts to whom everything seems permitted. More elf than woman, yet with flashes of genius which light up whole chapters :>f nonsense, she defies criticism, and puts every verdict at fault." — G. H. Lewes : Life of Goethe. 1G8 Germany, Present and Fast. and tho voice and example of nature and common sense prevailed. The reaction set in. The ideal of German men now is the good housekeeper. They ask of woman only blue eyes, a bust, and economy ; to bo like Orlando's mistress, — The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she. To be without colour is the highest virtue in the woman and the diamond ; the husband's wedding present to his bride — his Mor- o-eno-abe — is a cookery book. He desires her to remember nothing of her school-learning but her table of aliquot parts. 1 Kichter wrote amid the devastation wrought by setting the aBsthetic ideal before women, " A spiritual, and more important, and more murderous revolution than that in the political world is now beating in the heart of the nation." The men of Germany, whether literary or not, saw this at last, and put a price on the heads of aesthetic women, as Edgar did on the wolves. EevieAvers wrote them down, critics cut them up. As children order lady- birds, ladybirds to fly away home, for their house is on fire and their children will burn, so society in Germany ordered emanci- pated female souls back to the domestic nursery and cuisine. " Women and gouty legs are best at home." The days of Faustrecht returned, but the fist was only used against women who broke loose. A literary woman in society caused as much consternation as a bear in an Alpine village. All the population turned out in arms against the common foe. Nobles by feudal law could only be executed with the sword. Noble female souls may be knocked down or skewered with any weapon, a rolling-pin or a dung-fork. Clever men have no more scruple in torturing them with ridicule than cruel boys have in spinning cockchafers. A neighbouring naturalist introduced a frog into his garden to keep down slugs. Next day his outdoor servant came to him, hold- ing up the reptile by one leg, the life stoned out of it, and said, with his honest face all smiles, " I fund un on the walks, sir, and I deaded un." No one who has not lived in Germany can realise the exultation, the pride, with which an authoress who has trodden the paths of literature is held up to general scorn, with a " Please, 1 Heine truly said : " Die deutsche Ehe ist keine wahre Ehe. Der Ehemann hat keine Ehefrau, sondern eine Magd, und lehl scin isoliertes Hagestolzlehen im Geiste fort, selbst im Kreis der Familic." — Gedariken unci Mnfalle. Women. 1G9 sir, I deaded un ! " Auerbach, in his " Auf der HGhe,' : lias shown the dangers of sestheticism and Platonism, how heads held " in the heights " are likely not to see the pebbles in the path, and brin<: about a fall and bruises. In the " Dorfgeschichten," the lofty- minded schoolmaster, with highly polished intellect, finds that happiness most pure and cloudless is to be found only in the love of a very simple heart, and that the freshness of ignorance is water to the tongue of abstract thought. In " Die Frau Professorinn," the moral is the same. The artist, flattered by the beauty and wit of the salons of the " Eesidenz," neglects his peasant wife, who talks broad Black-Forest, till brought to his senses, and to a right appreciation of her value, by finding how the prince does homage to her " edeles Herz ; " and by the discovery that the unsophisti- cated woman is the most splendid of the works of nature. German writers have conspired to disparage in every way female aspirations after a life outside the walls of her house, and to exalt as her ideal the condition of a tame domestic animal. As housewives in Germany keep fowls in hutches by the kitchen fire, where the warmth is conducive to their fattening and egg-produc- tiveness, so have the husbands enclosed their women, and for much the same objects. They will not endure to allow them the run of their gardens, lest they scratch up the best flowers of their invention and busk on their best raked systems. The poets of the Transition had incautiously, like the fisherman in the Arabian tale, taken the leaden seal of Solomon off the jar, and a spirit had risen out of it, that filled the sky and threatened society. By hook or by crook the spirit must be got into the jar again, and pitched once more into the sea to lie there till the day of doom. For the purpose of laying the emancipated spirit of womanhood, writers have, like Tobit, had recourse to not a little gall. But there is no necessity for continuing the smoke when the fire is banished. It was men who inconsiderately had whipped the quiet souls of women into froth and flummery, and all that was needed was to let them stand to settle to their proper levels. If it was a mistake to emancipate them a hundred years ago, it is a worse mistake to chain or manacle them now. For the last fifty years, however, men have persistently refused woman a nobler vocation than to haggle over market produce and lard veal like a " fretful porcupine." One door only has been left open to 170 Germany, Present and Past. her, by which she- may escape the kitchen, and that leads upon the stage. There she is allowed to display her talents, for there she is only illustrating the works of men. But even there recognition of her powers has been but grudgingly bestowed. If she has attempted to write dramas, she has had to follow and reflect the passing humours of the people, or see her pieces hissed down. It was this debasing necessity which prevented Birch Pfeiffer from becoming a great dramatist. Public taste refused to be led by a woman, but not to be .flattered by her. In art she has been allowed to do nothing. Angelica Kauff- mann had to seek customers in England. If she must paint, let her daub Edelweiss and Alpine roses on men's cigar-cases. In music it is not to be expected that woman will ever make herself a name. Music and architecture are the two arts which demand a creative power, and creativeness is a masculine prerogative. Woman will execute, but man must design. She has ability rather than intellect. She is mentally as physically conceptive, and her function is not to beget. She may shine in painting, for she can copy, and has a keen selective appreciation, but for music and architecture initiation is required, and that woman has not. In no cosmogony is the creative power fabled to be female, for the general observation of mankind has denied to the feminine mind the gift of originativeness. For the same reason she has fancy, but not imagination, which is the initiation of creation, the first " moment " in calling of being out of not-being. Her poetry will, therefore, be a mosaic of impressions, a sympathetic reading of nature, a bright play about things of beauty, never the calling into existence of things that were not. But fancy, ability, and artistic aptitude have been mercilessly denied her during the last half century. Science has been closed to her as well as art. And in literature she has been allowed but little range — to translate from the English and write nursery tales. If she has ventured timorously into other fields, there has been a springing of rattles, a hooting and whooping, and she has had to fly scared to shelter. There has been a want of generosity in the treatment of clever women. Men have killed as ruthlessly the firstlings of her brain as Pharaoh did the first-born of the Hebrews. On the earliest scent of an authoress, critics have set themselves round the publisher's door like terriers about a rat hole, Women. 171 waiting to fall on and worry the poor little production when it appears. My naturalist neighbour, already quoted, had a monkey and a parrot sent him irom the tropics. The one and the other had had their minds opened since they left their native woods. The monkey in the kitchen had learned how to pluck a fowl, and the parrot in the cockpit, on the voyage, had acquired a breadth and freedom of expression neither suitable for society, nor proper to her sex. One day, free from mistrust and anticipations of evil, like Charity impersonified, their master went for a constitutional, leaving his pets together in the study, the one engaged in crack- ing nuts, the other in pluming and praising herself. No sooner was the door closed, than the monkey laid hold of the parrot, placed her between his knees, and regardless of screams and objurgations — plucked her clean. On the return of their master, neither monkey nor parrot was visible. Seeing the perch deserted, he called, " Poll, pretty Poll, where are you, Poll ? " Whereupon, from behind the window-curtain, hopped the wretched bird, as naked as her master's hand, and shrieked in tones of mingled mortification, rage, and pain, " We've had a hell of a time, sir ! a hell of a time ! " The story may be applied with perfect justice to authoresses and their critics in Germany. The latter, with the malice or envy of their tribe — for the most merciless critic is ever the most in- competent author-^-have been inexorable in their treatment of lady writers. They have ruthlessly riven off their every beauty on which they plumed themselves, and have sent them hopping out into the world, more naked than they came into it. Con- sidering the treatment gifted women in Germany have received during the last fifty years, they are justified in exclaiming with the parrot, — " We've had a hell of a time, sir ! a hell of a time ! " But there is a point below which you cannot compress steam. Women have begun to make their voices heard, and to show that their voices are worth listening to. They are insisting that they have a position to fill in the economy of social life above that of household drudges. They will neither be the toys nor the slaves, but the help-mates of man. The man is incomplete without the woman, and the woman without the man. This is the burden of 172 Germany, Present and Past the cry of the female writers of the present day. Marlitt shows us, in " Das Geheimniss der alten Mamsell," her heroine, Felicitas, condemned to kitchen-work and to study her hymn-book, and pictures the burning passion of the growing mind for knowledge and freedom. In "Die Zweite Frau," we have a cultivated woman in married life asserting her mental power, and thereby conquering the affection of the man, who married her only to be his house- keeper and governess to his child. But a book of far greater power and pathos than any of Marlitt's is " Ein Arzt der Seele," by Frau von Hillern, in which she vindicates the right of woman to be the intellectual associate and complement of man, whilst she rightly repudiates her claim to be his equal. The women have, in Germany, a very just cause for complaint. Since the first unsuccessful experiment, the men of Germany have excluded them from their society. In their clubs and taverns they spend their leisure, and pour out the wealth of their ideas among their fellow-men, but never in their homes. The women pass their lonely evenings over their knitting, or together, talking of babies. If the men appear at dinner, it is to eat and not to converse, to gobble their food and haste back to congenial society in the cafe. The wife and daughters are supposed not to look at a newspaper, or have knowledge or interests in anything which occupies the minds of the men. Divorce is the normal condition of married life — the divorce of souls ; nay, rather let me say that external marriage never unites the minds, the minds never get further than bowing acquaintanceship. Both sexes suffer from this estrangement. The elimination of women from society has had a deteriorating effect on men's minds and manners. It is this which causes the rudeness of exterior and coarseness of grit in the constitution of German men — a rudeness and a coarseness painfully ever-present to the observation of a foreigner. And it is this also that makes German women so incapable of using the good material which has been heaped up in their minds by education. The schools for girls are so excellent, and the instruction is so thorough, that a servant-maid in Germany is better grounded than most young ladies in England. But though the education given to women is admirable, they can make no use of it. With much less, English ladies can charm, and attach, and influence men : they may have little learning, but Women. 173 what little they have they know how to use ; for they are taught how to use it by constant association with the other sex. In Germany, there is no such association, and therefore no such teaching. Knowledge acquired is not assimilated and never utilised. Finding it valueless, it is got rid of as quickly after marriage as may be. Matrimony is like iodine ointment for the absorption of muscle. It acts on woman as a solvent to all that should give vigour to her character. There is a dish, much affected in Cornwall, called squab-pie. It is compounded of veal, pork, beef or mutton, potatoes, onions, apples and pilchards, the whole rolled up in strong dough. Nothing more repellent when raw, nor more toothsome when cooked. Female education is much like the making of squab-pie. The heads of girls are stuffed with an infinity of ingredients most incongruous, but each excellent in itself. Social intercourse is the great digesting force in life. If girls' heads were submitted to this, the result would be quite perfect. But they are not. The German girl is kept at home till she is married. After the wedding the German husband peeps cautiously into his wife's brain, and finding there only crude junks of solid fact, and tenacious dough of pedantry, withdraws his fingers, wipes them, and declines staying for dinner. German men are like English schoolboys, uncouth and boister- ous. It is wonderful what a change a holiday with his mother and sister will produce on the manners of the schoolboy. It is a pity that German men should not submit themselves to be kneaded and rolled into shape and gentility by the tender fingers of their wives and daughters. There can be no sweeter, tenderer refiners in the world than German ladies. They fret out their little lives, because they are denied the right to execute their proper mission. And German men, full of right principle, steady endurance, genius, and power, have in them all the elements of the ideally perfect man. But' one thing is lacking. The diamond must be cut, the silver refined. Let them put themselves unreservedly at the feet of their wives and sisters. The advantage will be mutual. Tho woman will be strength- ened whilst the man is being polished. The intellectual culture of the race has developed the mental powers of women as well as 174 Germany, Present and Past. of men. The German woman has far more brain power than the English or French woman, infinitely more than the Spaniard and I talian ; and with the admirable education given her, she is calcu- lated to be man's best associate and confidant and help. What is remarkable is the persistence in Germany to the present day of the two types of Jarnsaxa and Goda, which appear and re-appear all through German history. Almost every one who has any accpuaint- ance with German social life must have met with hard-headed, iron- willed, big-boned women, of loud voice, and intense self-assertion, very clever, but also intensely masculine, — army recruits in petti- coats ; but side by side with them are ever to be found women per- fect in their womanliness, the very ideals of what woman should be — sweet, self-contained, tender, humble, with sound common-sense, and the gentlest of hearts. This is the most common type of all, and it is most lovable. The German girl has not the self-con- sciousness of the English damsel, the coquetry of the French, the lusciousness of the Italian, the dignity of the Spaniard — she is not, perhaps, lively enough, she is not esjnegle enough, not dazzling, but she is maidenly modest, simple, and sweet. A German proverb says of the girls of Fatherland : " Every woman without a ring on the third finger is a witch." The witchery is that of Isabel in " Measure for Measure," and not of Circe. Can it be That modesty may more betray our sense Than woman's lightness ? Act ii. sc. 4. It is the witchery of a pure heart, great self-diffidence, self-sacrifice, and a rich, ripe mind. Ich mag in diesem Hexenheer Mich gar zu gem verlieren. 