Nor were Weidig's literary efforts to cease with his departure from Butzbach. His friend, George Büchner, started a new Journal for the People, and Weidig contributed to it. For its motto stood the words, Peace to the cottage-war to the palace.' The great tyranny of Austria and Prussia, and the little tyranny of Hesse, were closely allied, and so the great government joined the little government in bidding Weidig beware. Friends in Switzerland knew Weidig was in danger, and begged him to take shelter with them. But Weidig refused; he would not flee, he said, although he knew that his arrest could not be long forthcoming.

It came under touching circumstances. When Weidig had left Butzbach, in 1833, his father was still comparatively a young man. In 1835 the news arrived of his father's sudden and dangerous illness. He instantly hurried home, in the hope of seeing him once more. But he reached Butzbach too late. His father was dead.

He had left his wife near her confinement, and he returned home to her at Obergleen as soon as possible. On his reaching his house, he found a government official already there. Weidig was dragged off to prison without being permitted to say farewell to wife or son. A note to the latter contained these words: Try to remember me. Be good to your mother, and comfort her when she weeps.' It was often thought that he had a presentiment of the terrible fate that was soon to befall him.

It was by the testimony of one Clemm that Weidig had been arrested. Clemm, who was an apostate from the cause of liberty, could indeed prove nothing with regard to the share Weidig had taken in the revolutionary newspapers. But he submitted that he had fresh evidence, tending to prove Weidig's participation in the Frankfort attempt. It was on this charge, for which he had before been tried and then acquitted, that Weidig was now to be tried again.

Weidig was imprisoned in Darmstadt. There was no pretence even of a public trial. The investigations proper to a court of justice were entrusted to a person who was to combine the office of head gaoler and inquisitioner.

This man, Georgi by name, had been long an enemy of Weidig. He was of notoriously bad character, and it was said that he had suffered repeatedly from delirium tremens.

During the two years of Weidig's imprisonment, Georgi gradually increased the privations to which he subjected him. At first he was fairly well treated. But after a time Georgi removed from him his books and writing materials, and treated him like an ordinary criminal. It became too much for Weidig; and one day a knife came into his hands. The temptation was irresistible. He tried to kill Georgi.

He was disarmed at once, and Georgi was determined Weidig should repent of his rashness. He was now kept all day in heavy

chains, and usually in complete darkness. But it was still impossible to extract from him expressions of contrition. Georgi now resorted to other means: he had his prisoner cruelly flogged.2

It was a pitiful story: but the end was not long delayed. One morning the under-gaoler visited Weidig, and found him lying dead in the bed. . He was covered with blood: a broken water-bottle was near him.

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Doctors were called in, and the first suspicions naturally pointed to suicide. On the window there was found, written in blood, this sentence, signed with Weidig's initials: As my enemy denies me every means of defence, I choose at my own free will a shameful death.' But had Weidig written this? Had he really laid hands upon himself? Medical evidence went far to prove that the wounds were not self-inflicted.

Had Georgi killed him? Dark suspicions rested on him which neither he nor his friends and defenders were ever able to dispel entirely.

But the Government would not for a long time hear one of their creatures contemned. To mark their approval, the Central Government at Frankfort publicly complimented him, and the little government of Hesse followed suit by making him a knight. But the outery was too great and too terrible to be disregarded. An account of the life and death of Weidig, printed at Wintherthür, in Switzerland, was soon read and quoted all over Germany, despite the censorship. It opened with these words :--This work bears the standard of no one party; it is on the side of the eternal cause of humanity. It is concerned with a trial written on the records of Germany in letters of blood. But it is not addressed to jurists only. It is addressed to the princes and rulers of Germany. It is addressed to those who, seeing innocent and guilty suffer equally, stay not the oppressor's hand, and care not for justice or for the honour of their fatherland. It is addressed to them-heavy is their transgression.' The Government saw that the vox populi was now too unanimous and too bitter to be ignored. Scanty justice was done at last, and Georgi was dismissed from his post.3

In the same year (1837) tyranny had, however, a considerable triumph. Ernst August had ascended the throne of Hanover, and, by way of inaugurating his reign, announced his flat refusal to be bound by the Constitution. Some of the most renowned professors of

2 Georgi declared that the story of the flogging was a ' coarse lie,' but he seems to have no evidence to quote in his defence.

The literature on the subject of Weidig's death is very large and the evidence voluminous and conflicting. Two facts, however, remain indisputable :-First, that the trial of Weidig was absolutely secret; and, secondly, that the bitterest accusations against Georgi found many ready listeners in all Germany. These two facts demonstrate sufficiently the results that followed in Germany from the Metternich system of government.

Göttingen resigned their chairs on hearing this, saying they would not now be able to teach their pupils that it was their duty to obey the Government, since the Government declared itself an unlimited tyranny. The professors found many sympathisers, but in the end Ernst August won the day, and reigned as he chose, in defiance of Constitution and of Law.

Three years later a new king was proclaimed in Berlin. Frederick William the Fourth had, while a prince, shown great favour to the nobles, and their hopes were elated at his succession. But, on his accession to the throne, he was reported to have said that though the first noble when a prince, he was as king the first citizen. This story was often quoted, and the sanguine liberals believed that the day of good government was near at hand. How far their hopes were fulfilled we must investigate on a future occasion.

LEONARD A. MONTEFIORE.

NOTE.
Authorities.

For a general view of the government in Germany between 1820-1840:LINDNER: Das Manuscript aus Süd-Deutschland, 1820. Published under the pseudonym of George Erichsen.

