in the Allemagne, more than in any other of her works, is found a brilliant conglomeration of opinions that cannot easily be made to harmonize together." This is one of those very common critical sentences that sets out eulogistically enough, but ends in a deep depreciation, which, like the solemn cadence of a musical period, dwells on the ear when every thing that preceded it is forgotten. Herr Weber of whom we shall say more anon -sets out in the same strain, but ends even more wickedly: "No work on Germany, from the pen of a foreigner, has attained such a name as the Allemagne of Madame de Staël. Without doubt this lady is a genius of the highest order compared with other female writers; but the gigantic reputation of her work on Germany-a work which confines itself exclusively to the moral and literary side, and is, on the whole, a very cheering eulogy on German character, German honesty, German sentiment, and German thoughtarose more from well-known publisher's tricks, and the power of a name, than from its real merit. Savary, the minister of police, said very truly that it was not French: as little is it German and we are reminded at every page of the justness of French criticism, when they gave their clever countrywoman the soubriquet of La phrasière.' Que pensez vous de mon livre, Monsieur?—je fais comme vous, Madame, JE NE PENSE PAS'-is what I should be inclined to apply to the book. I wish to God that no Lady Morgan may come up the Rhine to play off before us another such exhibition of brilliant phrases." All this is not only very unjust in the mouth of any critic, but it is particularly unbecoming in the mouth of a German, considering that, as the Edinburgh Review very properly remarked, the main and most obvious objection to the Allemagne is, that it gives the Germans too unqualified praise. Herr Weber, indeed, says and every German repeats the saying-that Madame de Staël knew no German, and in the opinions which she gives on German literature

:

serves merely as the slavish mouthpiece of her learned cicerone, William Schlegel. We believe that she might know as much German as Madame Trollope, and a little more-and still know nothing, considering what a task she had proposed to herself. Her French biographer, indeed, says generally, that she studied the language of the country, and no doubt she talks learnedly on this subject as on every other within the wide range of Teutonic existence. But we have her own testimony to the fact that she could not speak German to Schiller at Weimar; and we may be assured that, had such a talker learned German at all, beyond a few rudimentary ideas, she would have learned it by talking. Why, indeed, should Madame de Staël have seriously studied German? Every person in Germany whom she wished to see the notables at Weimar and Vienna, (except some backward Schiller)-spoke French fluently and the great critical Aristarchus who paraded her about, with all his prate about romance and the middle ages, was and is as elegant a modern French coxcombas ever tripped out of Paris. And then that "ant-hill of ideas"-as Bettine Brentano designates the French lady's brain-could find no appropriate organ in the plumping phrases and Cyclopian sentences of German discourse. Eager to talk on all subjects, and find. ing every where persons eager to talk with her, Madame de Staèl did not make an anxious study of German, for the same reason that Shakspeare did not study geography-because she could dispense with it. The talent of the French lies in quickly apprehending and skilfully exhibiting. With what a wonderful "talent of appropriation" Mirabeau made his books, all the world knows; and Madame de Stael, from a short conversation with Goethe, Schiller, and Fichte, and the friendly revision of her note-book by such a universalist as Schlegel, could without difficulty, in the course of a few weeks, carry away as tangible and intelligible a sketch of the Kantian philosophy, as a systematic, deep

digging, plumbing and squaring architectural German could do in as many years. And the fact of the matter is, that nowhere yet in any treatise addressed to the general public, has a more correct and intelligible view of the general tendency of the Kantian philosophy been given, than that which the reader will find in the third volume of the Allemagne. But Schlegel, you say, wrote this, not Ma dame. If out of all the books of travels which have obtained a name in the world, that only be allowed which is directly and altogether original, we should like to see a calculation made how little of the much that has been written would be allowed to remain. A traveller, like a judge in a jury case, must listen to the statements of the witnesses, and the arguments of counsel on both sides, and sum up accordingly. Originality is out of the question. But as the judge must have an eye in his head, otherwise the whole evidence and pleadings will go for nought, so the traveller must have an eye in his head, and (what the lawyer does not require) a heart in his bosom