1 1 Goethe : Walpurgisnachtstmum. ( 175 ) CHAPTEE VII. EDUCATION. There is no darkness but ignorance. Twelfth Right, act iv. sc. 2. In t 187S, the Canton of Aaran removed every restriction which prevented the free practice of medicine. Before the beginning of the year, the State allowed none to cut and physic who could not show their credentials and prove their qualification. No sooner was this restriction removed, than the Canton was invaded by a legion of quacks. If the death-rate be not raised, it will be sur- prising. In England, in the matter of education, the State leaves the field clear to empirics. She makes no provision that the education of her children shall be sound and wholesome except only among the poor. A good rudimentary education is provided for the lowest class. No provision whatever is made for the upper and middle classes. No doubt the upper class is sufficiently alive to the importance of education, to take care of itself, but this is not the case with the middle class, which is ravaged by a legion of impostors. In December, 1864, a Eoyal Commission was issued authorising Lord Taunton, Lord Stanley, Sir Stafford Northcote, and others to inquire into the state of the schools for secondary education. Their province was bounded on the one hand by the scope of the Commission of 185S for inquiry into the state of the primary schools of the country, and on the other by the scope of the Commission of 1861 for inquiry into the state of the nine great public schools — Eton, Winchester, Westminster, etc. All the 17G Germany, Present and Past. schools between these two categories fell under the new Com- mission. The results fill twenty thick volumes of reports. Over eight hundred schools had to ho separately inspected and reported on. The work of the Commissioners was divided into two parts, one of which followed as the consequence of the other. They had first to ascertain the present condition of our middle- class schools, and next to suggest means for their improvement. The middle-class schools of England are of three distinct orders — endowed grammar-schools, proprietary schools, and private schools. All these fell under the terms of the Commission, hut as the endowed schools formed the only class with which the State supposed it had a right to interfere, it was chiefly these which were examined and reported on. The proprietary and private schools, as the property of individuals, were not interfered with, on the grounds, which I cannot hut think altogether mistaken, that the State was not justified in meddling with them. There are in England and Wales 782 endowed schools, which in whole or in part devote themselves to the work of secondary education. They educate 36,87-i hoys. The nine great public schools educate 2,956, and the proprietary schools 12,000. This gives a total of less than 52,000 boys receiving secondary education in the endowed and proprietary schools of this country. As it was calculated in 1865 that there were 255,000 boys of the age and social status to require secondary education, it appears that there are over 200,000 boys left to be educated at private schools, that is, the public and proprietary schools educate less than 20 per cent, of our middle-class youth. The condition of these private schools is not such as to make this fact an agreeable one to contemplate. In a set of establish- ments so numerous, and so varied, so entirely free from every kind of organisation and control, there must necessarily be every degree of goodness and badness. The Commissioners reported of such as they inspected that some were indeed " good " or " passable " but that many "were exceedingly bad." In some cases the masters were found to be intelligent and conscientious, in others to be incompetent. Some schools were the flourishing but rotten result of " successful charlatanism." On the whole, the condition of these schools was pronounced to be " lamentably unsatisfactory." Education. 177 Among the more expensive sort of private schools there is a minority of good, and a majority of bad ones. The cheaper class of private schools seemed to be almost all bad. Bad premises, unqualified teachers, utter confusion, formed the principal features of most of the pictures of this class of school, painted for us by the official inspectors. Nearly fifteen years have elapsed since this Commission was appointed; and what has been done to remedy the mischief? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Another genera- tion of our middle class is growing up in schools which are a disgrace to our civilisation, in which they are inadequately taught, their minds not educated, but crammed, their moral character debased. In Germany no man may teach unless he has satisfied Govern- ment that he is qualified to instruct ; and no school can be carried on in buildings not adapted to the purpose. In Germany the State supposes that it is responsible to the nation to see that the educa- tion given to all classes be wholesome and solid, and to ward off from it the perils of having its young incompetently, inefficiently, erroneously instructed. Before proceeding to see what the German system is, I wish here to bring before English readers the impression left on the mind of a German who has for some years been a master in our middle schools. I have compared his ex- periences with those of another German, and I find the report of both is the same. I may add that the gentleman whom I quote has passed through two German universities. The ushers for the private schools are provided by scholastic agencies; these furnish masters of all sorts for schools, English as well as foreign. Here at once we strike at the root of one evil in these schools. The agency pockets a sum from the principal and from the usher on a new appointment. It is obvious, therefore, that the oftener a vacancy occurs, the more rapid is the return. An usher is engaged at Christmas for 501. He pays at once to the agent 21. 10s. If he be dismissed at Easter, and the agent finds him another situation for the same sum, he gets again 21. 10s. If the usher again loses his place, and is recommended for the third term to a similar situation, the agent pockets ll. 10s. from him alone in the twelvemonth. How much he gets from the principal on each appointment I do not know. But each vacancy means two payments. An agent very unscrupulous, and desirous of making N 178 Germany, Present and Past, the most of his opportunities, finds it therefore in his interest to appoint bad men to good situations, and good men to schools where they cannot in self-respect remain. A good man in a good situa- tion will stick there. But a man who is forced to leave every quarter is a goose that lays a golden egg four times in the year. I do not assert that the agents act on this principle, hut it is obviously in their interest to do so. If they do not, they rise superior to the system. In Germany, a Government Board appoints on a vacancy occurring in a school. The Board examines the candidates, and nominates the most worthy or the most suited to the post. Since 1810, no teacher may open a school or go as private tutor who has not undergone examination. It is illegal for patrons or principals of schools to nominate any persons who have not proved their efficiency. A foreigner may not teach bis native language without having obtained a facultas docendi. In England a host of incom- petent persons pass themselves off as tutors and governesses who in Germany would be rejected by the Board. We, in our dread of seeing the liberty of the subject curtailed, and Government interfering with matters social but not political, shrink from interference of this sort. But why should we? We expect the Government to stand between the child and its parents for its protection, when the father and mother brutally ill-treat it ; the State will not allow the drunken parent to kick and break its tender bones, but allows him absolute freedom to cripple and dis- tort its mental and moral faculties. We allow the School Board to enter the cottage and force the ignorant parent to send the children to school. The parent maybe sees no profit in learning, but the State knows better, and brushes his objections aside. It has a right to do so. But there we halt. The middle classes are worse provided for than the classes below. The State makes no provision for their education, or that the educators of them shall not be wretched impostors. In Germany every stratum of society is treated with like im- partiality, like justice. The State secures that the son of the day- labourer and the son of the prince shall alike have properly proved and authorised instructors. In the Prussian Constitution of 1850 stands the following provision : — ■ Education. 179 " Every one is free to impart knowledge, and to found and con- duct establishments for instruction, when he has proved to the satisfaction of the proper State authorities that he has the moral, scientific, and technical qualifications that are requisite. All public and private establishments are under the supervision of authorities named by the State." That is to say, the education of the country is taken, like the post-office and the railways, into the hands of the State. The State will guarantee to the country that no man unqualified shall physic their bodies or educate their minds ; it supervises the butchers' shops, that no diseased meat shall be sold, and the schools, that no unwholesome teaching shall be imparted. It is quite a mistake to suppose that Germans regard this as an exercise of a despotic authority on the part of the Government; they are thank- ful for it as a protection. I do not suppose that Londoners resent interference by the authorities with the dilution of milk with fever- infected water, and its adulteration with chalk and horsebrain. It is a nuisance to have to try your milk every morning with a lactometer, and the parent ought to be grateful not to be obliged to dip a lactometer daily in the instruction given to his sons. Germany is divided up into Bezirke— circles, each containing from six to twenty or thirty parishes. On entering a village the first object that strikes the traveller's eye is a board, on which is painted, first, the name of the village, second, the name of the Bezirk to which it belongs. The Bezirk, the smallest State division, is con- trolled by a civil officer, called a Landrath. Associated with the Landrath is a school-superintendent. Each parish has one elemen- tary school or more, according to its requirements. In order to bring the youth to these schools, education is made compulsory. Every child, male and female, from the age of six to fourteen, is obliged to attend school. Regular attendance at school is enforced, if necessary, by the police. The police-office of every village makes out a list of all children of school age, and hands it in to the local School Board connected with each school, which is then responsible for the children's attendance. The teacher keeps a list of absentees, marking those who are absent without reasonable excuse. This list he passes to the Board, which proceeds to admonish the parent, and if admonition proves in- effective, the parent is fined or sent to jail. In Saxony the number 180 Germany, Present and Past. of compulsory years is eight, and every day missed during those eight years has to be made up afterwards ; and this plan has been found to answer admirably. The usual hours of school are from eight o'clock till noon, and from two o'clock till four in the after- noon. Tbo education given in these primary schools is of the most elementary condition. The general division of subjects during the week is this: — religion, six hours; reading and writing, twelve hours; ciphering, five hours; and singing, three hours. Nothing can be simpler or more practical ; every incentive to the exhibition of superficial accomplishments is taken away. There are examinations, but they are not converted into opportunities of tormenting and puzzling the children, and stimulating the teachers to pretentiousness and hollowness. Mr. Pattison, in his Report on the Prussian schools in 1861, says of them, " They may aim at little, but the principle is to achieve it. It may look, too, like the cultivation of the imagination, but it is possessed of a practical spirit which permits of no showing off." The instruction is kept down to what is purely elementary, but that is required to be most thorough. The masters for these schools are provided from colleges, Government establishments, where they are trained. The cost of board is very trifling; and as the students do all their own serving except cooking, the whole expense is little more than the cost of their food. The instruction is distributed over three years. At the end of this period, the student is examined ; if he passes he becomes a " Wilder," a wild man, and goes for three years as assistant in a large school, where he may learn the practical application of his knowledge. When this three years' probation is elapsed, the teacher is competent to take a parish school himself. His position is then one of respectability. The pastor, the schoolmaster, and the apothecary are the magnates and authorities of the village. Almost everywhere — I have not met with an exception — the village schoolmaster is a person it is a pleasure and profit to associate with. He is intelligent, well read, and full of interest in political and social questions, and always ready to impart local information on antiquarian and historical subjects, or matters of natural history. Now let us pass to the higher schools. Of these there are two types, the classical and the commercial. The classical schools are the " Progymnasium " and the " Gym- Education. 181 nasium," leading directly to the university and to the learned professions. The commercial schools are the " Upper Biirger- Schule " and the " Beal-Schule " leading to trade. The Gymnasium has six classes, not numbered, as ours, from, below, but from above : a sixth-form boy is not in Germany at the head, but at the tail of his school. It is hardly necessary to describe the " Progymnasium," which is only a preparatory school for the other, and which is modelled on its type. In the Gymnasium the pupils in every class but the lowest get thirty bours' schooling at least in the week, those in the lowest get twenty-eight. There is one half-holiday, which is in the middle of the week. The first, second, and third classes are usually divided into upj^er first and lower first, and so on. The following is the prospectus of houis and studies: — Flan of Studies in the Gymnasium. \ VI V IV III6 Ilia II& I la 16 la 1 Total 1. Eeligion 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 20 2. Writing 3 3 — 2 — — — — — 8 3. Drawing . 2 2 2 6 4. German 2 2 2 — 2 2 2 3 3 is 5. Geography and History 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 25 6. Mathematics 4 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 32 7. Natural Science . 2 2 — 2 2 1 1 2 2 11 8. French — 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 17 9. Greek .... _ — 6 6 6 6 6 6 G 42 10. Latin .... 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 8 8 86 [a. Latin ],, , , 11. 6. English V< i 1Un v ary \e. Hebrew [extra hours Total . 28 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 208 The school hours are in the morning from seven to about eleven in summer, from eight to about twelve in winter ; in the afternoon. they are from two to four all the year round. Where there is not in the same town a Keal-Schule, pupils at the Gymnasium arc allowed to substitute English, or some other subject for Greek. But in the Gymnasium as in the Real-Schule, there is no attempt made at special training for a particular profession. This is strictly prohibited. The object of the education is to broaden the mind, and all specialisation, if undertaken before a broad basis 182 Germany, Present and Past. bo laid permanently, dwarfs tho mind. There are colleges and faculties in the universities for special studies, but these must be entered on after a general and solid basis of culture has been laid. 1 Of Eeal-Schulen there are several kinds. That with nine classes is the Eeal-Schule par excellence. That with six classes is usually called the Upper Biirger-Schule. There are also Eeal- Gymnasia, where Latin and Greek are taught. In the Eeal-Schulen Latin is taught, but chiefly in the lower classes. In the first it is given the minimum of time, three hours in the week ; and in this class, and in the second, the time devoted to mathematics and the natural sciences amounts together to eleven hours a week. French has most time allotted to it, and English becomes a part of the curriculum of study. Drawing also assumes an importance not allowed it in the Gymnasium. Plan of Studies in the Hohre Biirger-Schule. VI V IV III II I Total. 