LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA FROM THE LIBRARY OF F. VON BOSCH AN TOUR IN GERMANY, AND SOME OF THE SOUTHERN PROVINCES OF THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE, IN THE YEARS 1820, 1821, 1822. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. EDINBURGH : PRINTED FOR ' ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO. EDINBURGH; AND HURST, ROBINSON, AND CO. LONDON. 1824. CONTENTS OF VOLUME FIRST. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE EAST OP FRANCE 1 ALSACE 3 Vineyards 4 STRASBURGH 5 French and German Cookery .... 6 The Cathedral 8 The Monument of Marshal Saxe ... 10 The Passage of the Rhine ..... 15 THE PLAIN OF THE RHINE ....... 17 German Stage Coaches 19 Grand Ducal Family of Baden ... 22 External Character of the Towns . . 24 CARLSRUHE 25 MANHEIM . .26 VI CONTENTS. PAGE HEIDELBERG 32 DARMSTADT 35 FRANKFORT 36 The Fair 37 The City 39 The Arts 42 The Jews 44 The Germanic Confederation .... 47 SELIGENSTADT 55 CHAPTER II. THE THURINGIAN FOREST 60 WEIMAR 6l The Grand Duke 65 Literature 66 Wieland 73 Schiller 74 Gothe 81 The Drama pi Character of the People 95 The Grand Duchess 97 Amusements 105 Political Conduct of the Grand Duke 108 Constitution of the Parliament of the Grand Duchy 110 Its Spirit and Proceedings . . . . 118 CONTENTS. Vll WEIMAR (continued} PAGE The Press 122 State of Political Feeling in Weimar . 126 Influence of the Small German States . 128 CHAPTER III. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE GERMAN UNI- VERSITIES 132 JENA 135 The Battle of Jena 136 THE UNIVERSITY Its Constitution . . . 139 Emoluments of the Professors . . .142 Public and Private Lectures . . . . 144 Division of a Subject into Different Cour- ses 146 Additional Occupations of the Juridical Faculty 149 The Mode of Teaching 153 The Students Their Evening Carousals . 156 Their Songs 160 The Landsmannschaften, or Secret Asso- ciations , . . . . 164 Duels . 180 Behaviour of the Students to the Towns- men 183 The Burschenschaft 185 Academical Liberty 190 Till CONTENTS. THE UNIVERSITY (continued) PAGE Academical Jurisdiction and Discipline 194 Bursaries 201 Decline of Jena, and its Causes .... 206 Dismissal of Professor Oken . . . . 208 Professor Luden and Kotzebue . . . 211 CHAPTER IV. RURAL POPULATION OF WEIMAR .... 218 WEISSENFELS ' . . 220 Dr Milliner 221 LUTZEN .' 224 LEIPZIG the City 225 The Arts 22p The Book-Trade . . 231 Piratical Publishers 235 Mr Brockhaus 239 THE ELBE 241 DRESDEN the City 243 The Royal Family 249 The Churches 254 Music 25? The Monument of Moreau .... 260 The Saxon' Switzerland 262 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER V. DRESDEN (continued) PAGE The Picture Gallery 270 The Collection of Copperplates '. . . 290 Sculpture 292 The Green Vault 293 The Armoury 294 Literature and the Language ... . 296 Administration of Criminal Justice . 300 Constitution of the Government . . 309 CHAPTER VI. ERFURTH 316 Luther's Cell 317 Ursuline Convent 320 GOTHA 324- EISENACH 325 Ruins of the Wartburgh 326 HESSE CASSEL 328 Westphalian Peasantry 330 CASSEL 333 King Jerome 335 The late Elector 338 Wilhelmshohe 342 The Arts 345 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PACK GoTTINGEN 350 Competition among the Professors . . 352 Professor Blumenbach 355 Scientific Collections 359 The Library 36l The Widows' Fund 363 Hospitals 366 Prosperity of Gottingen 869 Expenditure of the Students .... 3? 2 General Character of the University . 374 CHAPTER VIII. KiNonoM OF HANOVER Forest Laws 380 Wood-Thieves . . 382 The Peasantry 383 The Magistracy of the Small Towns . 385 HANOVER 386 The Theatre 388 Easter Festivities 390 Leibnitz 392 The Library 393 Pictures . . 395 National Character 396 The Estates 401 Relation of Hanover to England . . . 408 TOUR IN GERMANY, &c. CHAPTER I. STRASBURGH THE PLAIN OF THE RHINE FRANKFORT. Im niedersteigen strahlen Soil umher der Freudenschein, In des Neckars Reben-thalen, Und am silberblauen Main. THE prejudices of English travellers in favour of their own country are now proverbial, and have often exposed them to ridicule, sometimes to reproach. But if even the gaieties and novel- ties of Paris fail to remove this feeling of nation- al superiority, every one is entitled to a plenary- indulgence for railing, who has made a long journey in winter through the east of France. From Paris to Strasburgh, even the professed hunter of curiosities would find little to reward VOL. I. A STRASBUKGH. his pursuit ; the mere passing traveller, who is hastening to a certain point, finds, of course, no- thing at all. The tame banks of the Marrie, which the road accompanies in long, stiff stretch- es, as far as Chalons, give no relief to the dreari- ness of the scene ; the fortifications of Metz are in- teresting only to the engineer ; and in the open country the difference between a French and an English landscape is felt at once. The want of inclosures is a hackneyed topic of remark and dispute ; and, though nothing is more impos- sible than to convince a Frenchman that he or his country ever has blundered, or ever can blunder, we may be allowed to prefer our own still life, and to believe that hedges, and copse- wood, and plantations, are comfortable things even in winter. But it is in the appearance, or rather in the disappearance, of the population, that the difference is most striking. In a well culti- vated part of England, even the winter landscape is not entirely desolate. Everywhere the smoke of the farm-house rises ; the merry inmates are, at least, heard from within ; at every turn one comes across a sportsman'; the seats of the gen- try are more blithe and bustling than ever ; to STRASBURGH. say nothing of the resolution with which stage- coaches, and stage-coach travellers, hold out against the worst that winter can do. All around are sounds and sights of human industry or hu- man enjoyment. In France, man seems to be as dead as nature. The traveller looks out over an endless, dreary extent of brown soil, seldom vari- ed by the meanest cottage- The country popu- lation is drawn together in the villages, and these villages must be sought for to discover that the country is inhabited. It would seem that even the peasant cannot endure the comparative soli- tude of an English farmer's life. Like his bre- thren of Paris, he must have the pleasures of society. On approaching Alsace, the character of the country rapidly changes. It becomes hilly, pre- cipitous, romantic, rising into a branch of the lofty ridge which flanks the left bank of the Rhine, nearly from the frontiers of Switzerland to the mouth of the Moselle. The luxuriant plain of the Rhine, with its numberless towns and villages, is occasionally seen below through the apertures of the ridge. The river itself is too deeply sunk to be visible. As if this " Father 4 STRASBURGH. of wine," as the Germans fondly style him, would suffer nothing but the grape in his vicini- ty, the vineyards reappear so soon as the moun- tain begins to sink down in more gentle slopes. On this side of the Alps, however, a bare field is, in winter, a more pleasing object than a vine- yard. The vines either die, or are intentionally cut down, nearly to the ground. If the poles which supported them are taken away, as they generally are, the vineyard becomes a field of bare, black stumps; if they are allowed to re- main, it becomes a field of stiff, straight poles, marshalled in regular array. Even in summer and autumn, these vineyards add less to the beauty of a landscape than many other species of verdure. The vines, having reached in their growth the top of the stakes along which they are trained, curl downwards ; they are ranged in parallel lines ; the clusters avoid the eye, and lurk beneath the leaves. All the beauty that such a vineyard gives to the scene consists mere- ly in the mantle of deep verdure with which it clothes the soft and sunny slopes of the hills, a merit not at all of rare occurrence even in coun- tries where the grape never ripened. When STRASBURGH. near, the vineyard is in itself inferior to a hop plantation, which is the very same thing in kind, with more body and stateliness ; in the distance, it is no greater ornament than a field of prosper- ous turnips would be. But our northern imagi- nations, warming at the idea of the vine, just as our blood glows with its juice, bestow on every garden of Bacchus the beauties of Eden. Strasburgh itself is an irregular, old-fashion- ed, heavy-looking town, most inconveniently in- tersected by muddy streams and canals, and full of soldiers and customhouse-officers ; for it has the double misfortune of being at once a frontier trading town, and an important frontier fortifica- tion. The appearance of the inhabitants, and the mixture of tongues, announce at once that the Rhine was not always the boundary of France. Nearly two centuries have been insuffi- cient to eradicate the difference of descent, and manners, and language. The situation of the town, more than any thing else, has tended to keep these peculiarities alive, and prevent French manners from establishing, even in a French city, that intolerant despotism which they have often introduced into foreign capitals. 6 STRASBURGH. As it is the centre of the mercantile intercourse which France maintains with Swabia, Wirtem- berg great part of Baden, and the north of Switzerland, the German part of the population has always among them too many of their kind- red to forget that they themselves were once sub- jects of the Holy Roman Empire, or give up their own modes of speaking, and dressing, and eating. The stolid Swabian and serious Swiss drover are deaf to the charms of the universal language and kitchen. At Strasburgh you may dine on dishes as impenetrably disguised, or lan- guish over entremets as nearly refined away to nothing, as at the tables of the great Parisian ri- vals, Very and Vefours ; or, on the other side of the street, for half the money, you may have more German fat, plain boiled beef, and sour cabbage. The German kitchen is essentially a plain, solid, greasy kitchen ; it has often by far too much of the last quality. People of rank, indeed, in the great capitals, are just as mad on French cookery as the most delicate of their equals in London ; but the national cookery, in its general character, is the very reverse of that of France, and it is by no means certain that the STRASBURGH. 7 national cookery of a people may not have some connection with its national character. The German justly prides himself on the total ab- sence of parade, on the openness, plainness, and sincerity which mark his character ; accordingly, he boils his beef, and roasts his mutton and fowls, just as they come from the hands of the butcher and the poulterer. If a gourmand of Vienna stuff his Styrian capon with truffles, this is an unwont- ed tribute to delicacy of palate. French cook- ery, again, really seems to be merely a product of the vanity and parade which are inseparable from the French character. The culinary ac- complishments are to his dinner just what senti- ment is to his conversation. They are both sub- stitutes for the solid beef and solid feeling which either are not there at all, or, if they be there, are intended for no other purpose than to give a name. No one portion of God's creatures is reckoned fit for a Frenchman's dinner till he him- self has improved it beyond all possibility of re- cognition. His cookery seems to proceed on the very same principle on which his countrymen laboured to improve Raphael's pictures, viz. that 5 STKASBUKGH. there is nothing in nature or art so good, but he can make it better. The far-famed cathedral is, in some respects, the finest Gothic building in Europe. There are many which are more ample in dimensions. In the solemn imposing grandeur to which the lofty elevations and dim colonnades of this archi- tecture are so well adapted, the cathedral of Mi- lan acknowledges no rival ; and not only in some other German towns, as in Niirnberg, but like- wise among the Gothic remains of our own coun- try and of Normandy, it would not be difficult to find samples of workmanship equally light and elegant in the detail with the boasted fane of Strasburgh. It is certain, however, that no- thing can surpass it. The main body of the building is put together with an admirable sym- metry of proportion, precisely the merit of least frequent occurrence in Gothic architecture. To this it is indebted for its principal beauty as a whole. Connoisseurs, indeed, have measured and criticised, have found this too long, and that too short : but architectural beauty is made for the eye, and even in classical architecture, where all has been reduced to measurement, the rules of ST11ASBURGH. Vitruvius or Palladio themselves are good only as expressing in the language of art judgments which taste forms independent of rules. The harmony of proportions, and elegance of the workmanship, appear to still greater advantage in the spire, whose pinnacle is more than five hundred feet above the pavement, and whose mere elevation forms, in the eyes of most people, the only good thing about the cathedral. It has nothing uncommon in its general form. The massive base terminates just at the point where, to the eye, it would become too heavy for the elevation ; and is succeeded by the lofty slender pyramid, so delicately ribbed that it hardly seems to be supported, and bearing, almost to its pin- nacle, the profusion of Gothic ornament. Yet there is no superfluity or confusion of ornament about the edifice ; there is no crowding of figure upon figure, merely for the sake of having sculpture. With more, it would have approached the taw- dry and puerile style of the present day ; with less, it would have been as dead and heavy as the cathedral of Ulm, which, though exquisite in particular details of the sculpture, yet, with- out being more imposing, wants all the grace A 2 10 STRASBURGH. and elegance of the fabric of Strasburgh. Few things in art seem so unwilling to submit them- selves to good taste as the ornaments of Gothic architecture. How many imagine that they constitute the essential part of it ; that they are handsome things in themselves, which, in an hun- dred instances, they are not, and, therefore, the more of a good thing the better ; without re- garding any ulterior object, or suspecting that they have, or ought to have, some determinate relation to plan and proportion. In every town we ourselves have things which we facetiously denominate Gothic chapels, because they are covered with little pinnacles, and small curves, and are full of holes. The Gothic in small is fit only for the pastry cook, or the toy-shop. In the church of St Thomas, still devoted to the Protestant worship, is the monument erect- ed by Louis XV. to Marshal Saxe. It is the most celebrated production of Pigalle, and is a very fair specimen of the style of the French artists of the last century, in which Koubilliac has left us so many works marked with all its beauties and all its defects. The back-ground of the whole is a tall and broad 11 STRASBURGH. 11 pyramid of grey marble, set against the wall of the church. The pyramid terminates below in a few steps, on the lowest of which rests a sar- cophagus. The Marshal is in the act of descend- ing the steps towards the tomb. On the right, the symbolical animals of England, Holland, and Austria, are flying from him in dismay ; on the left, the banner of France is floating in triumph. The warrior's eye is fixed with an expression of tranquil contempt on a figure of Death who stands below, thrusting out his raw head and bony arms from beneath a shroud, holding up to the Marshal in one hand an hour-glass in which the sand has run out, and with the other opening the sarcophagus to receive him. A female figure, representing France, throws her- self between them, exerting herself at once to hold back the Marshal, and push away Death. On one side of the whole, a genius, according to the most approved recipe for monument making, weeps over the inverted torch, and, on the other, Hercules leans pouting on his club. All is in marble, and large as the life. The individual figures are of' moderate merit ; they are full of that exaggeration of feature and attitude of STRASBURGH. which the French artists have never yet got rid ; but the first impression of the whole composition is extremely striking, though the style is not sufficiently pure to make the impression lasting. It dazzles at first, and immediately fatigues. The figure of the Marshal himself has often been adduced as an example, to prove that sculpture can deal no less advantageously with the tight fantastic garments of modern times than with the loose drapery of antiquity ; but one cannot look at Marshal Saxe as he stands here, without wishing that the paludamenturn oc- cupied the place of the coat and waistcoat. There may be much industry and much skill of manipulation in hewing out accurately buttons And button-holes, and laces, and ruffles; but this is a merit of which no statuary, who knows the true province and feels the true dignity of his art, will boast ; for it lies in a species of imitation which requires manual dexterity rather than ge- nius, and has more in common with the carving of Dutch toys than with the divine art, whose proudest triumphs are achieved in creating hu- man forms. Measured by such a standard, old General Ziethen, who, with other heroes of the STRASBURGH. 13 Seven Years 1 War, frowns on the Wilhelms-Platss of Berlin in a hussar uniform wrought out in the most laborious and precise detail, would be, what many a Prussian holds it to be, the finest statue in the world. It is the business of sculpture to represent the human form, and every mode of dress, whether ancient or modern, is an obstacle in her way. But custom and propriety, which frequently compelled the ancient artists to adopt a covering, are still more tyrannical towards their modern followers- A naked Cicero would have been as little proper as a corsetted Venus, and a naked statesman or field-marshal of our own age would be more incongruous than either. Where dress, then, is unavoidable, the question seems just to be, what mode of attire trenches least on the peculiar province of the sculptor, and is most susceptible in itself of being worked into graceful forms ? Now the free and flow- ing dress of Athens or Rome was not only more graceful and noble in itself than the sharp an- gles, the stiff lines, the numerous joinings of our multifarious habiliments, but, in the hands of the sculptor, it was pliant as wax, to be moulded into any form which beauty or dignity might re- 14 STRASBUEGH. quire. But the artist who is to clothe a statue in a modern dress, has to work on much less manageable materials. His audacious hand must attempt no innovation on the received forms of buckram and broad cloth. In the dra- pery of his statue, if such an abuse of words may be tolerated, he must turn taste and genius out of doors, and work according to the mea- sures of some tailor of reputation.* * In few modern statues has the difficulty been so suc- cessfully surmounted as in Chantry's beautiful statue of the late Mr Homer. By avoiding everything like exag- geration of the particular parts, and softening them down to a degree which an artist of less taste would not have aimed at, he has identified, as far as might be, the dress with the form. The gown conceals the least poetical pe- culiarities, and is itself disposed in an arrangement ex- tremely simple and becoming. He has dispensed with the wig of a Chancery barrister, and who, that is not a disciple of Roubilliac, will not rejoice that he has done so ? The French artist executed the statue of President Forbes, in the hall of the Second Division of the Court of Session at Edinburgh, and bestowed on him the utmost plenitude of judicial curls and tippets. Chantry executed that of Pre- sident Blair, which adorns the hall of the First Division, clothed him in a more simple drapery, and left the lofty, THE RHINE. 15 Beyond the fortifications, there is still about a mile to the bank of the Rhine. The wooden bridge thrown across the river, though less in- geniously combined than the destroyed one of Constance, used to be reckoned the most stately structure of the kind in Europe. It is now use- less. In the campaigns which conducted the al- lies to Paris, great part of the bridge towards the German side was cut away, and has not yet been repaired. The communication is kept up by a bridge floated on boats, a little farther down the stream. This is reckoned altogether a more commodious structure. When the ice breaks up, part of the boats are cut away to give it free passage ; and though the communica- tion be thus partially interrupted for a day or two, yet, when the ice has once passed, in half an hour the bridge is again formed. If, on the other hand, the floating ice, which descends on this majestic river in huge masses and with ter- rific impetuosity, should carry away the wood- open brow unencumbered by the official mass of hair. To look at these two statues is sufficient of itself to deter- mine the comparative merits of these different styles. 16 THE RHINE. en piers of a bridge like the old one, the inter- ruption continues much longer, for the repairs are at once more tedious and expensive. It is for the same reason, as much as from the depth of the channel or the convenience of navigation, that all the bridges below this point, at Man- heim, Mayence, Coblentz, and Cologne, are con- structed on the same principle. The ice had broken up two days before, and was still hurry- ing downwards incessantly ; the bridge was cut away in the centre, and the passage was made in an ordinary boat, kept up against the current by running along a rope stretched across the open- ing in the bridge. A French customhouse guards the approach on the French side, but the search is brief and slight, for nobody minds what you carry out of the country. The play- ful quarrel about examining the baskets of a number of peasant girls returning from market in Strasburgh, seemed to be pertinaciously kept up by the officers, much more to have an oppor- tunity of ravishing illicit kisses than from any wish to detect illicit commodities. " Father Rhine" was passed safely and speedily. There comes a new country, new forms, new manners, KEHL. IT a new language ; but, amid all that is new, the old pest of police and customhouse-officers. You have just slipped from the hands of French Douaniers, and are caught in the fangs of Ger- man Mauthbeamten. Kehl, the first village on the German side, wears an open and regular appearance, which seldom recurs farther in the interior of the coun- try. Being a point of military importance from its situation in regard to Strasburgh, it had the fortune to be burned down, more than once, dur- ing the war, and has been rebuilt on a better plan. At first, long tracts of willow grounds, and occasional sandy flats, stretching on both sides of the river, mark the extent of its inunda- tions ; but, less than a couple of miles from the bank, the country is already one of the most beautiful in Europe. It is the opening of the plain of the Rhine, the Campagna d'oro of Ger- many every foot of which teems with popula- tion, and industry, and fertility, and, during two hundred years, has been fattened with the best blood of Europe. The Rhine is its uniform boundary on the west. On the east it is inclos- ed in the distance by irregular eminences, whose 18 PLAIN OF surface is the favourite abode of the grape, while their interior sends forth the mineral springs, which collect to Baden and Hueb all the fashion and disease of this part of Germany. Behind them tower the prouder and shaggy summits of the Hercynian or Black Forest. It has long since lost its extent of sixty days journey, as well as its Elks and Urochses. What remains is still gloomy with primeval oaks and pines ; but from their shades have been expelled even the banditti, who, by the received laws of romance, are as regularly the inhabitants of a German fo- rest as the dagger or the drug are the weapons of the Italian. Between these boundaries the plain runs along to the north, varying in breadth according as the hills press closer upon or retire farther from the river. The great road from Switzerland avoids the plain, running along the eminences which border it to the right. The champaign country, rivalling the plain of Tusca- ny, as seen from Fiesole, or that portion of Lom- bardy which stretches out beneath the Madon- na di San Luca at Bologna, lies below, and the eye never tires. The general character of the ob- jects, indeed, does not vary; it, is a perpetual THE RHINE. 19 succession of villages and small towns, lurking among vineyards, and corn-fields, and orchards; but, at every turn, they combine themselves in- to new groupes, or lie under new lights. Here a long stretch of the broad and glittering Rhine bursts into view, bounding the distant landscape like a silver girdle ; there his place is occupied by the remoter summits of the Vosges. Here you may linger among the cottages of Offenthal, whose vine still retains its character, and hangs its clusters round the window of the peasant ; or close by that little churchyard you may muse beneath the tree where Turenne fell on the last of his fields, and make a brief pilgrimage to the rustic chapel beneath whose altar the heart of the hero was deposited. What the Germans call a Diligence, or Post* wagen, dragging its slow length through this delicious scene, is a bad feature in the picture. Much as we laugh at the meagre cattle, the knotted rope-harness, and lumbering pace of the machines which bear the same name in France, the French have outstripped their less alert neighbours in everything that regards neatness, and comfort, and expedition. The German car- 20 PLAIN O? riage resembles the French one, but is still more clumsy and unwieldy. The luggage, which ge- nerally constitutes by far the greater part of the burden, (for your Diligence is a servant of all work, and takes a trunk just as cheerfully as a passenger,) is placed, not above, but in the rear. Behind the carriage a flooring , projects from above the axle of the hind wheels, equal, in length and breadth, to all the rest of the vehicle. On this is built up a castle of boxes and packag- es, that generally shoots out beyond the wheels, and towers far above the roof of the carriage. The whole weight is increased as much as pos- sible by the strong chains intended to secure the fortification from all attacks in the rear ; for the guard, like his French brother, will expose him- self neither to wind nor weather, but forthwith retires to doze in his cabriolet, leaving to its fate the edifice which has been reared with much labour and marvellous skill. Six passengers, if so many bold men can be found, are packed up inside ; two, more happy or less daring, take their place in the cabriolet with the guard. The breath of life is insipid to a German without the THE RHINE. 21 breath of his pipe ; the insides puff most genial- ly right into each other's faces. With such an addition to the ordinary mail-coach miseries of a low roof, a perpendicular back, legs suffering like a martyr's in the boots, and scandal- ously scanty air-holes, the Diligence becomes a very Black Hole. True, the police has directed its denunciations against smoking, and Meinherr the conducteur (he has no native appellation) is specially charged with their execution ; but Meinherr the conducteur, from the crav- ings of his own appetite, has a direct inte- rest in allowing them to sleep, and is often the very first man to propose putting them to rest. To this huge mass, this combination of stage-coach and carrier's cart, are yoked four meagre, ragged cattle, and the whole dash- es along, on the finest roads, at the rate of rather more than three English miles an hour, stoppages included. The matter of refreshments is con- ducted with a very philanthropical degree of leisure, and at every considerable town, a breach must be made in the luggage castle, and be built up again. Half a day's travelling in one 22 BADEN". > of these vehicles is enough to make a man loathe them all his lifetime.* It can only be ascribed to the amazing fertili- ty of this country that its population seem to have recovered so rapidly from the devastation with which the war visited them again and again. From Basle to Frankfort there is scarcely a field that has not been trodden down by contending armies. They are not wealthy, and would be found wanting if their practice in domestic com- forts were weighed against our own ideas ; but they exhibit, in full measure, the more indispen- sable possessions of industry and hilarity, a sim- ple and most affectionate disposition. The family of Baden has long filled a respectable rank among * In the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, the establish- ment of the new French mails has created some rivalry, or the government has been brought to bestir itself to faci- litate the means of communication in that commercial dis- trict of the kingdom. On the great road between Frank- fort and Cologne, a species of mail has been established, which they have dignified with the name of Schnellwa- gen, or Velocity Coach, because, by throwing off the car- rier's cart, it makes out between five and six miles an hour. BADEN. 28 the minor princes of Germany, as ruling with eco- nomy and kindness. It went by the side of that of Weimar in supporting the young genius of the country against the preposterous domination of French literature, and did not blush to call Klopstock to Carlsruhe as the ornament of its court. The present Grand Duke was among the first of the German princes to give his peo- ple a representative government, when the termi- nation of the war left him and them their own masters. On such a soil, and with a people so industrious and easily contented, a good govern- ment, well administered, should produce a rural population that would have no reason to envy any corner of Europe. The Grand Duke is a popular prince, particu- larly in the hereditary dominions of his house. It is in the Swabian part of his territories that he has found it most difficult to conciliate favour; not that he was undeserving of it, but because the Swabians could not easily throw off their heredita- ry attachment to the house of Hapsburgh. These hardy fatteners of snails and distillers of cherry water, a tribe, however, of whose intelligence their countrymen entertain so low an opinion, 24 BADEN. that, all over Germany, a piece of gross stupidi- ty is proverbially termed a Schwabenstreich, longed to return beneath the wing of the double eagle. During the first advance of the allies, when the Emperor and the Grand Duke were together at Freyberg, the former was actually receiving, in one room, an address from the Swabians, praying him to take them back under the imperial sceptre, while the latter, his host and their Sovereign, was under the same roof. The Emperor wept with them over old stories and old attachments, for there is not a more kind- hearted man in his empire ; but other views of policy were imperious, and they remained with their new master. This disposition, in fact, is said to have been part of the secret history of the constitution of Baden ; the Government resol- ved to bestow the boon to turn the popular opi- nion in its favour. Except some of the small capitals, which are light and open, the general character of the towns strewed round in all directions does not correspond with the beauty of the country. They are irregular, inconvenient, and gloomy. The inhabitants are content to creep through CARLSRtJHE, 25 dark, narrow streets during the day, if one spot be left open and planted with trees for their evening promenade. Carlsruhe, the capital of the Grand Duchy, besides being enlivened by the bustle and parade which the residence of a court in a small town always occasions, has a peculiar- ly rural appearance: it strikes one just as a large and very handsome country village. There has not been much taste shown in the poplar groves which surround it, and border, in long tedious lines, the roads that approach it. The poplar is not a tree to be planted in mas- ses ; even as forming an alley, it has no breadth of foliage, or depth of shade, to atone for its stiff, pyramidal, unvarying form. Carlsruhe is bu- ried among them, and they sink into utter in- significance when the eye, through the artificial openings, catches the masses of the Black Fo- rest in the back-ground. Without the presence of the court Carlsruhe would not exist. Its population has been creat- ed, and is supported only by the wants of the court, and the rank and wealth that always fol- low a court on business or pleasure. Gay and idle people form so large a proportion of the VOL. I. B ^b MAKHEIM. small whole, that poverty and misery do not easily come under the eye of the stranger. The first sight of Carlsruhe tells him it is a place of amusement and elegant enjoyment rather than of business ; he feels himself everywhere merely within the precincts of a palace ; nor, unless he penetrate into the debates of the chambers, will he soon discover that the more serious occupa- tions of life are much attended to. Beyond Carlsruhe the plain, for some miles, becomes broader ; but, in the neighbourhood of Heidelberg, a mountainous ridge, through whose vallies the Neckar finds its way, presses forward to the Rhine. Heidelberg rests on the last slope, and at the foot of the ridge ; corn and wine crowd upon each other along the Neckar, during all that remains of its course, to the walls of Manheim. Manheim itself is the most ma- thematically regular town in Europe, a mere collection of straight lines and parallelograms, every street and every mass of building like every other. It was not difficult to attain this uniformity in a town of twenty-five thousand in- habitants, but, besides being monotonous, it pro- duces confusion. One encounters more difficul- 10 MAKHEIM. 27 ty in finding his way through the streets of Man- heim than in much larger towns, which have not bowed the knee in such absolute subjection to a ground plan, and in which, though the whole be irregular, the parts are noticed and remem- bered for their own peculiarities. The Cicerones boast of one or two churches, which are very gaudy, and the palace, which is very large and heavy ; but the great charms of Manheim are due to nature. On the north it is skirted by the blue waters of the Neckar, which at Heidel- berg has quitted for ever its mountain gorge, and here pours itself, placid and slow, into the bosom of the Rhine. The Rhine itself rolls its ample stream on the west, washing the walls ; the plain beyond runs back from the left bank, disappearing at length in the shadow of the fo- rests and precipices of the Vosges. Except in the Rhelng-au itself, there are few spots on the Rhine where this imperial river makes so splendid an appearance the expanse of water, spread out like a mighty lake, its slow ma- jestic motion, its tinge of green, not deep enough to prevent the vivid reflection of the ram- parts and towers that bristle on the one bank, 28 MANHEIM and the cottages, and orchards, and vineyards, that stud the other. It is not wonderful that the coolness which lingers round his waters, even in the greatest heats of summer, should draw gay processions of strollers to the ramparts and bridge to enjoy the magnificent spectacle, or that they should proudly challenge Europe to equal their native stream. If Virgil had still to write, the Po would no longer be the " Rex fluviorum," even in Europe, for in every- thing but sky and classical association the Rhine is its superior. The artificial embankments of the Po, singular though they be as works of la- bour and skill, deform his beauty, and the sand with which he threatened to encroach on the Ad- riatic discolours his own waters. The Rhine that Virgil knew washed no vineyards, and re- flected no temples : he had heard of it only as a savage and unadorned stream, rolling itself through interminable woods, and guarding the haunts of barbarians who had checked the flight of the Roman eagle. The delights of the situation, and the plea- sures of the society, attract a number of resident strangers ; for here, too, as being the residence of MANHEIM. 29 the Markgravine Dowager, there is something of the parade and elegance of a court. Many of the sojourners are persons of literary habits, and the coteries of Manheim have gradually been acquiring a character for information and bon ton. There is a considerable number of Russians, particularly Livonians. The subjects of the 'Autocrat of all the Russias seem to have a natural fondness for nestling in every warm- er climate, or more civilized country, than their own. From Palermo to Brussels you find them, not travelling, but fixed, so long as they are allowed. These were the circumstances which made Kotzebue choose Manheim for his residence, when the notice excited by the surrep- titious publication of his unfortunate bulletin induced him to quit Weimar, and it was here, in a small house towards the Rhine, that he fell a victim to the fanaticism of Sand. I found the murderer, who had been executed shortly before, still the subject of general conversation. Though his deed, besides its moral turpitude, has done Germany much political mischief, the public feeling seemed to treat his memory with much indulgence. Most people, except the students, 30 MANHE1M. were liberal enough to acknowledge that Sand had done wrong in committing assassination, butthey did not at all regard him with disre- spect, much less with the abhorrence due to a murderer. The ladies were implacable in their resentment at his execution. They could easily forgive the necessity of cutting off his head, but they could not pardon the barbarity of cutting off, to prepare him for the block, the long dark locks which curled down over his shoulders, after the academical fashion. People found many things in his conduct and situation which conspired to make them regard him as an object of pity, sometimes of admiration, rather than of blame. Nobody regrets Kotzebue. To deny him, as many have done, all claims to talent and literary merit, argues sheer ignorance or stupidity ; but his talent could not redeem the imprudence of his conduct, and no man ever possessed in greater perfection the art of making enemies wherever he was placed. Every body believed, too, that Sand, however frightfully erroneous his ideas might be, acted from what he took to be a principle of public duty, and not to gratify any private interest. This feel- MANHEIM. 31 ing, joined to the patience and resolution with which he bore up under fourteen months of griev- ous bodily suffering, the kindliness of temper which he manifested towards every one else, and the intrepidity with which he submitted to the punishment of his crime, naturally procured him in Germany much sympathy and indul- gence. Such palliatingfeelings towards the per- petrator of such a deed are, no doubt, abundant- ly dangerous. If they pass the boundary by a single hairVbreadth, they become downright de- fenders of assassination, yet one cannot entirely rid himself of them. It is one of the greatest mischiefs of such an example, that it seduces weak heads and heated fancies into a ruinous coquetry with principles which make every man his neighbour's executioner. Still, it would be untrue to say that it was only his brother students who regarded Sand with these indul- gent eyes. To them, of course, "he appeared a martyr in a common cause. " I would not have told him to do it, 1 ' said a student of Heidel- berg to me, " but I would cheerfully have sha- ken hands with him after he did it." Even in the more grave and orderly classes of society, al- 32 HEIDELBERG. though his crime was never justified or applauded, I could seldom traceany inclination tospeak of him with much rigour. When the executioner had struck, the crowd rushed upon the scaffold, every one anxious to pick up a few scattered hairs, or dip a ribbon, a handkerchief, or a scrap of paper, in his blood. Splinters were chipped from the reeking block, and worn in medallions as his hair was in rings, false and revered as the reliques of a saint. To the students of Heidel- berg was ascribed the attempt to sow with For- get-me-not the field on which he was beheaded ; and which they have baptized by the name of Sandys Ascension-Meadow. Though punished as an homicide, he was laid in consecrated ground ; and, till measures were taken by the police to prevent it, fresh flowers and branches of weeping willow were nightly strewed, by unknown hands, on the murderer's grave. At Heidelberg, the university still flourishes, under the liberal administration of the house of Baden, and the student?, by far the most im- portant personages in the town, have their full share of the rawness, and rudeness, and caprices, which characterize, less or more, all the German HEIDELBERG. 38 universities. The shapeless coat the long hair the bare neck the huge shirt collar, falling back on the shoulders the affectedly careless, would-be-rakish air the total absence of all good breeding, announce, at once, the presence of the fraternity. But these evil spirits inhabit a paradise. The Neckar, though navigable for small craft, still retains all the freshness of a mountain stream. On its left bank, the town is huddled together at the foot of the rocks, plain, irregular, old-fashioned. The right bank glows with the vine, ripening beneath higher ridges of rock and wood, which shield it from the north. Behind, the prospect closes as the valley recedes along the windings of the river ; to the west, it opens out at once into the won- drous plain, and terminates only at the Rhine. The palace of the Electors of the Palatinate, di- lapidated by lightning, by war, and by time, frowns above the town. Fortunately it is a ruin. In the days of its perfect grandeur, a pile so huge and majestic, and, in many of its details, making fair pretensions to classical ar- chitecture, must have been out of place, and, if the expression may be used, out of keeping with 4 34 HEIDELBERG. the surrounding scenery. Gothic towers and loop-holed battlements may be perched on the summit of a precipice, or stuck on the side of a narrow and romantic valley ; but more ample space, and features more imposing than the merely picturesque, are the fitting accompani- ments of such a pile as the Castle of Heidelberg must have been, when its halls glittered with the granite columns which had once adorned the favourite palace of Charlemagne. If this was a defect, time and devastation have remedied it superbly ; whatever the castle may have been, the ruin is in perfect harmony with the scene, and certainly deserves its reputation as the most imposing and majestic in Europe. The walls, of a solidity that seemed to rival the rock on which they were founded, lie in the ditches, in confused masses, " like fragments of a former world." Among the stately reliques of the hall of the knights, there are still many rich remains of the magnificence which had rendered it the boast of Germany ; and, amid the smoke which pollutes its walls, one loves to imagine he can trace the course of the flash that lighted up the conflagration. DARMSTADT. 35 The humblest part of the whole, the cellars, have alone escaped destruction, for they are hewn out in the living rock, and, if old tales may be believed, extend far beneath the town. In one of them is still preserved the famed Hei- delberg tun, that contains I know not how ma- ny pipes of wine. Alas ! it is parched and emp- ty, as eloquent a memento of mortal vicissitudes as the ruined castle. When the halls and courts above resounded with the revelry of knightly banquets and feudal retainers, to fill it was a jubilee, and to drain it an amusement. The family of the Palatinate is on the throne of Bavaria, the castle is in ruins, and the tun is empty. It lives only in the drinking songs of the students, and as a lion for the stranger. At Darmstadt, another small, handsome town, the capital of the Grand Duchy of the same name, and, like Carlsruhe, entirely dependent on the residence of the court, I saw nothing but a very splendid theatre, furnished with an ex- cellent orchestra, and over-crowded with specta- tors, the greater part of whom had come up from Frankfort for the sake of Sacchini's QEdi- pus. The opera is the ruling passion of the 36 FRANKFORT. Grand Duke, but his subjects do not willingly see so much money spent on it by a prince who ranks so low among the " German gentles. 11 He has the best orchestra between Basle and Brus- sels, and the only fortification in his dominions is garrisoned by foreign troops. When, after long reluctance, he at length convoked a repre- sentative body under a new constitution, the first thing the representatives did was to quarrel with it as too antiquated and impotent. He trembled for the orchestra, became good natured, yielded them more liberal terms, and, as they left his opera untouched, there have been no more squabbles. A farther drive of fourteen miles, through a country more sandy than any part of the plain on the Upper Rhine, leads to the banks of the Main ; the well-bred listlessness and courtly de- meanour of Darmstadt are exchanged for the noise and bustle of Frankfort. Long before reaching the city, the increasing host of carriages and waggons announced the vicinity of this great emporium. On passing the bridge across the Main, the confusion became inextricable, for it was the Michaelmas Fair. The narrow streets, FRANKFORT. 37 sunk between tall, old-fashioned piles of build- ing, seemed too small for the busy crowd that swarmed through them, examining and bargain- ing about all the productions of Europe in all its languages. The outside walls of the shops, and, in many instances, of the first floors, were entirely covered with large pieces of cloth, ge- nerally of some glaring colour, proclaiming the name and wares of the foreigner who had there pitched his tent, in French and Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Bohemian, rarely English, very often Hebrew. The last, however, being a somewhat inconvenient language for sign-posts, was generally accompanied by a trans- lation in a known tongue. Not only the public squares, but every spot that could be protected against the encroachments of wheels and horses, groaned beneath gaudy and ample booths, which displayed, in the most outre juxta-position, all that convenience or luxury has ever invented, from wooden platters, Manchester cottons, or Vienna pipe-heads, to the bijouterie of the Pa- lais Royal or the china of Meissen, silks from Lyons, or chandeliers from the mountains of Bohemia. Every fair presents, on a smaller 38 FRANKFORT. scale, the same variety and confusion ; but the assemblage of men from all quarters of the globe, and these, too, men of business, in search of bar- gains, not amusement, that is collected in the streets and inns of Frankfort, during the fair, is to be found no where else, except, perhaps, in Leipzig on a similar occasion. If the traveller who happens to arrive at this most unfavourable of all seasons for the mere traveller can rest satisfied with a cellar or a gar- ret, the hotels are not the least animated part of the whole. Butler and cook have been prepar- ing during weeks for the campaign ; larder and servants are put upon a war establishment ; the large hall, reserved in general for civic feasts or civic balls, is thrown open for the daily table d'hote. In one hotel, above a hundred and fifty persons daily surrounded the table, chattering all languages " from Indus to the pole." The newly decked walls displayed in fresco all the famed landscapes of the Rhine, from Man- heim to Cologne ; the stuccoed ceiling and gilt cornices far outshone in splendour the hall on the opposite side of the way, in which the heads of the Holy Roman Empire used to be elected FRANKFORT. 39 and anointed. From a gallery at either end, a full orchestra accompanied each morsel of sau- sage with a sounding march, or, when Hock and Riidesheimer began to glow in the veins, attun- ed the company, by repeated waltzes, to the amusements of the evening. The merchants, who flock down from every quarter, are not al- ways allowed to make their journey alone. Their wives and daughters know full well that busi- ness is not the sole occupation of a Frankfort fair ; that, if there be bills and balances for the gentlemen, there are balls, and plays, and con- certs for the ladies, and that a gentleman, on such occasions, is never so safe as when he has his own ladies by his side. They long as ear- nestly for a temporary sojourn in Frankfort as for a season at Spa or Baden. Though, in ge- neral, neither well informed nor elegantly bred, they are pretty, affable, willing to be amused ; they give variety to the promenades, and chit- chat to the table. Except in the peculiarities of the fair, there is nothing to distinguish Frankfort from a hundred other large cities. It stretches chiefly along the right bank of the Main, which is discoloured by 40 FRANKFORT. the pollutions of the city, and certainly is not adorned by the clumsy, shapeless things, called ships, which minister to its commerce. In fact, a river of but moderate size always loses its beau- ty in passing or traversing a large city. Below the town, it waters a rural, but somewhat tame district, as it creeps on to the Rhine by the vineyards of Hocheim. The city itself is gene- rally old ; much of it is crazy. There is only one good street in it, the Zeil, and great part of the good houses in that street are inns. Among them is the one where Voltaire was seized, on the requisition of the Prussian resident, when flying from the wrath of the monarch to whom he had so long " washed dirty linen." The growing wealth of Frankfort loves to settle out- side of the walls ; for the country, in the imme- diate vicinity, whether up the Main, or back in the vallies of the Taunus, is so rich in natural embellishments, that the affluent naturally prefer it as a residence to the gloom of the town. A number of delightful villas stud the slopes and crown the summit of the Miihlberg, a mode- rate eminence, which stretches along the opposite bank of the Main, equally celebrated for the FRANKFORT. 41 wine and the prospect which it yields. There, reposing from the calculations of the counting- house, the merchant contemplates below, in silent rapture, the passage of sail and waggon that bring the materials of his wealth, and the pro- gress of the vines that are to renew the stores of his cellar. The cathedral, a work of the fourteenth cen- tury, is still less interesting in itself, than for its antiquity ; the unfinished tower, the unfinished labour of a whole century, sits heavy on the building. The Romer, or Roman, a building now used for the public offices, is supposed to derive its name from having been, if not built, at least used as a warehouse by Lombard mer- chants in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while Venice still distributed the productions of the East into the North. It was afterwards ap- plied to a more noble purpose, which alone gives it any interest ; within its walls the German Emperors were elected and crowned. There is still preserved, as a solitary remnant of majes- ty, a copy of the Golden Bull, the document that determined the rights of prince and subject in an empire anomalous while it endured, and 42 FRANKFORT. not regretted now that it is gone. The cornice above the crimson tapestry, with which the elec- tion chamber is entirely hung, has been allowed to retain the armorial bearings of the electors, and they now witness the deliberations of the Senate of Frankfort. The hall where the em- perors were crowned can never have been wor- thy of so august a ceremony. A city where every man and every moment is devoted to money-making is not the favourite abode of the arts, even though it be decorated with the epithet of free. Frankfort, indeed, pos- sesses a picture gallery, but I saw little in it worth seeing again. The magnificent legacy of a banker who, some years ago, bequeathed a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds, for the encouragement of the arts, and the support of young artists, will probably produce, as similar eleemosynary institutions commonly have done, an abundant crop of mediocrity. In the sub- urban gardens of the wealthiest among the mer- chants is the masterpiece of Dannecker, a sculptor of Wirtemberg, Ariadne on a leopard. The figure is well cut, but the attitude is un- pleasant ; she is too nicely and anxiously balan- FRANKFORT. 4tf ced on the back of the animal, like a timorous rope-dancer. Never was sculptor so unfortu- nate in his marble. The Goddess of Naxos looks as if she had been hewn out of old Stilton cheese ; her naked body is covered with blue spots and blue streaks, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. The citizens have long wished to erect a monument to their great townsman, Gothe ; but the opposition made to it, even from the press, (for Gothe has many de- tractors) seems to have convinced them of the propriety of deferring it, at least, till the patri- arch be dead ; and few men have outlived so many admirers. Frankfort, in consequence of her commercial relations, is so thoroughly under foreign influ- ence, and so polluted by a mixture of all foreign manners, that her population can hardly be said to have a character of their own, except what consists in a love to make money in every ima- ginable way. Even the multifarious connections with all ends of the earth, which have made her citizens in a manner citizens of the world, have unfitted them to be German citizens ; for they judge of the happiness of mankind by the rate 44 FRANKFORT. of exchange, and the price of wine. Let no one hastily condemn the worthy citizens of Frank- fort for thus forgetting, in the pursuits of the merchant and money speculator, what the politi- cian might, perhaps, hold to be the interest of their common country ; or, at least, before pro- nouncing his doom on their imagined selfishness, let him study the port of London, or Liverpool, or Bristol, and discover, if he can, a purer foun- dation for English mercantile patriotism. Of the fifty thousand inhabitants who form the population of Frankfort, about seven thou- sand are Jews. Perhaps they might have been expected to increase more rapidly in a city whose favourite pursuits are so congenial to the traf- ficking spirit of Israel, while its constitution gave them a toleration in religion, and security of property, which they obtained only at a much later period from more powerful masters. They are noisome in more senses than one. They in- habit chiefly one quarter of the town, which, though no longer walled in, as it once was, to se- parate them from the rest of the community, re- pels the Christian intruder, at every step, with filth much too disgusting to be particularized. FfcANKFOttl. 4 In the driving of their traffic they are importu- nate as Italian beggars. Laying in wait in his little dark shop, or little tattered booth, or, if these be buried in some obscure and sickening alley, prowling at the corner where it joins some more frequented street, the Jew darts out on every passenger of promise. He seems to pos- sess a peculiar talent at discovering, even in the Babel of Frankfort, the country of the person whom he addresses, and seldom fails to hit the right language. Unless thrown off at once, he sticks to you through half a street, whispering the praises of his wares mingled with your own; for, curving the spare, insignificant body into obsequiousness, and throwing into the twinkling gray eye as much condescension as its keenly expressed love of gain will admit, he conducts the whole oration as if he were sacrificing him- self to do you a favour of which nobody must know. When all the usual recommendations of great bargains fail, he generally finishes the cli- max with " On my soul and conscience, Sir, they are genuine smuggled goods." It seems to be the lot of the Jew to make him- self singular even in trades which he drives in 46 FRANKFORT. common with Christians, much more palpably than he differs from them in their religious faith. In a Protestant country a Catholic is not known, nor in a Catholic country a Protestant, till you open his prayer-book, or follow him into his church ; but the peculiarities which keep the Jew separate from the world belong to every -day life. It is true, that, all over Europe, indivi- duals are to be found who seldom repair to the synagogue, and have overcome the terrors of barbers and bacon ; but these are regarded in heart, by their more orthodox brethren, as the freethinkers and backsliders of the tribes of Is- rael, whose sinful compliances must exclude them from the church triumphant, though the ungodly portion of mammon, which they have contrived to amass, may render it prudent to re- tain them nominally within the pale of the com- munion below. The peculiarities of the general mass form a lasting wall of partition between them and their Christian neighbours. In his modes of appellation, in his meats, in his amuse- ments, the Jew is a separatist from the world, uniting himself to a solitary community, not on- ly in his religious faith, which no one minds, FRANKFORT. 