and winding course, might be traced in them as | Student Life of Germany." It is also thickly in a map; producing a marvellous feeling of studded with illustrations, after designs by double existence, a solemn figure of the spiritual Mr. Sargent, some of which are faithful and and material world, so closely joined, though in union invisible, which will one day be made as spirited. evident to our perception as was this admirable effect of appearance from reality. The brightness, the solidity, the depth, the accuracy of this scene, stretching all around the bay of the lake as far as eye could discern, is not to be described; for what description could awaken the devotional feelings of reverence for the adorable Creator of things visible and invisible, material and immaterial, which the contemplation of it excited in our hearts! Wordsworth could have done it justice, perhaps, in his verse, so pure, so holy, so full of thoughts that "Often lie too deep for tears." And then ever and anon, whilst we gazed on the still creation, we heard a sound distant and deep, which we liked to imagine might be the fall of avalanches among some of those very mountains of Savoy which were now reflected at our feet, though at a distance of forty miles. Mr. Howitt's taste for pedestrian rambles led him into those by-way nooks of Germany, beyond the ken of the summer tourist. His pictures of the life of the laboring classes then have a special value; we come upon one almost at random, a few pages from the commencement of the volume: "The Petersthal, or the Valley of Peter, on the Neckar, is one of those innumerable valleys in Germany lying amongst the hills, which swarm with human life, and present one of the most picturesque lively scenes of German industry;-industry still in the midst of quiet, and surrounded by the slumber of mighty woods. It is a long and winding valley, having very little breadth in the bottom, and yet enough for a clear stream to bound along, and hollow water-meadows of the richest green to slope down on each side, and numbers of ancient-looking water-mills to be seated upon it; and cottages to be scattered in one continual string for miles all along the foot of the hills on both sides. These mills are largish buildings, in the true heavy style, with large farm-yards attached; plenty of heaps and great piles of fire-wood; old mill-stones and old wagons lying or standing about. The millers are generally the most substantial men of the place. They, some of them, manufacture flour, and some The Rural and Domestic Life of Germany, oil from the rape and linseed, the poppy-head and with Characteristic Sketches of the Cities walnuts of the country; and the bumping sound of and Scenery. By William Howitt. Long-perpendicularly, and by the cogs of the wheels their stampers-beams moved by the machinery THE RURAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE OF man & Co. From the Athenæum. raised, and let fall on the seeds placed in flannel So far as this book contains the results of bags in a proper receptacle below, is one of the Mr. Howitt's experiences gathered during most characteristic sounds of these valleys. Often a residence at Heidelberg, it is pleasant and at a distance, when buried in the woods, you can welcome; but the sketches of cities, made find the direction of a village by the sleepy sound in "a general tour," are somewhat common- stand amid a world of old fruit trees, which, in auof these bumpers. These mills, and the cottages, place and superficial. The inner heart of tumn, are so loaded that they are obliged to be capitals so widely differing as Vienna, Ber- propped and tied up. In all directions, on the hill lin, Munich, Dresden, is not to be read in a sides, extend their cultivated fields, full of their passing glance, and Mr. Howitt is too fond crops of corn, and vegetables of various kinds; their of stating impressions as general truths. little vineyards often show their trelliced plots, and Neither can we recommend the reader to all above extends the thick and shady region of place much reliance on his judgment in art, people busy in their possessions. Men and women forest. Everywhere in these valleys you see the or his sweeping sketches of literature and and children are at work in the fields. Down the opinion. His knowledge of the authors of hills come women and children from the woods, the country cannot be so comprehensive as carrying on their heads loads of fuel, or dragging his nineteenth chapter would have us believe, great bundles of boughs down the narrow hollow when, in his list of the female writers of ways after them. Others are cutting grass for the Germany, he makes no mention of the pent-up cattle ;-women are mowing much oftener Princess Amelia, of Saxony, whose dramas, bare legs, washing by the clear stream. Quantities than the men. Below are groups of women, with besides being translated into English, and of linen are spread out to dry and to bleach; and promoted to the most exclusive stage in round the houses are stalking plenty of fowls, while Europe, that of the Théâtre Français,a large dog barks at you from his kennel as you are played from one end of the land to the pass the mill, or little poodles, with cock-a-side tails, other. But, these cautions made, the book bark at you from the cottages, and geese clap their before us is a healthy and amusing book-wings and clangour in the brook. This Petersthal and one, for the sake of which, if its author will permit us, we shall be content to forget that rickety bantling of his adoption, "The along lay the white patches of linen