1. Religion 2 2 2 2 2 2 12 2. German Language . . 6 5 4 4 4 4 27 3. French „ . . 7 7 6 G 6 6 3S 4. English „ . . — — 3 3 4 4 14 5. Geography ... 2 2 2 2 1 — 9 6. History .... — — 2 2 2 2 8 7. Mathematics . . . 4 4 3 2 3 3 19 8. Geometry — 2 2 2 1 2 9 9. Geometrical Drawing or"! Descriptive Geometry/ 2 2 4 10. Physics and Natural History . 2 2 2 4 2 3 15 11. Chemistry .... — — — — 2 2 4 12. Drawing 2 2 2 2 2 2 12 13. Singing ..... 2 2 2 2 2 2 12 14. Athletics 2 2 2 2 2 2 12 15. Writing 3 3 2 1 — — 9 Total 32 33 34 34 35 30 204 The first class is divided into Upper (b) and Lower (a). Class 1 consists of boys of from 11 to 12 years. The second class is similarly divided, and contains boys of from 12 to 13. The third class, also divided in like manner, comprises boys 1 The cost of the education in the lowest class in the Gymnasium is forty- four shillings a year; in the higher classes (IV. and V.) fifty-four shillings; in the highest (I., II., Ill) sixty-four shillings. The entrance fee is four shillings. Education. 183 from 13 to 14; the fourth class, undivided, is filled with hoys of from 14 to 15; the fifth class with boys of from 15 to 16; aud the sixth class with boys of from 16 to 18. The school year begins on September 30. The annual cost of education in the Upper Biirger-Schule is, — in the lowest class a guinea ; in the fifth, fourth, and third classes thirty-one shillings ; and in the two upper classes forty-two shillings. There is also an entrance fee of two to three shillings. 1 For this price a really first-rate education can be had. The teachers are all thoroughly approved men of learning and abilities. English or other foreign boys are admitted to these German schools as " guests." That is, they attend, school for half the day ; they are allowed to attend the class lessons and lectures, — they can, if they like, remain the whole day, but this is hardly advis- able at first. These pupils hecome gradually accustomed to hearing German, and become familiarised with the words and pronunciation. Later, they are asked questions with the class. This is a most admirable plan, when combined with private lessons at home. But it does not answer to send English boys to a German school, Gymnasium or Beal-Schule, entirely, till they are thoroughly familiar with the language. One thing English boys have to learn, which is to them a difficult acquisition, and that is, — to sit still and give their whole attention to what is before them. If they do not, they are turned out of the school with very little ceremony. An English officer writes to me : " My eldest boy went to the Upper Biirger-Schule here, at the age of fourteen, when I first came here. He is a quiet attentive lad, who makes use of his wits. I paid for him first forty shillings yearly, and then, when he got into the highest class, fifty-two shillings yearly. Before he was seventeen yeai's of age he had passed into Woolwich, and passed ninth, being first in some subjects ; and I believe he would have topped the whole lot if he had been up in classics, but at the Biirger-Schule he had not the opportunity of working on at them, and his Latin had been neglected since he left England. I attributo 1 This is the price for Upper Biirger-Sclmlen in Baden, at Karlsruhe, Pfortz- heim, Heidelberg, Freiburg. It is much the same everywhere else. The pay- ment is quarterly. If pupils come out of a preparatory school, there is uo entrance fee paid. Guests pay a little more. 184 Germany, Present and Past. his success entirely to his work at the Biirger-Schule, and the excellence of the education there given." The education of girls has been also vigorously taken in hand in Germany, but is not as thoroughly systematised as that of boys. There are still a vast number of private schools, many most ex- cellent, none thoroughly bad, or they would be put down by Government. In all these the education is moderate in cost. I sent my children under nine to a school conducted by a lady of rank, and paid for them one shilling each per month. A girl ruay obtain a thoroughly sound and superior education for seven pounds a year. But, in addition to the private schools are the public Ilohre Tuchter-Schulen, conducted under the auspices of the town. In Baden, the Government has drawn up a scheme of education for the upper girls' schools, and this is followed in all the establish- ments provided in the towns by the Council. Flan of Studies of the Upp er Ttichter-Schule. X IX VIII VII VI V in II 16 la Total 1. Religion 2 2 2 2 2 2 - 2 2 2 ~2~ 20 2. German \ Language J 19 wint. \7 sum. 9 8 7 7 5 4 4 3 3 1 60 58 3. Object-lessons 13 wint. \2 sum. 2 3 8 7 4. Mathematics (5 wint. \i sum. 5 5 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 — 34 33 5. Singing 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 — 13 6. Writing — 2 2 2 2 2 1 — — — — 11 7. Handwork — 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 — 18 8. French — — — 6 6 5 4 5 7 7 4 44 9. Geography — — — 2 2 2 2 2 1 — — 11 1 10. Natural HL tory . — — — 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 3 15 i 1 11. Athletics — — — 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 — 14 j 12. Drawing — — — — 2 2 2 2 2 2 — 12 ! 13. History — — — — — 2 2 2 2 2 2 12 j 14. English — 4 4 4 4 2 18 Total 20 wint. 16 sum. 23 23 28 if 29 »r 32 31 30 T2" 290 2j6 1 The school -year begins on May 1. In the three lowest classes the payment is 24s. a year, in the 7th to the 4th is 36s., and in the superior classes 48s. There is also an entrance fee of 2s. For a really trifling sum a first-class education for boys and girls may be had in Germany — an education, the like of which for com- Education. 185 pleteness is not to be got in England. Many English parents are finding this out, and are migrating to Germany to avail themselves of this great privilege. This, of course, the wealthy can do; but not those who are tied down by their business. They must send their children to inferior English establishments, where for a third- rate education they pay an exorbitant price. A German school- master, who had English boys under him as well as those of his own nation, said to me : " I cannot understand English boys. They play at their work, and they work at their play." This is a true remark. As a general rule they do not take interest in their lessons, and they do take a lively, vigorous, exhausting interest in cricket and foot-ball. German boys have no public games. All their energies are used up in their studies. They take no violent exercise except on the ice in winter. School-work is exhausting, and it takes all their energies out of them. In it they do take an interest. And the reason — or one principal reason — why they do, is because from early childhood it is impressed on them that their whole future depends on it. The Abiturienten-Examen is the day of judgment looming before the children's eyes, and their childish life is a solemn march to that Dies irce. At the close of youth, before entering on manhood, comes the terrible day which irrevocably fixes their fate. Unless they issue from that examination with a testimonial of " ripeness," every learned profession is closed to them, and three years' military drill instead of one is their doom. As the boy goes to school, he passes the barrack-yard or the Platz where the recruits are drilling. He sees them posturing, goose- stepping, tumbling, fencing, marching in mud or snow; and he thinks " I shall have three years of this unless I work ! " and it acts as a daily stimulus to exertion. But this is not all. The German masters have the knack — the art, rather, for it is the result of experience and study — of making their teaching interesting to their pupils. The system is simply this — the development of the reasoning powers in the boy. This is the great aim of German education, to make thinking men ; there is no effort made to store the mind with a multitude of facts, but there is every effort made to train the mind to build something out of any number of facts tossed capriciously before it — to teach it to analyse, compare, and classify them. This is the theory of education of boys. It is not carried out 1SG Germany, Present and Past. as a system in tlio private girls'-schools ; it is probably not as advisable Accuracy of detail is perhaps more necessary in girls than broad principles. The memory deserves among them cultiva- tion rather than the reason. The examination of boys leaving school — the examination which determines whether they shall serve three years or one in the army, whether they shall enter the army, be schoolmasters, pastors, lawyers, physicians, etc. — is held about three weeks before the close of the half-year. The examining body is composed of the director of the gymnasium, and the professors who teach the first class, a representative of the School Curatorium, the Government Commissioners, and a member of the Provincial Board. The Abiturient, or leaving boy, must have spent two years in the head form. He is examined in subjects on the same level as the teaching in this form, but he must not be examined in books and authors he has worked at in his class, and special care is taken to avoid " cram " qualifying for passing. He is examined generally in his mother tongue, Latin, Greek, French, mathematics and physics, geography, history, and divinity. Every effort is made to test the intelligence rather than the knowledge of the Abiturient. The paper work lasts a week, and then comes viva voce. Each per- formance is marked insufficient, sufficient, good, or excellent, and no other terms and no qualifications of these are allowed. It will be seen from what has been said, how studiously the Germans avoid doing that which we, English, by our competitive examinations, labour to do. " So well do the Prussian authorities," says Mr. M. Arnold, " know how insufficient for their object — that of promoting the national culture and filling the professions with fit men — is the bare examination test ; so averse are they to cram ; so clearly do they perceive that what forms a youth, and what he should in all ways be induced to acquire, is the orderly develop- ment of his faculties under good and trained teaching. With this view all the instructions for the examination are drawn up. It is to tempt candidates to no special preparation and effort, but to be such as a scholar of fair ability and proper diligence may at the end of his school course come to with a quiet mind, and without a painful preparatory effort, tending to relaxation and torpor as soon as the effort is over." Admirable as the German system of education is, I cannot but Education. 187 believe that too much mental work is exacted of the hoys. The school hours are too long : at least seven hours in the day, and if, as is frequently the case, the pupils take up an extra subject, eight. To this must be added two hours in the evening of preparatory work for the morrow ; this makes nine or ten hours a day at their books. As a natural consequence, they have no will or energy for physical exertion. Dr. Adolf Boginsky, in an article in the "Deutsche Medicin. Wochenschrift " for February 1, 1877, states as undeniable that the present system of education in Germany is producing three serious results. In the first place, children are becoming annually and in greater numbers more short-sighted ; secondly, their physical health deteriorates ; and, thirdly, the propagation of infection is encouraged. Into the third objection I will not enter, as to some extent inevitable. The other two demand more attention. Short-sightedness is unquestionably on the increase, and is already interfering with the efficiency of recruits for the army. Dr. Boginsky attributes it to the- use of slates. These get smudged, and the eyes are strained to decipher what is written on them. But this is not the only cause. In 1876 a Breslau physician published some interesting observations on the subject of defective vision. Short-sightedness, and sometimes entire loss of sight, seems to be one of the all but inevitable accompaniments of the dangerous art of reading. The unlettered peasant has almost always good eyes, and out of one hundred Silesian boors only two could be found whose sight was not in perfect condition. These clear-visioned labourers had naturally lived much in tho open air; and though it is to be presumed that, in accordance with the law of compulsory education, they must all have been to school, they had somehow succeeded in not learning to read. Out of 10,000 school-children of the age of fourteen, on the other hand, it appeared that no fewer than 1,004 had suffered in sight, and were obliged either to use glasses or to abstain altogether from books ; while of persons above the age of fourteen, whose eyes had been trained to read small and other print, no fewer than 63 per cent, were either short-sighted or in a greater or less degree unable to see. Of school-children under the age of six, 5 per cent, had already suffered in their eyes; up to the age of eleven, 11 per cent, had been so affected ; while the percentage rose to 19 per. cent at 188 Germany, Present and Past. the age of thirteen; to 26 per cent, at the age of eighteen, and to 43 per cent, at that of twenty-one. Very few persons, it seems, are born with defective vision, and the figures above cited show that the injury done to the eyes by poring over " miserable books " is progressive from infancy to mature age. A child's eyes, like its vocal organs and its fingers, are naturally capable of a great deal. In the pipe of the child are all the tones of every human language ; and any infant could be educated to pronounce German gutturals, French nasals, or Hottentot lingual clicks. All notes are there in posse, but education restrains, rigidities the organ of voice, and forms it into an instrument for the pronunciation of only a certain class of sounds. Up to fifteen a child can learn to pronounce any language. At that age its power of phonetic modulation is curtailed, and a language may be learned after that period, but never be pronounced properly. A child's fingers are capable of the most varied and rapid movements. If we take advantage of this flexibility and keep it up, it will become a skilful pianist ; neglect it, and the muscles rigidity, and after fifteen it will be useless to teach it to play the piano. A child's eyes are capable of being focussed on objects remote or near. But if the child be taken, and for ten hours in the day be made to focus its eyes on tiny characters six inches off its nose, and this process be prolonged for twelve or fifteen years, then the eye is educated to short-sightedness. It is not given time for exercise in focussing itself on distant objects. A child naturally uses its left hand as readily as its right : we discipline it not to use the left hand. So with the eye. Naturally calculated to see what is distant as well as what is near, by our school exigencies we rob it of its facility to see what is afar, and screw it to a focus six inches beyond the tip of the nose. Curtail the hours of school, or in school use oral teaching instead of books, and rigidly forbid a child a book out of school, and it will not grow up to use spectacles. Dr. Boginsky also says that the day's schooling in Germany leaves the boys in the evening prostrate, listless, and without appetite. They are apathetic to everything that encourages physical health, and at night suffer from want of sleep, or toss in their beds, and are afflicted with headaches. This is also true. " To be boy eternal " — the thought of Polyxenes — has little meaning in Education. 