47 but in matters which enter into the spirit, and descend to the details of ordinary life. Whether you dine, or pray, or converse, or correspond with a pure and conscientious Jew, some pecu- liarity forces upon your notice, that he is not one of the people ; and in these, more than in the pe- culiarities of their religious creed, rests the exe- cution of the curse, which still keeps the de- scendants of Israel a distinct and despised peo- ple among the Gentile nations. As a recompence for having lost the elections and coronations of the emperors, Frankfort was made the seat of the Germanic Diet, and would boast of being the seat of governmentof the whole Germanic body, if the Diet were a government. But, except that the presence of the deputies and foreign ministers increases the number of dinners and carriages in Frankfort, the Germans main- tain, that the confederation, in which they have been bound, serves no one purpose of a govern- ment, but is merely a clumsy and expensive in- strument, to enable Austria and Prussia to go- vern all Germany. The thing looks well enough on paper, they say, for the votes appear to be distributed according to the population of the 48 FHANKFORT. different states; but in its working it manifests only the dictatorial preponderance of powers which they will not acknowledge to be German in point of interest, and only partially German even in point of territory. One-third of the votes, in the ordinary meetings, belong to Austria, Prussia, England, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The small powers, who form the majority with half and quarter votes, or, as in one case, with the sixth part of a vote, are entirely dependent on these greater states. These greater states, though possessing territories in Germany, are es- sentially foreign in their strength and interests, and, enjoying an irresistible influence in the Diet, they have handed over the government of Germany to Austria and Prussia ; while Prussia, again, seems to have thrown herself into the arms of Russia, and Austria has been for centuries the bigotted opponentof every thing which might tend to render Germany independent of the house of Hapsburgh. The Emperor Francis did well not to labour after the restoration of the empire ; for, instead of remaining the limited and elective head of a disjointed monarchy, he has become the hereditary dictator of a submissive confede- FRANKFORT. 49 ration ; instead of negotiating at Ratisbonne, he can command at Frankfort. Thus the German- ic Diet is essentially the representative, not of German, but of foreign interests, guided by po- tentates who claim a voice in its measures in vir- tue of a portion of their territories, and then throw in upon its deliberations the whole weight of their preponderating political and military influence, to guard their own foreign interests, and effectuate schemes of policy, which have no relation to the union, or independence, or wel- fare of Germany. The confederation provides, to be sure, a pub- lic treasury and a common army for the defence of the country, but of what use are a treasury and army which stand at the disposal of foreign influence ? Moreover, it does not leave the states which compose it even political independence among themselves, and the quiet administration of their internal concerns. It seems to be the right of a sovereign prince to give his subjects as popular institutions as he may think proper ; but the sovereign princes of Germany must pre- viously obtain, through the medium of the Diet, the permission of the courts of Vienna and Ber- VOL. i. c 50 FRANKFORT. lin. On this body they are dependent for the degree in which they shall descend from the old arbitrary prerogative ; for the confederation, while it thus lops off the most unquestionable rights of sovereign states, has formally declared, with ridiculous inconsistency, that it can contain only sovereign princes and all the world knows what a sovereign prince means in the language of Vienna. Freedom of discussion among them- selves, and the power of communicating their deliberations to those for whom they legislate, seem to be inseparable from the useful existence of a legislative body ; but, by the provisions of the confederation, this eternal minor placed un- der the tutelage of foreign powers, the Diet is bound to take care, that neither the discussions in such assemblies themselves, where they exist by sufferance, nor their publication through the press, shall endanger the tranquillity of Ger- many and all the world knows by what stand- ard Prince Metternich measures public tranquil- lity. Even in the states where representative go- vernments have been established, the confedera- tion deprives them of ail power in the most im- FRANKFORT. 51 portant questions that can be put to a nation, those of peace and war ; for it has expressly pro- vided, that no constitution shall be allowed to impede a prince, who belongs to the confedera- tion, in the performance of the duties which the Diet may think proper to impose upon him. Whether Bavaria or Wirtemberg, for example, shall go to war, is not in every case a question for her own king and parliament, but for the Prussian and Austrian envoys at Frankfort. If the powers which, though essentially foreign, are preponderating, find it useful to employ the money and arms of the Germanic body, the con- stitution at home is virtually suspended. The Diet is despotic in legislative, and executive, and judicial authority ; and, if any part of the terri- tory included in the confederation be attacked, the whole body is ipso facto in a state of war. France quarrels with Austria and the Nether- lands ; she attacks the former in Italy, and the latter in the duchy of Luxembourg, which is a part of the confederation ; the whole Germanic body must fly to arms, for the territory of the confederation is attacked. Although Bavaria, for instance, should have no more interest in thequar- 52 FRANKFORT. rel than his Majesty of Otaheite, she must sub- rait to the. misery and extravagance of war, as if an enemy stood on the banks of her own Iser. In vain may her parliament resolve for peace, and refuse to vote either men or money ; it is the duty of their king to go to war for the in- violability of this ricketty and heterogeneous confederation. The decision belongs, not to the monarch and representatives of the Bavarian people, but to the diplomatists of Frankfort, and if the former be backward, a hundred thousand Austrians can speedily supply the place of tax- gatherers and recruiting-officers. These are the sentiments which are heard every where in Germany ; and, making every allowance for national partialities, there certain- ly is a great deal of truth in them. The Ger- manic confederation has nothing equal in it ; it is ruled by foreigners, for even the votes of Ha- nover obey the ministry of England. Weimar, whose liberal institutions and free press had been guaranteed by this very diet, was compelled to violate it, and submit to a censorship, at the will of a congress of ministers, whom Germany can justly call foreign, assembled at Carlsbad. If I FRANKFORT. 53 observed rightly, the preponderance of Austria is peculiarly grating to the powers more proper- ly German. They know that Austria is the very last among them which can pretend to be reckon- ed a pure German state ; the greatest part of her population does not even speak the language ; they are at least her equals in military fame, and have far outstripped her in all the arts of peace, It is not wonderful they should feel degraded at seeing their common country subjected to the domination of a power in which they find so lit- tle to love or respect. If you wish to know the politics of the confederation, say the Germans, you must inquire, riot at Frankfort, but at Vienna or Berlin. One thing is certain, viz. that the southern states, which have adopted po- pular institutions, musthang together in good and evil report. It is only in a determined spirit of union, and in the honest support of Hanover, that Bavaria, and Wirtemberg, and Baden, can be safe. The " delenda est Carthago" of Cato was much less necessary in Rome, than " ca- venda est Austria" is in Munich, and Stuttgard, and Hanover. The Diet is held to be utterly impotent even 5 FRANKFORT. in its most important duty, the preservation of that equality among its own members, without which a confederation is one of the most into- lerable forms of oppression. The King of Prus- sia chose to lay taxes, as was alleged, on the sub- jects of his neighbour the Duke of Anhalt Co- then, both of them members of the confedera- tion. The little duke brought his action be- fore the Diet against the great king. All Ger- many was on tiptoe expectation to see how the supreme government would discharge its duty. The supreme government was much averse to show the nakedness of its impotency in a dispute where all was strength on the one side, and all weakness on the other, and contrived to have the case settled out of court ; a phrase by no means out of place, for the form and nomen- clature of proceeding in the supreme executive government of Germany would be intelligible only in the Court of Chancery, or, still more, in the Scottish Court of Session. Nothing is ma- naged without whole reams of petitions, and an- swers, and replies, and duplies. A growler of Berlin was asked, ' what is the Diet about ?"* SELIGEXSTADT. 55 " Of course, examining the stationer's accounts," was the reply. But these are dry matters. It will be more amusing to follow the course of the Main, a dozen miles upwards from Frankfort, to " the Abode of Bliss," (Seligenstadt,) a small village which, close on the bank of the river, peeps forth from a decaying forest. It has its name from having witnessed the loves, as it still preserves the remains, of Eginhard and Emma. A scanty ruin called the Red Tower, is still pointed out as hav- ing been part of the original residence of the lo- vers, after Charlemagne prudently consented to save the honour of his daughter, by giving her to the aspiring secretary. Eginhard built a church on the spot, and stored it with reliques. The peasantry, having forgotten the names, and never known the history, have a version of their own. According to their legend, the daughter of an emperor who was celebrating his Christ- mas holidays at Frankfort, (and one of them told me his name was Emperor Nero,) fell in love with a huntsman of her father's train. She fled with her lover, as young ladies will do now and then, when papas look sour and young gen- 56 SELIGEUSTADT. tlernen look sweet. They found refuge and concealment in the forest, an outskirt of the Spes- sart, which, though now so much thinned, in those days spread its oaks far and wide over the country. They built themselves a hut, and, of course, lived happily. The young man was expert and industrious as a deer stealer; the lady boasted acquirements in cookery which subsequently were turned to excellent account. Years pass away ; the emperor happens to hunt again in the forest; overcome by hunger, fa- tigue, and a long chace, he stumbles, with his suite, on the solitary cottage, arid asks a dinner. The confounded inmates prepare to set before him the only repast their poverty affords, veni- son poached in his own forest. The emperor did not recognize his lost daughter in the more womanly form and rustic disguise of the hostess ; but the daughter recognized her father, and, as woman's wit knows no ebb, served up to his majesty a dish which she knew to have been his favourite, and of which he had never eaten ex- cept when it was prepared by her own skilful hands. Nero has scarcely tasted of the dish which he has wanted so long, when he breaks SELIGENSTADT. 57 forth into lamentations over the daughter whom he has lost just as long, and anxiously interro- gates his young hostess from whom she had learned cookery. The runaway and her hun- ter fall at his feet : Emperor Nero was a kind- hearted old man ; all is forgiven ; he names the spot the Abode of Bliss, in commemoration at once of his dinner and his daughter, carries the pair to his palace, and till his dying day eats of his favourite meal as often as he chooses. The lovers built a church where their hut had stood, and were buried together within its walls. Such is the tradition of the Franconian pea- sant. There is no doubt that the church was built, if not in the reign, yet shortly after the death of Charlemagne ; but it is just as little doubtful that, in its present form, it belongs to a much later age. What is called modern taste has been guilty of an unpardonable breach of good taste. The bones of Eginhard and his Emma reposed, as they ought to have done, in a mas- sy antique sarcophagus on an antique monu- ment. Some ruthless stone-hewer has been al- lowed to unhouse the ashes of the lovers from their venerable abode, and inclose them in a new c 2 58 SELIGENSTADT. shining, toy-shop chest. Theseare men who would set " Margaret's Ghost 1 " to the air of " Pray, Goody," and dash the wall-flower from a ruin to plant tulips in its stead. This Abode of Bliss boasts another species of beatitude. It is a frontier village of the duchy of Darmstadt towards Bavaria, and the traveller who passes the confines for the first time must submit to a Bacchanalian ceremony. It was here that, in the olden time, the merchants com- ing to the fair from East, and North, and South, used to assemble. Here they were accustomed to drink deep congratulations on the journey they had accomplished in safety, and good wish- es to the approaching fair ; and from hence they were conducted in triumph into the city by the town guards of Frankfort. They had procured a huge wooden ladle ; the handle depends from a wooden chain about three feet long; ladle and chain are cut out of the same piece of wood, a sample of early Niirnberg workmanship. This re- lique is religiously preserved in an inn at Seligen- stadt. Every traveller who passes the frontier for the first time must drain the ladle, brimful of wine, (it contains a bottle,) at one draught. This SELIGENSTADT. 59 is the strict rule ; but, in general, he can es- cape without getting drunk, by promising the bystanders the remainder of the bottle. His name is then enrolled in an Album which has now reached the third folio volume, and contains the names of most crowned heads in Europe during the last two hundred years. 60 WEIMAR. CHAPTER II. WEIMAR. Klein ist unter den Fiirsten Germaniens freylich der meine, Kurz und schmal 1st sein Land, massig nur was er vermag. Aber so wende nach innen, so wende nach aussen die Krafte Jeder, da war ein Fest Deutscher mit Ueutscher zu seyn. Gothr. As the traveller proceeds northward from Frankfort towards Saxony, the vine-covered hills of the Main speedily disappear to give place to the Thuringian Forest, which still re- tains its name, though cultivation has stripped much of it of its honours. The country which it covered forms a succession of low rounded ridges, which inclose broad valleys swarming with a most industrious population. Except to- wards Cassel, where many ridges still retain their covering of beeches, the corn-field and or- 4 WEIMAR. 61 chard have only allowed an occasional tuft to re- main round the cottages for shelter, or to crown the brow of the hill to supply fuel. To the ter- ritory of Cassel succeeds part of the Grand Duchy of Weimar, for, between the Thurin- gian forest and the foot of Erzgebirge, nestles a crowd of the small princes who, by family in- fluence, or political services, have saved their in- significant independence. To a few miles of Weimar succeed a few miles of Gotha ; these are followed by a slip of Prussia, and the Prus- sian fortress Erfurth ; you are scarcely out of the reach of the cannon, when you are out of the territory, and find yourself again in the domi- nions of the Grand Duke of Saxe- Weimar. Weimar, the capital of a state whose whole population does not exceed two hundred thou- sand souls, scarcely deserves the name of a town. The inhabitants, vain as they are of its well earn- ed reputation as the German Athens, take a pride in having it considered merely as a large village. Neither nature nor art has done any- thing to beautify it ; there is scarcely a straight street, nor, excepting the palace, and the build- ing in which parliament assembles, is there a 62 WEIMAR. large house in the whole town. In three min- utes a person can be as completely in the coun- try as if he were twenty miles removed. The palace is imposing only from its extent, and is still unfinished ; for the Grand Duke, having made as much of it habitable as was required for his own court and the family of his eldest son, is too economical with the money of his subjects to hasten the completion of his palace, before his little territory shall have recovered from the misery and exhaustion which began with the battle of Jena, and terminated only after the victory at Leipzig. The Ilm, a narrow muddy stream, creeps past the town. Along the river woods have been planted, walks laid out, rocks hewn into the per- pendicular where they were to be found, and plastered up into monticules where they were not to be found, all to form a park, or, as they often style it, an English garden. In the de- tail of ornament, the wits of Weimar have fallen into some littlenesses too trifling perhaps to be noticed, were it not that here we expect to find every thing correct in matters of taste, because Weimar has been the nurse of the taste of Ger- 10 WEIMAR. 63 many. It is quite allowable, for instance, to erect an altar in a shady corner, and inscribe it GENIO LOCI ; but though a serpent came forth from be- neath the altar on which ^Eneas was sacrificing to the manes of his father, and ate up the cakes, that is no good reason why a stone snake should wind himself round the altar of the Genius of the English garden of Weimar, and bite into a stone roll laid for him on the top. It is not in Weimar that the gaiety, or the loud and loose pleasures of a capital are to be sought ; there are too few idlepeople, and too little wealth, for frivolous dissipation. Without either spies or police, the smallness of the town and the mode of life place every one under the no- tice of the court, and the court has never al- lowed its literary elegance to be stained by ex- travagant parade, or licentiousness of conduct. The nobility, though sufficiently numerous for the population, are persons of but moderate for- tunes ; many of them would find it difficult to play their part, frugal and regular as the mode of life is, were they not engaged in the service of the government in some capacity or another, as ministers, counsellors, judges, or chamber- 64 WEIMAR. lains. There is not much dissoluteness to be feared where it is necessary to climb an outside stair to the routs of a minister, and a lord of the bedchamber gives, in a third floor, parties which are honoured with the presence even of princes. The man of pleasure would find Weimar dull. The forenoon is devoted to business ; even the straggling few who have nothing to do would be ashamed to show themselves idle, till the ap- proach of an early dinner hour justifies a walk in the park, or a ride to Belvedere. At six o'clock every one hies to the theatre, which is just a large family meeting, excepting that the Grand Ducal personages sit in a separate box. The performance closes about nine o'clock, and it is expected that by ten every household shall be sound asleep, or, at least, soberly within its own walls for the night. It is perhaps an evil in these small capitals that the court, like Aaron's serpent, swallows up every other species of so- ciety ; but at Weimar this is less to be regretted, because the court parties have less parade and formality than are frequently to be found in those of private noblemen in London or Paris : "WEIMAR. 65 it is merely the best bred, and best informed so- ciety of the place. The Grand Duke is the most popular prince in Europe, and no prince could better deserve the attachment which his people lavish upon him. We have long been accustomed to laugh at the pride and poverty of petty German princes ; but nothing can give a higher idea of the respectabi- lity which so small a people may assume, and the quantity of happiness which one of these in- significant monarchs may diffuse around him, than the example of this little state, with a prince like the present Grand Duke at its head. The mere pride of sovereignty, frequently most pro- minent where there is only the title to justify it, is unknown to him ; he is the most affable man in his dominions, not simply with the condescen- sion which any prince can learn to practise as a useful quality, but from goodness of heart. His talents are far above mediocrity ; no prince could be less attached to the practices of arbitrary power, while his activity, and the conscientious- ness with which he holds himself bound to watch over the welfare of his handful of subjects, have never allowed him to be blindly guided bj DO WEIMAR. ministers. Much of his reign has fallen in evil times. He saw his principality overrun with greater devastation than had visited it since the Thirty Years' War ; but in every vicissitude he knew how to command the respect even of the conqueror, and to strengthen himself more firm- ly in the affections of his subjects. During the whole of his long reign, the conscientious ad- ministration of the public money, anxiety for the impartiality of justice, the instant and sincere attention given to every measure of public bene- fit, the ear and hand always open to relieve in- dividual misfortune, the efforts which he has made to elevate the political character of his peo- ple, crowned by the voluntary introduction of a representative government, have rendered the Grand Duke of Weimar the most popular prince in Germany among his own subjects, and ought to make him rank among the most re- spectable in the eyes of foreigners, so far as re- spectability is to be measured by personal merit, not by square miles of territory, or millions of revenue. His people likewise justly regard him as hav- ing raised their small state to an eminence from WEIMAR. 67 which its geographical and political insignifi- cance seemed to have excluded it. Educated by Wieland, he grew up for the arts, just as the li- terature of Germany was beginning to triumph over the obstacles which the indifference of the people, and the naturalization of French litera- ture, favoured by such prejudices as those of Frederick the Great, had thrown in its way. He drew to his court the most distinguished among the rising genuises of the country ; he lov- ed their arts, he could estimate their talents, and lie lived among them as friends. In the middle of the last century, Germany could scarcely boast of possessing a national literature; her very language, reckoned unfit for the higher pro- ductions of genius, was banished from cultivated society and elegant literature : at the beginning of the present, there were few departments in which Germany could not vie with her most po- lished neighbours. It was Weimar that took the lead in working out this great change. To say nothing of lesser worthies, Wieland and Schiller, Gothe and Herder, are names which have gain- ed immortality for themselves, and founded the reputation of their country among foreigners. 68 WEIMAR. While they were still all alive, and celebrated in Weimar, their noctes ccenasque deorum, the court was a revival of that of Ferrara under Alphon- so ; and here, too, as there, a princely female was the centre round which the lights of litera- ture revolved. The Duchess Amalia, the mo- ther of the present Grand Duke, found herself a widow almost at the opening of her youth. She devoted herself to the education of her two infant sons; she had sufficient taste and strength of mind to throw off the prejudices which were weighing down the native genius of the country, and she sought the consolation of her long widowhood in the intercourse of men of talent, and the cultivation of the arts. Wieland was invited to Weimar to conduct the education of her eldest son, who, trained under such a tutor, and by the example of such a mother, early im- bibed the same attachment to genius, and the enjoyments which it affords. If he could not render Weimar the seat of German politics or German industry, he could render it the abode of German genius. While the treasures of more weighty potentates were insufficient to meet the necessity of their political relations, his confined WEIMAR. 69 revenues could give independence and careless leisure to the men who were gaining for Ger- many its intellectual reputation. The cultivated understanding and natural goodness of their pro- tector secured them against the mortifications to which genius is so often exposed by the pride of patronage. They were his friends and compa- nions. Schiller would not have endured the caprices of Frederick for a day ; Gothe would have pined at the court of an emperor who could publicly tell the teachers of a public seminary, " I want no learned men, I need no learned men," Napoleon conferred the cross of the Le- gion of Honour on Gothe and Wieland. He certainly had never read a syllable which either of them has written, but it was, at least, an ho- nour paid to men of splendid and acknowledged genius. It was fortunate for Weimar, that the talent assembled within it took a direction which threw off, at once, the long endured reproach, that Germany could produce minds only fitted to compile dry chronicles, or plod on in the scien- ces. The wit and vanity of the French, aided by the melancholy blindness of some German 70 WEIMAR. princes, had spread this belief over Europe. It is not difficult to conceive that Voltaire should have treated Germany as the abode of common- place learning, where the endless repetition of known facts or old doctrines, in new compends, and compilations, seemed to argue an incapacity of original thinking ; but it is more difficult to conceive that a monarch like Frederick, who possessed some literary talent himself, and affect- ed a devoted attachment to literary merit, should have adopted so mistaken an opinion of a coun- try which he must have known so much better than his Gallic retinue. Yet he had taken up this belief in its most prejudiced form. Instead of cherishing the German genius that was al- ready preparing to give the lie to the wits of France, he amused himself with railing at her language, laughing at ihegelehrte Dunlcelheit, or " learned obscurity"" of her learned men, and proscribing from his conversation and his library every thing that was not French, except the re- ports of his ministers, and the muster-rolls of his army. The delirium spread fo less important princes, and caught all the upper ranks of society. The native genius of the country, scarcely ven- WEIMAB. 71 turing to claim toleration, wandered forth in ex- ile to the mountains of Switzerland. On the banks of the lake of Zurich, where a small so- ciety of literati had assembled, Wieland follow- ed, unknown and unnoticed, the pursuits that soon placed him among the foremost men of his age. The house of Baden gave its countenance to Klopstock, and Lessing had found protection in Brunswick ; but it was Weimar that first em- bodied, as it were, the genius of the country, and that genius speedily announced itself in a voice that, at once, recalled Germany from her error. The Parisians, who, a few years ago, would have reckoned it infidelity to the muses to open a German book, have condescended to translate Schiller, and translate him almost as successfully as they do Shakespeare or the Scot- tish Novels. How truly did Schiller sing of the muse of his country,* For her bloomed no Augustan age ; No Medicean patronage Smiled on her natal hour ; She was not nursed by sounds of fame ; No ray of princely favour came To unfold the tender flower. * Die Deutsche Muse. 7 WEIMAR. The greatest son of Germany, Even Frederick, bade her turn away Unhonoured from his throne : Proudly the German bard can tell, And higher may his bosom swell, He formed himself alone. Hence the proud stream of German song Still rolls in mightier waves along, A tide for ever full ; From native stores its waters bringing, Fresh from the heart's own fountain springing, Scoffs at the yoke of rule. None of the distinguished leaders of the " German Athens" belonged to the Grand Duchy itself. Wieland was a Swabian, and the increasing body of literary light collected round him as a nucleus. The jealousies of rival authors are proverbial, but at Weimar they seem to have been unknown. They often opposed each other, sometimes reviewed each other's books, but ad- mitted no ungenerous hostilities. Wieland re- joiced when Gothe and Herder were invited to be his companions, although both were vehement opponents of the critical principles which he pro- mulgated in the German Mercury. Gothe had even written a biting satire against him, " Gods, WIELAND. 73 Heroes, and Wieland," which, though not in- tended for publication, had, nevertheless, found its way into the world. Gothe himself has re- corded how the young Duke sought him out in Frankfort. Schiller was first placed in a chair at Jena; but the state of his health, which, though it could not damp the fire of his genius, converted his latter years into years of suffering, unfitted him for professional occupation, and he was placed in independence at Weimar. Wieland, the patriarch of the tribe, seems likewise to have been the most enthusiastically beloved. All who remember him speak of him with rapture, and it is easy to conceive that the author of Oberon and of Agathon, and the translator of Cicero's Letters, must have been a delightful combination of acuteness [and wit, no ordinary powers of original thinking united to a fancy rich, elegant, and playful. To the very close of his very long life, he con- tinued to be the pride of the old, and the delight of the young. Much less a man of the world than Gothe, he commanded equal respect and greater attachment. Gothe has been accused of a too jealous sensibility about his literary VOL. I. D 74 WEIMAR. character, and a constantly sustained authorial dignity, which have exposed him to the imputa- tion of being vain and proud. Wieland gave himself no anxiety about his reputation ; except when the pen was in his hand, he forgot there were such things in the world as books and au- thors, and strove only to render himself an agree- able companion. The young people of the court were never happier than when, on a summer evening, they could gather round " Father Wie- land" in the shades of Tiefurth, or the garden of his own little country residence. Writers of books sometimes misunderstood the man, and talked of him as a trifler, because he did not al- ways look like a folio ; Wieland smiled at their absurdities. Gothe, too, got into a passion with people whose visits he had permitted, and who then put him into their books, not altogether in the eulogistic style which he expects, and, more- over, deserves; but, instead of treating such things with indifference, he made himself more inaccessible, and assumed a statelier dignity. Poor Schiller, while taking the lead of all his competitors in the race of immortality, could not keep abreast with them in the enjoyments of the SCHILLEB. 75 world. Tender and kindly as his disposition was, his genius sought its food in the lofty and impassioned. In his lyrical pieces, he seldom aimed at lightness, and mere elegance was a merit which he thoroughly despised. Continued sick- liness of body excluded him, in a great measure, from the world, and the closing years of his too short life were spent in scarcely remitting agony. Yet how his genius burned to the last with in- creasing warmth and splendour ! It would be too much to say that he lived long enough for his fame ; for, though he gained immortality, his later productions rise so far above his earlier worksi that he assuredly would have approached still nearer to perfection. No German poet deserves better to be known than Schiller, yet his most successful efforts are least generally known among us. His merits are by no means confined to the drama ; whoever is not acquainted with Schiller's Lyrical Poems, is ignorant of many of his most peculiar and in- imitable productions. In the ballad, he aimed at the utmost simplicity of feeling, and narra- tive, and diction. It would scarcely be too much to say that, in this style, his " Knight 76 WEIAIAK. Toggenburg" has no equal ; in German it cer- tainly has none. Its very simplicity, however, is a great obstacle in the way of translation ; for this is a quality which is apt, in passing into another language, to degenerate into what is tri- vial or familiar. KNIGHT TOGGENBURG. Knight, to love thee like a sister Swears to thee this heart ; Do not ask a fonder passion, For it makes me smart. Tranquil would I be before thee, Tranquil see thee go ; And what that silent tear would say I must not, dare not know. He tears himself away ; the heart In silent woe must bleed ; A fiery, but a last embrace ; He springs upon his steed. From hill and dale of Switzerland He calls his trusty band ; They bind the cross upon the breast, And seek the Holy Land. And there were deeds of high renown Wrought by the hero's arm ; Where thickest thronged the foemen round, His plume waved in their swarm ; SCHILLER. 77 Till, at the Toggenburger's name, The Mussulman would start : But nought can heal the hidden wound, The sickness of the heart. A year he bears the dreary load Of life when love is lost ; The peace he chases ever flies ; He leaves the Christian host. He finds a bark on Joppa's strand ; Her sail already fills ; It bears him home where the beloved Breathes on his native hills. The love-worn pilgrim reached her hall ; Knocked at her castle gate ; Alas ! it opened but to speak The thunder voice of fate : " She whom you seek now wears the veil ; Her troth to God is given ; The pomp and vow of yesterday Have wedded her to Heaven." Straight to the castle of his sires For aye he bids adieu ; He sees no more his trusty steed, Nor blade so tried and true. Descending from the Toggenburg, Unknown he seeks the vale ; For sackcloth wraps his lordly limbs, - Instead of knightly mail. 78 WEIMAR. Where from the shade of dusky limes Peeps forth the convent tower, He chose a nigh and silent spot, And built himself a bower. And there, from morning's earliest dawn, Until the twilight shone, With silent hope within his eye, The hermit sat alone. Up to the convent many an hour Gazed patient from below, Up to the lattice of his love, Until it opened slow ; Till the dear form appeared above, Till she he loved so well, Placid and mild as angels are, Looked forth upon the dell. Contented then he laid him down ; Blythe dreams came to his rest ; He knew that morn would dawn again, And in the thought was blest. Thus many a day, and many a year, The hermit sat and hoped j Nor wept a tear, nor felt a pang, And still the lattice oped ; And the dear form appeared above, And she he loved so well, Placid and mild as angels are, Looked forth upon the delL SCHILLER. 79 And thus he sat, a stiffened corpse, , One morn as day returned, His pale and placid countenance Still to the lattice turned. Even in the drama, most English readers judge of Schiller only from the Robbers, a boy- ish production, which gave, indeed, distinct pro- mise of the fruit that was to come, but is no more a sample of Schiller, than Titus Androni- cus would be of Shakespeare. It is impossible to form any idea of the German dramatist with- out knowing his Don Carlos, Mary Stuart, the Bride of Messina, and, higher than them all, Wallenstein. It was an unworthy tribute to living genius, to select Gothe's Iphigenia for the opening of the new theatre in Berlin ; for, high and multifarious as Gothe^s merits are, Schiller will always remain the great national dramatic poet of Germany. Before his time, her tragic muse had seldom risen above damn- ing mediocrity ; and ages will probably elapse before another appear to raise her to the same honours. Whenever a tragedy of Schiller was to be performed, I never found an empty thea*- 80 WEIMAR. tre in any corner of Germany. Moreover, on such occasions, the theatre is not crowded with the usual regular play-going loungers, who spend a couple of hours in a box because they have nothing else to do ; the audience consists chiefly of respectable citizens, who feel much more truly what nature and passion are, than the ribboned aristocracy of Berlin or Vien- na. Schiller nursed his genius by studying Shakespeare ; and it is wonderful how little an Englishman regrets Drury-Lane or Covent- Garden, when Madame Schroder, at Vienna, plays Lady Macbeth in Schiller's translation. We cannot be surprised that Shakespeare is ad- mired ; but at least we owe our gratitude to those who have introduced him to a people more able to appreciate his excellence than any other ex- cept ourselves ; and that, too, in a dress which, from the affinity of the languages, when in the hands of such men as Wieland and Schiller, Schlegel and Voss, impairs so little the original form. Instead of sneering at the German dra- ma, we should be inclined in its favour, by the fact, that it is the drama of a people which wor- ships at the altar of our unequalled dramatist GOETHE. 81 with as heart-felt devotion as any believer among ourselves. Shakespeare would seem to have been bestowed upon us, at once to maintain the su- premacy of our country, and to teach us humili- ty by the reflection, that it was given to no other, even among ourselves, to follow his course ; a comet hung in our sky, to be gazed on, and wondered at by us in common with the rest of the world, but as far beyond our reach, though blazing in our zenith, as to those who only caught his more distant rays. Of the Weimar sages and poets Gothe alone survives. One after another, he has sung the dirge over Herder, and Wieland, and Schiller : " his tuneful brethren all are fled ;" but, lonely as he now is in the world of genius, it could be less justly said of him than of any other man, that he, neglected and oppressed, Wished to be with them and at rest ; for no living author, at least of Germany, can boast of so long and brilliant a career. At once a man of genius and a man of the world, Gothe has made his way as an accomplished courtier 82 WEIMAR. no less than as a great poet. He has spent hi Weimar more than one half of his prolific life, the object of enthusiastic admiration to his coun- trymen ; honoured by sovereigns, to whom his muse has never been deficient in respect ; the friend of his prince, who esteems him the first man on earth ; and caressed by all the ladies of Germany, to whose reasonable service he has de- voted himself from his youth upwards. It is only necessary to know what Gothe still is in his easy and friendly moments, to conceive how justly the universal voice describes him as having been in person, manners, and talent, a captivating man. He is now seventy-four years old, yet his tall imposing form is but little bent by years ; the lofty open brow retains all its dignity, and even the eye has not lost much of its fire. The effects of age are chiefly perceptible in an occasional in- distinctness of articulation. Much has been said of the jealousy with which he guards his literary reputation, and the haughty reserve with which this jealousy is alleged to surround his inter- course. Those who felt it so must either have been persons whose own reputation rendered him cautious in their presence, or whose doubt- GOETHE. ful intentions laid him under still more unplea- sant restraints ; for he sometimes shuts his door, and often his mouth, from the dread of being improperly put into books. His conversation is unaffected, gentlemanly, and entertaining: in the neatness and point of his expressions, no less than in his works, the first German classic, in re- gard of language, is easily recognized. He has said somewhere, that he considered himself tohave acquired only one talent, that of writing Ger- man. He manifests no love of display, and least of all in his favourite studies. It is not uncom- mon, indeed, to hear people say, that they did not find in Gothe's conversation any striking proof of the genius which animates his writings ; but this is as it should be. There are few more intolerable personages than those who, having once acquired a reputation for cleverness, think themselves bound never to open their mouths without saying something which they take to be smart or uncommon. The approach of age, and certain untoward circumstances which wounded his vanity, have, at length, driven Gothe into retirement. He spends the winter in Weimar, but no man is less 84 WEIMAR. seen. Buried among his books and engravings, making himself master of everything worth read- ing in German, English, French, and Italian, he has said adieu to worldly pleasures and gaie- ties, and even to much of the usual intercourse of society. Not long ago, he attended a concert, given at court, in honour of a birth-day. He was late : when he entered the room the music instantly ceased ; all forgot court and princes to gather round Gothe, and the Grand Duke him- self advanced to lead up his old friend. For nearly five years he has deserted the theatre, which used to be the scene of his great- est glory. By the 1 weight of his reputation and directorship, he had established such a des- potism, that the spectators would have deemed it treason to applaud before Gothe had given, from his box, the signal of approbation. Yet a dog and a woman could drive him from the thea- tre and the world. Most people know the French melodrame, The Forest of Bondy, or the Dog of St Aubry. The piece became a temporary fa- vourite in Germany, as well as in France, for it was something new to see a mastiff play the part of a tragic hero. An attempt was made to GOETHK. 85 have it represented in Weimar. Gothe, who, after the death of Schiller, reigned absolute mo- narch of the theatre, resisted the design with vehemence ; he esteemed it a profanation of the stage which he and his brethren had raised to the rank of the purest in Germany, that it should be polluted by dumb men, noisy spectacle, and the barkings of a mastiff, taught to pull a bell by tying a sausage to the bell- rope. But his op- position was in vain ; the principal actress insist- ed that the piece should be performed, and this lady has long possessed peculiar sources of influ- ence over the Grand Duke. The dog made his debut and Gothe his exit ; the latter immediate- ly resigned the direction of the theatre, which he has never since entered, and took advantage of this good pretext to withdraw into the more re- tired life which he has since led. * * It was on this occasion that the lines in Schiller's Epistle to Gothe, Der Schein soil nie die Wirklichkeit erreichen, Und siegt natur, so muss die Kunst entweichen ; were parodied : Dem Hundestall soil nie die Biihne gleicheri, Und komrat der Pudel, muss der Dichter weichen. 86 WEIMAR. At Jena, where he generally spends the sum:- mer and autumn, he mixes more with the world ; and he occasionally indulges in a month's recrea- tion atToplitz or Carlsbad, where, among princes and nobles, he is still the great object of public curiosity. Among the erudite professors of Jena, there are more than one who do not seem to en- tertain much respect for him, and have written and done mortifying things against him. One of the few clouds, for example, which have pas- sed over the sky of his literary life, was an arti- cle in the Edinburgh Review, some years ago, on his memoirs of himself. It vexed him ex- ceedingly; but the most vexatious thing of all was, that one of his enemies at Jena immediately translated it into German, and circulated it with malicious industry. Gothe stands pre-eminent above all his coun- trymen in versatility and universality of genius. There are few departments which he has not at- tempted, and in many he has gained the first honours. There is no mode of the lyre through which he has not run, song, epigram, ode, elegy, ballad, opera, comedy, tragedy, the lofty epic, and that anomalous production of the German, GOETHE. 87 Parnassus, the civil epic, (Biirgerliche Epos) which, forsaking the deeds of heroes and the fates of nations, sings in sounding hexameters the simple lives and loves of citizens and farmers. Yet the muses have been far from monopolizing the talents of this indefatigable man ; as they were the first love, so they are still the favourites of his genius ; but he has coquetted with num- berless rivals, and mineralogy, criticism on the fine arts, biography and topography, sentimen- tal and philosophical novels, optics and compa- rative anatomy, have all employed his pen. His lucubrations in the sciences have not command- ed either notice or admiration ; to write well on every thing, it is not enough to take an interest in every thing. It is in the fine arts, in poetry as an artist, in painting and sculpture as a critic, that Gothe justifies the fame which he has been accumulating for nearly fifty years ; for his pro- ductions in this department contain an assem- blage of dissimilar excellencies which none of his countrymen can produce, though individu- ally they might be equalled or surpassed. Faust . alone, a poem, which only a German can tho- roughly feel or understand, is manifestly the 88 WEIMAR. production of a genius, quite at home in every thing with which poetry deals, and master of all the styles which poetry can adopt. Tasso deserves the name of a drama, only because it is in dia- logue, and it becomes intolerably tiresome when declaimed by actors ; but it is from beginning to end a stream of the richest and purest poetry. It is an old story, that his first celebrated work, Werther, turned the heads of all Germany ; young men held themselves bound to fall in love with the wives of their friends, and then blow out their own brains ; it is averred, that consum- mations of this sort actually took place. The public admiration of the young author, who could paint with such force, was still warm, when he gave them that most spirited sketch, Gotz of Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, a picture of the feudal manners of their forefathers. The reading and writing world immediately threw themselves into this new channel, and Ger- man presses and German stages groaned beneath the knights, the abbots, the battles, and the banquets of the fifteenth century. Like every man of original genius, he had novelty in his favour, and, like every successful adventurer in what is 10 GOETHE. 89 new, he was followed by a host of worthless imi- tators and insipid mannerists. The regular novels of Gothe are of a very questionable sort. The vivacity of his imagina- tion and fineness of feeling supply good indivi- dual pictures and acute remarks ; but they can- not be praised either for incident or character. They are often stained, too> with the degradation to which he unfortunately reduces love, where liking and vice follow fast upon each other. " The Apprenticeship of William Meister," for instance, is a very readable book, in so far as it contains a great deal of acute and eloquent criti- cism ; but who would purchase the criticism, even of Gothe, at the expence of the licentiousness of incident and pruriency of description, with which the book teems ? He now devotes him- self chiefly to philosophical and critical disquisi- tions on the fine arts. It is scarcely possible for a man who has writ- ten so much, not to have written much that is mediocre. Gothe, having long since reached that point of reputation at which the name of an au- thor is identified, in the eyes of his countrymen, with the excellence of his work, has been fre- 90 WEIMAR. quently overrated, and men are not awanting who augur that the best of his fame is past. But he can well afford to make many allowances for the excesses into which popular enthusiasm, like popular dislike, is so easily misled ; for there will always remain an abundance of original, and varied, and powerful genius to unite his name forever with the literature of his country. He himself said truly of Schiller, that where the present age had been deficient, posterity would be profuse ; and the prophecy is already receiving its fulfilment. To Gothe the present has been lavish, and the future will not be un- just. From his youth, he has been the favour- ite of fortune and fame ; he has reached the brink of the grave, hailed by the voice of his country as the foremost of her great, the patri- arch of her literature, and the model of her ge- nius. In his old age, wrapped up in the seclu- sion of Weimar so becoming his years and so congenial to his habits, he hears no sounds but those of eulogy and affection. Like an eastern potentate, or a jealous deity, he looks abroad from his retirement on the intellectual world which he has formed by his precept or his ex- THE STAGE. 91 ample; he pronounces the oracular doom, or sends forth a revelation, and men wait on him to venerate and obey. Princes are. proud to be his companions ; less elevated men approach him with awe, as a higher spirit ; and when Gothe shall follow the kindred minds whom he has seen pass away before him, Weimar will have lost the last pillar of her fame, and in the litera- ture of Germany there will be a vacant throne. Since the mastiff, backed by the influence of Madame J n, drove Gothe from the di- rection of the theatre, it has been rapidly de- clining from its eminence. He and Schiller had trained the whole corps dramatique t and created that chaste, correct style of representation which formed the peculiarity of the Weimar School. Every thing like rant disappeared from the stage, but the opposite extreme was not always avoided ; anxiety to observe the great rule of not " overstepping the modesty of nature," some- times brought down tragedy to the subdued tone and gesture of serious conversation. The pa- tience with which he drilled theperformers into a thorough comprehension of their parts was most meritorious ; it produced that accurate conception 92 WEIMAR. of character, the foundation of all histrionic ex- cellence, which distinguished the stage of Wei- mar above every other in Germany, and which, now that the guiding hand and spirit have been withdrawn, is disappearing even there. It was a common saying, that elsewhere particular things might be better done, but in Weimar every thing was well done. The administration passed into the hands of Madame J n, who, now reigning absolutely in the green-room, has al- ready contrived by pride, and vanity, and ca- price, to sow abundantly the seeds both of dete- rioration and contention. Bad taste in selecting, want of judgment in casting, and carelessness in performing, are become as common in Weimar as any where else. People are not blind to the progress of the corruption, but the predominat- ing influence stands on that foundation which it is most difficult to shake ; and, unfortunately, no expression of displeasure is allowed in the thea- tre itself: it is regarded as a private court theatre, where good breeding permits only ap- probation or silence. If a prince maintain a place of amusement for the public at his own ex- pence, he may have some pretext for saying, THE STAGE. 93 that you shall either stay away, or be quiet ; but when he takes your money at the door, he cer- tainly sells you the right of growling at the en- tertainment, if it be badly cooked, or slovenly served up. The liberty _of hissing is as essential to the good constitution of a theatre, as the li- berty of the press to the constitution of a state. Three -fourths of all the expences, however, come out of the pocket of the Grand Duke ; for, to the abonnes, a place in the boxes costs only nine- pence every evening, and in the pit fourpence. Spectators who are not abonnes pay more than double this price ; but these consist only of occa- sional strangers, and the students who pour over every Saturday from Jena, and throng the pit. These young men have, in such matters, a thorough contempt for meum and tuum , with them it is always abonnement suspendu. They cannot imagine that any man should have the impertinence to claim his place, if a student has chosen to occupy it ; and they are ready to maintain, at the point of the sword, the privileg- es of their brotherhood. Schiller's Robbers never fails to bring the whole university to Weimar, for they seem to find in the bandit life some- 94 WEIMAR. thing peculiarly consonant to their own ideas of liberty and independence. When the robbers open the fifth act with the song in which they celebrate the joys of their occupation, the stu- dents stand up in a body, and join vociferously in the strain. It may easily be thought trifling to say so much about a theatre ; but the only thing that gives Weimar a name is its literary reputation ; in this reputation the character of the stage formed a popular and important element, and exercised a weighty influence on the public taste. It is, likewise, almost the only amusement to which the inhabitants of this celebrated village have accustomed themselves. Thus their vanity is interested no less than their love of amusement ; and, though it may scarcely be thought advis- able, in so poor a country, to take a large sum from the public revenues to support a theatre, there is no braneh of expenditure which the in- habitants would less willingly see curtailed. They are irritated, therefore, that the influence of the queen of the boards with their master should act so injuriously in the histrionic repub- lic ; they had no fault to find with his gallantry 4 MANNERS. 95 so long as it did not violate the muses. Let not this be ascribed to any general want of moral sensibility. We have no very favourable idea of German morality, and, in the larger capitals, particularly those of the South, there certainly is no reason why we should ; but Weimar is a spot of as pure morality as any in Europe. At Munich or Vienna, corrumpere et corrumpi sae- culum vocatur; but the infection has not reach- ed these Thuringians. It is as surprising to find in Weimar so pure a court, round a prince who has shown himself not to be without human frailties, as it is to find in Vienna a society made up of the most unprincipled dissoluteness, round an emperor who is, himself, one of the purest men alive. Like all their sisters of Saxony, the ladies are models of industry ; whether at home or abroad, knitting and needle-work know no interruption. A lady, going to a rout, would think little of forgetting her fan, but could not spend half an hour without her implements of female in- dustry. A man would be quite pardonable for doubting, on entering such a drawing-room, whether he had not strayed into a school of in- 96 WEIMAR. dustry, and whether he was not expected to cheapen stockings, instead of dealing in small talk. At Dresden it is carried so far, that even the theatre is not protected against stocking wires. I have seen a lady gravely lay down her work, wipe away the tears which the sorrows of Theklain Wallenstem's Death had brought into her eyes, and immediately reassume her knit- ting. The Weimarese have not yet found it necessary to put softness of heart so abso- lutely under the protection of the workbag. They are much more attached to music than dancing, and sometimes a desperate struggle is made to get up a masquerade; but they want the vivacity without which a thing of that sort is the most insipid of all amusements. The higher class leave the masquerades to the ci- tizens, who demurely pace round a room, in black dominos, and stare at each other in black faces. As might be expected from the literary tone which so long ruled, and still lingers round the court and society of Weimar, even the ladies have not altogether escaped a sprinkling of pedantry ; some have been thickly powdered over with it, THE GRAND DUCHESS. 