on the green is a great place for bleaching and washing, and all meadow grass, and groups of the stoutest and most healthy-looking girls stood washing by the doors as thing spoke of the poverty of the congregation, or the neglect of the church in a populous valley, where nearly all the inhabitants were Catholics. In the churchyard there was not a single stone of remembrance. Nothing but crosses of lath, on which garlands of cut paper hung, or were laid on the graves. These garlands were made like those which used to be hung in our village churches at the funeral of a young maiden. Flowers were also, as usual, planted on the graves; and on these little lath crosses were nailed leaves torn out of their books of devotion, having rudely-colored pictures of the Virgin, or some favorite saint or other." we passed; while numbers of children ran about, I said it used to play, but a man came to put it order, many of them with nothing but a shirt on. Here and it had never played since. In short, every was one holding two cows by a rope tied to the horns, to graze by the way-side, and here another holding a goat. It was harvest time, and hot weather. The women were cutting their harvest, the men being gone to the greater harvest of the plain. The Catholic character of the valley was obvious by the little images of the Virgins in niches in the front of the cottages as we passed. These images are of the most wretched kind; little things of gaudily colored plaster, bought of the wandering Italian dealers. But at the head of the glen stood a little chapel, which is a perfect specimen of what you find so commonly in Catholic districts, at once indicating so much devotion and so much poverty. This little chapel had a very simple and ancient The chapter which follows this, on the appearance, standing at the head of that retired out-of-door life of the peasants inhabiting glen, and surrounded by the solemn woods. The the banks of the Rhine and the Neckar, is as altar was painted in gaudy colors of red and yellow, full of interesting details as of kindly symwith its front panels pasted with wall-paper. On it stood two pyramids or obelisks painted black, pathies. The sporting life of Germany, on covered with white death's heads, decreasing in the other hand, is somewhat hastily des size upwards to the top of the obelisks. Above patched; not so the festivities of the people, were little images of cherubs' heads; and one side the Kirchweihe, the Carnival of the Colonese, of the crypt, where the pix is kept, was a saint, the religious processions among the vinelooking as if he had fainted, and on the other a yards, which Goethe and Bettina have Virgin, looking round at the saint in great curiosity. painted so exquisitely, and the Christmas The censer and cups were of the commonest metal; delights of Pelznichel's visit to the good pewter, iron, or brass. The walls were covered with the most paltry pictures. On one side of the and bad children, and of the glittering tree altar hung one intended to represent a Madonna, laden with all sorts of heart-offerings, which on the other that of St.. Wenceslaus, the patron of is planted by every German hearth (have cattle, standing on a cloud in the middle of a field, stoves hearths?) to remind the old and and peasants and peasantesses kneeling and pray- young that the Old Year must go its ways ing to him; while below ran, in all directions, cat-in the midst of domestic gladness and gaiety. tle, horses, sheep, and swine, as if filled with extra-As for the promiscuous kissing which ushers ordinary rejoicing at the presence of the saint. The frames of these pictures were hung with gar- in the New Year, Hood had already made lands of leaves. Behind the altar was a little sanc- that his own in his inimitable wood-cut. tum; a scene of dirt and poverty. In a sort of cupboard lay the remains of leaden images of saints and cherubs, in a chaos of decrepitude, some without an arm, and some without a leg. There was material for making the incense in miserable pots and boxes, leathers and dusters, giving a most deplorable idea of the means for the preparation of those ceremonies in which the church so much delights, and in which the people believe so much efficacy to exist. A more woful exposure of the nakedness of the land, and unweaving of the enchantments of the mass, could not be. There was We must pass over the illustrations of German phlegm and German social peculiarities: the former appear to us somewhat extreme, and could be matched, moreover, by English examples; the latter have been sufficiently descanted upon by every tra veller and novelist, from Dr. Moore down to "Cecil." Our experience, too, of German ladies leads us to protest against Mr. Howitt's estimate of their intellectual accook more skilfully, play the piano-forte quirements. He owns, it is true, that they better, and speak languages more fluently, than the corresponding class in England: we are inclined to think that the amount of reading in the two countriesis, on the whole, more equally balanced than he states it. These remarks bring us to the sketchy notices of cities, galleries, &c., mentioned at the commencement of the article. We shall extract a passage here and there, without reference to connection: first, portraits of some of the celebrities of Germany, beginning at Stuttgart with Dannecker: also the little confessional chair, with its lattice; the priest's robes, of the plainest and commonest stuff, with a colored print or two of the most ordi. nary character; a book of the Catholic faith, and a registry of the