180 Germany. There Boy is but the diminutive of Man. Responsi- bility falls too soon on the young shoulders, and crushes the elasticity of youth out of childish hearts. The school system is such a strain on the vital energies of youths that their physical health would be permanently deterio- rated did not the year of military service come in like the Jubilee, to give the exhausted frame rest and time for recovery by emancipating it for a twelvemonth from the exactions of the brain. There is one point — and, I believe, only one — in which our public schools stand unrivalled in the results they achieve. The best class and school-room in them — the only one which produces really excellent results- — is the playground. There the jostling together of boys' minds, passions, bodies, disciplines the future man, and there the boy acquires that practical common-sense, that clear preception of the bearings of a case, which distinguishes him from a French or German boy. I have heard the remark made by foreigners experienced in English as well as foreign education, that no boys are like English boys for facility in forming a healthy judgment. German schools have no playground, German boys no games. They are separated from one another by nine inches on their forms in school, and are wider apart when they leave the school-room. They never obtain a practical knowledge of life. They grow up to live in worlds of their own creation, in ideas and theories which are not brought to the test of practical experience. It is the " faculty " of common sense, which is cultivated with distinguished success in our playgrounds, which redeems the English schools from the sentence of utter badness which they would otherwise deserve. And it is the absence of this " faculty " in the German prospectus which vitiates so much of the excellent teaching imparted. Better give the pupils a good playground, and confine them daily for three hours within its barriers, than seat them for the same time before a black-board to study the theory of Political Economy. A century hence, when the English middle classes shall see the injustice done them in being made to pay ninepence in the pound for the education of poor children to supplant in the race of life their own sons incompetently educated, it is to be hoped they will adopt the German system without its blemishes. 100 Germany, Present and Past. We have endowed schools, but they are under no supervision. They may be good one daj^ and bad the next ; they are given their character by the ruling head-master for the time. Perhaps the most striking feature in the present condition of endowed grammar- schools is the entire want of organization among them. Each school is independent of all others, and indeed of everybody and everything save the statutes by which it is governed. There is no subordination of one school to another, no classification, no arrange- ment of work among them. They each give the sort of education that it pleased the founder three hundred years ago to appoint, or that suits the idiosyncracies of the present master, without any regard to the wants of the present population and the demands of modern culture. They teach Latin and Greek almost exclusively, and teach it in a manner supposed to be best suited to qualify for the universities. Yet the proportion of scholars at grammar- schools who desire to be prepared for the universities is exceed- ingly small. Rich endowments are wasted in providing an education not meeting modern demands. The bo3's, an immense majority of the whole number, are compelled to begin a course of classical learning that cannot possibly be finished during their school career, and will be of no earthly use to them in their future business, simply because the master wishes it to be said that he has sent a dozen boys to the universities during his mastership. What a vast amount of money is wasted or misused which, if in the hands of the State, might be utilised for education to answer the exigencies of modern times ! It is not, indeed, to be expected that the Government in our island should confiscate these abused endowments, sweep all the receipts into a common educa- tional fund, and grapple with the education of the country in a comprehensive and vigorous manner. Bold measures are not popular in England ; abuses are like cats, they have nine lives. There is now provision made, in a cumbrous and expensive fashion, it is true, for the proper education of the lower classes. The State does secure that their children shall be given a sound elementary education, and by properly certificated teachers. But the same provision should in justice be made for the middle class. Mr. Squeers was not killed by Nicholas Kickleby. There are a legion of Do-the boys' Halls much nearer St. Paul's than Yorkshire, where, if the pupils be not exposed to the physical want endured Education. 191 by the Sqneers' scholars, the intellectual starvation is as acute. And education lor the upper classes should not be allowed to be as costly as it is at richly endowed colleges like Eton. The well-being of a people depends to a great extent on its culture. The culture of a nation should be a matter, therefore, of chief interest to its Government. Good bread is necessary for the body, and good education is not less necessary for the mind. Some years ago Englishmen were forced to feed on home-grown corn, often spoiled. The monopoly of the farmer was broken through in the interest of the consumer ; and bread, wholesome and cheap, was made procurable by all. At present good education is extravagantly costly, and bad education is not cheap. Melted, mouldy dough that would not bake served as bread in bad harvest years before the repeal of the Corn Laws. Alas ! there is a bad educational harvest every year, and thousands (over 200,000 boys) are mentally munching melted mouldy dough of knowledge every year. It is high time that this wrong should be recognized as in- tolerable to our humanity, and be redressed, and that all classes alike should be provided by the State with education, cheap, sub- stantial, and nutritious. Let us now very shortly survey the Universities, to which the boys destined to follow a learned profession pass when they leave school. There are now in Germany twenty-one universities ; if we include Braunsbeig, a Catholic theological and philosophical estab- lishment, twenty-two. As in the German universities there are no colleges — except for those destined for holy orders — the students lodge in the towns; the price of lodgings of course varies greatly. In Berlin a student can obtain a room for from 25 to 30 marks a month : attendance costs 3 marks ; morning coffee from 6 to 7 marks, 50 Pf. ; firing daily from 20 to 30 Pfennige. A student can get room, attendance, breakfast and firing for the winter term (end of October to March 1) for about 210 marks, or 10 guineas; for the summer term (end of April to August 1), for about 150 marks, or 11. 10.?. A student can dine at any hotel or restaurant for from 15 to 30 marks per month. The matriculation fee is 18 marks; but 192 Germany, Present and Past. r*t~- I -+l ^H Ci i-H -f O JO I CIS CO -*l -"f CO C5 ■J C ?l H h ifl IS M O K Cf, t-i :-. DC :". X -+i -ti -r> C3 ~r ifi T. — S O ■r. ■— iC -^ CO t> CO ITS X CN i-< X ~ ~t ■88Jnpa r i Jdll)U jo -o^ gouaipny jo 'o^j pus 'A'Soirnit],-! •A'qdosoimj ui ajaapnK jo -oji •aupip8i\[ ni sjuopnjs J° '°& •oiy 'M^q ni s?napnis jo -6^ CO I •— 1 i «C CO CO CO O r-4 rl 00 lOrlUJ o5h i 0; m in m o fh x im -h in n r> ci c i.-: -/. -i -^ x o o owe. o o w c. o tt -t x cue c - r. ■'. r. - OO M-1HCCMfl)iOOiQ'*Mt»NiflXNnt.O00 O C IC O O CO lonMt^*^-)i>cnio®HNNH"eco i— iHHOfflio^Mtooo^fflaoohMco^xxi- tM i-H l-H I— I I— 1 i — I l-H l-l •SaS^nSu-BT JO CO-* |l>Tti-^iTiHlOC000iMi0iO-*iC0C0-*i(MCNIC0O0 O tfj IQCOCOCOkOCOt^-^iCOi bO be bD bo to_ . g> g- pi So £ . £ . . -g bo H'^d S .« 5 §) 3 ■"£ cs es o -2 '3 o .-te .- -2 •7! S - .S — - - -5 i ? 'O d a> o t- t. ^ t,.-:o s J; Jj S r*5 :? ® k2 k3 2 = -s : = at Education. 193 for a student from another university 9 marks. On leaving the university he pays 14 marks for his testimonial. Of lectures given hy the professors, there are two sorts, the " Publicum " and the " Privatum." To the public lecture all persons are admitted ; and it is either gratis, or an honorarium of sixpence in English money is paid. The Privatum is delivered to the students in one special subject, and is more special in its interest. The honorarium paid for these private lectures — four hours per week throughout the term — is from 14 to 20 marks. At Heidelberg, the usual honorarium for one hour per week during term in the legal and philosophical faculties is 3} x marks. At Jena for four hours per week, 12 marks; but a medical course costs from 18 to 21 marks. Attendance at the necessary lectures for a year at Kiel comes to about 540 marks, or 211. Every professor is supposed to give four to six hours a week of private lectures, and from two to three hours of public lectures. In the medical faculty the lectures are from ten to twelve hours a week; professors of exegesis give six hours. Some professors give also the " Privatissimum," i.e. lecture in private, in their houses, to their pupils. This is nearly always gratis. University professors are most jealous of their comrades making money by their knowledge, and selling their science. Consequently few venture to brave the general feeling and charge for private " coaching." Those who do so, escape condemnation by extracting fees from English and American students, who are regarded as fair game. In addition to the professors of the University are the Privat- Docenten. A student who has finished his course may desire to devote himself to university life, and. become a member of the teaching body. He accordingly sends in a book he may have published, or an essay he has written, to the Dean, and with it names three subjects on which he is prepared to lecture. The Dean, thereupon, appoints a day and hour, and subject, and summons the faculty. The candidate then delivers his lecture before the collected professors, and is questioned by them. If he proves his knowledge of his subject, he is given his venia docendi, after which he may deliver lectures. If he is successful, during two years, in attracting pupils, he is appointed extraordinary pro- fessor, and receives a stipend. He then waits till he receives a o 194 Germany, Present and Past. call as professor to an university. He may not solicit a vacant professorship, he may not take any steps to secure votes ; hut must await his call as a special providence. Should he write to the Dean, or any of the professors, on a vacancy occurring, he is pretty certain of rejection ; so also if he solicits the recommendation of the Minister of Public Instruction. If by the end of two years the Privat-Docent has not been able to collect an audience, he is pronounced a failure, and withdraws from the university to adopt professional practice. The German universities confer but one degree, that of Doctor. The candidate desirous of obtaining a degree sends in a thesis to the Dean of the Faculty, who submits it to the other members, and if they approve, the candidate is summoned to examination. This used to take place in the house of the Dean ; it does so still in some faculties, and in the smaller universities ; and the pro- fessors invited by the Dean put the candidate through his facings, whilst they partook of wine or beer, smoked, and ate breakfast or supper, for which the candidate paid by putting a sum of money into the hand of the Dean's wife. Now in the large universities the examination takes place in the schools, unrelieved by pipes and beer. The result is, that there is some difficulty in collecting the professors for it : the new method may be more formal, but it is less pleasant. Some of the universities — Jena and Giessen were the chief offenders — were wont to give degrees on very easy terms. It was enough to send in a thesis, which may or may not have been written by the candidate. The fee for the degree was what was considered, not the merit of the postulant. Professor Mommsen called the attention of the Prussian Government to university abuses of this kind, and every faculty in the German universities was required to submit its rules to a Government Commission. Such abuses do not now exist. They cannot. Government exacts an examination of every man who passes through the university before he be admitted into one of the learned professions, conducted, not by the university, but by the Government Commissioners. If one who had received his Doctor's diploma from the faculty were to be plucked by the Government examiners, the scandal would attract general observation, and the faculty bring down on itself universal ridicule. Students may pass at will from one university to another. A Education. 195 friend of mine began his academic career at Wiirzburg, continued it at Heidelburg, and concluded it at Bonn. They may, or may not, attend lectures : nothing is compulsory. But the Government insists on all candidates for the ministry of the Church (Catholic and Protestant alike), and for law and medicine, passing three years in a German university, and at the end of that period under- going examination by Government Commissioners. The university is in Germany, not the testing, but the teaching body. It instructs, Government examines. The German universities are almost destitute of colleges. Before the Eeformation it was not so. There were many founded for the reception of poor scholars. At Tubingen, for instance, Plantsch endowed a little college for eighteen students out of his income, just before the storm burst over the university. Almost all such endowments have been swallowed up by the princes. But in Berlin is the Melanchthonium for divinity students, and the Johanneum, also for candidates for the ministry, where they are lodged for from three to six marks a month. At Breslau is the Episcopal Seminary for Catholic students, and the Johanneum for candidates for the Protestant ministry. At Leipzig is one college for 280 students, who are lodged and given breakfast and supper free of expense. In Freiburg was a college for those studying for orders, but the town has seized on the building and turned out of it the superior and the students. In the German universities the students wear no academical dress, and are not subjected to any oversight. They may go out of their lodgings and come in at any time of the night or day. They may go anywhere without the risk of being caught by proctors. They have neither chapels to keep, nor rations to con- sume. They are absolutely their own masters, and under no sort of supervision and restraint. I do not believe, from my own observation, that they abuse their liberty, and that the restrictions to which youths are subjected in the old English universities have any superior moral advantage. That our college system has other advantages I fully admit. In them men of all classes arc more thrown into association with one another than in the German university by their collegiate life. In Germany the only bond is that of the Corps, Burschenschaft, or Verbindung, to which they bclomr. In the whole course of the term or academical career. 196 Germany, Present and Past. the members of one club probably never even bear the names of, much less speak to those of another club. Thus, the university career has not as great a civilising influence on the manners as it might. A youth leaves the university as uncouth and un- mannerly as he entered it. In the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, where men of all classes rub together, the " cad " necessarily sloughs off much of his old rudeness, and acquires unconsciously a refinement of manner foreign to the parental back- shop. And the man of birth finds that among the middle-class fellow-collegians are men of great ability, excellence, and perse- verance, and he contracts maybe with one such a lasting friend- ship, which continues through life, when the one is at the hall and the other in the parsonage. At all events, everything like class prejudice is broken down by the English system, and inten- sified by the German system. 