97 and, in so small a circle, shake off their learned dust on all whom they jostle. One coterie forms a regular critical club. The gifted mem- bers, varying in age from sixteen to sixty, hold their weekly meetings over tea-cups, wrapped up in as cautious secrecy as if celebrating the mysteries of the BonaDea. A daring Clodiusonce intruded, and witnessed the dissection of a trage- dy ; but he had reason to repent the folly of being wise so long as he remained within the reach of the conclave. But altogether, the ladies of Weimar are, in every thing that is good, a fa- vourable specimen of their countrywomen. The serious pursuits and undeviating pro- priety of conduct of the Grand Duchess herself, have had a large share in thus forming the man- ners of her court and subjects. Her Royal Highness is a princess of the house of Darm- stadt ; she is now venerable by her years, but still more by the excellence of her heart, and the strength of her character. In these little prin- cipalities, the same goodness of disposition can work with more proportional effect than if it swayed the sceptre of an empire ; it comes more easily and directly into contact with those to- VOL. I. E 98 WEIMAR. wards whom it should be directed ; the artificial world of courtly rank and wealth has neither suf- ficient glare nor body to shut out from the prince die more checquered world that lies below. After the battle of Jena, which was fought within ten miles of the walls, Weimar looked to her alone for advice and protection. Her husband and younger son were absent with the fragments of the defeat- ed army ; the French troops were let loose on the territory and capital ; the flying peasantry al- ready bore testimony to the outrages which are in- separable from the presence of brutal and inso-' lent conquerors. The hope that she might be useful to the people in this hour of trial, when it was only to her they could look, prevailed over the apprehensions of personal insult and danger ; she calmly awaited in Weimar the approach of the French, collected round her in the palace the greater part of the women and children who had not fled, and shared with them herself the coarse and scanty food which she was able to distribute among them. The Emperor, on his arrival, took up his abode in the palace, and the Grand Duchess immediately requested an interview with him. His first words to her were, " Ma- THE GRAND DUCHESS. 99 dam, I make you a present of this palace ;" and forthwith he broke out into the same strain of invective against Prussia and her Allies, and sneers at the folly of endeavouring to resist him- self, which he soon afterwards launched against the unfortunate Louisa at Tilsit. He said more than once with great vehemence, " On dit que Je veux etre Empereur de Touest ; et" stamping with his foot, " je le serai, Madame.'"'' He was confounded at the firm and dignified tone in which the Grand Duchess met him. She neither palliated her husband's political conduct, nor supplicated for mercy in his political misfor- tunes. Political integrity, as a faithful ally of Prussia, had, she told him, dictated the one, and, if he had any regard for political principle and fidelity to alliances in a monarch, he could not take advantage of the other. The interview was a long one; the imperial officers in waiting could not imagine how a man, who reckoned time thrown away even on the young and beau- tiful of the sex, could spend so much with a princess whose qualifications were more of a moral and intellectual nature. But from that moment, Napoleon treated the family of Wei- 100 WE I MAE. mar with a degree of respect and consideration, which the more powerful of his satellites did not experience. He used to say, that the Grand Duke was the only sovereign in Germany who could be intrusted with the command of a score of men ; and he uniformly displayed for the Grand Duchess a very marked esteem. He even affected to do homage to the literary reputation of the town, and showered honours on the poets of Weimar, while he was suppressing universi- ties. The last time he was in Weimar was be- fore he led up his troops to the battle of Lutzen. When he learned that part of the contingent of Weimar, as a member of the Confederation of the Rhine, had joined the Allies, he only said smiling, " Cest la petite Yorkiade" He re- quested the honour of a glass of Malaga from the hand of the Grand Duchess herself, observing that he was getting old ; and, accompanied by the Grand Duke, and his second son, Prince Ber- nard, rode off to attack the enemy at Lutzen. From this moment, till the thunder-clouds which collected at Leipzig had rolled themselves beyond the Rhine, this tranquil abode of the muses witnessed nothing but the horrors of war THE WAR. 101 in all their merciless perfection. That three such armies, as those of France, Russia, and Au- stria, were let loose on the exhausted land, in- cludes in itself the idea of every possible misery and crime ; but it was lamentable, that as much should be suffered from the declared liberators as from the real oppressor of Germany. The Russians fairly deserved the name which the wits of the north bestowed upon them, of being Germany's Rettungsbestien, or, Brutes of Salva- tion ; but the Austrians far outstripped them in atrocity, and fired the villages, amid shouts of " Burn the hearts out of the Saxon dogs. 1 '' There is something exquisitely absurd in an Austrian imagining, that any people of Germany can pos- sibly sink so low as to be inferior to his own. That dreadful period has, in some measure, al- tered the character of these artless, kindly people; you can scarcely enter a cottage, that does not ring with dreadful tales out of these days of horror. Old village stories of witches on the Hartz, and legends of Number Nip from the mountains of Silesia, have given place to village records of individual misfortune, produced by worse spirits than ever assembled on the Brocken, 102 WEIMAR. or obeyed Rubezahl, in the clefts of the Schriee- koppe. It was precisely by its sympathy, its active humanity, and self-denial amid these horrors, that the reigning family fixed itself so deeply in the affections of the people. Every source of courtly expence was limited, or cut off, to meet the miseries of the ruined peasantry, and rebuild the villages which had been laid in ashes. In the short space of a month, the murders of the soldiery, and epidemic disease, produced by liv- ing in filth and starvation among the ruins of the villages, threw five hundred orphans on the country. Nine were found out of one family, without a rag to defend them against the chill- ing. damps of an autumn night, cowering round the embers of their burned cottage, watching by the corpses of their father and mother. The ducal family, assisted by a share of the money which was raised in this country for the suffer- ing Germans, adopted these orphans. They have all been educated in Weimar, instructed in a profession, and put in the way of exercising it. In the summer of 3821, they finished a small chapel, dedicated to the Providence that had led LITERATURE. their childhood safe through so much misfortune, of which not only the walls, but all the furni- ture and ornaments, are the work of their own hands, each in the profession to which he was educated. It is almost a consequence of the literary cha- racter of Weimar, that nowhere on the continent is English more studiously cultivated. Byron and Scott are as much read, as well understood, and as fairly j udged of by the Germans as among ourselves ; they have not merely one, but several translations of the best of the Scottish Novels. The Grand Duke himself reads a great deal of English. Besides his own private collection, the well-stored public library, which is thrown open for the use of every body, contains all our cele- brated writers. What a change in the course of half a century ! The library of Frederick still stands in Sans Souci, as he left it at his death, and does not contain a volume but what is French. In Dr Froriep's room, at the Industrie- Comp- toir, * one could imagine himself lounging in * This Industrie-Comptoir is an establishment found- ed by the late Mr Bertuch, under the protection of the 104 WK1MAR. Albemarle Street, instead of being in a retired corner of Saxony ; the newspapers, the reviews, the philosophical periodicals, are scattered about in all their variety, together with all the new books that are worth reading, and a great many that are not. Gothe, too, is fond of English reading, and whatever Gothe is fond of must be fashionable in Weimar. He is an idolater of Byron, though he holds that his Lordship has stolen various good things from him. Don Juan seems to be his favourite, but the paper and type really ap- peared to have no small share in the admiration with which he spoke of the work. Few things as- tonish the Germans more than our typographical luxury; the port of London would not give Grand Duke, for printing and engraving, and it has al- ready become one of the most important in Germany. Nearly three hundred persons are occupied in printing books, engraving maps and drawings, partly in copper, partly on stone, and constructing globes. The printing department is peculiarly active in the dissemination of foreign, particularly English, literature, by reprints and translations ; for Mr Bertuch was a scholar and a man of talent, and so is his relation and successor, Dr Froriep. AMUSEMENTS. 105 them a higher idea of our national wealth than our ordinary style of printing, joined to the fact that, notwithstanding its costliness, a greater quantity of books is devoured by our population than by any other in Europe. They are them- selves very far behind in printing, partly because the cheapness of a book is essential to its sale, partly because they have introduced few improve- ments in an art which they invented. A negotia- tion with a Berlin publisher, for printing a trans- lation of Playfair's Chronology, was broken off, because " paper could not be found large enough for the tables." Dr Milliner was as- tonished to find it stated in a magazine, that the few copies of Mr Gillies's version of the Schuld, which had been thrown off for the author's friends, were elegantly printed : " for," said he, " with us, on such an occasion, it is quite the re- verse." Though there are carriages in Weimar, its little fashionable world makes no show in the ring ; but, so soon as winter has furnished a suffi- cient quantity of snow, they indemnify them- selves by bringing forth their sledges. They are fond of this amusement, but are not suffi- 106 WEIMAR. ciently far north to enjoy it in any perfection, or for any length of time. The sledges would be handsome, were not their pretensions to beau- ty frequently injured by the gaudy colours with which they are bedaubed. By the laws of sledge- driving, every gentleman is entitled, at the ter- mination of the excursion, to salute his partner, as a reward for having been an expert Jehu ; and, if once in the line, it is not easy to drive badly. The whqlly unpractised, or very apprehensive, plant a more skilful servant on the projecting spars behind ; he manages the horses, while his principal, freed of the trouble, tenaciously retains its recompence. The long line of glitter- ing carriages, the gay trappings of the horses, the sound of the bells with which they are cov- ered, and, except this not unpleasant tinkling, the noiseless rapidity with which the train glides through a clear frosty morning, like a fairy caval- cade skimming along the earth, form a cheering and picturesque scene. Few things would raise the wrath of an Eng- lish sportsman more than a German hare-hunt, except, perhaps, a Hungarian stag-hunt, for the game is cut off from every chance of escape be- 4 AMUSEMENTS. 107 fore the attack is made. The Grand Duke of Weimar is an enthusiastic sportsman himself, and, when he takes his gun, every respectable person may do the same, and join his train. Pea- sants are used instead of grey-hounds ; they sur- round a large tract of country, and drive the hares before them, into the hands of fifty or sixty sportsmen with double-barrelled guns. It is a massacre, not a hunt. As the circle grows more confined, and only a few of the devoted animals survive, the amusement becomes nearly as dangerous to the sportsmen as to the game ; they shoot across each other in all directions ; and the Jagdmeister and his assistants find suf- ficient occupation both for their voices and their arms, here striking down, there striking up a barrel, to prevent the sportsmen, in the confu- sion, from pouring the shot into each other's bodies. A large waggon, loaded with every thing essential to good cheer, attends. After the first circle has been exhausted, the sportsmen make merry, while the peasants are forming a new one, in a different direction, and preparing a similar murderous exhibition. The peasants say, that, without this summary mode of execu- 108 WEIMAR. tion, they would be overrun witli hares ; and they very naturally prefer having it in their power to purchase dead hares for a price which is next to nothing, to being eaten up by thou- sands of them alive. The family of Weimar, besides sustaining so honourable a part in protecting the literature of Germany, likewise took the lead in the introduc- tion of free governments. The conclusion of the war was followed, all over Germany, by the ex- pectation of ameliorated political institutions. The Congress of Vienna found it necessary or prudent to assume the appearance, at least, of liberality ; but, unfortunately, the article regard- ing this matter, in the act of the congress, was couched in terms so general, as to leave it to the choice of every prince, (and so it has been interpreted in practice,) whether he would sub- mit his prerogative to the restraints of a legisla- tive body. This disastrous ambiguity, whether it was the effect of accident or artifice, was the origin of the popular irritation, which immedi- ately ensued in different parts of Germany ; for, amid the variety of meanings, of which the words were susceptible, the sovereigns naturally main- THE GOVERNMENT. 109 tained, that only such expositions were correct, as implied the continuance of their ancient unde- fined authority. Some, like the King of Prus- sia, allowed, that the article bound them to in- troduce " Constitutions of Estates," but denied that it bound them to do so within any limited pe- riod ; and held, therefore, that it lay with them- selves to decide, whether they should cease to be absolute princes five or five hundred years hence. Others, who were willing to submit to a " Con- stitution of Estates," explained these words of the Congress, as meaning merely the old oli- garchical estates, not a legislative body to con- troul, but an impotent body to advise ; not a parliament, but a privy council. A third party put this gloss on the article, that it only bound the sovereigns to each other, but in no degree to their subjects. Dabelow of Gottingen, a man not unknown in the literary world, wrote a book in defence of this last proposition. The Stu- dents of Gottingen reviewed his work, by affix- ing a copy to the whipping-post, marching to the author's house, and hailing him with a thrice re- peated pereat. In several of the states, particularly in the 110 WEI MAI:. south, more honest and liberal sentiments have gradually prevailed ; but it was Weimar that set the example. The Grand Duke, disdaining to seek pretexts in the act of congress, and jea- lous that any other state should take the lead in this honourable course, immediately framed for his people a representative government. He was assuredly the very last prince who could have been exposed to the necessity of making concessions ; his two hundred thousand subjects would as soon have thought of composing a gos- pel for themselves, as of demanding any share in the administration of public affairs. When the first elections took place under the new constitu- tion, considerable difficulty was occasionally ex- perienced in bringing up the electors, particu- larly the peasantry, to vote. In defiance of the disquisitions of the liberal professors of Jena, they could not see the use of all this machinery. " Do we not pay the Grand Duke for governing us, 11 they said, " and attending to the public business? Why give us all this trouble besides ?" Nay, after the experiment of a representative body has been tried during seven years, many still THE GOVERNMENT. Ill assert, that matters went on quite as well, and more cheaply without them. This miniature parliament forms only one house, for it consists of only thirty one members. Ten are chosen by the proprietors of estates-noble, ten by the citizens of the towns, ten by the pea- santry, and one by the University of Jena. The last is elected by the Senatus Academicus, and, besides being a professor, must have taken a re- gular degree in the juridical faculty. At the ge- neral election, which occurs every seventh year, not only the representatives themselves (Abgeord- neten) are chosen, but likewise a substitute (Stellvertreter) for every member, in order that the representation may be always full. If the seat of a representative become vacant by his death, or resignation, or any supervenient inca- pacity, the substitute takes his place till the next general election. The ten members for the no- bility are chosen directly by all the possessors of estates-noble, (Rittergilter.) A patent of no- bility gives the same right. The vote does not bear reference to any fixed value of property ; it rests on the nature of the estate ; the posses- sor has a vote for every separate independent 112 WEIMAR. estate of this kind which he possesses, however trifling, or however extensive it may be. The whole doctrine of splitting superiorities and creat- ing votes, in which the freeholders and lawyers of one part of our island have become so expert, would be thrown away on the jurisconsults of Saxony. The power of granting patents of no- bility would give the prince the power of creat- ing electors at pleasure ; but the Grand Duke has stripped himself of the prerogative of raising- estates to this higher rank, in so far as the elec- tive franchise is concerned, by a provision in the constitution, that, in future, he shall erect Rit- terguter, to the effect of giving a vote, only with the consent of the chamber. Even ladies in possession of such estates have a vote; but, if un- married, they must vote by proxy. A county of female freeholders would afford the most amusing canvass imaginable. In the representation of the towns and pea- santry, the election is indirect. The towns are distributed into ten districts, each of which sends one member. Weimar and Eisenach form districts of themselves, the former as being the capital, and containing a population of seven 10 THE GOVKliXMENT. 113 thousand souls ; the latter, as having some pre- tensions to be considered a manufacturing town, and containing a population somewhat greater than that of Weimar. In these, as well as in all the towns, great or small, which form the other districts respectively, every resident citizen has a vote without distinction of religion ; even Jews possess the franchise, though they cannot be elected. The whole body of voters in a town choose a certain number of delegates, in the proportion of one for every fifty houses the town contains, and these deputies elect the mem- ber for the district. At least two-thirds of all the citizens having a right to vote must be present at the election of the delegates, and two- thirds of the delegates at the final election of the member. If no election takes place, in con- sequence of more than a third part of the elec- tors being absent, all the expences of afterwards proceeding to a new election are borne by the absentees. The member for a district of towns must have a certain and independent income of about L. 75 Sterling (500 rix dollars) if he be elected for Weimar or Eisenach, and L. 45 (300 rix dollars) if he be chosen to represent 114 WEIMAR. the towns of any other district. It has very prudently been added, that, in estimating this income, no salary shall be taken into account, whether it be derived from the state or from a private person, whether paid for actual service, or enjoyed as a pension. The election of the ten representatives of the peasantry proceeds exactly in the same way. In regard to them, likewise, the duchy is divided into ten districts: in each district all the peasants who are major, and have a house within its bounds, choose their delegates in the same pro- portion to the number of houses as in the towns, and these delegates choose the member. The member must be one of themselves; they are not allowed to take him from the higher class of landed proprietors, which they certainly would easily have been brought to do, had it not been thus expressly prohibited. With the same view of preventing noble families from gaining undue influence in the legislature, it is provided that neither brothers, nor father and son, shall be capable of sitting in the chamber at the same time. The three sets of members thus elected, with THE GOVERNMEKT. 115 the representative of Jena, form the Landtag or parliament of the duchy. They elect their own president, and the election is confirmed by the Grand Duke. He must be chosen from the no- bility, and no person is eligible who is in the service of government, or enjoys a salary from it. He holds his office during twelve years, that is, two parliaments, but the house which appointshim may elect him for any longer period, or even for life. This is scarcely reconcileable with the strict elective principle; for, as the president thus passes from the dissolved chamber into the new one, the district for which he originally sat chooses one member less at the new election, and the new chamber itself finds itself under a presi- dent elected by its predecessors. Two assistants are given him by the house, taken indiscriminate- ly from the three estates, but they hold their office only for three years, that is, for one ses- sion. The president, and these two assistants, who have all salaries, form what is called the Vurstand, or presidency of the chamber; they are the organ through which it communicates with the Grand Duke : during the session, they have the general superintendenceof thebusiness; 116 WEIMAR. during adjournments and prorogations, they re- main in full activity to watch over the course of public affairs, to prepare the matters of discus- sion that are likely to be brought before the chamber at its next meeting, to issue writs for new elections where vacancies have taken place, and to apply to the Grand Duke, if they shall think it necessary, to call an extraordinary meet- ing. The chamber elects, moreover, its own clerk, pays him a salary, and may dismiss him at pleasure. Regularly the chamber meets only once in three years, but the Grand Duke, either of his own accord, or at the request of the Vorstand, may, at any time, call an extraordinary meeting. He has the prerogative likewise of dissolving it at any time ; but, in that case, a new chamber must be elected within three months, otherwise the dissolved one revives ipso jure ,- the former members are always re-eligible. The members have full privilege of parliament ; their persons are inviolable from the commencement, till eight days after the close of the session ; they are secured in liberty of speech, and legal pro- ceedings cannot be instituted against them with- THE GOVERNMENT. 117 out the consent of the chamber. During the session, they have an allowance of about ten shillings a day, besides a certain sum per mile to cover their travelling expences in coming to Weimar and returning home. The majority of voices determines every question. The speaker has no casting vote ; in case of equality, there must be a second debate and division ; and, if the chamber be still equally divided, the right of deciding is in the Grand Duke. In every case, his Royal Highness has an absolute veto. The powers of the chamber extend to all the branches of legislation, and its consent is indis- pensable to the validity of all legislative mea- sures. As it meets only once in three years, the budget is voted for the whole of that period ; but, a standing committee, consisting, besides the presidency, of three members from the no- bles, and three from the representatives of the towns or peasantry, continues during the long adjournment, to examine annually the public- accounts. No part of the constitution itself can be changed, nor any addition made to it, but with the joint consent of the prince and the chamber ; and no successor to the grand ducal 118 WEIM.AR. coronet is to receive the oath of homage from the representatives of the people, till he shall have sworn faithfully to observe it. It confirms the independence of the judges, and liberty of the press, which had been introduced in the grand duchy before this constitution was fram- ed. The chamber met for the second time in De- cember 1820, and sat no less than four months. The great ceremonies at opening it consist in a short speech from the Grand Duke, and a long banquet in the palace. The members then pro- ceed to business, and, out of San Marino, there is nothing like the simple, honest, well meaning legislators who are here brought together. The members elected by the noble proprietors, the professor from Jena, and, perhaps, a few of those who represent the towns, are men of education and experience ; but most of the latter, and, above all, the representatives of the peasantry, are still more moderate in education than they are in fortune. Yet, in spite of their bluff coun- tenances, homely manners, and shaggy coats, they bring with them two excellent qualities, a very modest distrust of their own judgment, and THE GOVERNMENT. 119 a most laudable desire to be saving both of their own and of the public money. A county mem- ber, as the representatives of the peasantry may in some measure be reckoned, who happened to reside not far from Weimar, walked in every morning to the house with a sufficient quantity of rural viands in his pockets to satisfy the de- mands of the day, and walked home again in the afternoon with his half guinea untouched. These men, as is perfectly natural, do not find themselves at home in the office of legislators ; the transmigration from respectable shopkeep- ers and small farmers into members of parlia- ment was too rapid to allow them to move easily in their new dress ; for there had been nothing -in their education, or previous habits of life, to prepare them to act in so very different a capa- city. They have no reason to be ashamed of this ; an overweening trust in their own qualifi- cations would be no desirable symptom ; every man of sense must feel the same uneasiness at being called from bargaining about rye and black cattle to deliberate on measures of finance, and decide questions of public law. To this want of experience, and the want of 120 WEIMAR self-confidence which results from it, are to be ascribed several errors into which they have fal- len. For instance, they committed a great blun- der in shutting their doors against the public , and it is worthy of notice, as a matter of politi- cal opinion, that on this point they have stub- bornly refused to gratify the Grand Duke. In the speech with which he closed the preceding session, he had stated his wish that, at their next meeting, they should consider the propriety of throwing open their deliberations to the people, and that he desired this publicity himself. They did deliberate ; but the small manufacturers and small farmers, with all their plain sense and ho- nest intentions, were so terrified at the idea of being laughed at for oratorical deficiencies, that they determined, by a great majority, to keep their doors shut, but resolved to print, now and then, an abstract of their journals for the information of the public, always under the proviso that no names should be mentioned. Luden, Professor of History at Jena, imme- diately let loose upon them his nervous and logi- cal, but cutting pen, and rendered them infi- nitely more ridiculous than they could possibly have made themselves by dull speeches. THE GOVERNMENT. 121 They committed a still more serious mistake in the case of Dr Oken, the Professor of Natural History. This gentleman had lost his chair in the University of Jena, for scolding Prince Met- ternich, and laughing at the King of Prussia. He had been dismissed without any judicial in- quiry or sentence, because he would not give up the publication of a journal which other courts considered revolutionary. He and his friends, therefore, loudly maintained that his dismissal was illegal, and the matter came regularly be- fore the Chamber in the shape of a question, whether the Grand Duke could legally dismiss a public servant, without good cause ascertained according to law ? The very way of putting the question showed that they had no clear idea of the dispute, for it placed ministers of state and public teachers, or even judges, on the same footing. The answer which they gave to it was still less satisfactory ; for they decided, though by a very small majority, that the Grand Duke does possess this prerogative ; but, at the same time, they voted an address, in which they pray- ed him to give them an assurance, that, till they should find time to concoct a remedial enact- VOL. i. F 122 WEIMAR. ment, he would not dismiss any other public servant in the same way. * The answer of his Royal Highness was rather touchy, and sounded very like a reproach that they should think him capable of doing any thing illegal. There is a Censorship, but its existence is no stain on the government of Weimar, for it is a child of foreign birth which it has been com- pelled to adopt. The constitution established the freedom of the press, restricted only by the necessary responsibility in a court of law, and * This vote naturally excited much anger, and spread some dismay, among the gentlemen of the University ; it has had no small influence in qualifying their admira- tion of the popular body. The lawyers among them maintain, to a man, that it is in the very teeth of the law. One of the most distinguished of them said to me, with some bitterness, " Oken deserved it for his silly confi- dence in the representatives of the people, whom he de- lighted to honour and laud. He would hear of nothing but a discussion before the Chamber, and now he can judge better what sort of thing the Chamber is. Had he made his application to the Supreme Court of Justice, instead of petitioning his representatives of the people, he would have kept his chair, and the Chamber would have been saved from making itself ridiculous." 10 THE GOVERNMENT. the constitution itself was guaranteed by the Diet. Greater powers, however, not only held it imprudent to concede the same right to their own subjects, but considered it dangerous that it should be exercised by any people speaking the same language. The resolutions of the Congress of Carlsbad were easily converted into ordinances of the Diet, and Weimar was forced, by the will of this supreme authority, to receive a Censorship. Nay, she has occasionally been compelled to yield to external influence, which did not even use the formality of acting through the medium of the Diet. Dr Reuder was the editor of a Weimar newspaper called the " Op- position Paper, 11 (Das Oppositions-Blatt,) a journal of decidedly liberal principles, and ex- tensive circulation. When it was understood that the three powers intended to crush the Nea- politan revolution by force, tliere appeared in this paper one or two articles directed against the justice of this armed interference. They passed over unnoticed ; but, in a couple of months, the Congress of Troppau assembled, and forthwith appeared an edict of the Grand Duke suppressing the paper. No one laid the 124 WEIMAR. blame on the government. Every body in Weimar said, " an order has come down from Troppau." The politics of Russia must always find an open door in the cabinet of Weimar, for the consort of the heir apparent is a sister of the Russian Autocrat, and enjoys the reputation of being a princess of more than ordinary talent. Her husband possesses the virtues, rather than the abilities of his parents. In fact, from the moment the liberty of the press was established, Weimar was regarded with an evil eye by the potentates who prepon- derate in the Diet. In less than three years there were six journals published in Weimar and Jena, devoted wholly, or in part, to politi- cal discussion, and three of them edited by pro- fessors of distinguished name in German learn- ing. Their politics were all in the same strain ; earnest pleadings for representative constitutions, and very provoking, though very sound disqui- sitions, on the inefficacy of the new form of con- federative government to which Germany has been subjected. At Weimar no fault was found with all this ; more than one of these journals were printed in the Industrie-C&mptoir^ an esta- THE GOVERNMENT. 125 blishment under the peculiar protection of the Grand Duke. But a different party, and parti- cularly the government press of some other courts, took the alarm, and raised an outcry against Weimar, as if all the radicals of Europe had crowded into this little territory, to hatch rebellion for the whole continent. Every oc- currence 'was made use of to throw odium on the liberal forms of her government, or torment its administrators with remonstrances and com- plaints. The Grand Duke really had some rea- son to say, that Jena had cost him more uneasi- ness than Napoleon had ever done. By displac- ing some, suspending others, and frightening all; by establishing a Censorship, and occasionally administering a suppression, the press of Wei- mar has been reduced to silence or indifference. These free institutions were in no sense the creation of the public mind, or the public wish- es, for the people had never thought about the matter, and felt immoveably that they could not be better governed than they had hitherto been. They were as completely a voluntary gift as could well be bestowed ; they were the work of the sovereign himself, and a few men of honesty 126 WEIMAR. and talent, setting themselves down to frame as effective, and yet, as the nature of the case re- quired, as simple an organ as possible, by which the public opinion, if so inclined, might controul the government. What they have done is ho- nourable to their liberality and prudence. Per- haps it was not so much the good will of the aristocracy, as the necessity of the case, and the good sense of the prince, that melted nobles and commoners into one chamber, where the former can exercise only their proper and natural influ- ence. So small a territory neither required the labours, nor could support the burden of two chambers. Setting aside the supreme controul of the Diet, to which neither the wishes nor the inte- rests of prince and people conjoined can oppose any resistance, if the people of the grand duchy be misgoverned, they can only have themselves to blame ; for the constitution of their legislative body is sufficiently popular, and its powers, if duly exercised, sufficiently effec- tive. Hitherto they have taken little interest in what it does. Except among men of liberal education, repining professors and silenced edi- THE GOVERNMENT. 127 tors find neither attention nor sympathy. In Weimar itself, during the session of the Cham- ber, you seldom hear public matters adverted to ; they are still too foreign to all their habits to occupy the citizens. You may possibly stumble now and then on a couple of ducal statesmen discussing some point in a corner at a party, or during 'a walk in the Park; or, at the table d'hote, (for, if practicable, the house pays re- gular deference to the dinner-hour) a member may let out some dark hints of what passed with- in doors ; but in society they are never heard pf ; political discussions and political parties are there unknown. The coteries of Weimar still keep by the song and the jest, poetry and paint- ing, the newest play or romance, or the adven- tures of the last sledge-party to Belvedere or Berka ; and nobody, save the professors of Jena, seems to care one farthing how the one and thirty may be earning their ten shillings a- day. This lies partly in the national character. They are young in political life, and, like all their countrymen, get on slowly, but surely. This is the temper which wears best, for in po- litical education, more than in any other, preco- 128 WEIMAK. city is the bane of depth and soundness. Die Zeit bringt Rosen, says their own proverb.* It may likewise bring an interest in public affairs, and a knowledge of public duties. Since the termination of the war left the go- vernment its own master, it has very wisely avoided that affectation of military parade, by which the smaller princes so often rendered themselves ridiculous, and ruined their finances. Except the few hussars who act as sentinels at the palace, and occasionally escort its inhabitants on a journey, you may traverse the grand duchy without meeting a uniform. Now, however, that the Diet has ultimately arranged the mili- tary contingents of the confederates, Weimar will have to support an army of two thousand men. It will be better able to bear the bur- den, than the still smaller states which are clus- tered together in the neighbourhood. The Grand Duke is within a day's journey of the territories of no fewer than twelve sovereign princes. Prussia is the leviathan that is nearest * Time brings roses- THE GOVERNMENT. 129 him. Bavaria, Royal Saxony, and Cassel, are within his reach, and are also politically import- ant. Then comes Weimar itself, like a first- born, among the allied Saxon houses of Gotha, Cobourg, Meynungen, and Hilburghausen. In the vanishing point of the perspective appear the " Wee wee German Lairdies," the double branches of the lines of Ileuss and Schwarzen- burg. There is a party in Germany, which still asks, how have these petty princes been allowed to re- tain their independence, when so many others, whose separate existence was in no respect more injurious to the unity and respectability of the common country, have been reduced to the rank of subjects ? What has saved Reuss or Sonders- hausen, when Tour and Taxis has been media- tized ? Their voices in the Diet can never be their own; for, though they have every ratio of monarch s, except the ultima, what they want is exactly the essential part of political oratory. They necessarily become instruments in the hands of the more powerful ; and, so long as they continue to exist, memorials of an empire which is gone, rather than livingefficient members 130 WEIMAK. of the German people, the country can never be redeemed from foreign tutelage, or acquire that native union which alone can give it the dignity of an independent state. The theory of this party accordingly is, that all foreign powers shall be stripped of their German dominions. Even Prussia and Austria are to be considered extraneous monarchies ; for, though they may be useful as allies, they will only be dangerous as curators, and curators they will be, if they are included at all. Then, all the states below second rates are to be blotted out, and their territories so apportioned among the pure Ger- man powers of some importance, such as Bava- ria, Wirtemberg, Saxony, and Hanover, that there shall be two powerful kingdoms in the north, and two in the south. Germany, they say, having thus four efficient, instead of forty inefficient mqnarchs, will command respect from all the world. England, alas ! has no chance for either of the two northern crowns. The very first step to be taken is to strip us of Ha- nover, and this party rails furiously at the Con- gress, for having allowed our royal family to retain it. Even the free towns are to fall, for THE GOVEBNMENT* 131 they are considered as merely English factories, which ruin the native manufactures ; and the twin monarch s of the north are to be specially charged with the duty of liberating God's ocean from our maritime yoke. Such was the plan detailed in the Ms. aus Siid Deutschland., a work which it cost the police a great deal of trouble to suppress. We may congratulate our- fielves, that the dictators of Germany have agreed to consider these doctrines as revolutionary ; that, at all events, in the present state of the world, they are impracticable ; and that the Rhine, the Neckar, and the Main, are much more prolific in good wines than in expert sea- men. 182 JEXA. CHAPTER III. JENA. Stosst an ! Jena lebe ! hurrah hoch ! Jena Student Hymn. THE vicinity of Jena, always one of the most distinguished, and, of late years, by far the most notorious of the German universities, is, to a stranger, no small recommendation of Weimar as a temporary residence ; a week of the courtly society and enjoyments of the one, interchang- ing with a week among the raw students and learned professors of the other, forms a pleasant alternation. The peculiarities of the Burschen life, * considered merely as matters of observa- * * It is necessary to mention, once for all, that the word Bursche, though it only means a young fellow, has been appropriated by the students, all over Germany, to desig- JENA. 133 tion, are seen to much less advantage in the large capitals, than in what are properly termed uni- versity towns ; towns, that is, which, in a great measure, have been formed by the presence of the university, and are dependent upon it. In Berlin, for example, however much the Burschen may be inclined to tyrannize, they feel that they are but as a drop in the ocean ; they are not suf- ficiently numerous, in reference to the popula- tion, to be personages of importance. Besides, the keen eye with which such a police watches all their vagaries, and the promptitude with which a military police, like that of Berlin, would suppress them, the ridicule of two hundred thou- sand inhabitants is more than they could well en- dure, while the manhood of such a population is more than the most persevering Bobadil amongst them would undertake to decimate. It is in towns which consist of scarcely any thing but the nate themselves. They have agreed to consider them- selves as being, par excellence, the young fellows of Ger- many. Das Burschenleben, for example, does not mean the mode of life of young men in general, but only of youi.-g men at college. 4 134 JENA. university, and in which the inhabitants are de- pendent on the presence of some hundreds of young men from all the countries of the Confed- eration, that the sect appears in its true form and colour. In these, the Burschen themselves con- stitute the public ; in these, no taint of extran- eous civilization mars the purity of their own roughness and caprices ; and, so far from ac- knowledging any superior, they recognize no equal. The mere citizens, or Philistines, as they are denominated by the sons of the aca- demic Israel, form a despised and rejected race. If they wish to let their houses, sell their wares, or have their bills paid, they must passively sub- rait to the capricious government of their over- bearing lodgers, who, constituting the all-power- ful and ever-present WE, rule the community li- terally with a rod of iron. These little towns are the empires of Comments, Landsmann- schaften, and Renommiren; of beer-drinking, and duel-fighting ; of scholars who set their mas- ters at defiance, and masters who, for the sake of fees, occasionally truckle to their scholars ; and nowhere do all these elements of the beau THE TOWN. 135 ideal of a modern German university concur in greater perfection than in Jena. Jena is a few miles to the eastward of Wei- mar, and stands in a much more pleasing dis- trict of country on the Saal. The ground sepa- rates into two lofty, precipitous, rocky ridges, presenting a striking regularity and uniformity of structure, but so bare, that even in summer no covering of verdure conceals the brown stone. These ridges terminate abruptly close by the Saal, which meanders through a very delightful valley, where the rich meadows in the bottom, the cultivated slopes of the hills, the cottages and hamlets peeping out from tufts of copsewood, or lurking beneath ancient elms, are all in a pure style of rural beauty ; the river it- self is a considerable and limpid stream, altoge- ther majestic in comparison with the muddy Ilm of Weimar. It is no wonder that Gothe prefers Jena to the capital for his summer residence. The town itself lies between the foot of the abrupt eminences and the river. There is no- thing about it worthy of remark. Many of the houses display a great deal of the ornamental, but somewhat grotesque, style of building which, 136 JENA. at one time, was so common in the south of Ger- many, and of which Augsburg, in particular, is still so full. Before descending into the town by a road which, in winter at least, is among the very worst in Europe, the traveller passes the field of battle of 1806, of that melancholy day when Prussia hastened to the field, And grasped the spear, but left the shield. Looking at the nature of the ground, the de- files which the French army had to pass, the as- cents which it had to climb, and the batteries which it had to encounter, as it advanced from Jena, a person, who is no tactician, finds it diffi- cult to conceive how the Prussians contrived not only to lose the battle, but to lose it so thorough- ly, that it decided the fate of the monarchy. Yet there are few things more absurd than the contempt with which, from the period of this unfortunate battle, it became fashionable for France, and the partial friends of France in other countries, to speak of the Prussian milita- ry, an ignorant affectation which even the gigan- tic efforts of the Liberation War have not been THK BATTLE. 137 able entirely to explode from among ourselves. A single battle may decide the fate of an empire, but can never decide the military character of a people. If France, under Napoleon, conquered at Jena, Prussia, under Frederick, had been equally triumphant at Rossbach. Whatever errors Prussia may have committed on the heights of Auerstadt, have all been washed out by the waters of the Bober and the Katzbach. Before the action Jena was the French head- quarters, and, as was to be expected from an army which, wherever it arrived, arrived in want of every thing but powder and shot, the town was not only plundered, but great part of it burned. The men ran about the streets with firebrands, extorting a ready compliance with all their demands. A shopkeeper, Avho, already plundered, refused to give up to a soldier the last pittance on which he could hope to preserve his family from starvation, was bayonetted on the spot by the ruffian. Mr Knebel, one of the an- cient literati of Weimar, who now enjoys in Jena his otium cum digmtate, labouring at a translation of Lucretius, on which Gothe told me he had known him employed forty years, 138 JENA. complained loudly of the murderous licence to one of the officers quartered in his house ; he was answered with a jest. The principal source of apprehension to the citizens lay in the pos- sibility of the students provoking the milita- ry, which would have produced an indiscrimi- nate massacre. It sounds ridiculous enough to talk of a few hundred boys insulting a French army ; but at Halle something of the kind ac- tually happened, and occasioned the suppression of the University, At Jena they were more prudent, and, with the current of battle, the storm rolled away in another direction. The French commissaries, however, who remained in the town for some time after the battle, were in- cessantly transmitting to head-quarters their ap- prehensions of the students. One of them was quartered in the house of a professor, and the professors generally lecture at home. When he first observed the students crowding about the door, nothing doubting but they were as- sembling to assassinate him, he saved himself by leaping from a window, at no small personal risk, and never stopped till he found himself safe in Weimar. PROFESSORS. J39 The university was founded in the middle of the seventeenth century, by the sovereign princes of the Ernestine branch of the house of Saxony, Weimar, Gotha, Cobourg, and Meinungen. It is the joint property of these little monarchs, who likewise share the patronage among them. In practice, however, the professors are named only by Weimar and Gotha ; for Cobourg and Meinungen have transferred their right to the latter, having probably found that the power of nominating the fourth part of a professor was not worth the expence which the partnership imposed upon them. By the constitution of the university, the new professor should be selected froma listof three candidates given in by thesena- tus academicus ; but the senate has allowed this privilege to go so entirely into disuse, that, for a long time, not even the form has been retain- ed, and the sovereign nominates directly to the vacant chair. The privilege is said to have been abused by the faculties. I was assured by members of the university that the senate has been known, from mere envy of superior talent, to pass by a man of acknowledged genius, and give in a list of three acknowledged blockheads. JEN* A. The constitution of the university is the same with] that which prevails ail over Germany. It consists of the four usual faculties, the Theolo- gical, Juridical, Medical, and Philosophical, though, in some instances, the distinction be- tween them is not very accurately observed. As every thing not included under the first three is referred to the philosophical faculty, and as they had been established long before many branches of knowledge rose to the rank of separate sciences, the philosophical assumes a most heterogeneous appearance; Greek and Che- mistry, Logic and Mineralogy, Belles-Lettres and Botany, stand side by side in the academical ar- ray. For the ordinary departments of study, there are three sets of instructors. The ordi- nary professors are, as their name imports, the proper corporation : they constitute the faculties, elect from among themselves the members of the senate, confer the degrees, exercise the jurisdic- tion, and appoint the inferior officers of the uni- versity, and receive salaries. Jena has twenty- eight; four theologians, no fewer than nine juris- consults, five medical, and ten philosophical professors. The extraordinary professors are in PROFESSORS. 141 a manner volunteers ; they have no seat in the faculty, no share in the authority of the corpo- ration, and receive either no salary, or a very trifling one. The third class, Doctor es privatlm docentes, have in reality nothing to do with the university, except that they are under its protec- tion, and have its authority -to teach; they are merely young men, who, having, taken a diplo- ma in some one of the faculties, have obtained the permission of the senate to give lectures, if they can find hearers. There are likewise at- tached to the university, as every where else in Germany, teachers of the principal modern lan- guages, and masters, moreover, in riding, fencing, dancing, music, and drawing. All these, to be sure, are in reality only private teachers, but they are an indispensable appendix to the univer- sity, and, in the eyes of great part of the stu- dents, this appendix, like the postscript of a la- dy's letter, is the most important member of the Alma Mater. A professor of law or theology might be of moderate attainments without doinw much mischief ; but few would think of attend- ing a university which did not possess able mas- ters in fencing, riding, and dancing. The first 142 JENA. of these three is the only personage whom the Burschen recognize as sacrosanct ; the last is of less use, for, as every German boy and German girl learns waltzing as naturally as walking, the college gentlemen are much more bent on the practice than the study of the art. The salaries of the professors are small, for how can so poor and insignificant a country be munificent in its learned institutions? They used to be four hundred rix dollars; within these few years they have been raised to five hundred, a sum which does not exceed L. 80, and is little more than what is required to bring a respectable student through a well spent year at Gb'ttingen. This rule, however, is not always strictly observed. When it is wished to bring a person of eminence to the university, and the man knows his own value, (which he generally does) it is neither unusual nor improper to find him higgling for a hundred or two hundred dol- lars more ; and the house of Weimar enjoys the reputation of having always been as liberal, in this respect, as its revenues allowed. The teachers are thus very far from being indepen- dent of the students and their fees, a dependence FEES. 143 which has brought with it both good and bad consequences. It has been useful, as competi- tion always is, by urging the professors to ac- quire reputation, that they may acquire hearers ; but it has been injurious by seducing them to court popularity by relaxing the reins of discipline, and overlooking many of the evils of the Bur- schen life, that they might draw crowds to their university by giving it the character of being the one where the follies and vices of the system which German students have established for their own government, were least exposed to punishment and restraint. The fee. like the salary, varies with the reputation of the teacher. The usual fee for a session is five rix dollars, (15s. 6d.) yet there are instances of a sturdy higgler beating down even this trifling sum. On the other hand, there are prelections, espe- cially in the medical faculty, which go as high as a guinea. In other branches of expence, the German student has not the same overwhelming- advantage ; but altogether, living as a respecta- ble Burschen would wish to do, he can enjoy, for half the money, the same education he could command in Scotland. The English universi- 144 JENA. ties, in their general character, never come into question, they are seminaries for particular clas- ses. A distinguished member of the juridical faculty at Jena was particularly inquisitive about the economical relations of his brethren in Britain. When I spoke to him of a professor of law, in Edinburgh, for example, adding to his salary a body of three hundred students at four guineas a head, for five months 1 labour, the astonished jurisconsult could only exclaim, " O das gesegnete Volklein /" Even the fees, moderate as they are, are but of recent origin. In the original constitution of the German universities, there was no provision forhonoraries; formany years, the professors con- tinued to deliver their lectures gratis. Michael is of Gottingen was among the first who openly at- tacked the system, and a revolution, so desir- able to the teachers, was speedily accomplished. The professors argued thus ; by law we must give lectures gratis, but that is no reason why we should not likewise give others, not gratis, to those who are willing to pay for them ; and if we only take care that the former shall be good for nothing, and reserve for the latter all that is FEES. worth knowing, every body who wishes to Jearn will choose to pay. This principle once adopt- ed, the progress of the thing was quite natural, and the distinction between public and private lectures in a German program becomes perfect- ly intelligible. The professors gradually intro- duced a separate course of prelections> which they called private, and for which they exacted fees ; the public, that is, the gratis lectures, ra- pidly became superficial and uninteresting, while every thing important in the science which he taught was reserved, by the professor, for the golden privatim. The natural consequence was, that public or gratis lectures disappeared, and what were called private took their place. These private lectures are, in every respect, ex- cept that of expence, the old public lectures; they are given in the same place, in the same way, on the same topics, but they must be paid for ; because it has unavoidably come to this, that a student as little thinks of attending, as a professor of delivering, public lectures in the old sense of the word. A student could not find a sufficient number of them to complete any course ; and, though he did, to take advantage VOL. I. G 146 JENA. of them would make him be regarded by his fellows as a charity school boy. Among the host of professors at Jena, there are few who have ever read a publicum in their lives ; and they are perfectly right. If it be bad in a wealthy government to make public instructors independent of intellectual exertion, it would be preposterous in a poor one, which cannot give them a decent independence, to deny them the fruits of their intellectual labour. Even where a wandering publice makes its appearance, it is uniformly accompanied with some such sig- nificant phrase as, horis et diebus commodis ; or, adhuc definiendis ; or the subject of the promised prelections has little to do with the de- partment in question. Thus Lenz, the Professor of Mineralogy, announced, for his private course, mineralogy and geognosy ; but, for his public- course, and that, too, only hora commoda, German Antiquities ! Some of the professors give a third course, which is announced as priva- tissime, and must be paid for at a still higher rate than the simply private. No better proof of their love of fees, and, what is much better, of their proverbial industry, can DIVISION OF LECTURES. 