inarriages, births, christenings, and so on, of the people of the valley. The little girl who attended us was astonished at our walking into this place. She entreated us to come out, as she was very much frightened at our going in there, it was so holy. She quite trembled with terrors and anxiety. The seats, and pulpit, and gallery were all of the most primitive construction. The front of the gallery had once been painted, but there now remained only the faintest traces of its adornment; and in its centre, over the door, stood an organ with tin pipes, most of which were broken or deranged. A lady of the party went up and "It was a high gratification to us, after quitting tried to elicit a sound, but in vain. The little girl | the studio, to be introduced to the venerable sculp tor himself. It was but just in time; they who seek him here now will not find him-he is since deceased. We found him seated on an elevated wooden bench in his garden, under the shade of a large pear-tree, where he could overlook the square in which stands the palace and theatre, and amuse himself with watching the passing people. He was upwards of eighty years of age, of healthy but of feeble appearance, and looking himself like one of Homer's old men sitting on the wall of Troy in the sunshine, in the quiet enjoyment of nature's out-of-door blessings. We had heard that he was quite childish, and were agreeably surprised to find him so perfectly rational, collected, and with no other fear of childishness than that resulting from the feebleness of old age. In his venerable face and long white locks we could recognize much of that simple and Christian character which had dictated the statue of the Christ, and in his cordial manner, the spirit which he had drawn from Christ's religion. He came to meet us, told us he had planted that pear-tree with his own hands, as well as most of the plants in the garden, and gathered us pears and roses for our daughter. Mrs. Dannecker, who is much younger, appeared a very kind and judicious guardian of his age. Peace to the ashes of the good old man. The next visit in Stuttgart which gave us the most pleasure, was to Gustav Schwab, one of the most hearty and popular of the living writers of Germany. Gustav Schwab is a Protestant clergyman, and a perfect specimen of Der gute Swaben.' He has written poetry, history, and much miscellaneous literature, all characterized by great talent and kind-heartedness. He seems particularly to delight in whatever does honor to his beautiful native state Würtemberg. He has described in graphic colors the interesting region of the Swabian Alps. He was the friend of Hauff, the young and popular romance writer, who was cut off too soon for his own full fame and the public enjoyment. We found Herr Schwab inhabiting a large old-fashioned parsonage, and just returned from delivering his forenoon sermon. He received us in the heartiest manner; and in truth you saw at the first glance more conspicuously his native good cordial-heartedness, than his poetical character. He is about the middle height, broad built, with a reddish face, very round brown eyes, and a deal of rough, short, straight gray hair. He entered from a side door, with a profound bow and a wondering air; but when we made our explanations, he welcomed us in the warmest manner, and in a few moments we were talking of Hauff, of Lichtenstein, of Swabia, of poetry, as if we had been acquainted for years. He took us into his study; a large old room full of books, and ornamented with a bust of Hauff and a portrait of the poet Uhland. He introduced us to his daughter, and to his wife; the latter, to all appearance, a genuine German housekeeper. He appeared delighted to learn that I had translated, in The Student Life of Germany,' one or two of his Student songs, in particular his Bursche's Departure.' He told this to his wife with great animation, saying to us, as he pointed to her, 'There is the Liebchen of the song g!'" Next, a few words touching Uhland :"But in this town, which has educated numbers of the most celebrated men of Germany, and has stood many a siege and storm in the stormy times of the nation, lives Uhland, one of the oldest and one of the finest lyrical poets of his country. Like his town and townsmen, Uhland has somewhat of an old-world look. He has never travelled much from home; has a nervous manner, and that the more remarkable in a man who, as a member of the Würtemberg parliament, has distinguished himself as a bold speaker and maintainer of the most liberal principles. In consequence of his very liberal political creed, he has now withdrawn both from the chamber and from his professorship in the university; and possessing a competent fortune, devotes his life to life's happiest, and one of its most honorable pursuits, that of poetry. It has been said of him, by a witty townsman, that he is a genuine nightingale; to be heard and not seen. But this is a little too severe. Though somewhat plain in person, and fidgety in manner, these are things which are speedily forgotten in the enthusiasm of intellectual conversation. He lives in a house on the hill-side overlooking the Neckar bridge, as you go out towards Ulm. Above lie his pleasant garden and vineyard, and hence he has a full view of the distant Swabian Alps, shutting in with their varied outlines one of the most rich, beautiful, and animated landscapes in that pleasant Swabian land. His wife, a bright-looking cheerful lady, came in from the garden with her work-basket, in which was an English edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, which