1 The mingling and friction of men in a college rub down self- conceit, and many a bumptious boy, when he comes to an English university, drops before his freshman's year is out to a sober estimate of himself. The German system, on the other hand, accentuates priggishness. The duelling, which is so prevalent in the German universities, is one consequence of this. Each student comes up with an overweening idea of himself; if he were forced to live with other men, sit with them in hall, and by them at the college lecture, or in the chapel, row in the same boat with them, scout for them at cricket, or speak with them in the same debating-club, he would learn to give and take. But nesting alone in his lodging, associating only with a few, he becomes suspicious of offence, ready to take umbrage at a trifle, and obliged by the regulations of his corps to fight whenever he harbours an impression that he has been treated with disrespect. A curious habit is for each Verbindung to consider it a matter of etiquette to fight a certain number of duels in the year, and all sorts of frivolous reasons are sought to make up the requisite number of duels, without which the club would lose its character. A student is proud of his slashed cheeks and slit nose : the scars prove him a gentleman, i.e. a man apt to take offence. Of the dignity 1 For a good account of the Burschenschaften or University Societies of young men, see Mavhew's " German Life and Manners in Saxony," chap, xxi., tl Student Life at Jena." Education. 197 of self-respect, the courtesy of a gentleman, he has less opinion. Swagger, bluster, and bombast are the badges of gentility with him. I asked a friend one day what was the distinguishing feature of the " Adel " in Germany. " The young Adel," was the answer given me, " are ready to fling away their lives as dirt, if but rudely nudged, and no apology offered." And this is the only conception the burger student has of nobility, and in his striving to be a gentleman, he apes the readi- ness to take offence in the unapproachable class above him in rank, and below him in fortune. Education is not merely the sharpening of the intellect, and the loading of the memory, but it is the polish of the mind also. And the mind is polished by association with women of all classes, and with men above and below in social standing. I have already spoken of the great misfortune to German men, that they mix so little with ladies. Boys do not play with their sisters, young men do not make them their confi- dants and friends. Consequently, they grow up without that reverence for womanhood which is so characteristic of young English gentlemen. It is precisely at the period of adolescence that prejudices are fixed for life or filed off; and thus it becomes all-important for young men to mix with those of other classes in the social scale, that they may know the special merits of each, and learn to esteem each for its merits. This is what our English university system affords, and the German university does not afford. Gentlemanliness is not readiness to take umbrage, but consideration for the feelings of others. And for acquiring this, the German university is no school. German university education produces another result, advan- tageous in one respect, the reverse in another, good or bad according to the view taken of education. If academic training be designed to focus the mental eye on one portion of the field of science, and on one point in that portion, then the German method is perfect. The student's attention is withdrawn from all distracting in- terests, and is concentrated on its special subject, and on the parti cular subdivision of his subject, which is to be the object of his life's study. It has been said, and said with truth, that school-work in Germany makes boys short-sighted. University study makes men mentally short-sighted. They are educated to 198 Germany, Present and Past. look at nothing but what is immediately under their noses. When I was a boy, it was a favourite trick of mine to mesmerise cocks, by placing them on a black-board, and drawing a line of chalk from the beak to the extreme edge of the board. The fowl then lay entranced for a considerable length of time, gazing with riveted attention at the chalk line. This is precisely the system of the German universities; the students are given each his chalk line, along which alone he may look, and in the absorbed contemplation of which he is to be lost all his life. The German method leads to magnificent results, it must be admitted, for those trained under it become masters of their special subjects, unapproachable by those brought up under a more liberal discipline. As long as it is pursued, German men of science and learning will distance all competitors. In natural science, in philosophy, in philology and every other branch of learning they will particularise a twig on the tree of knowledge, one leaflet on the twig, digest it, and then drop off content. "When Lord Dufferin went to Iceland, he found there a professor from Father- land hunting moths. He was not in pursuit of moths generally — that subject was too wide — but of one sub-order of moths, and to discover the variations in this sub-order he was ranging round the world. "We have an analogous system in one of our uni- versities, — Cambridge. There the student of mathematics has his interests detached from the litterse humaniores and concentrated on calculations. The wrangler is sent out into society without one point of sympathy w T ith it, into the world of men, to look on them as units in a great sum subject to permutations and combinations, to be contemplated and calculated from a statistical point of view. He is dismissed from his university into the crowd of beating hearts and eager interests, labouring with a calculus in his brain. Herr Lasker, in an article on the German universities in the " Rundschau," complains that the educational system there is productive of one-sidedness, of narrowness, not of breadth. No general view of histoiy, or natural science, or jurisprudence, is set before the students, but they are tied down to one petty point in each, and in the mastery of this, all idea of the relation it bears to other points and truths is lost. " The university," he says, " splinters itself into special schools. Each special subject is broken into minute particulars. The student becomes a scholar, Education. 199 and after the legal course is over, lie comes to an understanding with the teacher along with his fellow-workers in the same subject to follow a mean programme. He who has not made natural science his special department leaves the university without an idea of the weighty discoveries of natural philosophers. He who has gone through his course in medicine, gets no general survey of the many branches of study necessary for his calling : he has explored but one, and all subjects beyond his professional range are absolutely closed to him. The law-student knows nothing of the structure of the human body ; the surgeon nothing of the elementary groundwork of law and justice; the first principles of social economy, literature, ethnology, history, and all those matters which every educated man ought to know something about, if he is to mix in society, are to a terrible degree strange to those studying in special departments. The lecture-rooms lie side by side, the many schools are under one roof, the professors belong to one senate, the whole society is tied together by statutes and external organisation, but the spiritual link is missing ; per- sonal avocations insulate, particular studies separate the students ; and the university is nothing more than a congeries of schools for specialists." It was precisely because the theological training tended to narrow the minds of candidates for orders, that the Imperial Government has insisted on all theological students qualifying as well in three other subjects, such as literature, history, geo- graphy, mathematics, jurisprudence, natural philosophy, etc. No such requirement is made of candidates for law and medicine, and they will issue from the university more narrowed than the divinity students by their training. It is a consciousness of this, no doubt, which has made the Government of Germany insist on examining the students of the universities by commissioners of its own appointment, and on making the training of the Lyceum and Biirgerschule so general and excellent. This preliminary education is, as I have shown, on a broad basis. The contraction of the basis begins at once and abruptly in the university. After striving to stretch little minds to cover acres, they tie them down on a needle-point. But the teaching of the schools ought to be followed up at the university, not set aside. A German professor, to whom I was one day speaking on 200 Germany, Present and Past. various subjects, interrupted me with the exclamation, " You Englishmen puzzle me beyond measure. You know a little of so many things, and are so full of interest in every department of literature, science, and art ! Believe me, there must be no uni- versality of knowledge and interest if a man is to be master of a subject." He was right, but then life is much more pleasant to a man who has a nerve everywhere in sympathy with all that surrounds him. It is, I doubt not, the necessity of working for a livelihood which specialises German studies. The majority of men who go to the university go there to learn what will gain them their bread, not to become cultivated members of society. " Bread-and-butter students " these are termed, and all professors lament that their necessity should interfere with their general culture. The question seems to me to resolve itself into this — sooner or later a man, if he is to do anything in his profession, must become a specialist, but when is specialisation in his studies to begin? I should say, not till he leaves the university. A liberal education will always tell in the end ; and I do not believe that valuable time is lost in deferring the contraction of the radius of studies till a man is twenty-three. ( 201 ) CHAPTER VIII. THE ARMY. France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away ? Say, shall the current of our right roam on ? Whose passage, vex'd with thy impediment, Shall leave his native channel, and o'erswell With course disturb'd even thy confining shores, Unless thou let his silver water keep A peaceful progress to the ocean. King John, act ii. sc. 2. " Every German is subject to military duty, and cannot perform it by proxy." The Reichsverfassung places this statement at the head of the Articles on military affairs. In it is declared the per- sonal obligation of every man in the country to bear arms for the defence of Fatherland. 1 This principle of universal military service is no special feature of German organisation, but what is peculiar to Germany is the way in which it is carried out. For understanding this, it is necessary to lay down a few plain truths which have been grasped by the Germans and ' missed by others. And 'it is to the recognition of these elementary truths, which lie at the root of the German organisation, that the Empire owes the possession of the most magnificent army the world has ever seen and is ever likely to see. Other nations may copy, but they cannot surpass a military system which in its main features is absolutely perfect. 1 It is, however, broken by Art. 1 of the Kriegsdienst-Gesetz of Nov. 9, 18G7, which exempts : — 1. Members of the reigning houses in the Empire. 2. „ mediatised princely houses. 3. Natives of Elsass and Lothringen born before Jan. 1, 1S51. 202 Germany, Present and Past. The object of an army is to execute by physical force the will of the general in command. The army is the implement with which this will is executed : therefore, for the carrying out of the object, the greater the physical force employed, the more certain the general is of attaining his purpose. But the physical force of an army is composed of two factors : first, the numerical strength of the force under command ; secondly, the special perfection of each member constituting this force. The first factor is raised to its highest power when every avail- able man has been called to arms ; the second, when every soldier has received the most complete education required for a military vocation. For this purpose the greatest possible amount of time must be devoted to military education. But the State has to consider not merely the efficiency of its army, but also the commercial prosperity of the country. Con- sequently, all men cannot be taken from peaceful avocations for an indefinite length of time. It must cut its coat, bon gre mal gre, according to its cloth. It is the interest of the State to have a strong force at its dis- posal, but it is a greater interest of the State to have this with the least possible distraction of the energies of the country from agri- culture, commerce, and manufactures. Out of the balance of these two interests issues the measure of the strength of the military power of a country. If, however, military power be the product of numbers and of military capability, it is clear that two opposed forces may exactly equalise or neutralise each other, when the factors differ. That is, a smaller number of men with greater capacities may equal a greater number with smaller capacities. From this consideration arise two military systems. One system raises the factor of the strength of the troops to the highest possible term, by drawing all into the army capable of bearing arms, but in consequence is obliged to reduce the second factor to its minimum. This is the Militia system. Its inherent weakness lies in this fact, that when one factor = 0, it may be multiplied to any amount without obtaining a product. Another system rests its supreme weight on the military capa- bilities of the men, and their length of service ; consequently the The Army. 203 number under arms has to be reduced to a minimum. This is the recruiting system. It also has its inherent defects. If once the small army of picked men be annihilated, there are no successive levies of reserves trained to take its place. Great competence is succeeded by utter incompetence. And, again, it is by no means satisfactorily shown that a soldier of twenty years' standing in the ranks is better than one who has been under training for five years. With the officer it is different. But with the private, I believe, it is not so. If I am not very much mistaken, I think it will be found that a German private retiring into the reserve is in every point as thorough a soldier as an English private of many years' standing ; in several particulars his superior, for the English training is not to be compared with that of the German soldier. As for physical strength and endurance, and moral courage, one is as good a man as the other. How we suffered for want of a reserve in the Crimean war is in all men's memories. We sent out boys, and they died like flies. We are better off now, or we should be nowhere in the military race. The German system is an endeavour to hold a medium between the Militia and the recruiting systems. It endeavours to unite the advantages of both, by raising both factors to their highest possible power. Every man capable of bearing arms is given a thorough-going military education, so that every able-bodied man in the Empire is capable of responding to the call of the Emperor, and he can send rank after rank, host after host, of disciplined men into the field, till he has exhausted all the manhood in the country. To effect this, the conscripts must not be kept longer under colours than is absolutely necessary for their military education, and when this is completed, must be sent back to their peaceful avocations, only to be called up again so often as to ensure their nut forgetting what they have learned. By this means the least strain is put on the country, and the greatest military force is ob- tained. But, again, military capacity is the result of two factors : mechanical drill, and educated intelligence. It follows, therefore, that without affecting the product, the first factor may be dimin- ished, and the second increased. Consequently, a le-s amount of drill, that is, only just sufficient to quality him for his duties, is sufficient for a man of education. In intellectual development and 204 Germany, Present and Past general intelligence, the latter makes up what the clown has to work out by means of drill. Let 10 he the total, x the drill, and y education ; then 8x + 2y = 10, and so will 3x + ly = 10. On this is hased the system of Einjahrigers. 