147 be found than the numerous subdivisions into which they break down their particular depart- ments, converting each into the subject-matter of a separate course, and not unfrequently su- peradding to them prelections which appear to have little connection with their proper business. Every professor, though appointed to teach a particular science, is left to his own discretion as to the manner in which he shall teach it ; and the Protestant universities are accustomed to boast of this liberty as an advan- tage which they enjoy over their Catholic rivals, with whom the how as well as the what of pub- lic teaching, and even the text-books that shall be used, are laid down by positive rule. In the former, the professor is left entirely to the free- dom of his own will. In the course of the ses- sion, that is, in about five months, he may go through his science, and immediately begin it again for the next ; but, in general, he adopts a plan by which more fees are brought in, and the science is perhaps better taught. He breaks down his subject into separate courses, which are car- ried on simultaneously ; for he either devotes a certain number of days in the week to one, and 148 JNA. the rest to another, or lectures two or three hour* a-day. Thus every thing is taught more in de- tail, the professors get more money, and have much harder labour. But they are a race most patient of toil. It has been said of Michaelis, that he was so identified with his profession, that he never was happy but when reading lectures, and all the days in his calendar were white, ex- cept the holidays. His mantle seems to have descended on the greatest part of his follow- ers between the Vistula and the Rhine. At Jena, Stark, whose peculiar department is the ob- stetric art, was lecturing at one hour on the theory, and, at a second, in the Lying-in Hospi- tal, on the practice of midwifery ; at a third, upon surgery ; at a fourth, on the diseases of the eye ; and, at a fifth, was giving clinical lectures in the Infirmary. Kieser, another celebrated member of the same faculty, was occupying two different hours with two separate courses in medicine; for a third, he announced animal magnetism ; and for a fourth, the anatomy and physiology of plants. Of the two properly medical courses, the first was general pathology ; the second, which, if taken at all, must be taken and paid LAW. for as a separate course, was a particular part of the general doctrine, inflammations, but treated more in detail. One of our own professors, who, though re- ceiving four times the money, impatiently reck- ons every hour till his five brief months of mo- derate labour be past, could not hold out for a single year among these gentlemen, for they have two sessions in the year, each of about five months. Their only period of relaxation is an interval of a month between one session and the other, which, however, they generally contrive to stretch out to six weeks, by finishing the one a few days earlier, and commencing the other a few days later, than strict rule allows. The professor who lectured on the Pandects was reading three hours a day, two of them succes- sively ; an enormous task both for him and his pupils. This department being so heavy, three gentlemen of the juridical faculty read the Pan- dects in their turn. The lawyers have thus hard work, but they are likewise much more amply provided for than their brethren ; their salaries, and the fees de- rived from students, do not constitute one-half 150 JENA. of their emoluments. The juridical faculty, in every German university, forms a court of ap- peal for the whole Confederation. In all the states, the losing party in a cause had the right of appealing to a university : this right was con- firmed by the Act of Confederation ; and even the native Forum, if it find difficulties which re- quire the assistance of more profound juriscon- sults, may send the case for judgment to a uni- versity. In all such appeals, the members of the juridical faculty become judges; they have no salary for this part of their duty, but they have fees paid by the litigants ; and at Jena I have heard them estimated as being at least equal to the professorial salary. To this union of the bench with the chair are undoubtedly to be ascribed, in some measure, the distinguished legal talents which have at all times adorned the German universities, and which, in the present day, are far from being extinct. The theoreti- cal studies of the academician are thus daily brought to the test of practice ; he sees at every moment how his logical deductions work in the affairs of ordinary life. It gave the prince like- wise a direct interest to fill these chairs with LAW. distinguished men ; for, the greater the quantity of profitable business, the smaller was the neces- sity for supplying or increasing salaries at his own expence. The lawyers of Jena have still a third source of toil and emolument, equal to either of the preceding, because they constitute the Oberap- pellatiuns-Gericht, or Supreme Court of Appeal, not only for the grand duchy, but likewise for all the other Saxon Houses, and the two branch- es of Reuss. * This plurality of offices is not, perhaps, very favourable to the independence of the judges ; for, though not removeable from the bench, yet, in consequence of the decision of the Landtag already referred to, they can be re- moved from their chairs at the pleasure of the * By the Act of Confederation it is provided, that every state whose population does not amount to three hundred thousand souls, shall unite itself with others sufficiently populous to make up that number, for the erection of a common Supreme Court of Appeal. The jurisdiction of that of Jena extends to the territories of Weimar, Gotha, Cobourg, Meinungen, and Hilburghausen ; and to these have been added the petty families of Reuss, from the proximity of their territories to the Saxon duchies. 152 JENA. Grand Duke; and it is perfectly natural, that the fears of the removeable professor should have some influence on the conduct of the irre- moveable judge. The poverty, however, of these little governments, renders such an accu- mulation of offices indispensable ; for, unless a man were thus allowed to insure a competency, the finances could not maintain such a supreme tribunal as would command the public respect, and place its members above the temptation of stooping to unworthy gains. The proceed- ings in all cases are entirely in writing, and not a human being is admitted to witness them. " I can show you the room, the table, and the chairs," said a member of the court, " but I can do nothing more for you. 11 It is strange enough, that though, in the conflict of modern politics, the professors of Jena have been cried down as being leavened with a portion of liberal- ism approaching to treason, yet the lawyers, with all their talent and political liberality, dis- play a rooted dislike to trial by jury, and the publicity of judicial proceedings. The labours of Feuerbach, however, on the other side, have not been without effect. Though, out of the MODE OP TEACHING. 153 Rhenish provinces, I never found an open court in Germany, except at Berlin, the conflict of opinions has weakened even professional preju- dices. The same lawyers who detest juries, are willing to admit publicity in criminal trials; but they cannot think of it with patience in civil suits ; first, because people would take no inter- est in them ; second, because, though they did, they would not understand them ; third, because, though they did understand them, they have no right to know other people's private affairs. It is scarcely worth while to say, that the mode of teaching is almost entirely the same as in the Scottish Universities. The studenft live where they choose, and how they choose, having no connection with the University, except sub- jection to its discipline, which they do not much regard, and attendance at the appointed hour in the Professor's lecture-room, where nobody knows whether they be present or not. The lectures are given in German ; and, after a small theatre like that of Weimar, there are few surer means of mastering this beautiful, but difficult language, than to attend the prelections of a Professor on some popular topic, such as his- 154 JENA. tory. There is no particular university build- ing set apart for the classes ; at least, the build- ing which bears the name is not applied to that purpose ; it only contains the library and the jail. Such of the Professors as have only small classes assemble them in their own dwelling- houses. Others, who can boast of a more nu- merous auditory, have larger halls in different parts of the town. There is not a class-room in Jena which would contain more than two hundred persons ; and, now that its honours have been blighted, that is a greater number than any of its learned men can hope to col- lect. Till of late years, however, the Professor of History, an extremely able and popular gen- tleman, used to have a much more numerous auditory. When he occasionally delivered a ptiblicum, the overflowing audience filled even the court ; the windows were thrown open, and his resounding voice was heard distinctly in every corner. Nothing can exceed the orderly behaviour of the students ; they seem to leave all their oddities at the door. Savage though they be esteemed, a stranger may hospitize, as they call it, among them MODE OF TEACHING. 155" in perfect safety, even without putting himself un- der the wing of a Professor. Every man takes his seat quietly, puts his bonnet beneath him, or in his pocket, unfolds his small portfolio, and pro- duces an inkhorn, armed below with a sharp iron spike, by which he fixes it firmly in the wooden desk before him. The teacher has notes and his text-book before him, but the lec- ture is not properly read ; those, at least, which I heard, were spoken, and the Professor stood. This mode of communication is only advisable when a man is thoroughly master of his subject, but is perhaps susceptible of much more effect than a recited manuscript. Above all, Martin, the Professor of Criminal Law, and Luden, the Professor of History, harangue with a vivacity and vehemence, which render listlessness or in-, attention impossible. Thus the hour is spent in listening, and it is left entirely to the young men themselves to make what use they may think proper, or no use at all, of what they have heard ; there is no other superintendence of their studies, than that of the Professor in his pulpit, telling them what he himself knows ; there are no arrangements to 156 JENA. secure, in any degree, either attendance or ap- plication ; the received maxim is, that it is right to tell them what they ought to do, but it would be neither proper nor useful to take care that they do it, or prevent them from being as idle and ignorant as they choose. Once outside of the class-room, the Burschen show themselves a much less orderly race ; if they submit to be ruled one hour daily by a professor, they rule him, and every other person, during all the rest of the four and twenty. The duels of the day are generally fought out early in the morning ; the spare hours of the forenoon and afternoon are spent in fenc- ing, in renowning that is, in doing things which make people stare at them, and in pro- viding duels for the morrow. In the evening, the various clans assemble in their commerz- houses, to besot themselves with beer and tobac- co ; and it is long after midnight before the last strains of the last songs die away upon the streets. Wine is not the staple beverage, for Jena is not in a wine country, and the students have learned to place a sort of pride in drinking COMMERZ-HOUSES. 157 beer. Yet, with a very natural contradiction, over their pots of beer they vociferate songs in praise of the grape, and swing their j ugs with as much glee as a Bursche of Heidelberg brandishes his romer of Rhenish. Amid all their multi- farious and peculiar strains of joviality, I never heard but one in praise of the less noble li- quor :* Come, brothers, be jovial, while life creeps along; Make the walls ring around us with laughter and song. Though wine, it is true, be a rarity here, We'll be jolly as gods with tobacco and beer. Vivallerallerallera. Corpus Juris, avaunt ! To the door with the Pandects ! Away with Theology's texts, dogmas, and sects ! Foul Medicine begone ! At the board of our revels, Brothers, Muses like these give a man the blue devils. Vivallerallerallera. * It is scarcely necessary to say, that these rude rhymes are not translated from any idea that they possess poetical merit, but merely to show the character of the Burschen strains, and of the academicians, perhaps, who compose and sing them. 158 JENA. / One can't always be studying ; a carouse, on occasion, Is a sine quo nun in a man's education ; One is bound to get muddy and mad now and then ; But our beer jugs are empty, so fill them again. Vivallerallerallera . A band of these young men, thus assembled in an ale-house in the evening, presents as strange a contrast as can well be imagined to all correct ideas, not only of studious academical tranquillity, but even of respectable conduct ; yet, in refraining from the nightly observances, they would think themselves guilty of a less pardonable dereliction of their academic charac- ter, and a more direct treason against the inde- pendence of Germany, than if they subscribed to the Austrian Observer, or never attended for a single hour the lectures for which they paid. Step into the public room of that inn, on the opposite side of the market-place, for it is the most respectable in the town. On opening the door, you must use your ears, not your eyes, for nothing is yet visible except a dense mass of smoke, occupying space, concealing every thing in it and beyond it, illuminated with a dusky light, you know not how, and sending forth from COMMEKZ-HOUSES. 159 its bowels all the varied sounds of mirth and re- velry. As the eye gradually accustoms itself to the atmosphere, human visages are seen dimly dawning through the lurid cloud ; then pewter jugs begin to glimmer faintly in their neigh- bourhood ; and, as the smoke from the phial gradually shaped itself into the friendly Asmo- deus, the man and his jug slowly assume a de- fined and corporeal form. You can now totter along between the two long tables which have sprung up, as if by enchantment ; by the time you have reached the huge stove at the farther end, you have before you the paradise of Ger- man Burschen, destitute only of its Houris: every man with his bonnet on his head, a pot of beer in his hand, a pipe or segar in his mouth, and a song upon his lips, never doubting but that he and his companions are training them- selves to be the regenerators of Europe, that they are the true representatives of the manliness and independence of the German character, and the only models of a free, generous, and high- minded youth. They lay their hands upon their jugs, and vow the liberation of Germany; they stop a second pipe, or light a second se- 12 160 JENA. gar, and swear that the Holy Alliance is an un- clean thing. The songs of these studious revellers often bear a particular character. They are, indeed, mostly convivial, but many of them contain a peculiar train of feeling, springing from their own peculiar modes of thinking, hazy aspira- tions after patriotism and liberty, of neither of which they have any idea, except that every de- vout Bursche is bound to adore them, and mys- tical allusions to some unknown chivalry that dwells in a fencing bout, or in the cabalistical ceremony, with which the tournament concludes, of running the weapon through a hat. Out of a university town, these effusions would be ut- terly insipid, just as so many of the native Ve- netian canzonette lose all their meaning, when sung any where but in Venice, or by any other than a Venetian. Thus, their innumerable hymns to the rapier, or on the moral, intellectual, and political effects of climbing up poles and tossing the bar, would be unintelligible to all who do not know their way of thinking, and must ap- pear ridiculous to every one who cannot enter into their belief, that these chivalrous exercises STUDENT SONGS. 161 constitute the essence of manly honour; but they themselves chaunt-these tournament songs ( Tournier-lieder) with an enthusiastic solem- nity which, to a third party, is irresistibly ludi- crous. The period when they took arms against France was as fertile in songs as in deeds of va- lour. Many of the former are excellent in their way, though there was scarcely a professional poet in their band, except young Korner. These, with the more deep and intense strains of Arndt, will always be favourites, because they were the productions of times, and of a public feeling unique in the history of Germany. Where no reference is made to fencing tourna- ments, or warlike recollections, there is never- theless the distinct impress of Burschen feel- ings. The following may be taken as a satisfactory example of the ordinary genus of university minstrelsy ; it is by way of eminence, the Hymn, or Burchen Song of Jena ; it contains all the texts which furnish materials for the amplifi- cation's of college rhymsters, and shows better than a tedious description how they view the world. JENA. Pledge round, brothers ; Jena for ever ! huzza ! The resolve to be free is abroad in the land ; The Philistine " burns to be joined wilh our band, For the Burschen are free. Pledge round then ; our country for ever ! huzza ! While you stand like your fathers as pure and as true, Forget not the debt to posterity clue, For the Burschen are free. Pledge round to our Prince, then, ye Burschen ! huzza ! He swore our old honours and rights to maintain, And we vow him our love while a drop's in a vein, For the Burschen are free. Pledge round to the love of fair woman ! huzza ! If there be who the feeling of woman offends, For him is no place among freemen or friends ; But the Burschen are free. Pledge round to the stout soul of man, too I huzza ! Love, singing, and wine, are the proofs of his might, And who knows not all three is a pitiful wight ; But the Burschen are free. Pledge round to the free word of freemen ! huzza ! Who knows what the truth is, yet trembles to brave The might that would crush it, is a cowardly slave ; But the Burschen are free. " That is, the people. STUDENT SONGS. 163 Pledge round then each bold deed for ever ! huzza ! Who tremblingly ponders how daring may end, Will crouch like a minion, when power bids him bend ; But the Burschen are free. Pledge round then, the Burschen for ever ! huzza ! Till the world goes in rags, when the last day comes o'er us, Let each Bursche stand faithful, and join in our chorus, The Burschen are free. If they ever give vent in song to the democra- tic and sanguinary resolves which are averred to render them so dangerous, it must be in their more secret conclaves ; for, in the strains which enliven their ordinary potations, there is nothing more definite than in the above prosaic effusion, There are many vague declamations about free- dom and country, but no allusions to particular persons, particular governments, or particular plans. The only change of government I ever knew proposed in their cantilenes, is one to which despotism itself could not object. Let times to come come as they may, And empires rise and fall ; Let Fortune rule as Fortune will. And wheel upon her ball ; 164 JENA. High upon Bacchus' lordly brow Our diadem shall shine ; And Joy, we'll crown her for his queen, Their capital the Rhine. In Heidelberg's huge tun shall sit The Council of our State, And on our own Johannisberg The Senate shall debate. Amid the vines of Burgundy Our Cabinet shall reign ; Our Lords and faithful Commons House Assemble in Champagne. Only the Cabinet of Constantinople could set it- self, with any good grace, against such a reform. But, worse than idly as no small portion of time is spent by the great body of the academic youth in these nightly debauches, this is only one, and by no means the most distinguishing or troublesome, of their peculiarities ; it is the unconquerable spirit of clanship, prevalent among them, which has given birth to their violence and insubordination ; for it at once cherishes the spirit of opposition to all regular discipline, and constitutes an united body to give that opposi- tion effect. The house of Hanover did not LANDSMANNSCHAFTEN. 165 find more difficulty in reducing to tranquillity the clans of the Highlands of Scotland than the Grand Duke of Weimar would encounter in eradicating the Landsmannschaften from among the four hundred students of Jena, and inducing them to conduct themselves like orderly, well- bred young men. The Landsmannschaften themselves are by no means a modern invention, though it is believed, that the secret organiza- tion which they give to the students all over Germany has, of late years, been used to new purposes. The name is entirely descriptive of the thing, a Country manship, an association of persons from the same country, or the same province of a country. They do not arise from the constitution of the university, nor are they acknowledged by it ; on the contrary, they are proscribed both by the laws of the university and the government of the country. They do not exist for any academical purpose, for the young men have no voice in any thing connected with the university ; to be a member of one is an aca- demical misdemeanour, yet there are few stu- dents who do not belong to one or another. They are associations of students belonging to 166 JENA. the same province, for the purpose of enabling each, thus backed by all, to carry through his own rude will, let it be what it may, and, of late years, it is averred, to propagate wild politi- cal reveries, if not to foment political cabals. They are regularly organized ; each has its pre- sident, clerk, and councillors, who form what is called the Convent of the Landsmannschaft. This body manages its funds, and hasthe di- rection of its affairs, if it have affairs. It like- wise enjoys the honour of fighting all duels pro patria, for so they are named when the interest or honour, not of an individual, but of the whole fraternity, has been attacked. The assembled presidents of the different Landsmannschaften in a university constitute the senior convent. This supreme tribunal does not interfere in the pri- vate affairs of the particular bodies, but decides in all matters that concern the whole mass of Burschen, and watches over the strict observance of the general academic code which they have en- actedfor themselves. The meetings of both tribu- nals are held frequently and regularly, but with so much secrecy, that the most vigilant police has been unable to reach them. They have cost LANDSMANNSCHAFTEN. 167 many a professor many a sleepless night. The governments scold the senates, as if they trifled with, or even connived at the evil ; the senates lose all patience with the governments for think- ing it so easy a matter to discover what Bur- schen are resolved to keep concealed. The ex- ertions of both have only sufficed to drive the Landsmannschaften into deeper concealment. From the incessant quarrels and uproars, and the instantaneous union of all to oppose any measure of general discipline about to be enforc- ed, the whole senate often sees plainly, that these bodies are in active operation, without be- ing able either to ascertain who are their mem- bers, or to pounce upon their secret conclaves. Since open war was thus declared against them by the government, secrecy has become indispensable to their existence, and the Bursche scruples at nothing by which this secrecy may be insured. The most melancholy consequence of this is, thati as every man is bound by the code to esteem the preservation of the Landsmannschaft his first duty, every principle of honour is often trampled under foot to maintain it. In some universities it was provided by the code that a 168 JENA. student, when called before the senate to be ex- amined about a suspected Landsmannschaft, ceas- ed to be a member, and thus he could safely say that he belonged to no such institution. In others, it was provided, that such an inquiry should operate as an ipso facto dissolution of the body itself, till the investigation should be over ; and thus every member could safe- ly swear that no such association was in ex- istence. There are cases where the student, at his admission into the fraternity, gives his word of honour to do every thing in his power to spread a belief that no such association exists, and, if he shall be questioned either by the se- nate or the police, steadfastly to deny it. Here and there the professors fell on the expedient of gradually extirpating them, by taking from every new student, at his matriculation", a solemn pro- mise that he would not join any of these bodies ; but where such principles are abroad, promises are useless, for deceit is reckoned a duty. The more moderate convents left it to the conscience of the party himself to decide, whether he was bound in honour by such a promise ; but the code of Leipzig, as it has been printed, boldly declares every promise of this kind void, and LANDSMANNSCHAFTEN. 169 those who have exacted it punishable. More- over, it invests the senior convent, in general terms, with the power of giving any man a dis- pensation from his word of honour, if it shall see cause, but confines this privilege, in money matters, to cases where he has been enormouslv cheated. Thus the code of university Lands- mannschaften, while it prates of nothing but the point of honour, and directs to that centre all its fantastic regulations, sets out with a violation of every thing honourable. Such are the tenets of men who chatter unceasingly about liberty and patriotism, and have perpetually in their mouths such phrases as, " the Burschen lead a free, honourable, and independent life in the cultivation of every social and patriotic virtue." Thus do moral iniquities become virtues in their eyes, if they forward the ends, or are necessary to the continued existence of a worthless and mischievous association ; and who can tell how far this process of measuring honour by imagin- ed expediency may corrupt the whole moral sense ? Is it wonderful that Sand, taught to consider deceit, prevarication, or breach of pro- mise as virtues, when useful to a particular cause, VOL. I. H 170 JENA. should have regarded assassination in the same light, when the shedding of blood was to conse- crate doctrines which he looked upon as holy ? The students who have not thought proper to join any of these associations are few in number, and, in point of estimation, form a class still more despised and insulted than the Philistines them- selves. Every Bursche thinks it dishonourable to have communication with them ; they are ad- mitted to no carousal ; they are debarred from all balls and public festivals by which the youth contrive to make themselves notorious and ridi- culous. Such privations would not be severely felt, but they are farther exposed to every spe- cies of contempt and insult ; to abuse them is an acceptable service to Germany ; in the class- room, and on the street, they must be taught that they are " cowardly slaves ;"" and all this, because they will not throw themselves into the fetters of a self-created fraternity. However they may be outraged, they are entitled neither to redress nor protection ; should any of them resent the maltreatment heaped upon him, he brings down on himself the vengeance of the whole *nass of initiated ; for, to draw every man LANDSMAKNSCHAFTEN. 171 within the circle is a common object of all the clans ; he who will join none is the enemy of all. Blows, which the Burschen have pro- scribed among themselves, as unworthy of gen- tlemen, are allowed against the " Wild Ones," for such is the appellation given to these quiet sufferers, from the caution with which they must steal along, trembling at the presence of a Comment Bursche, and exiled, as they are, from the refined intercourse of Commerz-houses to the wilds and deserts of civilized society. Others, unable to hold out against the insolence and contempt of the young men among whom they are compelled to live, in an evil hour seek refuge beneath the wing of a Landsmannschaft. These are named Renoncen, or Renouncers. Having renounced the state of nature, they stand, in academical civilization, a degree above the ob- stinate " Wild Ones, 1 ' but yet they do not ac- quire by their tardy and compelled submission a full claim to all Burschen rights. They are merely entitled to the protection of the fraterni- ty which they have joined, and every member of it will run every man through the body who dares to insult them, in word or deed, otherwise 172 JENA. than is prescribed by the Burschen code. By abject submission to the will of their imperious protectors, they purchase the right of being abused and stabbed only according to rule, in- stead of being kicked and knocked down contra- ry to all rule. Associations are commonly formed for pur- poses of good will and harmony ; but the very object of the Landsmannscliaften is quarrel- ling. So soon as a number of these fraternities exist, they become the sworn foes of each other, except when a common danger drives them to make common cause. Each aspires at being the dominant body in the university, and, if not the most respected, at least the most feared in the town. They could be tolerated, if the subject of emulation were, which should produce the greatest number of decent scholars; it would even be laudable if they contended which should be victor at cricket or foot-ball. But unfortu- nately, the ambitious contest of German Bur- schen is simply, who shall be most successful at retwwning) that is, at doing something, no matter what, which will make people stare at them, and talk about them ; or, who shall produce the LANDSMANNSCHAFTEN. 173 greatest number of scandals, that is, who shall fight the greatest number of duels, or cause them to be fought ; or, who will show the quick- est invention, and the readiest hand in resisting all attempts, civil or academical, to interfere with their vagaries. If opportunities of morti- fying each other do not occur, they must be made ; the merest trifles are sufficient to give a pretext for serious quarrels, and the sword is immediately drawn to decide them, the " con- summation devoutly to be wished," which is at bottom the grand object of the whole. At Jena the custom has been allowed to grow up of per- mitting the students to give balls ; the Senate has only tried to make them decent, by confining them to the Rose, an inn belonging to the Uni- versity, and therefore under its controul. If they be given anywhere else, the Burschen cannot expect the company of the fashionable ladies of Jena, the wives and daughters of the profes- sors. Now a Landsmannschaft which gives a ball, Renowns superbly ; it makes itself distinguished, and it must, therefore, be morti- fied. The other Burschen station themselves at the door, or below the windows ; they hoot, JENA. yell, sing, whistle, and make all sorts of infernal noises, occasionally completing the joke by breaking the windows. This necessarily brings up an abundant crop of scandals ; and it can easily happen, that as much blood is shed next morning,' as there was negus drunk the night be- fore. A Landsmannschaft had incautiously an- nounced a ball before engaging the musicians ; the others immediately engaged the only band of which Jena could boast for a concert on the same evening. The dancers would have been under the necessity of either sacrificing their fete, or bringing over an orchestra from Wei- mar ; but the quarrel was prevented from coming to extremes by the non-dancers giving up their right over the fiddlers, on condition that the ball should be considered as given by the whole body of Burschen, not by any particular fraternity. A number of students took it into their heads to erect themselves into an independent duchy, which they named after a village in the neighbourhood of Jena, whither they regularly repaired to drink beer. He who could drink most was elected Duke, and the great officers of his court were appointed in the LANDSMANNSCHAFTEN. 175 same way, according to their capacity for liquor. To complete the farce, they paraded the town. Though all this might be extremely good for sots and children, in students it was exquisitely ridiculous ; but it attracted notice ; it was a piece of successful renowning, and their brethren could not tamely submit to be thrown into the shade. A number of others forthwith erected themselves into a free town of the empire ; took their name from another neighbouring village ; elected their Burgomaster, Syndic, and Coun- cillors, and, habited in the official garb of Ham- burgh or Frankfort, made their procession on foot, to mark their contempt of ducal pomp, and point themselves out as industrious frugal citizens. The two parties now came in contact with each other; and it was daily expected, that their reciprocal caricatures, like angry ne- gotiations, would prove the forerunners of an open war between his Serene Highness and the Free Town. The individual Bursche, in his academical character, is animated by the same paltry, ar- rogant, quarrelsome, domineering disposition. When fairly imbued with the spirit of his sect, 176 JENA. no rank can command respect from him, for he knows no superior to himself and his comrades. A few years ago, the Empress of Russia, when she was at Weimar, visited the University Mu- seum of Jena. Among the students who had assembled to see her, one was observed to keep his bonnet on his head, and his pipe in his mouth, as her Imperial Majesty passed. The Prorector called the young man before him, and remonstrated with him on his rudeness. The defence was in the genuine spirit of Burschenism : " I am a free man; what is an Empress to me ?" Full of lofty unintelligible notions of his own importance and high vocation ; misled by ludicrously erroneous ideas of honour ; and hur- ried on by the example of all around him, the true Bursche swaggers and renowns, cho- leric, raw, and overbearing. He measures his own honour, because his companions measure it, by the number of scandals he has fought, but neither he nor they ever waste a thought on what they have been fought for. To have fought unsuccessfully is bad ; but, if he wishes to become a respected and influential personage, not to have fought at all is i nfinitely worse. He, THE COMMENT. 177 therefore, does not fight to resent insolence, but he insults, or takes offence, that he may havea pretext for fighting. The lecture-rooms are but secondary to the fencing- school ; that is his temple, the rapier is his god, and the Com- ment is the gospel by which he swears. This Comment, as it is called, is the Burschen Pandects, the general code to which all the Landsmannschaften are subject. However nu- merous the latter maybe in a university, there is but one comment, and this venerable body of law descends from generation to generation, in the special keeping of the senior convent. It is the holy volume, whose minutest regulations must neither be questioned nor slighted. What it allows cannot be wrong ; what it prohibits cannot be right. " He has no comment in him,' 1 used to be a proverbial expression for a stupid fellow. It regulates the mode of election of the superior officers, fixes the relation of " Wild Ones 11 and " Renouncers 11 to the true Burschen, and of the Burschen to each other ; it provides punishments for various offences, and commonly denounces excommunication against thieves and cheaters at play, especially if the H2 178 JENA. cheating be of any very gross kind. But the point of honour is its soul. The comment is, in reality, a code, arranging the manner in which Burschen shall quarrel with each other, and how the quarrel, once begun, shall be terminated. It fixes, with the most pedantic solicitude, a gra- duated scale of offensive words, and the style and degree of satisfaction that may be demanded for each. The scale rises, or is supposed to rise, in enormity, till it reaches the atrocious expression, Dummer Junge, (stupid youth,) which contains within itself every possible idea of insult, and can be atoned for only with blood. The parti- cular degrees of the scale may vary in different universities ; but the principle of its construction is the same in all, and in all " stupid youth" is the boiling point. If you are assailed with any epithet which stands below stupid youth in the scale of contumely, you are not bound immedi- ately to challenge ; you may " set yourself in advantage ;"" that is, you may retort on the of- fender with an epithet which stands higher than the one he has applied to you. Then your oppo- nent may retort, if you have left him room, in the same way, by rising a degree above you ; and THE COMMENT. 179 thus the courteous terms of the comment may be bandied between you, till one or the other finds only the highest step of the ladder unoc- cupied, and is compelled to pronounce the " stu- pid youth," to which there is no reply but a challenge. I do not say that this is the ordinary practice ; in general, it comes to a challenge at once ; but such is the theory of the Comment. Whoever submits to any of these epithets, with- out either setting himself in advantage, or giv- ing a challenge, is forthwith punished by the convent with verschiss, or the lesser excom- munication ; for there is a temporary and a per- petual cerschiss, something like the lesser and greater excommunication in ecclesiastical dis- cipline. He may recover his rights and his ho- nour, by fighting, within a given time, with one member of each of the existing Landsmann- schaften ; but if he allows the fixed time to pass without doing so, the sentence becomes irrevoc- able : no human power can restore him to his honours and his rights ; he is declared infamous for ever; the same punishment is denounced against all who hold intercourse with him ; every mode of insult, real or verbal, is permit, 180 JENA. ted and laudable against him ; he is put to the ban of this academical empire, and stands alone among his companions, the butt of unceasing scorn and contumely. In the conduct of the duel itself, the comment descends to the minutest particulars. The dress, the weapons, the distance, the value of different kinds of thrusts, the length to which the arm shall be bare, and a thousand other minutiae, are all fixed, and have, at least, the merit of pre- venting every unfair advantage. In some uni- versities the sabre, in others the rapier, is the academical weapon ; pistols nowhere. The wea- pon used at Jena is what they call a Scldager. It is a straight blade, about three feet and a half long, and three-cornered like a bayonet. The hand is protected by a circular plate of tin, eight or ten inches in diameter, which some bur- lesque poets, who have had the audacity to laugh at Burschenism, have profaned with the appellation of " The Soup Plate of Honour." The handle can be separated from the blade, and the soup plate from both, all this for pur- poses of concealment. The handle is put in the pocket ; the plate is buttoned under the coat ; the DUELS. 181 blade is sheathed in a walking-stick ; and thus the parties proceed unsuspected to the place of combat, as if they were going out for a morning stroll. The tapering triangular blade, neces- sarily becomes roundish towards the point; therefore, no thrust counts, unless it be so deep that the orifice of the wound is three-cornered ; for, as the Comment has it, " no affair is to be decided in a trifling and childish way merely pro forma" Besides the seconds, an umpire and a surgeon must be present ; but the last is al- ways a medical student, that he may be under the comment-obligation to secrecy. All parties present are bound not to reveal what passes, without distinction of consequences, if it has been fairly done ; the same promise is exacted from those who may come accidentally to know any thing of the matter ; to give information or evidence against a Bursche, in regard to any thing not contrary to the Comment, is an inex- piable offence. Thus life may easily be lost without the possibility of discovery ; for autho- rity is deprived, as far as possible, of every means by which it might get at the truth. It is perfectly true, that mortal combats are not 12 182 JENA. frequent, partly from the average equality of skill, every man being in the daily practice of his weapon, partly, because there is often no small portion of gasconade in the warlike propen- sities of these young persons ; yet neither are they so rare as many people imagine. It does not often happen, indeed, that either of the par- ties is killed on the spot, but the wounds often superinduce other mortal ailments, and still more frequently, lay the foundation of diseases which cling to the body through life. A profes- sor, who perhaps has had better opportunities of learning the working of the system than any of his colleagues, assured me, that instances are by no means rare, of young men carrying home con- sumption with them, in consequence of slight injuries received in the lungs. On the occasion of the last fatal duel at Jena, the government of Weimar gave this gentleman a commission to inquire into the affair. He declined it, unless he were armed, at the same time, to act against the Landsmannschaften generally. On receiv- ing this power, he seized a number of their Schlager, and sent to jail a score of those whom he believed to be most active in the confraterni- LAXDSMANNSCHAFIEN. 183 ties. But the impression of this unwonted ri- gour was only temporary ; they became more se- cret, but not at all less active. Yet, let it only become necessary to oppose the inroads of discipline, to punish the towns- men, or do some extravagant thing, that will astound the governments, and these bodies, which thus live at daggers- drawing with each other, are inseparable. They take their measures with a secrecy which no vigilance has hitherto been able to penetrate, and an unanimity which has scarcely been tainted by a single trea- son. The mere townsmen are objects of su- preme contempt to the Bursche ; for, from the moment he enters the university, he looks on himself as belonging to a class set apart for some peculiarly high vocation, and vested with no less a privilege than that of acknowledging no law but their own will. The citizens he denominates Philistines, and considers them to exist only to fear, honour, and obey the chosen people of whom he himself is one. The greater part of the inhabitants are dependent on those who at- tend the university, in some professional shape or other, and must have the fear of the Burschen 184 JENA. daily and nightly before their eyes. To mur- mur at the caprices of the chosen tribes, to laugh at their mummeries, or seriously resist and re- sent their arrogance, would only expose the un- happy Philistine to the certainty of having his head and his windows broken together ; for he has no rights, as against a Bursche, not even that of giving a challenge, unless he be a noble- man or a military officer. When the Burschen are in earnest, no civil police is of any earthly use ; they would as little hesitate to attack it as they would fail in putting it to flight. I saw Leipzig thrown into confusion, one night, by the students attempting to make themselves masters of the person of a soldier who, they believed, had insulted one of their brethren in a quarrel on the street about some worthless woman. Al- though it was late, the offended party had been able speedily to collect a respectable number of academic youth, to attack the guard-house ; for a well trained Bursche knows the commerz- houses, where his comrades nightly congregate to drink, smoke, and sing, as certainly as a well trained police officer knows the haunts of thieves and pickpockets. THE BURSCHENSCHAFT. 185 The most imminent danger which the Lands- mannschaften have hitherto encountered, arose from the students themselves. The academical youth seemed to have brought back from the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, a spirit of more manly union ; and, perhaps, an earnest contest against French bayonets had taught them to look with less prejudiced eyes on the paltriness of their own ridiculous squabbles. A few lead- ing heads at Jena proposed that the Lands- mannschaften should be abolished, and the Com- ment abrogated ; not, however, with the view of crushing all associations, but that the whole body of the students might be united in one general brotherhood, under a new and more reasonable constitution. The Landsmannschaften did not yield without a struggle, but the Burschen- schaft (for so they baptized the new association, because it comprehended all Burschen) finally triumphed ; renowning dwindled away, and ve- nerable dust began to settle on the Comment. It is agreed on all hands, that, during the exist- ence of this body, the manners of the university improved. In the investigation afterwards in- stituted by the Diet, the Professors bore witness, 186 JENA. that greater tranquillity, order, and respect for the laws, had never been manifested in Jena, than under the Burschenschaft. There was no- thing compulsory in it ; no constraint was used, no insult or contempt was permitted towards those who did not choose to join it. So far was it already advanced in civilization, in comparison with the former brotherhoods, that besides pro- hibiting the introduction of dogs into its solemn assemblies, it would allow no man either to smoke, or to remain covered in them. It was even provided, that the orator should turn his face to the Burschen while he was addressing them, and take his seat again when he had finished. * This spirit of uniformity, going out from Jena, shook the old institutions in other universities ; till at length, when the students had assembled from every corner of Germany in 1817, to celebrate on the Wartburg the an- niversary of the Reformation, and the battle of Seriously, these were all regulations of the Bur- schenschaft of Jena. We may judge from them of the decorum which reigns iu a Landsmannschaft meeting. THE BUBSCHENSCHAFT. 187 Leipzig, the destruction of the Landsmann- schaften was unanimously voted, and the all-com- prehending Burschenschaft was to take their place. But this proved its ruin. It had been resolved, not merely to melt into one organized association the whole body of students in their respective universities, but to form a supreme council of delegates from them all, to direct and give unity to the whole. The fears which the governments had long entertained, that political objects were concealed beneath the Burschen- schaft, now became certainty. The organization of the body, and the regular contributions by which funds were to be created ; the resolution to wear the sword and plume as the proper or- naments of a chivalrous student, and to adopt a sort of uniform in the. singular dress which is still so common among them, were all regarded, if not as indications of dangerous designs, at least as instruments which could easily be used for dangerous purposes. The very language in which they announced their objects, so far as any distinct idea could be drawn from its mys- tical verbosity, covered them with political sus-* 168 JENA. picion. * The words country, freedom, and independence, were perpetually in their mouths ; and people naturally asked, how is this new Ger- manic Academic Diet to benefit any one of the three ? What means this regular array of depu- ties and committees among persons who have no duty but that of prosecuting their studies ? To what end this universal Burschen Tribunal, which is to extend its decrees from Kiel to Tu- bingen, and conduct the movements of a com- bined body from the shores of the Baltic to the foot of the Alps ? These questions were in every body's mouth ; and it is unjust to say that they * I can only assure the reader, that the following de- claration in the constitution of the Universal Burschen- schaft is as accurately translated as I myself could under- stand it. " The Universal German Burschen schaft comes into life, by presenting an ever improving picture of its countrymen blossoming into freedom and unity ; by maintaining a popular Burschen life, in the cultivation of every corporeal and intellectual power; by preparing its members for a popular life in a free, equal, and well- ordered community, so that every one may rise to such a degree of self-consciousness, as to represent, in his pure personality, the brightness of the excellency of a German popular life." THE BURSCHENSCHAFT. 189 were merely politic alarms sounded by the minions of suspicious and oppressive govern- ments. He must be a credulous man who can believe, that from eight to ten thousand students, animated by the political ardour which, of late years, has pervaded all the universities of Ger- many, could be thus organized, without becom- ing troublesome to the public tranquillity ; and he must be a very imprudent man, who could wish to see the work of political regeneration, even where it is needed, placed in such hands. Members of the university of Jena itself, who are no lovers of despotism, do not conceal their conviction, that, although the founders of the Burschenschaft were sincere in their desires to abolish the old murderous distinctions, yet they laboured after this union, only with the view of using it as a political instrument. The govern- ments denounced the new associations ; in Jena they had first breathed, and in Jena they first expired. The Burschenschaft obeyed the order of the Grand Duke for its abolition. The Landsmannschaften immediately came forth from their graves ; the Comment once more be- 190 JENA. came the rule of faith and life ; renowning and scandalizing reassumed their ancient honours ; and, as formerly, the Burschen still quarrel and fight, and swear loudly to make good their " academical liberty." It is amusing to listen to the pompousness with which these young men speak of this Aka- demische Freyheit,v?l\en it is known that it means precisely nothing. To judge from the lofty pe- riods in which they declaim about the blessings it has showered on the country, and the sacred obligations by which they are bound to maintain it, we would conclude that it invests them with no ordinary franchises ; while, in truth, it gives them nothing that any other man would wish to have. To be dressed, and to look like no other person ; to let his beard grow, where every good Christian shaves ; to let his tangled locks crawl down upon his shoulders, where every well-bred man wears his hair short ; to clatter along the streets in monstrous jack-boots, loaded with spurs, which, from their weight and size, have acquired the descriptive appellation of pound- spurs ; to rub the elbow of his coat against the ACADEMICAL LIBERTY. 191 wall till he has made a hole in it, * where ordi- nary people think it more respectable to wear a coat without holes ; to stroll through the streets singing, when all decent citizens are in bed ; to join his pot companions nightly in the ale-house, and besot himself with beer and tobacco ; these, and things like these, are the ingredients in the boasted academical freedom of a German stu- dent. In every thing connected with the uni- versity, he has neither voice nor influence ; in this respect, a boy of the Greek or Latin class at Glasgow, when he gives his vote for the Rec- tor Magnificus, is entitled to look down with contempt on the brawling braggers of Gottin- gen or Jena. These modes of liberty the Bursche enjoys in common with every silly or clownish fellow in the country ; for they consist merely in being singular, ridiculous, and ill-bred, where other people, who have the same right., choose to act otherwise. TheLandsmannschaften themselves are tyrannical in their very essence. So far from being his own master, the Bursche is * This actually occurred in Jena ; it was Renowning ; it was something to be stared at. 'JENA. chained in word and deed ; he is tied down by the strict forms of a fantastic code which he did not frame, which he cannot alter, to which he has not even voluntarily submitted himself, and from which its provisions deny him the power of withdrawing. Dread of the contume- ly that is heaped on a " Wild One," or of the still more lamentable slavery which awaits a " Re- nouncer, r> forces him into the fraternity ; and, once within the toils, he is not allowed to break loose, however galling they may be to his feel- ings, or revolting to his judgment. Yet amid the very rattling of their chains, these men have the impudence to prate about liberty as their distinguishing privilege. It is itself, however, no slight peculiarity, that all these peculiarities do not last longer than three years. When the student has finished hi> curriculum, and leaves the university, he is him- self numbered among the Philistines ; the pre- judices, the fooleries, and hot-headed forward- ness of the Bursche depart from him, as if he were waking from a dream ; he returns to the ordinary modes of thinking and acting in the world ; he probably never wields a rapier again, ACADEMICAL LIBERTY. 193 or quarrels with a mortal, till his dying day ; he falls into his own place in the bustling competi- tion of society, and leads a peaceful industrious life, as his fathers did before him. His politi- cal chimeras, too, like all the rest of his oddities, are much less connected with principle than his turbulence would seem to imply ; they are modes of speech, which, like the shapeless coats, and daily fencing matches, it has become the fashion of the place to adopt, rather than any steady feeling or solid conviction. The Burschen pe- culiarities are taken up because they belong to the sort of life to which the person is, for a time, consigned ; but they do not adhere to the man, or become abiding parts of his character ; once beyond the walls of the town, and they fall from him with the long hair. Were it otherwise, the consequences would already have been visible. Did these young men carry out into the world the same vague and heated ideas, and the same dangerous readiness to act upon them, which are reckoned part of their duties at college, it might furnish good grounds for the political precau- tions of alarmed governments, but it would like- wise render them unavailing ; for the great mass VOL. I. I 194 JENA. of the people would speedily be leavened. These are the very men, who, in many cases, form the army, who instruct the people, who oc- cupy all the lower, and not a few of the higher departments in the provincial governments. Tliere does not seem to be much more reason to fear that a swaggering and unruly German Bursche will become a quarrelsome and riotous German citizen, than there would be to appre- hend that a boy of Eton would grow up to be a radical leader in Parliament, because at school he had borne a share in a barring out. The decay of discipline which disfigures most of the universities, and the manifold forms of li- centiousness and insubordination that have ne- cessarily arisen from it, are intimately connected with the jurisdiction of the university. The se- nate possessed exclusive jurisdiction in civil caus- es, as well as in criminal prosecutions ; it wielded likewise all the powers of police over this portion of the community. In capital offences, if any such occurred, the criminal was generally turned over to the regular authorities ; but in all others he was amenable to no other court than the Prorector and Senate of his universitv. The ACADEMICAL JURISDICTION. 