too. This eye, and this heart, Madame de Staël had above all women. That she did not know German, (as we believe to have been the fact,) only makes her book so much the more wonderful; and as for Schlegel, the French lady showed her extraordinary discernment in attaching to her person such an intelligent cicerone. The most that Schlegel could do was to show her the object and the point of view a living eye he could not give; and with merely German spectacles a French eye must have been altogether blind. We conclude, therefore, that Madame de Staël saw with her own eyes and felt with her own heart; and we have no difficulty in understanding how the eye that saw through the imposing hypocrisy of Napoleon, perceiving in all the breadth of consular and imperial pomp only an "equestrian Robespierre," (Robes pierre au cheval;) and the high heart that disdained to make the pen of genius, prophetic of eternal truth, a tool to flatter the gilded vanities of the moment should have delighted to survey the history of man from the calm heights of Schelling's cosmopolitan Catholicity, and have responded with strong pulsations to the sternly sublime poetry of moral sentiment,

systematized by the philosopher of Königsberg. What Savary said of the Allemagne, that it is not French, and what Weber says, that it is not German, is in fact its greatest praise. It is both French and German; French in the brilliancy of its outward exhibition, German in the purity and the nobility of its inward sentiment. We may say, indeed, that between France and Germany Madame de Staël interposed as a peacemaker and a conciliator-an electric flash equalizing the positive and negative sides of European thought.

We have made these remarks in justification of Madame de Staël, because we think that her book, like that of Tacitus on the same subject, is a work that forms an era in the great history of international appreciation-al

—a history naturally, and almost necessarily synonymous with the history of civilisation. Since the year 1813, the interest in things German, both in this country and in France, has been steadily on the increase; foreign criticism has become now something better than an echo-chamber for the bandying about of mutual misunderstandings; and though we still see with astonishment tailors and other unworthy persons, TW TUXOTY, looking out from the windows of Berlin palaces, we know now, and rejoice in the knowledge, that there are kings there also. True, we will not exchange our classic Edinburgh or our titanic London for any elegant cabinet city of a Carlsruhe, spread out in courtly clegance like a lady's fan, in the foreground stiffly adorned with long Lombardy poplars, while behind some dark sombre Schartzwald, instinct with robbers and hobgoblins, frowns. The Goethe-maniac and Kantian apostles of Germanism, may phrase as mystically as they will; we will not exchange our British soil, whereon we walk erect, for any sublime ballooning, devil knows whither, in the crescent boat of German metaphysics. We will not admit Goethe into partnership with Shakspeare; but we are willing to admit, and do admit with great satisfaction, that Goethe himself, (as we learn from Eckermann,) had too much sense to put forward any such claims; and we are willing, with Mrs Trollope, to scale any heights, and penetrate any mines that may tend to give us a more perfect

knowledge of our Teutonic brethren beyond the Rhine, and to cherish a kindly sympathy with their wellbeing.

It is not true, as the lady whom we have just named with pleasant boast fulness asserts, that Austria or any part of Germany, after the manifold writing that has been on the subject, can now be regarded as" an essentially unknown country." It is true, however, that we have in our English language very few works on the subject of Germany that can be regarded as satisfactory. The best compendium of things German that we have hitherto produced, is that by Hawkins; but it has all the vices as well as all the virtues of the race of hand-books or manuals, to which, in their noblest phase, it belongs. It wants the homogeneous fusing fire, and the sportive play of iridescent light that intellect can then only show when it is not caged. For general intelligence and informa tion, without the stiffness of systematic disquisition, and for a certain ease and anecdotal vivacity, keeping delicately on this side of that tone of frivolous and conceited gossip, towards which modern travel-writing has a tendency, Mr Russell's well-known work remains a model: pity only that he shoots so rapidly across so wide a region! He also, like most German tourists, is very imperfect in his geography. Würtemberg, Bavaria, and the Tyrol, are altogether omitted.

A very pleasant work has been written by Mr Spencer.t This writer has two advantages; he has, in the first place, a perfect love and sympathy with the German character; and, in the second place, his enthusiasm drives him into strange corners, which the swallow flights of most English travellers leave unexplored. He has seen the green isle of Rugen-the last citadel of persecuted heathenism; he has seen also the trist walls of Constance-on which the curse of imperial perjury seems to lie, and the name of Huss is stereotyped in sadness. But Mr Spencer also is too rapid. It is im. possible to do justice to Germany in two small volumes.