1 From these general observations we may pass to the description of the norms through which the doctrine just laid down is applied. The duty to bear arms applies, of course, only to those capable of doing so, physically and mentally, and to those who are morally qualified to stand in the ranks and fight for Fatherland. The conscripts who are unable to serve under arms are sent to workshops, hospitals, or offices attached to a corps. Imprisonment for felony or any serious crime incapacitates a man from serving his country. Every German — if not in the navy — belongs to the active army for seven years ; as a rule, from the age of twenty to the beginning of the twenty-eighth year. 2 During the first three years he belongs to the standing army ; during the last four to the reserve ; during the next Jive to the Landwehr ; and to the Landsturm till forty-two. The entire nautical population is free from military service, but is required for the navy. As nautical population are reckoned all those who on entering their twentieth year have served for one year at least either in a German trading or fishing vessel, or have been stokers, or served on steamboats in any capacity. The length of service in the navy, reserve, and Seewehr is the same as in the army. The armament of the German Empire consists of — ( .. , ■ standing. _ under colours < ° 1. The Army -l (reserve. I the Landwehr. the fleet j standin S« 2. The Navy j (reserve. (the Seewehr. 3. The Landsturm. The standing army and fleet are always on a war footing : they are the schools educating the nation for war. The Land- and See- 1 To be described presently. 2 In Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, and Hanover, from the 21st to the 29th year. The Army. 205 wehr are the feeders of the standing army and navy. The Land- sturm only flies to arms when a portion of the realm is threatened with invasion. The standing army in time of peace was limited till 1881 to 401,659 men, a number it might not exceed; the Frei- willigers not included. But in April 1880, Prince Bismarck carried a measure increasing the German army, till March 31, 1888, to 18,128 officers and 427,274 men, exclusive of volunteers. Moreover, those who have served their time are not henceforth to receive their discharge in the autumn, but in the ensuing March, which raises the standing army in winter by about 100,000 men. 1 This number is a maximum. On no day in the year may it exceed this. It is the normal number for which the Beichstag votes supplies. The army consists of — 1. Infant^; 2. Cavalry; 3. Field Artillery; 4. Siege Artillery; 5. Pioneers; 6. Train. There are other formations, as schools for under-officers, a railway battalion, telegraph corps, riding institutes, etc. For tactical unity, in the infantry the battalion is the unit, in the cavalry the squadron, in the field artillery the battery. In the infantry, jagers and sharpshooters, a battalion consists of 1000 men. In the cavalry, a regiment is composed of 750 men. In the siege and field artillery there are 150 men to a company ; in the train a battalion consists of 1000 men, in the pioneers of 600 men. The infantry consists of 503 battalions, the cavalry of 465 squadrons, the field artillery of 340 batteries, the siege artillery of 31 battalions, the pioneers of 19 battalions, the train of 19j battalions. The infantry consists of 523,744 men. 5' cavalry )> G1,000 )) artillery „ 94,000 V pioneers ,, 17,300 )> train » 42,632 For special employment 6,926 745,602 To these must be added 17,621 officers — the requisite number is not yet supplied. As a rule, three battalions of the infantry, five squadrons of In the summer of 1880, the exact number of reserve and Landwehr called out was 110.165 men. 206 Germany, Present and Past. cavalry, and two or three artillery divisions form a regiment. Every two or three regiments form a brigade. Every two or three brigades form a division. Generally two brigades of infantry and one of cavalry form a division. 1 There is no fixed rule as to the number and distribution of officers ; but usually each company, squadron, and battery, has a captain, a first lieutenant, two or three second lieutenants, and the " requisite " number of under-offioers. At the head of every battalion and artillery division is a staff officer ; at the head of every regiment a superior staff officer. A brigade is, as a rule, commanded by a major-general, a division by a lieutenant-general, and an army corps by a general. Besides the divisional formation of the army, it has also a territorial division. This military division forms the basis of the organisation of the Landwehr and the supply. The Empire is divided into seventeen army-corps districts, over which the generals in command exercise chief territorial jurisdiction in all military matters. The army-corps districts fall into divisional and brigade sub- districts ; the latter again, according to extent and population, into Landwehr, company, and battalion districts. The army articulation corresponds with the territorial division, from which it is recruited and supplied. Thus each army corps, each division, and each infantry brigade, has its own district, from which, as a rule, its men are drawn, and it is completed on mobili- sation. Consequently the young men of a village find themselves together in the drill-ground and in barrack — a provision of the highest moral advantage. The young trooper who misconducts himself does so in the presence of his companions from childhood, and he knows that the report of him will reach his home. On the battle-field he is not among strangers, and if shot, a comrade will bear his last words to his native village, to his mother and his Schatz. Over all the land, officers are stationed forming military boards — the Divizion-Commando, the Brigade-Commando, and the Land- wehr-Commando. In time of peace the divisional commander has the oversight in his district, also care for the discipline and know- ledge of the whereabouts of the men on furlough. Ee is charged 1 Only in the Body-Guard and Royal Saxon Corps are there entire cavalry divisions. The Army. 207 -with the supervision of the Landwehr, and with all preparations for mobilisation on a moment's notice. The Landwehrbezirks-Commando has the following duties : — 1. The control of those on furlough in that district. 2. The preparation of all needed for mobilisation, and the formation of the Landwehr battalion. 3. The care of the clothing and arming of the Landwehr battalion, and the supply of ammunition. 4. Provision for recruiting, and for invalids. In time of war, the field army is engaged in active operations against the enemy, and the reserve garrisons the fortresses and keeps the lines of communication, and as they are drawn upon to fill the gaps made by war in the ranks of the field army, their places are supplied from the Landwehr. "With this outline of the army organisation in his head, the reader will be able to follow me into particulars. Unless he be a military man, he may be disposed to say with Faust, " Ich bin des trocknen Tons nun satt ; " but I hope that the details will prove more interesting than the outline. I would not advise him to omit to follow me, if he -would acquire a just idea of that most remarkable creation of the Prussian spirit of organisation and discipline — the German army. It is to Fatherland what the Pyramids are to Egypt, Paris to France, and the Metropolitan Eailway to England, — a typical creation of the national genius. Let us begin with the recruit, and go through the course with him. Every year, in the month of February, a circular is issued by the War Ministry indicating : — 1. The number of recruits required for each infantry battalion and each cavalry regiment. 2. The number of assistants and workmen required for each corps. 3. The days on which each corps is to receive its recruits. In every district lists are kept of the men in it and their ages ; and every young man of twenty has to present himself before the local Board. There is an excellent little book to bo had for a few pence, 1 which puts in a simple form before the recruits their duties and what the law requires of them. Every man is Wchrjiflichtig, i.e. bound to serve, yet all are not required to serve. 1 Wurzer: Kateehismus fiir die deutschen Nilitarpflichtcn. Lcipz. 1S7S. 208 Germany, Present and Pad. The standing army is legally fixed in number, at a percentage of the population. It is not therefore every man who is called to arms. When more recruits present themselves than are required, lot decides which are to enter military service. But certain are exempt ; such as young men who are the sole support of aged parents, or helpless brothers and sisters ; the only sons of landed proprietors, tradesmen, etc., incapacitated by age or illness from managing their estates or shop. A special arrangement is made with those destined for a learned profession, which shall be noticed presently. Deformity, excessive physical infirmity, short sight, a height under l m 60 (5ft. 7|in.), etc., incapacitate a man from serving. The recruits are allowed to express their wishes as to the sort of service they desire to enter, infantry, cavalry, chasseurs, artillery, etc., and their wishes are considered as far as is possible. When the number has been made up, the commandants of the different regiments determine by lot which are to serve in their respective contingents. There are, however, a few exceptions made to this impartial distribution. Men of and over l m 82 may be sent to the first regiment of the Guards. The chasseur (Jager) and sharpshooter regiments are recruited almost exclusively from the agents of the Government and mediatised princes in the service of the forests. This recruiting is under the special direction of the inspector of the chasseurs and sharpshooters. The chasseurs are no favourites in the German army. It is thought by the officers that all the privates should receive a like training in rifle practice. But the governments favour these regiments, whence they draw their servants for the charge of their forests. The organisation is altogether peculiar : it forms an hereditary class of foresters, who furnish the army with professional sharpshooters, and this corps of rangers in turn supplies the State with men devoted to its interests in the forests. The distribution of recruits is made without regard to their social positions. Well-dressed sons of citizens, peasant lads, and even ragged youths jostle each other. But there are not many members of the upper classes found in the crowd ; for these young men, having received a superior education, are allowed to enter the army as volunteers, or are in the military colleges, with the intention of making the army their profession. Tlte Army. 209 As the men come to their regiment, they are submitted to medical inspection. Those deemed unfit for service are sent back to their districts, and the Landwehr officers therein are bound within a stated period to supply their places with fresh recruits. The sifting out and replacing of the unsuitable occupies about a fortnight. A month after the reception of the recruits, a report on the appearance, physical condition, size, etc., of the men is sent in from all the regiments to the Staff; and their reports are forwarded to the Emperor. The commandant of each regiment distributes the recruits in their battalions on the day of their arrival. The tallest men go into the first battalions, the smaller among- the fusileers. With ns the reverse takes place. They are then subjected to a second medical inspection. The first was solely to ascertain if they were physically sound, the second to ensure that they are not labouring under any contagious disease. Then they are all bathed and clad in uniform. Each man makes up a parcel of his ordinary clothes and sends them home at the end of a month, when it is definitely decided that he remains in the regiment. The rest of the first day is spent in installing the recruits in their chambers. Their money is taken from them, and placed with the commandant, but each man is allowed to keep two thalers, or six shillings. The object is to prevent inexperienced youths being led to squander their little funds at the instigation of older soldiers, naturally disposed to regale themselves at the expense of their new comrades. The recruits are next given out combs, brushes, a looking-glass, razors, etc., for which they have to pay a moderate price, or it is deducted from their wage. Then their hair is cut, and they are vaccinated. In the first month they all take the oath to the colours. Each company receives annually from forty to fifty recruits. Each dormitory is under the supervision of a non-commissioned officer, appointed to be instructor to the recruits by the com- mandant of the company. The recruits are also generally broken into groups of two or three under an older soldier, who is supposed to act towards them the part of an elder brother. This plan has been found very advantageous for developing feelings of mutual friendship and comradeship ; linking together into one all the members of the great military family. A few days after his incorporation in the regiment, each recruit is required to draw up p 210 Germany, Present and Past. a short biography of himself, as frank and complete as possihle. This he submits to his captain, who thereby is made acquainted with the antecedents of his men, and is able to judge of their intelligence and the degree of their education. Those who cannot write give their account viva voce. But the number of illiterate is o very small. What has been said of recruiting for the infantry applies equally to the cavalry, with only slight differences, on which we need not tarry. Cavalry and infantry alike have attached to them a body of workmen of two sorts : the one " Oekonomie-Hand- werker," are not reckoned as in the ranks, and do no military service ; the others, among them saddlers, smiths, tailors, shoe- makers, etc., form part of the effective fighting body. Besides the men sent from the contingent, the cavalry regiments receive volunteers for one or four years. The first are few on account of the cost ; they have to find their own horses, accoutre- ments, keep, etc. The volunteers of four years are, on the contrary, very numerous. In consideration of the extra year for which they volunteer, they are let off two years in the Landwehr. These volunteers are received much more cordially than the recruits from the ordinary contingent ; because the cavalry officers are well aware that three years is not long enough for the training of an effective horse-soldier. Consequently captains do their utmost to draw as many volunteers as they can to their squadrons, and thereby reduce the number of ordinary recruits. From thirty- five to forty-five men annually enter each squadron. For regiments of the Guard, Cuirassiers, and Uhlans, the minimum height is l ra 67 : for the light cavalry, dragoons, and hussars, l m 62. In the recruiting of the German army the commandant of the regiment is the axle of the system. He knows the effective force his corps must have on a peace and on a war footing, and he is bound to be always ready to have under control the number of men required. When necessary he must apply to the Staff of his corps-d 'armee for the number of recruits he requires; he must winnow out the unserviceable men and call for others to replace them, or fill their places with volunteers. This is only rjossible with recruital which is territorial, by wdiich system each corps has at hand a store from wdiich to draw at will, and which is being incessantly supplied ; so that there is always ready at a The Army. 211 moment's notice all the material in men and equipment for completing tlie corps and giving it its full effective force in times of war and peace. In most European armies, when the annual period for the commencement of instruction comes round, there appear whole shoals of general orders and directions, often con trad ictory, minutely regulating the kind and duration of the different exercises, not during the month only, hut even by day and hour. Nothing of this sort exists in the German army. To the commandant of the company is left the entire responsibility for the instruction of his men, in what mode and at what hour he sees fit. His initiative has no other limits than the obligation imposed on him of presenting his soldiers ready for inspection to his superior officers at fixed times, and to have them trained to a certain standard by those times. The commandant of the battalion has no right to interfere with the instruction of the companies that compose his battalion. All he is