195 modes of punishment were fines, expulsion, or imprisonment; for every German university has a gaol attached to it, though the durance is not very severe in itself, and, in' the eyes of the Burschen, is attended with no disgrace. They do not think the less of a man because he has been sent to the college prison for some act of insubordination ; it raises his character as a prov- ed, tried Bursche ; it tells for him like a feat of Renowning; it adds as much to his academic glory as if he had " tweaked a Philistine." He moves to his dungeon " with military glee, 1 ' per- fectly aware, that, by a little inconvenience, he is purchasing much influence and respectability amo -'^is companions. It is long since doubts began to be entertain- ed of the efficiency of this distinct and exclusive jurisdiction in the persons of the professors. They originated in the laxity with which the power has been exercised ; and this ruinous laxity is inherent in the system. Notwithstand- ing all that has been written and said in its de- fence, it must be manifest to every one who knows the German universities, that, in point of fact, it has done mischief, and may be ranked 196 JENA. among the principal causes of the decay of dis- cipline. Where students live in the manner de- scribed, and the maintenance of the public peace, as well as of academical good order, is entrusted to the university itself, the duties of the Pro- rector and Senate are at once laborious and in- vidious. The discipline of the university de- pends entirely on the rigour with which these gen- tlemen discharge their duty ; and this mode of administration is favourable neither to uniformi- ty nor firmness. The Prorector is changed every half year ; all the good which a man of vigilance and determination has effected in six months may be undone, as it often has been un- done, during the following six, by the careless- ness, the laxity, or the connivance of his suc- cessor. He has, to be sure, a committee of the Senate, to assist him in the ordinary business ; but this does not in any way mend the matter, though it diminishes his responsibility ; for it has long been the prevailing spirit of every Ger- man faculty to wink, as much as possible, at the irregularities of their pupils, and relax the reins of discipline ; because, to hold them with a firm hand exposes them to odium. If it was natural ACADEMICAL JURISDICTION. 197 for the students to prefer a kindly, paternal, in- dulgent jurisdiction of this kind, on whose fears and comforts they could operate in so many ways, to the legal sternness and strictness of a police magistrate, it was equally natural, that the Professor should choose to be a favourite among the young men on whom, in some mea- sure, his fame, his fees, and even the quiet of his life depended, rather than to be detested by them as a tyrannical master, or a too rigorous judge. The Burschen speedily saw their ad- vantage. Feeling that weak hands guided the chariot of the sun, they got the bit between their teeth, and started off in their unrestrained course, setting all the universities on fire. For the ri- gorous among their teachers they had hootings and pereats ; for the indulgent they had vivats and serenades. It was nothing uncommon to see a venerable professor descend from among his folios to the filial youths who fiddled beneath his window at fall of night, and, with cap in hand, while tears of tenderness diluted the rheum of his aged eyes, humbly thank the co- vered crowd for the inestimable honour. It is, no doubt, very amiable in these gentlemen to 198 JENA. say that the spirit of a young man must not be broken, or his honour severely wounded ; that he is not to be punished as a criminal, but gently reclaimed, like a child who has gone astray, by the paternal hand of his instructors ; but the ef- ficiency of paternal authority has its bounds, even where the natural relation gives it more weight than the metaphorical paternity of the univer- sity fathers ; and the Burschen have long since been far beyond these bounds. When the ques- tion is, whether the professors shall throw off the father, and assume the judge, or see the dis- cipline of the university, and the manners of its students, wrecked before their eyes, these ami- able common places are the root of all evil. The question had come to this a century ago, and the matter has every year been growing worse. Gottingen had not existed many years before discipline was so miserably neglected, in consequence of this system of truckling, that Miinchausen appointed a Syndicus, or superior magistrate, who had no connection with the uni- versity, to superintend the execution of the laws. It has ended at length, as the abuse of a privi- lege always does end, in the curtailment of this ACADEMICAL JURISDICTION. 199 exclusive jurisdiction of which the professors were so proud and so chary. As the ordinary ir- regularities of the students have been mixed up, of late years, with political feelings, to which even some of the teachers incautiously lent their countenance, the governments have in general found it prudent to conjoin civil assessors with the academical authorities, and to narrow, on the whole, the limits of their exclusive jurisdic- tion. I am not even sure that the easy footing on which the Professors of Jena seem to live with their students is altogether desirable ; for, in such matters, mistaken affability can do more mischief than even superciliousness. There is no harm in waltzing in Germany, and no harm any where in playing whist or the piano ; but a German sage, who has to manage German Burschen, should be the last man to forget the proverb which makes familiarity and contempt mother arid daughter. The professors have lately formed a Landsmannschaft, as it were, of their own, to Renown, by giving themselves and the students an entertainment every Sunday evening in the Rose, the same favoured inn to which they have restricted the Burschen balls. 200 JENA. The professors alone are members of the asso- ciation ; but each has the privilege of inviting as many students, or strangers, as he thinks proper. The very intention of the thing was, if not to gratify the young men by a mark of attention for good behaviour, and mortify the disorderly by exclusion, at least to give them some chance of civilization, by submitting them to the polish of well behaved company, and re- spectable ladies. On alternate evenings there is a regular concert, for few Burschen do not play some instrument, and play it well. On the others, there are tea-tables, and card-tables, a little music, and a little dancing. The ladies sing, play the piano, perhaps waltz for an hour, and, by nine o'clock, all is over, in a decent Christian way, if either of these epithets can be applied to such a mode of spending Sunday evening. The dethroned Professor of Natural History was waltzing most vigorously, while the Professor of Greek hopped vivaciously about as arbiter elegantiarum. Who, after this, will talk of Heavysterns and Heavysides as representa- tives of German erudition ? Who will style German Professors dull bookworms, when they thus flutter like butterflies ? It is perfectly BURSARIES. 201 true, that a select number of the young men thus amuse themselves, for a couple of hours, like well bred persons, under the eyes of their academical superiors ; but this has a very partial and temporary effect. The teacher and the taught, those who should command, and those who should obey, are brought together in a fashion by no means favourable to rigid dis- cipline. I cannot believe that the students, accustomed to see their professors thus occu- pied, and to be thus occupied along with them, on Sunday evening, can regard them as very authoritative personages on Monday morning. Besides, it can only extend to a very limited number ; while thirty or forty of the most re- spectable youngsters are growing smooth under the hands of academical ladies, the three or four hundred, who stand most in need of reformation, are hatching academical rebellions over jugs of beer. Jena used to muster about eight hundred stu- dents, but within the last five years, the number has diminished to nearly one-half, and, as in most other German universities, the large pro- portion who are supported entirely or partly on i 2 202 JENA. charity excites surprise. It has been the bane of these seminaries that the liberality of the pub- lic, and the mistaken piety of individuals, con- verted them, in some measure, into charity schools. Bursaries and exhibitions, when kept within proper bounds, may do much good ; but, in this country we can have no idea of the ex- travagant length to which they have been car- ried in the German universities, the Protestant as well as the Catholic, and, above all, in the de- partment of Theology. At the Reformation, there was a large demand for preachers in the protest- ant market, and it was thought, that part of the ecclesiastical revenues, thrown open to the state- by the downfall of popery, could not be better employed than in encouraging the manufac- ture ; the production of clergymen was cherish- ed by a bounty. lu the Catholic countries, again, the public seminaries had always a great deal of the hospitium in them : theology is fre- quently taught in the cloister, and, to assist the rising priesthood is one great end of monastic wealth. A hierarchy, whose constitution pro- vides for the finished priest so many temples of indolence, where he may doze away his life, BURSARIES. 203 would act inconsistently, if it withheld its liberal hand in preparing him for his high destiny. Up- wards of thirty thousand pounds have been ex- pended in one year, in the hereditary dominions of Austria, in maintaining students gratis. In one seminary at Presburgh, there used to be five hundred young men studying theology, with an allowance of about twenty pounds yearly each. The bursaries at Altorf, before it was abolished in 1807, are said to have equalled all the other expences of the university ; and, perhaps, the number and amount of these foundations, at Tubingen, in Wirtemberg, where the theologi- cal seminary alone has been calculated to cost two thousand a-year, may have had a powerful influence in establishing its character as a nur- sery for young divines. In cheaper times, there were bursaries on which a man, with economy, could contrive to support himself and a family. The unavoidable consequence of this mistaken liberality was, to allure into the learned profes- sions, and particularly into the church, a great number of men who otherwise would never have thought of quitting a more appropriate occupa- tion. The market was speedily glutted, and so 204 JENA. it will continue, so long as those premiums exist, which draw crowds into professions, where nei- ther the sins, nor the diseases, nor the law-suits of the people, wicked, sickly, and quarrelsome as the world is, can possibly give them all bread. Jena is comparatively free from this form of liberality; the princes who founded it have always been too poor to be nursing fathers to the church, in this sense of the words. The only eleemosynary institution is the Freytisch, or Free-Table, which consists in this, that a certain number of students are provided by the univer- sity with dinner and supper at a public table ; they must supply all their other wants as thev best can. Even the table is not always entirely gratuitous. The senate are in the habit of ex- acting, from such as can afford it, a groshen a- day, not quite a shilling weekly ; and nearly one- half of the whole number has been known to pay it. The whole number of places is a hundred and fifty ; thus charitable provision is made for more than one-fourth of all the students attend- ing the university ! It has now assumed a dif- ferent form ; the young men themselves natural- ly shrunk from the inferiority with which it pub- BURSARIES. 205 licly marked them in the eyes of their compa- nions, and, still more, from the restraints which daily dinners, and nightly suppers, under aca- demical inspection, laid upon their academical liberty. Their fellow students would not even condescend to fight with them ; and no Hindoo can feel greater horror at loss of Caste, than a Bursche at being thought unworthy to scanda- lize. This forbearance of their superiors might sometimes proceed from a more laudable motive. They knew, that if one of these poor fellows were detected in a scandal, he might possibly forfeit his place at the free-table ; perhaps, there- fore, it showed more delicacy than supercilious- ness, to avoid seeking quarrels with them. But to the Knights of the Free-Table this was the severest of all mortifications ; they would not be spared. At the same time, they were perpetu- ally complaining of their provender, and de- nouncing to the Prorector, the butcher, the baker, the cook, and the superintendent. All these circumstances induced the senate, four years ago, to abolish the institution, and apply the funds to the use of the same students in a different way. To each is allotted a proportion- 206 JENA. al share of the whole sum, and he is allowed to eat where he chooses. He does not receive the money, otherwise it would instantly dissolve in beer ; he selects his table in one of the numerous eating-houses, and, to the amount of the sum to which he is entitled, the university is security to the landlord. The sudden diminution of the number of stu- dents originated in the murder of Kotzebue, and the wide spread, but extravagant belief, that the whole body of the youth of Jena were infected with the same principles, would exhibit them in similar frightful deeds, if they could only be worked up to the same pitch of devotedness with Kotzebue's assassin, and that even some of her chairs were prostituted to teach sedition, and, in- directly at least, to palliate assassination. It can- not be denied that there was enough in Jena to teach a man very troublesome, because very vague, though ardent political doctrines; but there was nothing at all to teach him murder. Sand's former companions and instructors uni- formly speak of him as a reserved, mystical per- son, who kept aloof even from the noisy pastimes of his brethren. In fact, the storm had long ITS DECLINE. 207 been gathering over Jena; Jena had arranged the Wartburg festival, which was treated as downright rebellion ; Jena had given birth to the Burschenschaft, an institution of most problema- tical tendency, which was to unite all the stu- dents of Germany in one organized confedera- tion, from the shores of the East Sea to the foot of the Alps ; among the professors of Jena had appeared the periodical publications which spoil- ed the sleep of all the diplomatists of Frankfort and Vienna. A Russian gentleman published a book to prove the necessity of subjecting the universities to a severer code of laws, and point- ed out Jena as the focus of a revolutionary fire that was inflaming the whole body of the Ger- man youth. Two Burschen immediately came over to Weimar, where the author then lived, to challenge the intermeddling Philistine, but were met with the remarkable answer, that he had only written according to the views of his master the Emperor, and could be no more re- sponsible than a soldier who acts in obedience to a higher command. The murder of Kotzebue, a man, the manner of whose death did Germany more mischief than all the servile volumes he 208 JENA. could have written, furnished, unfortunately, too good a pretext for crushing the obnoxious uni- versity. Jena was proscribed : some of the states expressly prohibited their youth to study there : in all, it was allowed to be known, that those who did would be looked on with an evil eye. If it be impossible to acquit some of the Pro- fessors of having been misled, by their zeal for political ameliorations, incautiously to counte- nance the extravagancies of their pupils, the imprudence has brought a severe punishment on all ; for all have suffered most sensibly from the diminution in the number of students. They have been Attacked, too, with suspensions, depositions, and threats. Fries, the Professor of Metaphysics, attended the festival on the Wartburg, where the students burned certain slavish books ; he was suspended from his office, and has not yet been restored. The most un- fortunate, as the most imprudent of all, was Dr Oken, the Professor of Natural History. The scientific world allows him to be a man of most extensive and accurate learning in all the de- partments of his science. His character is en- tirely made up of placidity and kindliness ; in DR OKEN. 209 conversation he seems studiously to avoid touch- ing on political topics ; he is apparently, and the voice of his colleagues declares him to be in reality, among the most tranquil, mild, easy minded men alive. He, too, was at the Wart- burg, and, in the contest of opinion which arose in Germany about the establishment of internal liberty, Dr Oken, like most of his colleagues, took the liberal side. He was editor of the Isis, a periodical publication devoted entirely to na- tural science ; but he now began to consecrate its pages to political discussion. He wrote gall- ing things, and the manner in which he said them was perhaps more provoking than what was said. From his style of learning, he was probably the very last man in the university that should have meddled with politics ; and, unfortunately, he meddled with them in a more irritating way than any other person. Russia, Austria, and, it is said, Prussia, insisted he should be dismissed as the most dangerous of Jacobins, who was organizing a revolution in the bosom of the university. The Grand Duke, who loves not harshness, long resisted taking so decisive a step against a man so universally be- 210 JENA. loved for his personal, and respected for his sci- entific character ; but all he could gain was, that Dr Oken should have the choice of giving up his journal, or resigning his chair. The Pro- fessor refused to do either, saying very justly, that he knew no law which rendered them in- compatible. His doom was fixed. In June 1819 he was dismissed from his office, without any farther inquiry, or any sentence of a court of justice. The standing commission of the Wei- mar parliament gave its approbation to the mea- sure at the time, and it has been already men- tioned, that, when the question was afterwards brought before the whole chamber, that body, to the astonishment of all Germany, voted the dismissal to be legal. It is unnecessary to say, that the fall of the Professor increased the idolatry of the Burschen towards him. On his deposition, they presented to him a silver cup, which he displays on his frugal board with an honest pride, bearing the inscription, Wermuth war Dir gebothcn ; tr'inke Wein. * A person in Weimar, who had culti- * Wormwood was offered thee ; drink wine. PROFESSOR LUDEN. vated natural history, left behind him, at his death, a valuable collection of foreign and native insects, which his widow wished to sell. No sooner did the students learn that Oken was in treaty for it, than they purchased it at their own expence, and presented it to him in the name of the Burschen. The patience and equanimity with which he has borne his misfortune have conciliated every body. The Isis, reclaimed from her political wanderings, has returned to chemistry and natural history, with equal bene- fit to her master, and to the sciences ; and all join in the hope, that Dr Oken will soon be re- stored to the chair which he filled so usefully, Luden, Professor of History, would probably have shared the same fate, had he not read the signs of the times more accurately, and retired seasonably from the contest. In his own depart- ment, he has justly the reputation of being one of the best heads in Germany. He possesses great learning ; he is acute, nervous, and eloquent, oc- casionally intolerably caustic, and sometimes over- hasty and fiery in his opinions, or rather in de- fending them. The party that numbers Luden among its champions is sure to be deficient nei- 212 JENA. ther in learning, nor logic, nor wit. His class has always been the most numerously attended in the university, for the marrow of his prelec- tions consists, not in narrations of historical facts which any body can read in a book, but in elu- cidations and disquisitions springing out of these facts, which, if not always correct, are always cle- ver. He is an idolater of Sir William Temple, of whom he has written a life. " If I know any " thing, 11 said he, one day in his lecture, " of the " spirit of history, or if I have learned to judge of " political institutions and political conduct, it is " to Sir William Temple that I owe it all. 11 In the beginning of 1814, when Germany was about to put forth all her power to banish the long en- dured domination of France, Luden began the publication of his Nemesis. As its name im- ports, the great object of the journal was to rouse and keep alive the public feeling, and it is said to have been wonderfully successful. After the general peace arose internal political irrita- tion. The Nemesis, having nothing more to do with France, now became the bulwark of the liberals of Germany. The opposite party dread- ed it more than any other, both from the talent PROFESSOR LUDEN. 213 which it displayed, and the weight of the editor's character, who was well known to be no vision- ary, and to be perfectly master of the subjects that were treated in his journal. Neither did it give them the same convenient handle as the imprudent Isis ; for it indulged in nothing per- sonal, or irritating, or disrespectful. It was no book for the many ; it dealt only in sober poli- tical disquisitions, and erudite historical illustra- tions, tainted with a good deal of that metaphy- sic which belongs to all German politicians. Perhaps these very qualities rendered a victory over the Nemesis indispensable, and Luden's unfortunate collision with Kotzebue furnished too good an opportunity for at least harassing the editor. An article in the Nemesis, written by Luden himself, in which he took a view of the condi- tion and policy of the leading European powers, contained some remarks on the internal admini- stration and foreign policy of Russia, not, in- deed, in the style of eulogy, but just as little in that of insult or disrespect. Kotzebue was finish- ing his second report to the Emperor of Russia on the occurrences of German literature, when 214 % JENA. this tract came under his eye. Already in open war with all universities and all professors, he inserted a very partial and unfavourable notice of it in his bulletin, suppressing every thing re- spectful or laudatory that was said of Russia, setting every thing censorious in the most odious light, and accompanying the whole with virulent remarks, equally injurious to the public arid private character of the author. Kotzebue's re- ports were written in French, and were tran- scribed by a person in Weimar, before being sent to St Petersburgh. The copyist was no adept in French ; and being doubtful of some passages, he requested his neighbour, Dr L , to read them for him. It so happened that these sentences were among the most virulent against Luden, of whom Dr L was an intimate ac- quaintance. The latter, struck with their cha- racter, prevailed on the copyist to leave the ma- nuscript with him for a few hours, transcribed all that related to his friend, and sent it off to Jena. A new number of the Nemesis was in the press ; Luden sent the extracts from Kotzebue's report to be printed in it, accompanied with a very ample and bitter commentary. This jour- PROFESSOR LUDEN. 215 nal was printed in Weimar ; Kotzebue learned, it was never discovered how, that a portion of his bulletin, and a portion which he was not at all desirous that Germany should know, was to appear in the next number ; and, on his applica- tion, the Russian Resident demanded that this alleged violation of private property should be prevented. Count Edling, who was at that time foreign minister, immediately ordered Bertuch not to proceed with the printing of that number of the Nemesis. But it so happened, that great part of the impression was already thrown off; and, as there was no order not to publish, the printed copies were sent to Jena to be distribut- ed. Kotzebue stormed ; all the numbers of the Nemesis, containing the obnoxious article, were seized and condemned. The seizure was in vain, for Oken immediately republished it in the Isis. The Isis was seized and condemned, and Wieland immediately reprinted it in his " Friend of the People. 11 * This journal, too, * This was the son of the great Wieland. He had some talent, but was unsteady. His " Friend of the People" was suppressed ; then he tried to re-establish it 216 JENA. was seized and condemned ; but the matter was by this time over all Germany. Kotzebue, de- tected in his malevolence, thwarted in all his at- tempts at suppression, and the object of general dislike, was exasperated to the uttermost. He railed at the government of Weimar in good set terms, threatened the whole grand duchy with the vengeance of the Russian Autocrat, and retired, fuming, to Manheim. Criminal proceedings were instituted against Luden ; the court at Weimar sent the case for judgment to the University of Leipzig, which condemned the professor to pay a fine, or go to prison for three months ; but, on an appeal to the supreme court at Jena, the sentence was reversed. It was now his turn to attack. He prosecuted Kotzebue for defamation ; and the court at Weimar, which seems to have been determined to keep clear of the matter altogether, sent the case to the juri- under the title of " The Friend of Princes/' but various princes would have nothing to do with such friends ; then it assumed the name of" The Patriot;" but no printed Proteus can escape a vigilant police, and at last Wieland died, just at the proper time, when he had nothing to do. PROFESSOR LUDEN. 217 dical faculty of Wiirzburg. That university ordained Kotzebue to recant what he had writ- ten against Luden, as being false and inju- rious, and to pay the costs of suit. The progress, and, still more, the judicial termina- tion of this affair could not be agreeable to the Court of St Petersburgh, whose influence, from family connections, must always be powerful at Weimar. Harassed by the troublesome conse- quences of the quarrel, foreseeing the progress of the policy, that, in a few months, introduced a censorship, under which he would have dis- dained to proceed, and apprehending, perhaps, a similar fate to that which so soon overtook Dr Oken, Professor Luden gave up together the struggle and the Nemesis. VOL. I. 218 WEISSENFELS. CHAPTER IV. WEISSENFELS LEIPZIG DRESDEN. Gott segne Sachsenland, Wo fest die Treue stand In Sturm und Nacht. Saxon National Hymn. FROM Weimar, the territory of the grand duchy still stretches a dozen miles to the north- ward, along the great commercial road between Frankfort and Leipzig, till it meets the south- ern frontier of Prussia, on the summit of the Eckartsberg, a woody ridge into which the country gradually rises, and from time imme- morial a chace of the House of Weimar. There is less culture, and less population, than in the southern districts, for the country is cold and hilly. The villages are generally in the hol- lows, on the bank of some small stream, rural PEASANTRY. 219 enough in their accompaniments, but frequently betraying in themselves utter penury. One wonders where the people come from who pay the taxes in this country. Districts have been known to pay in agricultural produce, from in- ability to raise money. It can only be an incor- rigible attachment to old habits, that induces the peasantry still to use so much wood in building their cottages, where stone is abundant, fuel scarce and expensive, and fires frequent and destructive. A watchman, appointed for the special purpose, (Der Feuerwachter ) looks out all night from the tower of the old castle in Weimar, to give the alarm if fire appear within his horizon. I have seen a village of forty- eight houses reduced to a heap of ashes in a couple of hours, except the church, which was of stone. From the materials used in building and roofing, and the connection of the houses with each other, every peasant is exposed, not only to his own mischances, but to those, like- wise, of all his neighbours ; for, if one house in the village take fire, the probability always is, that very few will escape. Yet the peasant will rather run the risk of having his house burned 220 WEISSENFELS. about his ears twice a-year, than be at the expence of insuring it. In the last session of the Landtag, a plan was introduced for esta- blishing an insurance company by public autho- rity, the insurance in which should be compul- sory. It no doubt sounds strange to talk of compelling people to do themselves a good turn ; but, without some similar intervention of public authority, the want of capital and enterprise is a sufficient bar to the establishment of such insti- tutions. At Weissenfels, which has its name (the White Rock) from the range of precipices whose foot is washed by the Saal, the stranger regards with much indifference, in the vaults of the old castle, the cumbersome coffins of uninteresting princes, and visits with reverence the apartment in which the bleeding body of Gustavus Adol- phus was deposited after the battle of Liitzen. An inscription, commemorating the event, re- cords, among other things, that the heart of the hero weighed ten pounds some ounces. Part of the wall of the room had been stained with his blood, and it was long anxiously preserved, till the plaster was cut out, and carried off by DR MULLNEB. 221 Swedish soldiers. The spot itself is still religi- ously protected against all whitewashings, and, .covered by a sliding pannel, retains its old dirty hue. Dr Milliner, the great living dramatist of Germany, honours Weissenfels with his resi- dence. He is a doctor of laws, and an advocate, a profession which supplies tragedy writers in more countries than one ; but he gets into so many disputes with neighbours and booksellers, that he is jocularly said to be his own best client. He certainly has more of the spirit of poetry in him than any of his living rivals, ex- cept Gothe ; but many of his finest passages are lyric, rather than dramatic. His appearance betokens nothing of the soul which breathes in his tragedies. He was still in bed at mid-day, for he never begins his poetical labours till after midnight. He spends the hours of darkness with the ladies of Parnassus, disturbs the whole neighbourhood by the vehemence with which he declaims his newly composed verses, and late in the morning retires to bed. Dissipation is not the only thing that can turn day into night. He speaks willingly of his own works, ami 222 WEISSEKFELS. seems to have a very proper sense of their merits. His general humour is extremely dry and sarcastic. Gothe had sent him over from Weimar a number of Blackwood's Magazine, containing a critique on the Schidd, with speci- mens of a translation. He took Blackwood to be the name of the author of the Magazine, and a distinguished literary character ; nor did he seem to give me his full belief, when I assured him, that that gentleman was just a bookseller and publisher like his friend Brockhaus in Leipzig. He was overjoyed to learn that we have more than one translation of Leonora, for " the yelpers," he said, were beginning to al- lege, that Burger had stolen it from an old Scot- tish ballad. We cannot claim that honour, but some of Dr Milliner's brethren plunder us with- out mercy or acknowledgment. A very merito- rious piece of poetry was once pointed out to me in the works of Haug, the epigrammatist, as a proof that the simple ballad had not died out with Schiller. It was neither less nor more than a translation of our own delicious " Bar- bara Allan," whom Haug had converted, so far as I recollect, into " Julia Klangen." HAUG. Haug has written too many epigrams to Have written many good ones ; they want point and delicacy. He has no fewer than an hundred on the Bardolphian nose of an innkeeper who had offended him. One of his best is in the form of an epitaph on a lady of rank and well known gallantry, and the idea is new : As Titus thought, so thought the fair deceased, And daily made one happy man, at least. * It was of the same lady, who spoke much too boldly of her contempt for the calumnies of the world, that he afterwards sung, " I wrap me in my virtue's spotless vest ;" That's what the world calls, going lightly dressed. The difference between courtship and marriage has been the theme of wits, since the first bride was won, and the first epigram turned. Haug does not belie his trade : She. You men are angels while you woo the maid, But devils when the marriage- vow is said. * Hier schlummert die wie Titus dachte, Un.d taglich einen glueklich machte. LUTZEN. He. The change, good wife, is easily forgiven ; We find ourselves in hell, instead of heaven. A continued plain extends from Weissenfels to Leipzig. At Liitzeri, the road runs through the field on which Gustavus and Wallenstein, each of them as yet unconquered, brought their skill and prowess to the trial against each other for the first, the last, the only time. Close by the road is the spot where Gustavus fell under repeated wounds, buried beneath a heap of dead piled above his corpse in the dreadful conflict that took place for his dead body. A number of unhewn stones, set horizontally in the earth, in the form of a cross, mark the spot. On one of them is rudely carved in German, " Gustavus Adolphus, King " of Sweden, fell here for liberty of conscience. 11 A shapeless mass that rises from the centre of the cross, and, since that day, has been called " The Stone of the Swede, 11 bears merely the ini- tials of the monarch's name. Though in a field, and close upon the road, neither plough nor wheel has been allowed to profane the spot. Some pious hand has planted round it a few poplars, and disposed within the circle some rude benches of turf, where the wanderer may linger LEIPZIG. 225 and muse on the deeds and the fate of a heroic and chivalrous monarch. This rude memorial, standing on his " deathbed of fame," produces a deeper feeling of reality and veneration than many mountains of marble than " sculptured urn and monumental bust," so powerful are the' associations which locality can call up. Immediately beyond Liitzen, Royal Saxony begins to " rear her diminished head," a por- tion of Germany which, in the arts and elegancies of life, as well as in industry, acknowledges ho superior. Leipzig gives at once full proof of the latter. The banker, the merchant, and the bookseller, would assuredly find in it a great deal that is worthy his notice ; but to the travel- ler who has none of those sources of interest, it presents little that is new, after Frankfort. To any other foreigner, a town like the one or the other is infinitely more amusing than to a Bri- ton ; for to the former it is novel and unique, and hence the wonderment with which they speak, and the pride with which they boast of it. The German, the Russian, the Pole, the Aus- trian, the Italian, the Swiss, and, in a hundred instances, the Frenchman, has seen nothing like K 2 226 LEIPZIG. such a scene of commercial activity, and possibly will see nothing like it again : such regiments of bales, such mountains of wool-packs, such fir- maments of mirrors, such processions of porters and carters, are to him a new world ; and when the novelty has worn off, he forms his opinion of the place, at last, according as he has been seek- ing money or amusement. My banker spoke with ecstasy of the delights of a Leipzig smoking club, and a game at nine pins ; while Mr , a gen- tleman of elegant acquirements, formerly mini- ster of a great northern power in the Nether- lands, and now its consul at Leipzig, was breath- ing out his soul in lamentations over the harsh fate which had doomed him to this " mercantile Patmos." But to a Briton, fresh from his own country, the chandler's shop of Europe, and the weaving factory of the universe, a town like Leipzig has not even the charm of novelty in what renders it striking and interesting to most other people. Only individual groupes now and then attract his notice. Leipzig does not equal Frankfort in pomp and bustle, but is a much more imposing and better built town. There is an odd mixture of the old THE CITJf. 227 and the new, which is far from producing any unpleasant effect. Few towns exhibit so much of the carved masonry which characterized the old German style of building, joined with so much stateliness. The whole wears an air of comfort and substantiality, which accords excel- lently well with the occupations and character of the inhabitants. Many of the shops would make a figure even in London ; but then they are full of English wares, and many of those who fre- quent them are full of English mannerism. The dandyism of Bond Street lounges in the count- ing-houses and behind the counters of Leipzig, in more than its native exaggeration. The more sober inhabitants, well acquainted with our imi- tation-shawls, denominate these young country- men of their own, Imitation-Englishmen. But Frankfort has immeasurably the advantage in every thing outside of the town. The level, well-cultivated, monotonous country round Leip- zig, poor in natural beauty, but rich in histori- cal recollections, abundantly supplies the wants, without offering any thing to gratify the taste, of the citizens. The field where Gustavus took vengeance OR the ferocious Tilly, for the sack- of 228 LEIPZIG. Magdeburg the field where Gustavus himself fell the field where, in our own day, united Germany " broke her chains on the oppressor's head," all surround this peaceful mart of com- merce. Leipzig has seen more blood shed in its neighbourhood, and more merchandize pouring wealth through its streets, than any other city of Germany. In many parts it still bears distinct traces of the obstinate conflict that took place, when the Allies, in the heat of victory, forced their way into the town. In the principal streets of the suburb where the infuriated Prussians advanced, the houses are riddled with shot. The inhabit- ants, so far from wishing to obliterate these me- morials of the VolJcerschlachty or Battle of the People, as they term it, have carefully imbedded in the walls cannon-balls which had rebounded. One which struck the church itself, just above the door, has been preserved in this way, and surmounted with an inscription, that does more honour to the piety than to the poetry of the city. The Elster, which runs through part of the suburbs, and occasioned the final destruction of the French army, is in reality but a ditch, THE ARTS. 229 and neither a deep nor a broad one. Where it washes the garden of Mr Reichenbach's summer pavilion, it received Poniatowski, who, already wounded, took his way through the garden, when all was lost, and sunk, with his wounded horse, in this apparently innocuous rivulet. A plain stone marks the spot where the body was found ; and, in the garden itself, an unadorned cenotaph has been erected by private affection to the memory of the Polish chief. In the cemetery, one of the largest and most homely in Europe, whose most interesting grave is that of Gellert, the pious father of German li- terature, I observed an old epitaph, extremely characteristic of the reigning spirit of the place, but in much too light a strain to be imitated, though undoubtedly the writer held it, in his day, to be a very ingenious combination of piety and bank business. It is in the forin of a bill of exchange for a certain quantity of salvation, drawn on and accepted by the Messiah, in fa- vour of the merchant who is buried below, and payable in heaven, at the day of judgment. Every citizen of Leipzig boasts of the church of St Nicholas and its paintings, as a splendid 230 LEIPZIG. proof of the good taste of his mercantile city in the arts, and the munificence with which ir has cherished them. It has the singular merit of being in the form of a square, a very questiona- ble innovation. The Corinthian pillars, which separate the nave from the aisles, are handsome objects in themselves, but the barbarous or fan- tastic architect has enveloped the capitals in sprawling bunches of palm leaves, a deplorable substitute for the acanthus. He seems to have had some idea in his head of making the roof appear to rest on palm trees. In general, it is difficult to judge of architectural beauty in the interior of a Protestant church, provided with all its accommodations ; for the arrangements required, or supposed to be required, by the Protestant service, are frequently incompatible with architectural effect. The galleries, for ex- ample, take all beauty from the pillars which they divide ; and here there is a double tier of them. Santa Maria Maggiore, and San Paolo fuori delle Mura, (while it yet stood,) present the noblest architectural perspectives in Europe; but what would become of them, if their pillars were loaded with galleries ? THE BOOK-TRADE. 231 The altar-piece of this church, as well as the host of Scriptural paintings which cover the walls of the choir, are all from the pencil of Oeser, an artist of the last century, who enjoy- ed, in his day, a reputation which the church of St Nicholas does not justify. To the uninitiat- ed eye, at least, his productions here are defi- cient in expression, in effect, and variety of grouping, and languish under a weak monoton- ous colouring. The modern German painters have very generally forsaken the department in which the old artists of their country performed such wonders : that palm has passed to Scotland. Labouring to form themselves, as it is styled, after the Italian masters, they degenerate into insipid mannerists, and fill the world with eter- nal repetitions of Madonnas and Holy Families. As Frankfort monopolizes the trade in wine, so Leipzig monopolizes the trade in books. It is here that every German author (and in no country are authors so numerous) wishes to pro- duce the children of his brain, and that, too, on- ly during the Easter fair. He will submit to any degree of exertion, that his work may be ready for publication by that important season, 232 LEIPZIG. when the whole brotherhood is in labour, from the Rhine to the Vistula. Whatever the period of gestation may be, the time when he shall come to the birth is fixed by the Almanack. If the auspicious moment pass away, he willingly bears his burden twelve months longer, till the next advent of the Bibliopolical Lucina. This perio- dical littering at Leipzig does not at all arise, as is sometimes supposed, from all or most of the books being printed there ; Leipzig has on- ly its own proportion of printers and publishers. It arises from the manner in which this branch of trade is carried on in Germany. Every book- seller of any eminence, throughout the Confe- deration, has an agent or commissioner in Leip- zig. If he wishes to procure works which have been published by another, he does not address himself directly to the publisher, but to his own commissioner in Leipzig. This is not all, for the latter, whether he be ordered to transmit to another books published by his principal, or to procure for his principal books published by another, instead of dealing directly with the per- son from whom he is to purchase, or to whom he is to sell, treats only with his Leipzig agent. THE BOOK-TRADE. 233 The order is received by the publisher, and the books by the purchaser at third hand. The whole book-trade of Germany thus centres in Leipzig. Wherever books may be printed, it is there they must be bought ; it is there that the trade is supplied. Such an arrangement, though it employ four persons in every sale in- stead of two, is plainly an advantageous ar- rangement for Leipzig ; but the very fact, that it has subsisted two hundred years, and still flourishes, seems to prove that it is likewise found to be beneficial to the trade in general. Abuses in public institutions may endure for centuries ; but inconvenient arrangements in trade, which affect the credit side of a man's ba- lance-sheet at the end of the year, are seldom so long-lived. German booksellers, moreover, are not less attentive to profit than any other honest men in an honest business. They even reckon among the advantages of this system, the saving which it enables them to make in the article of carriage. If a bookseller in Berlin has ordered books from Vienna, Strasburg, Munich, Stutt- gard, and a dozen other places, they are all de- posited with Jiis Leipzig agent, who then for- 284 LEIPZIG. wards them in one mass much more cheaply than if each portion had been sent separately and directly to Berlin. Till the middle of the sixteenth century, pub- lishers, in the proper sense of the word, were unknown. John Otto, born at Niirnberg in 1510, is said to be the earliest on record who made bargains for copy-right, without being himself a printer* Some years afterwards, two regular dealers in the same department settled in Leipzig, where the university, already in high fame, had produced a demand for books, from the moment the art of printing wandered up from the Rhine. Before the end of the century, the book-fair was established. It prospered so rapidly, that, in 1600, the Easter catalogue, which has been annually continued ever since, was printed for the first time. It now presents every year, in a thick octavo volume, a collec- tion of new books and new editions, to which there is no parallel in Europe. The writing public is out of all proportion too large for the reading public of Germany. At the fair, all the brethren of the trade flock together in Leip- zig, not only from every part of Germany, but PIRATICAL PRINTERS. 235 from every European country where German books are sold, to settle accounts, and examine the harvest of the year. The number always amounts to several hundreds, and they have built an exchange for themselves. Yet a German publisher has less chance of making great profits, and a German author has fewer prospects of turning his manuscript to good account, than the same classes of persons in any other country that knows the value of intellectual labour. There is a pest called Naclidruckerei) or Reprinting, which knaws on the vitals of the poor author, and paralyzes the most enterprising publisher. Each State of the Confederation has its own law of copy-right ; and an author is secured against piracy only in the state where he prints. But he writes for all, for they all speak the same language. If the book be worth any thing, it is immediately reprinted in some neighbouring state, and, as the reprinter pays nothing for copy-right, he can obviously afford to undersell the original publisher. Wirtemberg, though she can boast of possessing in Cotta one of the most honour- able and enterprising publishers of Germany, is 236 LEIPZIG. peculiarly notorious as a nest for these birds of prey. There are various well known booksell- ers who scarcely drive any other branch of trade. So soon as a book appears which promises to sell well, they put forth a cheaper edition, which drives the legitimate one from the market, and nothing remains for the publisher but to buy off the rascally pirate with any sum which his ra- pacity may demand. The worst of it is, that authors of reputation are precisely those to whom the system is most fatal. The reprinter meddles with nothing except what he already knows will find buyers. The rights of unsale- able books are scrupulously observed ; the ho- nest publisher is never disturbed in his losing speculations ; but, when he has been fortunate enough to become master of a work of genius or utility, the piratical publisher is instantly in his way. All the states do not deserve to be equal- ly involved in this censure, Prussia, I believe, has shown herself liberal in protecting every Ger- man publisher. Some of the utterly insignifi- cant states are among the most troublesome, for reprinting can be carried on in a small just as well as in a great one. The bookseller who PIRATICAL PRINTERS. 237 published Reinhardt's Sermons was attacked by a reprint, which was announced as about to ap- pear at Reutlingen, in Wirtemberg. The pi- rate demanded fourteen thousand florins, nearly twelve hundred pounds, to give up his design. The publisher thought that so exorbitant a de- mand justified him in applying to the govern- ment, but all he could gain was the limitation of the sum to a thousand pounds. Such a system almost annihilates the value of literary labour. No publisher can pay a high price for a manuscript, by which, if it turn out ill, he is sure to be a loser, and by which, if it turn out well, it is far from certain that he will be a gainer. From the value which he might otherwise be inclined to set on the copy-right, he must always deduct the sum which it pro- bably will be necessary to expend in buying off reprinters, or he must calculate that value on the supposition of a very limited circulation. At what rate would Mr Murray pay Lord Byron, or Mr Constable take the manuscript of the Scottish Novels, if the statute protected the one only in the county of Middlesex, and the other only in the county of Edinburgh ? Hence 238 LEIPZIG. it is that German authors, though the most in- dustrious, are likewise the worst remunerated of the writing tribe. I. have heard it said, that Gothe has received for some of his works about a louis d'or a sheet, and it is certain that he has made much money by them ; but I have often likewise heard the statement questioned as in- credible. Burger, in his humorous epistle to Gokingk, estimates poetry at a pound per sheet ; law and medicine at five shillings. The unpleasing exterior of ordinary German printing, the coarse watery paper, and worn-out types, must be referred, in some measure, to the same cause. The publisher, or the author who publishes on his own account, naturally risks as little capital as possible in the hazard- ous speculation. Besides, it is his interest to diminish the temptation to reprint, by making his own edition as cheap as may be. The sys- tem has shown its effects, too, in keeping up the frequency of publication by subscription, even among authors of the most settled and popular reputation. Klopstock, after the Messiah had fixed his fame, published in this way. There has been no more successful publisher than MR BROCKHAUS. 239 Cotta, and no German writer has been so well repaid as Gothe ; yet the last Tubingen edition of Gothe himself is adorned with a long list of subscribers. What would we think of Byron, or Campbell, or Scott, or Moore, publishing a new poem by subscription ? Mr Brockhaus is allowed to be the most effi- cient publisher in Leipzig, and consequently among the first in Germany. He is a writer, too, for, on miscellaneous, particularly political topics, he frequently supplies his own manu- script. He is supposed to have made a fortune by one work on which he ventured, the Co- versations-Lexicon, a very compendious Ency- clopaedia. The greatest fault of the book is a want of due selection ; personages of eternal name, and topics of immutable interest, are con- tracted or omitted, to make way for men and matters that only enjoy a local and passing no- toriety. Even a Britannica, with a Supplement, should not waste its pages on short-lived topics, and only the quinta pars nectaris of human knowledge and biography should be admitted into an Encyclopaedia of ten octavo volumes. The book} however, has had a very extensive LEIPZIG. circulation, and often forms the whole library of a person in the middling classes. It would have proved still more lucrative, had the writers, among whom are many of the most popular names of Germany, shown greater deference to the political creeds of the leading courts. The numerous political articles, not merely on sub- jects of general discussion, but on recent events, important and unimportant, are all on the li- beral side of the question ; moderate, indeed, argumentative, and respectful, but still pointing at the propriety of political changes. The book was admitted into the Russian dominions only in the form of an editio castigata ; from this tree of knowledge were carefully shaken all the fruits which might enable the nations to dis- tinguish between good and evil before it was allowed to be transplanted beyond the Vis- tula. Even in this ameliorated state, it be- gan to be regarded as, at least, lurid, if not downright poisonous, and ultimately was prohi- bited altogether. Brockhaus is, by way of eminence, the liberal publisher of Germany. He shuns no respon- sibility, and stands in constant communication MR BROCKHAUS. 241 with all the popular journalists and pamphle- teers. His Zeitgenosse, or, The Contemporary, was a journal entirely devoted to politics. It frequently contained translations of leading po- litical articles from the Edinburgh Review ; and these, again, were sometimes reprinted and circulated as pamphlets. The Hermes is of the same general character, a quarterly publication, which apes in form, as well as matter, one of our most celebrated journals. In 1821, his weekly journal, The Conversations-Wochen- blatt, was prohibited in Berlin, and shortly af- terwards, it was thought necessary to erect a separate department of the Censorship for the sole purpose of examining and licensing Brock- haus's publications. The prohibition was speedi- ly removed, and I believe (but I had left Berlin before it happened) that likewise the separate censorial establishment was of brief duration. Brockhaus has brought himself out of all politi- cal embarrassments, with great agility and good fortune, and still rails on at despots and re- printers. Beyond Leipzig the small river Mulda is crossed by a ferry, and that, too, on the great VOL. I. L 242 THE ELB. road which connects Leipzig with Dresden, Bo- hemia, Silesia, and Austria. There is no suffi- cient excuse for this most inconvenient arrange- ment. The Mulda is a trifling stream in com- parison with the Elbe, and is less exposed to inundations ; yet no difficulty has been found in building even stone bridges across the Elbe. It is on a solid, though somewhat clumsy struc- ture of this kind, that you pass the river at Meissen ; and, though still a dozen miles from Dresden, you are already in the country, which, by its mixture of romantic nature with the richest possible cultivation, has acquired to Dresden the reputation of being surrounded by more delightful environs than any other Euro- pean capital. All the way to the city the road follows the Elbe, which pours its majestic stream between banks of very opposite character. The left rises abrupt, rocky, woody, picturesque ; the right swells more gradually into graceful and verdant eminences, whose slopes towards the river are covered with vineyards. In all these features of natural beauty, the Elbe is in- ferior to the Rhine, but only to the Rhine, and on the Rhine there is no town where the enjoy- DKESDEN. 