The fact of the matter is, that to a person who is not a Madame de Staël, the study of so vast and varied a coun try as Germany requires time. There are many curious topographical and interesting historical details that cannot be found in a guide-book; and for German literature, we shall allow an Englishman of respectable talents five years to become familiar with its spirit, and five years more to follow it out through—not all—but its main and most striking wide-spread ramifications. A perfectly ripe and completely organized work on Germany has not, to our knowledge, yet been produced by any foreigner. Madame de Staël's work can scarcely be called a growth; she only blew away the mist, and lighted certain prominent points of the panorama with brilliant lamps. But the Germans themselves have been so much the more busy to paint a picture of Deutschland, that all men might look on and call beautiful. They seem, indeed, to have discovered the art of intellectual daguerrotype, and to have designed more truly than any artist can, the finished portrait of themselves. They have, in particular, produced three works of the self-descriptive and self-anatomizing kind, which, together, form a whole not easily rivalled in any other literature: these

works are:

1. Menzel's History of the Ger

mans.

2. Menzel's German Literature. 3. Weber's Germany, or Letters of a German travelling in Germany.

The first, as the name bears, historical, the second critical, the third topographical. Of Menzel's works it is not our intention here to speak; their merit has been universally ac knowledged: and though the work on German literature has throughout a polemical character, and is unfortu nately, on some points, full of violence and dogmatical one-sidedness, yet the spirit of the whole is so manly, and the grasp of vigorous intellect so comprehensive, that we imagine the Germans will wait many years before this work can be super

Svo.

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seded by another, which, eschewing its few faults, shall emulate successfully its many rare virtues. From Weber's work, as being unknown in England, and, unless we are much deceived, hitherto untrumpeted in the high places of British criticism, we intend in this notice to present our readers with a few extracts. In the first place, however, one word as to the author. "Charles Julius Weber," says the Conversations Lexicon, "known by the clever (geistreich) letters of a German travelling in Germany, was born in the year 1767 at Langenburg, in the princedom of Hohenlohe Langenburg, where his father had a situation under government, (this country is now incorporated into Würtemberg.) He studied law at Erlangen during three years, from 1785 to 1788. had, however, early conceived a strong passion for history and geography, and these studies he afterwards zealously prosecuted, with a prospective view to a professorship in one of the universities. Disgusted with the paltry peddling of the law in such a petty princedom as that of Hohenlohe, he went in 1789 to Göttingen; but here, notwithstanding the patronage of Schlözer, Pütter and Eichhorn, he failed in realizing his schemes of academical ambition. He then betook himself, as many literary men have done before him, to tutordom and secretaryship. He was first tutor in the house of the famous Lyonese banker Delessert, in Switzerland, and from this he advanced to be private secretary to the reigning count of Erbach-Schönberg. Dignified with the title of government.councillor, he attended the count to the congress of Rastadt, (1797,) where, under the auspices of Napoleon, the delicate work of mediatizing was going on. Being well versed in French literature, he here made acquaintance with the leading French characters of the day. At the house of the count he had previously seen the best society; and, among other interesting persons, had met with Dumouriez, and given him lessons in German. He after wards travelled with the young count of Ysenburg-Büdigen; and in the year 1804 retired from these changeful occupations into the quiet of private life, with much knowledge of the world, and 5000 florins in his pocket. The remaining twenty-eight years of his life (he died in 1832) he spent

with his friends apart from public life, devoting himself alternately to travel and study. Every year he made a tour through some part of his German fatherland, now and then extending his route as far as Paris, and generally bringing home with him some valuable addition to his curious library, amounting at his death to 11,000 volumes. In the year 1818 he first came before the public as author, and published several works of an historical character, all exhibiting traits of an original mind. But none of his works carried the public by storm, shutting the mouth of the gainsayers, except this Germany, which was first published at Stuttgard in 1826-8, in three vols. 8vo; and now, in this second edition, amounts to four Starke Bünde-strong octavos, as the Germans say, with some 600 or 700 pages each. The work was received," continues our oracle, "with universal approbation; it contains the flower of Weber's genius, and the cream of his experience.'