she had been reading. She appeared well used to society, and very well read and intelligent. They have no children, but have adopted a very pretty sharp boy as their foster son. Uhland, indeed, appears to lead a happy and independent life here. Happy in his amiable and sensible wife, who highly admires his genius, and in the midst of his native scenes, to which, like all Swabians, he is much attached, and enjoying throughout Germany a high and firm reputation. Night in a German dorf is well described. Not so fair, to our thinking, are Mr. Howitt's wholesale denunciations of "all these shrines, crosses, and images of saints, which crowd the bridges and waysides in Catholic Germany," as "especially ugly and disgusting." He cannot, surely, have crossed the bridge at Wurzburg, with its solemn lampbearing angels, making the entrance into that grand old town at nightfall so impres sive! He cannot have trodden the way to the Kirch Hof at Nuremberg! And where would be the poetry of the man's mind, who, travelling among the Bavarian lakes, could fail to be moved by the votive tablets and monuments, rude though they be, which tell where such a forester perished in the great winter flood, or such a shepherd was rescued from the peril of a landslide? All down the Moselle, too, how picturesque are the white chapels, nestling close to the brink of the gliding river, underneath the shelter of rich walnut trees, or great rocks crowned with their crumbling fragments of ruin! But in preference to our fine fren zies" the reader will probably prefer such a Undine. Without any particular description, you passage as the following, where our author have in Undine the feeling of the Danube and its resumes his more poetical manner of obser-scenes most vividly impressed upon you. There is vation: a sternness, a solitude, a mysterious awe connected with its deep and dark waters; a brooding spirit of the gloomy and sublime in the voyage of Undine down the Danube, which came most strongly on our recollection as we sailed along this great river." We may return to this book: a visit to Herrahut, and a scramble up the Brocken, "People are fond of comparing the voyages of the Danube and the Rhine, and prononncing which is the more beautiful. I should, myself, find it difficult to say which is the more beautiful or interesting. The two great rivers have a certain similarity, and yet very great differences. They have both their woods, their mountains, their castles, their vine-in stormy weather, claiming our attention; to say nothing of other matters overlooked yards, and their legends; but the Rhine is more populous and cheerful; the Danube more solitary by us in a first general notice of a volume and solemn. You have not those large and popu- so closely crammed. lous towns seated along the banks of the Danube, nor the same life of commerce on its waters. You have not the same extent of finely cultivated vineyards; the same continued stretch of rocks and precipices; at least, so far as I have traversed itfrom Linz to Vienna; but you have more splendid woods, more rude and solemn scenery, mingled with slopes and meadows of the most soft and beautiful BORROW'S BIBLE IN SPAIN. character. The Danube has not been for ages, like The Bible in Spain. By GEORGE BORRow. London: 1842. 2 vols. 12mo. MR. BORROW's book on the 'Gipsies of Spain,' published a couple of years ago, was so much and so well reviewed (though the Rhine, the great highway of commerce, though it has been the scene of bloody contests, and of the march of armies. Its towns, therefore, are small, few, and far between. Its villages have an antiquated, weather-beaten, and half-decaying air; its only life a few ill-dressed peasants, gazing at the steamer as it flies past. Its current is rapid and ir-not, to our shame be it said, in our own Journal), that we cannot suppose his name regular, interrupted with shoals and sand-banks; and marshy meadows, where heaps of pebbles, is new to any of our readers. Its literary thrown up by the floods, testify to its fury in winter merits were considerable-but balanced by and in rainy weather. The Rhine has a more joyous equal demerits. Nothing more vivid and and flourishing aspect, with its cities, its populous picturesque than many of its descriptions villages stretching along its banks, and those banks of scenery and sketches of adventure: noso green, and smoothed for the purposes of naviga- thing more weak and confused than every tion. On the Danube you have solitude; an air of attempt either at a chain of reasoning, or neglect; a stern and brooding spirit, which seems to belong to the genius of the past; of trackless even of a consecutive narrative of events woods; of solitary miners; of rude feudal chiefs that it included. It was evidently the work hunting the boar and the hart in the wild glens and of a man of uncommon and highly interdeep forests--a genius which gives reluctantly way esting character and endowments; but as to the spirit of Steam, which has invaded it. You clearly he was quite raw as an original aumeet or pass on its waters scarcely a boat. There thor. The glimpses of a most curious and is no white sail greeting you in the distant sunshine; novel subject that he opened, were, howfor the boatman dare not hoist one lest the sudden squalls from the hills should sink his craft. Vast ever, so very striking, that, on the whole, rafts now and then, with rude-looking men, float that book deserved well to make a powerdown from the distant Bohemian forests. Old and weather-beaten towers give you a grim greeting from the shaggy rocks as you