at liberty to do is to note to their captains such deficiencies or irregularities as attract his eye. He has no power to alter the course fixed by a commander of a company. Later, he, in his turn, instructs his battalion, and becomes wholly responsible for its instruction as a tactical unity. All he can exact is, that the companies, when they pass under his hand shall prove thoroughly instructed in all rudimentary branches of drill and discipline. A like freedom is accorded to every officer charged with every branch whatsover of instruction. All German officers, from the lieutenant to the general, are unanimous in regarding this liberty as an essential and indispensable condition of success, not only as concerns the instruction of the troops, but also in all that affects military success. For it produces emulation among the officers of every grade, it draws out their powers and teaches them promptness and observation. Moreover, it is the best possible means of teach- ing an officer the details of the service. He learns as much as does the soldier whom he is teaching. In the whole military hierarchy there is not an office moro important than that of commandant of the company, squadron, or battery — that is, as concerns the instruction of the troops. And as a capable officer is put in that post, he is given plenty of elbow- room. Not only does he instruct the men of his squadron, but, by 212 Germany, Present and Pud. the position he occupies, he alone is in a position to form anion" - the officers of his company a successor capable of replacing him- self. If this initiative freedom accorded to each strikes a foreign observer, not less does the minutely methodical and progressive system with which the instruction is pursued, not from year's end to year's end only, but in each particular period of the year. Experience has established the rules and formulated the series of exercises appropriate to the exigencies of war, and to the character of the nation and the habits of the country. These are never interfered with. Every one knows his part and fulfils it without hesitation. The instruction of a German regiment advances with calmness and regularity, precisely like that in a public school in which with each new year there is an influx of fresh scholars to re- commence the lessons learned by their predecessors, now moved to a higher form. The drill, to the very gymnastics, is not left to a non-com- missioned officer alone. The recruits are, indeed, put through their facings, and taught to turn head over heels, and climb a pole, by a " Gefreite " or lance-corporal, but the lieutenant is present throughout the instruction. The position of a sub-lieutenant in the German army is no sinecure. He has a great deal of hard and very wearisome work, and he is kept a great part of the day at it ; he has to cuff and lick the awkward squad into shape, and is him- self the constant butt of reprimands from his superior officers. More of this shortly. The year of instruction in the infantry comprehends six periods :— 1. Preparatory period : — Erom the end of the grand manoeuvres and the dismissal of the reserve to the arrival of the recruits ; that is, from the second half of September to the beginning of November in the Guards, to the beginning of December in the Line. 2. Period of individual instruction of the recruits : — Till the middle of February in the Guards, till the beginning of March in the Line. 3. Period of inspection, or Spring exercises, to the middle of May. 4. Period of service in the country, to the beginning of August. The Army. 213 5. Period of autumnal exercises, to the end of August. 6. Period of grand manoeuvres, to the second half of September. 1. Preparatory Period. — The first thing the captain has to do is to choose and prepare the instructors to whom the recruits are to be confided, for on this depends almost exclusively the success of the instruction. And as, on account of the shortness of the dura- tion of active service, it is difficult to have a sufficient number of experienced non-commissioned officers, 1 their preparation absorbs all the care and time of the commandant of the company during this period. In each company one lieutenant, three or four non- commissioned officers, and six or nine lance-corporals are detailed for this purpose. The captain confides the post of instructor to the lieutenant he considers most apt for this charge. This lieutenant directs the instruction of the recruits under the immediate eye of the captain, who, however, leaves him the utmost latitude, on the same principle that runs through the whole service — the development of the in- dividual powers by according liberty to the utmost extent possible with the maintenance of necessary system and discipline. As a rule, the lieutenants set a high and honourable example before their pupils. Each officer-instructor is made entirely re- sponsible for the men confided to him. He has the surveillance over them, and sees that they are not brutalised by older soldiers. He serves as a check upon the non-commissioned officers under him, and prevents them from tyrannising over the recruits. At the same time he stimulates their zeal for the service, and puts a stop to violence and vulgarity on their part. A very sincere attach- ment often grows up between the lieutenant and his men, and the sense of responsibility of setting them a good example has a high moral effect upon him. In order to be able to acquit himself of his duty as instructor, the lieutenant is obliged to prepare for it diligently during the " preparatory period." The captain lends him his aid, advises him, but never personally charges himself with his instruction. The captain chooses one or two experienced non-commissioned officers and gives them as assistants one or two younger soldiers ; by this means experienced instructors are trained for the following year. 1 I use the term " non-commissioned officers" for those entitled iu German " Unter-Officiereu," i.e. Feldwebel and Viee-Feldwebel. 214 Germany, Present and Pad. The lieutenants receive every day two hours' theoretical in- struction from the commandant on the principles of manoeuvres, the theory and rules of musketry, on the discipline of the service, the history of the regiment, and the outlines of military legislation. The commandant has also, during this period, to see that all the undress uniforms for the recruits are clean and in good condition, and that the dormitories are fresh whitewashed and furnished with every necessary. During this preparatory period also the non-commissioned officers learn to conduct patrols, make little reconnaissances, and practically resolve certain tactical problems. The officers are also then engaged on their tactical studies, under the direction of the commandant of the battalion. At the same time the pioneers are instructed in sapping. 2. Period of Individual Instruction. — The day of the arrival of the recruits is, undoubtedly, the most important in the year to the commandant, who is naturally jealous to maintain the reputation of his company. The course of instruction to the recruits lasts from twelve to fourteen weeks. In those weeks the country lout has to be trained to serve in the ranks. In twelve weeks the raw recruit has to learn the regulations of fighting in scattered order, the handling of his arms, how to shoot, gymnastics, and, in a word, everything that is necessary to enable him to take his place in the ranks, go through his exercises with the company, and do all that is required of a soldier in time of peace. This constitutes " Duty State," as Ger- mans understand it. To attain this result the commandant of the company has to exert all his energies and bring all his experience to bear to elaborate a plan and sequence of drill and study which is to be followed. Here again occurs a feature peculiar to the German system, and altogether admirable. Extreme attention is paid to explaining to the recruit the reason for every order given. The object is, to educate the man's intelligence, to make of him not a machine only, but an intelligent machine, capable of judging and acting for him- self under extraordinary circumstances. This is precisely what was wanting in the Eussian soldiers in the late war. They were machines, they went where they were ordered, but they had no judgment when individual judgment was wanted. In that the The Army. 215 Turk was his superior. But among the Guards under Skobeleff it was otherwise. They had been taught on the German method, and the results became evident directly they appeared before Plevna. I must again repeat, no detailed scheme of instruction is issued by authority. In all orders extant, the only requirement is that a certain specified point of training shall be reached : how that is brought about is left entirely free. Full liberty is accorded to the commandant, and his superiors absolutely refrain from any interference, and from all ajjpearance of limiting or touching his independence. Consequently there is great variety. In a company of recruits which I observed in 1877-78, the hours of drill were from eight to eleven a.m., and from two to four p.m., and there was one hour's instruction in military subjects in the evening. For the first fort- night or three weeks from the date of joining, the recruit was exercised solely in gymnastics. Most captains arrange the course of instruction by weeks, with a programme for each, and leave the details of execution to the lieutenant. The lieutenant in turn makes verbal recommendations to the non-commissioned officers, taking care to allow them also a certain amount of freedom. The recruits are under constant surveillance — to such an extent that, during the first six weeks of their service, no young soldier can leave the barrack without being attended by a Gefreite. This is a rule of some importance, especially in large towns, where inex- perienced country youths might otherwise be easily drawn into conduct incompatible with honour and respect for their uniform. The following is a table of a day's employment in the fourth week after a recruit has joined : — Mor ung. A.M. A.M. 6.0 . Rise. 9.0 to 9.30 Exercise in poiutin 7.0 . Breakfast. 9.30 „ 11.30 Manoeuvres. 7.30 to 8.30 Theoretical instruction. Midday Dinner. Afternoon. P.M. P.M. 2.0 to 3.15 . Drill. 6.45 to 7.0 . Instruction on calls 3.15,, 4.0 . Gymnastics. (bugle). 4.0 „i.:;o . Pointing. 7.0 . Supper. 5.30 „ 6.30 . Instruction on keeping arms clean, etc. 9.0 . Bed. 216 Germany, Present and Past. Instruction in skirmishing begins the second week, and occupies an hour and a half every day. During the first six weeks the non- commissioned officers exercise their groups in obejnng the bugle- calls, which are sounded by the lieutenant at a distance. After the seventh week, and till the tenth, this exercise is repeated only every other day. In the eleventh week, the lieutenant assembles all the recruits of the company in one detachment : each of these groups constitutes a platoon formed in two ranks. The three platoons are ranged one behind the other, and thus a little column is formed, which the lieutenant exercises as if it were a complete company. The men by this means get an idea of the relations of open order and compact order, and of the movements and formations peculiar to the latter. It is the best possible preparation for the school of field exercise, to which they pass in the thirteenth or fourteenth week after their incorporation. After the preliminary instruction in pointing, in the fifth week the recruits are given a little gun (Ideines Geivehr), which allows of good practice at fifty paces. But the moment when they begin at the butts with their regular weapons is not fixed. Sometimes men are in " Duty State " who have only fired ten rounds, whilst others may have fired forty. In the evenings the men are taught by a tailor how to repair their clothes ; during this instruction, or after it, they are exercised in bugle-calls by the lance-corporal. Theoretical instruction is given by the lieutenant once a week during the first four weeks, thrice in the next four, and thrice in the last four. The rule is not absolute, and there is no regulation- book from which the teaching is given. The instruction is oral, and catechetical. 3. Period of Spring Exercises and Inspection. — The period of individual instruction passed, an inspection of the recruits is made by the commandant of the regiment, after which he passes them into the company school. This inspection, which takes place about the end of February, is one of the most important days in the military life, and it usually excites the liveliest interest, not only among the officers of each regiment, but throughout the garrison, so that for some time nothing else is talked about than the results obtained by this or that captain, the merits of this or that plan of instruction, and The Army. 217 the quality of the men about to pass. The inspection takes place with great solemnity. All the highest military officers in the garrison attend in full uniform. The men are presented to the colonel by the lieutenant of the company. The inspection is in two parts. One has to do with the manoeuvres, and takes place on an appointed day. The other, which is an examination into the theoretical knowledge of the recruit, his gymnastic acquire- ments, etc., takes place as suits the convenience of the colonel. The review of the recruits is minute and thorough. They are put through all the evolutions : the cadence of their marching is taken by the watch. 1 The inspection of fifty recruits occupies two hours. When it is over, the colonel addresses a few' words of encouragement to the young soldiers, and congratulates them, if they deserve it. The inspection over, the recruits cease to form a class apart, they are admitted into the ranks of the company, and take part with the older soldiers in all their duties and drill. It is not that their education is supposed to be terminated, but it is supposed that they have arrived at a point at which the example of older soldiers and contact with them, along with the varied exercises of the Spring period, will complete their military education. During the two preceding periods a great strain has been put on the older soldiers. Many have been detailed as instructors, and all the duties of guard have devolved on the rest; so that every soldier has often to be on guard once in three days. Now the companies are filled, and the turn of each man comes only once in ten or twelve days. The captain has now all his men at his dis- posal for company evolutions. He proceeds at once with the reorganisation of his company. The place of each soldier is assigned him according to his height ; and the whole company is divided into three platoons, formed in double rank, each of which constitutes a section commanded by a non-commissioned officer. The lance-corporals, orderlies, etc., are distributed evenly through the sections, and each is given charge of an equal number of new soldiers. During this period the service is more varied. The Spring exercises comprehend company and battalion drill, and the evolu- tions of the regiment and brigade. Moreover, target-practice is now seriously undertaken. It is unnecessary to say that indi- 1 Quick march is 112 to the minute. 