From this account the reader will be able to judge what an admirable guide through broad Deutschland he has to expect in Charles Julius Weber. Every thing seems to conspire here to equip completely the concocter of a perfect book of native topography. We have an early passion for geography and history; hard training at the law for three years, various travelling and trafficking in the region of the polite world, an eye well trained to observe the characteristic changes of many-coloured life, and a brain well stored with curious scraps of book learning, such as every German must have. Add to all this, a very pleasant and fluent breadth of witso far as a German can be witty; and you will understand how twenty or thirty years of hither and thither travelling in Germany by a German, will make a book, topographically at least, far superior to any thing that the English language can boast of in this kind. It were in vain, indeed, to expect that even a Mistress Jamieson, were she to localize herself in her beloved Germany for the rest of her life, for the purpose of writing an "Allemagne," could produce a work so rich in experience, and so ripe in conclusions, as the intelligent gossip of a cheerful sexagenarian bachelor, native to the soil. It is seldom that a man

of highly cultivated intellect and great general information, makes it an object of his life to perambulate and thoroughly to describe his native country; and seldomer still, that when done thoroughly, it is also done cheerfully and agreeably. Such a topographer, so far as we can see, Germany has had the good fortune to find in Mr Weber; and the student of German literature will be delighted to find that even the stern and architectural Menzel (Literatur, iv. 77) gives to Weber's rambling labours the testimony of his almost unqualified admiration. The length of Menzel's eulogy must be the excuse, (and it is the only one,) why we do not here honour our pages with its insertion.

'We have now done our duty in introducing the stranger, and explaining as briefly as possible the purpose and drift of his mission. He shall now measure out his intelligent gossip without much interruption from usso long as our readers receive instruction or amusement from such dis

course.

He sets out methodically, as a German will, with a description of Germany generally, and of the Germans generally. Being a native of South Germany, he begins with eulogizing that; as indeed who that has been in Styria, or Austria, or Tyrol, or the Salzburg, or in the Swabian Alps and the smiling vale of the Neckar, will be slow to do with him?

"Happy inhabitants of the valley of the Danube, the Rhine, the Maine, and the Neckar! Read what voyages you will to Italy, to Sicily, to Spain, and the south of France-and you will scarcely be tempted with these Hesperian regions, lying languid and inert beneath the too powerful sun, to exchange your own happy abodes where the temper of man and the temper of the sky are equally mellow, and where the intellectual culture of Europe has placed her throne! I at least say, with Kind

"Bin einmal in die Citronen gegangen Thu's nimmermehr!"

But Herr Weber's enthusiastic attachment to Southern Germany appears, perhaps, most strongly in those strong colours of contrast in which he has set forth the portraiture of the dreary north: "The natives of this region may live here happily enough,

no doubt; but a South German who has been here once, will scarcely repeat his visit from the mere pleasure of travelling. The air in this ill-starred half of Germany is not pure and darkblue, but misty and scarcely bluish, (kaum blaulicht)-the woods only grey, green, or black-the earth whitish grey, or dark-brown heath, and the lumulus lupulus (hop) takes the place of the vine. The heaths, however, are fruitful stores of honey; and flocks of tiny black sheep find a nutriment here, which they, doubtless, prefer much to any thing they could crop from the greenest hills of Tyrol: there are also juicy berries of various kinds, and delicious eggs of such wildfowl as serve them here for nightingales. But these varieties will not mend the matter. mend the matter. Here the hay has no fragrance-lovers in the grass are almost a caricature, as in Holland-the shade of the wood is not kindly, the trees do not luxuriate in blossom; and where the birds do not sing but scream, how should poets sing? Here wimples gently no prattling brook-the very rivers creep phlegmatic along over the melancholy flat-the waters are dirty browntaste of peat-moss-and for swimming, nourish creeping, things. All the four elements are unprofitable.

"In these flat regions, at the same time, it is an advantage that the imagination rarely gains the mastery over the understanding, and the natives seem happier, because they are more contented. The senses triumph more seldom over the soul- pampered stomachs oppress more rarely the brain. In the upper classes there is more delicacy, perhaps, than in the south, (alles ist feiner in der gebildeten classe.) But taking the mass of the North Germans, we must say with sadness, that being engaged in an eternal struggle with stepmother Nature, the children are, like their mother, serious, monotonous,unfriendly,unwieldy, colder, more watery, more sandy, than other sons of man-not cheerful, merry, and communicative, like the sons of the southern hills-without wine, without harp and song. I say truly, when I get beyond Cassel, and across the Elbe, I feel like Adam driven out of Paradise into the vale of tears. What the Englishman said of Scotland, might be said more truly by a South German of North Germany- If Cain