243 ment always derived from beautiful scenery is so much heightened by the pleasures of society, and the splendid productions of art. Much as a stranger may have heard of Dresden, the ap- proach to it from this side does not disappoint his expectations. From the rich and picturesque scenery of nature, he enters at once among pa- laces, passes the Elbe, from the New Town to the Old, on a noble bridge, a most refreshing sight to a Briton, is immediately stopped by the gorgeous and imposing pile of the Catholic church, and turns from it to the royal palace. What were once lofty ramparts now bear spacious alleys along the river, in which innumerablelaugh- ing groupes are perpetually enjoying the scene or the shade. The gaiety of the hurrying equi- pages, the crowd of passengers, the apparent vivacity and hilarity of the people, give a most favourable first impression of the " German Florence." It is true, that such figurative terms of comparison are often used very loose- ly ; but, although a German, be he from the north or from the south, is always a very dif- ferent person from an Italian ; though the cloudless sky that burns above the Arno be 244 DRESDEN. more constant than the sun which shines upon the Elbe ; and though the capital of Saxony neither possesses the Medicean Venus, nor has formed schools of painters and sculptors to be the wonders of the world, yet, in its natural beauties, in the character of its inhabitants, in its love of the arts, and what it has done for them, Dresden may be fairly enough said to be to Germany what Florence is to Italy. The city is divided by the Elbe. Originally it stood entirely on the left bank. That portion is still the largest and most characteristic part of the whole, and, as it contains the palace, is likewise the most fashionable. The general style of build- ing is simple, austere, and, therefore, when in due dimensions, imposing. It is easily seen, that the Saxon nobles, in building palaces, thought chiefly of convenience and duration, not of pil- lared portals and airy verandas. The houses are lofty, and the streets narrow, as in all old towns in this part of the Continent ; but some of the principal streets are of ample breadth, and lined with very stately, though unadorned buildings. There is not a square, properly so called, in the whole city, except two immense market-places, 12 THE CITY. 245 one of which, the Alt mark t, is a fine specimen of the ordinary civil architecture of Germany, and does not lose in comparison even with the Hof of Vienna. Here, however, as every where else, of late years a love of trivial orna- ment has been creeping in, which assuredly is far inferior to the substantial simplicity of their fa- thers. People will have pilasters, aye, and pil- lars, too, and entablatures, and pediments, where there is no space for them ; and where, though there were space, they would have no beauty. In our own cities, while public buildings have long been conducted with much good taste in the south, and some aspirations after it seem to be rising in the north, how often do we see a cheese- monger's wares reposing in state round the base of Doric pillars, I suppose they must be called, or flitches of bacon proudly suspended from the volutes of the Ionic. The Neustadt, or New Town, on the opposite bank of the Elbe, is more open, for the attach- ment to narrow streets was beginning to give way when it was commenced ; but it is built in a more trivial style : at least, it has that ap- pearance to the eye ; for, as few people of fa- 246 DRESDEN. shion have hitherto emigrated across the Elbe, there is not the same frequent intermixture of stately mansions. The principal street, however, which runs in a right line from the bridge, is the finest in Dresden. Were it better planted, it would more than rival the Linden of Berlin. The bridge which connects these two parts of the city, striding across the river with eleven no- ble arches, is the first structure of the kind in Germany. In architectural symmetry and ele- gance, it cannot vie with many of the French, or with some of the Italian bridges ; but the streams which these cross are ditches, compared with the magnificent river which pours its waters under the walls of Dresden. There is not a single stone bridge on the Rhine, from where it leaves the Lake of Constance to where it divides itself among the flats of Holland. * The Danube, at Ratisbonne, is a much more manageable stream * I cannot trust to my recollection whether the bridge on the Rhine at Lauffenburg, between Schaffhausen and Basle, is of wood or stone ; but there the river could be surmounted by a bridge infinitely more easily than the Elbe at Dresden. THE BRIDGE. 247 than the Elbe ; and, moreover, the bridge at Ratisbonne is ugly, unequal, not even uniform, and very ricketty. The good Viennese, so far from attempting to throw a stone bridge across the Danube, where he passes near their capital, extolled it as an unparalleled triumph of art when, a few years ago, they built a wooden bridge, on stone piers, over a narrow branch of the main stream, which washes the walls. The bridges on the Oder at Frankfort and Breslau, and that on the Vistula at Cracow, are all of wood. The best proof of the solidity of the bridge of Dresden is, that it has hitherto resisted ice and inundations, both of which are peculiar- ly destructive on this part of the river. The in- undations come down from the mountains of Bo- hemia very rapidly, and, owing to the nature of the country through which the river flows till it approaches the city, with irresistible impetuosity. The northern confines of the Saxon Switzerland are not more than ten miles above Dresden, and, till the Elbe has quitted this singular district, it traverses only deep narrow valleys, or rugged gorges, through which it seems to have opened a passage. There is no breadth of plain, as there 248 DRESDEN. is along the Rhine, over which an inundation can spread itself out. The accumulated mass of wa- ter is hurried down to Dresden with accumulat- ing impetus. I have seen the Elbe rise sixteen feet above its ordinary level within twelve hours. Such a course in a river is ruinous for bridges. That of Dresden, which has set the Elbe at de- fiance, could not resist gunpowder ; the French blew up the centre arch, to facilitate their re- treat to Leipzig. Of course, it was perfectly right to repair it ; but why has that barbarous mass of artificial rock, surmounted by an un- couth crucifix, been restored, to disfigure the centre of the bridge, after it had fortunately been blown up along with the arch ? It is an incum- brance, and a very ugly one : having been once fairly got rid of, it really did not deserve to be restored. Yet the Emperor of Russia has thought proper to commemorate, by an inscrip- tion, that he restored what disfigures the finest bridge in Germany. The slender iron rail, too, which occupies the place of a balustrade, is alto- gether trivial. This is no draw-bridge over a canal. The prospect from the bridge itself is cele- THE ROYAL FAMILY. 249 brated all over Germany, and deserves to be so. Whether you look up or down the river, the towers and palaces of the city are pictured in the stream. A lovely plain, groaning beneath po- pulation and fertility, retires for a short distance from the further bank, then swells up into an amphitheatre of gentle slopes, laid out in vine- yards, decked with an endless succession of vil- lages and villas, and shut in, towards the south, by the summits of the Sachsische Schweitz, a branch of the mountains of Bohemia. The royal palace but who can tell what the royal palace of Dresden is ? it is composed of so many pieces, running up one street, and down another, and so carefully is every part concealed that might have looked respectable. One sees no order ; the eye traces no connection among the masses of which it is made up, and seeks in vain for a whole. Unfortunately, that portion whicn, from its situation, could have made some show, that which fronts the open space at the entrance of the bridge, is the most unseemly of all, and has the air of a prison. The royal family which inhabits this palace has the best of all testimonies in its favour, that of DRESDEN. the people. Its younger branches, indeed, ne- phews of the king, are persons of whom scarcely any body thinks of speaking at all ; but the king himself is the object of universal reverence and affection. The Saxons, though too sensible to boast of his talents, maintain that he is the most upright prince in Europe, and all allow him those moral qualities which most easily secure the affection of a German people, and best de- serve the affection of any people. The political misfortunes which overtook Saxony when Napo- leon was no longer able to protect her, rendered them neither peevish nor impatient. Though the conqueror flattered their pride by treating their country with great respect, and even re- stored, in some measure, the Polish supremacy of the Electorate, by creating for it the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, they are no fonder of France than their brethren ; but neither do they conceal their grudge against the powers who punished Saxony for Napoleon's kindness, by giving so much of its territory to Prussia. Germans are the very last people with whom partitioning schemes should be tried, for they are the very last that will amalgamate themselves with ano- THE ROYAL FAMILY. 251 ther. Attachment to his native prince is part of a German's nature ; no man finds so much diffi- culty in conquering old affections and preju- dices. For a century the Saxons have been accus- tomed to have a king of a different religion from their own. The electoral crown, which, from the first thesis of Luther, had been the boast and bulwark of the Reformation, was regained for the church of Rome by the throne of Poland. The difference, however, does not seem to produce any cause of discontent or complaint, except that the most important personages about the court are naturally Catholics. The royal family is surrounded by them, and, it is asserted, is studiously kept in the trammels of the priest- hood. There is no intolerance, no exclusion of Protestants ; but it is not possible for so devout and priest-ridden a Catholic as the king is, to con- sider the heretical among his courtiers as equally fit companions for the royal presence, and deposi- taries of the royal confidence, with the orthodox ; and it is just as little possible, that the Catholic priesthood should not govern absolutely so de- vout a king. Protestantism suffers, too, in ano- 252 DRESDEN. ther way. Where any portion of the Roman hierarchy; perhaps of any hierarchy, nestles, the spirit of proselytism is immediately aroused. Where it rules a court, and basks in the light of royal favour, it arms itself with much more powerful weapons than argument. As the Elector of Saxony was converted by the prospect of a new crown, so his subjects may be just as easily converted by the prospect of facilitating their advancement to honours, and offices, and sa- laries. In one thing the king and his capital never have agreed, and never will agree ; the king loves quiet and priests ; his subjects love mirth and ballet-dancers. This people, abounding in corn and wine, living in a laughing and beauti- ful country, and infected, in part, by the crowds of strangers who flock together to admire the riches of their capital, are fond of society and amusement. They are more light-hearted, they have more easy gaiety about them, than any of their countrymen ; nor is it soiled by the gross sensuality of Vienna. The king has no liking for any of these things ; the passing pleasures of life have no charm for him. This does not arise THE ROYAL FAMILY. 253 from his advanced age, for it has always been so; it is in his character, and has been greatly foster- ed by feelings of devotion, degenerating almost into the ascetic. The court of Dresden indulges so little in pomp, or even in the ordinary amuse- ments of fashionable society, that one could scarcely discover it existed, were it not for the royal box in the theatre, and the grenadier guards at the gate of the palace. The Protestant gaiety of the people does not scruple to lay the blame of this sequestered life on the priests. In particular, they allege that the ecclesiastics, to in- sure the continuance of their domination, have educated the young princes, not like young men, but like old women ; kept back, no doubt, from much that is bad, but likewise from much more that is good in the world ; allowed to grow up in ignorance of every thing but what it pleased their bigotted and ghostly instructors they should know ; and thus bent into an unnatural quietude of life, and passiveness of character, which are perhaps not a whit more desirable than a certain degree of irregularity. This is not the social character that will captivate the Saxons. Au- gustus II. was, both in Poland and Saxony, the 254 DRESDEN'. most splendid of sovereigns ; under him, Dres- den was " the Masque of Germany." Augustus III. loved pleasure to extravagance. The pre- sent king has hurried himself and his court into the other extreme. It was reckoned no small triumph, a few years ago, that the royal counte- nance was obtained to a mimic tournament, at which the young nobility, armed from the anti- quated treasures of the Rustkammer, tilted va- liantly, in the arena of the riding-school, at stuff- ed Turks, and fleshed their maiden sabres in pasteboard Saracens. If Saxony has a minister at the Sublime Porte, how would he excuse his master, should the Great Turk get into a great passion, as he very reasonably might do, at such amusements being allowed in the court of an ally? I observed nothing particularly worthy of no- tice in the churches of Dresden, either in their architecture or ornaments. Every body tells you to admire the Frauenkirche, as being built after the model of St Peter's ; and it is like St Peter's in so far as both have cupolas, but no farther. I doubt not but the dome of St Peter's might be placed like an extinguisher THE CHCTRCHES. 255 over the whole crowded octangular pile of the Frauenkirche. The Catholic church, as being devoted to the religion of a very devout royal family, is that on which most splendour has been lavished. It was built, in the earlier part of the last century, on a design of the Italian Chiaveri. The quantity of ornament, and the waved facade, with its inter- rupted cornices and broken pediments, announce at once the degenerated taste which had appear- ed in Italy nearly a hundred years before, and erected such piles as the Salute at Venice, and the church Delia Sapienza in Rome, which dis- figures one side of a quadrangle designed by Michel Angelo. The building gains by its si- tuation; for it faces the Elbe, just at the en- trance of the bridge, unencumbered by any ad- joining edifice, except a black, covered gallery, certainly an unseemly appendage, which, for the convenience of the royal family, connects it with the palace. The elevations of the lower part are harmonious, and the effect of the whole is gor- geous ; but there is a total want of simplicity and grandeur, and the parapets are bristled round with grim sandstone saints. The more simple 256 DRESDEN. and elegant form of the interior is injured by the galleries for the accommodation of the court. The royal pew, quite cased in glass, is literally a hot-house. It was only here that I observed that decent custom strictly enforced, (which was universal in the earlier ages of the church,) of making all fe- males take their places on one side, and all males on the other. During mass, domestics of the royal household, armed with enormous batons, patrole the nave and aisles to enforce the regula- tion, and remove all pretences as well as oppor- tunities of scandal. The system of separation was not observed, however, above stairs, among the adherents of the court ; there, the sheep and goats were praying side by side. This decorum, too, has its origin in the purity of the royal cha- racter, though truly the citizens of the capital seem to value this most estimable virtue much more lowly than it deserves. His majesty ba- nished from the Temple of Venus at Pilnitz, the portraits of ladies celebrated for their beauty and gallantries, which had given the apartment its name ; and he retires every night to his lonely couch in the conviction that Vesta presides over THE CHURCHES 57 his capital. It is most honourable to himself, that, both by his own example and by police re- gulations, he has done all in his power to render it a fitting abode for the Goddess ; but it is a pity that he should be so very much deceived as to the effect of either. At the same time, de- bauchery has not the unblushing notoriety of Vienna or Munich. As all Germany praises the music in this church, it must be good, for the Germans are judges of music ; but, though I heard it in East- er, when the sacred harmony of Catholics puts forth all its powers, I must confess that little pleasure was derived from the noise of a score of fiddles, which the organ, though built by Silberman, could not conquer, and the voices of the choir, though adorned by that of an Eu- nuch, could not sweeten. It is not merely the casual associations which may fill the head with reels and country dances, as if it were intended to Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heaven ; these are instruments whose tones, to an untu- tored ear, at least, do not harmonize with feelings of solemnity and devotion; and the crowd of 258 DRESDEN. them usually pressed into the service of the church, takes all distinctness and effect from the vocal music, which in reality becomes the ac- companiment, instead of being the principal part of the composition. After hearing Mozart's Re- quiem, for example, performed at Berlin, with the full complement of fiddles, so much did it gain in effect, merely from their absence, that I could scarcely recognize the composition when given in Vienna simply by the choir and the or- gan, except where the trumpet, echoing along the lofty roof of St Stephen, seemed to send its notes from the clouds, as it bore up the accomr paniment at, Tuba mirum spargens sonura, Per sepulchra regionum, Coget omnes ante thronum. Allegri's famed Miserere, as sung in the Sis- tine chapel at Rome, during Easter, justifies the belief that, for purposes of devotion, the un- aided human voice is the most impressive of all instruments. If such a choir as that of his Ho-, liness could always be commanded, the organ itself might be dispensed with. This, however, THE CHURCHES. 259 is no fair sample of the powers of vocal sacred music; and those who are most alive to the " concord of sweet sounds" forget that, in the mixture of feeling produced by a scene so im- posing as the Sistine chapel presents on such an occasion, it is difficult to attribute to the music only its own share in the overwhelming effect. The Christian world is in mourning ; the throne of the Pontiff, stripped of all its honours, and uncovered of its royal canopy, is degraded to the simple elbow-chair of an aged priest. The Pontiff himself, and the congregated digni- taries of the church, divested of all earthly pomp, kneel before the cross in the unosten- tatious garb of their religious orders. As even- ing sinks, and the tapers are extinguished one after another, at different stages of the service, the fading light falls ever dimmer and dimmer on the reverend figures. The prophets and saints of Michel Angelo look down from the ceiling on the pious worshippers beneath ; while the living figures of his Last Judgment, in every variety of infernal suffering and celestial enjoyment, gra- dually vanish in the gathering shade, as if the scene of horror had closed for ever on the one, DRESDEN. and the other had quitted the darkness of earth for a higher world. Is it wonderful that, in such circumstances, such music as that famed Miserere, sung by such a choir, should shake the soul even of a Calvinist ? Except, perhaps, the Viennese, no people of Germany are so fond of being out of doors as the Saxons of Dresden, for none of its capitals displays so many temptations to allure them ; wood and water, mountain and plain, precipice and valley, corn and wine, palace and cottage, tossed together in bright confusion, and glowing in a climate which, on this side of the Alps, may well be called genial. The rising grounds which form the circle to the south-east, and were the principal scene of the combats and bombard- ments that terminated in the retreat of the French army to Leipzig, are the only part of the environs that have any thing like lameness in their character. Where they slope down to- wards the town, and not much more than a mile from the walls, stands the lonely monu- ment of Moreau, on the spot where he fell. It is merely a square block of granite, surrounded below by large unhewn stones, and bearing on MOREAU'S MONUMENT. its upper surface a helmet, a sword, and a laurel chaplet. The brief inscription, " The Hero Moreau fell here by the side of Alexander," is worth mentioning, merely to notice the audacity with which some unworthy and ungenerous spir- it has dared to violate it. An unknown but deliberate hand has tried to efface the word Hero, and has carved above it, as regularly and deeply as the rest of the inscription, the word Traitor. So professionally has it been perform- ed, that it has not been possible to obliterate entirely this degrading exploit of cowardice and malignity. The most partial admirers of that great man may be allowed to wish, that, after so honourable a life, he had fallen on a less ques- tionable field ; but the rancour which could de- secrate his simple monument, was infinitely more detestable than even the imperial enmity, which honoured with its hatred his talents and virtues when alive. A French gentleman, on being asked at Dresden, whether he had yet visited the monument of his countryman, answered with passionate vivacity, " Non; il n'etoit pas mon compatriote ; car moi, je suis Fran$ais." 262 The Frenchman who is ashamed of Moreau is a man of whom nobody can be proud. The most remarkable part of the neighbour- hood, a district that would be remarkable in any country, is the Sachsische Schweitz, or Saxon Switzerland; and it is visited with astonish- ment, even after the wonders of the real Swit- zerland. The latter, indeed, contains infinitely finer and more stupendous things ; for here are no glaciers, no snowy summits like Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau, no walls of rock lost in the clouds like the Wetterhorner ; but Switzerland contains nothing of the same kind. Only Adels- berg, on the frontier between Silesia and Bohe- mia, approaches it, and Adelsberg is still more singular. The Saxon Switzerland commences about eight miles above Dresden, and follows the course of the Elbe upwards, lying among the mountains which form the boundary be- tween Bohemia and Saxony. A short way above the capital, Pilnitz, a royal residence of historical notoriety, but remarkable in no other respect, reflects itself in the waters of the Elbe. About four miles farther up, the valley closes ; the mountains become more lofty and bare ; the THE SAXON SWITZERLAND. 263 majestic river comes forth from the gorges which you are about to enter, quitting at length the Tugged and mountainous course which has hem- med him in from his birth in the mountains of the Giant, and destined to visit, throughout the rest of his career, only scenes of industry and fertility. From this point, up to the frontiers of Bohemia, the rocks in the neighbourhood of the river, principally on the right bank, consist- ing of a coarse-grained sandstone, are cut in all directions into frightful gorges, as if the chisel had been used to hew passages through them. They should rather be called lanes, so narrow are they, so deeply sunk, and so smoothly per- pendicular do the gigantic walls of rock rise on both sides. The walls themselves are cut verti- cally into separate masses, by narrow openings reaching from the summit to the very bottom, as if a cement, which once united them, had been washed away. These perpendicular mass- es, again, are divided and grooved horizontally into layers, or apparent layers, like blocks regu- larly laid upon each other, to form the wall. The extremities are seldom sharp or angular, but almost always rounded, betraying the con- 264 DRESDEN*. tinued action of water. They generally termi- nate in some singular form. Some have a huge rounded mass reclining on their summit, which appears scarcely broad enough to poise it; others have a more regular mass laid upon them, like the astragal of a Doric pillar ; others assume the form of inverted pyramids, increasing in breadth as they shoot higher into the air. Oc- casionally they present a still more singular ap- pearance ; for, after tapering in a conical form, to a certain elevation, they begin to dilate again as they rise higher, as if an inverted truncated cone were placed on a right truncated cone, re- sembling exactly, but on an infinitely greater scale, what often occurs in caverns, where the descending stalactite rests on an ascending sta- lagmite. The abyss, which lies deep sunk behind the summit called the Bastey, though not so regular as some others, is the most wonderful of all, in the horrid boldness and fantastic forms of its rocks. The Ottazcalder Grund is so narrow, ; and its walls so lofty, that many parts of it can never have felt sunshine. I trode, through the greater part of it, on snow and ice, when all THE SAXON SWITZERLAND. 265 above was warm and cheery, and butterflies were sporting over its frozen bosom. Some small cascades were literally hanging frozen in their fall. In one place the walls are not more than four feet asunder. Some huge blocks, in their course from the summit, have been jam- med in between them, and form a natural roof, beneath which you must creep along above the brook on planks, if the brook be small, or wad- ing in water, if it be swollen; for the rivulet occupies the whole space between the walls in this narrow passage, which goes under the name of " Hell." When, in one of these lanes, you find an alley striking off on one side, and, hav- ing squeezed your body through it, another si- milar lane, which you soon find crossed by ano- ther of the same sort, you might believe your- self traversing the rude model of some gigantic city, or visiting the ruined abodes of the true ter- rae JUii. * When, again, from some elevated * And once they had inhabitants. Among the loftiest and most inaccessible of the cliffs which overlook the Elbe, remains of the works of human hands are still vi- sible. A band of robbers, by laying blocks across the VOL. I. M 266 DRESDEN. point, you overlook the whole mass, and sec these stiff bare rocks rising from the earth, ma- nifesting, though now disjoined, that they once formed one body, you might think yourself gaz- ing on the skeleton of a perished world, all the softer parts of which have mouldered away, and left only the naked, indestructible frame-work. The Bastey, or Bastion, is the name given to one of the largest masses which rise close by the river on the right bank. One narrow block, on the very summit, projects into the air. Perch- ed on this, not on, but beyond the brink of the precipice, you command a prospect which, in its kind, is unique in Europe. You hover, on the pinnacle, at an elevation of more than eight hundred feet above the Elbe, which sweeps round the bottom of the precipice. Behind, and up along the river on the same bank, rise similar precipitous cliffs, cut and intersected like those already described. From the farther bank, chasms, had formed bridges, frail in structure, and easi- ly removed when security required it ; and, in the upper floors, as it were, of this natural city, long set regular power at defiance. THE SAXON SWITZERLAND. 267 the plain gradually elevates itself into an ir- regular amphitheatre, terminated by a lofty, but rounded range of mountains. The strik- ing feature is, that, in the bosom of this am- phitheatre, a plain of the most varied beauty, huge columnar hills start up at once from the ground, at great distances from each other, overlooking, in lonely and solemn grandeur, each its own portion of the domain. They are monuments which the Elbe has left standing to commemorate his triumph over their less hardy kindred. The most remarkable among them are the Lillenstein and Jfonigstein, which tower nearly in the centre of the picture, to a height of about twelve hundred feet above the level of the Elbe. They rise perpendiculai'- ly from a sloping base, formed of debris, and now covered with natural wood. The access to the summit is so difficult, that an Elector of Saxony and King of Poland thought the exploit which he performed in scrambling to the top of the Lilienstein deserving of being commemorat- ed by an inscription. The access to the Konlg- fttein is artificial, for it has long been a fortress, and, from the strength of its situation, is still a DRESDEN. virgin one. Besides these, the giants of the ter- ritory, the plain is studded with many other columnar eminences of the same general charac- ter, though on a smaller scale, and they all bear, from time immemorial, their particular legends ; for the mountains of Saxony and Bohemia are the native country of tale-telling tradition, the cradle of Gnomes and Kobolds. In the deep rents and gloomy recesses of the Lilienstcin, hosts of spirits still watch over concealed trea- sures. A holy nun, miraculously transported from the irregularities of her convent, to the summit of the Nonnenstein, that she might spend her days in prayer and purity in its ca- verns, is commemorated in the name of the rock ; and the Jungfernsprung, or Leap of the Virgin, perpetuates the memory of the Saxon maid, who, when pursued by a brutal lustling, threw herself from the brink of its hideous pre- cipice, to die unpolluted. 269 CHAPTER V. DRESDEN. THE ARTS LITERATURE CRIMINAL JUSTICE THE GOVERNMENT. DRESDEN has the advantage of being lively and entertaining at all seasons of the year, though the sort of persons who produce and enjoy its pleasures vary most sensibly with the state of the thermometer. The winter entertainments of the higher ranks are just what they are elsewhere. Those who find balls, and routs, and card-parties, dull in other countries, will not find them a whit less so in Saxony. The middle and lower classes seek their pleasures in the theatre ; for no rank in Germany reckons play-going a sin. The king himself is so extravagantly fond of music, that, besides a regular troop of actors, he sup- ports two operatic companies, one Italian and 270 DRESDEN. the other German, and has at the head of his chapel Weber, the first of the living theatri- cal composers of Germany, and Morlacchi, who- fills a very respectable rank after the despotic Rossini. Spring comes on, and the native heroes of the winter disappear, to be replaced by stran- gers. The great body of the citizens take their turn in the cycle of amusement, and take it out of doors. OH the first of May, as regularly as the year comes round, the royal family removes to Pilnitz ; the nobility and gentry, all, in short, who are not too poor, fly to their country-seats, or the baths of Bohemia ; the superb orangery is brought forth from its winter covering, and set to blossom round the Zwinger, in the open air ; the picture-gallery is thrown open ; Bottiger commences his prelections on ancient statues, in the collection of antiques ; foreigners crowd into the city from all parts of Europe ; and Dresden, with its laughing sky, and climate, and scenery, and people, becomes, for a season, the coffee- house of Germany. It is to its collection of pictures that Dresden is principally indebted for the reputation which it enjoys as the centre of the arts in Ger- THE GALLERY. many. No gallery on this side of the Alps, deserves, a& a whole, to b uncertain ; nor is it easy to believe that a painter so celebrated and so occupied as an original ar- tist as Julio Romano was, can have spent his time on the innumerable copies which are every where current in his name. The picture which represents a martyr with the fire kindling at his feet, and is ascribed to Mi- chel Angelo, is just such a figure as he would have painted, and probably its very prototype may be found in the Vatican ; but it is in oil, a cir- cumstance always injurious to the authenticity of any picture pretending to be from the pencil of an artist who used it so very seldom in oil-paint- ing, which he declared to be fit only for women and lazy men. The gallery is weak in the Ve- netian, and Bolognese, and Florentine schools, though there is one of those voluptuous beauties of Titian, commonly called Venuses, and a very beautiful half figure of St Cecilia by Carlo Dolce, a favourite subject of copying among the female amateurs. Of Da Vinci, the great father of the Lombard school, there is only a portrait of Sfor- za, the celebrated usurper of Milan, who was too fortunate in having Leonardo to paint him, and THE GALLERV. 289 Guicciardini to write his history : it is a portrait that belongs to the very first class in every re- spect. The crowds of copyists which fill the gallery during the summer months, show that the pos- session of this rich collection has not been alto- gether favourable to the growth of original ge- nius. A sure and lucrative employment is found in making miniature copies ; originality of style and composition dies out ; or, when the painter ventures to work after his own taste and imagination, he unconsciously degenerates into mannerism. Dietrich was a skilful landscape painter, but possessed a dangerous facility of pencil. Mengs, the first of modern German art- ists, though by birth a Bohemian, is more pro- perly to be given to Italy, where he spent his life. Within these few years, Kiigelchen gained a great name. His pictures are distin- guished by great elegance of forms, with much softness and tenderness, a sort of fairy lightness, in the colouring. A murderer cut him off too early. Dresden still contains many painters, and a love of the art is widely diffused ; but the painters are copyists, and the love of the VOL. I. N 290 DRESDEN'. art is dilettanteisni. During summer and au- tumn, the gallery is filled with professional and amateur artists, copying the celebrated pictures, or individual groupes or figures from them, for money or amusement. Many of them, espe- cially of the mere amateurs, are ladies, and here the pride of rank which, in every thing else in Germany, is so unyielding, gives way. The- countess pursues her task by the side of her more humble companion, who is copying for her daily bread, under the gaze of every strol- ling stranger. It is nothing uncommon to find ladies repairing to Dresden from distant capitals, to spend part of the summer in copying pic- tures. One of the most complete collections of cop- perplates in Europe, containing every thing that is interesting in the history of the art, or val- uable for practical excellence, forms a supple- ment to the pictures. The earliest is of 1466, and is said to be the earliest yet known. What a leap the art takes at once from the uncouth forms of Schongauer and Mechlin, to the drawing and finishing of Diirer ! It is amusing to ob- serve the minutiae by which the connoisseur dis- ENGRAVINGS. tinguishes an original plate from the copies, often excellent, which have been made of most celebrated engravings. In a portrait, the graver had slipped at a letter in the word Effigies, so that this letter is accompanied, in the original, by a slight scratch, more difficult to be observed than the fragment of a hair. The copyist ei- ther had not observed the defect, or thought proper to correct it ; and the absence of this blemish is the only test by which the copy can be distinguished from the original. In an early work of Dtirer, which contains a town, the omission of a small chimney, which is not more than a point, and, in another, a still slighter variation in the ornaments of a helmet, alone de- tect the copy. Money is liberally spent in car- rying on the series in the works of the modern masters of all countries. Whoever wishes to study the history of this beautiful art, and be initiated into the mysteries of connolsseurship, can find no better school than the cabinet of Dresden. It overflows with materials, and .is under the direction of a gentleman, who not only seems to be thoroughly master of his occu- pation, but has the much rarer merit of being 292 DRESDEN. in the highest degree patient, attentive, and communicative. The Saxons, to complete their school of arts, have procured a quantity of ancient sculptures, purchased and begged from different quarters of Italy, and casts in gypsum of the great works which could neither be bought nor begged. The latter are from the hand of Mengs himself, and, besides perfect accuracy, many parts of the figure, such as the hair, are finished with a much higher degree of industry and precision than is usually found in this department of the plastic art. Both collections are under the direction of Bottiger, than whom Germany re- cognizes no greater name in every thing con- nected with ancient art and classical antiqui- ties. With, perhaps, less taste in the arts them- selves, he is allowed to be master of much more extensive and profound erudition concern- ing them than Winckelman, in whom his Con- tributions to the History of Ancient Painting, corrected many errors, and supplied many defi- ciencies. This erudition, which Heyne and Wolff in vain urged him to lay out in some great work, instead of squandering it, by fits and THE GREEN VAULT. starts, among a hundred different subjects in tracts and reviews, is quite in its place in his lectures, or even in the Abendzeitung, the po- lite journal of Dresden, which is often made the vehicle of his lucubrations ; but it is formidable to a listener in ordinary conversation. When Bottiger bends his head, and half shuts his eyes, the hearer may reckon on encountering a flood- tide of erudition and superlatives, which, how- ever, the kindliness and simplicity of the old man render perfectly tolerable. It would be unpardonable to pass over in si- lence the treasures of the Griine Gewdlbe, or Green Vault, of which every Saxon is so proud ; and whoever takes pleasure in the glitter of precious stones, in gold and silver wrought, not merely into all sorts of royal ornaments, but in- to every form, however grotesque, that art can give them, without any aim at either utility or beauty, will stroll with satisfaction through the apartments of this gorgeous toy-shop. They are crowded with the crowns, and jewels, and regal at- tire of a long line of Saxon princes ; vases and other utensils seem to have been made merely as a means of expending gold and silver ; the shelves 294 DRESDEN. glitter with caricatured urchins, whose body is often formed of a huge pear], or an egg-shell, the limbs being added in enamelled gold. The innumerable carvings in ivory are more interest- ing, as memorials of a difficult art, which was once so highly esteemed in Germany, and of the minute labour with which German artists could mould the most reluctant materials into difficult forms. One is dazzled by the quantity of gems and precious metals that glare around him ; he must even admire the ingenuity which hae fa- shioned them into so many ornaments and un- meaning nick-nacks ; but there is nothing he for- gets more easily, or that deserves less to be re- membered. The Rusfkammer Y too, is not merely a mu- seum with a few specimens of what sort of things spears and coats of mail were, but is just what a well-stored armoury must have been in the days of yore. Were Europe thrown back, by the word of an enchanter, into the middle ages, Saxony could take the field, with a duly equip- ped army, sooner than any other power. We cannot easily form any idea of the long practice which must have been necessary to enable a man THE ARMOUKY. 295 to wear such habiliments with comfort, much more to wield, at the same time, such arms with agility and dexterity. But the young officers of those days wore armour almost as soon as they could walk, and transmigrated regularly from one iron shell into another, more unwieldy than its predecessor, till they reached the full stature of knighthood, and played at broad- sword with the weight of a twelve pounder on their backs, as lightly as a lady bears a chap- let of silken flowers on her head in a quadrille. There is here a complete series of the suits set apart for the princes of Saxony; the smallest seemed to be for a boy of ten or twelve years old. It would be difficult to find a man who could promenade in the cuirass of Augustus II., which you can hardly raise from the ground, or. sport his cap, which incloses an iron hat heavier than a tea-kettle ; but Augustus, if you believe the Saxons, was a second Sampson. They have m their mouths innumerable histories of his bodily prowess; such as, that he lifted a trumpet- er in full armour, and held him aloft on the palm of his hand ; that he twisted the iron ban- nister of a stair into a rope, and made love to a 296 DRESDEN. coy beauty by presenting in one hand a bag of gold, and breaking, with the other, a horse-shoe. Among the reliques is the first instrument with which Schwarz tried his newly invented gunpowder. The fire is produced by friction. A small bar of iron, placed parallel to the barrel, is moved rapidly forwards and backwards by the hand ; above it is a flint, whose edge is pressed firmly against the upper surface of the bar by a spring ; the friction of the flint against the bar strikes out the fire, which falls upon the powder in a small pan beneath. These are some of the treasures and curiosi- ties, the collections of arts and trifles, which have made the Saxons so proud of their capital, and draw to it men of genius and taste, as well as men of mere idleness and dissipation. The general tone of society bears the same impress of lightness and gaiety. Though there are many men of high literary reputation in Dresden, re- gular literary coteries are not favourite forms of social life ; the pedantry and affectation which generally surround them are not for the meri- dian of Dresden. But it can easily happen that, after sipping your tea amid chit-chat, you are LITERATURE. doomed to hear some one read aloud for a couple of hours. The yawning gentlemen may deserve some commiseration, but the ladies are not to be pitied, for they are universally the great patronesses of these evening congregations, and knitting goes on just as rapidly as if they were tattling with each other. Tick, a poet of original genius himself, and a worthy co-ope- rator in the labours which have so successfully transplanted Shakespeare to the soil of Germany, is peculiarly celebrated for his elocutionary powers. I have heard him read, at one stretch, the whole of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, in Schlegel's translation, to an enraptured tea-au- ditory, with a different modification of voice for every character ; and really the combined excel- lence of the translation and elocution left little to be desired. Yet, with all its love of gaiety and novelty, Dresden is, I take it, the only respectable Eu- ropean capital in which no newspaper, properly so called, is published. The Abendzeitung is in- tended for tea-tables, and filled with sentimental tales and verses, old anecdotes which interest nobody, and critiques on the performances in 298 DRESDEN. all the great German theatres, which interest every body. There is no political newspaper, probably from the vicinity of Leipzig, where people perhaps believe political newspapers can be better managed, because political matters arc more attended to, and better understood. It cannot be because the censorship is more strict at Dresden than at Leipzig, for all the Leipzig newspapers are admitted, and at the Resource, a club of gentlemen for reading newspapers and eating dinners, I found not only all the French journals, but the Morning Chronicle and the Times, along-side of the Courier. English is very generally cultivated among the well educated ranks, though French is still the conventional language of courtiers and wait- ers. The German which they speak, and fond- ly speak, has no rival in purity, except the dia- lect of Hanover ; and the preference given by grammarians to the latter rests on small points of pronunciation, in which analogy perhaps fa- vours Hanover, but the ear allows her little su- periority. So far is the nicety of Hanover from fixing itself in the pure German states as the mark of a well educated man, that I have known THE LANGUAGE. Hanoverians, when living in Saxony, renounce their native pronunciation, to avoid the charge of being; affected. I have sometimes hesitated O whether German, on the lips of a fair, frolick- ing Saxon, was not just as pleasing a language as Italian in the mouth of a languishing, volup- tuous Venetian, though those who judge of the former of these tongues merely from the apocry- phal saying of Charles V., that it was a language fit to be spoken only to horses, will, no doubt, think it very ridiculous that any such doubt should ever be entertained. I do not mean that the accents, considered merely as the materials of sound, fall so softly on the ear ; but German is so much more poetical in the ideas which these accents suggest and represent than any other living language, that it possesses a much higher .merit, because, in addition to the philosophical regularity of its structure, it paints in much more vivid colours. Even the roughness to the ear is by no means so frequent or striking as we are apt to imagine ; while the expressions awake so many feelings and associations, that the merely sensual claims of the ear are, in a great measure, disregarded. A traveller who has heard 300 DRESDEN. a postillion grumble about his Trinkgeld, or a couple of peasants curse and swear at each other in an ale-house, and who, whenever he is in company that is suitable for him, hears and speaks only French, immediately writes down that German is a horrible language which splits the ear, and furnishes merely a coarse medium for saying coarse things. What would we think of Italian were it j udged of in the same way ? Where are there upon earth more grating and atrocious sounds than the dialects of the Mil- anese and Bolognese ? In this gay and elegant capital, one of the least pleasing features is the number of condemn- ed malefactors employed in cleaning the streets, fettered by the leg, and kept to their labour by the rod of an overseer, and the muskets of sen- tinels. Here, just as in Italy, these miscreants have the impudence to ask charity in the name of heaven from the passenger whose pocket they would pick, or whose throat they would cut, if the chain were but taken from their ancle. The time not consumed in labour is spent in a miser- able and corrupting confinement, in dungeons which are always loathsome, and sometimes sub- 12 CRIMINAL LAW. 301 terraneous. Having heard a professor of Jena rail, in his lecture, at the mal-administration of English prisons, in a style which I suspected no German was entitled to use who looked nearer home, I took occasion to visit one of the prisons of Dresden. It was crowded with accused as well as condemned, and seemed to have all the usual defects of ill-regulated gaols, both as to the health and moral welfare of its inmates. They were deposited in small dark cells, each of which contained three prisoners ; a few boards, across which a coarse mat was thrown, supplied the place of a bed, and the cells were overheat- ed. Many of the prisoners were persons whose guilt had not yet been ascertained ; but, possible as their innocence might be, it was to some the sixth, the eighth, even the twelfth month of this demoralizing confinement. One young- man, whom the gaoler allowed to be a respect- able person, had been pining for months, with- out knowing, as he said, why he was there. The allegation might be of very doubtful truth, but the procrastinated suffering, without any definite point of termination, was certain. Till the judge shall find time to condemn them to the 302 DRESDEK. highway, or dismiss them as innocent, they must languish on in these corrupting triumvirates, in dungeons, compared with which the cell they would be removed to, if condemned to die, is a comfortable abode. I could easily believe the assurance of the gaoler, that they uniformly Jeave the prison worse than they entered it. Such arrangements, under a system of crimi- nal law like that which prevails all over Ger- many, are hideous; because it is a system which sets no determinate limit to the duration of this previous confinement. The length of the im- prisonment of an accused person depends, not on the law, but on the judge, or those who are above the judge. The law having once got the man into gaol, does not seem to trouble itself any farther about him. There are instances, and recent ones, too, of persons being dismissed as innocent after a five years 1 preparatory imprison- ment. People, to be sure, shake their heads at "such things, with " aye, it was very hard on the poor man, but the court could not sooner arrive at the certainty of his guilt or innocence.' 1 No doubt, it is better, as they allege, that a man should be unjustly imprisoned five years, than CJUMINAL LAW. 303 unjustly hanged at the end of the first; but they cannot see that, if there was no good ground for hanging him at the end of the first, neither could there be any for keeping him in gaol dur- ing the other four. They insist on the necessity of discovering the truth. Where there are sus- picious circumstances, though they acknowledge it would be wrong to convict the man, they maintain it would be equally wrong to liberate him, and therefore fairly conclude that he must remain in prison " till the truth comes out." To get at the certain truth is a very excellent thing; but it is a very terrible thing, that a man must languish in prison during a period indefinite by law, till his judges discover with certainty whe- ther he should ever have been there or not. The secrecy in which all judicial proceedings are wrapt up, at once diminishes the apparent num- ber of such melancholy abuses, and prevents the public mind from being much affected by those which become partially known. All this leads to another practice, which, however it may be disguised, is nothing else than the torture. It is a rule, in all capital of- fences, not to inflict the punishment, however 304 DRESDEK. clear the evidence may be, without a confession by the culprit himself. High treason, I believe, is a practical exception. In it the head must go off, whether the mouth opens or not. In all other capital crimes, though there should not be a hook to hang a doubt upon, yet, if the culprit deny, he is only condemned to, perhaps, perpe- tual imprisonment. There is no getting rid of the dilemma, that, in the opinion of the man's judges, his guilt is either clearly proved, or it is not. If it be clearly proved, then the whole punishment, if not, then no punishment at all should be inflicted ; otherwise suspicions are vi- sited as crimes, and a man is treated as a crimi- nal, because it is doubtful whether he be one or not. * If his judges think that his denial pro- * The established practice has been vigorously attacked of late years, especially by Feuerbach, a high name in German jurisprudence. The query, Whether evidence that would be insufficient to convict without the confes- sion of the culprit, should justify a lower degree of pu- nishment, or free him from all punishment, was the sub- ject of a prize question in 1800. A summary of the con- troversy may be found in the third and fourth volumes of the Archiv des Criminah-echts } edited by Professors Klein, Kleinschrod, and Konopack. CRIMINAL LAW. 305 ceeds merely from obstinacy, he is consigned to a dungeon, against whose horrors, to judge from the one I was shown, innocence itself could not long hold out ; for death on the scaffold would be a far easier and more imme- diate liberation, than the mortality which creeps over every limb in such a cell. It is a cold, damp, subterraneous hole; the roof is so low, that the large drops of moisture distilling from above must trickle immediately on the miserable inmate; its dimensions are so confined, that a man could not stretch out his limbs at full length. Its only furniture is wet straw, scantily strewed on the wet ground. There is not the smallest opening or cranny to admit either light or air ; a prison- er could not even discern the crust of bread and jug of water allotted to support life in a place where insensibility would be a blessing. I am not describing any relique of antiquated barba- rity ; the cell is still in most efficient operation. About four years ago, it was inhabited by a wo- man convicted of murder. As she still denied the crime, her judges, who had no pretence for doubt, sent her to this dungeon, to extort a con- fession. At the end of a fortnight, her obstinacy S06 DRESDEN. gave way ; when she had just strength enough left to totter to the scaffold, she confessed the murder exactly as it had been proved against her. Such a practice is revolting to all good feel- ing, even when viewed as a punishment ; when used before condemnation, to extort a confes- sion, in what imaginable point does it differ from the torture ? Really we could almost he tempt- ed to believe, that it is not without some view to future utility, that, in a more roomy apartment adjoining this infamous dungeon, all the regu-. kr approved instruments of torture, from the wheel to the pincers, are still religiously pre- served. A number of iron hooks are fixed in the ceiling; a corresponding block of wood runs across the floor, filled with sharp pieces of iron pointing upwards; in a corner were mouldering the ropes by which, prisoners used to be sus- pended by the wrists from the hooks, with their feet resting on the iron points below. At the side of the wheel is a pit of exquisitely cold wa-. ter. The benches and table of the judges still retain their place, as well as the old-fashioned iron candlestick, which, even at mid-day, fur. CRIMINAL LAW. 307 nished the only light that rendered visible the darkness of this " cell of guilt and misery. 11 Fortunately, the dust has now settled thick up- on them, never, let us hope, to be disturbed. The worst of all is, that this species of torture (for, considering what sort of imprisonment it is, and for what purposes it is inflicted, I can give it no other name) is just of that kind which works most surely on the least corrupted. To the master-spirits of villany, and long tried ser- vants of iniquity, a dark, damp hole, wet straw, and bread and water, are much less appalling than to the novice in their trade, or to the inno- cent man, against whom fortuitous circumstances have directed suspicion. How many men have burdened themselves with crimes which they never committed, to escape torture which they never deserved .' What a melancholy catalogue might be collected out of the times when the torture was still inflicted by the executioner ! And, alas ! very recent experience robs us of the satisfaction of believing they have disappeared, now that Ger- many has substituted for the rack so excruciat- ing a confinement. A lamentable instance hap- pened in Dresden while I was there, (1821.) 308 DRESDEN. Kiigelchen, the most celebrated German painter of his day, had been murdered and robbed in the neighbourhood of the city. A soldier, of the name of Fischer, was apprehended on suspicion. After a long investigation, his judges found rea- son to be clearly satisfied of his guilt ; but still, as he did not confess, he was sent to the dun- geon, to conquer his obstinacy. He stood it out for some months, but at last acknowledged the murder. He had not yet been broken on the wheel, when circumstances came out which point- ed suspicion against another soldier, named Kalk- ofen, as having been at least an accomplice in the deed. The result of the new inquiry was, the clearest proof of Fischer's total innocence. Kalkofen voluntarily confessed, not only that he was the murderer of Kiigelchen, but that he had committed likewise a similar crime, which had occurred some months before, and the perpe- trator of which had not hitherto been disco- vered. The miscreant was executed, and the very same judges who had subjected the un- happy Fischer to such a confinement, to ex- tort a confession, now liberated him, cleared from every suspicion. As the natural consequence THE GOVERNMENT. 309 of such durance in such an abode, he had to be carried from the prison to the hospital. He said, that he made his false confession, merely to be released, even by hastening his execution, from this pining torture which preys equally on the body and the mind. This is the most fright- ful side of their criminal justice. It may be al- lowed, that there are few instances of the inno- cent actually suffering on the scaffold ; such ex- amples are rare in all countries ; though it is clear that, in Germany, the guiltless must often owe his escape to accident, while the lawhas done every thing in its power to condemn him. But even of those who have at length been recogniz- ed as innocent, and restored to character and so- ciety, how many, like poor Fischer, have carried with them, from their prison, the seeds of dis- ease, which have ultimately conducted them to the grave as certainly as the gibbet or the wheel f The Estates of Saxony were sitting at Dresden, and part of them came to a quarrel with the go- vernment ; the civic provosts set themselves in downright opposition to the anointed king, or, at least, to theanointed king's ministers. The Estates 510 DRESDEN. have yet undergone no change ; they retain their antiquated form, their old tediousness, expen- siveness, and inefficiency, a collection of courtly nobles and beneficed clergymen, or laymen enjoying revenues that once belonged to cler- gymen, called together as old-fashioned instru- ments which the royal wishes must condescend to use, but can likewise command. The great mass of the population, exclusive of the aris- tocracy, can be said to have a voice only through the few representatives of the towns, in the mode of whose election, again, there is no- thing popular. It was they alone, however, who showed a desire to question the conduct of the higher powers. They complained that their rights had been violated in the imposition of tax- es ; they called for the accounts of those branch- es of the administration for which extraordinary supplies were demanded ; when this was refused, they requested permission to make their pro- ceedings public, as a justification of themselves to the people. This, too, was refused, and they then addressed a remonstrance to the Ritter- schaft,or assembly of the nobility, requesting that body to join them in making good their reason- THE GOVERNMENT. 