pass; and views into distant glens and dark woodlands, make you feel that you are in a far wilder and more savage region than that of the Rhine. Campbell, in his so-oftenquoted verses, On leaving a scene in Bavaria,' has strikingly indicated the spirit of the Danube: 6 Yes, I have loved thy wild abode, Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore; To tame thy torrent's thunder-shock- But Campbell has not more livingly embodied the ful impression, and could not but excite great hopes that his more practised pen would hereafter produce many things of higher consequence. The present volumes will, we apprehend, go far to justify such anticipations. In point of composition, generally, Mr. Borrow has made a signal advance; but the grand point is, that he seems to have considered and studied himself in the interval; wisely resolved on steadily avoiding in future the species of efforts in which he had been felt to fail; and on sedulously cultivating and improving the peculiar talents which were as universally acknowledged to be brilliantly dis played in numerous detached passages of his 'Gipsies.' His personal history appears to have French, Spanish, Portuguese; and in the been a most strange one-fuller of adven- varieties of the Gipsey dialect actually in ture than any thing we are at all familiar use over almost every part of Europe. Of with even in modern romance. It is a pity his complete skill in the Scandinavian lanthat he has been withheld, by whatever guages we cannot doubt, because he puband however commendable feelings, from lished some ten years ago a copious body of giving a distinct account of it, at least in translations from their popular minstrelsies, its leading features; but we have only done in a style not at all to be confounded hints and allusions, widely scattered and with that of certain clever versifiers, who often obscure. He must pardon us, there- get a literal version made of a ballad in fore, if in stating our notion of what his some obscure dialect into plain French, or life has been, we should fall into some English, or German prose, and then turn it little mistakes. into flowing English rhymes worthy of the anthology of the Annuals. His Norse ditties have the unforgeable stamp of authenticity on every line. Had he condescended to take the other course, they would have been more popular among fine ladies and lazy gentlemen-but they would not have been true and real; and uncouthness, and harshness, and barbarity of thought and phrase, and rhyme too, were all with him real features which it would have been a sort of crime to depart from. We are informed that Mr. Borrow's accurate knowledge not only of the Gaelic but of the Welsh has been shown in the composition of another series of metrical translations from these dialects, which, however, the poor reception of the Norse volume discouraged him from printing. Finally, it appears that his anxiety about the Gipsies has induced him to study the Sanscrit, of which great tongue he considers their original dialect to be a mutilated and degraded offshoot; but whether Mr. Borrow has ever been in India, or acquired the use of any of its living languages, does not distinctly appear. We rather think, however, such is the fact. Now, be it observed, Mr. Borrow is at this time under forty years of age -a man in the very prime of life and vigor, though, indeed, his wanderings and watchings have left one broad mark behind them. Tall, strong, athletic, with a clear olive complexion, and eyes full of the fire of genius and enterprise, his hair is already white as Mont Blanc. We infer, then, from various obiter dicta of our author, that he is a native of Norfolk-in which county, in very early days, his curiosity and sympathy were powerfully excited by the Gipsey race; insomuch that he attached himself to the society of some members of the fraternity, and so won on their confidence that they initiated him in their dialect, of which, by degrees, he became quite master, and also communicated to him much of their secret practical lore, especially as regards the training and management of horses. From Norfolk the young gentleman appears to have gone to Edinburgh, for the purpose of studying in its university. He, we gather, while thus resident in Scotland, not only studied Latin and Greek and Hebrew with diligence, but made frequent excursions into the Highlands, and, being enthusiastically delighted with the region and the legends of its people, added one more to the very short list of Saxons that have ever acquired any tolerable skill in its ancient language. Whether or not Mr. Borrow also studied medicine at Edinburgh, with a view to the practice of that profession, we do not venture to guess-but that he had attended some of the medical and surgical classes in the university cannot be doubted. Of the course of his life after the period of adolescence we know scarcely any thing, except what is to be inferred from the one fact that he chose to devote himself to the service of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and from the numerous localities which he alludes to as having been visited by him in that occupation, and the most of them, be it observed, so visited that he acquired the free use, in speaking and in writing, of their various dialects. Mr. Borrow, incidentally and unaffectedly (as we conceive), represents himself as able to serve the Society by translating the Scriptures, and expounding them in conversation (he nowhere hints at preaching), in the Persian, the Arabic, the German, the Dutch, the Russian, the Polish; in Italian, |