218 Germany, Present and Pad. vidual exercises, gymnastics, fencing, etc., are not given up, but they take a subordinate position. Each company is divided into three distinct groups; the first composed of men of superior military aptitude, the last, of men exceptionally clumsy or stupid. The second group is the most numerous. The exercises of each group are calculated to meet its special requirements. The men in the third group have their deficiencies plainly pointed out to them, that they may make efforts to remedy their defects. Every Saturday a transfer is made from one group to another, according to progress made. But inversely, also, it may happen that a man is degraded into an inferior group, if he shows himself incapable of keeping pace with those with whom he has been associated. No regard is had to time of service, all that is looked to is the qualification of each. During the war of 1870-71, the importance of the company as a tactical unity was made clear. Since that date the German captains have redoubled their efforts to give their companies the highest attainable suppleness and cohesion. But in this, again, there is no regulation drill ; each captain is left to follow his own inspiration and experience. Company exercises are generally preceded by military promenades into the country, to accustom the men to long marches, and familiarise them with the principal rules and precautions to be observed on them. They are usually marched in columns by sections, drums and bugles at the head, but not in close rank. On the way the soldiers are given an explanation of the object and utility of such and such regulations, and every occasion is taken to show them what consequences the neglect of these precautions would entail. When the march is long, it is interrupted by halts, and the captain orders the men to pile arms, and then gives them instructions on bivouacking. The men on the first march are fully equipped with bread-pouch, can, and knapsack, the latter empty. After a few marches the saucepan is added, then the great-coat and stew-pan. The company drill takes place on the Exercirplatz, a level space to be found in every garrison town, not within rails, but completely open to all the world, and a favourite lounge of nursery-maids. Now begin the Schulexerciren, on which German military authorities lay great stress. Their object is to bring bodies of men into the most perfect control by their officers. The men are The Army. 219 put through all the regulation forms. But this is by no means all. The captains during the course of the Schulexerciren — the regulation exercises — order at times movements absolutely contrary to those indicated by the regulation. The advantage of this method is, that the men are kept on the alert, and learn to dis- entangle themselves, and form with admirable rapidity; and they acquire the conviction, that whatever the order given, it must be promptly and precisely obeyed. As soon as all formations are familiar to the men, they are taught to pass from one to the other at a double, and without following any regulation order. The object sought is to obtain the instantaneous and mechanical execu- tion of a movement, at the mere word of command. All formations and principles relative to dispersed order are taught with special care, always on the Exercirplatz, that is to say, without regard to the nature of the ground. It is only when a company is perfectly master of its regulation formations, that it passes to these exercises applied to the actual condition of the cuuntry. These exercises last from five to six weeks. Not a movement is made without its mechanism and its tactical aim being clearly explained to the private soldier. During this initiatory process, the progress is slow, but when acquired, there follows extreme rapidity of manoeuvring, commands succeeding one another with- out relaxation, executed at a run ; regularity, the cadence of the steps, rectification of line, are strictly exacted when the movement is accomplished. Such is the method adopted ; and the result is that the company acquires extraordinary suppleness, and the attention of every soldier is kept on the alert. For often the soldiers have no sooner taken three or four steps towards the formation that has been ordered, when a new command is given. After the inspection of the companies, battalion drill follows, and occupies from three to four weeks. These exercises take placo thrice a week, and occupy about three hours on each occasion. The other three days of the week are devoted to company drill. The men are also practised at judging distances, fencing, and at the targets. When the battalion review is satisfactorily over, regimental evolutions follow during a fortnight, on alternate days. After the regimental exercises, followed by an inspection, come the brigade exercises, occupying about a week. Then the brigades 220 Germany, Present and Past are inspected, and by that time, the period of spring exercises has come to an end, and has to make way for field exercises. The war of 1870-71 produced such an impression on military officers, that the instruction of the troops has become, if possible, more practical than ever. In all their exercises we have the repetition of a battle in all its forms. The memorable day of Saint-Privat, especially, and the enormous losses to which the infantry were subjected in traversing that bare plain under a murderous fire, has greatly contributed to determine the direction of the present instruction of the troops. 1 It is a matter of principle in these manoeuvres never to repeat an order. He who has given one, waits patiently its execution. And if a subordinate hesitates, or makes a mistake, his superior officer is content to point it out to him when the critique takes place at the end of the instruction. It is thought of the utmost importance to allow him the means of correcting himself, of finding out his own mistake and remedying it as best he may, without the intervention of his superior. Again, I must repeat, the end aimed at constantly and unflaggingly in the German army, is to develop the individual initiative in every officer in every degree, from the general-in-chief to the sub-lieutenant. A German general says on this particular : — " Although we have a perfect right at all moments to criticise the proceedings of our inferiors, yet we abstain, on principle, from doing this, even when we hear them express opinions in their critiques contrary to our own. No two men in this world see a thing from the same point of view, and we hold that, before we can judge of a system, it is necessary to wait till we can estimate the results it produces. When the day of inspection by us arrives, then we formulate our requirements and pass our opinion. But, above everything, our object is to develop in our officers initiative, and an interest in their profession. And we believe there is no better means of attaining this than by giving them full and entire liberty to follow what course they please, so long as the end be gained. Besides, by listening to their criticism, we obtain the precious elements of appreciation of the value of each." 1 See on these regulation exercises Tallenbach : Die Taktik u. die Aushildungsmethode d. Preussischen ExercirreglemenU f. lie. In/anterie. Berlin, 1876. The Army. 221 Young English officers take but a languid interest in their profession. They go through their duties perfunctorily ; but it is a rare exception to find one eager and interested in the science of war. I have quoted in a former chapter the remark made to me by a German schoolmaster : " Your English boys play over their lessons, and work at their play. I rarely get a pupil from your country who takes any interest in his studies." It is much the same in our army. Our young officers do not take up their career as a business, but as a task. It is the reverse in Germany. Everything connected with his profession excites the liveliest interest in the lieutenant. His library is stocked with military books, he devours the last new monograph in military science with more eagerness than the English officer manifests for Ouida's latest novel. The German press teems with books of this sort, and publishers would not undertake them unless they had a large sale. I have counted eighty-five works, exclusive of magazines and papers devoted to military matters, which have been published during the three months, April, May, and June, 1878. Can the English press show a quarter of this number in the whole year ? And here I may add my opinion of the young German officer, as he is a social and moral element in every city. I have the very highest opinion of him for his integrity, honour, devotion to his profession, and to the men put under his charge. I do not believe a more worthy, conscientious set of officers is to be found in any army. That they are not always what Ave understand in England by gentlemen, is also true : they are drawn from the burger class, and inherit its want of breed. 1 • And if anything could reconcile an Englishman to the idea of universal military service, it would be the conduct of men and officers in a garrison town. The three years' service has a mighty educational effect on the country clown. It sharpens his intelligence, polishes his manner, widens his ideas, teaches him the advantages of organisation, and the necessity for discipline, and he returns to his native village, improved physically, mentally, and often morally as well. 1 This applies to the infantry and artillery. The cavalry are recruited almost exclusively from the gentry. A few of noble blood are to be found in the infantry ; but very few. In the army, as elsewhere, class distinction intervenes injuriously. When I speak of " gentlemanliness," I do not mean only iu manner, but in mind. 222 Germany, Present and Past. 4. Period of Field Exercises. — With summer begin the exercises applying what has been already learned to the exigencies of facts, as in real warfare. For this purpose, the soldiers are taken out into the country, sometimes for the whole day, sometimes for twenty-four hours, and even more. They are taught to adapt their movements to the nature of the country, to take on the march all the precautions necessary in time of war, to execute small manoeuvres, attack and defend positions, surmount obstacles, bivouack, also to learn sapping, swimming, and practice at targets. Up to the middle of June these exercises are carried out in com- panies, after that in battalions, and then in regiments, and with troops of all arms combined. Modern warfare has proved the great importance of these exercises : consequently, the greater part of the summer is placed at the disposal of the commandant of a company for carrying them out. We will take very briefly the regulations governing them. 1. Patrols and Outpost Duty. — Although this branch of service specially belongs to the cavalry, it is, however, made a matter of serious attention in the infantry. Before sending out a company, outposts are exercised near the barracks on the drill-ground, so that all may see the object sought and the general disposition. The soldiers thus learn at once how the foreposts serve as a protection to themselves, and as spies on the movements of the enemy. And the officers take pains to point this clearly out to their men, and show them how to regulate their dispositions by those of the enemy. When these first principles are well ground into them, the company is led into the country. Great care is taken to train soldiers to execute their duties as sentinels and patrols with intelligence and observation. Every soldier has it impressed on him to distinguish rigorously between what he has seen and what he believes he has seen, between facts and conjectures — a lesson much harder to learn than many would suppose. Every report contains first statements of what has actually been observed, and then conclusions drawn from them. It is worthy of remark that in all reports, whether in time of peace or of war, one uniform pattern of memoranda and envelopes is used. Each page bears all the necessary indications, printed by the Imperial Secret Press at Berlin, which issues these memoranda- books and envelopes to all the soldiers. On the envelope, beside T/te Army. 223 the address and the hour of despatch and receipt, is marked the pace at which it is to be conveyed to its destination. X indicates that it may be carried at foot-pace ; XX, at a trot ; and XXX, at a gallop. These marks give the measure of the importance of a despatch. The reports and addresses are always written in pencil. This uniform method of reporting has this advantage, that every soldier is perfectly familiar with it, and with the regulation for the transmission of orders and information ; moreover, all reports being of an uniform size, are more easily preserved in the journals of the march and the regimental archives. After the instructions of the companies, battalion exercises follow, and then those of regiments, each fraction occupying all the space which, according to the conditions of the land, it would have to occupy in the event of actual war. During these manoeuvres, which sometimes last a long time, the officers are given independent missions of which they must render an account later. 2. To familiarise the men with marches and the precautions to be adopted on them, advantage is taken of the journey to the field of exercise. Often two companies, or two battalions, take different routes toward the same spot, and feel one another on their way, or, on the contrary, watch and harass each other's march. Along the whole way they fire incessantly on one another, as a soldier discovers himself flying from one poplar to another, or a head appears above a hedge, or out of a ditch, along which a column is creeping under cover. 3. To these two species of exercises is added instruction on the manner of organising and guarding a bivouac. The men are taught the proper dispositions : the vedettes and other sentinels are placed; the position of the kitchens is determined, and some- times actually erected and used. The men learn to extemporise fireplaces with bricks or stones or clay, and to collect fuel for them, some arrangement having been come to beforehand with the owner of the land. The men not occupied, either seated or standing, are given full explanations of the why and wherefore of everything that is done, and why the spot is chosen. To exercise the officers and non-commissioned officers in choosing proper plac< s for bivouacking, the troop is preceded by a patrol commanded by an officer charged with this duty. 224 Germany, Present and Past. 4. During the little manoeuvres tlie men are taught to surmount difficulties, to jump ditches, and, if too wide to he over- leaped, to hridge them. In traversing a wood, call-words are given out to the several companies, and the men enter the wood and disappear, hut are kept together hy their cries. 5. Small manoeuvres are made, such as the attack or defence of divers accidents of the country, either with or without an enemy represented. Sometimes part of a company is detailed to keep a group of houses or a hill against the advance. I have seen dummy soldiers in French uniform put previously aloout on a wooded slope in positions likely to he occupied hy an enemy defending it. The captain, standing in the middle of his company, points out to his men what has to he done. Such a height has to he stormed, or the enemy dislodged from such a village. He indicates the difficulties and the advantages of the ground ; and shows them the ohjections which forhid his adopting one mode of attack, and the reasons which induce him to take another. He hids the men ohserve on what point during the attack their attention must be fixed, and how that success depends on such and such things being done. When companies are engaged in sham fight with one another, the commandants of the battalions give their captains small tactical problems which they are required to resolve. 6. During all these exercises, the men are incessantly called on to observe and take advantage of the accidents of the ground in all possible circumstances, being told both how to do so, and also why to do so. 7. All through the summer the men are taught swimming: a lesson in the Schwimmbad generally follows some instruction that has not been of an exhausting nature. 8. The men are not exercised in the corps to manage cannon. But the commandants of battalions detach annually from one to four lance-corporals into the artillery, to learn there the manage- ment of caissons of infantry ammunition. Each battalion by this means obtains a number of men familiar with this branch of the service. 9. Instruction on spade work becomes annually more and more important. Since the Eusso-Turkish war it has attracted redoubled attention. In order to have good instructors for the regiments, each details annually one officer and six non-commissioned officers Tlie Army. 225 to the sappers and miners, where they learn the work necessary for the infantry. This is acquired in about forty-eight days, according to this table. DAYS 1. Preliminary exercises. The resolution of geometrical problems on the surface of the soil. Tracing and measuring lines . 2 2. The making of fascines, gabions, baskets, &c 3 3. The throwing up of lines of defence, creation of obstacles . .12 4. Castrametation 8 5. Military bridges ..11 6. Destruction of railways and telegraphs 3 7. Practical application of preceding instructions