J. RUSSELL: A Tour in Germany, 1828.

JACOBY: Bilder und Zustände aus Berlin, 1833.

LAUBE: Politische Briefe, 1833.

The Annual Register (London).

For the insurrectionary attempts of 1830-1833 :

MENZEL: Taschenbuch der neuesten Geschichte, 1829-1835.

WIRTH (1) Die politische reformatorische Richtung der Deutschen im XVI.

und XIX. Jahrhundert, 1841.

(2) Denkwürdigkeiten aus meinem Leben, 1844.

(3) The biography of Wirth in Meyer's Grosses Conversations-Lexicon. ILSE: Geschichte der Politischen Untersuchungen, 1860 (this book relates chiefly to the 'Frankfort attempt' of 1833).

Constitutional points are best treated in:

ROTTECK and WELCKER: Staatslexicon, 1856.
DAHLMANN: Die Politik, 1847.

ZACHARIAE: Deutsches Staats- und Bundesrecht, 1845.

The history of Weidig, his trial and his death, is to be found in the following books:

1. WEIDIG: Reliquien. 2. Der Tod des Pfarrers Weidig. The guilt or innocence of Georgi is further discussed in books and pamphlets by Boden, Welcker, Noellner, and Georgi himself,

Besides these, I have derived much information from the newspapers and general histories mentioned in the note to the previous article (especially from the Times and from Frau Büchner's admirable book), and I have again continually referred to the works of Heine and Börne, who seem to be the acutest, as they certainly are the wittiest, commentators on the history of their time.

L. A. M.

THE SLICING OF HECTOR.

Disjecta non leni ruinâ.-HOR.

THE ingenuity of modern mechanism, as I am told, cuts a skin of morocco leather right down its interior tissue into two skins, and, with a loss of solidity and durability, produces a doubled superficies of available material, genuine in a certain sense. A like process has been instituted by some of the distinguished scholars who, numbering Mr. Grote in their band, and with some subaltern diversities of fashion, agree in dividing the Homeric poems into two integral masses. This slicing process is applied to, and in part founded on, a bisection of many principal Homeric characters, each of whom is placed before us in a dual personality, according to his presentment' in these segments respectively. Hector, among the rest, is divided into two Hectors; and, as is alleged, with two different sets of attributes. Each of these cases has to be treated on its own ground. And the question I have now to ask is whether we shall accept this dualism for Hector, or shall still be content to have him in the singular number.

Professor Geddes of Aberdeen has recently made a material contribution to the literature of the Homeric question, in his Problem of the Homeric Poems. He differs, rightfully in my opinion, from most of those who divide the authorship, in treating the original

Homer as a native of the Greek Peninsula and not of Asia Minor: and he supports his opinion by an able argument on the Olympus of the Poems, the home of their mythology. He opposes, too, those who simply divide the Homer of the Iliad from the Homer of the Odyssey. The most conspicuous excellence of his work, however, will perhaps be found to be its method. Instead of arbitrarily selecting a few points out of thousands, and founding on very narrow bases the most sweeping conclusions, he is content to plough his way to his results by a complete upturning of the surface: by a minute, indefatigable, and even statistical sifting, I would say ransacking, of the text in its details. Colonel Mure was the first Homeric writer, as far as my memory serves, who pointed out that this process opened to us a true road of fruitful progress: and I hail with pleasure a practical application of the principle from beyond the border. The

'Macmillan, 1878.

issue of such an investigation is one we must all acknowledge to be material. The most conservative Homerologist, if he be a lover of the truth, must be more willing to see his favourite doctrines overturned by a method which is sound, than defended by one which is visionary. The criterion of statistics must not lead us to forget that there is also a criterion of art. But they are variously available with different minds: and in a judicious combination of the two we shall find probably the best apparatus for dealing with the Homeric question. It is, however, necessary, when the statistical element is employed, that it should be employed with the utmost attainable accuracy.

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The examination of such a work, to be worthy of its aim, must involve, like the work itself, a great mass of detail, and is greatly beyond my present scope. Nor will I intimate an opinion upon the specific form of dualism which it recommends, and which assigns to the author of the Odyssey the Books, which it rends from the Iliad. I confine myself strictly to one single point of the investigation, namely, the character of Hector. Here, says Professor Geddes (p. 104), the divergence as to the representations. . . is peculiarly marked, and it is only under the theory of two strata in the Iliad that the phenomena can be adequately explained.' There are, indeed, particular reasons why the character of Hector should favour the theory of a dualism in the Iliad. I will not say that an adverse result in Hector's case will suffice to overthrow the dualistic theory. It would only be the failure of one test out of many; but it would be a test applied upon ground confessedly advantageous to the theory which assails the integrity of the Poem.

Professor Geddes divides the Iliad into a primary work and a later secondary addition or accretion. The primary portion he calls the Achillean Books, the secondary the Ulyssean. Mr. Grote has named the first the Achilleis. The Professor does not treat the accretions as forming an integral poem in themselves. They are adjective, not substantive. But, for brevity's sake, I will here call these additions the Ulysseid. The mode of breaking up our Iliad is as follows:

1. Achilleid. Books I., VIII., XI. to XXII. Fourteen Books. 2. Ulysseid. Books II. to VII., IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. Ten Books.

Professor Geddes finds Hector, as he is presented to us in the Ulysseid, to be an attractive character; but in the Achilleid a repulsive one. The charges against him are not formally nor very distinctly set out, owing, in all likelihood, to a desire for brevity, especially reasonable where so wide a field was to be traversed. But they appear to be in substance that he was—

1. Fierce or brutal.

2. Boastful.

3. Harsh and insolent.