311 able demands. To all inquiries in Dresden how the matter had gone on, and what proceedings the Ritterscliaft had adopted, the universal and discouraging answer was, man weiss nicht, " no- " body knows." In fact, in a body so constituted, there is al- ways one predominating and irresistible interest, that of the aristocracy. In numbers, and still more in influence, they form by far the greater part of those who are called to this assembly of indefinite powers, of advisers rather than con- trollers. This influence is, in every case, at the disposal of the crown ; because, from the habits of society, and the want of all political independ- ence where there never has been a public politi- cal life, those who ostensibly hold it know no higher reward than the smiles of the crown. You would more easily prevail with them to vote away the money or personal security of the peo- ple without inquiry, than to run the risk of be- ing excluded from the next court dinner. The defect, therefore, does not lie in the aristocra- cy possessing a powerful influence ; for every country which pretends to exclude them from it is forcing its political society into unnatural 312 DRESDEN. forms ; and can scarcely promise itself a stable or tranquil political existence : it lies in their possessing this influence only in form, while it really belongs to the executive, and still more, in their allowing no other class to have any influ- ence at all. Amid the feudal relations under which this form of government originated, and which alone could give it any justification, the nobility were really almost the only persons, exclusive of the towns which acknowledged no sovereign but the empire, who could be trusted, to any useful pur- pose, with political power. The connection be- tween them and the lower ranks was so unequal, that any influence given to the latter only in- creased the power of the former. A noble could have used their votes just as arbitrarily in wrest- ing from a neighbour the representation of a county, as he used their swords in wresting from him a pretty daughter, or a score of black cattle. Out of their own body, no class pretended to any rights, because there were none which could be maintained against the brute force that had every where constituted the sword interpreter of public law. But this exclusive influence was THE GOVERNMENT. 313 likewise a very effective one against the monarch. Those very feudal relations which enabled them to abuse every body else, enabled them likewise to prevent the monarch from abusing any body without their permission. If even the head of the Holy Roman Empire called them around him to punish a disobedient count or an impertinent provost, they took their own way, and followed their own likings, in the quarrel. The army of the empire was half assembled, made half a cam- paign to do nothing at all, and, in the course of centuries, down to the Seven Years' War, when the phantom for the last time took a bodily form, fully justified the ridicule attached to the very name of the Reichsexecut'tonsarmee. But it is long since all the relations of society were totally changed in both respects. The excluded classes have become more proper depositaries of a certain portionof political influence; still earlier, the excluding classes had become altogether un- fit to monopolize an influence intended to check the monarch, because they had degenerated into a body of courtly retainers, dependent on that very monarch, commanded by him to ratify his pleasure, requested perhaps to advise, and, if VOL. i. o DRESDEN. they disapproved, destitute of every instrument to make their disapprobation efficient. They were powerful men, and, in opposing the mo- narch, were on many occasions useful men, when they had swords in their hands, and vassals at their backs ; but they are worthless as a legis- lative body? now that their only weapon is the grey goose quill in the hand of their clerk.* Pub- lic opinion could alone give them force ; but that is a weapon which they do not venture to use, for they know that, if once drawn, it would probably attack the forms which make them, though only in name, the exclusive organs of public senti- ment on the public administration. Thus the predominating influence of the aris- tocracy, though annihilated as to its power of * So accurately do the people judge of the utility of such a body, that it has become a vulgar, indeed, but yet a true, because a proverbial distich : Das was ein Landtag isl schliesst sich in diesem Reim ; Versammelt euch, schafft geld, und packt euch \vieder heirn. The picture of our parliament is in these simple rhymes ; Assemble, give us money> and get home again betimes. THE GOVERNMENT. 315 doing good, still exists as to its power of exclud- ing all other classes which have gradually risen to be worthy of a more efficient voice; the old forms were cut only to oligarchical shapes, and are still the uniform of the only constitutional legislators. The system is bad in theory, be- cause it is at once exclusive and inefficient ; in practice, it is not productive of real oppression, because, from the personal character of the mo- narch, he is as anxious to promote the happiness of his kingdom as of his own family. But in Saxony, as in every other German state which has ad- mitted no modification of the old principle, a king with a less estimable heart, and no better a head, than the present sovereign, could do infinite mischief, and there would be no recognized power in the state which could legally and effect- ually set itself in the breach. 316 CHAPTER VI. THURINGIA CASSEL. Manner vetsorgten das briillende Vieh, und die Pferd' an den Wagen ; Wasche trockneten emsig auf alien Hecken die Weiber; Und es ergotzten die Kinder sich platschernd im Wasscr des Baches. GOTHE. RETRACING Thuringia from Weimar towards the capita] of Westphalia, Erfurth, about twelve miles from the former, presents its ramparts and cannon. It is only as a fortress, forming the key between Saxony and Franconia, that it is now of any importance ; and the lounging Prus- sian military are the most frequent objects in its deserted streets. The sixty thousand inhabit- ants whom its trade and manufactures maintain- ed, down to the end of the sixteenth century, ERFURTH. 317 have diminished to less than one-third of the number. Erfurth sunk as Leipzig rose. The last scene of splendour that enlivened it, was the congress of so many crowned heads round Na- poleon in 1807. Bonaparte, though he rarely indulged in the mere pleasures of royalty, had a troop of French actors with him, and both here and at Weimar, he ordered Voltaire's Death of Caesar to be given, a strange choice for such a man. During the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the wife of a northern minister refused to go to the theatre, because " cette piece liberale, 1 ' Wil- liam Tell, was to be performed. In no other Saxon town have the Catholic in- habitants kept their ground, even in numbers, so welf as here. In the very heart of the coun- try where the Reformation first took root, sur- rounded on all sides by Protestants, and long governed by Protestant princes, they have suc- ceeded in maintaining an equality with the new religion, as if determined to follow as much what they had seen of the Reformer in his youth, as what they had heard of his doctrines in his more advanced years. The Augustine mona- stery, in which the young Luther first put on 318 ERFURTH. the cowl of the hierarchy which he was to shake to its foundations, and strove to lull with his flute the impatient longings of a spirit that was to set Europe in flames, has been converted to the purposes of an orphan asylum ; but the cell of the Reformer has been religiously preserved, as the earliest memorial of the greatest man of modern times. The gallery on which it opens is adorned with a Dance of Death, * and over the door is the inscription, Cellula divino magnoque habitata Luthero, Salve, vix tan to cellula digna viro ! Dignus erat qui regum splendida tecta subiret, Te dedignatus non tamen ille fuit. * The reader probably knows, that such a Dance of Death is a series of paintings representing Death leading off to the other world all ranks of men, from the monarch to the beggar, and of all professions and characters, priests and coquettes, soldiers and philosophers, musi- cians and doctors, c. &c. They were generally pain t- ed, either in church-yards, as in the cemetery of the Neustadt in Dresden, to teach the general doctrine of human mortality, or in churches and convents, to com- memorate the ravages of a pestilence. Of the latter kind was the celebrated Dance of Death at Bale, painted on LUTHER. 319 It is small and simple, and must have been a freezing study. Beside his portrait is hung a German exposition of the text, " Death is swal- lowed up in victory," in his own handwriting, written in the form in which old books often terminate, an inverted pyramid. There is a copy of his Bible so full of very good illumina- tions, that it might be called a Bible with plates. The wooden boards are covered with ingenious carving and gilding, and studded with pieces of coloured glass, to imitate the precious stones which so frequently adorn the manuscripts of the church. It is said to have been the work of a hermit of the sixteenth century, who thus em- ployed his leisure hours to do honour to Luther ; yet Protestant hermits are seldom to be met with. the occasion of the plague which raged while the Council was sitting. It no longer exists except in engravings. It has commonly been attributed to Holbein, but, of late years, this has been questioned, and attempts have been made to prove, from particular figures and dresses, that it was painted at least sixty years before Holbein was born, and probably by Glauber, whose name appears on one of the figures. 320 ERFURTH. Wherever monks nestled, nuns were never a wanting. Though the Prussian government turned out both, when compelled by its neces- sities to convert church property to the use of the state, a few samples were retained, not out of regard to the religious objects of the institu- tion, but from views of public utility as to edu- cation. The Abbess of the Ursuline convent in Erfurth very affably receives the world, though she never comes into it. The convent machinery is entire. When you knock, a key is sent out by a turning box, and the key itself admits you no farther than the parlour grate. The grate, however, is no longer the ne plus ultra of the profane sex. A withered dame, whose conse- crated charms could bear with perfect impunity the gaze of worldly eyes, admits the visitor to the presence of the Abbess in the parlour, a spa- cious, but empty, 'bare, comfortless room. She appeared to be about sixty, during twenty-two years of which she had never crossed the thresh- old of her convent. She was extremely active and obliging, without any taint of the ascetic or affectedly demure. She spoke willingly, as was natural, of the happiness and tranquillity of her CONVENTS. 321 spiritual family, and, with tears in her eyes, of the late Queen of Prussia, who had saved them. A black gown, like a sack, any thing but fashion- ed to show the shape, descended from the shoul- ders to the toes in one unvarying diameter. A thick white bandage wrapped up the neck to the very chin, and was joined below to a broad tip- pet of the same colour, which entirely covered the shoulders and breast. The eyebrows peep- ed forth from beneath another white bandage, which enveloped the brow, covered the hair, and was joined behind to the ample black veil, which the Abbess had politely thrown back. The whole dress consisted of coarse plain black and white, without a tittle of ornament either in good or bad taste. On the parlour table lay a number of work- bags, pin-cases, pin-cushions, and similar trifles, the manufacture of which employs the leisure hours of the brides of heaven. It is expected that the visitor shall make a purchase ; and he does it the more willingly in this case, because the convent, though not at all wealthy, educates gratuitously a number of poor female children. No better way could have been devised of em- 322 ERFURTH. ploying the time which, in spite of devotion, must hang heavy on the hands of a nun. " Pray without ceasing," is a difficult injunction, even for young ladies. It was this view of public advan- tage alone which, on the intercession of the late queen, saved the convent from abolition. The nun was allowed to separate herself from the world, but only to perform the duties of a mo- ther. Great part of the children are Protest- ants ; the nuns do not interfere with their reli- gious education ; that is left to a Protestant clergyman. The church, with its images and ornaments, displayed, as might be expected, a huge profu- sion of millinery, in the very worst style of satin and gilding. The images, and, above all, those of the Virgin, on whose adornment her virgin devotees had bestowed all their simple skill and pious industry, were horrible. It is even allowed to visit the cells, the Ab- bess having previously taken care to remove the inhabitants. The cell was about ten feet long, by six broad. Though the weather was still extremely cold, there was neither stove nor fire- place ; and the only window looked out upon a CONVENTS. 323 small inner court, which, in summer, is a gar- den. In one corner stood a low bed, with coarse, but clean green curtains, so narrow, that even a nun must lie very quiet to lie comfort- ably. A few religious daubings misadorned the walls ; on a small table lay a few religious books, and a glass case containing a waxen figure of a human body in the most revolting state of cor- ruption, covered and girt round by its crawling and loathsome destroyers. This was the furni- ture of the nun's cell ; every thing simple and serious ; nothing but the light of Heaven to put her in mind of the world she had quitted. In some particulars, the rigour of the strict monastic rule has been relaxed. The nuns are allowed to converse alone with their friends at the parlour grate ; formerly it was necessary that two sisters should be present. But the law of absolute seclusion is unrelentingly maintain- ed ; the nun, having once taken the veil, never again crosses the threshold of the convent. It is right it should be so, if a convent is to exist at all. The moment this rule is relaxed, a nunnery becomes merely a boarding-house, and one of a very questionable kind. At the same time, it 824 ERFUKTH. is more than doubtful, whether the Prussian government would visit a runaway nun with any punishment, or compel her to return to her religious confinement. The days in which pretty girls were built up in stone walls for preferring a corporeal to a spiritual bridegroom are over, and the truant damsel would probably be left to the chastisement of her own conscience. The noviciate is two years, and, during the preceding two years, five young ladies had taken the veil. The permission of the government is necessary ; for, without the royal sanction, no woman dare marry herself to Heaven. The predilection for such matches, however, is rapidly disappearing. The number of sisters in this convent is seven- teen. At the accession of the present Abbess they were fifty six. They had died out, most of them, she said, in a good old age, and candi- dates had not come forward in sufficient num- bers to replace them. Circumstances prevented me from indulging in more than a hasty glance at Gotha, another small capital of a small state. It has more the air of a town than Weimar, but has not more of the bustle of life, and far less of its pleasures 12 GOTHA. 325 and elegant enjoyments. Gotha has not main- tained the literary character which it had begun to acquire under Ernest II. Himself a man of science, he drew men of science to his court, and all public institutions connected with learn- ing flourished beneath his liberality. His suc- cessor, the late Duke, who died in 1822, was of retired and eccentric habits, bordering occasion- ally on the hypochondriac. Though allowed not to be without talent, and supposed to have even written romances, he sought his enjoyments chiefly in music. Many people would not reck- on the want of a theatre a misfortune in a town ; but, in a small German capital, where the court affects no parade, and patronizes no other mode of amusement, nothing could be a surer sign of its Trophonian qualities. The Goths occasionally pack themselves into coaches, and make a journey of forty miles, even in the depth of winter, to hear an opera in Weimar. Eisenach is the most wealthy and populous town in the duchy of Weimar, and sends a whole member to parliament. With a population not exceeding ten thousand inhabitants, it was reck- oned, till within these few years, among the 326 EISENACH. most flourishing of the manufacturing towns so frequent between Leipzig and Frankfort. Se- duced by the protection which the Continental System seemed to promise, its capitalists forsook the manufacture of wool for that of cotton. They had just advanced far enough to have san- guine hopes of ultimately succeeding, when the unexpected changes in political relations again opened the German markets to England, and their cotton manufactures were blighted. One of the most ingenious and persevering among their capitalists told me, that, during the former period, he had employed nearly four hundred persons in cotton spinning, a large scale for an establishment in a small Saxon town. After at- tempting in vain to struggle on after the peace, he found it necessary to follow the example of others, dismiss the greater part of his workmen, return with the rest to wool, adhere to the com- mercial congress of Darmstadt, and cry loudly for prohibitory duties against England. The ruins of the Wartburg, an ancient resi- dence of the Electors of Saxony, hang majesti- cally above the town on a wooded eminence, overlooking the most beautiful portion of the LUTHER. 327 Thuringian forest. It was here that the Elec- tor did Luther the friendly turn of detaining him ostensibly as a prisoner, to secure him against the hostility of the church, whom his boldness before the diet at Worms had doubly incensed ; and, among the few apartments still maintained in some sort of repair, is that in which the Reformer lightened the tedium of his durance, by completing his translation of the Bible. In the pious work he was often inter- rupted by the Devil, who viewed its progress with dismay, but who could not have been treat- ed with greater contempt by St Dunstan himself than by the Reformer. Having appeared in vain, not only in his own infernal personality, but under the more seducing forms of indolence, lukewarmness, and love of worldly grandeur, he at length assumed the shape of a large blue fly. But Luther knew Satan in all his disguises, re- buked him manfully, and at length, losing all pa- tience as the concealed devil still buzzed round his pen, started up, and exclaiming, Willst du dann niclit ruhig bleiben ! * hurled his huge ink * Wilt thou not be quiet ! 328 HESSE. bottle at the prince of darkness. The diaboli- cal intruder disappeared, and the* ink, scattered on the wall, remains until this day, a visible proof of the great Reformer's invulnerability to all attacks of the evil one. The people, no less superstitious, in their own way, than the devotees of the opposing church, look with horror on the sceptics who find in the story merely the very credible fact, that the honest Reformer, who by no means possessed the placidity of uncle Toby, had lost his temper at the buzzing of an impor- tunate fly. Werner, who, notwithstanding the frequent mysticism of his theology, and the ir- regularity of his fancy, has delineated Luther, in the Weihe der Kraft, with more force than any other German poet, represents him as so ex- hausted and abstracted from the world, after in- tense study, that for a while he does not know his own father and mother. On entering, from Saxony, the Electorate of Hesse Cassel, both nature and the men pre- sent a different appearance. There is more of the forest ; the country is a heap of moderately elevated ridges, stretching across each other in every variety of form and direction, and princi- HESSE. 329 pally covered with beech woods. All the culti- vation lies in the narrow rallies which run be- tween them, occasionally climbing the slope a short way, and encroaching on the forest just far enough to show how much may still be gained. From their position and confined extent, the vallies are exposed, in this climate, to excessive moisture, and, to judge from the appearance the fields presented after a day's moderate rain, the peasantry follow a very imperfect, or a very indolent system of draining. Many fields were under water, and yet rivulets close by, into which it might easily have been carried off. Sa- tisfied with having one mode of doing a thing, however imperfect or inconvenient it may be, they never think of looking about for a better. With capital, and without institutions that de- press agriculture, an immense addition might be made to the productiveness of this part of Hesse, both in improving what is already cultivated, and in gaining what the Thuringian forest still retains ; for by far the greater part of these ridges might be successfully cultivated to the very summit. A portion of wood must always be retained for fuel. Though coal is by no 330 HESSE. means rare, the Hessians, like all other Germans, have strong prejudices against using it. Their coal, they say, has so much sulphur in it, that it produces an intolerably offensive smell. The very same objection is made at Dresden to the coal worked in the vicinity of Tharant, and at Vienna to the coals of CEdenburg ; and, every- where, the fossil is left to those to whose pover- ty its cheapness, in comparison with wood, is an important consideration. Nothing but the scar- city and consequent rise in the price of wood will force a market for coals. In Saxony this effect is beginning to be felt already. The Westphalian peasantry, like all their neighbours, are chiefly hereditary tenants, and you will find men among them who boast of being able to prove, that they still cultivate the same farms on which their ancestors lived before Charlemagne conquered the descendants of Herrman, or, for any thing they know, before Herrman himself, drawing his hordes from these very vallies, annihilated the legions of Varus. They do not retain a single regret for the king- dom of Westphalia, nor have they any reason to do so. It was the unsparing domination of a THE PEASANTRY. 331 foreigner ; it was a period of extravagant expen- diture for purposes of foreign policy or private profligacy} and, at every turn, the new forms of the French administration were rubbing against some old affection or rooted habit. Napoleon could not bribe them to any amicable feeling to- wards him, even by pretending to annihilate any cramping feudal relations which might still exist between them and their landlords. They felt that they were more impoverished than ever, by a power which had no claim to impoverish them at all, and were treated as foreigners in their own country. They could neither endure French insolence, nor reckon in French money ; " but now," say they, " we know again where we are." In body they are a stouter made race of men than the Saxons, with broader visages and more florid complexions; but they have likewise a more stolid expression. They retain very gener- ally the old costume, tight pantaloons, a loose short jacket, commonly of blue cloth, and a very low crowned hat with an immense breadth of brim, from beneath which they allow , their shaggy locks to grow unshorn, not neatly plaited, HESSE. as among the young men of some of the Swiss Cantons, but seeking their own tangled way over the shoulders and down the back, after the fa- shion of the students. The students, again, cite the Westphalian peasantry to prove, that the Germans who fought against Varus undoubted- ly wore long hair ; and thence conclude, that a barber's scissars must be as fatal to the spirit of German independence, as Dalilah's were to the strength of Sampson. The villages have much more of the Bavarian than Saxon character, and display, externally at least, the utmost squalor. The only tolerable dwelling is generally that of the postmaster ; the others are wooden hovels, dark, smoky, patched, and ruinous. The crowds of begging children that surround you at every stage, (an importunacy to which you are seldom exposed in other parts of Germany,) prove that there must be poverty as well as slovenliness. Of the latter there is abundance in every thing. Even the little country church, and its simple ceme- tery, which even the poorest peasantry comon- ly love to keep neat and clear, follow the gene- ral rule, that it is enough if a thing barely serve CASSEL. 333 rts purpose. At Hoheneichen, the church was a miserable tottering heap of broken walls, where many a man would not willingly lodge his horse ; and, in the church-yard, while the tomb stones glared in all colours of the rainbow, bristled with cherubs like Bologna sausages, and sera- phim sinking beneath the load of their own em- bonpoint, neglected gooseberry bushes, heaps of straw, and piles of winter fuel, were mingled with the new made graves. Cassel stands partly at the bottom, partly on the steep ascent, and partly on the summit of an eminence washed by the Fulda. No two parts of a city can be more distinct in external charac- ter than the lower and upper towns. The for- mer is huddled together on the river, at the bot- tom of the hill ; its streets are narrow, dark, and confused ; the houses consist mostly of a frame of wood- work, in which the beams cross each other, leaving numerous and irregular inter- stices ; these interstices are then built up with stone or brick. Every floor projects over the in- ferior one, so that the house is much broader at top than at bottom : and some narrow lanes are thus, in a manner, arched over, to the utter ex- 334 CASSEL. elusion of light and air. The upper town, again, originally begun by French refugees, who brought their arts and industry to Cassel on the revocation of the edict of Nantz, is light, airy, and elegant, from its style of building as well as from its site. The electoral palace occu- pies great part of a street, or rather of a delight- ful terrace, which runs along the brow of the hill, looking down on the Augarten, the com- bined Kensington and Hyde Park of Cassel, and far and wide over the hills and valleys of Thu- ringia, and the windings of the Fulda. Squares like those of Cassel are rare things in the second- ary German capitals. The Museum, a majestic Ionic building, forms nearly one side of the Friderichsplatz, and is its principal ornament, while its greatest defect is a statue of the Elector Frederick, who built the museum, and gave his name to the square, standing on legs like the bodies of his own hogs. When the French threw it down, in furtherance of their plan to remove every thing which might recal the memory of the expelled family, whose crown was given to the puppet Jerome, they had the impudence to make this want of taste in the sculptor a pretext THE CITV. 335 for their mischievous violence. The faithful Hessians contrived to preserve the old Elector, and, on their liberation, restored him to the pe- destal in his original corpulence of calf. The Konigsplatz is the finest square in Germany, if that may be called a square which is oval. It is the point of union between the Lower and Upper towns ; and the six streets which run off from it, at equal distances in its circumference, produce a very marked echo. The sounds uttered by a person standing in the centre are distinctly re- peated six times. The French erected a statue of Napoleon in the centre ; the Hessians observ- ed that their favourite echo immediately became dumb, and will not believe that a statue of their own Elector would have equally injured the re- verberation, by displacing the point of utterance from the exact centre. As the Allies advanced, first the nose disappeared from the French Em- peror, then an arm, then he was hurled down al- together, a lamp-post was set up in his place, and the echo again opened its mouth. Cassel only contains about twenty thousand inhabitants, exclusive of the military, who are over-numerous, but have been the source, if not 336 CASSEL. of respectability and safety to the country, yet of millions to the electoral treasury. The popu- lation is said to have been nearly one-half great- er under Jerome. This is easily credible, but is just the reverse of any proof of prosperity. Cassel was then the capital of a much more ex- tensive kingdom than the proper electorate; a greater number of public functionaries, and a greater military establishment, were maintained. Round the gay, dissolute, and extravagant court of Westphalia, crowded a host of rapacious fo- reigners and idle hangers-on, who were unknown under the homely, nay, the parsimonious admi- nistration of the expelled Elector. But these classes only fill the streets of a capital at the ex- pence of the morals and prosperity of the coun- try, and no where were both these consequences more severely felt than in Hesse. Notwithstand- ing the bustle and splendour which Jerome cre- ated amongst them, the Hessians, though as fond of these things as other people, do most cordially detest him and his whole crew of cor- rupters and squanderers. Jerome perhaps did not wish to do mischief for its own sake ; few miscreants do ; he would have had no objection KING JEROME. 337 that every man and woman in his kingdom should have been as idle, and worthless, and dissolute as himself; but he laboured under such a want of head, such a horror of business, and such a devotion to grovelling pleasures, that it was only by mistake he could stumble on any thing good. He was, in fact, a good natured, silly, unprincipled voluptuary, whose only wish was to enjoy the sensual pleasures of royalty, without submitting to its toils, but, at, the same time, without any natural inclination to exercise its rigours. His profligate expenditure was as pernicious to the country as the war itself; oil this score he was doomed to read many a scold- ing epistle, and some threatening ones, from Napoleon ; but, without these enjoyments, Je- rome could not have conceived what royalty was good for. The man did not even give himself the trouble to learn the language of his kingdom. People feared and cursed his bro- ther, but they openly despised and lajighed at him. When, on his flight, he carried oft* what he could from the public treasury, they were thun- derstruck, not at the meanness of the thing, but VOL. i. p 338 CASSEL. at the possibility of King Jerome possessing so much forethought. The capital was in mourning for the late Elector. The mourning consisted in the theatre being shut, and in people expressing their hopes that the son woirld now spend like a prince what the father had amassed like a miser. The late Elector went regularly to church, was no habi- tual drunkard or profane swearer, and left be- hind him, according to the universal voice, at least forty illegitimate children, and as many millions of rix-dollars. In comparison with the wants of the Elector of Hesse, he was the wealth- iest prince in Europe. The foundation of the treasure had been laid by his father, who hired out his troops to England for the American war, the least honourable of all ways in which a prince can fill his pockets. He himself added to the inheritance by what his friends call frugality, and the great body of the people niggardliness. He turned his accumulating capital to good ac- count with the avidity of a stock-jobber, and was a most successful money lender. No sort of extravagance marked his court or his personal habits. If he gave his mistresses titles, these THE ELECTOR. 339 cost nothing ; if he gave them fortunes, it was always soberly. Such things, moreover, are too much matters of course in Germany to excite either notice or dissatisfaction ; and even in this department, his subjects justly found him mo- derate, when compared with the royal lustling from France. His favourite, the Countess of H n, enjoys the reputation of having often seduced him into acts of liberality towards others, at which he otherwise would have shuddered. The young Elector, who has now succeeded, was put upon an allowance which would have proved insufficient for a prince much more ac- customed to controul his passions ; he therefore got into debt, and it has happened, it is averred, that the very money borrowed from the father at four per cent., has been lent to the son at thirty. On the approach of the evil day which drove the Elector from his states, he had providently placed his riches beyond the usurper's reach. During his exile, savings were made even on the interest, in his frugal household at Prague. On his restoration, he returned to the old course ; no act of liberality diminished the sum of his treasures, and no relaxation of the burdens 340 CASSEL. which press down this impoverished country dried up any of the sources of his gain. He im- mediately seized all the domains which had been sold under Jerome, and refused, till his dying day, to repay the purchasers a single farthing of the price. I was struck with the freedom of a Hessian clergyman, in a funeral sermon on the Elector's death. Having painted his merits, such as they were, he said : " But truth forbids me " to go farther, and where so much was excel- " lent, one failing may be conceded, and must " not be concealed. One virtue, one most fair " and Christian virtue, was awanting. Had " there but been more generosity and liberality, " every eye in his dominions would have wept " on the grave of William I." The sermon was not only preached, but likewise printed. Still, though stained with the most unprincely of all failings, he must have possessed redeeming qualities, for his people was attached to him. He was affable in the extreme ; the meanest of his subjects might approach him without uneasi- ness, if his object was not to ask money ; and he was strictly just, in so far as a prince so fond of prerogative could be just. Above all, his govern- THE ELECTOR. inent was to his subjects one of beneficence, com- ing after the public oppression and private de- gradation of the kingdom of Westphalia ; seven years of disgraceful and useless extravagance had taught them to regard even his parsimony with indulgence. When he returned, Cassel voluntarily poured out her citizens to welcome him ; thousands crowded from the remotest cor- ners of the land to hail him on the frontiers ; the peasants, in the extravagance of their joy, literally led on the cavalcade in somersets, and, on the shoulders of his subjects, the old man was borne in tears into the capital of his fathers. The principal change which the Hessians seemed to expect from the successor was, that he would lead at least a more princely life. " R d may now make up his accounts," was the com- mon saying. He escaped immediately from the old-fashioned forms and counsellors of his father, and the military from their long queues. Some noble officers were removed, to be replaced by persons not noble, and he was supposed to have a strong inclination to give his nobility nothing to do, unless they chose to learn something. In Cassel, it is as much a matter of course to 342 CASSKL. visit the Electoral residence, Wilhelmshohe, as it is in Paris to go to Versailles. It stands on the eastern slope of a wooded eminence, about two miles to the westward of the town. Earlier princes had chosen the site and begun the work, but the late Elector was more industrious than them all; for, next to making money and getting children, his greatest pleasure was to build pa- laces. The main body of the palace is oval, pre- senting a long, lofty, simple front, without any ornament, except an Ionic portico in the centre. The wings are entirely faced with the same or- der, but the low range of arches which connects them with the principal building offends the eye grievously. The main front itself is too poor ; the portico, projecting from the bare walls, is good in itself, but ought to be in better com- pany. Simplicity is an excellent thing, but only in its proper place, and within proper bounds. It is incongruous that the huge pile of the prin- cipal building should stand so utterly mean and unfinished-looking, while the attendant wings are loaded with Ionic pillars. Even large masses of surface, generally imposing things in archi- tecture, are not gained, for it is frittered down WILUELMSHOIIE. 343 by the rows of small windows. Who suggested the barbarous idea of emblazoning the name of the building on the frieze of the portico ? Je- rome changed it into Napoleonshohe. The well wooded hill behind is crowned by u turretted building, which takes its name from a colossal statue of Hercules resting on his club, that surmounts it. The hollow iron statue is so capacious, that I know not how many persons are said to be able to stand comfortably in his calf, dine in his belly, and take their wine in his head. At his feet begin the waterworks which form the great attraction of Wilhelmshohe, and have rendered it the Versailles of Germany. The streams are collected from the hill within the building itself, commence their artificial course by playing an organ, rush down the hill over a long flight of broad steps, pour them- selves into a capacious basin, issue from it again in various channels, and form, still hastening downwards, a number of small cascades. At length they flow along a ruined aqueduct, take all at once a leap of more than a hundred feet from its extremity, where it terminates on the brink of a precipice, into a small artificial lake, 344 CASSEL, from whose centre they are finally thrown up to the height of a hundred and thirty feet in a mag- nificent jet. There is much taste and ingenuity in many of the details ; but, to enjoy the full ef- fect, one ought to see them only in the moment of their full operation. He ought neither to see the dry channels, the empty aqueducts, the plas- tered precipices, the chiselled rocks, and the mi- niature imitations of columnar basalt, nor wit- ness any of the various notes of preparation, the shutting of valves and turning of cocks ; all these things injure the illusion. Though Jerome inhabited the palace, and even built a theatre, in which his own box, where he could see without being seen, is fitted up with the most useless voluptuousness, and never fails to suggest many degrading stories of the effeminate debauchee, the French did a great deal of mischief in the grounds. From mere wanton insolence, they broke down many parts of the stone ledge which ran along the aqueduct internally, as well as the iron railing that guarded it without, and displaced from the grottoes various water deities and piles of fishes. The latter, however, do not seem to have de- THE ARTS. 345 served any mercy, if we may judge from one in which a base of tortoises and lobsters supports a pyramid of cod-fish, dolphins, and, it may be, whales, coarsely cut in coarse stone. The Marble Bath, and other edifices of Landgrave Charles, are in a much more compli- cated and ostentatious style than that which was afterwards introduced in the museum, and trans- ferred to Wilhelrnshohe. The marblebath, though it really contains a bath, was merely a pretext for spending money and marble. It is filled with statues, and the walls, where they are not coat- ed with party-coloured marbles, are covered with reliefs as large as life. All the sculptures are works of Monnot, a wholesale artist of the ear- lier part of the last century. He had studied and long worked in Rome, and practice had given him the art of cutting marble into human shapes ; but he wanted invention, no less than elevation and purity of taste. His forms have neither dignity nor grace. They cannot be said altogether to want expression ; Daphne and Arethusa pursued by Apollo and Alpheus look just like ladies in a great fright, and Calista hangs her head like a girl doing penance ; but p2 346 CASSEL. the expression is common, not to say vulgar. The gross caricature of the Dutch painters is in its place in an alehouse, but is intolerable in a classical group of sculpture. Yet the fallen Ca- lista is sculptured in all the grossness of her shame; one of the attendant nymphs presses her finger firmly on the ocular proof of the fair one^s frailty, and looks at Diana with a waggish vul- garity, which the pure and offended goddess would not have tolerated on so delicate an occa- sion. The electoral gallery of pictures contains many valuable paintings; but I can say nothing about them, for both times I endeavoured to see them, the Herr Inspector was engaged at court, although, on the second occasion, He had himself fixed the hour. To be sure, if a man is called to court, he must go; but it must be a very thoughtless court which allows the visiting of a public gallery to depend on the incidental occu- pations of a keeper. It ought either to be com- mitted to a person who shall have no other oc- cupation, or, if enough of money cannot be spar- ed from other pleasures to give such a person a suitable recompence, let, at least, a fixed portion THE ARTS. 347 of his time be dedicated to this purpose. More- over, he is paid in reality by a heavy douceur lev- ied on the curious. The Elector, that his mu- seums, and galleries, and gardens, and waterfalls, might be cheaply kept, intrusted them to per- sons always numerous, and authorized them to tax the visitors. In the north of Germany you often have the satisfaction of seeing the palm of a councillor of state (Hqf-ratli) extended for his half guinea/ One has riot much reason to grum- ble at this, so long as it does not rise to extor- tion, though it is meanness when compared with the liberality of the Italian capitals, or even of Dresden and Vienna ; but it is vexatious that his gratification should be impeded because a public officer is allowed or ordered to attend to some- thing else than his proper duty. A 11 the pictures in theCatholic church are from the pencil of Tischbein, (the father,)* who has been for Cassel in painting what Monnot was in Tischbein, the son, to whom Gothe has addressed some eulogistic sonnets, was a much superior artist. He devoted himself in Italy to the study of the antique. The designs which he sketched for an edition of Homer are full of spirit. 348 CAssEt, sculpture, equally industrious, and still less meri- torious. His pictures have no character ; the forms are clumsy and incorrect ; the expression is devoid of soul and meaning ; the attitudes are stiff; the colouring is weak and watery. His Christs are in general the most vulgar looking people, and the angel who presents the cup in the Agony is the most familiar looking person- age in the history of painting. Although the Italian masters had perhaps no good authority for always making the apostle John a comely youth, with luxuriant hair and a glowing coun- tenance, yet they were possibly as much in the right as historians, and assuredly much more in the right as painters than Tischbein, when he made him an old, and what is worse, an ugly man in the Crucifixion. Sacristans are not al- ways good authority ; therefore, I do not believe that Albert Diirer ever put pencil to the eight small paintings in the Sacristy representing the scenes of the Passion. Very old they certainly are, older than Diirer ; but Diirer would never have indulged in such inaccurate drawing, such gross exaggerations of a sort of nature which, to please in painting, ought rather to be mitigated. THE ARTS. 349 The soldiers attending the Crucifixion, and the executioners in the Flagellation, are downright caricatures, with huge lumpish noses, like balls of flesh stuck on the upper lip. Such pictures, however eagerly they may be hunted out, can have no value but as curiosities in the history of the art. 350 CHAPTER VII. GOTTINGEN. Ei ! grass' euch Gott, Collegia ! Wic steht ilir in Parade da ! Ihr dnmpfen Sale, gross und klein, Jetzt kriegt ilir mich nicht mehr hinein. Scfwab. THE territory of Hanover approaches nearly to the walls of Cassel. The rich vallies through which the Fulda flows give promises of beauty and fertility, on which the traveller afterwards thinks with regret when toiling through the sands in the northern part of the kingdom. At Munden, a small, but apparently thriving town, the Fulda and Werra, issuing from opposite dells, unite and form the Weser, which is al- ready covered with the small craft that carries on the trade with Bremen. -The lofty summits GOTTINGEN. 351 of the Harz now rise in the distance, and you enter the U- niversity of Gottingeu. Though the youngest of the German univer- sities of reputation, excepting Berlin, Gottingen is by far the most celebrated and flourishing. Miinchausen, the honest and able minister of George II., who founded it in 1735, watched over it with the anxiety of a parent. He acted in a spirit of the utmost liberality, which, to the honour of the Hanoverian government, has never been departed from, both by not being niggardly where any really useful purpose was to be gained, and by treating the university it- self with confidence and indulgence. He acted, moreover, in that prudent spirit which does not attempt too much at once. How many splendid schemes have failed, because their parents, ex- pecting to see them start up at once in the vi- gour of youth, like Minerva ready armed from the head of Jupiter, had not patience to guide them while they tottered through the years of helpless infancy. Had Miinchausen foreseen 352 GOTTINGEV. what the expence of the university would in time amount to, he probably would never have founded it. The original annual expenditure was about fifteen thousand rix-dollars, (L. 2500,) it now amounts to six times that sum. The library alone consumes annually nearly one-half of the whole original expence. Gottingen is manned with thirty-six ordinary professors, three theological, seven juridical, eight medical, including botany, chemistry, and natural history; the remaining eighteen form the philosophical faculty. Drawing is a regular chair in the philosophical faculty, and stands be- tween mineralogy and astronomy. The fencing- master and dancing-master are not so highly honoured, but still they are public functionaries, and receive salaries from government. The con- fusion is increased by that peculiarity of the Ger- man universities which allows a professor to give lectures on any topic he pleases, however little it may be connected with the particular department to which he has been appointed. Every profes- sor may interfere, if he chooses, with the pro- vinces of his colleagues. The Professor of Na- tural History must lecture on Natural History, 12 COMPETITION OF PROFESSORS. 35 but he may likewise teach Greek ; the Professor of Latin must teach Latin, but, if he chooses, he may lecture on Mathematics. Thus it just becomes a practical question, who is held to be the more able instructor ; and, if the mathema- tical prelections of a Professor of Greek be rec- koned better than those of the person regularly appointed to teach the science, the latter must be content to lose his scholars and his fees. It is \hefacully, not the science to which a man is appointed, that bounds his flight. This is the theory of the thing, and on this are founded the frequent complaints that, in the German univer- sities, the principle of competition has been car- ried preposterously far. Fortunately^ the most important sciences are of such an extent, that a man who makes himself able to teach any one of them well, can scarcely hope to teach any other tolerably ; yet the interference of one teacher with another is by no means so unfrequent as we might imagine ; there are always certain " stars " shooting wildly from their spheres. 1 ' It would not be easy to tell, for example, who is Professor of Greek, or Latin, or Oriental Literature ; you Avill generally find two or three engaged in them 351 GOTTIXGEN. all. A Professor of Divinity may be allowed to explain the Epistles of Paul, for his theologi- cal interpretations must be considered as some- thing quite distinct from the labours of the phi- lologist; but, in the philosophical faculty, where, in regard to languages, philology alone is the object, I found at Gottingen no fewer than four professors armed with Greek, two with Latin, and two with Oriental Literature. One draws up the Gospel of John, and the Acts of the Apostles ; a second opposes to him the first three Evangelists, the fourth being already en- listed by his adversary ; the third takes them both in flank with the Works and Days of Hesiod ; while the fourth skirmishes round them in all directions, and cuts off various strag- glers, by practical lucubrations in Greek syntax. Now, if people think that they will learn Greek to better purpose from Professor Eichorn's Acts of the Apostles, than from Professor Tyschen's three Gospels, the latter must just dispense with his students and rix-dollars ; When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war. The former gentleman, again, leads on orien- BLUMENBACH. 355 tal literature under the banner of the Book of Job ; the latter takes the field undismayed, and opposes to him the Prophecies of Isaiah. But Professor Eichorn immediately unmasks a bat- tery of " Prelections in Arabian ;"" and Pro- fessor Tyschen, apparently exhausted of regular troops, throws forward a course of lectures on the " Ars Uiplomatica," to cover his retreat. In Latin, too, one professor starts the Satires of Persius against those of Horace, named by another, and Tully's Offices against the Ars Poetica. The one endeavours to jostle the other by adding Greek ; but they are both Yorkshire, and the other adds Greek too. The juridical faculty of Gottingen contains seven learned professors. Of these no fewer than three were reading on Justinian's Institutes in the same session, two of them, moreover, using the same text-book. Two of them likewise lec- tured on the form of process in civil cases, both using the same text-book. O Gottingen, though not yet an hundred years old, has already exhibited more celebrated men, and done more for the progress of knowledge in Germany, than any other similar institution in 556 GOTTINGEJf. the country. Meyer, Mosheim, Michaelis, and Heyne, are names not easily eclipsed ; and, in the present day, Blumenbach, Gauss, whom many place second only to La Place, Hugo, Heeren, and Sartorius, fully support the pre-emi- nence of the Georgia Augusta. Europe lias placed Blumenbach at the head of her physiolo- gists ; but, with all his profound learning, he is in every thing the reverse of the dull, plodding, cumbersome solidity, which we have learned to consider as inseparable from a German savaiit^ . a most ignorant and unfounded prejudice. Gothe is the greatest poet, Wolff the greatest philologist, and Blumenbach the greatest natu- ral historian of Germany ; yet it would be diffi- cult to find three more jocular and entertaining men. Blumenbach has not an atom of academi- cal pedantry or learned obscurity ; his conversa- tion is a series of shrewd and mirthful remarks on any thing that comes uppermost, and such likewise, I have heard it said, is sometimes his lecture. Were it not for the chaos of skulls, skeletons, mummies, and other materials of his art, with which he is surrounded, you would not easily discover, unless you brought him pur- BLUMENBACH. 357 posely on the subject, that he had studied na- tural history. He sits among all sorts of odd things, which an ordinary person would call lum- ber, and which even many of those who drive his own science could not make much of ; for it is one of Blumenbach's excellencies, that he con- trives to make use of every thing, and to find proofs and illustrations where no other person would think of looking for them. By the side of a drawing which represented some Botocuda Indians, with faces like baboons, cudgelling each other, hung a portrait of the beautiful Agnes of Mansfeld. A South American skull, the lowest degree of human conformation, grinned at a Grecian skull, which the professor reckons the perfection of crania. Here stood a whole mummy from the Canary Islands, there half a one from the Brazils, with long strings through its nose, and covered with gaudy feathers, like Papageno in the Magic Flute. Here is stuck a negroes head, there lies a Venus, and yonder re- clines, in a corner, a contemplative skeleton with folded hands. Yet it is only necessary to hear the most passing remarks of the professor, as you stumble after him through this apparent 358 GOTTINGEN. confusion, to observe how clearly all that may be learned from it is arranged in his head, in his own scientific combinations. The only thing that presented external order, was a very com- plete collection of skulls, showing the fact, by no means a new one, that there is a gradual pro- gression in the form of the skull, from apes, up to the most generally received models of human beauty. "Do you see these horns ?" said he, searching among a heap of oddities, and draw- ing forth three horns, " they were once worn by " a woman. She happened to fall and break '* her head ; from the wound sprouted this long " horn ; it continued to grow for thirty years, " and then she cast it ; it dropped off. In its " place came a second one ; but it did not grow " so long, and dropped off too. Then this " third one, all on the same spot ; but the poor " woman died while the third was growing, and " I had it cut from the corpse. 11 They were literally three genuine horns. The last two are short, thick, and nearly straight ; but the first is about ten inches long, and completely twisted, like the horn of a ram. It is round and rough, of a brownish colour, and fully half an inch in SCIENTIFIC COLLECTIONS. 359 diameter towards the root. All three are hol- low, at least at the base. The termination is - blunt and rounded. Other instances of the same thing have been known, but always in wom- en ; and Blumenbach says it has been ascer- tained by chemical analysis, that such horns have a greater affinity, in their composition, with the horns of the rhinoceros, than with those of any other animal. The pre-eminence of Gottingen is equally founded in the teachers and the taught. A Gottingen chair is the highest reward to which a German savant aspires, and to study at Got- tingen is the great wish of a German youth. There are good reasons for this, both with the one and the other. The professor is more com- fortable, in a pecuniary point of view, than any where else, and possesses more facilities for push- ing on his science ; the student finds a more gentlemanly tone of manners than elsewhere, and has within his reach better opportunities of studying to good purpose. This arises from the attention which the government has bestow- ed to render the different helps to study, the library, the observatory, the collections of phy- 360 GOTTINGEN. sical instruments, and the hospitals, not as cost- ly, but as useful as possible. The government of Hanover has never adopted the principle of bribing great men by great salaries, a principle naturally acted on in those universities which have no recommendation except the fame of the teach- ers. It has chosen rather to form and organize those means of study which, in the hands of a man of average talent, (and such are always to be had,) are much more generally and effectively useful, than the prelections of a person of more distinguished genius when deprived of this indis- pensable assistance. The professors themselves do not ascribe the rapidly increasing prosperity of the university so much to the reputation of distinguished individuals who have filled so many of its chairs, as to the pains which have been taken to render these means of improvement more perfect than they are to be found united in any sister seminary. " Better show-collections," said Professor Heeren, very sensibly, " may be " found elsewhere ; but the great recommenda- " tion of ours is, that they have been made for " use, not for show ; that the student finds in " them every thing he would wish to see and THE LIBRARY. 361 t; handle in his science. This is the true reason " 'why the really studious prefer Gottingen, and " this will always secure our pre-eminence, inde- " pendent of the fame of particular teachers ; " the latter is a passing and changeable thing, " the former is permanent." Above all, the library is a great attraction both for the teacher and the learner. It is not only the most complete among the universities, but there are very few royal or public collections in Germany which can rival it in real utility. It is not rich in manuscripts, and many surpass it in typographical rarities, and specimens of ty- pographical luxury ; but none contains so great a number of really useful books in any given branch of knowledge. The principle on which they proceed is, to collect the solid learning and literature of the world, not the curiosities and splendours of the printing art. If they have twenty pounds to spend, instead of buying some very costly edition of one book, they very wisely buy ordinary editions of four or five. When Heyne undertook the charge of the li- brary in 1763, it contained sixty thousand vo- lumes. He established the prudent plan of in' VOL. I. Q 362 GOTTINGEN. crease, which has been followed out with so much success, and the number is now nearly two hundred thousand. They complain much of the expence of English books. No compulsory mea- sures are taken to fill the shelves, except that the booksellers of Gottingen itself must deliver a copy of every work they publish. The command of such a library (and the ma- nagement is most liberal) is no small recom- mendation for the studious, whether he be teach- er or pupil ; but, in this case, it is perhaps of still more importance to the professors in a pe- cuniary point of view. The thousand or twelve hundred pounds which government pays every year in booksellers 1 accounts, cannot be reckon- ed an additional expence. The professors them- selves say, that, without it, it would be necessary to lay out as much, if not more, in augmenting their salaries ; for, if they had to purchase their own books, they could not afford to labour on salaries varying from a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds. Meiners calculated, in the be- ginning of the present century, that the saving thus made on salaries was at least equal to the whole expence of the library. In other univer- THE WIDOWS' FUND. 363 sides, I have often heard the professors complain bitterly of the expence of new books, to which they were subjected by the poverty of their col- lege library. They have reason to complain, when we think of the number of new books which a public teacher in any department finds it prudent to read, and, to a certain extent, uses, although there may be very few of them which he would wish permanently to possess. If the Professor of History, for example, pays thirty rix-dollars for Hallam's Middle Ages, or a Lec- turer on Antiquities pays fifty rix-dollars for Belzoni's Egyptian Researches, these sums are most important drawbacks on the salary of a German professor, yet these are only single books in a single language. Now, a professor of Halle or Jena must either dispense with the books al- together, or pay for them out of his own pocket. His brother of Gottingen has them at his com- mand without laying out a farthing. Hence it is, that professors in other universities always set down the library as one great recommenda- tion of a Gottingen chair. Another is the widows' fund, founded by pub- lic authority, like that of the Church of Scotland, 364 GOTTINGEN. and still more flourishing. Though the Hano- verian government has never thought it prudent to procure or retain a distinguished man by an invidious excess of salary above his brethren, it would be at once ignorant and unjust to suppose that it has been in any way niggardly towards the learned persons who fill the chairs of Gottingen. The regular salaries are from twelve to fifteen hundred rix-dollars, exclusive of the fees. Tak- ing the salaries in the mass at L. 200 Sterling, which is below the average, they are higher than the salaries of any other German university, ex- cepting, perhaps, one or two at Berlin. Savig- ny, for example, Professor of Law at Berlin, is said to have been gained for the Prussian capi- tal by the highest salary that ever was paid in Germany. The professors of Gottingen have, moreover, various other small sources of gain, or rather of saving. Thus they very soon discover- ed that Gottingen beer did not agree with their stomachs, and obtained the privilege of im- porting foreign beer, free of duty. At Altorf, before its abolition, the professors, in virtue of a similar privilege, were regular wine dealers. The widows' fund, however, is peculiar to Gottingen, THE WIDOWS* FUND. 365 and recommends its chairs to the learned even more than its library and fees. In no country does the scanty recompence of a learned man threat- en more helpless destitution to a family which he may leave behind him, than in Germany. The widows' fund is as old as the university itself, and originated with Miinchausen. The capital was originally only a thousand rix-dollars ; at the end of the last century it amounted to fifty-one thousand, chiefly matle up of benefactions from the government and private individuals, but partly, likewise, from the savings of the accu- mulating interest. The interest of the capital, with the yearly payments made by the profes- sors, forms the fund from which the families of deceased professors are pensioned. The profes- sors are not bound to pay this annual tax; they have their choice to pay the money, and have the benefit of the fund, or keep the money in their pockets, and leave a family in starvation. The rate of allowance fixed at the beginning of the present century was a hundred and fifty-six rix- dollars (L.24) yearly to the widow, or, if she had predeceased, to the children. 'For every five thousand rix-dollars added to the capital, whether 366 GOT TIN GEN. by bequests or an excess of ordinary revenue, ten are added to the pension of every widow. On the death of the widow, the pension is conti- nued till the youngest child reaches the age of twenty. The burdens have always been so few, that the revenue of the fund has not only been able to discharge them, but a part of it, sometimes two-thirds, has always been added to the capital, which is thus rapidly increas- ing. Medical science is the department in which the fame of Gottingen is least certain, not from any want of talent on the part of the teachers, but solely from the want of extensive hospitals, these indispensable requisites to medical educa- tion, which only large towns can furnish. Got- tingen, small as it is, contains three ; but they are necessarily on a diminutive scale. One of them is set apart for surgical operations ; ano- ther for clinical lectures ; the third belongs to a class which, in a German university town, can always reckon on being more regularly supplied than any other ; it is a lying-in hospital. There are twelve hundred students in Gottingen, and, on an average, twenty mothers in the hospital. HOSPITALS. 367 On one side, a Magdalene greets the eyes of the suffering sinner, as if to remind her of what she is ; and, on the other, a bad copy of the Madon- na della Sediola, as if to comfort her with the idea of what she may become. It would be awk- ward to inquire how far the students themselves contribute to the welfare of this establishment, by providing it with patients ; though there is no doubt, that they are its best friends, and the greatest enemies of the public morals. It has often happened, that the father has been the first, as an obstetric tyro, to hear the cry of his child ; and it would happen more frequently, were it not that, when he does not long for the honours of irregular paternity, the mother, who has sold herself, is easily bribed to buy another father. Where so many young men are assembled, free from all controul, except a very imperfect aca- demical controul, and surrounded by such crea- tures as minister in domestic services in a uni- versity town, the consequences to morality will always be the same ; and assuredly the principles of German Burschen are the very last that would struggle against the corruption. It would be nothing out of the way of their style of thinking 368 GOTTINGEN. to hear them maintain, that it is a greater enor- mity to let the lying-in hospital go to ruin for want of patients, than to debauch innocence ; they would defend the irregular manufacture of living bodies on precisely the same principles, on which their medical brethren, among ourselves, defend the theft of dead ones. Still it is true, that, among the females whom the German Burschen come across in their academic towns, there is little innocence to debauch. The laun- dresses, in particular, a set of persons who claim- ed the severe eye of the praetor much more than any nautae or cauponcs, use the charms of their subaltern Naiads as a regular trap to catch cus- tomers ; she who has the prettiest is sure to re- quire the most extensive bleaching green. At first, the effects of all this were melancholy at Gottingen ; for these creatures often contrived to seduce silly Burschen, who were worth angling for, into marriage ; but the government took such severe measures against them, above all, by declaring such marriages null, that they no longer attempt it, and gather their gains in a less ambitious course. Gottingen is no worse than its sister universities, and matters have greatly THE STUDENTS. 369 mended during the last twenty years ; at least they say so themselves. The same mother, how- ever, has been known to appear four different times in the hospital, in four successive years, in honour of four different Burschen ; and even no- ble equipages have occasionally deposited mask- ed fair ones, for a time, in this house of doubtful reputation. The number of students has been regularly on the increase since the termination of the war, partly from the increased extent of 'the kingdom, partly from the abolition of the neighbouring university of Helmstadt, (Brunswick and Meck- lenburgh having very wisely agreed to recognize Gottingen as the university of these duchies,) and partly from the proscription of Jena which followed the murder of Kotzebue. But the principal reason of this increase is the rising character of the university itself, which, besides attracting foreigners, prevents the Hanoverians from going to study elsewhere. More than one half of the whole number are foreigners, that is, not natives of the kingdom of Hanover. The number of foreigners from states not German is naturally small, in comparison with those who be- ft* 370 GOTTINGEN. long to other German states. In 1821, out of nearly seven hundred, who were not natives of the kingdom, not a hundred were from countries foreign to Germany. Swiss and Greeks were the most numerous, then Russians and English- men. While there were upwards of a hundred young men from Prussia, notwithstanding the well-earned reputation of Berlin, there was only one solitary subject of Austria. The Austrian Eagle is most jealous of her young gazing on other suns than her own. Five Hungarians, who had come to Gb'ttingen to learn something, were actually ordered away by an express command from Vienna, and found it necessary to obey. The proportion of lawyers among the students is extravagantly large ; more than one half of the whole number were matriculated in the juridical faculty. The reason of this is, that, from the mode of internal arrangement common to all the German states> there is an immense number of small public offices connected with the admini- stration of justice, to which, trifling as the com- petence they afford may be, numbers of young men look forward as their destination, and which require a legal education, or, at least, what passes 11 LAW. 371 for a legal education. Under the system of patrimonial jurisdiction, which, though clipped here and there, still remains in its essence as well as in its form, every other landed proprietor must have a judge, or, if his estates be disjoin- ed, two or three judges, to administer justice, in the first instance, to all who dwell within the li- mits of his property. The crown, too, requires a host of little praetors of the same kind on its domains. It is true, that such a person is badly paid ; but then there are legal imposts on the li- tigants, to say nothing of his own chicane, which give him a direct interest in fomenting and pro- tracting suits ; and, under so imperfect a system of controul as every where prevails, he must be a marvellously stupid or a marvellously honest Dorfrichter who cannot drive his gains up to a very ample recompence for his talents. The same person is occasionally judge in two different small districts. It sometimes happens that it is neces- sary for the judge of the one to notify something that has happened, the escape of a thief, for in- stance, to the judge of the other ; and instances have actually occurred of the same person in. the one capacity writing a letter to himself in the 372 GOTTI^GEN. other, and then answering his own letter, not to lose the fees attached to the performance of these duties. The consequence. is, that in Gottingen one half of the students are gaining a sprinkling of law, and out of it, justice and the country are suffering under a locust tribe of Dogberry s. Gottingen has the reputation of being a dear place, and the more prudent of its preceptors do not wish to propagate any contrary belief ; for, like all its sisters, it has felt the burden of en- ticing a host of poor scholars into learned courses. It has two hundred and sixteen freytiscli-stellen^ that is, it has funds which are laid out in feed- ing so many poor students. The student selects a traiteur who supplies him with his food at a fixed rate, and is paid by the university. Many of the lower sorts of cooks depend almost entire- ly on these college monies. The alms is not al- ways well bestowed ; niggardly interest some- times gains it in preference to necessity. An in- stance was mentioned to me of a wealthy Mecklen- burgher being so mean as to ask this pittance for his son, and so unfortunate as to obtain it. The young man himself would not submit to the un- necessary degradation, transferred his privilege EXPENDITURE. 373 of eating gratis to a poor comrade, dined himself at the table d'hote of the most fashionable inn, and ran in debt. The lowest sum I ever heard mentioned as sufficient to bring a young man respectably through at Gottingen is three hundred rix-dol- lars yearly, not quite L. 50, but assuredly it is too low. Michaelis, even in the last century, said four hundred ; Meiners, in the beginning of the present, set it down at three hundred ; Pro- fessor Saalfeld, who has brought down Flutter's work to 1820, fixes on three hundred and fifty. It is certain that the number of those who spend only the lowest of these sums is much smaller than the number of those who spend the highest. Taking the average at three hundred and fifty, which certainly does not exceed the truth, the university, with upwards of twelve hundred stu- dents, and thirty-six regular teachers, besides the extraordinary professors and the doctores privatim docentes, annually circulates in Gottin- gen, at least, seventy thousand pounds. Con- siderably more than one-half of those who spend this money are foreigners to Hanover; and, as they are generally the more wealthy, they spend 374 GOTTINGEN. a considerably greater share of the whole sum than the part merely proportioned to their num- bers. Thus, the university brings annually into the town about L. 40,000 from foreign coun- tries. The mere rent of rooms let to the students amounted, for the winter session 1820-1821, to 21,800 rix-dollars, rather more than L. 3300. The professors exercise a very strict controul over all the inhabitants who follow this occupa- tion. Opposite to each student's name in the university catalogue stands not only the street, but the very house which he inhabits, and if he remove, it must be immediately notified to his academical superiors. In the whole town there were a thousand and ninety-six rooms to let, of which six remained empty, though the number of students was twelve hundred and fifty-five ; for, as it is not to be expected that a man, who is unable to pay for half a dinner, can conven- iently be at the expence of a whole bed-chamber, it frequently happens that two turn in together into the same room. The university has been fortunate in suffering nothing from the political animosities which of late years have harassed so many public teachers DISCIPLINE. 375 in Germany, and set most of the universities in so turbulent a light. It would be too much to say that her students escaped the infection which made the silly, hot-headed Burschen set them- selves up for political regenerators. They bore their part in the Wartburg festival ; they dis- carded hair-cutters and well-made coats : but the spirit evaporated more speedily than elsewhere, and was more firmly met by the vigour of the senate, and the prudence of the government. The latter, though it has very properly oppos- ed itself, from the very beginning, to the irre- gularities of the students, is in favour both with them and their teachers. While some other states look upon their universities with jealousy and dislike, Hanover has always treated what the Duke of Cambridge called, " the fairest pearl in her crown," with confidence and liberality. It has never pretended to find proofs of an or- ganized revolution in the doctrines of the teach- ers, or the occasional turbulence of the scholars. It has borne with the one, and battled against the other, but has never used them as tokens of political crime to justify political harshness. The regulations against the press introduced by the 376 GOTTINGEN. Congress of Carlsbad, and enacted into a law of the Confederation by the Diet, have introduced here, as in all the seminaries, a censorship from which the universities had hitherto been exempt- ed. But in Gottingen the power thus given has not been used ; no censorship, I was assured, had been established. Those professors whose departments necessarily draw them into political discussion, have acted much more sensibly than their brethren of Jena. They have not degen- erated into mere newspaper writers, nor sullied their academical character, by mixing them- selves up in the angry politics of the day with the fury of partisans. Sartorius, the Professor of Statistics and Political Economy, sits in the States for the town of Eimbeck. Gottingen enjoys the reputation, that a more sober and becoming spirit reigns among its stu- dents than is to be found in any of its rivals, and that, even in their excesses, they show a more gentlemanly spirit : to this merit every Gottinger at least lays claim. In the external peculiarities of the sect, they seem to be much on a level with their brethren. I heard as late and as loud singing, or rather vociferation, resounding on the DISCIPLINE. 377 streets and from the windows of Gottingen, as in Halle, or Heidelberg, or Jena. They are as much attached to the fencing school and the duel, to the vivat and the pereat ; but they are not so fertile in contriving ridiculous expedients to make themselves be noticed. The Senate has a body of armed police under its own command, to keep them in order; but the students have oftener than once driven these academic warriors from the field, covered with more wounds than glory. Landsmannschaften, too, are said to be rooted out, and Blumenbach was blessing his stars that it had come to be his turn to be Pro- rector when these things are no more ; but duels keep their place ; and, considering that these fra- ternities are as much prohibited every where as in Gottingen, and yet do continue to exist else- where, it may fairly be presumed that they lurk and act in Hanover under the same secrecy which protects them in Prussia and Saxony. Disci- pline, likewise, at least for many years, has been rigorously enforced. In return for the confi- dence and liberality with which the government has always treated the professors, it has justly insisted on the firm and uncompromising dis- 378 GOTTINGEX. charge of their duty. That spirit of truckling to the young men, so disgusting in some other universities, has disappeared. The preference which Gottingen may reason- ably claim in point of general manners arises principally from the circumstance, that a greater proportion of its students are young men of rank, and of respectable or affluent fortune, than else- where. I do not mean, that rank and wealth give these persons purer morals, or a more ac- commodating spirit of subordination, than their less fortunate fellows ; but the dissipations of the former are not so gross and raw in their ex- ternal expressions as similar excesses in the lower ranks of life, and it is only of their external con- duct that there is here any question. A licen- tious peer and a licentious porter are generally very different characters. Where the poorer class of students forms the majority, the man- ners are always more rude, and the whole tone of society is more vulgar, than where their num- bers are comparatively small. To this, I think, it is chiefly owing that Gottingen, without per- haps any well-founded claim to better conduct, or greater academical industry, than some other DISCIPLINE. 379 universities, certainly does impress the stranger with the idea of something more orderly and gentlemanly. The very appearanceof the town aid s this impression, for Gottingen is one of the most agreeable and cleanly-looking towns in Germany. The regularity and width of the streets, which possess likewise the rare merit of being furnish- ed, for the most part, with pavements, and the neat, light, airy appearance of the houses, though they make no pretensions to elegance, is some- thing very different from Halle or Jena. 380 CHAPTER VIII. HANOVER. . Ein warmes immer reges Herz, Bei hellem Licht ira Kopfe ; Gesunde Glieder ohne Scbmerz, Und Heinrich's Huhn im Topfe. The Burechen. THE greater part of the fifty miles between Gottingen and Hanover still presents a pleasant, varied, and well cultivated country, consisting of moderate sized plains, bounded by wooded ridges of moderate elevation. Here, too, as in Hesse, a great quantity of land is in forest, which might be easily converted to agricultural pur- poses, were it not that the forest laws prevent the proprietor from either clearing it away, or deriv- ing any advantage from it as a forest. The pea- santry have the right of pasturage in the forest; FOREST LAWS. 381 if cleared away, it would only become an open common pasture. The scarcity of fuel all over the kingdom argues a deficiency of wood; and it would be a more advisable speculation, regular- ly to cut and renew the forest, did not the ffii- tungs-Recht, the right of pasturage, present a thousand obstacles. The proprietor must not increase the number of his trees, for he dare not encroach on the extent of the pasturage. That it may not be inconvenient for the cattle, he must plant, if he plant at all, at distances which are ruinous to young wood, by leaving it without shelter. Then, both the cattle and the persons who tend them are sworn enemies of young trees; the quadrupeds, because they find them to be good eating, and the bipeds, because they imagine, that to destroy them is to advance the public weal of the village, by augmenting the pasturable surface. To protect them from the wind, they are fastened to stakes; to defend them against cows and cowherds, they are surrounded with thorns; immediately the herdsmen carry off the thorns and stakes as excellent fuel, and the cattle attack the trees as excellent food- The proprietor very naturally gives up a business 382 HANOVER. which he cannot ply with profit, neglects his fo- rest, and the scarcity and cost of fuel is rapidly increasing. In the Estates a proposal was made, though unsuccessfully, to exempt forest-land from the land-tax, on the ground that it is a spe- cies of property which, under the existing laws, cannot possibly be productive to the owner. It has likewise a demoralizing influence, and produces a class of criminals which we scarcely know, wood-poachers. In many districts the price of fuel is so high, that the poor cannot af- ford to purchase it; but they can just as little endure to be frozen, or to eat their meat un- dressed; they plunder the forests, and justice is compelled to connive, in some measure, at this crime of necessity. Holz-dieb, or wood-thief, is a term as expressive of daring, recklessness, and revenge, as poacher is with us. The Jagers, and other servants appointed to watch the forest, are regarded by them in the same light in which game-keepers are by poachers, and, if they value their personal safety, they must discharge their duty with great lenity or carelessness. When some notable piece of plundering makes it neces- sary to bestir themselves, the Jagers of a num- AVOOD POACHERS. her of neighbouring forests occasionally assem- ble as if for a chace ; the dogs are uncoupled, and the horns sound, but the wood-thieves are the game, and often suffer a severe chastisement. They, again, take vengeance in their own way and time ; there have been examples of an ob- noxious inspector, or keeper of a wood, falling a sacrifice to the murderous enmity of such men, years after he had brought, or attempted to bring them to punishment. They are exactly our own poachers, only they are produced, not by idleness or a love of amusement, but by the impossibility of dispensing with one of the first necessaries of life. These pleasant valleys are more thickly peo- pled than the northern provinces of the king- dom, which contain so many large tracts of un- cultivated heath and uninhabited sand. The po- pulation of Calenberg, Gottingen, and Gruben- hagen, commonly included under the name of the southern provinces, exceeds that of the northern by nearly one half, in proportion to their respective superficial extent. * Villages and * Before the addition of East Friesland, which was ceded to Hanover at the general peace, the northern pro- 384 HANOVER. small towns are plentifully scattered ; the former are apparently more substantial and convenient, and the latter more bustling and cheerful than in Hesse. There are always, indeed, many traces of poverty, and much of what we would reckon slovenliness, and want of skill ; but the peasant- ry look active and comfortable. It is no pecu- liar praise to Hanover, that its peasantry are no longer adscriptitii glebae, bound to live, and la- bour, and d.ie where they were born, however hard the conditions might be on which their fa- mily had originally acquired the hereditary lease, as it may be called, of the lands ; for in what German state has not this been rooted out ? The conditions under which the son is to succeed to his father's farm may be personally oppressive, as well as impolitic, in regard to agriculture ; vinces were reckoned at 464 geographical square miles, with a population of 680,000 ; the three southern pro- vinces at 162 miles, with 343,000 inhabitants, exclusive of the 40,000 poor but industrious inhabitants who peo- ple the valleys, work the mines, and carry on the iron manufactories of the Harz. Since the cessions made to Hanover at the peace, the population of the whole king- dom is given in round numbers at 1,320,000. THE REPRESENTATION. 385 but he is no longer bound, as he formerly was, to submit to them. If he dislikes them, or wishes to seek a more indulgent landlord, he is at liber- ty to pack up his little all, and settle himself where he chooses. It is true, a German peasant will not readily quit the soil which his fathers have laboured for ages; he will submit to a great deal, indeed, before taking this desperate step, which is to him, though he only remove perhaps into the next parish, as painful a separation as if he were an emigrant leaving his country for a distant corner of the globe. But the knowledge that such a thing can be done, and is done, has necessarily brought the proprietors to feel the necessity of avoiding those exactions, and miti- gating the hard feudal terms of former days, which would be most likely to make it happen. Hanover depends so much on agriculture, that the towns, numerous as they are, do not contain above a tenth part of the whole popula- tion ; yet, in the Estates convoked in 1814, they returned nearly one-third of the members. There is nothing popular in the mode of election ; the member is chosen by the magistrates, and the magistrates are either self-elected, or named by VOL. i. R 386 HANOVER. the Crown. The most popular form I heard of is that of Osnabruck, whose new charter gives the citizens some share in filling up vacancies in the magistracy, but in such a round about way, that it may fairly be quoted as the beau ideal of indirect election. The magistracy chooses six- teen citizens, " good and true men ;" these six- teen choose four ; two of these four, in conjunc- tion with one member of the surviving magistra- cy, choose twelve ; these twelve choose three ; . out of these three the magistrates choose one ; this one must be confirmed by the government, and then takes his seat among the civic authori- ties, the picked man of the three who represent the twelve, who represent the three, who repre- sent the four, who represent the sixteen, who re- present the magistracy, who represent them- selves. Aye, this is the House that Jack built ; yet it is no crazy, ruined, old fashioned edifice, but a spick and span new house built in the year 1814. * The nearer the capital, the less beauty. On * Verordnung, die Organisation . des Magistrals der Stadt Osnabruck betreffend; 31st October 1814. THE CITY. 387 approaching its walls, you emerge from hill and dale into that wide, dreary, sandy plain, which spreads itself out from the foot of the Harz, nearly to the shores of the East sea. Hanover makes no show in the distance; it even looks more dull and gloomy than it really turns out to be. The population does not exceed twenty thousand ; but the appointment of a royal go- vernor has brought back some portion of prince- ly gaiety, and the assembling of the General States, drawing together many of the nobility from the different provinces, gives its streets and shopkeepers, for a season, additional activity. It is an irregular town, neither old nor new fa- shioned ; every thing is marked with mediocri- ty. The formerly Electoral palace is a huge, plain, uninhabited building, and that of the Duke of Cambridge is merely the best house in the best street. The manners did not seem to me to be at all so much Anglicised as they are sometimes represented. Except the English uniform of the Guards, the English arms on the public offices, and, in some circles, a later dinner hour than is usual in Germany, nothing reminds one that he is in a capital which has so 388 HANOVER. i long been subject to the King of England. It is only within these few years that Hanover has come into contact with England in such a way, as either to teach, or be taught any thing ; only the higher orders are exposed to this influence, and any fragments of foreign customs which they may adopt, will not easily spread into the great body of the people, or produce any visible change on the national manners. The manners of France penetrated much more deeply into the capitals which she occupied, because French- men were thrust into all the commanding sta- tions of society ; but England has hitherto act- ed towards Hanover with justice and propriety. The Hanoverians cannot complain that the ad- ministration of their government has been di- verted to the profit of foreigners. Though there naturally are English officers about the governor, all the public offices are filled by na- tives. Our language and literature are naturally much cultivated among them, but scarcely more so than at Dresden or Weimar. The theatre, though a court theatre, is the only one in Ger- many where I ever found recognized our con- THE THEATRE. stitutional privilege of making a noise. The gods of Covent Garden or Drury Lane could not maintain the rights of theatres with greater turbulence, than their brother deities of Hano- ver ; but, as they assert that they have enjoyed the franchise ever since they had a theatre, we cannot claim the merit of having taught them this imposing expression of public sentiment. It was an opera, Gretry's Coeur de Lion ; the singing was mediocre, and the acting detestable ; all the men were awkward, and all the women ugly. Great part of the pit was filled with mi- litary officers. All over Germany, it is reckon- ed essential to the respectability of the military character, that these gentlemen should be able to frequent the theatre ; but, low as the prices are, (the pit at Hanover is only a shilling,) their pay is insufficient to afford this nightly amuse- ment. The government, therefore, keeps back a small portion of their pay, gives them gratis admission to the theatre, and, in some way or other, makes up the difference to the manager. Is it more respectable to go to the theatre on charity, than to stay at home ? If it is supposed that the dignity of the military character de- S90 HANOVER. pends, in public estimation, on the apparent abi- lity of the military to spend money, is it elevat- ed by an arrangement which tells every body, that they are less able to spend money than their fellow-citizens ? Even a strolling party, if there be military in the place of its temporary abode, generally sets apart a portion of its barn for the Herren Officiere> either gratuitously, or at half price. It looks like a privilege. Hanover had put on all the gaiety it can as- sume, for it was Easter Sunday, and Easter Sunday is a fair. The lower orders, in holiday finery, were swarming through the walks that run along the ramparts, decently dressed, de- cently behaved, and healthy looking people. A large plain, outside of the walls, covered with booths, E O tables, and other sources of Sunday amusement, was the gathering place. On one side, a great many parties of young men were playing cricket in their own way. They had only one wicket ; the ball was not bowled along the ground, but thrown up in the air, and struck, as it descended, with a short staff, often with ad- mirable precision and dexterity. In another part, the press was thronging round the canvas- AMUSEMENTS. 391 booths, where cakes, and toys, and gin, and to- bacco, were retailed. Though every body was very merry, and many very noisy, there was no quarrelling; nay, not even any intoxication. Many more segars than drams were consumed. Next afternoon, the whole city repaired to Herrenhausen, a royal residence in the suburbs, where the royal water-works were to spout their annual tribute to the Easter festivities. The long and ample alley, which runs from the city to the gardens of Herrenhausen, is magnificent ; the gardens themselves are straight walks, lined with trees, and carpeted with turf, but the sta- tues intended to adorn them are execrable. The expectant thousands were lounging patiently round the spacious basin, till the arrival of the governor and his suite should authorize the fountain to play from its centre ; yet, when it did come, they did not seem to think it a very fine sight. It is on a trifling scale. The wind was so strong, that the column of water, instead of throwing itself back on all sides in an ample and graceful curve, the great source of beauty in such a fountain, was carried and scattered so far to leeward, as to drench the unsuspecting HANOVER. citizens' who had ranged themselves on that side The wetted part of the crowd fled in consterna- tion ; the dry part shouted in malicious triumph at their own windward prudence; the fountain played on, and the band struck up " God Save the King." At the entrance of the public walks stands the monument of Leibnitz, a bust of the philosopher, on an elevated pedestal, within a small Ionic temple. Huge bundles of his manuscripts, as well as the armed chair in which he died, read- ing Barclay's Argenis, are still preserved in the library where he studied, or rather lived. The greater part of them are not regularly written out, but are scraps of paper of all sizes, scrawled over with incoherent notes. To keep this chaos in order, Leibnitz made use of a singular com- mon-place book. It is an array of shelves, like a book-case, divided by vertical partitions into a great number of small pigeon holes. Under each hole is a label, with the name of the subject to which it was appropriated, frequently with the name of an emperor, or any other person whom the philosopher found useful as making an epoch, or important enough to have a division for him- THE LIBRARY. self. When, in the course of his reading, he came upon any thing worth noticing, he jotted it briefly down on any scrap of paper that happen- ed to be at hand, and deposited it in its proper pigeon hole. One of the librarians assured me, with great complacency, that Buonaparte's ex- pedition to Egypt was originally an idea of Leib- nitz ; for, among his manuscripts, a memorial addressed to Louis XIV. had been discovered, in which the philosopher represents it as a great and good work to deliver from Oriental bar- barism the country which had been the mother of all arts and sciences, and the ease with which its liberation might be effected by the Most Christian King. The library itself is small ; the government justly thinks that it does enough in supporting the library of Gbttingen ; but there are some in- teresting typographical rarities. A copy of Tully's Offices, of 1465, very beautifully and re- gularly printed on vellum, bears testimony to the mystery in which the art was at first involv- ed ; for the printer, after setting down his name, " Fust," (Faust,) and the year, at the end of the book, adds, that it was executed nee penna, nee 394 HANOVER. aerea penna, sed quadam arte. That early pro- duction of the graphic art, the Biblium Pau- perum, is a misnomer ; for it is no Bible at all, properly speaking, and could be of no use to the poor, except as a picture-book to amuse their children, for the text is Latin. It is a series of wooden cuts, representing the principal events of the sacred writings. The cuts occupy the upper half of every page ; below is the explanation, in rude, rhymed, Latin verses. lu the cut which represents our first parents after their expulsion from Paradise, Adam is busily delving, and Eve sits beside him, spinning, with little Cain upon her knee : When Adam delved, and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman ? The superbly illuminated missal is said to have been a present from Charles V. to our Henry VIII. ; if so, it must have undergone strange vicissitudes. A notification in English, signed by a Mr Wade, is affixed to it, which states, that he first saw the manuscript in the possession of a private gentleman in France, about the beginning of the last century. The PICTURES. 395 proprietor showed it to him, but would not al- low him to touch it ; nay, he himself turned over the leaves only with a pair of silver tongs, and, observing Mr Wade smile, remarked, with some warmth, that it was thus that his ancestors had so long preserved the matchless manuscript in its present splendour. On the death of this gentle- man, Mr Wade purchased it from his executors ; from him it came into the possession of our royal family, who deposited it, along with the silver tongs, in the library of Hanover. The gardens and villa of the late Count Wal- moden are now royal property ; but the collec- tion of pictures has been dispersed. Those that remain give no good idea of the artists whose names they bear. The Madonna and Child, said to be by Raphael, the Dying Monk, as- cribed to Tintoretto, and the Pope adoring the Virgin, baptized as a Guido, have nothing in them, to be sure, inconsistent with the earlier style and more careless efforts of these masters ; but neither do they give the slightest idea of what these masters could do, and would not at- tract notice were it not for the names. Christ parting from the Disciples at Emmaus is a design 306 HANOVEK. of Annibal Caracci, full of the simplicity, and dignity, and boldness, in which that painter fol- lowed so close on Fra Bartolomeo. Few pic- tures of Rubens exhibit the provoking inequali- ties of his genius so strongly as one which re- presents the Magdalene, backed by a host of Saints. She is kneeling, in tears, before the Virgin and Child. The colouring is in many points in his very highest style ; the figures are in his very worst, not only homely, but absolute- ly vulgar and unpleasant. The Saints, above all St Francis, with their hard-favoured coun- tenances, totally devoid of all interesting and poetical expression, look like so many jail-birds. The Magdalene is just one of those gross masses of human flesh which he has so often painted ; it is well that her hands are folded upon her breast, so as partly to cover it ; for, from what is visi- ble, these suspended dugs, if displayed in full volume, would have been frightful. The Ma- donna, too, is a homely housewife, beautifully painted ; but the Holy Infant itself, in form, ex- pression, and colouring, is delicious, all grace, animation, and softness. The Hanoverians (if a passing visitor be en- NATIONAL CHARACTER. 397 titled to form an opinion) are a most sober- minded, plodding, easily contented people. Like all their brethren of the north of Germany, with- out possessing less kindness of heart, they have much less joviality, less of the good fellow, than the Austrians, and are not so genial and extra- vagant, even in their amusements, as the Bava- rian or Wirtemburger. Though quite as indus- trious as the Saxons, they are neither so lively, nor so apt. Their neighbours of Cassel and Brunswick have the reputation of being some- what choleric ; but to this charge the Hanove- rian is in no degree liable ; there is more danger of his becoming a drudge, than of his growing impatient. Endowed neither with great acute- ness of perception nor quickness of feeling, it is long before he can be brought to comprehend the bearings of what is new to him, and it is dif- ficult to rouse him to ardour in its pursuit. If it become advisable that he should set himself free from old usages, which are, in fact, his strongest affections, great slowness and great pa- tience are necessary to untie the cords with which he is bound. Though every other person should see that they are rotten, and that the man has 398 HANOVER. only to shake himself to get rid of them, he will not move a limb before every knot has been re- gularly undone. He possesses, in a high degree, the capacity of holding on in any given line of motion, however monotonous and inconvenient, and is the last man in Europe who will start out of his way to chase butterflies. If this confined inactivity of character renders him, in some re- spects, a less pleasing companion, it saves him likewise from many vices and many extrava- gancies. If he be somewhat dull, he is honest and affectionate ; if his views be very limited, his hands are unwearied. He is much too sober minded either to sink into frivolity, or rise to enthusiasm ; he betrays little eagerness for infor- mation, for he sees little use to which he could apply it ; he trusts his own understanding with the extremest caution, for he is little accustom- ed to ratiocination. Gottingen is said to have had a most beneficial influence on the culture of the nobility, and higher ranks of the citizens; nor was it to be supposed, that, while the uni- versity was scattering abroad so much good seed over the other states of Germany, it would find thorny ground only in its native country. THE GOVERNMENT. 399 Though a strong feeling of attachment to his hereditary prince is common to every German, in none is it more deeply rooted than in the Ha- noverian. It is the most inveterate of his habits, from which it would give him infinite pain to tear himself loose. It is not an opinion, for he seldom thinks, and never argues about what monarchs ought to be ; though it may be affect- ed by the personal qualities of the ruler, it ex- ists independent of them ; the most splendid could scarcely rouse him to enthusiasm, and the most degrading must descend very low, indeed, in abasement, before they could mislead him into hatred or contempt. Even the long absence of their native princes has, in no degree, diminish- ed their affection for them ; their love of the Guelphs has, in this respect, survived trials which fidelity to a mistress would hardly have withstood. Nor is it undeserved. Among: its O own people, who are the best judges, and even among the writers of the liberal party, who would not willingly acknowledge it if it were not true, the House of Hanover enjoys the reputa- tion of having always governed with an honest regard to the welfare of its subjects, and the 400 HANOVER. rights of the estates, such as they were. It lias neither rendered itself hateful by niggardliness and private oppression, nor burdensome by ex- travagance; the liberality of its conduct has maintained the honour of the country among its neighbours, and, at the Congress of Vienna, Ha- nover alone fought the battle for the political amelioration of Germany. If Napoleon wished gradually to'win on the good will of his German provinces, and found his domination on some- thing more respectable and secure than mere brute force, why did he so industriously insult their feelings and irritate their prejudices? In Hanover, above all, the partition of the Electo- rate, to throw part of it into the kingdom of Westphalia, was a deadly sin against the na- tional pride of the people, for which, in their es- timation, no anathemas against aristocratic ex- emptions could atone. The return of their na- tive sovereign was, to them, the re-creation of their country, which Napoleon had blotted out from among the states of Germany. When I was in Hanover, the report had already spread that his Majesty intended to make that visit to his German dominions which he soon afterwards THE GOVERNMENT. 401 executed. The people were manifestly looking forward to the event, not with the impatience of a Parisian crowd to see fine sights, for no peo- ple could be less at home in such scenes of pa- rade than the Hanoverians, but with the hearty anxiety of one who Jongs to meet an old friend. In the simplicity of their hearts, they had taken it into their heads, that the King was coming to put to rights any little public matters which they had some indistinct notion were not as they ought to be. They were quite sure, they said, that if they sometimes had to pay more money than they could well afford, only the great folks at Hanover were to blame for it ; nor had they any sort of doubt, but that his Majesty would look into every thing with his own eyes, and right what required righting with his own hands. This feeling is universal; the government is popular ; even the liberal pamphleteers allow that Hanover has no reason to envy any other German state. The estates of the kingdom were not assembled; though they had been sitting, they admit no witnesses of their deliberations. There is a large dining-room, with three or four rows of chairs 402 HANOVER. arranged amphitheatrically in front of a throne from which the governor delivers his speeches, and a couple of handsome parlours for the two houses. The apartment of the first chamber is the largest and best adorned, for it is a room that was prepared for the whole estates before their separation into two houses. When that separation took place, the peers reserved it to themselves, and sent the commons up stairs to the drawing-room. It is even surrounded with a gallery fitted up for the spectators in those days of good intentions, but which has never been used. The members have fewer legislative con- veniences than with us. There are no continu- ous benches where a noble lord may doze over the state of Europe ; no gallery where an ho- nourable member may dream a reply to a drowsy oration ; no smoking room where he may di- gest the argument without having heard the speeches. The members are ranged behind each other on simple chairs, like the company at a Scotch funeral, and much less luxuriously than in many an Italian theatre. When the house divides, they repair into an adjoining room, where they find pen and ink, and a number of THE GOVERNMENT. 403 small square pieces of paper, on which the Aye or No is to be written; if the morsels be ex- hausted, there are scissars to cut new ones. The array of scissars is magnificent ; half a dozen pairs, long, sharp, and glittering, adorn the table of each house, instead of a sceptre. One of their regulations might be advantageously transferred to various other assemblies, viz., that when a member appears to be wearying out the house by speaking at too great length, the president shall put him in mind, dass er sicli ~kurzjusse, that " brevity is the soul of wit." Both chambers are elective, for even the first consists only of deputies chosen by the nobility of the different provinces, with the exception of a few members who sit in virtue of their rank as titular dignified clergy, that is, as possessing what was once church property. The chamber of the aristocracy ought rather to be called the chamber of freeholders, for it is in fact the re- presentation of the landed interest, as distin- guished from the population and the manufactur- ing interest of the towns. Though every person who has a patent of nobility, and a Rittergut, or estate noble, has a right to vote, the former is 404 HANOVER. not essential to the franchise. It has long been consuetudinary law in Hanover, that every proprietor of a Rittergut, that is, every free- holder, though he should not have the honours and privileges of nobility in his person, is Land- tagsfdhig, entitled, that is, to appear personally in the estates, while that form of assembly pre- vailed, and now to vote in the election of the de- puties who represent his province. In some parts of the kingdom, a great quantity of allo- dial property has sprung up. It is chiefly found in what are called the Marschlanden, formerly morasses, stretching along the banks of the Weser and the Elbe, where inundations had de- posited the rudiments of a fertile soil, unclaimed either by the Crown or the feudal nobility while it remained in its original barrenness ; drain- ed of its waters, and defended, against the stream, by a peasantry that settled among its insalubrious damps from the same love of secu- rity which created the fields of Holland, and founded a city of princes on the waves of the Adriatic; gradually brought, by the industry of centuries, to be the most fertile district of the kingdom ; and now swarming with an affluent THE GOVERNMENT. 405 and independent rustic population. All these proprietors have not only been admitted to the elective franchise, but, instead of being thrown in with the neble proprietors around them, they elect their own members. The chambers are very doubtful about the extent of their powers. It is certain that they can do nothing without the consent of the execu- tive, in other words, that the veto of the crown is absolute, but it is much less certain whether the crown is bound to yield when they declare against it. Some proprietors of estates not no- ble, petitioned the House to be admitted to the representation ; the House surely mistook its duty in voting, that this was not a matter fit for deliberation before them, but appertained solely to the executive. The government, however, is allowed, on all hands, to have acted with the ut- most liberality, and the most sincere wish to do good. In an edict organizing the militia, it pro- hibited any serviceable male from fixing his domicile in a foreign country, without its per- mission ; the Commons immediately quarrelled this, as contrary to the liberty of the subject, and the natural right of every man to live where he 406 HANOVER. chooses ; and the ministry yielded the point. It firmly refused to re-establish the nobility in the old exemptions from taxation and military ser- vice, which Napoleon had first shaken. The nobil- ity made an obstinate struggle to retain their ex- emption from the land-tax, but in vain, though the majority of the estates belonged to their own class ; for there were many of them to whom the frowns of the court were more formidable than the pressure of a tax. Resisting, likewise, their claims to monopolize all the lucrative and influ- ential offices of the state, the government has em- ployed commoners of talent, wherever it could find them, both in the civil administration and in the army. There is no German court where ability and honesty, to whatever rank they may belong, are allowed fairer play. The most imprudent thing which the Estates have done was wrapping up their proceedings in such impenetrable secrecy. By a majority of two votes, they excluded the public from being present at their deliberations. Then, although they ordered an epitome of their journals, con- taining important reports made by committees, propositions submitted to the Chamber, and its THE PRESS. 407 final decision upon them, to be regularly print- ed, this compend was intended only for the mem- bers themselves, and was anxiously kept back from indiscriminate publication. The conse- quence is, that the great body of the citizens take no interest in proceedings of which they know nothing. The leading men of the minis- try, and the Governor himself, are believed to be favourable to publicity ; and the example of Weimar shows, that, even under a much more popular system of representation than is yet es- tablished in Hanover, deputies may cling to se- crecy, while the government recommends pub- licity. Professor Luden of Jena, who is him- self a Hanoverian by birth, published, in 1817, a history and review of the proceedings of the Estates, from their first meeting after the expul- sion of the French down to that year.* It is a sensible, and, in no point of view, a reprehensi- ble book : though it sometimes questions the propriety of the decisions of the Estates, both * Das Konigreich Hanover, nach seinen offentlichen Verhaltnissen. 408 HANOVER. they and the government are treated, not only with respect, but with eulogy. Y"et it seems to have been proscribed, on no other imaginable ground, than because it discusses the discussions of the Chamber. At least, no bookseller in Ha- nover would say that he had it ; and I procured it only by the politeness of a Privy Councillor who allowed me to make use of his name. Thus there seems to be a possibility of suppressing, without incurring the odium of prohibiting. It has long been a popular belief in England that Hanover is mischievous to us ; that it is a trifling patrimonial appendage of our monarchs which draws us unnecessarily into expensive continental quarrels. However, according to a common phrase, there is no love lost between us and the Hanoverians. They are in no degree flattered by their king wearing the crown of England; if it gives their cabinet political weight, they feel that they shine in borrowed light. The well educated classes laugh at the English- man who retails the assertion, that Hanover does Britain mischief : " It is we," say they, " who " suffer. When the King of Hanover is of- CONNECTION WITH ENGLAND. 409 " fended, the King of England is not bound to " resent his injuries ; but when the King of " England gets into a continental quarrel, Ha- '* nover, with no earthly interest in the dispute, " is the first victim of the rupture." END OF VOLUME FIRST. . EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY JOHN STARK. OCSB LIBRARY University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. LTH1T ;JAN flLOCTO&J 997 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 590 831 4